A qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological study conducted through interviews with 20 non-traditional (NT) Hispanic/Latino female part-time community college students and located at an urban community college in southern New Jersey explored for factors of persistence and discontinuation. Six themes emerged. Theme 1: Institutional persistence…

A method for teaching problem-solving skills to mathematics students is presented. By subtly incorporating engineering applications, the students are simultaneously exposed to an effective outreach programme. The process includes offering a complex problem that challenges students' abilities. Before allowing the students to become frustrated, the…

Systems biology, metabolomics, metabolic engineering, and other recent developments in biochemistry suggest that future biochemists will require a detailed familiarity with the compounds and pathways of intermediary metabolism and their biochemical control. The challenge to the biochemistry instructor is the presentation of metabolic pathways in a…

Environmental familiarization is a learning phenomenon embedded within most tasks used to study learning and motivation. Given its prevalence there is surprisingly little systematic behavioral research on factors affecting familiarization. The six experiments reported in the present report used rats' tendency to interact more with a novel object…

This paper reports an investigation of children's picture storybooks about school. Previous research has indicated that parents and educators choose to read books about school to children as a way of helping children become familiar with school expectations. Drawing on over 100 children's picture storybooks, the content (text and illustrations) of…

Background: The aim of this study was to examine the effects of familiarity of depicted persons and environments in recognition of photographs for pupils with different degrees of intellectual disability (ID). Method: Forty-five pupils with ID participated. Results: An interaction effect between the two variables, person and environment, was found…

The present study examined undergraduate psychology students' (N = 83) self-reported interest in and familiarity with five specialty areas in professional psychology: counseling psychology, clinical psychology, school psychology, forensic psychology, and criminal profiling. Results suggest that although students are quite interested in careers…

This article interrogates the politics of representation, expectation, and responsibility at the new National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, DC. The authors explore the interpretive contests (between and among Natives and non-Natives) provoked by the museum's representational strategies. They think that NMAI has positioned…

Counseling orientations are redescribed in terms of the relative importance they place on knowing. This epistemological redescription results in a reconsideration of the role of humanism. Specifically, rather than a treatment orientation, the author argues that humanism should be considered a moral imperative. Implications of this conclusion for…

Examined the relationships between student differences, prior experience with the subject material, past performances, teaching behaviors, and perceived learning and achievement. Found that achievement is affected by test anxiety and high school GPA, and that content-unfamiliar students, unlike content-familiar students, are more positively…

Examined children's comprehension and production of idioms through the roles of familiarity and of different kinds of contextual information on comprehension. A sample of 264 children showed that familiarity (i.e., frequency of exposure) plays a minor role and only for children who are not yet able to use contextual information. (18 references)…

Outlines a psychophysiological (involuntary responses to novel environmental stimuli) model of the role of orienting responses (ORs) in learning from televised lectures. Demonstrates that insertion of videographics in talking-head lectures produces ORs in television viewers. Finds that ORs enhance learning of familiar material but interfere with…

A study involving 11 male and 11 female inhabitants of Leiden (Netherlands) tested the hypothesis that a subject's judgments of the personality of unfamiliar target persons correspond better with the subject's Implicit Personality Theory than do judgments of the personality of familiar persons. The results confirm the hypothesis. (TJH)

Explored variation in destination search among group of retirement migrants (n=163) in terms of distance between origin and destination, previous place experience with destination, and presence of friends and family at destination. Found that first two factors significantly restricted search for potential destinations, but third did not. Suggests…

A survey of 143 clergy found 29% had no education about child abuse and neglect and that 22% believe that evidence, rather than the suspicion of abuse, is required before a report is made. The need for increased efforts to educate clergy about child abuse and neglect is discussed. (CR)