The current work examined age differences in the classification of novel object images that vary in continuous dimensions of structural shape. The structural dimensions employed are two that share a privileged status in the visual analysis and representation of objects: the shape of discrete prominent parts and the attachment positions of those…

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether playing a specific ball sport, such as tennis, could maintain the coincidence-timing (CT) performance of older adults at a similar level to that of younger ones. To address this question, tennis players and nonplayers of three different age ranges (ages 20-30, 60-70, and 70-80 years)…

This study compares 27 sixth grade students who have been learning Spanish since kindergarten with 5 who have had Spanish for only 1 year using a battery of Spanish oral and written tests. The students who started early out performed the new students in listening, speaking, and writing Spanish. Those who started early also displayed a positive…

The purpose of this study was to further researchers' understanding of lexical acquisition in the beginning primary schoolchild by investigating word learning in small-group elementary science classes. Two experiments were conducted to examine the role of semantic scaffolding (e.g., use of synonymous terms) and physical scaffolding (e.g., pointing…

Older and younger adults' abilities to use context information rapidly during ambiguity resolution were investigated. In Experiments 1 and 2, younger and older adults heard ambiguous words (e.g., fires) in sentences where the preceding context supported either the less frequent or more frequent meaning of the word. Both age groups showed good…

High school students aspiring to become music educators (n = 116) and upper-level music education majors (n = 130) took part in this investigation comparing higher-order thinking skills in an observation analysis task. We used certain procedures from previous investigations (Sheldon & DeNardo, 2004; Standley & Madsen, 1991). Upperclassmen…

This study investigated semantic transfer in second language (L2) learning and provided a replication of the author's study (Jiang, 2002) in a different English as a Second Language (ESL) population. Korean ESL speakers were asked to perform a semantic judgment task in which they decided whether or not 2 English words were related in meaning. Two…

In the United States, reported child abuse rates vary dramatically with race. We employed a scenario methodology to examine whether teachers, whose professional obligations include reporting suspected instances of abuse, exhibit bias in evaluating a possibly abused child. Each teacher (180 White, 180 Black, and 180 Hispanic) read one of six…

The authors posit that women can rely on self-monitoring to overcome negative gender stereotypes in certain performance contexts. In a study of mixed-sex task groups, the authors found that female group members who were high self-monitors were considered more influential and more valuable contributors than women who were low self-monitors. Men…

Clahsen and Felser (CF) analyze the performance of monolingual children and adult second language (L2) learners in off-line and on-line tasks and compare their performance with that of adult monolinguals. They conclude that child first language (L1) processing is basically the same as adult L1 processing (the contiguity assumption), with…

The domains of application in applied linguistics have changed considerably since the early 1960s. In most of these domains, the fundamental property of language as "a resource for making meaning" has increasingly been foregrounded. This approach recognises, amongst other dimensions of language, its multi-stratal character, i.e. that a given…

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate attention orienting triggered by another's gaze direction in autism. Method: Twelve high-functioning children with autism and gender- and age-matched normal control children were studied using two tasks. In the first task, children were asked to detect laterally presented target stimuli preceded…

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…

Parent-child communication regarding children's negative emotions and coping were examined in a sample of 75 5th graders (53% boys) and their mothers and fathers. We predicted that emotionally open communication between a parent and his or her child would be related to children's use of constructive coping strategies. Parents reported on how they…

Beginning in July 2002, the Health Sciences Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill underwent an 11 million dollar renovation. During three phases of the renovation, parts of the collection were inaccessible to patrons. In order to continue to make the library's collection available, library staff created a paging system.…