According to previous studies, a higher degree of processing fluency leads to higher liking; however, other studies indicate that a higher degree of processing fluency leads to lower recognition. This experiment examines the influence of processing fluency on both liking and recognition to determine if the same results occur when participants are asked to rate liking and remember images. Subjects rated a series of images by level of liking, then were given a recognition test. The stimuli were a combination of fluent and disfluent product images with varied fluency in each of four categories: Amount of Information, Figure-Ground Contrast, Clarity, and Symmetry. Results indicated that participants liked fluent images more than disfluent images. However, results also revealed a trend that recognition may have been higher for fluent images, and that the effects of fluency on recognition depended on which type was manipulated. Thus, the effects of varying processing fluency are different when participants are asked to both rate liking and remember items. This experiment aims to provide successful marketing tactics, suggesting that marketers make their products fluent in order to produce greater liking and memory.

Our purpose was to explore developmental changes in the organization and access to the mental lexicon between the ages of three-, five-, and seven years. Six-hundred and seventy three Mandarin-speaking participants listed all exemplars of animals and foods that came to mind within two one-minute intervals. Compared to younger participants, the older children demonstrated more correct responses and fewer errors, suggesting that they have greater knowledge of category-relevant vocabulary. They produced more subcategories, many of which involved embedding and overlapping, which suggests they have more sophisticated lexical-semantic organization. Also, they produced fewer and less closely spaced repetitions, suggesting they could more effectively monitor retrieval responses. We conclude that between the ages of three to seven, children expand and refine the organization of their mental lexicons. Improved monitoring may reflect growth in executive functioning.

The current research investigates how and why consumers' construal levels and the appeals framed either by gains or losses jointly influence persuasion. The findings across four experiments indicate that matching high-level construals with gain frames and low-level construals with loss frames leads to a) higher intentions to engage in cholesterol lowering behavior (experiment 1), b) more favorable brand attitudes (experiment 2), c) greater willingness to donate to an environmental organization (experiment 3), and d) higher buying intentions for a brand (experiment 4). It seems that these outcomes occur because matches between construal level and message frames encourage people to pay attention to the information they evaluate (experiments 1 ˜4), and this enhanced attention induces greater perceptions of processing fluency, which in turn leads to positive attitudes (experiments 2˜4). Further, this research demonstrates that an adequate amount of cognitive resources is required for this matching effect to occur (experiment 4). The current research contributes to the construal level, message framing, and matching literatures by unveiling the specific mechanism underlying the matching relationship between construal level and gain versus loss frames on persuasion and by identifying a boundary condition for it. This research also has managerial implications for marketing managers and policymakers in that it suggests a strategic way to use construal level and message frames to enhance marketing communication and advertising effectiveness.

This study explores the development of second language (L2) fluency during a semester abroad and its relationship to the development of grammar, vocabulary, and language processing speed. It also considers the influence of individual participants' first language (L1) and pre-study abroad (SA) L2 fluency on the development of fluency during study abroad. Additionally, the study examines issues in the measurement of fluency, focusing on questions related to measuring pauses in L2 speech. Thirty-nine undergraduate students (L1 English) studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina, completed a pretest consisting of speaking tasks in English and Spanish, Spanish grammar and vocabulary tests, a picture-naming task, and a measure of sentence processing speed. Approximately three months later, near the end of their time abroad, they completed a posttest consisting of the same tasks, with the exception of the speaking tasks in English. Participants also filled out a questionnaire every other week during the semester in which they estimated the amount of time that they had spent interacting with native speakers of Spanish. Results show that participants experienced significant gains on most measures of fluency during study abroad. This finding was especially true for participants who began their time abroad with low L2 fluency. Nevertheless, students who began the semester abroad with high L2 fluency still had significantly higher fluency at the end of the semester than students who began with low L2 fluency. Looking at the relationship between L2 fluency and L2 linguistic knowledge (vocabulary and grammar scores) and language processing speed (picture-naming and sentence-matching scores), the study found a moderate relationship between pretest measures of L2 fluency and pretest measures of linguistic knowledge and processing speed. However, the results show no relationship between pre-SA linguistic knowledge and processing speed and gains in L2 fluency, and little relationship between gains in linguistic knowledge and processing speed and gains in L2 fluency. The best predictor of gains in L2 fluency was pre-SA L2 fluency. These results suggest that although there is a relationship between L2 linguistic knowledge and L2 fluency, having more advanced L2 linguistic knowledge prior to study abroad does not necessarily give students an advantage in the area of fluency development during study abroad. Regarding the measurement of fluency, the data show that learners with low and high levels of lexical-grammatical competence significantly differed from one another on all measures of rates of pauses (short and long pauses, filled and unfilled pauses, and mid-clause and end-of-clause pauses) as well as in the percent of pauses occurring in the middle of a clause. However, they did not significantly differ from one another in the percent of filled pauses. The findings suggest that measuring all of these pauses may be useful in examining L2 fluency. However, there is perhaps little or nothing to be gained from counting filled and unfilled pauses separately, as speakers' tendency to use more of one or the other appears to be more closely related to personal speaking style than to L2 ability.

