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Colour in the classroom, either in isolation or in conjunction with other environmental factors, is an element that has been widely discussed in the scientific literature, albeit not systematically. On the other hand, its evolution towards coloured light, made possible in recent years by light emitting diode (LED) technology, has hardly found a place among researchers. Despite the progressive rise of smart classrooms, intelligent learning environments or references by some authors to "dynamic lighting", its analogous concept, "dynamic colour", hardly appears in reviews of the scientific literature. This exploratory, quasi-experimental study shows how coloured light affects the learning process in primary school classroom environments, integrating cognitive processes, instrumental learning and affective processes, and helping to define the dynamic potential of its use. The experimental part has been carried out for four weeks, collecting data that are analysed descriptively, comparatively with the control group and in the internal variance of the experimental group. The results show positive influence tendencies in the cognitive and affective processes of the students, although not so much in instrumental learning.

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of the EASY Minds program on working memory and selective attention of a group of Iranian students with maths learning disabilities. The study had a quasi-experimental research design with pre-test, post-test, and follow-up tests. Forty students with maths learning disabilities were randomly assigned to either experimental or control groups. The findings showed that the program improved working memory and selective attention of the experimental group, and this effect lasted for a two-month follow-up. It can be concluded that the EASY Minds program can be used as an interventional technique to improve working memory and selective attention of students with maths learning disabilities.

When the author stepped into the lead specials teacher role at a private elementary school in Charlotte, North Carolina, he was convinced that early childhood educational experiences could shape students' later cognition. He asked himself the question: What novel task might he set for the students that did not rely on rote learning, logic, or persuasion but would impel a more complex understanding of color? With sorting activities common to the school's prekindergarten and kindergarten curricula, he asked students to dig through bins of loose crayons that were brought outside and to pick out all the possible colors of the sky. He was inverting a typical sort-the-crayons-into-bins lesson--and would claim to be doing just that if the principal asked. Genuinely, the purpose of the activity was to give students an experience that would subvert existing schemata and trigger the process of schema formation, causing them to develop a more complex, intuited understanding of color.

Children (N = 103, 4-9 years, 59 females, 84% White, c. 2019) completed visual processing, visual feature integration (color, luminance, motion), and visual search tasks. Contrast sensitivity and feature search improved with age similarly for luminance and color-defined targets. Incidental feature integration improved more with age for color-motion than luminance-motion. Individual differences in feature search ([beta] = 0.11) and incidental feature integration ([beta] = 0.06) mediated age-related changes in conjunction visual search, an index of visual selective attention. These findings suggest that visual selective attention is best conceptualized as a series of developmental trajectories, within an individual, that vary by an object's defining features. These data have implications for design of educational and interventional strategies intended to maximize attention for learning and memory.

This paper aims to explore the narrative expression skill of design students through manipulating image structure. Moreover, narrative expression is the skill of interpreting design with narrative. The study is a classroom experiment conducted naturally, and the experimental data is obtained and analysed by quantitative analysis. We found differences in students' narrative tendencies and richness in overall narrative expression. The teaching and training of design narrative can effectively help students familiarise themselves with the design process and personal skill integration and encourage students to pay attention to the design of elements and content. This will improve students' design competencies under skills different from technology. The paper concludes that students must improve and integrate design competencies through practical methods under other narrative tendencies. Furthermore, the lecturer can explore and adjust design teaching through design narrative training to strengthen or balance students' design performance competency.

Previous research suggests that children's ability to label visual features (e.g. "red") and dimensions (e.g. "color") impacts attention to visual dimensions. The goal of this study is to investigate variations in the quality of the neural system supporting dimensional label comprehension and production in relation to children's dimensional attention skills. The current study recruited 3- to 4-year-olds from the East Tennessee area to complete dimensional label tasks for color labels while recording functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in order to measure hemodynamic changes in left frontal, left parietal, and left temporal cortices previously implicated in dimensional attention. Different aspects of dimensional attention were evaluated using the dimensional priming task (measuring attentional stability), the dimensional change card sort (DCCS) task (measuring flexible dimensional attention), the triad classification task (measuring selective attention), and the matching task (measuring dimensional understanding). Dimensional label learning was measured using a color Production and color Comprehension task. Results indicated that the temporal cortex was activated during the dimensional label tasks. Further, we found that activation in parietal cortex during the dimensional label tasks increased with better performance on the dimensional attention tasks. On the other hand, activation in the temporal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during the dimensional label tasks decreased with better performance on the dimensional attention tasks. These results suggest that dimensional attention skills can reveal variations in the quality of neural representations supporting dimensional label learning.

Background: Circumscribed interests (CIs) are regarded as one of the common symptoms for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although some studies have found attentional bias toward CI-related stimuli for individuals with ASD, few studies have directly explored the reasons for these findings. Method: Children with ASD (n = 15) and age-matched typically developing (TD) children (n = 15) completed a Stroop-like task and a modified dot-probe task, and their reaction times were measured. The stimuli of these tasks included neutral objects and objects related to CI for individuals with ASD. Results: Children with ASD had longer reaction times to name colors of CI-related stimuli than neutral stimuli in the Stroop-like task. Similarly, in the modified dot-probe task, if the CI-related stimulus was presented simultaneously with the neutral stimulus, children with ASD responded faster to the target that appeared in the previous location of the CI-related stimulus (i.e. congruent condition) than to the neutral stimulus (i.e. incongruent condition). Importantly, the reaction times of children with ASD in the incongruent condition were significantly slower than in the baseline condition, where both neutral stimuli were displayed simultaneously with stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) of 500 ms. In contrast, there was no significant difference in reaction times to CI-related stimuli and neutral stimuli in both tasks for TD children. Conclusions: These findings suggest children with ASD have attentional bias toward CI-related stimuli, because of difficulty disengaging attention from CI-related stimuli with SOA of 500 ms.

