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This study, aiming to reveal preschool children's mental models of their environment, was carried out with the participation of 225 children aged 36-72 months attending 8 different preschool education institutions. It is based on qualitative research designed around a case study. The Word Association Test and Drawing were used as the data collection tools. In the study, it was observed that 36-48-month-old children mostly focused on the visuals they saw in the park (garden) and traffic in their environmental drawings, and in addition to these visuals, 49-60-month-old children included the forest in their environmental drawings, and 61-72-month-old children included home and school in their environmental drawings. The most prominent environments/elements observed with both data collection tools were the house, traffic, park, and sky for the 3648-month-old children; house, traffic, park, sky, and rural-village for the 49-60-month-old children; and house, traffic, park, sky, rural-village, forest and nearby settlement (market, store, etc.) for the 61-72-month-old children. The common elements that children associate with the environment in their mental models are the concepts of house, traffic, park, and sky.

Graph theory allows the student to work on problems that require imagination, intuition, systematic exploration, conjecturing, and reasoning. It implies that mathematical investigation skill is essential to be proficient in Graph Theory. In this study, we conduct empirical research that deals with associational research. There were 97 students selected purposively from sophomore students in the Discrete Mathematics course offered by one of the mathematics education departments in Indonesia. The empirical evidence was analyzed to explain students' thinking behavior on Graph Theory by discovering the association structure between prior knowledge and mathematical investigation skill, then visually depicting its association using the k-means clustering procedure and correspondence analysis. Since in our department, we expect certain prior skills, then this visualization could be used as self-reflection for our department, whether we have gained the results as expected to strengthen certain investigation approaches. Generally, the study concludes some findings that provide novelty and open issues for future research to develop a learning environment supporting mathematical investigation activities.

According to the ACLU (2005), ". . .at times of national stress -- real or imagined -- First Amendment rights come under enormous pressure." So, too, academic freedom of expression for faculty, staff, and students has become a casualty in the post-9/11 world. Academics were criticized and reprimanded for not being patriotic enough. Using a conceptual framework that includes historical reanalysis, terror management theory, contradictory constructions of patriotism, and electronic discourse, this essay explores the nexus between patriotism and free expression in higher education. We examine historical trends in freedom of expression, analyze three higher education case studies (Chilling Churchill; 9/11 and Middle Eastern Studies; and Shunning Bob Jensen), and suggest why patriotism and censorship go hand and glove in times of national crisis. We end one a cautionary note, expressing concern about how easily words can be turned against academics, the very people who should have the highest level of protection for their words. Nearly 20 years ago, Professor Pat Somers joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin bringing her trademark wit and her seemingly indefatigable energy to root out injustice. The paper below represents one such branch of her academic curiosity in response to a perceived injustice to a fellow member of the Academy. This paper was first presented as a draft manuscript at the American Educational Research Association and later submitted to a notable journal. Unfortunately, a second paper on academic freedom was already included in the edition, but the editors encouraged Pat and her team to pursue other publications. And then, as with many things, this paper fell to the side as Pat pursued a new branch of academic curiosity and stewarded her many doctoral students through the dissertation process. As you will note in the dedication, Pat was a deeply curious and pedagogically dynamic member of the Academy and this paper stands at the ready for updating and resubmission. We present it today unadulterated as a testimony to Pat's prescience, her passion and her drive -- a historical glimpse into the early days of a very real threat to academic freedom that persists today.

Mastering creative thinking skills (CTS) is crucial for enhancing students' science conceptual understanding. However, conventional teaching prioritizes linear thinking over the three sub-CTS essential to science learning: associative, visual, and divergent thinking. Weaknesses in these three sub-CTS cause students to have misconceptions, difficulty in creating mental images, and an inability to generate ideas on abstract scientific concepts. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Digital Storytelling Science Creative (DSSC) module in enhancing these three sub-CTS, based on the topic of acids and bases. The ASSURE instructional design model guided the DSSC module design and development process. This quasi-experimental design study involved 63 eighth-grade students. Analysis of two-way MANCOVA using the data collected through the administered Creative Thinking Skills Test revealed that the DSSC module group performed significantly better than the control group in divergent thinking. However, the DSSC module did not significantly affect students' associative and visual thinking or gender.

The perceptions of students who study environmental science related to pollution are certainly different because they are influenced by various circumstances. These circumstances, among others, depend on what they observe around them and their prior knowledge. This study aimed to determine the concept of pollution according to the cognitive structure of prospective biology teachers. The research was designed as a case study and the selected participants were 29 first-year biology education students who took environmental science courses. Data were collected by giving word association tests, open-ended questions, and drawings. The results showed that students' thinking process and prior knowledge influenced their ability to express ideas or answers. Cognitive perceptions of prospective biology teachers from the word association test brought up 30 words related to the pollution which were grouped into four categories, namely types of pollution, causes of pollution, consequences of pollution, and solutions to overcome pollution. Cognitive perceptions of prospective teachers based on open-ended questions, most of them wrote the definition of pollution as stated in the environmental management law, and cognitive perceptions of prospective teachers outlined in the form of drawing related to efforts to overcome pollution are throwing garbage in its place, doing reforestation, and go green action. [Note: The publication year (2023) shown in the citation on the PDF is incorrect. The correct publication year is 2024.]

