Self-directed learning (SDL) skills are the basis of lifelong learning. The authors present findings from a classroom experiment to assess acquisition of the skill of SDL under structured and unstructured learning environments. The authors found that structure match enhances SDL skills and that courses designed to enhance students' readiness for…

Previous studies haves shown that under masked priming conditions, CORNER primes CORN as strongly as TEACHER primes TEACH and more strongly than BROTHEL primes BROTH. This result has been taken as evidence of a purely structural level of representation at which words are decomposed into morphological constituents in a manner that is independent of…

This project is conducted by students during the second semester of their second year in our educational institution. This project constitutes an initiation into research and allows a broadening of knowledge, a development in autonomy, organization, team work, and initiative. It helps prepare the student-engineer for an internship in industry. The…

X-ray fluorescence is a non-destructive technique that allows elemental composition analysis. In this paper we describe a prescription to obtain the elemental composition of homogeneous coins, like 50 cent Euro coins, and how to get the quantitative proportions of each element with the help of Monte Carlo simulation. Undergraduate students can…

This study explored learning and generalization of parts of the Russian case-marking paradigm, an inflecting-fusional system in which affixes simultaneously mark several grammatical features (case, gender, number, animacy). In Experiment 1, adult English speakers (N = 43) were exposed to nouns with transparent gender marking in the nominative case…

By allowing students to develop and conduct research on biological or environmental problems they identify themselves, students gain a higher level of understanding and appreciation for science. To this end, teachers should incorporate student-driven research in biology and environmental science classes in lieu of cookbook laboratory activities…

Understanding how to measure cognitive load is a fundamental challenge for cognitive load theory. In 2 experiments, 155 college students (ages = 17 to 22; 49 men and 106 women) with low domain knowledge learned from a multimedia lesson on electric motors. At 8 points during learning, their cognitive load was measured via self-report scales (mental…

The role of phonology-to-spelling consistency (i.e., "feedback consistency") was investigated in 3 lexical decision experiments in both the visual and auditory modalities in French and English. No evidence for a feedback consistency effect was found in the visual modality, either in English or in French, despite the fact that consistency…

Many of the problems studied in cognitive science are inductive problems, requiring people to evaluate hypotheses in the light of data. The key to solving these problems successfully is having the right inductive biases--assumptions about the world that make it possible to choose between hypotheses that are equally consistent with the observed…

This article proposes a new model of human concept learning that provides a rational analysis of learning feature-based concepts. This model is built upon Bayesian inference for a grammatically structured hypothesis space--a concept language of logical rules. This article compares the model predictions to human generalization judgments in several…

It has been suggested that prediction may be an organizing principle of the mind and/or the neocortex, with cognitive machinery specifically engineered to detect forward-looking temporal relationships, rather than merely associating temporally contiguous events. There is a remarkable absence of behavioral tests of this idea, however. To address…

Although it is well-established that children with Specific Language Impairment characteristically optionally inflect forms that require tense and agreement marking, their abilities with regards to derivational suffixation are less well understood. In this paper we provide evidence from children with Grammatical-Specific Language Impairment…

Simple experiments involving musical instruments of the woodwind family can be used to demonstrate the basic physics of vibrating air columns in resonance tubes using nothing more than straightforward measurements and data collection hardware and software. More involved experimentation with the same equipment can provide insight into the effects…

Variability in talker identity, one type of indexical variation, has demonstrable effects on the speed and accuracy of spoken word recognition. Furthermore, neuropsychological evidence suggests that indexical and linguistic information may be represented and processed differently in the 2 cerebral hemispheres, and is consistent with findings from…

According to a prominent theory of human perception and performance (M. A. Goodale & A. D. Milner, 1992), the dorsal, action-related stream only controls visually guided actions in real time. Such a system would be predicted to show little or no action priming from previous experience. The 3 experiments reported here were designed to determine…