Repeating a single-prime stimulus as a target to respond to usually facilitates responses. However, sometimes, prime repetition slows the responses and produces the single-prime negative priming effect. In this study, the distractor set hypothesis was proposed as a mechanism of attentional control that can contribute toward single-prime negative priming. In Experiments 1a-1d, an integrated Stroop task was used. The results showed that the prime produced negative priming only when it matched the form of the competing distractors. A separate Stroop task was used in Experiments 2 and 3 and a flanker task was used in Experiments 4a and 4b. In both tasks, the results suggested that a prime produced negative priming when the location of the prime matched that of the distractors. In Experiment 5, alternative explanations including the effects of the prime-to-distractor similarity and the target set were examined. The results revealed that the distractor set, rather than the target set and the similarity between the prime and distractor, could better account for the negative priming effect.

Stimulus-response binding and retrieval (SRBR) is a fundamental mechanism driving behavior automatization. In five experiments, we investigated the modulatory role of affective consequences (AC) on SRBR effects to test whether binding/retrieval can explain instrumental learning (i.e., the "law of effect"). SRBR effects were assessed in a sequential prime-probe design, with an orthogonal variation of response relation (response repetition vs. change) by distractor relation (word repetition vs. change). Binding/retrieval effects are measured by an interaction of the two factors, with distractor repetitions inducing a retrieval of the prime episode and a tendency to re-enact the previous response, which leads to facilitation in conditions where the response must be repeated, but leads to interference when the required response changes from prime to probe. Positive, neutral, or negative events signaling changes in points that were linked to monetary gains or losses were delivered after every trial to investigate whether AC modulate the binding/retrieval effect. Consistently across all five experiments (total N= 466), robust SRBR effects were obtained, but we did not find any evidence for an affective modulation of these binding/retrieval effects, indicating that these effects are automatic and independent of AC. In particular, Experiment 5 demonstrated a dissociation between instrumental learning via AC (reflected in higher frequencies of rewarded responses) and SRBR, which was not influenced by AC following a response.

Attention is biased toward features aligning with task goals and stimuli previously allocated attentional priority (selection history). The relationship between selection history and the strategic control of attention has scarcely been explored. In the present study, we utilized a modified version of the Adaptive Choice Visual Search (ACVS) task to determine whether the choice of visual search strategy varies with the strategies participants have elected to use in the past. Participants were tasked with searching through stimuli presented in two task-relevant colors on each trial to find one of two targets. The distribution of stimuli rendered in these two colors was manipulated between subjects, with one group receiving more imbalanced displays during learning. Participants who experienced the more imbalanced displays quickly learned the optimal visual search strategy of searching through the less abundant color, which maximized performance. Critically, these participants retained their tendency toward this learned strategy in a subsequent test phase in which displays were less imbalanced, in contrast to participants who completed the same test phase but had only experienced the less imbalanced displays. Our results demonstrate that, without explicit instruction, the choice of visual search strategy is to some degree dependent upon selection history.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of cognitive training (CT) using mobile applications on attentional control and impulsivity among pre-service teachers. Pre-service teachers were divided into two groups: experimental (n=25) and control (n=14) groups, they were selected from a large sample (n=718). Over 28 sessions, the training group engaged in CT tasks (the tower of Hanoi [TOH] and simple reaction time [SRT]), whereas the control group did not participate in training sessions or understand the main goal of the study. In the criterion tasks (matching familiar figures and numerical Stroop), all participants were pre- and post-tested. CT using mobile applications helps us see how the trained group's attentional control and impulsivity had influenced. we also observed the progress of trained group as measured by number of moves or time for TOH, and reaction time (RT) for SRT. Other effects were observed in comparison to a control group that underwent no training. There were changes in impulsivity in post-test in favor of training group according to number of moves, and time component of matching familiar figures test. Corresponding to attentional control, the finding indicated that there were changes in (number and size) RT component in post-test in favor of training group.

The present study investigated whether adult learners of second language (L2) can automatically activate emotional connotation during emotional word recognition as compared native (L1) users and whether L2 use plays a significant role in it. The automaticity of activation was measured through the emotional Stroop task. In this task, emotional words and neutral words were displayed in two different colors, and the participants were asked to indicate the color by button press. Results showed a delay in L2 learners' response to emotional words (the emotional Stroop effect) without significant differences from L1 users' response, indicating comparable automaticity in activating emotional connotation in performing the task. Further analyses on the effect of L2 use revealed its significant role in increasing the emotional Stroop effect. Specifically, L2 learners with higher amount of L2 use in daily life produced a significant emotion Stroop effect comparable to L1 users, while L2 learners with lower L2 use did not. We discuss the importance of L2 use in actual context in automatic processing of L2 emotional words, especially among adult learners who began L2 learning in adulthood in a case of underrepresented languages as L2.

