The validity of the linguistic relativity principle continues to stimulate vigorous debate and research. The debate has recently shifted from the behavioural investigation arena to a more biologically grounded field, in which tangible physiological evidence for language effects on perception can be obtained. Using brain potentials in a colour…

Objective: The main aim of the present study is to investigate the short-term cognitive effects of computer games in children with different psychiatric disorders and normal controls. Method: One hundred one children are recruited for the study (aged between 9 and 12 years). All participants played a motor-racing game on the computer for 1 hour.…

The influence of attention on perceptual awareness was examined using metacontrast masking. Attention was manipulated with endogenous cues to assess the effects on the temporal and spatial parameters of target visibility. Experiment 1 examined the time course of effective masking when the target and mask set were presented at an attended vs. an…

A holographic process is presented where the object is made of the real image produced by a two-mirror system. Single-step reflection hologram recording is achieved. Details of the process are given, optics concepts are outlined and demonstrative results are presented. (Contains 6 figures and 2 footnotes.)

Autistic and typical children mastered a simultaneous discrimination task with three sets of all-tactile compound stimuli. During training, responding to one stimulus (S+) resulted in rewards whereas responding to the alternative (S-) was extinguished. Test 1 was conducted with recombinations of S+ and S- elements. In Test 2, the test stimulus to…

This paper brings task-based language teaching (TBLT) curriculum development principles into the blended learning context, presenting processes and outcomes from a project to develop a task-based thematic unit--asking and giving directions--in a hybrid web-based university-level class focused on listening and speaking skills in Mandarin Chinese.…

This report describes reflections from two cycles of developmental research that involved creating and refining a series of computer-based applets for reasoning about the relative magnitude of fractional quantities. The applet sequence stemmed from a cognitively demanding task used in face-to-face teacher education settings that involved placing…

With an emphasis on procedural fundamentals, the original behavior-analytic equivalence experiments and the equivalence paradigm are described briefly. A few of the subsequent developments and implications are noted, with special reference to the possible significance of the findings with respect to language and cognition. (Contains 9 figures.)

We report the results of a 2-year longitudinal comparison of grade 3 and grade 4 English-as-a-second-language learners in an experimental, comprehension-based program and those in a regular (i.e., more typical) language learning program. The goal was to examine the extent to which sustained, long-term comprehension practice in both listening and…

Twenty-four junior high school students with academic achievement in the 26-50 percentiles were given easier anagram tasks while their 183 classmates were given more difficult ones by means of a presentation trick using polarizing filters. The two series of anagram tasks were projected simultaneously on the same screen, but each of two groups of…

Classifier languages are spoken by a large portion of the world's population, but psychologists have only recently begun to investigate the psychological reality of classifier categories and their potential for influencing non-linguistic thought. The current work evaluates both the mental representation of classifiers and potential cognitive…

The ability to select an appropriate motor response by resolving competition among alternative responses plays a major role in cognitive performance. fMRI studies suggest that the development of this skill is related to the maturation of the frontal cortex that underlies the improvement of motor inhibition abilities. However, fMRI cannot…

This study reports the outcomes of two in-service courses, which targeted the development of chemistry teachers' skills to promote inquiry or reasoning and creative thinking skills among their students. Sixteen chemistry and four biology teachers participated in two intervention studies, both designed according to the philosophy of scientific and…

Purpose: To evaluate the learning effects of a deductive language-teaching procedure when teaching a novel gender agreement verb inflection to children with language impairment. Method: Thirty-two 6-8-year-old children with language impairment were randomly assigned to either a deductive (N = 16) or an inductive (N = 16) treatment group. In the…

Previous studies, including Duffield and Matsuo (2001; 2002; 2009), have demonstrated second language learners' overall sensitivity to a parallelism constraint governing English VP-ellipsis constructions: like native speakers (NS), advanced Dutch, Spanish and Japanese learners of English reliably prefer ellipsis clauses with structurally parallel…