The role of partner familiarity in the organization, duration, and content of social pretend play was studied in a triadic situation involving two friends and a third familiar child. Findings showed that play between friends was longer and richer than play with the third partner and that girls spent nearly twice as much time in fantasy as boys.…

Findings of four investigations involving five through seven year olds suggest that, even though children can make relatively accurate judgments of their knowledge states, they tend to overestimate their competence when assessing their knowledge in relation to performance on a task. (RH)

Two experiments examined the effects of a culture-general factor, pattern redundancy, on the discrimination of five-tone melodies that differed in their adherence to Western tonal conventions, among 9-month olds, 5-year olds, and adults. Increasing exposure seemed to attenuate the effects of the pattern redundancy while amplifying the influence of…

Reactions to peers' distress were recorded for 52 toddlers (hosts), 18 to 36 months old, who were observed playing with familiar peers in their own homes during 2 sessions, 6 months apart. Four contextual factors were explored: the host's responsibility for the guest's distress, similarity between the toddler and the distressed peer, relative…

We assessed the impact of visual similarity on written word identification by having participants learn new words (e.g. BANARA) that were neighbours of familiar words that previously had no neighbours (e.g. BANANA). Repeated exposure to these new words made it more difficult to semantically categorize the familiar words. There was some evidence of…

Two studies were designed to investigate the role of morphemic structure on students' word reading. The first study asked whether familiar morphemes in words facilitate word reading for elementary students. Results showed that lower and upper elementary students read words with two morphemes (derived words with a base word and one suffix, such as…

The field of engineering is defined by a number of specialty areas, thus most engineering students must decide upon an educational specialty track within the engineering major. Data on familiarity with, and perceptions of similarity among 11 engineering specialties were collected from 129 undergraduate engineering students from a public urban…

This paper uses narrative and reflective methodologies to examine pedagogical practices that enable the production of meaningful relationships. I suggest that the term "fields of influence" encapsulates practices that enable some people to influence relationships with others. The narrative invites readers to consider how the embodied qualities…

Two alternative hypotheses can be used to explain how young children acquire the cardinal meaning of small-number words. The first stresses the role of counting and predicts better performance when the items are presented in succession. The second considers the role of subitizing and predicts better performance when the items are presented…

The study reported in this paper explored the schemas that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators bring to the task of comprehending oral narratives produced by Aboriginal children. During each data collection session, a participant listened to a series of eight passages and tried to recall each passage immediately after listening. The…

The research described in this paper investigates one possible explanation for students' ability or inability to identify fallacious arguments. As students' ability to identify informal reasoning fallacies has been the subject of scant empirical investigation, the current study may broaden our knowledge concerning this phenomenon and locate it in…

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived reasons of pre-service music educators (undergraduate music majors preparing to teach music) for preferring three distinctive pieces with traditional roots in East Asia. The selected pieces were foreign to research participants in the US. Pre-service music educators (N = 66) listened to a…

Two experiments examined the role of perceptual complexity, object familiarity and form class cues on how children interpret novel adjectives and count nouns. Four-year-old children participated in a forced-choice match-to-target task in which an exemplar was named with a novel word and children were asked to choose another one that matched the…

Symmetry is an aspect of mathematics that is strongly linked to art and design. We chose to explore this connection in the context of a liberal arts mathematics course. Here we present a brief description of this course, including an outline of the curriculum and specific features of the course. We subsequently present the results of a study we…

Instructors who teach in online learning environments have the unique opportunity to enhance the interaction of their students through an online threaded discussion board. With effective planning and skillful facilitation techniques, this venue for posting messages can be used as a resource to engage learners in becoming an interactive and…