Self-regulated learning (SRL) is highly meaningful in the context of higher education. According ... more Self-regulated learning (SRL) is highly meaningful in the context of higher education. According to the educational standards of higher professional education in Russia up to 70% of all educational time is to be spent on student's self-study. In this prospective the role of self-regulated learning becomes significant and its promoting tends to be important in the process of teaching and learning. Self-regulated learning involves metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral processes that are personally initiated to acquire knowledge and skill, such as goal setting, planning, learning strategies, self-reinforcement, selfrecording, and self-instruction. Moreover, strategy use is the crucial element for defining self-regulated learners. Whereas teachers should allow students to gain awareness of this process, learn how to control it, how to apply SRL strategies and learn more effectively. This article will define self-regulated learning, including SRL stages, SRL strategies and the role of teachers in promoting SRL in the context of higher education.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Feb 4, 2015
The present study examined the visual perception and attention abilities associated with general ... more The present study examined the visual perception and attention abilities associated with general giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (EM). The research involved four groups of 16-18 years old participants varying in levels of G and EM. 190 participants were tested on a battery of visual processing tasks: visual-spatial memory (VSM), visual speed of information processing (SVIP),Visual-perception (VP) and Visual attention (VA). The results support the notion that the differences between the groups are task depended. On the VSM (Backward visual-spatial memory span) test, differences in performance were associated only with EM factor, while on the visual-perception (Pattern-recognition test) and attention (D2-CP score) tests only the G factor had a main performance effect. SVIP was associated with both G and EM factors.
International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2014
This paper presents study that investigates brain activity (using ERP methodology) of male adoles... more This paper presents study that investigates brain activity (using ERP methodology) of male adolescents when solving short problems in algebra and geometry. The study design links mathematics education research with neuro-cognitive studies. We performed a comparative analysis of brain activity associated with the translation from visual to symbolic representations of mathematical objects in algebra and geometry. The findings demonstrate that electrical activity associated with the performance of geometrical tasks is stronger than that associated with solving algebraic tasks. Additionally, we found different scalp topography of the brain activity associated with algebraic and geometric tasks. Based on these results, we argue that problem solving in algebra and geometry are related to different patterns of brain activity.
International journal of multilingualism: interdisciplinary studies of multilingual behaviour, 2008
The study examines a hypothesis that the degree of accent in L2 is related to a measure of ego pe... more The study examines a hypothesis that the degree of accent in L2 is related to a measure of ego permeability. Native Hebrew speakers, native Russianspeaking immigrants, and Arabic-speaking Israeli natives participated. All were students at the University of Haifa, where the language of instruction is Hebrew. The participants were recorded producing two speech segments and the recorded segments of speech were played to a group of 20 native Hebrew speakers, who rated the degree of accent in each segment on a scale from 1 (no accent) to 5 (heavy accent). These participants also completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) developed by Davis (1980), which has been translated into Hebrew and validated (Even, 1993). The scale yields a single numerical score that is a reflection of empathic capacity. We looked at the correlations between the "heaviness" of the accent of L2 speakers and a measure of empathy. These revealed strong correlations between degree of accent and empathy scores in the Russianspeaking group, but not in the Arabic-speaking group. The sociolinguistic implications of these findings are discussed. Native speakers can identify different groups of non-natives on the basis of pronunciation, but are not able to do so reliably on the basis of only written or syntactic evidence (Ioup, 1984). Some researchers assumed that bilinguals who have acquired L2 after puberty tend to speak with an accent because the phonological system of their native language (L1) constrains the production of L2 sounds (
The intriguing phenomenon of insight (also known as the "Aha!" moment) has provoked a l... more The intriguing phenomenon of insight (also known as the "Aha!" moment) has provoked a long-standing conflict over its cognitive mechanism. The special-process theory posits insight as a unique, unconscious mechanism. Conversely, the business-as-usual theory conceptualizes insight processing as ordinary and similar to non-insight, i.e., analytic, incremental, and attention demanding. To resolve this conflict, participants completed cognitive tests and solved four types of problems: verbal insight, spatial insight, verbal non-insight, and spatial non-insight. These problems were solved under three conditions: silence (control), inner speech suppression (articulatory suppression), and non-verbal attentional demands (spatial tapping). Interestingly, insight problem solving differed from verbal non-insight, but resembled spatial non-insight problem solving. Solving insight and spatial non-insight problems substantially benefitted from spatial and near verbal analogical thinking...