This study aims to determine the perceptions of fine arts high school music department students about the concept of "instrument training" through an alternative measurement and evaluation technique "Word Association Test (WAT)". In this study, the survey model, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The study group of the research consisted of 110 students studying at Nevit Kodalli Fine Arts High School Music Department in the 2021-2022 academic year. The data were obtained by applying the "Word Association Test (WAT)". Firstly, WAT was explained for informative purposes during the application. Then, the students were asked to write the first 5 words that they thought were related to the key concept of "instrument training" within 1 minute. Afterwards, they were asked to make a sentence related to these answer words. The obtained answer words were analysed by content analysis technique. As a result of the analysis, the answer words that the students associated with the key concept of "instrument training" were grouped under 9 categories (teaching materials, performance anxiety, motivation for the instrument, social skills, attitude towards the instrument, technical skills, student capacity, education and training). According to the order of these categories, the most frequently associated answer words with instrument education were instrument, etude, excitement, working, cooperation, happiness, note, talent and teacher. Under the category of performance anxiety and motivation related to the instrument, the students showed a negative distribution on the word "tiring". It was observed that the students had a positive cognitive structure in all categories.

Given the relevance of graphs of functions, we consider their inclusion in primary education from the functional approach to early algebra. The purpose of this article is to shed some light on the students' production and reading of graphs when they solved generalization problems from a functional thinking approach. We aim to explore how 3rd and 4th graders construct graphs associated to functions and what elements they use; and how they read function associated graphs and whether they connect pairs of values to see beyond the data. After four working sessions about functions, we designed and implemented individual interviews to 12 students. Through a qualitative analysis, we highlight that the students can read data in a graph on two different cognitive levels and also construct it from different elements of the graph initially provided. Regarding data reading, we evidence two levels: (a) literal reading of a given element in the graph, and (b) reading beyond the data. The construction of the graph is described with base on the axes, values and labels on the axes, scale of the axes, and construction techniques. We present examples of students' work that evidence that graph construction varied depending on whether it was created from a blank sheet or it was necessary to provide help regarding the axes or the scale of the graph. We describe several techniques used by the students in the representation of data that yield non-canonical representations of a graph and that help glimpse how students are interpreting this representation.

The process of creative problem-solving (CPS) commonly demands that individuals consciously or unconsciously integrate creative ideas from a vast array of diverse information. Using a masked priming paradigm and the Chinese remote associates test (RAT), this study provides innovative behavioral evidence for the integration of multiple unconscious stimuli during CPS. In Experiment 1, three masked Chinese characters were simultaneously presented in the RAT, the first and third characters could be combined to form an answer. Two Chinese two-character words were presented in parallel, each containing the answer in Experiment 2, and required the complete word information to be split and subsequently re-integrated in a more complex manner than in Experiment 1. Interestingly, in both the experiments, multiple unconsciously processed stimuli generated a priming effect on creative performance. Specifically, a positive priming effect was observed in response to the difficult RATs, whereas a negative priming effect was observed in response to the easy RATs. Overall, our study verified that semantic integration between different unconsciously perceived stimuli can occur, which provides insights into the mechanisms underlying unconscious priming effects and contributes to a better understanding of how creative cognitive processing is influenced by multiple types of unconscious information.

When faced with the need to transform an object, idea, or situation, people have a tendency to favor adding new components rather than removing existing ones. This is called the "additive bias." Previous research, along with historical and anecdotal examples, shows that this bias may significantly reduce problem-solving abilities and have a detrimental impact on the innovation process. In this study, our objective was to develop a novel tool, the additive bias implicit association test (ad-IAT), to investigate the reasons underlying people's preference for additive actions. By using this tool, we empirically demonstrated that people displayed an inherent tendency to assign a positive valence to additive concepts and to perceive additive actions as safer and more functional than subtractive concepts. Importantly, we also found that implicit preference for addition resulted in participants favoring additive actions while neglecting subtractive alternatives when engaged in a problem-solving task. Collectively, our series of experiments substantiated the effectiveness of our ad-IAT in uncovering and quantifying the additive bias. This, in turn, provided a deeper comprehension of the underlying factors contributing to the bias and its impact on people's behavior.

In many domains, learners extract recurring units from continuous sequences. For example, in unknown languages, fluent speech is perceived as a continuous signal. Learners need to extract the underlying words from this continuous signal and then memorize them. One prominent candidate mechanism is statistical learning, whereby learners track how predictive syllables (or other items) are of one another. Syllables within the same word predict each other better than syllables straddling word boundaries. But does statistical learning lead to memories of the underlying words--or just to pairwise associations among syllables? Electrophysiological results provide the strongest evidence for the memory view. Electrophysiological responses can be time-locked to statistical word boundaries (e.g., N400s) and show rhythmic activity with a periodicity of word durations. Here, I reproduce such results with a simple Hebbian network. When exposed to statistically structured syllable sequences (and when the underlying words are not excessively long), the network activation is rhythmic with the periodicity of a word duration and activation maxima on word-final syllables. This is because word-final syllables receive more excitation from earlier syllables with which they are associated than less predictable syllables that occur earlier in words. The network is also sensitive to information whose electrophysiological correlates were used to support the encoding of ordinal positions within words. Hebbian learning can thus explain rhythmic neural activity in statistical learning tasks without any memory representations of words. Learners might thus need to rely on cues beyond statistical associations to learn the words of their native language.

