The paper problematises student writing as social practice from the perspective of lecturers' discursive practices. The paper uses data from a major study at a higher learning institution in Tanzania to explore lecturers' discursive practices and familiarity with the university orders of discourse including English medium of instruction, in…

Understanding the views of the public is an important factor in developing and evaluating policy on inclusive education. This article presents the results of an opinion poll conducted by an alliance of researchers and community partners to measure public perceptions regarding inclusive education of students with an intellectual disability, the…

This study investigates the effects of student teachers' hands-on experience with evaluation on their preferences for assessment methods. A course on child development within the 1st year of the elementary teacher education program provides the quasi-experimental learning/teaching setting. Five research conditions are linked to four assessment…

Value-by-area maps, or cartograms, provide a curiosity-provoking method of depicting geographically related data. The use of cartograms for learning such data involves a learner's familiarity with the region depicted and the distortion of true, earth-centered scale. To examine the effects of region familiarity and region distortion on learning…

Two studies investigated the processing of familiar and unfamiliar figurative language. Subjects read paragraphs containing figurative sentences (proverbs in study 1 and metaphors in study 2) or literal controls; later subjects were given a cued recall test designed to test their memory for contextually inappropriate meanings (a literal cue for a…

In two experiments, the ability of children younger than 20 months to engage in delayed ordered recall was investigated. In the first experiment, 13- and 16-month-old children were presented with 2-step event sequences and tested for recall, first, immediately following the event and second, after a one-week delay. Sequences were novel-causal,…

Discusses the need to introduce dogs to elementary children with visual impairments and describes a program in Delaware that uses a curriculum that provides information about dogs, a video about dogs, and introduces children to the animals to help overcome fears or apprehension about dogs. (CR)

Investigates how a speaker's expectations about the audience can influence public speaking anxiety and willingness to speak. Indicates that audience characteristics interact with speaking contexts in complex ways but that, in general, audience pleasantness exerts a stronger influence than audience familiarity, with pleasant friends the most…

Investigated the effect of setting on the social referencing of 48 children of 6-40 months. Behavioral regulation was observed in familiar child care centers and an unfamiliar university laboratory. Affect was not influenced by setting and showed regulation only for the oldest children. (RJC)

This investigation explored recognition memory for sign language vocabulary in sign language students. Ten beginning and 10 advanced students were asked to judge their familiarity with 50 old and new vocabulary items presented in both written (sign gloss) and signed stimulus modes. (JL)

A modified Visual Expectation Paradigm assessed the role of picture content in the spatiotemporal expectations of 80 infants. Stable picture content information facilitated formation of expectations about when and where pictures would appear. Two month olds' reactions were consistently slower than those of three month olds.(LB)

University students of Spanish at three different course levels were used in a study of the effects of topic familiarity on second-language listening comprehension. Findings regarding the supporting role of background knowledge are consistent with many second-language reading and listening studies. (Contains 45 references.) (LB)

Used event-related potentials to examine infants' ability to form representations of stimuli presented in a haptic modality and to then recognize these stimuli as familiar when the stimuli were subsequently presented in a visual modality. Found that in certain conditions infants encoded the haptically familiarized object, then transferred their…

Results of 3 experiments indicated that 13.5- and 16.5-month-old children recalled multiple sequences after a 1-week delay. Without cues, the recall of 16.5-month olds was facilitated by familiarity and by enabling relations; only enabling relations aided the 13.5-month olds' recall. With verbal cues, the recall of 13.5- and 16.5-month olds was…

Examined the effect of familiarity with different English accents, investigating Japanese college students' intelligibility and comprehensibility judgements of familiar and unfamiliar English (American and Irish English). Results indicated that familiarity and exposure contributed to higher perceived comprehensibility, but not necessarily to…