Numerous publications advocate that anxiety and depression are the key factors affecting academic performance among students, particularly those going through undergraduate studies. Observation through a dialogue with college students demonstrates with clarity the frustration and disappointment of students who report a lack of motivation and focus…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education is essential to the economic growth, health, and progress of the modern world. One cognitive ability that underpins thinking and learning in STEM, as well as other disciplines, is relational ability. This ability to spot common relations shared by different objects, events, ideas, or…

Children born preterm, defined as children born prior to 37 weeks gestational age, are at increased risk for cognitive, academic, and social-emotional impairments and disability. The gap in performance between preterm children and full-term peers has been well-documented from the earliest stages of schooling well into adulthood. However, it has…

Infancy is a pivotal time in the development of a human's cognitive ability. There is a lack of research in this area, specifically on mothers and their beliefs about literacy practices and the home learning environment. By utilizing Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework, this study explores the beliefs of mothers and how they impact the infants'…

Are there developmental pathways for learning that provide continuity from early learning through adulthood with measurable intervals for assessment and with transitions for learning that are understandable, stable, identifiable, communicable, flexible, and affordable to implement? If so, what are the foundations for learning that enable students…

The present dissertation reports two experiments that examine implicit and explicit language learning methods and their impacts on early vocabulary, grammar, and phonological acquisition, in addition to working memory, proactive/reactive control, and fluid intelligence, as well as learner motivation. Experiment 1 investigated adult L2 acquisition…

Teacher evaluations have varying platforms and models used to provide feedback to teachers on their instructional practices. While research shows the importance of effective and meaningful feedback on teacher impact, there is little research on the specific model of evaluating administrators using Cognitive Coaching. The purpose of this study was…

Although researchers have indicated that counselors' clinical experience positively predicts increased cognitive complexity, most research on the topic has not addressed how counselors' own experiences shape their cognitive complexity. Completed research on counselors' cognitive complexity has been primarily quantitative, included European…

A project is a finite activity aimed at producing a tangible product or service. Designing and developing instruction is a type of "project." Instructional design projects ("design projects") require instructional designers (IDs) to manage multiple and often overlapping work tasks, balance the "triple constraint"…

National mathematics achievement results show that elementary students in the United States are not increasing in cognitive ability or critical thinking skills (NAEP, 2020). For this increase, mathematically promising students require more opportunities for cognitively demanding mathematics instruction. As a result, this descriptive study focused…

Pre-kindergarten in Texas targets 3 and 4-year-old children who are considered at risk. The result of the state eligibility rules for public pre-kindergarten is homogeneous classrooms composed predominantly by English Language Learners, and students from high-minority and high-poverty households. The non-diverse pre-kindergarten classrooms have…

The rate of digital media usage among eight to 18-year-old students, since late 1990s, has risen by over 30%, yet the official acceptance of such technology for educational outcomes remains limited. Due to such a remarkable growth of digital media usage in absence of formal educational recognition, researchers began to explore how specifically…

Referential expressions such as pronouns are frequently used in conversations, and native speakers seem to understand who these expressions refer to effortlessly. Although the process of pronoun resolution seems to be easy, interpretations of pronouns are dependent on various sources of information from the discourse including morphosyntax (e.g.,…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show a wide range of developmental characteristics and differ from each other in terms of symptom presentation. This heterogeneity leads to difficulties when trying to individualize treatments that work for individual children with ASD. Therefore, identifying and understanding subgroups of children on…

Technology is ubiquitous and takes many forms. Digital media consumption (e.g., television, video games, etc.) has increased significantly in its prevalence in our lives as well as in social acceptability. However, it has also been consistently implicated in poorer health outcomes. The extent to which cognitive functions are adversely affected by…