Learning names for parts of objects can be challenging for children, as it requires overcoming their tendency to name whole objects. We test whether comparing items can facilitate learning names for their parts. Applying the structure-mapping theory of comparison leads to two predictions: (a) young children will find it easier to identify a common…

This study explored the impact of infant-directed speech (IDS) versus adult-directed speech (ADS) on neural activity to familiar and unfamiliar words in 6- and 13-month-old infants. Event-related potentials were recorded while infants listened to familiar words in IDS, familiar words in ADS, unfamiliar words in IDS, and unfamiliar words in ADS.…

A 2-year longitudinal study was carried out to test the hypothesis that children's word-specific learning of inflectional spellings is an essential first step in their acquiring an understanding of morphological rules for spelling inflections. Ninety children, who were 6-years-old at the start of the project, were asked to spell pseudowords and…

This paper argues that the two national components of identity among Palestinian Arab students in Israel--the Arab component and the Palestinian component--are strong, while the civil Israeli component is very weak. This paper also argues that although social relations between Arab students and Jewish students are very limited, the readiness of…

Data from the Evidence-based Treatment Survey were used to compare providers serving families in American Indian and Alaska Native communities to their counterparts in non-American Indian/Alaska Native communities on provider characteristics and factors that influence their decision to use evidence-based practices (N = 467). The findings suggest…

This quasi-experimental study attempts to incorporate grammatical elements into meaning-focused reading classes by attracting learner attention to form with minimal interruption to meaning comprehension. Two hundred fifty-nine Korean English as a foreign language students underwent four different treatments--involving textual enhancement and topic…

Considering the difficulties in understanding the global meaning of texts, this paper intends to give some suggestions on how to help students reach a deeper understanding of texts in intensive reading classroom within the framework of schema theory. The purpose of this paper is expressed in three ways. The first is to give a brief overview of…

We investigated the effects of gender and group size on perceptions of group variability, using groups of students taking different majors that varied in the proportion of men and women (female-majority, parity, and male-majority). We found that both group size and gender had consistent effects on perceived out-group variability, even when…

The author identified books most often selected among a sample of economically disadvantaged Black 8- to 12-year-old participants (N = 293) and investigated reasons participants offered for choosing specific books. Participants self-selected books at a book fair providing 412 books. The most commonly selected books supplied descriptive data.…

The internal use of language during problem solving is considered to play a key role in executive functioning. This role provides a means for self-reflection and self-questioning during the formation of rules and plans and a capacity to control and monitor behavior during problem-solving activity. Given that increasingly sophisticated language is…

Assessment of learners' academic achievement in a second language presents important challenges to the fields of educational research and educational practice. Although these challenges legitimately concern learners' familiarity with a second language, the challenges are more complex, particularly in the contexts of large-scale assessments that…

Two studies investigated how preschool children's interpretations of novel words as names for parts of objects were affected by 3 kinds of information: (a) whole object familiarity, (b) whole part juxtaposition, and (c) syntactic information indicating possession. Study 1 tested 3- to 4-year-olds and found that although there was evidence that all…

Students' abilities to master the genres of science must include not only factual knowledge. They also have to negotiate what they want to achieve with their texts and their ideas about writing and themselves as writers and science students. In this article, classroom observations, text analysis and interviews are combined in a case study of two…

Object naming studies have generally observed that both normal and brain damaged individuals are faster and more accurate at identifying non-living objects than living objects (Humphreys, Riddoch, & Quinlan, 1988; Warrington & Shallice, 1984). However, a potential confounding variable, manipulability, has been present in past studies that may…

We investigated the effect of familiarity on people's perception of facial likeness by asking participants to choose which of two mirror-symmetric chimeric images (made from the left or right half of a photograph of a face) looked more like an original image. In separate trials the participants made this judgment for their own face and for the…