This research note explored the hypothesis that chunking differences underlie the slow finger-tap sequencing performance reported in the literature for persons who stutter (PWS) relative to fluent speakers (PNS). Early-stage chunking was defined as an immediate and spontaneous tendency to organize a long sequence into pauses, for motor planning,…

Proactive interference (PI) refers to the finding that memory for recently studied (target) information can be vastly impaired by the previous study of other (nontarget) information. PI can be reduced in a number of ways, for instance, by directed forgetting of the prior nontarget information, the testing of the prior nontarget information, or an…

The papers in this Special Issue were initially prepared for an EARLI 2013 Symposium that was designed to examine methodologies in use by researchers from two sister communities, Learning and Instruction and Learning Sciences. The four papers reflect a common ground in advances in conceptions of learning since the early days of the "cognitive…

Purpose: The influence of attention on postural control and the relationship between attention and falling has been reported in previous studies. Although a dual-task procedure is commonly used to measure attentional demand, such procedures are affected by allocation policy, which is a mental strategy to divide attention between simultaneous…

Imposing a penalty for late or incomplete homework assignments, Dueck says, neither inspires learning nor provides accurate grades. Dueck lists four rules that a teacher must follow if penalties for inadequate homework are to be efficient in prodding students to do that work. The usual homework penalty structures violate each of these four rules.…

Many standardized tests are now administered via computer rather than paper-and-pencil format. In a computer-based testing environment, it is possible to record not only the test taker's response to each question (item) but also the amount of time spent by the test taker in considering and answering each item. Response times (RTs) provide…

This study tested the procedural deficit hypothesis of specific language impairment (SLI) by comparing children's performance in two motor procedural learning tasks and an implicit verbal sequence learning task. Participants were 7- to 11-year-old children with SLI (n = 48), typically developing age-matched children (n = 20) and younger…

Dropping a magnet into a conductive pipe (made up of copper or brass or aluminum) is a very popular demonstration in many physics classrooms and laboratories. In this paper we present an inexpensive timer that can be used to measure the terminal velocity of the magnet falling through a conducting pipe. The timer assembly consists of Hall effect…

Strain comparison studies have been critical to the identification of novel genetic and molecular mechanisms in learning and memory. However, even within a single learning paradigm, the behavioral data for the same strain can vary greatly, making it difficult to form meaningful conclusions at both the behavioral and cellular level. In fear…

Previous text comprehension studies using the contradiction paradigm primarily tested assumptions of the activation mechanism involved in reading. However, the nature of the contradiction in such studies relied on validation of information in readers' general world knowledge. We directly tested this validation process by varying the strength of…

Dickinson and Szeligo ("Can J Exp Psychol" 62(4):211--222, 2008) found that processing time for simple visual stimuli was affected by the visual action participants had been instructed to perform on these stimuli (e.g., see, distinguish). It was concluded that these effects reflected the differences in the durations of these various…

This study assessed visual search abilities, tested through the flicker task, in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Twenty-two children diagnosed with ASD and 22 matched typically developing (TD) children were told to detect changes in objects of central interest or objects of marginal interest (MI) embedded in either…

Undergraduate physics majors typically begin their study of modern physics with special relativity. It is here that physics students first encounter the counterintuitive concepts of time dilation and length contraction. Unfortunately, the derivations of these results are often cloaked in several layers of analysis that render them rather…

The present study investigates the temporal elements affecting asynchronous discussion board messages over a semester, ways in which time is contextualized in space and content, and students' spatio-temporal practices within fixed frames. The theoretical framework uses Lefebvre's rhythm analysis, Bakhtin's chronotope, and…

Purpose: The purposes of this paper are to implement a spaced repetition algorithm into a learning game, analyze the pros and cons of this implementation and make different considerations about designing the game to make the algorithm work in an optimal way. While games offer a promising way of engaging and motivating learners to deal with a…