Scorpionism is a known significant problem of medical and social importance in many tropical and subtropical regions including the Middle East. In Iran, highest prevalence of scorpion sting about 60% of all the stings has been reported from Khuzestan province. Among the 21,000 cases of reported scorpion stung patients, 12% were caused by H. lepturus, but contributed to 95% of all moralities in ...

Extinction of Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats is a useful model for therapeutic interventions in humans with anxiety disorders. Recently, we found that delivering extinction trials soon (15 min) after fear conditioning yields a short-term suppression of fear, but little long-term extinction. Here, we explored the possible mechanisms underlying this deficit by assessing the suppression of fe...

This study investigated the effectiveness of reactive incidental focus on form (FonF) for each learner with regard to different linguistic categories in meaning-oriented EFL classes. To this end, 30 hr of meaningful interactions of upper-intermediate EFL learners were audio-recorded in 2 free discussion classes. Instances of reactive incidental focus-on-form episodes (FFEs), where teachers offe...

This study builds on Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) motivational-cognitive construct of task-induced involvement in learning vocabulary and addresses itself to its strong claim that the depth of processing is the overriding factor in learning words. The paper first re-examines the effect of processing load and then of task type on the initial learning and retention of words. To do so, 60 EFL lear...

To elucidate developmental changes of the Summary Scores of the Boston Qualitative Scoring System (BQSS) for the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF). One hundred healthy children aged 6-16 (average 9.7 +/- 2.4; 60 boys, 40 girls). The ROCF was administered and graded based on the BQSS. The subjects were classified in four age-groups: 6- and 7-year-olds; 8- and 9-year-olds; 10- and 11-year-olds...

The "testing effect" refers to the finding that after an initial study opportunity, testing is more effective for long-term retention than restudying. The testing effect seems robust and is a finding from the field of cognitive science that has important implications for education. However, it is unclear whether this effect also applies to the acquisition of problem-solving skills, which is imp...

The present study aimed at investigating the effect of using language games on elementary students’ vocabulary retention. Thirty two numbers of students were chosen. They were at the same level of proficiency and were assigned into two groups of 16. The control group received traditional method of teaching vocabulary such as: drills, definitions, etc. and the experimental group was exposed to l...

Two experiments investigated long-term retention subsequent to directed forgetting. In Experiment 1, both recognition and cued recall were better for categories given remember (R) instructions than for categories given forget (F) instructions. A constant advantage of R items over F items persisted from an immediate test to a 1-wk delayed test. In Experiment 2, recognition of R items exceeded th...

Taking a memory test not only assesses what one knows, but also enhances later retention, a phenomenon known as the testing effect. We studied this effect with educationally relevant materials and investigated whether testing facilitates learning only because tests offer an opportunity to restudy material. In two experiments, students studied prose passages and took one or three immediate free-...