Memory decision-making in 26- to 32-month-olds was investigated using visual-paired comparison paradigms, requiring toddlers to select familiar stimuli (Active condition) or view familiar and novel stimuli (Passive condition). In Experiment 1 (N = 108, 54.6% female, 62% White; replication N = 98), toddlers with higher accuracy in the Active…

Exploration is considered essential to infant learning, but few studies have quantified infants' task exploration. The purpose of this study was to quantify how infants explored task space with their feet while learning to activate a kick-activated mobile. Data were analyzed from fifteen 4-month-old infants who participated in a 10-min mobile task…

The extant literature on the use of autonomy support during caregiver-child conversations has focused primarily on conversations about fun, shared experiences, with limited consideration of unshared experiences or attention toward the role of conversation context. The present study examined how autonomy support, conversation context, and child age…

Emotion talk plays an important role in the social and emotional development of preschoolers, but not much work has shown how teachers talk about emotions in the classroom. We recorded preschool teachers' (N = 13) emotion talk in naturalistic observations. Teachers expressed 633 emotion-related utterances, about 3 per hour (range fewer than 1 to…

In simple rule-switching tests, 3- and 4-year-olds can follow each of two sorting rules but sometimes make perseverative errors when switching. Older children make few errors but respond slowly when switching. These age-related changes might reflect the maturation of executive functions (e.g., inhibition). However, they might also reflect…

Language acquisition involves learning not only grammatical rules and a lexicon but also what people are intending to convey with their utterances: the semantic/pragmatic component of language. In this article we separate the contributions of linguistic development and cognitive maturity to the acquisition of the semantic/pragmatic component of…

Many educational Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) collect baseline versions of outcome measures (pretests) to be used in the estimation of impacts at posttest. Although pretest measures are not necessary for unbiased impact estimates in well executed experimental studies, using them increases the precision of impact estimates and reduces sample…

Two studies, an experimental category learning task and a computational simulation, examined how sequencing training instances to maximize comparison and memory affects category learning. In Study 1, 2-year-old children learned color categories with three training conditions that varied in how categories were distributed throughout training and…

In an effort to lessen the social and economic dysfunctions many California farm workers suffer because of the migratory and seasonal nature of their jobs, a three-phase study was conducted to research, develop, and implement a new career system for the farm worker. During the project's first phase, a job task analysis was conducted on four…

The main thrust of California's Ryan Act (1970) has been to terminate credential qualifications by verification of credit received from an institution of higher education and move towards the competency based professional preparation program where institutions are first authorized to offer such programs and then assigned the responsibility to…

Phase I involved 5 weeks of entry level employment for academic teachers in selected establishments in order to acquaint them with an occupational field. They did the regular work of these positions for 6 hours each work day and then spent 2 hours interviewing other personnel to collect significant occupational information. Phase II involved 3…

This handbook is designed to help vocational educators identify changes in the labor market and to incorporate these changes quickly and effectively into their curricula. It guides teachers and administrators through the major steps in developing competency-based curricula for new and emerging occupations--i.e., (1) to identify new and emerging…

This handbook contains eight generic instructional strategies for use in vocational education contexts. The strategies include: clinical teaching, collaborative approach, cooperative learning groups, direct instruction, environmental/curriculum modification, individualized instruction, task analysis, and peer or adult tutoring. For each strategy,…