Rats obtained food-pellet reinforcers by nose poking a lighted key. Experiment 1 examined resistance to extinction following single-schedule training with different variable-interval schedules, ranging from a mean interval of 16 min to 0.25 min. That is, for each schedule, the rats received 20 consecutive daily baseline sessions and then a session…

Students enjoy carrying out an exciting and challenging research project that combines science with computers and mathematics to investigate how polyacrylate animals change in size over time when placed in water and aqueous salt solutions. The hands-on activity motivates students and provides them with the necessary skills and information to have…

Science trade books can spark real-life involvement in saving a threatened fish. A successful science program at the Westbrook Elementary School, in Bethesda, Maryland, does just that. The program--in which students participate in watershed restoration projects as part of a yearlong study of the local Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River…

In this article, the author developed an activity called "The Polar Insulation Investigation." This activity builds on students' natural interest in "things polar" and introduces them to animal adaptations in a unique way. The aim of the exploration is to determine the role of animal coverings (e.g., blubber, fur, and feathers) and to see which is…

Over the past decade, much has been learned about the ocean's secrets and especially about the creatures of the deep sea. The deepest parts of the oceans are currently the focus of many new discoveries in both the physical and biological sciences. Middle school students find the deep sea fascinating and especially seem to enjoy its mysterious and…

The colourful, vigorous territorial display behaviour of the Siamese fighting fish, "Betta splendens", has great appeal for both pet enthusiasts and animal behaviourists. Their beauty, longevity, easy maintenance and rearing make them a popular pet and an ideal science laboratory specimen. This investigation utilises "B. splendens" to test for the…

The dissection of the mammalian heart in secondary biology classes need not be restricted to revealing the internal structure of the heart and its function. It could also be used to demonstrate other important aspects of blood circulation, including the blood supply to the heart itself as well as the causes and effects of coronary heart disease.…

This study reconsiders a series of drawing tasks (Goodnow, 1978) in which children have to modify their stereotypical drawing of the human figure to represent a person in movement. Another task, in which children have to differentiate the drawing of a kangaroo from that of a person, is also considered. According to a neo-Piagetian model of drawing…

This paper describes the partial results of a research project which investigated conceptions of nature and the role of place in environmental education in children who attended Camp Arowhon. Through interviews and observations, utilizing a hybrid research drawing from phenomenography and ethnography, local common wild animals emerged as playing…

The potential for personalized cancer management has long intrigued experienced researchers as well as the naive student intern. Personalized cancer treatments based on a tumor's genetic profile are now feasible and can reveal both the cells' susceptibility and resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. In a weeklong laboratory investigation that…

Human newborns discriminate languages from different rhythmic classes, fail to discriminate languages from the same rhythmic class, and fail to discriminate languages when the utterances are played backwards. Recent evidence showing that cotton-top tamarins discriminate Dutch from Japanese, but not when utterances are played backwards, is…

When an odor is paired with a delayed illness, rats acquire a relatively weak odor aversion. In contrast, rats develop a strong aversion to an olfactory cue paired with delayed illness if it is presented simultaneously with a gustatory cue. Such a conditioning effect has been referred to as taste-potentiated odor aversion learning (TPOA). TPOA is…

Fear extinction is defined as a decline in conditioned fear responses (CRs) following nonreinforced exposure to a feared conditioned stimulus (CS). Behavioral evidence indicates that extinction is a form of inhibitory learning: Extinguished fear responses reappear with the passage of time (spontaneous recovery), a shift of context (renewal), and…

Learning strategy preferences depend upon circulating estrogen levels, with enhanced hippocampus-sensitive place learning coinciding with elevated estrogen levels. The effects of estrogen on strategy may be mediated by fluctuations in GABAergic function, given that inhibitory tone in the hippocampus is low when estrogen is high. We investigated…

We use a variation of contextual fear conditioning, called the context pre-exposure facilitation effect (CPFE) to study the rat's memory for context. In this paradigm, the rat is pre-exposed to a conditioning context and later returned to that context, where it is immediately shocked. The memory context is revealed by the fact that pre-exposure to…