Casadevante et al. (Curr Psychol 42: 4272-4285, 2023) used an objective test and found that regulation of response speed was related to better performance in a category learning task. The present study aims at analysing whether the relation between regulation of response speed and learning exists in an associative learning task. We developed ad hoc the Treasure Forest, an objective test consisting of a computerized associative learning task. We conducted a first study with 86 university students to assess the relation between spontaneous response speed and learning. Results showed that participants who acted slowly learned more than their mates who acted faster (t (83) = 8.898, p < .001, [eta-squared] = 0.672). Moreover, some students who began the task acting too fast to learn decreased their response speed by the second half of the task and simultaneously their learning index improved (t (11) = 2.325, p < 0.05, d = 0.721). Hence, self-regulating the response speed was linked to associative learning. We conducted a second study to analyse the influence of an external speed regulation on learning. The intervention group (N = 99) was prevented from clicking more than one click per second while the control group (N = 85) acted without restrictions. The intervention group achieved a higher learning index than the control group, who acted faster (t (160) = 4.828, p < 0.001, [eta-squared] =.117). Hence, regulating response speed promoted associative learning. We concluded that regulating response speed promoted associative learning, and we hypothesized that training self-regulation of response speed may improve learning and academic performance. Besides, we highlight the utility of employing objective test for analysing self-regulation.

We report the first evidence that the gist mechanism of fuzzy-trace theory and the associative mechanism of activation monitoring theory operate in parallel, in the recall version of the Deese/Roediger/McDermott illusion. In three experiments, we implemented a new methodology that allows their respective empirical indexes, gist strength (GS) and backward associative strength (BAS), to each be manipulated while the other is held constant. In Experiment 1, increasing GS increased false recall of missing words, but increasing BAS did not. In Experiments 2 and 3, however, increasing GS and increasing BAS both increased recall of missing words, and those effects were independent and additive. In all three experiments, GS and BAS affected true recall of list words in qualitatively different ways: (a) Increasing GS always improved true recall, regardless of whether BAS was high or low, but (b) increasing BAS impaired true recall when GS was high and improved true recall when GS was low. To pinpoint the retrieval loci of the two variables' effects, we analyzed the data of all experiments with the dual-retrieval model. Those analyses showed that the variables' respective effects were due to different retrieval processes.

A word often expresses many different morphological functions. Which part of a word contributes to which part of the overall meaning is not always clear, which raises the question as to how such functions are learned. While linguistic studies tacitly assume the co-occurrence of cues and outcomes to suffice in learning these functions (Baer-Henney, Kügler, & van de Vijver, 2015; Baer-Henney & van de Vijver, 2012), error-driven learning suggests that contingency rather than contiguity is crucial (Nixon, 2020; Ramscar, Yarlett, Dye, Denny, & Thorpe, 2010). In error-driven learning, cues gain association strength if they predict a certain outcome, and they lose strength if the outcome is absent. This reduction of association strength is called unlearning. So far, it is unclear if such unlearning has consequences for cue--outcome associations beyond the ones that get reduced. To test for such consequences of unlearning, we taught participants morphophonological patterns in an artificial language learning experiment. In one block, the cues to two morphological outcomes--plural and diminutive--co-occurred within the same word forms. In another block, a single cue to only one of these two outcomes was presented in a different set of word forms. We wanted to find out, if participants unlearn this cue's association with the outcome that is not predicted by the cue alone, and if this allows the absent cue to be associated with the absent outcome. Our results show that if unlearning was possible, participants learned that the absent cue predicts the absent outcome better than if no unlearning was possible. This effect was stronger if the unlearned cue was more salient. This shows that unlearning takes place even if no alternative cues to an absent outcome are provided, which highlights that learners take both positive and negative evidence into account--as predicted by domain general error-driven learning.

Childhood is a period when memory consolidation and knowledge base undergo rapid changes. The present study examined short-delay (overnight) and long-delay (after a 2-week period) consolidation of new information either congruent or incongruent with prior knowledge in typically developing 6- to 8-year-old children (n = 32), 9- to 11-year-old children (n = 33), and 18- to 30-year-old young adults (YA; n = 39). Both memory accessibility (cued recall of objects) and precision (precision of object placement) of initially well-learned object-scene pairs were measured. Our results showed that overnight, memory accessibility declined similarly in all age groups; memory precision improved more in younger children (YC) compared to older children (OC) and even declined in YA. After a 2-week period, both memory accessibility and precision became worse. Specifically, while age groups showed similar decline in memory accessibility, precision decline was less in YC than in OC and YA. The accessibility and precision of congruent and incongruent information changed similarly with consolidation in all age groups. Taken together, our results showed that, for initially well-learned information, YC have robust memory consolidation, despite their overall lower mnemonic performance compared to OC and YA, which is potentially crucial for stable and precise knowledge accumulation early on in development.

Causal reasoning is a fundamental cognitive ability that enables individuals to learn about the complex interactions in the world around them. However, the mechanisms that underpin causal reasoning are not well understood. For example, it remains unresolved whether children's causal inferences are best explained by Bayesian inference or associative learning. The two experiments and computational models reported here were designed to examine whether 5- and 6-year-olds will retrospectively reevaluate objects--that is, adjust their beliefs about the causal status of some objects presented at an earlier point in time based on the observed causal status of other objects presented at a later point in time--when asked to reason about 3 and 4 objects and under varying degrees of information processing demands. Additionally, the experiments and models were designed to determine whether children's retrospective reevaluations were best explained by associative learning, Bayesian inference, or some combination of both. The results indicated that participants retrospectively reevaluated causal inferences under minimal information-processing demands (Experiment 1) but failed to do so under greater information processing demands (Experiment 2) and that their performance was better captured by an associative learning mechanism, with less support for descriptions that rely on Bayesian inference.