Executive functions (EFs) are an umbrella term that includes various cognitive abilities (such as inhibition, planning, goal-setting, monitoring, and shifting). There is common agreement that there are three main EFs: inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory. Further studies have reported that compared to typically developing peers, children with cerebral palsy (CP) show deficits in EF skills. This study aims to evaluate children with CP's inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility skills. Forty children with CP between the ages of 7-13 were included in the present study. EF scores of the CP group were compared with scores of typically developing peers matched one-to-one by age and sex. The EF skills were evaluated with Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST), Stroop color-word test (SCWT) TBAG Form, and executive function behavior rating scale parent form (BRIEF-P). It was determined that there was a significant difference in the WCST total trials, total errors, categories completed, and percent conceptual level responses scores (p < 0.05); SCWT-TBAG scores (p < 0.05), and BRIEF-P all scores (p [less than or equal to] 0.01) of children with CP. The results of this study suggest that children with CP are disadvantaged with EF skills in terms of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility.

Informational text (IT) is a type of nonfiction designed to convey information about the natural or social world. Reading IT with young children increases knowledge of content area vocabulary and concepts and helps children build the background knowledge for success with future reading. However, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may struggle to understand IT. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to discuss how young children with ASD can be supported to comprehend IT. Instructional strategies discussed include (a) providing physical and temporal access to IT, (b) enhancing comprehension of IT within the context of Interactive Shared Book Reading (ISBR); and (c) promoting child engagement during ISBR. The theme of the life cycle of a frog is used to illustrate how the instructional strategies can be used in a kindergarten classroom.

This work investigates how people make judgments about the content of their visual working memory (VWM). Some studies on long-term memory suggest that people base those metacognitive judgments on the outcome of a retrieval attempt. In contrast, Son and Metcalfe (2005) observed that people identify poorly remembered items immediately, presumably by the lack of familiarity for the retrieval cue. We tested these two hypotheses in the context of metacognition in VWM. In three experiments, we investigated participants' response behavior in a color reproduction task with a hidden color wheel. With this procedure, participants must search for the intended response, starting from a random color. We assumed that instant awareness of the inability to retrieve an information would be reflected in selecting the first, random color, rather than search for a particular color in the wheel. Although participants provided a substantial number of low-confidence responses, results of an adapted mixture modeling analysis yielded little evidence for quick guesses. Rather, participants consistently searched for a color (even with unfamiliar retrieval cues in Experiment 2), and only quickly guessed when being cued with objects at test that were not previously presented (Experiment 3). We conclude that people usually engage in retrieval attempts for providing judgments about their VWM, even when information is poorly remembered.

Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) has been widely recognized as a reliable predictor of reading proficiency. Although RAN represents the speed of cognitive processing, there are few studies that have addressed RAN as a cognitive process in its own right Furthermore, RAN performance of ELL (English Language Learners) has been less frequently investigated. We have two parts to this study. First, we examine the factor structure of an enlarged composite measure of speed measure by adding four additional tests comprising color naming, and two number naming tasks to the traditional RAN of digit and letter naming. In the second part, we determine the association of Speed with broad cognitive processes comprising Executive Functions, and Information processing. Participants were students in English medium schools in India. They were divided into two age groups (8-14 and 15-20) for statistical analyses of six Speed measures Results show a strong unitary speed factor in the 8 to 14 age group. In contrast, in the 15 to 20 group RAN tests comprising digits and letters showed a very small loading on the same factor. Addressing the second objective, which is the impact of speed on various cognitive tasks, the results show that response speed has a minimal influence on Nonverbal Configurations (simultaneous) tasks, and tasks of executive functions comprising Working Memory, and Visual-Spatial Processing. These tests will enable us to isolate specific cognitive deficiencies from response speed. In a re-examination of the relation between Reading & RAN-type tests, we could suggest that serial articulation is the common and essential feature that binds rapid naming tasks and reading fluency.

One of the essential tools of music education is the notation system. The musical notation system has evolved and attained its present form over many years. Learning the music notation system at an early age is an important step for the future of music education. For music education to start early, it may be helpful to adapt to music writing with colors without knowing how to read and write. This research aims to present a notation teaching method via colors to help music education. Although there have been some previous studies on colors and music, this research offers an approach for both using colors and removing them to adapt to today's notation system. It is an innovative study in this respect. After using the colors, it is aimed to avoid adaptation difficulties when switching to the prevalent notation system. The two stages were connected by first showing the notes with a diagram of colors and intervals and then coloring today's notation. The last stage aims to provide adaptation by removing the colors in the second stage. With the design obtained, three children's songs were applied in 3 steps and analyzed. Every stage of the research was carried out in the company of music education experts, and technical problems that may arise were tried to be prevented. As a result of the study, a teaching system has emerged that can facilitate the teaching of musical notation, especially for illiterate preschool children and educators who want to teach notation.

In this Black Feminist qualitative study, we used sista circle methodology and Black feminist thought (BFT) to explore Black college women's experiences, socialization, and messages on skin complexion. We further examined the impact of these messages on Black college women's campus experience. Eight, self-identified, Black college women participated in this study. The individual and collective experiences of these eight sistas revealed: (a) Black college women receive messages about complexion and colorism from family and media; (b) the salience of colorism shifts depending upon Black women's educational status and identity development; and (c) acts of resistance against colorism vary from choosing to be silent, engaging in conversations, and even to committing to research on issues facing Black women. Campus practitioners should consider offering programs and resources inclusive of nuanced experiences of Black college women to avoid reaffirming colorism. Researchers should consider exploring (with)in-group privileges afforded to Black women based upon their complexion to better understand how colorism impacts (post)college success.