This study examines the possible effects of bilingualism, mother tongue and type of morphology on... more This study examines the possible effects of bilingualism, mother tongue and type of morphology on morphological awareness of Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking preschoolers (mean age – 5:4). Four groups of children participated in the study: (1) 50 Arabic-speaking monolingual speakers; (2) 50 Hebrew-speaking monolingual speakers; (3) 50 Arabic/Hebrew bilingual speakers; and (4) 50 Hebrew/Arabic bilingual speakers. Participants from the bilingual groups were sequential non-balanced bilingual speakers who started learning a second language at ages 3–4 in a bilingual Arabic/Hebrew kindergarten. All children performed two tasks on inflectional morphology and three tasks on derivational morphology in one or both languages. To examine inflectional morphology, domain plural nouns were chosen because of their linear nature in both Hebrew and Arabic and because inflectional plural-noun morphology is acquired very early. In derivational morphology, the focus was on the verbs because of their high to...
This paper addresses the neuro-cognitive characterization of super mathematically gifted high sch... more This paper addresses the neuro-cognitive characterization of super mathematically gifted high school students. The research population consisted of three groups of students excelling in mathematics: super mathematically gifted (S-MG), generally gifted students who excel in school mathematics (G-EM), and students who excel in school mathematics but are not identified as being generally gifted (NG-EM). An Event Related Potentials (ERP) research methodology was employed to examine behavioral and electrophysiological measures associated with insight-based and learning-based problem solving. Forty-two male adolescents participated in the study. Analysis of the electrical potentials evoked when solving these two distinct types of problems revealed three types of neuro-efficiency effects, which highlight the different characteristics of electrical activity of super mathematically gifted students. These characteristics are predominantly task-dependent, emerge at different stages of the task and are reflected in different scalp topography.
The present study was motivated by a scarcity of knowledge about the impact of early bilingualism... more The present study was motivated by a scarcity of knowledge about the impact of early bilingualism on the development of general creativity and mathematical creativity. Two groups of bilingual and monolingual preschoolers (mean age = 60.9 months, SD= 3.1) from the same monolingual kindergarten participated in this study: 15 Russian/Hebrew balanced bilinguals and 15 native Hebrew-speaking monolinguals. All children were administered the Figural Form A (Thinking Creatively with Pictures) from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, the Pictorial Multiple Solution Task assessing general creativity, and the Creating Equal Number task measuring mathematical creativity. Bilingual children showed higher creative ability than their monolingual peers. It seems, however, that bilingualism affects various domains of creative ability differently. Consistent with findings of an earlier study (M. Leikin, 2013) the results demonstrate that relationships between creativity components and bilingualism are task dependent, and when differences between bilingual and monolingual children are revealed, they are in favor of bilinguals. In other words, advantages in creative ability in bilinguals are specific rather than general.
