Multisite field experiments using the (generalized) randomized block design that assign treatments to individuals within sites are common in education and the social sciences. Under this design, there are two possible estimands of interest and they differ based on whether sites or blocks have fixed or random effects. When the average treatment…

Randomized experiments can provide key insights for improving educational technologies, but many students may experience conditions associated with inferior learning outcomes in these experiments. Multiarmed bandit (MAB) algorithms can address this issue by accumulating evidence from the experiment as it runs and modifying the experimental design…

Previous research has established that readers' eye movements are sensitive to the difficulty with which a word is processed. One important factor that influences processing is the fit of a word within the wider context, including its plausibility. Here we explore the influence of plausibility in counterfactual language processing. Counterfactuals…

The forward effect of testing occurs when testing on previously studied information facilitates subsequent learning. The present research investigated whether interim testing on initially studied materials enhances the learning of new materials in category learning and examined the metacognitive judgments of such learning. Across the 4…

This article reports one eye-tracking and one sentence-completion experiment, examining the antecedent preferences for plural anaphora "they" and demonstrative "these." Our results show that the antecedent-grouping preference depends on type of referring expressions: specifically, the preference for "they" is to refer…

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of an educational game that is used for teaching the mechanisms of the action potentials in cell membranes. The game was composed of pieces representing the intracellular and extracellular environments, ions, ion channels, and the Na+-K+-ATPase pump. During the game activity, the students arranged…

When advice comes from interdependent sources (e.g., from advisors who use the same database), less information should be gained as compared to independent advice. On the other hand, since individuals strive for consistency, they should be more confident in consistent compared to conflicting advice, and interdependent advice should be more…

Many gamification designs in education do effectively mobilize students to some extent. Yet, there is still very little research to account for the specific influence on each student. It is essential to determine whether the students can be engaged by gamification in terms of various psychological factors. In this paper, the game element point was…

The results of two experiments demonstrate that preservice teachers made biased school-placement recommendations depending on student's ethnicity, which on average penalized students from an ethnic minority. Moreover, additional information that was supposed to disconfirm ethnic stereotypes (religious affiliation in Experiment 1, number of missed…

Recent research on video lectures has indicated that the instructor's pointing gestures facilitate learning performance. This study examined whether the instructor's pointing gestures were superior to nonhuman cues in enhancing video lectures learning, and second, if there was a positive effect, what the underlying mechanisms of the effect might…

The "nothing-special" account of insight predicts positive correlations of insight problem solving and working memory capacity (WMC), whereas the "special-process" account expects no, or even negative, correlations. In the latter vein, DeCaro, Van Stockum Jr., and Wieth (2016) have recently reported weak negative WMC…

The problem of demonstrative behavior is very topical among teenagers and this issue has become the subject of systematic scientific research. Demonstrative manifestations in adolescents disrupt the favorable socialization; therefore, understanding, prevention and correction of demonstrative behavior at this age is relevant and requires special…

In a series of experiments, we tested a recently proposed hypothesis stating that the degree of alignment between the form of a mental representation resulting from learning with a particular visualization format and the specific requirements of a learning task determines learning performance (task-appropriateness). Groups of participants were…

Source-based essays are evaluated both on the quality of the writing and the content appropriate interpretation and use of source material. Hence, composing a high-quality source-based essay (an essay written based on source material) relies on skills related to both reading (the sources) and writing (the essay) skills. As such, source-based…

The first data structure that first-year undergraduate students learn during the programming and algorithms courses is the one-dimensional array. For novice programmers, it might be hard to understand different algorithms on arrays (e.g. searching, mirroring, sorting algorithms), because the algorithms dynamically change the values of elements. In…