In 4 experiments, we investigated the effects of object affordance in reach-to-grasp actions. Participants indicated whether a depicted small or large object was natural or manmade by means of different object-grasping responses (i.e., with a power or a precision grip). We observed that the size of the depicted object affected the grasping…

Purpose: Two new treatments, 1 based on sentence to picture matching (SPM) and the other on object manipulation (OM), that train participants on the thematic roles of sentences using pictures or by manipulating objects were piloted. Method: Using a single-subject multiple-baseline design, sentence comprehension was trained on the affected sentence…

This study examined whether young children are able to imitate a robot's goal-directed actions. Children (24-35 months old) viewed videos showing a robot attempting to manipulate an object (e.g., putting beads inside a cup) but failing to achieve its goal (e.g., beads fell outside the cup). In 1 video, the robot made eye contact with a human…

In 2 experiments, participants learned bone anatomy by using a handheld controller to rotate an on-screen 3-dimensional bone model. The on-screen bone either included orientation references, which consisted of visible lines marking its axes (orientation reference condition), or did not include such references (no-orientation reference condition).…

For many decades, tool use has been viewed primarily as a cognitive achievement, an ability that separates not only adults and older children from infants, but humans from virtually all other species. According to this standard account, tool use and associated means-ends behaviors are dependent on symbolic or representational thinking. Organisms…

Two experiments examined the flexibility and stability with which children and adults organize locations into categories on the basis of object relatedness. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and adults learned the locations of 20 objects belonging to 4 categories. Displacement patterns revealed that children and adults used object cues to organize the…

Children with autism frequently display self-injurious behavior (SIB), but skin picking--a less severe topography of SIB--has not been the focus of much clinical research. The present study evaluated a home-based intervention that was implemented with a 9-year-old girl who had autism and picked her fingers with resulting tissue damage. The…

G. P. Bingham, R. C. Schmidt, and L. D. Rosenblum (1989) found that, by hefting objects of different sizes and weights, people could choose the optimal weight in each size for throwing to a maximum distance. In Experiment 1, the authors replicated this result. G. P. Bingham et al. hypothesized that hefting is a smart mechanism that allows objects…

In order to better understand how to design hands-on child-computer interaction, we explore how different styles of interaction facilitate children's thinking while they use their hands to manipulate objects. We present an exploratory study of children solving a spatial puzzle task. We investigate how the affordances of physical, graphical…

We used a three-component multiple-schedule with a brief reversal design to evaluate the effects of structurally unmatched and matched stimuli on immediate and subsequent vocal stereotypy that was displayed by three children with autism spectrum disorders. For 2 of the 3 participants, access to matched stimuli, unmatched stimuli, and music…

How do concrete objects that cue real-world knowledge affect students' performance on mathematics word problems? In Experiment 1, fourth- and sixth-grade students (N = 229) solved word problems involving money. Students in the experimental condition were given bills and coins to help them solve the problems, and students in the control condition…

Two experiments investigated how 3-year-old children select a tool to perform a manual task, with a focus on their perseverative parameter choices for the various relationships involved in handling a tool: the actor-to-tool relation and the tool-to-target relation (topology). The first study concerned the parameter value for the tool-to-target…

An extensive body of scholarship has documented the way disciplinary texts and activities are produced and mediated through their relationship to a wide array of extradisciplinary discourses. This article seeks to complement and extend that line of work by drawing upon Witte's (1992) notion of intertext to address the way disciplinary activities…

The authors recommend practical techniques and resources for teaching at-risk secondary students, who are often nontraditional learners. The article describes tactual and kinesthetic instructional resources that research has shown are effective for typically performing and at-risk students who do not learn conventionally. (Contains 2 figures.)

The authors investigated whether speakers who named several objects processed them sequentially or in parallel. Speakers named object triplets, arranged in a triangle, in the order left, right, and bottom object. The left object was easy or difficult to identify and name. During the saccade from the left to the right object, the right object shown…