Introduction by Mark Leikin, Mila Schwartz, and Yishai Tobin .- Part I. Language and Literacy in ... more Introduction by Mark Leikin, Mila Schwartz, and Yishai Tobin .- Part I. Language and Literacy in Multilingual Society. Chapter 1. Relevance of the Linguistic Coding Difference Hypothesis to English as an Additional Language of Literacy in Israel by Janina Kahn-Horwitz, Richard L. Sparks, and Zahava Goldstein . Chapter 2. Literacy Reflexes of Arabic Diglossia by Elinor Haddad . Chapter 3. Multilingualism Among Israeli Arabs, and the Neuropsychology of Reading in Different Languages by Zohar Eviatar and Raphiq Ibrahim .- Part II. Academic Achievement of Children Coming from Immigrant Families. Chapter 4. Cognitive, Language, and Literacy Development in Socio-Culturally Vulnerable School Children: The Case of Ethiopian Israeli Children by Esther Geva and Michal Shany . Chapter 5. Second Generation Immigrants: A Socio-linguistic Approach of Linguistic Development Within Framework of Family Language Policy by Mila Schwartz . Chapter 6. Understanding Language Achievement of Immigrants in Schools: The Role of Multiple Academic Languages by Tamar Levin and Elana Shohamy .- Part III. Multilingual Acquisition and Processing. Chapter 7. Adjective Inflection in Hebrew: A Psycholinguistic Study in Speakers of Russian, English and Arabic Compared with Native Hebrew Speakers by Iris Alfi-Shabtay and Dorit Ravid . Chapter 8. Verb Inflections Indicators of Bilingual SLI: Qualitative vs. Quantitative Measurements by Sharon Armon-Lotem, Galit Adam, Anat Blass, Jonathan Fine, Efrat Harel, Elinor Saiegh-Haddad, and Joel Walters. Chapter 9. Procedural and Declarative Memory in the Acquisition of Morphological Knowledge: A Model for Second Language Acquisition in Adults by Sara Ferman and Avi Karni . Chapter 10. Reading L1 and L2: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence: A Comparison between Regular and Dyslexic Readers by Zvia Breznitz and Liat Fabian . Chapter 11. Identification of Grammatical Functions in Two Languages by Mark Leikin and Elina Ritvas
The focus of the present study was the trajectory of the acquisition of noun pluralization in Heb... more The focus of the present study was the trajectory of the acquisition of noun pluralization in Hebrew as a window into the development of inflectional morphology among early sequential Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals. Our participants were six early sequential bilingual children between 36 and 42 months of age at the beginning of the study, who acquired Russian (L1) at home and at preschool within a ‘first language first approach’ and whose age at the onset of their acquisition of Hebrew (L2) was about 3 years. We investigated both qualitative and quantitative features of noun pluralization in Hebrew (L2) acquisition in order to determine (1) whether early sequential bilingual children are delayed or accelerated in this domain; (2) whether they show similar or different patterns of errors in comparison to the L1 children; and (3) at what age sequential bilingual children acquire regular versus irregular noun plural forms compared with the L1 children. We relied on a multi-faceted ...
AbstractIn this paper we suggest that instruments of neuro-cognitive research enable the evaluati... more AbstractIn this paper we suggest that instruments of neuro-cognitive research enable the evaluation of giftedness in mathematics. We start with a literature review on the related topics presented so as to situate our suggestions within the existing research on giftedness and excellence in mathematics. This literature review allows us later to discuss our findings, which are based on neurocognitive data collected in a large-scale multidimensional examination of mathematical giftedness. Sampling procedure in the study was performed based on two orthogonal (in our view) characteristics: general giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (EM). In this paper we present findings that lead to a definition of the mathematically gifted population. We present selected results to provide evidence for our findings. In this paper we demonstrate three major findings:A. Effects of G and EM factors are task-dependent both in behavioral and neurophysiological measures: the EM factor has significan...
The present study was designed to investigate whether accelerated reading rate influences the way... more The present study was designed to investigate whether accelerated reading rate influences the way adult readers process sentence components with different grammatical functions. Participants were 20 male native Hebrew-speaking college students aged 18-27 years. The processing of normal word strings was examined during word-by-word reading of sentences having subject-verb-object (SVO) syntactic structure in self-paced and fast-paced conditions. In both reading conditions, the N100 (late positive) and P300 (late negative) event-related potential (ERP) components were sensitive to such internal processes as recognition of words' syntactic functions. However, an accelerated reading rate influenced the way in which readers processed these sentence elements. In the self-paced condition, the predicate-centered (morphologically based) strategy was used, whereas in the fast-paced condition an approach that was more like the word-order strategy was used. This new pattern was correlated wi...
