The ability to use analogical reasoning traditionally has been considered a higher-level ability characteristic of thinking of older children and adults. Such reasoning has not been thought to be accessible to younger children. However, recently, it has been suggested that younger children's ability to understand and solve analogical problems…

This paper provides an overview of the issue of student anonymity in the summative assessment of student work in higher education. It considers both theoretical literature pertaining to bias in the evaluation of the work of others and the limited empirical work undertaken on this issue in higher education. It then describes the experience of three…

This paper offers a review of the literature on the role of imitation in the earliest stages of social interaction between babies and familiar partners. The review focuses on the ways in which reciprocal imitation marks familiar relationships that provide special contexts for babies to engage actively and exuberantly in the construction of a…

Provides a model of the basis of the differentiation process consisting of item detectors that learn estimates of conditional probabilities of item features. The model is used to account for a number of findings in the recognition-memory literature including the differentiation effect. Simulations illustrate the model. (SLD)

Reviews research that demonstrates that children in the one- to two-year age range are able to remember specific events over weeks and months. Recall is influenced by what young children are asked to remember, the number of times they experience events, and the availability of cues or reminders. (SLD)

Reviews the literature on the effect of prior knowledge and text familiarity on document comprehension and usability. Discusses current methods for assessing subjects' topic familiarity. Presents an empirically based method for effectively assessing topic familiarity. Explains that the method includes use of two subject groups and reliance on…

This study reports analyses and findings from a public opinion survey designed to explore beliefs about domestic violence (DV) -- what it is, when it is against the law, and how prevalent it is. The project interviewed 1,200 residents from six New York communities. The analyses reveal substantial first hand and second hand experience with DV and…

Communication researchers should ask more explicit questions concerning the processes by which mediated messages can create, modify, or reinforce beliefs about social actors and social environments. There are four general categories into which to divide variables concerning processing strategies for mediated social information: source…

Offers sociometric analysis of the central office staff of an urban school district with respect to their knowledge of and attitudes toward school-based innovations. Results show personnel had no clear understanding of what innovation is or of the complexity inherent in implementation processes. Lack of leadership, overreliance on external…

Examines how centrality in world science is affected by performance and reputation. This study uses surveys of academic researchers and literature in engineering to ascertain the surging Japanese and the relatively declining American research performance. Findings show that reputation outweighs performance as the United States continues to…