The role of instruction to develop learners' pragmatic competence in both second and foreign language contexts has recently motivated a great deal of research. However, most of this research has adopted an explicit instructional approach with only a few studies attempting to operationalise a more implicit condition for pragmatic learning. In order…

A new computerized environment introducing a variety of metacognitive support mechanisms (MSMs) in different phases of the problem-solving process was designed to influence students' transfer from solving structured problems (near transfer) to solving open-ended problems (far transfer). Two hundred and thirty one students (aged 13-14 years) were…

Teenagers with nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD) have difficulty with fine-motor coordination, which may relate to the novelty of the task or the lack of "self-talk" to mediate action. In this study, we required two teenagers with NLD and two control group teenagers to touch the thumb of each hand firmly and accurately to the fingertips of the…

In this article, the author investigates effective teaching and learning of geometrical concepts using dynamic geometry software (DGS). Based from her students' reactions to her project, the author found that her students' understanding of the concepts was better than if they had learned geometry through paper-based tasks. However, mixing computer…

One of the ways to investigate the mental lexicon is to use word association tests. Empirical studies comparing associations by children and adults have indicated a tendency for children to give syntagmatic responses, whereas adults give paradigmatic responses. In order to investigate lexical development in L2 acquisition of Swedish we collected…

Purpose: The authors aimed to establish whether 2 theoretically motivated interventions could improve use of verb argument structure in pupils with persistent specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Twenty-seven pupils with SLI (ages 11;0-16;1) participated in this randomized controlled trial with "blind" assessment. Participants were randomly…

Research suggests that the World Wide Web (WWW) represents the intersection of at least two domains: content and technology. This investigation was designed to examine the relationship between prior knowledge and WWW browsing outcomes (i.e., navigation behavior and knowledge gain) within the context of a genetics Web site. Students randomly…

The present findings are drawn from the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD), in which approximately 100 children with familial risk of dyslexia and 100 control children have been followed from birth. In this paper we report data on the reading development of the JLD children and their classmates, a total of 1,750 children from four…

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of instruction supplemented by conceptual change texts (CCTs) over traditional instruction on students' understanding of electrochemical (galvanic and electrolytic) cell concepts. The participants of the study consisted of 64 students from the two classes of a high school located in…

We designed a classroom activity to foster students' understanding of what schemas are and how they function. We used a video of the instructor as an infant to illustrate how schemas influence gender stereotyping. Before the video, we told students that the baby was either a boy or a girl. After the video, students rated whether the baby would…

The present study is the first to utilize twin modeling to examine whether parent-teacher disagreement for ADHD ratings is due to parent or teacher bias, or due to raters observing different but valid ADHD behaviors. A joint analysis was conducted with 106 twin pairs, including twins selected for ADHD and control twin pairs. Total ADHD scores were…

Exposure to print is a significant predictor of vocabulary growth and declarative knowledge in normally achieving readers (Stanovich, West, & Harrison, 1995). Research has also shown that initial differences in print exposure can be used to predict differences in reading comprehension in children studied ten years after initial assessment…

Assessment of auditory abilities is important in the diagnosis and treatment of children with autism. The aim was to evaluate hearing objectively by using transient evoked otoacoustic emission (TEOAE) and auditory brainstem response (ABR). Tests were performed on 30 children with autism and 15 typically developing children, following otomicroscopy…

It is often assumed that engaging in a one-on-one dialogue with a tutor is more effective than listening to a lecture or reading a text. Although earlier experiments have not always supported this hypothesis, this may be due in part to allowing the tutors to cover different content than the noninteractive instruction. In 7 experiments, we tested…

Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and healthy controls were administered a flanker task that consisted of the presentation of colored targets and distractors. Participants were required to attend to the center target and identify its color. The stimulus displays were either congruent (i.e., the target and flankers were the same color) or…