Objectives: We provide a novel application of psycholinguistic theories and methods to the field of auditory training to provide preliminary data regarding which minimal pair contrasts are more difficult for listeners with typical hearing to distinguish in real-time. Design: Using eye-tracking, participants heard a word and selected the corresponding image from a display of four: the target word, two unrelated words, and a word from one of four contrast categories (i.e., voiced-initial [e.g., "peach-beach"], voiced-final [e.g., "back-bag"], manner-initial [e.g., "talk-sock"], and manner-final [e.g., "bat-bass"]). Results: Fixations were monitored to measure how strongly words compete for recognition depending on the contrast type (voicing, manner) and location (word-initial or final). Manner contrasts competed more for recognition than did voicing contrasts, and contrasts that occurred in word-final position were harder to distinguish than word-initial position. Conclusion: These results are an important initial step toward creating an evidence-based hierarchy for auditory training for individuals who use cochlear implants.

When young children evaluate their confidence, their monitoring is often overoptimistic, that is, inaccurate. The present study investigated a potential underlying mechanism for kindergarteners' and second graders' overconfidence within a paired associates learning paradigm. We implemented a pre-monitoring phase motivating children to differentially evaluate their confidence for each alternative "before" children could choose an answer in the subsequent recognition phase. For one, we intended to weaken the influence of one single and prepotently selected memory trace. For another, we motivated and enabled children to evaluate all four answer alternatives concerning their certainty before evaluating their final recognition choice by giving a confidence judgment. We compared monitoring discrimination and monitoring bias with a control condition whose task sequence did not include a pre-monitoring judgment. Contrary to our expectations, the pattern of results indicated that being instructed to pre-monitor did "increase" and not decrease overconfidence in young children. The present results will be discussed against the background of memory-metamemory interaction, confirmation bias, and methodological issues.

In this study, it is aimed to examine the perceptions of the mathematics teacher candidates regarding the concept of fraction. 32 teacher candidates participated in the research carried out in the screening model. The word association test was used as a data collection tool and the obtained data were analyzed by content analysis method. According to the results of the analysis, it is seen that the perceptions of teacher candidates regarding the concept of fraction are mostly concentrated in the themes of meanings of fractions, operations in fractions, and representation of fractions. In addition, the themes of numbers, notation, and other mathematical topics in which it is used are other themes that emerged. It was seen that the teacher candidates expressed the quotient meaning at most, they did not mention the percent meaning. It was seen that they mostly expressed the addition operation in fractions and the type of compound fraction. As a result, it is seen that pre-service teachers' perceptions about the concept of fraction are limited. Pre-service teachers can be given a more comprehensive and relational education on the concept of fraction.

This study employed a word association test to determine middle school students' cognitive perceptions and misconceptions of the key concepts regarding "cycles of matter and environmental problems." The study adopted descriptive research in survey model. The sample consisted of 457 eighth-grade students from four middle schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) in the central district of Mus province in the 2020-2021 academic year. Data were collected using a word association test developed by the researcher. The test addressed eight key concepts: "water cycle," "nitrogen cycle," "oxygen cycle," "carbon cycle," "ozone layer," "global warming," "greenhouse effect," and "ecological footprint." The data were analyzed using content analysis. Concept networks were created based on participants' responses. Participants associated "water cycle," "nitrogen cycle," "oxygen cycle," "carbon cycle," "ozone layer," "global warming," "greenhouse effect," and "ecological footprint" with "evaporation," "lightning," "photosynthesis," "carbon dioxide," "ozone hole," "melting of glaciers," "global warming," and "humans," respectively. Participants did not make adequate associations with oxygen cycle, which was one of the key concepts. It was found that participants did not know enough about the key concepts from the sentences they wrote, preventing them from making scientific statements. They mostly had unscientific and superficial remarks and misconceptions. Within the scope of the research, it is recommended that teachers create effective learning environments where they can use different methods and techniques to help students eliminate misconceptions.

This article aims to give a comprehensive guide to planning and designing vocabulary tests which include Identifying the skills to be covered by the test; outlining the course content covered; preparing a table of specifications that shows the skill, content topics and number of questions allocated to each; and preparing the test instructions. The test should meet several criteria as the instructions should be brief and clear; the questions should cover all kinds of skills, tasks and exercises covered in the classroom and textbook; the test items should require the students to perform tasks at the phoneme, grapheme, affix, word, phrase and paragraph levels. The questions should test student's ability to think, apply, infer, connect, and synthesize information, not mere recall, and should not use exact sentences and examples from the textbook. The test should have as many production questions as possible. It should have adequate discrimination power; should be reliable and valid; and should be a power and a speed test. In addition, the article describes the optimal test length, when to give the tests during the semester and the test duration. It describes the test paper format; how the tests are scored, marks allocated for each question type and whole test, using whole marks, not fractions; deducting points for spelling and grammatical mistakes. After scoring the answer sheets, the instructor returns the marked answer sheets to the students, shows the marking system and goes through the questions one by one, gives the correct answers and mentions the common errors. Follow-up issues such as calculating the test validity, reliability, and discrimination power, using the test results for diagnosing weaknesses and providing remedial work are given. The effects of the proposed test model on learning outcomes and students' views are also given.

