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Teachers' subjective understandings of their students' cognitive abilities have important implications for classroom interactions, children's access to resources and opportunities, and educational equity more broadly. Using nationally representative data and three-level hierarchical linear models, this study explored the links between teacher perceptions and children's sociodemographic backgrounds. The authors find that teachers perceive substantial racial-ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender differences in children's literacy skills. Roughly half of these disparities are explained by actual between-group differences. The remaining perceptual inaccuracies flow more from classroom characteristics than from teachers' professional or personal backgrounds (e.g., their own race or ethnicity). Specifically, holding students' social and academic backgrounds constant, the authors find that teachers in lower-socioeconomic-status and lower-achieving contexts more often underestimate their students' abilities. These results highlight the importance of recent policy efforts to avoid isolating traditionally disadvantaged children.

Behavioral research has produced many taskspecific cognitive models that do not say much about the underlying information-processing architecture. Such an architecture is badly needed to better understand how cognitive neuroscience can benefit from existing cognitive models. This problem is especially pertinent in the domain of sequential behavior where behavioral research suggests a diversity of cognitive processes, processing modes and representations. Inspired by decades of reaction time (RT) research with the Additive Factors Method, the Psychological Refractory Period paradigm, and the Discrete Sequence Production task, we propose the Cognitive framework for Sequential Motor Behavior (C-SMB). We argue that C-SMB accounts for cognitive models developed for a range of sequential motor tasks (like those proposed by Keele et al., Psychological Review, 110(2), 316-339, 2003; Rosenbaum et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 9(1), 86-102, 1983, Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 710-725, 1986, Psychological Review, 102, 28-67, 1995 Schmidt, Psychological Review, 82(4), 225-260, 1975;Sternberg et al., 1978, Phonetica, 45, 177-197, 1988. C-SMB postulates that sequence execution can be controlled by a central processor using central-symbolic representations, and also by a motor processor using sequencespecific motor representations. On the basis of this framework, we present a classification of the sequence execution strategies that helps researchers to better understand the cognitive and neural underpinnings of serial movement behavior.

In 2 experiments, the authors studied the effectiveness of physical and observational practice on learning and the effect on learning of combining physical practice and observation, as compared with providing physical practice alone. In Experiment 1, retention and transfer performance of 30 university students after physical, observational, or no practice were contrasted. Consistent with findings from other studies, the retention results indicated that observational practice is inferior to physical practice. The transfer data indicated no differences between observation and physical practice groups. In Experiment 2, retention and transfer performance of 30 participants in physical and combined (alternating physical and observational) practice groups were contrasted. The retention results showed no differences between the combined and physical practice groups, but the combined group performed significantly better than the physical practice group on the transfer test. Those findings suggest that a combination of observation and physical practice permits unique opportunities for learning beyond those available via either practice regimen alone.

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