Self-regulated learning (SRL) is highly meaningful in the context of higher education. According ... more Self-regulated learning (SRL) is highly meaningful in the context of higher education. According to the educational standards of higher professional education in Russia up to 70% of all educational time is to be spent on student's self-study. In this prospective the role of self-regulated learning becomes significant and its promoting tends to be important in the process of teaching and learning. Self-regulated learning involves metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral processes that are personally initiated to acquire knowledge and skill, such as goal setting, planning, learning strategies, self-reinforcement, selfrecording, and self-instruction. Moreover, strategy use is the crucial element for defining self-regulated learners. Whereas teachers should allow students to gain awareness of this process, learn how to control it, how to apply SRL strategies and learn more effectively. This article will define self-regulated learning, including SRL stages, SRL strategies and the role of teachers in promoting SRL in the context of higher education.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Feb 4, 2015
The present study examined the visual perception and attention abilities associated with general ... more The present study examined the visual perception and attention abilities associated with general giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (EM). The research involved four groups of 16-18 years old participants varying in levels of G and EM. 190 participants were tested on a battery of visual processing tasks: visual-spatial memory (VSM), visual speed of information processing (SVIP),Visual-perception (VP) and Visual attention (VA). The results support the notion that the differences between the groups are task depended. On the VSM (Backward visual-spatial memory span) test, differences in performance were associated only with EM factor, while on the visual-perception (Pattern-recognition test) and attention (D2-CP score) tests only the G factor had a main performance effect. SVIP was associated with both G and EM factors.
International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2014
This paper presents study that investigates brain activity (using ERP methodology) of male adoles... more This paper presents study that investigates brain activity (using ERP methodology) of male adolescents when solving short problems in algebra and geometry. The study design links mathematics education research with neuro-cognitive studies. We performed a comparative analysis of brain activity associated with the translation from visual to symbolic representations of mathematical objects in algebra and geometry. The findings demonstrate that electrical activity associated with the performance of geometrical tasks is stronger than that associated with solving algebraic tasks. Additionally, we found different scalp topography of the brain activity associated with algebraic and geometric tasks. Based on these results, we argue that problem solving in algebra and geometry are related to different patterns of brain activity.
International journal of multilingualism: interdisciplinary studies of multilingual behaviour, 2008
The study examines a hypothesis that the degree of accent in L2 is related to a measure of ego pe... more The study examines a hypothesis that the degree of accent in L2 is related to a measure of ego permeability. Native Hebrew speakers, native Russianspeaking immigrants, and Arabic-speaking Israeli natives participated. All were students at the University of Haifa, where the language of instruction is Hebrew. The participants were recorded producing two speech segments and the recorded segments of speech were played to a group of 20 native Hebrew speakers, who rated the degree of accent in each segment on a scale from 1 (no accent) to 5 (heavy accent). These participants also completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) developed by Davis (1980), which has been translated into Hebrew and validated (Even, 1993). The scale yields a single numerical score that is a reflection of empathic capacity. We looked at the correlations between the "heaviness" of the accent of L2 speakers and a measure of empathy. These revealed strong correlations between degree of accent and empathy scores in the Russianspeaking group, but not in the Arabic-speaking group. The sociolinguistic implications of these findings are discussed. Native speakers can identify different groups of non-natives on the basis of pronunciation, but are not able to do so reliably on the basis of only written or syntactic evidence (Ioup, 1984). Some researchers assumed that bilinguals who have acquired L2 after puberty tend to speak with an accent because the phonological system of their native language (L1) constrains the production of L2 sounds (
The intriguing phenomenon of insight (also known as the "Aha!" moment) has provoked a l... more The intriguing phenomenon of insight (also known as the "Aha!" moment) has provoked a long-standing conflict over its cognitive mechanism. The special-process theory posits insight as a unique, unconscious mechanism. Conversely, the business-as-usual theory conceptualizes insight processing as ordinary and similar to non-insight, i.e., analytic, incremental, and attention demanding. To resolve this conflict, participants completed cognitive tests and solved four types of problems: verbal insight, spatial insight, verbal non-insight, and spatial non-insight. These problems were solved under three conditions: silence (control), inner speech suppression (articulatory suppression), and non-verbal attentional demands (spatial tapping). Interestingly, insight problem solving differed from verbal non-insight, but resembled spatial non-insight problem solving. Solving insight and spatial non-insight problems substantially benefitted from spatial and near verbal analogical thinking...