In this study, first the level of interconnectedness of the key concepts concerning the topic of physical and chemical changes in pre-service chemistry teachers' (PSCTs') semantic memories was explored. Second, the group cognitive structures of the PSCTs that contain associations between these key concepts and the response concepts that appeared for the key concepts were mapped. Data for all of these processes were collected by a word association test (WAT). Seventy PSCTs attending the Chemistry Education Department at an education faculty participated in the study. At the end of the study, it was determined that the semantic relatedness that PSCTs established between key concepts in their long-term memories was correct and strong. When the cognitive structure of the PSCTs was mapped based on the key concepts of the topic of physical and chemical changes and the response concepts written for these concepts were examined, it was seen that the links of the key concepts with each other through the response concepts were all suitable in terms of chemistry knowledge. Finally, suggestions are made on how to use the word association method to obtain an overall perspective of the teaching outcomes at the end of the teaching period and/or to quickly reveal the preconceptions of the students before teaching. In addition, recommendations are presented to guide researchers who plan to use this method in terms of the points to be considered during the development of a WAT and the route of development.

Knowledge maps are teaching tools that can promote deeply learning and avoid knowledge loss by helping students plan learning paths. Mining potential association rules of concepts from student exercise data was a common method to construct knowledge maps automatically. While manual conditions should be set to filter the association rules future to improve the accuracy of knowledge maps, which made the construction of the knowledge map can not automatic totally. So, the study proposed a knowledge map construction method that combined knowledge tracking and association rule mining expanding with interaction frequencies based on exercise data to achieve rules cleaning automatically. The method first predicted students' knowledge mastery sequences by a deep knowledge tracking model and discovered clustering relations to represent potential structures between concepts by fuzzy cluster analysis. Meanwhile, the method investigated association rule mining expanding with interaction frequencies to discover association rules between concepts. Finally, the clustering relations were used to filter the mined association rules automatically. To verify the effectiveness of the method, we constructed a knowledge map based on 34,350 online exercise data of 117 students in a computer programming course. Experimental results proved that the map was valid. Our implementations are available at https://github.com/xxdmw/FPGF-master.

The present study examines the impact of the explicitness of corrective feedback and explicit associative memory on the acquisition of -ing/-ed participial adjectives through delayed video-based corrective feedback. Fifty-two L1 Spanish learners were randomly assigned to one of three groups (implicit, explicit, or no-feedback) and performed an interactive task with an experimenter via a video-conferencing tool without receiving any feedback. At the end of the task, the feedback groups received a video replay with inserted oral corrections (either partial recasts or explicit corrections). The no-feedback group performed the interactive task without receiving corrective feedback. A paired-associates test with delayed recall was used to measure explicit associative memory. Pretest-posttest development was measured using oral production and grammaticality judgment tasks. Both corrective feedback groups outperformed the no-feedback group. While no statistical difference emerged between the two delayed corrective feedback groups, a small difference was detected for the explicit group when considering effect sizes. Moreover, a positive relationship was found between explicit associative memory and learning gains on the grammaticality judgment task.

Applying 10 Hz ([alpha]-rate) sensory stimulation, not 5 Hz ([theta]-rate), prior to introducing novel speech-print pairs can reset the phase of [theta] oscillations and enhance associative learning. This rapid gain indicates coordinated mechanisms to regulate attentional/cognitive resources ([alpha] oscillations) and facilitate memory storage ([theta] oscillations) early in learning. The present findings may inform educational practices for children with reading difficulties.

Chance favors the prepared mind, said Louis Pasteur. Sometimes, significant breakthroughs occur when we creatively integrate new information, leading to a creative insight or an Aha! moment, while at other times when we fail to use a clue, we remain stuck in our habitual thinking patterns. In this study, we hypothesized that the brain's transient oscillatory states would characterize its receptivity or preparedness for such insights. We conducted a real-time brain-state-dependent cognitive stimulation experiment during insightful problem-solving. We showed that participants were more successful in utilizing clues and experienced more Aha responses when these clues were presented at the spontaneously up-regulated state of right temporal alpha oscillation, as opposed to the down-regulated state. Furthermore, we observed an inverse correlation between the coupling of alpha oscillation phase and gamma oscillation power and the frequency of insight. These results shed light on the neural mechanism underpinning the brain's receptivity to integrate upcoming semantic information, emphasizing the pivotal role of dynamical brain oscillations in the Aha! experience.

The issues of depth vocabulary knowledge and Willingness to Communicate (henceforth, WTC) are among the most important issues in second language learning. The present study set out to empirically look into the contribution of WTC to depth of vocabulary knowledge in L2 learning. To this end, 88 English L2 learners, divided into two groups in terms of their WTC, were given two depth vocabulary tests. The Word Association Test (WAT) was first administered to make a comparison between the depth vocabulary knowledge of the two WTC groups. Then, to triangulate the results, the Word Part Levels Test (WPLT) was administered to check whether the obtained results confirmed those of WAT. Analyzing data through independent t-test and MANOVA indicated that learners with higher levels of WTC had deeper vocabulary knowledge than those with lower levels of WTC on the WAT. Further, the triangulation results evinced that although the two groups did not differ significantly on the form-section and meaning-section of the WPLT, they significantly differed on the use-section of the test. The relevant pedagogical implications of the study are discussed.

Emotion labels can be helpful for creating emotion categories. Russell and Widen (2002) demonstrated the label superiority effect; that is, emotion labels produce a more precise categorization of emotional faces than the corresponding emotional faces. The current study aimed to test the label superiority effect on emotional voices and examined whether emotion labels produce a more precise categorization of emotional voices than the corresponding emotional voices. Four- to six-year-olds were shown emotion categories, represented by a box, and emotion labels (e.g., 'happy' label) or corresponding unlabelled vocal expressions were used to specify the target emotions. The children had to decide which of a group of test voices should go into the box and which should be left out. We presented happy and angry voices in Experiment 1 and angry and fearful voices in Experiment 2. The results in Experiment 2, but not in Experiment 1, showed that children were more likely to correctly choose the target emotion using the emotion label than the emotional voices, partially confirming the label superiority effect on emotional voices.