In this study, we investigated whether a colourful design would foster the aesthetic appreciation of Chinese classic poetry, and the role of learners' empathy trait in this process. Middle school students (N = 159) were assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (Colour Design: Colourful vs. Grayscale) × 2 (Empathy Trait: High vs. Low) between-subject design. Results showed that learners with high empathy attained higher scores on comprehension test and aesthetic appreciation ratings than learners with low empathy. Moreover, a significant interaction of the two factors on aesthetic emotion and evaluations ratings was found, indicating that aesthetic ratings were higher in the high empathy group than in the low empathy group with grayscale learning materials, whereas aesthetic ratings were comparable between the two groups with the colourful design. The results indicated that a colourful design can foster low empathy learners' aesthetic appreciation, and suggested that individual differences should be taken into consideration in instructional design in the multimedia learning of poetry.

We investigated the extents of automaticity in location and orientation encoding in visual working memory (VWM) by manipulating their task relevance and assessing the amount of resource recruited by their encoding. Across five experiments, participants were surprised with a location report trial (Experiment 1A, 2A, and 3) or an orientation report trial (Experiment 2A and 2B) at a point when only the item's color had been task-relevant. This was followed by control trials to assess the memory quality of color when location or orientation had become task-relevant. We found the surprise trial performance to be significantly worse than the first control trial for both location and orientation, although to a greater extent for orientation for which there was virtually no measurable information from the subjects' reports. This was the case even when encoding was the only incidental memory process before the control trials (Experiment 2A and 2B), and the surprise memory costs cannot be attributed to the unexpectedness inherent to the surprise question (Experiment 3). The control trials revealed a consistent reduction of color memory only in the orientation experiments. These results suggest that although location encoding is more automatic than orientation, neither is encoded in a fully automatic manner. Our results show that incidentally encoded location is only coarse-grained, constraining the spatial precision of space-based indexing systems.

Perspective-taking plays an important role in daily life, allowing consideration of other people's perspectives and viewpoints. This study used a large sample of 265 community-based participants (aged 20-86 years) to examine changes in perspective-taking abilities--a component of "Theory of Mind"--across adulthood, and how these changes may relate to individual differences in executive functions at different ages. Participants completed a referential-communication task (the "Director" task) while behavioral responses and eye movements were recorded, along with four measures of executive functions (inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and planning). Results revealed a quadratic fit of age in egocentric errors; performance on the task plateaued between 20 to [approximately]37 years old but showed a substantial decline from [approximately]38 years onward (i.e., increased egocentric errors). A similar pattern was established in eye-movement measures, demonstrating that advancing age led to a decrease in efficient attention orientation to a target. In other words, older adults were more distracted by a hidden competitor object (egocentric interference) and were therefore delayed in orienting their attention to the correct target object. Mediation analyses revealed that executive functions partially mediated the effect of age on perspective-taking abilities. Importantly, however, the relationship between age and egocentric bias in task performance remained significant when controlling for changes in executive functions, indicating a decline in social cognition abilities with advancing age that was independent of age-related declines in more domain-general abilities, such as executive functions.

Language is a major tool for an individual to communicate. The phonological & morpho-syntactic components are involved in functions of language processing & executions. Case marker is one of the morpho-syntatic feature, which describes the abstract meaning of the grammatical components of nouns & verbs and in formation of meaningful sentences. Linguistically, case marker is one of the difficult features to comprehend its functions and use in language expressions. There are dearth of studies describing about any specific approach to train the case markers in persons with language disabilities, in regards the present article aimed to develop a comprehensive approach named MARKER approach to train the case markers. This approach planned and developed in improving the language functions & processing skills with respect to information processing model associated with various facilitative skills. It majorly focused on training the case marker morphological principles from concrete to abstract level and its utility in meaningful sentence formations. The present approaches developed are with respect to Kannada cultural & language background, and one can implement similar strategies when working in other languages.

This study aims to explore the political cartoons that highlight the displacement of Palestinians in the village of Sheikh Jarrah. It investigates the way this discourse is portrayed as well as the predominant themes of these cartoons. The data of this study consists of eight political cartoons drawn from Palestinian online newspapers from May to July 2021, featuring the displacement issue of Sheik Jarrah by well-known local cartoonists. Multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) in which language analysis is combined with the analysis of other semiotic resources including colors, gestures, images, etc. for interpreting meaning (O'Halloran et al., 2011), is adopted for the analysis. Visual Social Semiotics of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) is also used as a linguistic framework. The study asserts that understanding the three different aspects of the visual compositions, namely, representational, interactive and compositional, that serve as a semiotic mode of communication, is essential for conveying the intended message of the visual compositions. The study also identifies the predominant themes or messages of the selected cartoons, which mainly focus on two main points: (i) the tyranny and oppression of Israel over Palestinians through eradication and displacement; and (ii) the Palestinians' struggle, steadfastness and resistance in the event of Israel's forced displacement.

