Striking Differences: The Impact of Moderate and High Trauma on Reading Achievement

This study explored the relationship between childhood traumatic exposure, such as violence and loss of a significant other, and reading achievement. With a sample of 163 urban elementary children (grades 2–5), the impact of traumatic events on 3 years of reading scores was examined. Results suggested that violence exposure had an adverse effect on reading scores and that there was a striking difference between students who experienced moderate exposure as compared to students with high exposure. However, both groups of students experienced a significant decrease in reading achievement. Discussion of these findings proposes an explanation for why reading achievement might be adversely affected by traumatic exposure and gives suggestions for teachers to utilize with those students identified as having been exposed to traumatic events.     

Horses form cross-modal representations of adults and children

Animal Cognition - Recently, research on domestic mammals’ sociocognitive skills toward humans has been prolific, allowing us to better understand the human–animal relationship. For...     

Horses discriminate between human facial and vocal expressions of sadness and joy

Animal Cognition - Communication of emotions plays a key role in intraspecific social interactions and likely in interspecific interactions. Several studies have shown that animals perceive human...