This study examines the possible effects of bilingualism, mother tongue and type of morphology on... more This study examines the possible effects of bilingualism, mother tongue and type of morphology on morphological awareness of Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking preschoolers (mean age – 5:4). Four groups of children participated in the study: (1) 50 Arabic-speaking monolingual speakers; (2) 50 Hebrew-speaking monolingual speakers; (3) 50 Arabic/Hebrew bilingual speakers; and (4) 50 Hebrew/Arabic bilingual speakers. Participants from the bilingual groups were sequential non-balanced bilingual speakers who started learning a second language at ages 3–4 in a bilingual Arabic/Hebrew kindergarten. All children performed two tasks on inflectional morphology and three tasks on derivational morphology in one or both languages. To examine inflectional morphology, domain plural nouns were chosen because of their linear nature in both Hebrew and Arabic and because inflectional plural-noun morphology is acquired very early. In derivational morphology, the focus was on the verbs because of their high to...
This paper addresses the neuro-cognitive characterization of super mathematically gifted high sch... more This paper addresses the neuro-cognitive characterization of super mathematically gifted high school students. The research population consisted of three groups of students excelling in mathematics: super mathematically gifted (S-MG), generally gifted students who excel in school mathematics (G-EM), and students who excel in school mathematics but are not identified as being generally gifted (NG-EM). An Event Related Potentials (ERP) research methodology was employed to examine behavioral and electrophysiological measures associated with insight-based and learning-based problem solving. Forty-two male adolescents participated in the study. Analysis of the electrical potentials evoked when solving these two distinct types of problems revealed three types of neuro-efficiency effects, which highlight the different characteristics of electrical activity of super mathematically gifted students. These characteristics are predominantly task-dependent, emerge at different stages of the task and are reflected in different scalp topography.
The present study was motivated by a scarcity of knowledge about the impact of early bilingualism... more The present study was motivated by a scarcity of knowledge about the impact of early bilingualism on the development of general creativity and mathematical creativity. Two groups of bilingual and monolingual preschoolers (mean age = 60.9 months, SD= 3.1) from the same monolingual kindergarten participated in this study: 15 Russian/Hebrew balanced bilinguals and 15 native Hebrew-speaking monolinguals. All children were administered the Figural Form A (Thinking Creatively with Pictures) from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, the Pictorial Multiple Solution Task assessing general creativity, and the Creating Equal Number task measuring mathematical creativity. Bilingual children showed higher creative ability than their monolingual peers. It seems, however, that bilingualism affects various domains of creative ability differently. Consistent with findings of an earlier study (M. Leikin, 2013) the results demonstrate that relationships between creativity components and bilingualism are task dependent, and when differences between bilingual and monolingual children are revealed, they are in favor of bilinguals. In other words, advantages in creative ability in bilinguals are specific rather than general.