The purpose of this study was to examine the primary and secondary color preferences of students with special needs as well as their color preference for an object regarding their disability types, school levels, and gender. The study employed a survey research design with quantitative methodology. It was conducted with the participation of 549 students with Intellectual Disability, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Down Syndrome and Learning Disability. The researchers collected the data by using a car visual together with the geometric shapes used by Ece and Çelik (2009). The collected data were entered into the Excel program, and the frequency and percentage values were obtained. The results revealed that according to their school level, students' primary and secondary color preference changed. When the geometric shape was changed, students' color preferences changed, accordingly. With respect to their disability types, students preferred red as the primary color and blue as the secondary color, and they chose blue for the car visual. It was found that while primary and secondary color preferences of male and female students differed but they preferred blue for the car visual.

The main purpose of this study is to identify alternative concepts that students possess on the colour of blood and determine the strength of those concepts as well as the reasons for why students constructed them. The sample of the study consisted of participants who were selected from three different cohorts of students (i.e. middle-school, high-school and university). 233 participants were recruited from two middle-schools, 207 students from two high-schools, and 181 third year pre-service teachers from a public university in Kars, Turkey. The study followed the survey method and the data was collected using the "What colour is our blood?" questionnaire. Content analysis was used to analyse the data collected from the questionnaire which consisted of open-ended questions. Analysis of the data indicated that students possessed various alternative concepts on the colour of blood. Furthermore, results suggested that the numbers of students holding the alternative concept with regards to the colour of blood being blue increases day by day. It was found that information sources such as school, teacher, family, friends, media and various visual elements play a role in the emergence of those alternative concepts.

Red Culture is one of the symbols of Chinese national spirit in China. With the enhancement of China's international status, the world gets to know the Red Culture stage by stage. And yet, in the process of Red Culture's foreign publicity, the depth and breadth of cultural diffusion have been affected by different factors. This paper objectively analyzes the current situation of foreign publicity translation about Red Culture and then focuses on the Red tourism industry to explore the characteristics and advantages of foreign-oriented publicity translation under the intercultural communicative perspective. In the end, we are trying to come up with some methods to increase the accuracy of Red Culture publicity translation.

The objectives of this study are to investigate verbal and visual semiotic resources employed as well as the cultural aspects embedded in the online soft drink advertisements. The data of this study was selected from the U.S. official soft drink brand Coca-Cola Instagram account (@cocacola), and a total of 58 advertisements were analyzed. Three analytical frameworks were employed to analyze the data. First, Nilsen (1979)'s phonetic devices framework was used for verbal resources analysis. Second, Kress & van Leeuwen (2006)'s and Harrison (2008)'s social semiotics frameworks were adapted for analyzing visual resources. Third, Hofstede et al. (2010)'s cultural dimensional model was employed to discuss the cultural aspects in the advertisements. The analysis of the verbal resources in the advertisements reveal two types of phonetic devices: alliteration and assonance. For the visual analysis, the advertisements tend to use the brand's color, red, instead of a logo to make the brand memorable. The representative participants (RP)' positions and gazes also give the sense of equality between the viewers and the brand. Most of the advertisements use visual resources that complement the verbal resources in order for the advertisements to be coherent as well as being able to convey the embedded cultural aspects. Two cultural aspects out of six were found: masculinity and indulgence. In addition, the study also found religious aspects embedded in the data.

Contrastive focus, conveyed by prosodic cues, marks important information. Studies have shown that 6-year-olds learning English and Japanese can use contrastive focus during online sentence comprehension: focus used in a "contrastive context" facilitates the identification of a target referent (speeding up processing), whereas focus used inappropriately in a "noncontrastive context" misleads listeners to predict an incorrect referent, hindering the identification process (Ito et al., 2012, 2014). In Mandarin Chinese, the mapping between prosodic form and contrastive focus is less transparent, potentially delaying the acquisition of contrastive focus. This study assessed the online processing of contrastive focus by 196 Mandarin-speaking 4-10-year-olds and 34 adults in China, using the visual world paradigm. Stimuli contained a target NP in a mini discourse, with focus being used in "contrastive" (Experiment 1) versus "Noncontrastive" contexts (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 showed that the "appropriate" use of prosodic form for contrastive focus facilitated the identification of a target referent for 7-10-year-olds and adults, though not younger children. Experiment 2 showed that the "inappropriate" use of prosodic form for contrastive focus slowed the identification process only for 10-year-olds and adults. Thus, whereas 7-10-year-olds are sensitive to prosodic form for contrastive focus, only 10-year-olds use it as a primary cue to predict an upcoming referent like adults. The acquisition of contrastive focus in Mandarin is therefore a gradual process, with children showing sensitivity to contrastive focus during the early school years, and developing adult-like form-function mapping between prosody and focus until the end of primary school.

In the standard Proportion-Congruent (PC) paradigm, performance is compared between a list containing mostly congruent (MC) stimuli (e.g., the word RED in the color red in the Stroop task; Stroop, 1935) and a list containing mostly incongruent (MI) stimuli (e.g., the word BLUE in red). The PC effect, the finding that the congruency effect (i.e., the latency difference between incongruent and congruent stimuli) is typically larger in an MC list, has been interpreted by the popular conflict-monitoring account (Botvinick et al., 2001) as reflecting a proactive process whereby attention to task-relevant information is adapted based on how frequently conflict from task-irrelevant information arises. Recently, however, alternative accounts of the PC effect have emerged that assume either that the PC effect reflects processes other than proactive conflict adaptation (e.g., stimulus-response contingency learning) or that proactive conflict adaptation is only engaged as a last resort (e.g., when contingency learning cannot be used to minimize interference). We examined these ideas in three experiments in which proactive conflict adaptation could be evaluated independently from processes that are normally confounded with it in the PC paradigm, while still allowing those processes, particularly contingency learning, to be used to minimize interference. Consistent with the conflict-monitoring account of the PC effect, but inconsistent with all the alternative accounts of the PC effect, evidence for proactive conflict adaptation emerged in all experiments. Although multiple processes may be engaged in the PC paradigm, this paradigm remains a valid tool for examining proactive conflict adaptation, its typical use.

