Purpose: Listening effort is a broad construct, and there is no consensus on how to subdivide listening effort into dimensions. This project focuses on the subjective experience of effortful listening and tests if cognitive workload, mental fatigue, and mood are interrelated dimensions. Method: Two online studies tested young adults (n = 74 and n…

Measuring cognitive load is important in virtual learning environments (VLE). Thus, valid and reliable measures of cognitive load are important to support instructional design in VLE. Through three studies, we investigated the validity and reliability of Leppink's Cognitive Load Scale (CLS) and developed the extraneous cognitive load (EL)…

The authors discuss empirically determined competence areas to K-12 computer science education, emphasizing the cognitive level of competence. The results of a questionnaire with 120 professors of computer science serve as a database. By using multi-dimensional scaling and cluster analysis, four competence areas to computer science education…

Sensorimotor processing in children and higher-cognitive processing in adults could determine how non-native phonemes are acquired. This study investigates how age-of-acquisition (AOA) and proficiency-level (PL) predict native-like perception of statistically dissociated L2 categories, i.e., within-category and between-category. In a similarity…

Although factor analysis is the most commonly-used method for examining the structure of cognitive variable interrelations, multidimensional scaling (MDS) can provide visual representations highlighting the continuous nature of interrelations among variables. Using data (N = 8,813; ages 17-97 years) aggregated across 38 separate studies, MDS was…

We examined autonomic physiological responses induced by six different cognitive ability tasks, varying in complexity, that were selected on the basis of on Guilford's Structure of Intellect model. In a group of 52 participants, task performance was measured together with nine different autonomic response measures and respiration rate. Weighted…

This study examined whether children with mathematical difficulties (MDs) or comorbid mathematical and reading difficulties have a working memory deficit and whether the hypothesized working memory deficit includes the whole working memory system or only specific components. In the study, 31 10-year-olds with MDs and 37 10-year-olds with both…

An hypothesis concerning a definition of the concepts assimilation and accommodation was tested. Both assimilation and accommodation were hypothesized to be processes that produce changes in cognitive structures--internal representations used to organize behavior. The hypothesis is that, in contrast to assimilation, the changes in structure caused…

Young, middle-age, and old adults ranked similarities of word pairs in a conditional rank-ordering task. Analyses of variance revealed an age-related decline in semantic processing but no such decline for elaboration. Older adults' retrieval was less compatible with initial processing than was the case for younger adults. (Author/ABB)

Bottleneck models of psychological refractory period (PRP) tasks suggest that a Task 1 response should be unaffected by the Task 2 response in the same trial, because selection of the former finishes before selection of the latter begins. Contrary to this conception, the authors found backward response-level crosstalk effects in which Task 2…

Conducted exploratory field study to examine how age-concepts are experienced and to assess relationship of age identities to each other. Proposes Cognitive Age as a new multidimensional age scale that merges the standard scale, Identity Age, and Personal Age. Study results attest to Cognitive Age scale's reliability and validity. (Author/NB)

Subjects scaled 48 positive and 32 negative assertion vignettes according to similarity of difficulty to determine how people cognitively present complex social situations. Analyses indicated each dimension could be described according to major component(s) that contributed to it and dimensions varied in importance as a function of assertion…

In four experiments, evidence was found for a complex psychological representation of musical pitch. The perception of music depends not only on psychoacoustic properties of the tones, but also on processes that relate the tones to one another through contact with a well-defined and complex psychological representation of musical pitch. (Author/RD)

The Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) is designed to measure masculinity and femininity independently. It is based on the dualistic, as opposed to the bipolar, nature of masculinity and femininity. The development of measures for sex role research has relied on empirical techniques; item selection has been based on respondents' stereotyped conceptions…

This experiment tested the ability of people to recall the locations of buildings in a familiar campus setting. Ten graduate students represented the relative locations of buildings by pairwise distance judgments and by direct mapping of locations on a Tektronix cathode ray terminal. Both methods led to accurate judgments. (Author/CTM)