Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological model proposes that events in higher order social ecosystems should influence human development through their impact on events in lower order social ecosystems. This proposition was tested with respect to ecological violence and the development of children's aggression via analyses of 3 waves of data (1 wave…

This case study examined the relationships between the programmatic features of service learning and student willingness to participate in and development during a service learning opportunity in the secondary, Social Studies classroom. The sample included two sections of Advanced Placement Psychology which consisted of 58 junior and senior…

Librarians have a long history of protecting user privacy, but they have done seemingly little to understand or influence the privacy policies of library resource vendors that increasingly collect user information through Web 2.0-style personalization features. After citing evidence that college students value privacy, this study used content…

This study has the main objective to present the findings of a small-scale classroom research carried out to collect data about my spoken error correction behaviors by means of self-observation. With this study, I aimed to analyze how and which spoken errors I corrected during a specific activity in a beginner's class. I used Lyster and Ranta's…

The attempt to create common standards and assessments in education obliges individuals to revisit some longstanding debates about the capacity of the American intergovernmental system to adapt to new policy demands. Some observers remain skeptical that states have the political will or administrative capacity to develop and adopt higher policy…

This study investigated the effect of temporal frequency and modulation depth on reaction times for discriminating the direction of first-order (luminance-defined) and second-order (contrast-defined) motion, equated for visibility using equal multiples of direction-discrimination threshold. Results showed that reaction times were heavily…

Unexpected events often distract us. In the laboratory, novel auditory stimuli have been shown to capture attention away from a focal visual task and yield specific electrophysiological responses as well as a behavioral cost to performance. Distraction is thought to follow ineluctably from the sound's low probability of occurrence or, put more…

We explored infants' ability to recognize the canonical colors of daily objects, including two color-specific objects (human face and fruit) and a non-color-specific object (flower), by using a preferential looking technique. A total of 58 infants between 5 and 8 months of age were tested with a stimulus composed of two color pictures of an object…

Within the motor system, cortical areas such as the primary motor cortex (M1) and the ventral premotor cortex (PMv), are thought to be activated during the observation of actions performed by others. However, it is not known how the connections between these areas become active during action observation or whether these connections are modulated…

The purpose of this study was to examine where children choose to play on a school ground with a diversity of play spaces. We were particularly interested in understanding the influence of the natural/green part of the school ground on children's choice. Using a momentary time sampling direct observation instrument, a total of 23 scans were taken…

This study evaluates the impact of teaching basic qualitative methodology to preservice teachers enrolled in an educational psychology course in the quality of observation journals. Preservice teachers enrolled in an educational psychology course requiring 45 hr of field experience were given qualitative methodological training as a part of the…

A number of recent studies suggested that visuo-spatial perspective taking (VSPT) occurs spontaneously when viewing either a human body or an action by an agent. However, it remains unclear whether VSPT is caused by the observation of an (potential) action or occurs because the observer infers from certain cues that another mind is present…

Teacher-student relationships are accepted as influential but the dynamics of those relationships are not well understood, especially with difficult students. A series of interviews were combined with classroom observations and written reflections to understand in what ways a teacher negotiated her relationship with a behaviorally challenging…

This research examined generality of the phylogenetic rule that birds discriminate frequency ranges more accurately than mammals. Human absolute pitch chroma possessors accurately tracked transitions between frequency ranges. Independent tests showed that they used note naming (pitch chroma) to remap the tones into ranges; neither possessors nor…

The purpose of this study was to examine agreement between the Walk4Life DUO pedometer (W4L; Walk4Life, Plainfield, Illinois, USA) and two criterion instruments in the measurement of physical activity. Participants (N = 189, M = 16.74 years, SD = 0.99) in high school physical education concurrently wore the DUO (i.e., comparison instrument) and…