Students may avoid working on difficult tasks because it takes them longer to complete those tasks, which results in a delay to reinforcement. Research studies show that reinforcer and response dimensions can be manipulated within a concurrent operants framework to bias choice allocation toward more difficult tasks. The current study extends previous literature on concurrent choice assessments by examining the effects of reinforcement schedules and fluency interventions on the choice allocation between low and high effort math tasks. The study was conducted with 4 second graders in an elementary school. The choice assessment conducted prior to fluency training (Phase 1) examined the effects of enriching the reinforcement schedule for the high effort tasks on student choice. During fluency training (Phase 2), strategies to increase fluency rates on high effort tasks were implemented. The choice assessment following fluency training (Phase 3) examined changes in choice pattern when the same choice alternatives were available as in Phase 1. A concurrent schedules with reversal design was used to identify student response allocation to tasks under different reinforcement conditions during the choice assessments. The fluency training phase was conducted as a case study design. The three important findings of this study were: (a) prior to fluency training, the 4 students allocated more time to low effort tasks when equal reinforcement was provided for both types of math tasks; the students then shifted to high effort tasks as the reinforcement schedule was enriched for these tasks; (b) fluency training strategies were effective in increasing the rate at which high effort tasks were accurately completed; and (c) all 4 students switched more quickly to high effort tasks following fluency training. Implications for educators are discussed.

The study investigated the effects of a motivational and cognitive pre-tasks on oral task production by intermediate and low advanced college learners of French at a large public university in the United States. The motivation and cognitive groups engaged in an information-gap group discussion task in French following brief motivationally and strategically oriented pre-tasks conducted in the participants' native language, while the control group completed the discussion task without a pre-task. In addition, all groups completed a dictation as a measure of proficiency and a post-task motivation survey. The results of the study did not show any significant differences between the motivation, cognitive and control treatments in terms of accuracy, fluency or complexity of their speech. Possible reasons contributing to the findings are discussed and interpretations are proposed. Particularly, it is suggested that strategies for motivating students and providing cognitive support for a language task need to be coupled with focus on the task content and/or form, addressed in the target language, in order to differentially affect the fluency, accuracy, and complexity aspects of the second language speech. At the same time, the motivation group participants reported significantly higher interest in the task, higher perception of its value, and higher perception of their own autonomy, which indicates that the motivation pre-task did positively affect their motivation in relation to the task. Interest and value subcategories of the motivation survey were particularly sensitive to differences between the groups. It is suggested that regular support and promotion of positive motivational dispositions in a language class may, in the long run, result in an observable positive effect on certain aspects of the learners' speech.

