Children often perseverate, repeating prior behaviors when inappropriate. This work tested the roles of verbal labels and stimulus novelty in such perseveration. Three-year-old children sorted cards by one rule and were then instructed to switch to a second rule. In a basic condition, cards had familiar shapes and colors and both rules were stated…

The goal of the current research was to assess whether children can make strategic use of morphological relations among words to spell. French-speaking children in Grade 4 spelled three word types: (a) phonological words that had regular phoneme-grapheme correspondences, (b) morphological words that had silent consonant endings for which a…

Three studies investigated how 24-month-olds and adults resolve temporary ambiguity in fluent speech when encountering prenominal adjectives potentially interpretable as nouns. Children were tested in a looking-while-listening procedure to monitor the time course of speech processing. In Experiment 1, the familiar and unfamiliar adjectives…

Balota et al. [Balota, D., Cortese, M., Sergent-Marshall, S., Spieler, D., & Yap, M. (2004). Visual word recognition for single-syllable words. "Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133," 283-316] studied lexical processing in word naming and lexical decision using hierarchical multiple regression techniques for a large data set of…

The purpose of this study was to systematically develop an instrument to measure computer aversion, computer attitudes, and computer familiarity. The study is an extension of previous research (Schulenberg, 2002). Development involved item generation, pilot testing, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The measure was administered to…

This paper describes the partial results of a research project which investigated conceptions of nature and the role of place in environmental education in children who attended Camp Arowhon. Through interviews and observations, utilizing a hybrid research drawing from phenomenography and ethnography, local common wild animals emerged as playing…

People recall taboo words better than neutral words in many experimental contexts. The present rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) experiments demonstrated this taboo-superiority effect for immediate recall of mixed lists containing taboo and neutral words matched for familiarity, length, and category coherence. Under binding theory (MacKay et…

Overgeneralization occurs when a child uses the wrong word to name an object and is often observed in the early stages of word learning. We develop a method to elicit overgeneralizations in the laboratory by priming children to say the names of objects perceptually similar to known and unknown target objects. Experiment 1 examined 18 two-year-old…

This study explores the role of culturally familiar background knowledge in inferential and literal comprehension in L2 reading. Ninety-eight Turkish EFL (English as a Foreign Language) university students were divided into two groups of equivalent English proficiency. They read either the original of an American short story or a "nativized"…

The incidence of breast cancer is rising rapidly among the fast-growing demographic group of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). In this study, the authors assessed the awareness of breast self-exam (BSE) and factors predicting practice of BSE among Chinese immigrant women living in San Francisco. Three hundred and ninety-seven women…

Having grown up in an age of rapidly developing electronic communication technology, today's students come to higher education with high levels of comfort and familiarity with computer-mediated communication (CMC, hereafter). The students' level of comfort with CMC, coupled with CMC's promises of enabling supplemental class discussion as well as…

Tested hypothesis from Bahrick and Pickens' infant attention model that retrieval cues increase memory accessibility and shift visual preferences toward greater novelty to resemble recent memories. Found that after retention intervals associated with remote or intermediate memory, previous familiarity preferences shifted to null or novelty…

Describes a survey of science faculty and researchers at the University of Michigan that investigated their information needs as well as resource use and preferences in diverse research contexts. Discusses speed, convenience, familiarity, currency, authoritativeness, reliable availability, and barriers in information-seeking. (Author/LRW)

Explored age-related memory differences for performed action events of varying familiarity in 50 adults aged 18-31 and 50 adults aged 55-84. Type of encoding and item familiarity influenced immediate and delayed free recall in both age groups. (RJC)

Studied 4- to 10-year-olds' familiarity judgments of peers. Found that, contrary to adults, external facial features were key. Also found that the switch to adult recognition pattern takes place after the ninth year. (ETB)