Research has shown that learning a known-and-unknown word combination leads to greater learning than learning an unknown word alone (Kasahara, 2010, 2011). These studies found that attaching a known adjective to an unknown noun can help learners remember the unknown noun. Kasahara (2015) found that a known verb can serve as an effective cue to remember an unknown noun in a known-and-unknown combination. To examine useful cues to learn unknown verbs, this study compared verb (unknown) + noun (known) combinations to verb (unknown) + adverb (known) combinations. Additionally, we explored how learners' vocabulary size would affect the known-and-unknown two-word combination learning to deepen our understanding of the characteristics of students who benefit from combination learning. The participants in each group learned 18 two-word combinations consisting of the same unknown target verbs and different known cues (nouns or adverbs). The participants were provided with a five-minute learning phase and two immediate recall tests: a Single Word Test, to write down the L1 meanings of the targets, and a Combination Test, to write down the L1 meanings of the combinations. The same two tests were administered one week later. The results showed that known nouns were better cues for learning unknown verbs than known adverbs. It was also found that participants with a larger vocabulary size benefited more from two-word combination learning.

Foraging refers to behavior that exploits the current environment for resources and induces exploration for a better environment. Visual foraging tasks have been used to study human behavior during visual searches. Participants searched for target stimuli among the distractors and either acquired or lost points when they clicked on a target or distractor. In the current study, we investigated the influence of blocking feature learning in visual foraging. For this purpose, we divided participants into control and blocking groups. The blocking group completed three phases: in the first phase, stimulus colors predicted rewards; in the second phase, stimulus color and orientation predicted rewards; in the third phase, only stimulus orientation predicted rewards. The control group completed either the second and third phases (Experiments 1 and 2) or all three phases (Experiment 3) with different reward combinations: color in Phase 1, color and orientation in Phase 2, and orientation in Phase 3. When the learning of a stimulus feature was blocked, the participants made less accurate responses. This suggests that the learning of task-relevant information was disturbed, and the blocked feature was not selected to after blocking. Additional analyses showed that the performance deviated slightly from the optimal performance; however, the extent of the deviation was not affected by blocking, implying that two distinct decision-making processes were involved in visual foraging. Our findings highlight the impact of blocking feature learning on visual foraging performance and reveal its distinct influence on multiple decision-making processes in this task.

Judgments of learning (JOLs) are often reactive on memory for cue-target pairs. This pattern, however, is moderated by relatedness, as related but not unrelated pairs often show a memorial benefit compared to a no-JOL control group. Based on Soderstrom et al.'s, "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition" 41, 553-558, (2015) cue-strengthening account, JOLs direct attention towards intrinsic cues which aid retrieval. However, reactivity may also reflect specific processing of cue-target associations, which is applied whenever semantic associations are available, even when these associations are indirect. The present study tested this possibility using mediated associates (e.g., lion -- stripes) which are directly unrelated to each other and indirectly related through a non-presented mediator (e.g., tiger). Based on a cue-strengthening account, no reactivity would be expected for mediated associates. Alternatively, if cue strengthening primarily reflects enhanced processing of cue-target relations, memory benefits would be expected whenever pairs are semantically related, even if pairs are indirectly related through mediators. Overall, reactivity extended to mediated associates in cued-recall (Experiment 1) and recognition tests (Experiments 2 and 3). Interestingly, JOL reactivity was consistently found on recognition of non-mediated unrelated pairs (Experiments 2-4). Thus, positive reactivity on related pairs for cued-recall testing likely reflects increased activation of cue-target associations. However, because recognition is based on familiarity cues, reactivity occurs globally for all pair types, regardless of cue-target relations.

Recall performance in working memory (WM) is strongly affected by the similarity between items. When asked to encode and recall list of items in their serial order, people confuse more often the position of similar compared to dissimilar items. Models of WM explain this deleterious effect of similarity through a problem of discriminability between WM representations. In contrast, when lists of items that are all semantically similar are compared to lists of dissimilar items, semantic similarity does not negatively impact order memory, questioning the idea that semantic information is part of the WM content. This study reports four experiments in which semantic similarity was manipulated using lists composed of multiple semantic categories. These experiments revealed two main patterns. First, semantic similarity can "increase", rather than decrease, order memory. Second, semantic knowledge reliably constrains the way items migrate; when migrating, items tend to do so more often toward the position of other similar items, rather than migrating toward other dissimilar items. These results challenge the way current models of WM represent similarity. The plausibility of different theoretical accounts and mechanisms is discussed.

Visual objects are often defined by multiple features. Therefore, learning novel objects entails learning feature conjunctions. Visual cortex is organized into distinct anatomical compartments, each of which is devoted to processing a single feature. A prime example are neurons purely selective to color and orientation, respectively. However, neurons that jointly encode multiple features (mixed selectivity) also exist across the brain and play critical roles in a multitude of tasks. Here, we sought to uncover the optimal policy that our brain adapts to achieve conjunction learning using these available resources. 59 human subjects practiced orientation-color conjunction learning in four psychophysical experiments designed to nudge the visual system towards using one or the other resource. We find that conjunction learning is possible by linear mixing of pure color and orientation information, but that more and faster learning takes place when both pure and mixed selectivity representations are involved. We also find that learning with mixed selectivity confers advantages in performing an untrained "exclusive or" (XOR) task several months after learning the original conjunction task. This study sheds light on possible mechanisms underlying conjunction learning and highlights the importance of learning by mixed selectivity.

