Gygax, Gabriel, Sarrasin, Oakhill, and Garnham (2008) showed that readers form a mental representation of gender that is based on grammatical gender in French and German (i.e., masculine supposedly interpretable as a generic form) but is based on stereotypical information in English. In this study, a modification of their stimulus material was…

Though many previous studies have reported enhanced cognitive control in bilinguals, few have investigated if such control is modulated by language proficiency. Here, we examined the inhibitory control of high and low proficient Hindi-English bilinguals on an oculomotor Stroop task. Subjects were asked to make a saccade as fast as possible towards…

In this research we present the use of some technologies in problem solving activities (at different secondary school grades), aimed at finding a model for a geometric configuration, and representing this model in various ways: through a construction, through a Cartesian graph, etc. The task is part of a teaching experiment, in which students used…

This paper argues for a renewed focus on statistical reasoning in the beginning school years, with opportunities for children to engage in data modelling. Results are reported from the first year of a 3-year longitudinal study in which three classes of first-grade children (6-year-olds) and their teachers engaged in data modelling activities. The…

The present study aims to investigate the effects of a design experiment developed for third-grade students in the field of mathematics word problems. The main focus of the program was developing students' knowledge about word problem solving strategies with an emphasis on the role of visual representations in mathematical modeling. The experiment…

Anxiety and depression are linked to lower academic performance. It is proposed that academic performance is reduced in young people with high levels of anxiety or depression as a function of increased test-specific worry that impinges on working memory central executive processes. Participants were typically developing children (12 to…

In a recent study, Gevers and colleagues (2010, "Journal of Experimental Psychology: General," Vol. 139, pp. 180-190) showed that the SNARC (spatial numerical association of response codes) effect in adults results not only from spatial coding of magnitude (e.g., mental number line hypothesis) but also from verbal coding. Because children are…

Attributional style models of depression in adults (Abramson et al. 1989, 1978) have been adapted for use with children; however, most applications do not consider that children's understanding of causal relations may be qualitatively different from that of adults. If children's causal attributions depend on children's level of cognitive…

Purpose: To investigate whether working memory capacity (WMC) modulates the effects of to-be-ignored speech on the memory of materials conveyed by to-be-attended speech. Method: Two tasks (reading span, Daneman & Carpenter, 1980; Ronnberg et al., 2008; and size-comparison span, Sorqvist, Ljungberg, & Ljung, 2010) were used to measure individual…

This paper describes and discusses the role of practical work in science education in Ireland. The 2002 report of a government Task Force on the Physical Sciences, set up to consider the problems facing the teaching of the physical sciences in second-level schools in Ireland, has resulted in rapid reform of the science curriculum at both junior…

Interactive display systems give users flexibility to tailor their visual displays to different tasks and situations. However, in order for such flexibility to be beneficial, users need to understand how to tailor displays to different tasks (to possess "metarepresentational competence"). Recent research suggests that people may desire…

This investigation connects issues in second language (L2) acquisition to topics in quantitative sociolinguistics by exploring the relationship between native-speaker (NS) and L2 variation. It is the first large-scale analysis of L2 mood use (the subjunctive-indicative contrast) in Spanish. It applies variationist findings on the range of…

This study examined the effects of input-based practice on developing accurate and speedy requests in second-language Chinese. Thirty learners from intermediate-level Chinese classes were assigned to an intensive training group (IT), a regular training group (RT), and a control group. The IT and the RT groups practiced using four Chinese…

Attention operates to select both spatial locations and perceptual objects. However, the specific mechanism by which attention is oriented to objects is not well understood. We examined the means by which object structure constrains the distribution of spatial attention (i.e., a "grouped array"). Using a modified version of the Egly et…

Executive function mechanisms underpinning language-related effects on theory of mind understanding were examined in a sample of 165 preschoolers. Verbal labels were manipulated to identify relevant perspectives on an explicit false belief task. In Experiment 1 with 4-year-olds (N = 74), false belief reasoning was superior in the fully and…