Examines the acquisition of tense and agreement by L2 learners of French. Interviews were conducted with English-speaking children acquiring French as a second language and with grade-matched native French-speaker controls. Results revealed that items encoding agreement emerged before items encoding tense, suggesting that the abstract grammatical…

Focuses on the importance of phonology in establishing orthographic representations. In normal readers, phonological and orthographic representations of words are so closely connected that they are usually coactivated, whereas in dyslexics, this connection is less strong, so that orthographic representations interfere less with phonemic…

Describes a computer-based instructional system called Stat Lady and reports the results of an evaluation study of undergraduates that tested the efficacy of learning probability from this program compared to a traditional lecture and a no-treatment control group. Aptitude treatment interaction is also investigated. (Author/LRW)

Describes how the University of Pennsylvania is testing a new way of teaching involving team-taught interdisciplinary courses on some its freshmen, while keeping others in a control group. (EV)

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the influence of Career Discovery I, the first module in a computer-assisted program for career decision-making, on the stability of the choice of college majors. This study sought to determine whether any differences existed in the stability of college majors between students who entered a…

In the No Child Left Behind Act and the What Works Clearinghouse, the federal government has attempted to establish guidelines for the type of education research that U.S. schools should consider in selecting instructional programs and resources. The government's clear preference for the medical model--a powerful research design in such fields as…

The notion of item context effects implies that psychometric properties of an item or scale are altered by the presentation format, for example, blocked versus randomized. In an experimental study with high school students, the experimental group (n = 407) answered a four-dimensional academic self-concept questionnaire, in which the items were…

A peer support intervention was developed to support aging caregivers and adults with developmental disabilities in planning for the future. The intervention consisted of a legal/financial training session followed by five additional small-group workshops. Pretest and 1-year follow-up surveys were conducted with 29 families participating in the…

This study sought to assess the effectiveness of a marital distress prevention program for couples by examining how marital quality, especially marital competencies such as dyadic coping, could be improved by means of a prevention program focusing on the enhancement of coping resources (Couples Coping Enhancement Training). The study consisted of…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a new career development program designed to help adolescents explore their interest in enterprise as a career option. Using a person-oriented approach, pre- and post-test measurements of enterprising interests in an intervention (n=321) and a control group (n=302) of adolescents aged 16.5 years on average…

University students report significantly worse sleep quality than the general population. Sleep problems are related to increased health concerns, irritability, depression, fatigue, and attention and concentration difficulties, along with poor academic performance. Clinical research indicates that psychoeducational interventions are among the most…

The present work investigated the development of an explicit understanding of pretend play actions. Study 1 revealed a long decalage between earlier implicit understanding of pretence as an intentional activity and a later more explicit understanding. Study 2 was a training study. It tested for two factors--systematic pretence experience and…

Purpose: Preschoolers with language impairment have difficulties with both literal and inferential language, both of which are critical to later reading comprehension. Because these children are known to be at risk for later reading comprehension difficulties, it is important to design and test interventions that foster both literal and…

Background: Delay aversion, the motivation to escape or avoid delay, results in preference for small immediate over large delayed rewards. Delay aversion has been proposed as one distinctive psychological process that may underlie the behavioural symptoms and cognitive deficits of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Furthermore, the…

Background: Children with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) show behavioral abnormalities in gaze and face processing, but recent studies have indicated that normal activation of face-specific brain areas in response to faces is possible in this group. It is not clear whether the brain activity related to gaze processing is also normal in…