This study considered the songs currently in use in Gaelic groups for 0-3 year olds in Scotland, whilst investigating how practitioners use them in the groups. In this article, I argue that Gaelic Early Years practitioners insufficiently understand the potential of song in relation to Gaelic language acquisition with young children and their families. Although it is common practice to integrate Gaelic translations of popular English children's songs into Gaelic playgroups, these songs often distort and misrepresent the Gaelic language's rhythms and grammar. With the connected aspects of phrasing, inflexion and rhythm, music and language are closely related. Shared singing activities hold great potential in advancing young children's growing linguistic skills in first and additional language acquisition. Maximising the benefit, however, requires a highly skilled, knowledgeable and responsive practitioner base and a clearly developed teaching strategy.

Associative learning abilities vary considerably among individuals, with attentional processes suggested to play a role in these variations. However, the relationship between attentional processes and individual differences in associative learning remains unclear, and whether these variations reflect in event-related potentials (ERPs) is unknown. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between attentional processes and associative learning by recording electrocortical activity of 38 young adults (18-32 years) during an associative learning task. Learning performance was assessed using the signal detection index d'. EEG topographic analyses and source localizations were applied to examine the neural correlates of attention and associative learning. Results revealed that better learning scores are associated with (1) topographic differences during early (126-148 ms) processing of the stimulus, coinciding with a P1 ERP component, which corresponded to a participation of the precuneus (BA 7), (2) topographic differences at 573-638 ms, overlapping with an increase of global field power at 530-600 ms, coinciding with a P3b ERP component and localized within the superior frontal gyrus (BA11) and (3) an increase of global field power at 322-507 ms, underlay by a stronger participation of the middle occipital gyrus (BA 19). These insights into the neural mechanisms underlying individual differences in associative learning suggest that better learners engage attentional processes more efficiently than weaker learners, making more resources available and displaying increased functional activity in areas involved in early attentional processes (BA7) and decision-making processes (BA11) during an associative learning task. This highlights the crucial role of attentional mechanisms in individual learning variability.

The interest in crossmodal correspondences, including those involving sounds and involving tastes, has experienced rapid growth in recent years. However, the mechanisms underlying these correspondences are not well understood. In the present study (N = 302), we used an associative learning paradigm, based on previous literature using simple sounds with no consensual taste associations (i.e., square and triangle wave sounds at 200 Hz) and taste words (i.e., sweet and bitter), to test the influence of two potential mechanisms in establishing sound--taste correspondences and investigate whether either learning mechanism could give rise to new and long-lasting associations. Specifically, we examined an emotional mediation account (i.e., using sad and happy emoji facial expressions) and a transitive path (i.e., sound-taste correspondence being mediated by color, using red and black colored squares). The results revealed that the associative learning paradigm mapping the triangle wave tone with a happy emoji facial expression induced a novel crossmodal correspondence between this sound and the word sweet. Importantly, we found that this novel association was still present two months after the experimental learning paradigm. None of the other mappings, emotional or transitive, gave rise to any significant associations between sound and taste. These findings provide evidence that new crossmodal correspondences between sounds and tastes can be created by leveraging the affective connection between both dimensions, helping elucidate the mechanisms underlying these associations. Moreover, these findings reveal that these associations can last for several weeks after the experimental session through which they were induced.

This study aims to determine the cognitive structures of students at different educational levels (8th grade and 12th grade) related to acid-base chemistry. The research was designed as a case study and structured in two stages. The first stage analyzed concepts related to acid-base chemistry and their direction and strength in students' knowledge structures. The second stage determined the descriptive and structural features of students' knowledge structures related to acid-base chemistry in a more holistic approach. The study was carried out with a total of 160 students, 80 grade 8th and 80 12th grade students. A word association test (WAT) and the free writing technique (FWT) were used together. In the WAT, ten different frequency ranges were determined forming cognitive structure maps of the students. With high-frequency values on the map, it was found that the number of stimulus and response words decreased but the strength of associations increased. In frequency ranges where the frequency values of associations were low, it was found that the number of stimulus and response words increased and the cognitive structure organization was at the most advanced level compared to other frequency ranges, but the strength of associations was weak. In general, it was observed that there were no bidirectional and cross-associations between the concepts in the cognitive structures of the students about chemistry and that there was a static structure that included one-way associations only. Additionally, the concepts in the cognitive structures of students related to acid-base chemistry were analyzed in terms of their structural characteristics. It was found that, in the cognitive structures of the students there were no associations between many concepts that should be related to each other.

This paper examines the implications of the association patterns in our understanding of the mental lexicon. By applying the principles of graph theory to word association data, we intend to explore which measures tap better into lexical knowledge. To that end, we had different groups of English as Foreign language learners complete a lexical fluency task. Based on these empirical data, a study was undertaken on the corresponding lexical availability graph (LAG). It is observed that the aggregation (mentioned through human coding) of all lexical tokens on a given topic allows the emergence of some lexical-semantic patterns. The most important one is the existence of some key terms, featuring both high centrality in the sense of network theory and high availability in the LAG, which define a hub of related terms. These communities of words, each one organized around an anchor term, or most central word, are nicely apprehended by a well-known network metric called modularity. Interestingly enough, each module seems to describe a conceptual class, showing that the collective lexicon, at least as approximated by LA Graphs, is organised and traversed by semantic mechanisms or associations via hyponymy or hiperonymy, for instance. Another empirical observation is that these conceptual hubs can be appended, resulting in high diameters compared to same-sized random graphs; even so it seems that the small-world hypothesis holds in LA Graphs, as in other social and natural networks.