Being able to read proficiently is a critical skill all students must master in order to graduate from high school, pursue postsecondary learning opportunities, and secure employment. English language learners (ELLs) are a group of students at risk for leaving school without becoming proficient readers. Repeated reading has been identified through the literature as a promising approach for remediating reading difficulties for adolescent ELLs with reading difficulties (Denton et al., 2004; 2004; Hawkins et al., 2011; Malloy et al., 2006; Tam et al., 2006; Valleley & Shriver, 2003). Repeated reading been shown to increase students' reading fluency and in turn their comprehension, and vocabulary instruction is considered an essential component of instruction for ELLs. The main purpose of this study was to extend the literature and investigate two components of reading intervention for adolescent ELLs with reading difficulties: fluency instruction and vocabulary instruction. Specifically the study examined the following research questions: (1) What is the impact of a repeated reading intervention on the reading fluency, accuracy, and reading comprehension of adolescent ELLs with reading difficulties? (2) What are the additive effects of vocabulary instruction, in conjunction with the repeated reading intervention, on the reading fluency, accuracy, and reading comprehension of adolescent ELLs with reading difficulties? Summary of Study Design and Findings A single case ABCBC multi-treatment design was used to investigate effects of repeated reading over no intervention (baseline) and the additive effects of vocabulary instruction for three adolescent ELLs with reading disabilities. The repeated reading intervention phases consisted of adult modeling, error correction, feedback, and practice reading expository passages. The repeated reading + vocabulary instruction phases added direct instruction of six vocabulary words found in the passage. Overall findings indicate that ELLs with reading disabilities benefit from repeated reading interventions but respond differentially to the addition of vocabulary instruction.

The purpose of this study was to examine the utility of a brief assessment for the selection of an effective instruction to increase fluency performance on computation math problems. Participants were four general education third-grade students who performed below the median score on a classwide administered multiple math skills probe. Students first participated in a brief assessment within a mini-withdrawal design to compare the relative effects of a contingent reward (CR) condition to a baseline condition on math fluency performance using a multiple skills probe. All four students increased performance when given an opportunity to earn an incentive for meeting a performance goal. Increased performance indicated a performance deficit to explain low math performance and that the students would positively respond to a contingent reward intervention on single math skills. To validate this hypothesis, the effects of baseline, CR, and instruction plus CR on fluency performance over time was assessed using a multiple baseline design across three single target skills for each student. Of the 12 skills assessed, results from the extended analysis demonstrated that the CR was effective on one skill, instruction plus CR was effective on five skills, and performance improved during baseline on six skills. Post results showed improved performance on the multiple probe for all students but performance was retained over 2 to 4 weeks on 5 of the 12 skills mastered during the study. Discussion focuses on considerations of the utility of a brief assessment approach in the application decision making and for future research

Research that shows the need for letter-writing fluency as a foundation for being able to attend to higher-level thinking skills in writing calls for more research as to what the components of letter-writing fluency actually are and how they are related to writing efficiency. This hierarchical multiple regression study entailed two parts. First, results of assessments of three selected subskills of letter-writing fluency were analyzed to determine how much variance they contribute to the task of letterwriting fluency in 49 kindergarten students in December of their kindergarten year. The first assessed subskill was letter-naming fluency (LNF), which has previously been shown to be predictive of reading ability. The other two subskills that were assessed focus on critical features of letters: (a) letter construction of lowercase letters using physical manipulation and placement of critical features, and (b) critical feature production (CFP) in the form of writing pseudo-letters made up of the same critical features as Roman alphabet letters. As LNF was suspected to be a strong indicator of letter-writing fluency, the other two subskills of critical feature identification and CFP were also analyzed to see how much variance they accounted for in LNF. LNF, CFP, and letter construction were shown to account for a total of 49% of the variance in the skill of letter-writing fluency. LNF accounted for 39% and thus most strongly correlated with writing fluency. Letter construction using critical features and writing of pseudo-letters together added 10% more to the variance of letter-writing fluency. Critical feature identification and CFP were shown to account for 20% of the variance in LNF. This study has implications for letter-writing instruction in early childhood education classrooms, including a strong emphasis on letter-naming activities in the early stages of letter writing. Exploratory, developmentally sensitive instruction may be beneficial involving early writers in activities that require identification, manipulation, and writing of basic critical features of letters. These instructional options are worthy of further research.

Precision teaching (PT) is a measurement system used in multiple settings for all types of behavior, from driving to mathematics. The ultimate goal of PT is to develop fluent, free operant behaviors through analyzing response frequencies on a standard celeration chart. Research has found PT to be effective at improving both the speed and accuracy of academic skills. There is little research, however, in the effects of learning channels, a component of PT, as they relate to the acquisition of academic skills. The present study examined the relationship between single and multiple learning channels on the acquisition of mathematics skills by five 1st graders in a public school setting. Implications related to universal designs for learning (UDL) utilized in educational environments are also discussed.