Can we use attentional control to ignore known distractor features? Providing cues before a visual search trial about an upcoming distractor color (negative cue) can lead to reaction time benefits compared with no cue trials. This suggests top-down control may use negative templates to actively suppress distractor features, a notion that challenges the mechanisms of top-down control provided in many theories of attention. However, there is currently mixed support for this mechanism in the literature. Alternative explanations have been proposed, which do not require suppression within top-down control but instead involve recoding the negative cue into a positive template based on color or spatial layouts. In three experiments, we contrasted the predictions of active suppression and the recoding strategies. Across experiments, we found consistent evidence against a color recoding account. We also found evidence of accuracy, reaction time, and eye movement benefits when location recoding was not possible. These results suggest that prior benefits from negative cues cannot be explained exclusively by spatial or color recoding. The results indicate that active suppression likely plays a role in the attentional benefits following negative cues.

Concerning the evolution of our mind, it is of core interest to understand how high-level cognitive functions are embedded within low-level cognitive functions. While the grounding of meaning units such as content words and sentence has been widely investigated, little is known about logical cognitive operations and their association with nonlinguistic cognition. However, recent theoretical claims have suggested that "the foundations of logical oppositions and negation may well be much more deeply rooted in the physiological structure of human cognition than is standardly assumed" (p. 227, Jaspers, 2012). The present study investigated potential candidates for such a grounding process by exploring the associations between basic "yes" versus "no" decisions and nonlinguistic features. In five preregistered experiments investigating the interplay between deciding "yes" or "no" and color, shape, and facial expressions, there was converging evidence for the intercoupling between the process of performing a "yes" (agreeing) or "no" (rejecting) decision and emotional faces (happy/sad), color (green/red), and also shape (round/square and soft/sharp). Potential mechanisms for such associations are discussed.

This article posits that the comic medium, wedded with traditional essay assignments, may be a powerful tool for social studies teachers, those who prepare social studies teachers at the collegiate level and other teachers and professors who desire to teach about citizenship in an era of "fake news" and alternative facts.

Learning language is always a challenge. A more daunting task is learning those culturally bound aspects of language. The present study examines the ability of Jordanian EFL learners to comprehend culturally bound color expressions. It also investigates whether L1 transfer plays a role in their processing of color idioms. To achieve this goal, I designed a multiple-choice test (MCT) that consisted of 20 items. Each item contained a color idiomatic expression within its contextual meaning. The main assumption underpinning my present study is that native language transfer plays a facilitating role in learners' ability to comprehend color idioms. The findings have revealed that idiomatic expressions with an equivalent conceptual basis and an equivalent linguistic form were the easiest. The most difficult were those with (1) a similar conceptual basis and a different linguistic form and (2) culture-specific expressions which have a different conceptual and linguistic basis. The study is expected to propose some pedagogical implications that may assist EFL teachers to familiarize their students with color idiomatic expressions in English.

This study investigated preschool children's opinions on educational robots using their robot drawings. The study group consisted of 64 five- and six-years old children in an independent kindergarden affiliated to the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) in Ankara province, Turkey and participated in the Preschool Robotics Coding Workshop within the scope of the project titled "TUBITAK 4007 Science in the Footsteps of Cezeri" in the 2018- 2019 academic year. For the purpose of this study phenomenology model as a qualitative research approach was adopted and data was collected through visual materials and semi-structured interviews to determine children's opinions on robots. The data collection process was carried out in an eight-weeks period starting in March 2019 as one week for the acquaintance phase, six weeks for practice, and the last week for a two-day workshop with educational robots. In line with the findings of this research, the mechanical features of the robots were examined, it was determined that there was an increase in the battery drawings in children's last drawings compared to their first drawings. It was also determined that the children responded to "Who builds the robots?" interview question as factories, scientists, machines, and repairers in the first interview while more than 90% of the children responded as scientists and engineers in the second interview.

The Arduino microcontroller is currently one of the favorite tools of makers, and many teachers have used it in teaching or experiments. In addition, light-emitting diode (LED) smart lighting is the worldwide trend in lighting. There are many teaching demonstrations or applications of color addition using LEDs. Furthermore, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a popular emerging technology today, and the sensor is the most important component in the perception layer of the IoT, which makes teaching, research, or application related to sensors very important. Therefore, this study shows that an Arduino microcontroller can be used as an experimental setup for the teaching of light color mixing, light intensity detection, and ambient temperature sensing via a tricolor (red, green, and blue [RGB]) LED and two types of sensors: photoresistors and thermistors. The setup has intuitive, concrete, and multifunctional features, and is expandable, which is different from the typical experimental setup designed for only a single specific purpose. It is also suitable for students learning about light color mixing and sensor-related physics course experiments or demonstrations, whether they be in high school or college.

