Recently, researchers have concluded that motor skill performance is enhanced when learners adopt an external attentional focus, compared to adopting an internal focus. We extended the line of inquiry to children and examined if skill learning in children was differentially affected by providing instructions and feedback that direct attentional…

Advanced theory-of-mind (AToM) development was investigated in three separate studies involving 82, 466, and 402 elementary school children (8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds). Rasch and factor analyses assessed whether common conceptual development underlies higher-order false-belief understanding, social understanding, emotion recognition, and…

Pasifika students are a minority group in New Zealand education who are at risk of underachievement. This article examines how five high achieving Pasifika students reported the factors that contribute to the task value of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) Scholarship. It uses expectancy value theory to consider motivation through…

Most L2 instructors implement their curriculum with an eye to improving the four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Absent in this vision of language are notions of pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and multicultural competencies. Although current linguistic theories posit a more complex, interactive, and integrated model of language,…

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of cognitive task complexity and individual differences in input, processing, and output anxiety (IPOA) on L2 narrative production. The participants were enrolled in a bilingual secondary educational program. They performed two narrative tasks in speech and writing. The participants' level of…

Collaborative text reconstruction tasks such as dictogloss have been suggested as effective second language (L2) learning tasks that promote meaningful interaction between learners and their awareness of L2 target grammatical structures. However, it should be noted that the effect of pair interaction on the final product may differ depending on…

Adolescence is characterized by increasing incidence of health risk behaviors, including experimentation with drugs and alcohol. To fill the gap in our understanding of the associations between risky decision-making and health risk behaviors, we investigated associations between laboratory-based risky decision-making using the Stoplight task and…

The present study examined individual differences in the processing of different forms of figurative language. Sixty participants read sarcastic, metaphorical, and literal sentences embedded in story contexts while their eye movements were recorded, and responded to a text memory and an inference question after each story. Individual differences…

Learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) are exposed to a collection of materials and communicative activities in the classroom through which they learn to use the language competently and appropriately. Textbooks, in particular, are a rich source of input, offering a variety of opportunities to acquire and practice pragmatic competence in…

The relevance of the present issue is caused by a strong need to conduct monitoring processes in all types of teaching processes and a poor development of theoretical, content and technological, scientific and methodological material for teachers' monitoring skills development during their teaching practice. The aim of the article is to create and…

This study examines the influence of experience with a second language (L2) on the perception of phonological contrasts in a third language (L3). This study contributes to L3 phonology by examining the influence of L2 phonological perception abilities on the perception of an L3 at the beginner level. Participants were native speakers of Korean…

Supporting elementary student understandings of ideas related to Earth's Place in the Universe (ESS1) can be challenging, especially given the large time and distance scales involved with many of the concepts. However, with effective use of crosscutting concepts and science and engineering practices, important concepts within this content domain…

Early life stress (ES) significantly increases predisposition to psychopathologies. Cannabinoids may cause cognitive deficits and exacerbate the effects of ES. Nevertheless, the endocannabinoid system has been suggested as a therapeutic target for the treatment of stress- and anxiety-related disorders. Here we examined whether cannabinoids…

Strategies based memory training programs are widely used to enhance the cognitive abilities of the elderly. Participants in these training programs are usually people whose mental abilities remain intact. Occasionally, people with cognitive impairment also participate. The aim of this study was to test if memory training designed specifically for…

This study investigated whether vocabulary delays in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can be explained by a cognitive style that prioritizes processing of detailed, local features of input over global contextual integration--as claimed by the weak central coherence (WCC) theory. Thirty toddlers with ASD and 30 younger,…