First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Prof. Jennifer E. Michaels. I am most appreciative of your guidance over the last four years, from the basics of elastic waves to both short- and long-term career advice. I have grown a tremendous amount, both profes-sionally and personally

I discuss Julian Barbour's Machian theories of dynamics, and his proposal that a Machian perspective enables one to solve the problem of time in quantum ge-ometrodynamics (by saying that there is no time!). I concentrate on his recent

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an impact on intellectual development, particularly spatial reasoning. A review of 15 studies found a 'strong and reliable' relationship, the author likening the differences to one inch in height or about 84 points on standardised school tests. A study contrasting the impact of music lessons

children had diminished sensitivity (compared to adults) and their weighting strategies. A similar lack of correspondence between auditory sensitivity to acoustic properties and processing of speech signals has been observed for populations other than typically developing children. For example, several

representations, and (c) the domains of space and time provide a testbed for hypotheses about the evolution and structure of abstract concepts. 1.2 Metaphor and the problem of abstract thought The mystery of how people come to mentally represent abstract domains such as time, ideas, or mathematics has engaged

, word frequency, neighborhood density, generalization, phonological delays A long-standing debate in the study of phonological development relates to the nature of children's underlying lexical representations. This debate has been of interest from both theoretical and clinical perspectives. A