The idea of "threshold concepts" has been used to identify discipline-based concepts that are critical to that academic area. Threshold concepts are often difficult for students to assimilate in a meaningful way but, once done, can be powerful for the learner. In general, threshold concepts are 1) transformative to learner thinking; 2)…

Background: In scientific inquiry learning, students often have difficulties conducting hypothetical reasoning with multiple intertwined variables. Concept maps have a potential to facilitate complex thinking and reasoning. However, there is little investigation into the content of student-constructed concept maps and its association with inquiry…

This study aimed to adapt and validate the Word Complexity Measure (WCM) for Persian-speaking toddlers. The WCM is a tool for assessing phonological complexity, originally proposed by Stoel-Gammon. The study was conducted in two phases: (1) adapting the WCM parameters to the Persian language and (2) conducting a validation study with 60…

Taking into account the profound impact of technology on modern education, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing academic interest has focused towards the design and application of such tools on different learning contexts. A specific area of Human-Computer Interaction, called affordance theory, focuses on the perception, design and…

Language Learning Strategies (LLSs) assist learners to develop cognitive or behavioral competences to make the language learning process more self-directed and effective. In the current educational contexts, think-aloud methods are used to provide insights into the cognitive processes of individuals as they engage in enhancement of skills and…

The objective for beginning writers is to learn how to generate alphabet-letters which are recognisable and easy to read. This study investigated the accuracy of Year 1 and 2 children's alphabet-letter-writing by evaluating their alphabet and orthographic knowledge, following evidence which identifies these skills as important for correctly…

Although the notion of "assumptions" is important in mathematical activity as early as the elementary school, there is limited research on how to help elementary teachers develop "mathematical knowledge for teaching" related to assumptions. In this paper, we discuss the theoretical foundation and implementation of an…

Intra-individual response time variability (IIRTV) during cognitive performance is increasingly recognized as an important indicator of attentional control (AC) and related brain region function. However, what determinants contribute to preschoolers' IIRTV received little attention. The present study explored the interaction of dopaminergic…

Integrated language arts and science & technology (ILS&T) instruction can make learning more meaningful and improve student learning outcomes for both subjects. Although the literature has stressed that such integrated instruction presents pedagogical challenges for elementary school teachers, little is yet known about the specific…

This longitudinal study investigates the differences in learners' effortful behaviour over time due to receiving metacognitive help--in the form of on-demand task-related visual analytics. Specifically, learners' interactions (N = 67) with the tasks were tracked during four self-assessment activities, conducted at four discrete points in time,…

The role of relative salience in processing of hierarchical stimuli in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was examined in this study. Participants with ASD and typically developing controls performed a Navon letters task under conditions of global salience, local salience or equal salience of both levels. Results revealed no group…

The present study evaluates the updating of long-term memory for duration. After learning a temporal discrimination associating one lever with a standard duration (4 sec) and another lever with both a shorter (1-sec) and a longer (16-sec) duration, rats underwent a single session for learning a new standard duration. The temporal generalization…

Ongoing discussions on the nature of storage in visual working memory have mostly focused on 2 theoretical accounts: On one hand we have a discrete-state account, postulating that information in working memory is supported with high fidelity for a limited number of discrete items by a given number of "slots," with no information being…

Prior research has shown that interruptions lead to a variety of performance costs. However, these costs are heterogenous and poorly understood. Under some circumstances, interruptions lead to large decreases in accuracy on the primary task, whereas in others task duration increases, but task accuracy is unaffected. Presently, the underlying cause…

There is an increasing trend in cloud adoption of enterprise applications in, for example, manufacturing, healthcare, and finance. Such applications are routinely subject to targeted cyberattacks, which result in significant loss of sensitive data (e.g., due to data exfiltration in advanced persistent threats) or valuable utilities (e.g., due to…