Children with autism were compared with control groups on their ability to make moral judgements. Participants were presented with pairs of vignettes in which actions were either deliberate or accidental and caused injury to a person or damage to property. Participants were asked to judge which protagonist was the naughtier and to verbally justify…

This research was conducted to examine whether choice-based distraction provides an effective means of reducing the distress of children undergoing routine dental treatment. Sixty children between the ages of 5-12 who required restorative dental treatment were assigned randomly to either a Control group or a Distraction group in which the…

Neural integration of glutamate- and dopamine-coded signals within the nucleus accumbens (NAc) is a fundamental process governing cellular plasticity underlying reward-related learning. Intra-NAc core blockade of NMDA or D1 receptors in rats impairs instrumental learning (lever-pressing for sugar pellets), but it is not known during which phase of…

Children's productions of the affix -"ed" in past tense and past participle contexts (e.g., "the boy kicked the ball" vs. "the ball was kicked") were examined in spontaneous conversations and elicited productions. The performances of 7 children with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared with those of 2 control groups of typically…

This study examines whether the Problem Based Economics curriculum developed by the Buck Institute for Education improves grade 12 students' content knowledge as measured by the Test of Economic Literacy, a test refined by the National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) over decades. Students' problem-solving skills in economics were also…

Nutrition-related messages inundate mass media advertisements in the United States but it is unclear as to how those messages affect a person's food selection behavior and awareness of nutrient and non-nutrient message content. This dissertation is a culmination of research examining the use of mass media (television and print) as a pedagogical…

This report summarizes the results of the Newark, New Jersey, Striving Readers program for project Years 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. This report updates one analysis (3 years); the remainder of the impacts and implementation findings are for Year 4. The Striving Readers Grant addresses the unmet needs of middle school students reading 2 or more years below…

As increasing numbers of adolescents become involved in online activities, many also become victims of cyberharassment. This pilot project investigates how a program teaching coping skills (Best of Coping program, BOC) and a program teaching cybersafety (Cyber Savvy Teens program, CST) can optimise adolescents' capacity to cope online.…

The aim of this study was to compare the effects of a didactic stress management program, group counselling, and a control group on school counsellors' stress coping strategies. Thirty-four school counsellors were randomly assigned to either a didactic stress management group, group counselling, or a control group. The didactic stress management…

This study describes the multifaceted components of an assessment process. The paper explains a novel approach in which an advisory council participated in a "fun," hands-on activity to rank-order learning outcomes. The top ranked learning competency, as identified by the advisory council, was the need for students to gain a better…

Computer assisted psychomotor training is recognized as an appropriate tool in motor skill acquisition in adults with and without physical limitations. In specialized populations of individuals with physical deficits such as Parkinson's disease, previous researchers have examined the application of computer assisted training during upper extremity…

The authors' hypothesis is that if teachers (as experts) understand and teach concepts from the position of expertise teacher quality will improve. They believe that focusing on the key ideas will deepen both teacher and student understanding and allow learners to build the concepts necessary to form solid foundations for the application of…

This study investigates the relationships between the use of a zoom tool, the terms they supply to describe the image, and the type of image being viewed. Participants were assigned to two groups, one with access to the tool and one without, and were asked to supply terms to describe forty images, divided into four categories: landscape, portrait,…

Foreign Missions Preparation (FMP) has been in operation at The Master's College (TMC) since 1989, employing experiential education to train and facilitate cross-cultural summer Short-Term Mission (STM) trips for over a thousand undergraduate students. The question driving the case study was: "What influence does an analysis of the experiences of…

The purpose of this research project was to use an experimental design research methodology to compare learning and attitudinal effects of two different design instructional strategies on randomly selected and assigned 11th and 12th grade students. Through the use of a common technological based problem, students were guided through a design…