Three experiments examined the role of representations in adolescents' deductive reasoning. Findings indicated that, with age, conditional reasoning improved on tasks containing permission conditional relations; reasoning fallacies increased on tasks containing causal conditional relations. Valid conditional inferences were more common on problems…

Describes a transition process at Susquehanna University designed to help its new president adjust to the institution. Discusses the transition committee's efforts, including formation of a schedule for the new president, sharing of institutional information, and planning various meetings with important constituencies. Includes sidebars on useful…

The characteristics of scanning patterns between the ages of 6 and 26 weeks were investigated through repeated assessments of 10 infants. Eye movements were recorded using a corneal-reflection system while the infants looked at 2 dynamic stimuli: the naturally moving face of their mother and an abstract stimulus. Results indicated that the way…

This study examined infants' abilities to separate speech from different talkers and to recognize a familiar word (the infant's own name) in the context of noise. In 4 experiments, infants heard repetitions of either their names or unfamiliar names in the presence of background babble. Five-month-old infants listened longer to their names when the…

When presented simultaneously with equally discriminable, but unfamiliar, visual and auditory stimuli, 4-year-olds exhibited auditory dominance, processing only auditory information ( Sloutsky & Napolitano, 2003). The current study examined factors underlying auditory dominance. In 6 experiments, 4-year-olds (N181) were presented with auditory and…

Helen May recently completed her doctoral studies at the University of Leeds. Her EdD thesis, written with the benefit of extensive experience of practice, focused on the engagement of children with learning difficulties in interactions in primary classrooms. In this article, Helen May draws on her familiarity with the literature to explore the…

The development of large-scale livestock facilities has become a controversial issue in many regions of the U.S. in recent years. In this research, rural-urban differences in familiarity and concern about large-scale livestock facilities among Ohioans is examined as well as the relationship of social distance from agriculture and trust in risk…

Recent studies using a violation-of-expectation task suggest that preverbal infants are capable of recognizing basic arithmetical operations involving visual objects. There is still debate, however, over whether their performance is based on any expectation of the arithmetical operations, or on a general perceptual tendency to prefer visually…

Autism is a developmental disorder with possibly multiple pathophysiologies. It has been theorized that cortical feature maps in individuals with autism are inadequate for forming abstract codes and representations. Cortical feature maps make it possible to classify stimuli, such as phonemes of speech, disregarding incidental detail. Hierarchies…

This study was designed as a first step to explore sexual harassment in the electronic domain. One hundred six students read 10 e-mail messages ranging from jokes to spam to a sexual proposition from a stranger and rated them on an offensiveness evaluative scale. Participants also completed social desirability and attitudes toward sexual…

In four conditioned taste aversion experiments with rats as subjects, the effects of extinguished or pre-exposed flavors on retardation and summation tests was compared. Experiment 1 showed that when steps were taken to ensure similar exposure to the target flavor in all conditions, acquisition after pre-exposure and reacquisition after extinction…

Two experiments investigated the influence of sentential context on the relative ease of deriving a particular meaning for novel and familiar compounds. Experiment 1 determined which of two possible meanings was preferred for a set of novel phrases. Experiment 2 used both novel (e.g., "brain sponge") and familiar compounds (e.g., "bug spray"). The…

There are reasons to believe that infant-directed (ID) speech may make language acquisition easier for infants. However, the effects of ID speech on infants' learning remain poorly understood. The experiments reported here assess whether ID speech facilitates word segmentation from fluent speech. One group of infants heard a set of nonsense…

We examined how children with and without oral language (word-finding) difficulties (WFD) perform on oral reading (OR) versus silent reading recognition (SRR) tasks when reading the same words and how lexical factors influenced OR accuracy, error patterns, and nature of miscues. Primary-grade students were administered an experimental reading…

Instructional strategies for successfully teaching concepts are found throughout the instructional design literature. These strategies primarily consist of presenting learners with definitions, examples, and non-examples. While examples are important presentation instruments, theorist suggests that examples should not be re-used in the assessment…