Purpose: An online questionnaire survey was conducted to explore University of Plymouth students' perceptions and understandings of, and attitudes towards, sustainable development and related concepts and issues. In general, student perceptions of sustainable development have been under-researched. This research sought to go some way towards…

Developmental studies of face processing have revealed age-related changes in how infants allocate neurophysiological resources to the face of a caregiver and an unfamiliar adult. We hypothesize that developmental changes in how infants interact with their caregiver are related to the changes in brain response. We studied 6-month-olds because this…

This paper reports on research concerning Greek in-service Primary teachers' perceptions about environmental issues and attitudes towards Education for Sustainable Development. A questionnaire with multiple-choice and open-ended questions was used in order to gain more comprehensive understanding of their thoughts. The analysis of data revealed…

In two experiments, 1.5-year-olds were taught novel words whose sound patterns were phonologically similar to familiar words (novel neighbors) or were not (novel nonneighbors). Learning was tested using a picture-fixation task. In both experiments, children learned the novel nonneighbors but not the novel neighbors. In addition, exposure to the…

Examined children's and adults' perceptions of facial stimuli that were either systematically exaggerated (caricatures) or de-exaggerated (anticaricatures) relative to a norm face. Found that all ages perceived caricatures as the most distinctive version and anticaricatures as least distinctive; the smallest effect was for 6-year-olds. Caricatures…

Examined geographical representations among children and young adults. Found that a distinct home region was apparent at age 9. At age 11, children divided North America into regions the same as university students. Children used new location information to update location estimates. Children preserved ordinal structure of initial location…

To assess script-based knowledge and performance of routine events, 20 mentally retarded adults and 20 nonretarded preschoolers were asked to sequence photographs of events. Retarded individuals were better able to sequence events depicted in familiar contexts than in novel contexts. (Author/JDD)

Children's knowledge of the use of objects helped determine whether children's actions indicate their understanding of the functional use of objects independent of their ability to verbally describe the object or its function. Found that older children made fewer phenomenism errors but that the majority were still able to show the function of the…

The role of partner familiarity in the organization, duration, and content of social pretend play was studied in a triadic situation involving two friends and a third familiar child. Findings showed that play between friends was longer and richer than play with the third partner and that girls spent nearly twice as much time in fantasy as boys.…

Findings of four investigations involving five through seven year olds suggest that, even though children can make relatively accurate judgments of their knowledge states, they tend to overestimate their competence when assessing their knowledge in relation to performance on a task. (RH)

Two experiments examined the effects of a culture-general factor, pattern redundancy, on the discrimination of five-tone melodies that differed in their adherence to Western tonal conventions, among 9-month olds, 5-year olds, and adults. Increasing exposure seemed to attenuate the effects of the pattern redundancy while amplifying the influence of…

Reactions to peers' distress were recorded for 52 toddlers (hosts), 18 to 36 months old, who were observed playing with familiar peers in their own homes during 2 sessions, 6 months apart. Four contextual factors were explored: the host's responsibility for the guest's distress, similarity between the toddler and the distressed peer, relative…

We assessed the impact of visual similarity on written word identification by having participants learn new words (e.g. BANARA) that were neighbours of familiar words that previously had no neighbours (e.g. BANANA). Repeated exposure to these new words made it more difficult to semantically categorize the familiar words. There was some evidence of…

A method for teaching problem-solving skills to mathematics students is presented. By subtly incorporating engineering applications, the students are simultaneously exposed to an effective outreach programme. The process includes offering a complex problem that challenges students' abilities. Before allowing the students to become frustrated, the…

Systems biology, metabolomics, metabolic engineering, and other recent developments in biochemistry suggest that future biochemists will require a detailed familiarity with the compounds and pathways of intermediary metabolism and their biochemical control. The challenge to the biochemistry instructor is the presentation of metabolic pathways in a…