Introduction by Mark Leikin, Mila Schwartz, and Yishai Tobin .- Part I. Language and Literacy in ... more Introduction by Mark Leikin, Mila Schwartz, and Yishai Tobin .- Part I. Language and Literacy in Multilingual Society. Chapter 1. Relevance of the Linguistic Coding Difference Hypothesis to English as an Additional Language of Literacy in Israel by Janina Kahn-Horwitz, Richard L. Sparks, and Zahava Goldstein . Chapter 2. Literacy Reflexes of Arabic Diglossia by Elinor Haddad . Chapter 3. Multilingualism Among Israeli Arabs, and the Neuropsychology of Reading in Different Languages by Zohar Eviatar and Raphiq Ibrahim .- Part II. Academic Achievement of Children Coming from Immigrant Families. Chapter 4. Cognitive, Language, and Literacy Development in Socio-Culturally Vulnerable School Children: The Case of Ethiopian Israeli Children by Esther Geva and Michal Shany . Chapter 5. Second Generation Immigrants: A Socio-linguistic Approach of Linguistic Development Within Framework of Family Language Policy by Mila Schwartz . Chapter 6. Understanding Language Achievement of Immigrants in Schools: The Role of Multiple Academic Languages by Tamar Levin and Elana Shohamy .- Part III. Multilingual Acquisition and Processing. Chapter 7. Adjective Inflection in Hebrew: A Psycholinguistic Study in Speakers of Russian, English and Arabic Compared with Native Hebrew Speakers by Iris Alfi-Shabtay and Dorit Ravid . Chapter 8. Verb Inflections Indicators of Bilingual SLI: Qualitative vs. Quantitative Measurements by Sharon Armon-Lotem, Galit Adam, Anat Blass, Jonathan Fine, Efrat Harel, Elinor Saiegh-Haddad, and Joel Walters. Chapter 9. Procedural and Declarative Memory in the Acquisition of Morphological Knowledge: A Model for Second Language Acquisition in Adults by Sara Ferman and Avi Karni . Chapter 10. Reading L1 and L2: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence: A Comparison between Regular and Dyslexic Readers by Zvia Breznitz and Liat Fabian . Chapter 11. Identification of Grammatical Functions in Two Languages by Mark Leikin and Elina Ritvas
The focus of the present study was the trajectory of the acquisition of noun pluralization in Heb... more The focus of the present study was the trajectory of the acquisition of noun pluralization in Hebrew as a window into the development of inflectional morphology among early sequential Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals. Our participants were six early sequential bilingual children between 36 and 42 months of age at the beginning of the study, who acquired Russian (L1) at home and at preschool within a ‘first language first approach’ and whose age at the onset of their acquisition of Hebrew (L2) was about 3 years. We investigated both qualitative and quantitative features of noun pluralization in Hebrew (L2) acquisition in order to determine (1) whether early sequential bilingual children are delayed or accelerated in this domain; (2) whether they show similar or different patterns of errors in comparison to the L1 children; and (3) at what age sequential bilingual children acquire regular versus irregular noun plural forms compared with the L1 children. We relied on a multi-faceted ...
AbstractIn this paper we suggest that instruments of neuro-cognitive research enable the evaluati... more AbstractIn this paper we suggest that instruments of neuro-cognitive research enable the evaluation of giftedness in mathematics. We start with a literature review on the related topics presented so as to situate our suggestions within the existing research on giftedness and excellence in mathematics. This literature review allows us later to discuss our findings, which are based on neurocognitive data collected in a large-scale multidimensional examination of mathematical giftedness. Sampling procedure in the study was performed based on two orthogonal (in our view) characteristics: general giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (EM). In this paper we present findings that lead to a definition of the mathematically gifted population. We present selected results to provide evidence for our findings. In this paper we demonstrate three major findings:A. Effects of G and EM factors are task-dependent both in behavioral and neurophysiological measures: the EM factor has significan...
The present study was designed to investigate whether accelerated reading rate influences the way... more The present study was designed to investigate whether accelerated reading rate influences the way adult readers process sentence components with different grammatical functions. Participants were 20 male native Hebrew-speaking college students aged 18-27 years. The processing of normal word strings was examined during word-by-word reading of sentences having subject-verb-object (SVO) syntactic structure in self-paced and fast-paced conditions. In both reading conditions, the N100 (late positive) and P300 (late negative) event-related potential (ERP) components were sensitive to such internal processes as recognition of words' syntactic functions. However, an accelerated reading rate influenced the way in which readers processed these sentence elements. In the self-paced condition, the predicate-centered (morphologically based) strategy was used, whereas in the fast-paced condition an approach that was more like the word-order strategy was used. This new pattern was correlated wi...
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