Describes a research project that is concerned with the design procedures followed by those engaged in designing pedagogic tasks for use in classrooms. Focuses on the part of the project that involves actual observation of designers in the process of developing one specific task for class use. Findings are presented under three headers: control…

Discusses the value of role-play in developing interpersonal skills and presents a 10-step model to help performance technologists design effective role-plays. Highlights include training objectives; designing assessment instruments; task analysis; generality and demonstration; designing social-communicative problems for the content; practice; and…

Analyzed the development of two morphological structures in Hebrew, one inflectional and the other derivational, and examined the mutual contribution of morphological knowledge and learning the written code. In a longitudinal design, 40 children were tested twice on two oral tasks--inflecting nouns for possession and deriving denominal…

Given recent claims that task-based instruction has desirable pedagogic qualities, this article investigates the effects of choosing different types of tasks, as well as different task implementation conditions, on the fluency, accuracy, and complexity of the language that is produced when tasks are carried out. (Author/VWL)

This article presents an explorative study, which is part of a comprehensive project to examine the impact of epistemological beliefs on metacognitive calibration during learning processes within a complex hypermedia information system. More specifically, this study investigates: 1) if learners differentiate between tasks of different complexity,…

Assessing use of language learning strategies has become commonplace around the world. One strategy assessment tool is the questionnaire, which usually asks students to report on their typical, general use of language learning strategies. Because of this general focus, most questionnaires do not require respondents to complete an actual language…

Over the course of development, the ability to switch between different tasks on the basis of feedback cues increases profoundly, but the role of performance monitoring remains unclear. Heart rate indexes can provide critical information about how individuals monitor feedback cues indicating that performance should be adjusted. In this study,…

In April 2003 the first European Science Olympiad took place in Dublin City University in Ireland. In this competition second level students were asked to carry out a number of tasks involving biology, physics and chemistry. Students had qualified initially in competitions in one of these subjects and were organised into integrated teams which…

Background: Studies of school-aged children, adolescents, and adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have variably shown ADHD-related impairment in both inhibitory control and sustained attention. However, few studies have examined ADHD-associated patterns of performance on these tasks among younger children (below age 7…

Background: The objective of this study is to identify intact and deficient cognitive processes in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and children with high functioning autism (HFA). Method: Three rigorously diagnosed groups of children aged between 6 and 12 years (54 ADHD, 41 HFA, and 41 normal controls) were tested on…

This article presents three studies conducted in Canada and Australia that relate theory of mind (ToM) development to mental state discourse. In Study 1, mental state discourse was examined while parents and their 5-7-year-old children jointly read a storybook which had a surprise ending about the identity of the main character. Comments specific…

In a secondary school mathematics teaching methods course, a research team engaged 22 preservice secondary teachers (PSTs) in designing and posing tasks to algebra students through weekly letter writing. The goal of the tasks was for PSTs to elicit responses that would indicate student engagement in the mathematical processes described by NCTM…

The aim of this paper is to describe a task-cycling pedagogy for language learning using a technique we have called "Stimulated Reflection". This pedagogical approach has been developed in the light of the new technology options available, especially those that facilitate audiovisual forms of interaction among language learners and teachers. In…

Increasingly, public health promotion is about more than influencing individual behavior. Rather, it is equally important to undertake efforts to impact social, environmental, and political factors. Having a clear understanding of the inner workings of the legislative process enhances one's ability to effectively influence policy. It is important…

We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the contributions of explicit and implicit processes during second language (L2) sentence comprehension. We used a L2 grammaticality judgment task (GJT) to test 20 native English speakers enrolled in the first four semesters of Spanish while recording both accuracy and ERP data. Because…