Previous research demonstrates that children delineate more nuanced color boundaries with increased exposure to their native language. As socioeconomic status (SES) is known to correlate with differences in the amount of language input children receive, this study attempts to extend previous research by asking how both age (age 3 vs 5) and SES (under-resourced vs advantaged) might impact color name acquisition of preschool children. The results confirm the findings of previous research, showing that older children labeled the color continuum more accurately than did younger participants. In addition, we found that while SES did not make a difference in how children labeled the continuum using basic color terms (e.g. blue), basic color terms with achromatic modifiers (e.g. light blue), and compound terms (e.g. blueish-green), 5-year-olds from more advantaged economic environments used significantly more non-basic color terms (e.g. turquoise) compared to their counterparts from under-resourced environments. We suggest that, as children hear more non-basic terms, these world-to-word mappings become solidified, and exposure to such labels may contribute to the timing of when children can map those terms to the color continuum.

Via two reading experiments, this exploratory study examined the effects of over- and under-specified linguistic input on L2 online processing of Chinese referring expressions (REs). In each experiment, a group of advanced L2 Chinese speakers (all with Uyghurs as L1) and a control group of native Chinese speakers read 48 sets of 4 sentence pairs with each set including one sentence pair containing referential underspecification (ambiguity) and one pair containing overspecification (redundancy). An analysis of the two groups' reaction time (RT) using mixed-effects linear modelling reveals that underspecification had no effect on native Chinese speakers in both experiments, and overspecification also had no effect in the form of a redundant size noun modifier in Experiment 1 but showed a facilitating effect in the form of a color noun modifier in Experiment 2. In contrast, L2 Chinese speakers were significantly disrupted by underspecification in both experiments but not by overspecification. The results seem to support the hypothesis that L2 processing is constraint-based. Tentative research and pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.

The presented study examines the question of colour categorization in relation to the hypothesis of linguistic relativity. The study is based on research conducted by Gilbert et al. (2006) and their claim that linguistic colour categorization in a particular language helps colour recognition and speeds the process of colour discrimination for colours from different linguistic categories but only for the right visual field. Our study approached the research question differently. We used the same methodology as Gilbert's team et al. (2006), but we used different colour categories in the Czech language and significantly enlarged the number of participants to 106 undergraduate psychology students. Our results show that the fastest reaction times were in trials when the target was located in the left visual field, quite opposite from the Gilbert's et al. (2006) study. We argue that this finding is based on different processes than simple colour linguistic categorisation and attentional processes actually play an important role in the task.

We present an instructional approach to teaching causal inference using Bayesian networks and "do"-Calculus, which requires less prerequisite knowledge of statistics than existing approaches and can be consistently implemented in beginner to advanced levels courses. Moreover, this approach aims to address the central question in causal inference with an emphasis on probabilistic reasoning and causal assumption. It also reveals the relevance and distinction between causal and statistical inference. Using a freeware tool, we demonstrate our approach with five examples that instructors can use to introduce students at different levels to the conception of causality, motivate them to learn more concepts for causal inference, and demonstrate practical applications of causal inference. We also provide detailed suggestions on using the five examples in the classroom.

Inhibitory control is a core executive function that develops during childhood and is measured with tasks that require the inhibition of a dominant response. The current study examined the diagnostic value of using response accuracy and latency in a simple inhibitory control test, the computerized Pointing-Stroop Task (cPST), for kindergarten children. The cPST was completed by 135 children, ages 3 through 6 years with diverse national and cultural backgrounds. In explanatory response models, item difficulties and time intensities could be predicted very reliably by congruency and item position, with incongruent responses causing more errors and longer response latency. Moreover, the prediction of fluid intelligence (a close correlate of inhibitory control) from children's performance in the cPST was enhanced by using response accuracy and response latency, which had a multiplicative effect, indicating that efficient (accurate and fast) inhibitory control is related to fluid intelligence. These results suggest that measuring the efficiency of inhibitory control in young children is a more appropriate assessment than using either response accuracy or response latency.

Immersive Virtual Environments can provide users with a sense of spatial presence and experience. But learners with Color Vision Deficiency cannot receive information entirely in the environments because they are difficult to distinguish some or all colors. This study selects learners with red-green color blindness as the sample, and designs three kinds of barrier-free Teaching Resources based on a color scheme and color contrast to explore their impacts on spatial cognition and learning experience. The experimental results show that the Color Adjusted Teaching Resources has significant differences both in learning satisfaction and technology acceptance, and the Contrast Adjusted Teaching Resources performs an important role in improving spatial cognition and technology acceptance. In addition, the Color and Contrast Adjusted Teaching Resources is significantly different from the Color Adjusted Teaching Resources in spatial cognition. Therefore, the findings indicated that the barrier-free color scheme and higher contrast of Teaching Resources can significantly improve spatial cognition, learning satisfaction, and technology acceptance of learners with red-green color blindness. To some extent, the research results can contribute to the design of barrier-free Teaching Resources about red-green color blindness.

Recent work has investigated the origin of infant colour categories, showing pre-linguistic infants categorise colour even in the absence of colour words. These infant categories are similar but not identical to adult categories, giving rise to an important question about how infant colour perception changes with the learning of colour words. Here we present two novel paradigms in which 12- and 19-month-old participants learning English as their first language were assessed on their perception of colour, while data on their colour word comprehension were also collected. Results indicate that participants' perception of colours close to the colour category boundaries dramatically change after colour word learning. The results highlight the shift made from infant colour categories to adult-like linguistically mediated colour categories that accompanies colour word learning.

