Listening comprehension input is necessary for language learning and acculturation. One approach to developing listening comprehension skills is through exposure to massive amounts of naturally occurring spoken language input. But exposure to this input is not enough; learners also need to make the comprehension corpus meaningful to their learning…

Difficulties in phonological processing and reading that characterize developmental dyslexia have been suggested also to affect those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, it is not known to what extent various intervening factors, such as low intelligence quotient or age, explain the observed difficulties. In this study,…

In this paper, we discuss two types of discourse: the first one--the discourse of cognitive impairment of a long-term care facility (LTCF) reflected in the institution's language policy and in the language use of several caregivers of the LTCF; and the second one, the discourse of "small" stories (Bamberg and Georgakopoulou 2008) told by Alise, a…

Aim: There is a lack of investigation into the functional developmental profile of children with Down syndrome. On the basis of current international health paradigms, the purpose of this study was to assess the developmental profile of these children. Method: Sixty children (33 males, 27 females) with Down syndrome (age range 6-16y; mean age 9y…

This study reports an adaptive digital learning project, Scientific Concept Construction and Reconstruction (SCCR), and examines its effects on 108 8th grade students' scientific reasoning and conceptual change through mixed methods. A one-group pre-, post-, and retention quasi-experimental design was used in the study. All students received tests…

A disproportionally high number of children with specific language impairment (SLI) develop dyslexia. Yet it is hard to predict which individual child is at risk. This article presents a longitudinal study of phonological and early literacy development of 18 Dutch-speaking children with SLI, compared to 18 typically developing controls over a…

This paper reports the results of four dual-task experiments that were designed to determine the extent of domain-specificity of the verbal working memory resources used in linguistic integrations. To address this question, syntactic complexity was crossed in a 2x2 design with the complexity of a secondary task, which involved either (1)…

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of research on expertise and training in complex domains. First, we present a summary of the origins of the research on expertise and the development of current theory in expert performance. Then we present a synopsis of the literature on expert performance in sport and perceptual-cognitive skills…

Understanding a narrative situation depends on keeping track of multiple characters that enter and exit dynamically as the plot unfolds. Because there has been no systematic investigation of age differences in the ability to manage multiple characters during narrative comprehension, this project was designed to examine those differences in this…

More than a century of research shows that increasing the gap between study episodes using the same material can enhance retention, yet little is known about how this so-called distributed practice effect unfolds over nontrivial periods. In two three-session laboratory studies, we examined the effects of gap on retention of foreign vocabulary,…

Background: Non-word repetition in children is a skill related to, but separable from grammatical ability. Lexical skill may bridge the gap between these two abilities. Aims: The main aim was to determine whether real-word-repetition tasks could be better as predictors of grammatical ability than non-word-repetition tasks in children with typical…

Cognitive bias refers to a well-established finding that individuals who suffer from certain clinical problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, etc.) selectively attend to, remember, and interpret events relevant to their condition. Although a body of literature exists that has tried to examine this…

The main objective of this study is (a) to explore the relationship among cognitive style (field dependence/independence), working memory, and mathematics anxiety and (b) to examine their effects on students' mathematics problem solving. A sample of 161 school girls (13-14 years old) were tested on (1) the Witkin's cognitive style (Group Embedded…

The information that individuals can hold in working memory is quite limited, but researchers have typically studied this capacity using simple objects or letter strings with no associations between them. However, in the real world there are strong associations and regularities in the input. In an information theoretic sense, regularities…

The aim of the present study was to examine executive dysfunctioning and decreased processing speed as potential mediators of age-related differences in episodic memory. We compared the performances of young and elderly adults in a free-recall task. Participants were also given tests to measure executive functions and perceptual processing speed…