It is well documented in the cognitive literature that visual stimuli create strong memory connections (Shapiro & Waters, 2005). In L2 research, mnemonic devices have been found to be a relevant factor in the development of vocabulary learning (Sagarra & Alba, 2006). However, the extent to which visual cues are needed in the association of…

Within the field of psycholinguistics there are those who argue for a close relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and syntactic processing (Just and Carpenter, 1992) and those who argue that there is no such relationship (Waters and Caplan, 1996b; 2004). Despite years of research, empirical data has yet to settle this disagreement,…

The present study investigated how children learn that some verbs may appear in the figure-locative but not the ground-locative construction (e.g., "Lisa poured water into the cup"; "*Lisa poured the cup with water"), with some showing the opposite pattern (e.g., "*Bart filled water into the cup"; "Bart filled the cup with water"), and others…

One area explored in the second (in-depth) phase of the Learning in Science Project was "children's science," defined as views of the world and the meanings for words that children have and bring with them to science lessons. The investigation reported focuses on students' (N=43) views of physical change associated with boiling, melting,…