Biosphere contamination is a current environmental and social issue that must be included in the school programme. It is essential that students recognise their responsibility, and be knowledgeable about the generation and reduction of environmental pollution. Dyes are usually used in school activities and discharged into household effluents, constituting potential toxic agents. To offer solutions to this problem, it was proposed to evaluate the ability of "Lemna" sp. plants to remove synthetic dyes. For this, activities that require accessible resources and minimum safety precautions were designed, which could be carried out by students at home in the virtual education modality imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The practical experience integrated theoretical-practical contents from different disciplines, achieving a true interdisciplinary dialogue. The use of "Lemna" sp. secured a fast and significant dye decolourisation, demonstrating the importance of biodiversity in the attenuation of environmental changes due to anthropogenic activities. This experience allowed us to arrive at an interdisciplinary, significant and situated learning experience through the implementation of the scientific method.

In the United States the color red has come to represent the Republican party, and blue the Democratic party, in maps of voting patterns. Here we test the hypothesis that voting maps dichotomized into red and blue states leads people to overestimate political polarization compared to maps in which states are represented with continuous gradations of color. We also tested whether any polarizing effect is due to partisan semantic associations with red and blue, or if alternative hues produce similar effects. In Study 1, participants estimated the hypothetical voting patterns of eight swing states on maps with dichotomous or continuous red/blue or orange/green color schemes. A continuous gradient mitigated the polarizing effects of red/blue maps on voting predictions. We also found that a novel hue pair, green/orange, decreased perceived polarization. Whether this effect was due to the novelty of the hues or the fact that the hues were not explicitly labeled "Democrat" and "Republican" was unclear. In Study 2, we explicitly assigned green/orange hues to the two parties. Participants viewed electoral maps depicting results from the 2020 presidential election and estimated the voting margins for a subset of states. We replicated the finding that continuous red/blue gradient reduced perceived polarization, but the novel hues did not reduce perceived polarization. Participants also expected their hypothetical vote to matter more when viewing maps with continuous color gradations. We conclude that the dichotomization of electoral maps (not the particular hues) increases perceived voting polarization and reduces a voter's expected influence on election outcomes.

Business cases are commonly adopted into the accounting curricula to promote deep learning. However, in practice, case-based learning is often ineffective without facilitation because of accounting students' strong surface-learning tendencies. This study investigates the case-based learning effect of colour-coded digital annotation (CCDA). CCDA requires students to highlight web-based text using prescribed colours and present case responses as annotated comments. Our findings indicate that students who adopt CCDA achieve greater improvement in case assessments. Consistent with findings in the technology-enhanced literature (TEL), CCDA provides greater benefits for students who engage more with the intervention. However, CCDA's effect on learning outcomes is not correlated with the self-reported learning experience. This study contributes to the literature and practice by presenting a cost-effective intervention to operationalise case-based learning in accounting education.

Research Findings: The study investigated whether preschool code-related home literacy experiences had direct associations with regular and irregular word reading in the first year of primary school as well as exploring whether there were indirect associations between these experiences and later word reading via children's language skills or inhibitory control. The parents of 274 preschool children completed a home learning questionnaire at time 1 (M[subscript age] = 3:11). At time 2, the children completed phonological awareness, vocabulary, inhibitory control and nonverbal reasoning assessments (M[subscript age] = 4:3) and at time 3 a word reading assessment (M[subscript age] = 5:3). Letter-sound interactions (a code-related home literacy index that included discussions about letter-sound associations) bore significant associations with children's word reading, whereas letter activities (a code-related index that was less focussed on letter-sound links) did not. Path analyses indicated that letter-sound interactions directly predicted regular word reading and predicted regular and irregular word reading indirectly via children's phonological awareness. These findings highlight that different aspects of code-related home literacy experiences are differentially associated with later word reading skills. Practice and Policy: The findings suggest that parents' integration of interactive, age-appropriate discussions that focus on letter-sound associations into children's everyday experiences may support emerging word decoding skills.

This article reports on a study in which third-grade students (8-9 years) were given a degree of agency in conducting chance experiments and representing the outcomes. Students chose their own samples of 12 coloured counters, ensuring all colours were represented. They predicted the outcomes of item selection, tested their predictions, explained the outcomes, quantified their chances of colour selections, and created two representations displaying the probabilities. Children displayed awareness of randomness and variation, together with proportional reasoning, as evident in their identification of one or more colours as having a greater chance of being selected, or equal chances when proportions of colours were equal. Evidence of children's metarepresentational competence appeared in their creation of two representations to display their probabilistic outcomes, with bar and circle graphs, as well as stacked bars, created. The inclusion of their own forms of inscription revealed a range of probability and statistics understandings. In selecting and justifying their preferred representations for conveying their outcomes, students favoured both bar and circle graphs, with a focus on how accurately, effectively, and efficiently their representation displayed the data, with the importance of the inscriptions highlighted.

A design experiment where students in Grade 5 (11-12 years old) play the Color Run game constitutes the context for investigating how students can be introduced to informal hypothesis testing. The result outlines a three-step hypothetical learning trajectory on informal hypothesis testing. In the first step, students came to favor sample space reasoning over idiosyncratic reasoning when the sample space was changed between color runs. In the second and third steps, students used degrees of variation in the distribution of the mode across samples to infer whether an unknown sample space was uniform. Students' reasoning disclosed the logic: the larger the variation, the greater the reason for rejecting a uniform sample space.