Concentration toward the mode: Estimating changes in the shape of a distribution of student data.

When making comparisons between groups of students, a common technique is to analyze whether there are statistically significant differences between the means of each group. This convention, however, is problematic when data are negatively skewed and bounded against a performance ceiling, features that are typical of data in education settings. In such a situation, we might be particularly interested to observe group differences in the left tail, specifically among students who have room to improve, and conventional analyses of group means have limitations for detecting such differences.

Terracotta: A tool for conducting experimental research on student learning.

For researchers seeking to improve education, a common goal is to identify teaching practices that have causal benefits in classroom settings. To test whether an instructional practice exerts a causal influence on an outcome measure, the most straightforward and compelling method is to conduct an experiment. While experimentation is common in laboratory studies of learning, experimentation is increasingly rare in classroom settings, and to date, researchers have argued it is prohibitively expensive and difficult to conduct experiments on education in situ.

Wild brooms and learning analytics.

In this commentary we present an analogy between Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe's classic poem, , and institutional learning analytics. In doing so, we hope to provoke institutions with a simple heuristic when considering their learning analytics initiatives. They might ask themselves, "Are we behaving like the sorcerer's apprentice?" This would be characterized by initiatives lacking faculty involvement, and we argue that when initiatives fit this pattern, they also lack consideration of their potential hazards, and are likely to fail.

Generalizability, transferability, and the practice-to-practice gap.

Emphasizing the predictive success and practical utility of psychological science is an admirable goal but it will require a substantive shift in how we design research. Applied research often assumes that findings are transferable to all practices, insensitive to variation between implementations. We describe efforts to quantify and close this practice-to-practice gap in education research.

Visual Search Asymmetry Due to the Relative Magnitude Represented by Number Symbols.

In visual search tasks, physically large target stimuli are more easily identified among small distractors than are small targets among large distractors. The present study extends this finding by presenting preliminary evidence of a new search asymmetry: stimuli that represent larger magnitude are identified more easily among featurally equivalent distractors that represent smaller magnitude. Participants performed a visual search task using line-segment digits representing the numbers 2 and 5, and the numbers 6 and 9, as well as comparable non-numeric control stimuli.

A dissociation between engagement and learning: Enthusiastic instructions fail to reliably improve performance on a memory task.

Despite widespread assertions that enthusiasm is an important quality of effective teaching, empirical research on the effect of enthusiasm on learning and memory is mixed and largely inconclusive. To help resolve these inconsistencies, we conducted a carefully-controlled laboratory experiment, investigating whether enthusiastic instructions for a memory task would improve recall accuracy. Scripted videos, either enthusiastic or neutral, were used to manipulate the delivery of task instructions.

An In Vivo Study of Self-Regulated Study Sequencing in Introductory Psychology Courses.

Study sequence can have a profound influence on learning. In this study we investigated how students decide to sequence their study in a naturalistic context and whether their choices result in improved learning. In the study reported here, 2061 undergraduate students enrolled in an Introductory Psychology course completed an online homework tutorial on measures of central tendency, a topic relevant to an exam that counted towards their grades.

The Cognitive Costs of Context: The Effects of Concreteness and Immersiveness in Instructional Examples.

Prior research has established that while the use of concrete, familiar examples can provide many important benefits for learning, it is also associated with some serious disadvantages, particularly in learners' ability to recognize and transfer their knowledge to new analogous situations. However, it is not immediately clear whether this pattern would hold in real world educational contexts, in which the role of such examples in student engagement and ease of processing might be of enough importance to overshadow any potential negative impact. We conducted two experiments in which curriculum-relevant material was presented in natural classroom environments, first with college undergraduates and then with middle-school students.

Psychophysics in a Web browser? Comparing response times collected with JavaScript and Psychophysics Toolbox in a visual search task.

Behavioral researchers are increasingly using Web-based software such as JavaScript to conduct response time experiments. Although there has been some research on the accuracy and reliability of response time measurements collected using JavaScript, it remains unclear how well this method performs relative to standard laboratory software in psychologically relevant experimental manipulations. Here we present results from a visual search experiment in which we measured response time distributions with both Psychophysics Toolbox (PTB) and JavaScript.

To the beat of your own drum: cortical regularization of non-integer ratio rhythms toward metrical patterns.

Humans perceive a wide range of temporal patterns, including those rhythms that occur in music, speech, and movement; however, there are constraints on the rhythmic patterns that we can represent. Past research has shown that sequences in which sounds occur regularly at non-metrical locations in a repeating beat period (non-integer ratio subdivisions of the beat, e.g.

The Lateralizer: a tool for students to explore the divided brain.

Despite a profusion of popular misinformation about the left brain and right brain, there are functional differences between the left and right cerebral hemispheres in humans. Evidence from split-brain patients, individuals with unilateral brain damage, and neuroimaging studies suggest that each hemisphere may be specialized for certain cognitive processes. One way to easily explore these hemispheric asymmetries is with the divided visual field technique, where visual stimuli are presented on either the left or right side of the visual field and task performance is compared between these two conditions; any behavioral differences between the left and right visual fields may be interpreted as evidence for functional asymmetries between the left and right cerebral hemispheres.

The validity and utility of geotaxis in young rodents.

Negative geotaxis, an automatic, reliable, stimulus-bound, orientation and movement directionally against gravitational cues, is often used for behavioral assessments of infant rodents. We summarize historical and contemporary analyses and conclude that negative geotaxis does not exist in infant rats. Infant rodents placed on inclined surfaces (ranging from 15 degrees to 70 degrees in most tests) are posturally unstable and their compensatory responses have been misinterpreted as negative geotaxis.

Positive geotaxis in infant rats (Rattus norvegicus): a natural behavior and a historical correction.

Infant rats (Rattus norvegicus) placed on a shallow incline (2 degrees, 4 degrees, or 8 degrees) oriented and moved downhill within 1 min; that is, they displayed positive geotaxis. Their downhill translocation increased with angle of inclination. A variety of possible behavioral elements (e.