Phraseology has been flourishing in the field of English writing studies in recent years. However, the focus has primarily been on items with less variability, such as ngrams or lexical bundles. To address this gap, this study investigates concgrams (Cheng et al., 2006), which encompass both constituency and positional variations, in advanced General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) writings. One hundred compositions from the GEPT were divided into two proficiency groups based on their scores and analyzed using the corpus tool ConcGram 1.0. The phraseological characteristics of concgrams are explored from four perspectives: frequency, type-token ratios (TTRs), word associations, and configuration. The goal is to determine the relevance of the use of concgrams to writing evaluation. The results indicate that TTRs and configuration play minor roles, while frequency and word associations appear to be more relevant to excellent writing. This study highlights the importance of including more variable phraseological units and provides a new approach to investigating the presence of phraseological units in greater depth.

The article describes practices of "intensive reading" for post-qualitative inquiry, drawing on the work of Deleuze, with some examples from the author's own research. To read intensively is to experience the forward propulsion toward something not-yet-present. That forward momentum, and the fragmented path that it carves through the library, has the potential, in the words of Stengers, to summon something "that has no stable illustration in this world."

The aim of this study is to examine the cognitive structures of the secondary school students towards the concept of health. The study was carried out using the descriptive survey model, which is a research approach that intends to describe a past or present situation as it is. The study group of the research was determined by maximum diversity sampling and consisted of 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th grade secondary school students studying in Bursa and Malatya in the 2021-2022 academic year. In this study, which attempts to examine the perceptions of secondary school students regarding the concept of health, WAT (Word Association Test) was used as a data collection tool. The word association test consists of two dimensions. While there are explanations about WAT (Word Association Test) and sample WAT (Word Association Test) study in the first dimension, there is the WAT worksheet for the concept of health in the second dimension. In the analysis of the data, the words obtained regarding the answers given by the students to the key concept of health were examined in detail in a table, the threshold point was determined by considering the repeated words, and concept networks were created in this direction. In the study, secondary school students produced different words for the concept of health. Those with four or fewer frequencies of these words were not included in the analysis. The most repeated word among the words included in the analysis was "doctor". Those which followed this word were "hospital", "vaccine" and "COVID-19". As a result of the research, no difference was observed in terms of the cities in which the study was conducted or regarding class level, and similar answers were obtained in all classes.

The purpose of this work is to determine how widely and in which semantic and morphologic categories, word associations are used by children. There is no study about word associations children use in the acquisition of Turkish as their mother tongue. Participants of the current research consisted of a total of 90 kids between 4.0 and 6.0 years of age in 3 different cities in Turkey based on easy accessibility. The data obtained by transferring oral language texts produced by children in their natural habitat to the computer environment was analyzed by evaluating according to their age brackets. Semantic categories are free-combinations, collocations (sub-categories; semi-restricted collocations, restricted collocations, figurative idioms and pure idioms) and co-creations. Morphologic categories are determined as rigid noun phrases, predicative relations, and phrasal templates. As a result, it was seen that the production of children in the participation group increases as age increases. Generally, it is seen that children in the 6.0 age group produce more complete word associations compared to lower age groups. Word association productions of 6.0-year-old children are more than the total word association productions of children in 4.0 and 5.0. It was determined that children perform productions in the free-combination category the most between semantic categories, and they make up predicative relations the most between morphologic categories. This result matches theories of development and acquisition and the characteristics of Turkish.

According to Bayesian/predictive coding models of autism, autistic individuals may have difficulties learning probabilistic cue-outcome associations, but empirical evidence has been mixed. The target cues used in previous studies were often straightforward and might not reflect real-life learning of such associations which requires learners to infer which cue(s) among many to track. Across two experiments, we compared adult learners with varying levels of autistic traits on their ability to infer the correct cue to learn probabilistic cue-outcome associations when explicitly instructed to do so or when exposed implicitly. We found no evidence for the effect of autistic traits on probabilistic learning accuracy, contrary to the predictions of Bayesian/predictive coding models. Implications for the current Bayesian/predictive coding models are discussed.

This study aimed to determine how Chinese children adapt to Chinese orthography-phonology correspondence by acquiring phonetic radical awareness (PRA). This study used two important Chinese encoding approaches (rote and orthographic approaches) as the developmental trajectory, in which the present study hypothesized that phonological awareness (PA) exerts not only a direct influence on PRA but also an indirect influence through paired-associate learning (PAL). We also explored whether the association between PA and PAL is affected by the complexity of visual stimuli embedded in PAL. This study recruited 70 s-grade students to participate in various tests, which assessed (1) PA (measured by onset and rhyme awareness); (2) PRA (measured by regularity and consistency of phonetic radicals); (3) PAL (measured by learning performance on strokes; pattern-object and strokes pattern-syllable mapping); and (4) Chinese character recognition ability. Path analyses indicated that (1) character size had a significant positive correlation with PRA but not with PAL; (2) PAL fully mediated the association between PA and PRA; and (3) compared with PAL with a low stroke count, PA had a stronger relationship with PAL with a high stroke count. The results of this study were consistent with previous studies and suggest that PRA is the most important literacy skill for children in the middle of their learning-to-read stage. The results also augment existing literature by revealing that PRA acquisition is increased by PAL supported by PA, rather than by PA alone. Moreover, when the visual complexity of PAL increases, the support of PA to PAL would increase to make up for the working memory shortage.