Training referential communication skills: The limits of success

We explored why an effective speaker-training technique failed to generalize to listener skills by comparing the relative effectiveness of speaker and listener training. Our hypotheses were that: either listening tasks utilize different skills than speaking tasks (thus one should not expect transfer), or the acquisition of listener skills precedes the acquisition of speaker skills (thus the transfer patterns tested in our previous research—speaker to listener—violated the normal developmental sequence), or there is no spontaneous transfer between tasks in different modalities (even though such tasks require the use of some of the same skills). This research utilized a referential communication paradigm. Five-year-olds received either speaker training, listener training, or both speaker and listener training. Children were tested for transfer on speaking and listening task after a 1-week delay. The results suggest that although speaking and listening tasks appear to require, at least in part, certain of the same skills, preschoolers do not exhibit spontaneous intermodality transfer. Theoretical implications for the relationship between speaker and listener skills are discussed.     

Evaluating a blended-learning program on developing teamwork competence

The knowledge, skills and abilities that are required to work optimally in teams are critical for many types of work. Organizations can provide access to these skills by means of training programs. Diverse studies show how traditional in-site training methodologies can improve teamwork knowledge, skills and abilities. Nevertheless, in-site methods can be complemented with on-line strategies that result in blended-learning programs. The aim of this work is to analyze, following Kirkpatrick's assessment levels, the effectiveness of a blended-learning program of teamwork training in an organizational context. Carried out with 102 professionals, the results show participants' satisfaction with the program, high level of learning (of both declarative and procedural knowledge), and a moderate level of transfer of learning to the job.     

Differential effectiveness of explicit verbal feedback on children's communication skills

In order to specify by which combination of content and form dimensions the explicit verbal feedback comes to be most effective in enhancing communication skills, a training experiment was designed where both dimensions were factorially manipulated. Forty children (mean age, 5–10) were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: Interrogative Cognitive feedback, Declarative Cognitive feedback, Interrogative Perceptual feedback, and Declarative Perceptual feedback. The Cognitive type of feedback specified the successive cognitive steps underlying the comparison activity whereas the Perceptual type of feedback stressed only the necessity of describing perceptual differences when communicating. These two contents of feedback were either provided by a set of standardized questions or of declarative statements, after each trial of a speaking training task. Subjects were given a pretest, and immediate and delayed posttests comprised of a speaking task and a listening generalization task. A 2 (Contents) × 2 (Forms) × 2 (Tasks) × 2 (Post-tests) analysis of variance showed that all subjects performed significantly better on the speaking task than on the listening generalization task and that subjects in the Interrogative Cognitive condition performed better than subjects in the three other conditions, on both post-test tasks. Results emphasize the mutual facilitating effects of the Interrogative Form and the Cognitive Content of explicit feedback and are discussed in terms of the generalization and stability of the induced learning.     

Working memory and phonological awareness as predictors of progress towards early learning goals at school entry

This study investigates whether working memory skills of children are related to teacher ratings of their progress towards learning goals at the time of school entry, at 4 or 5 years of age. A sample of 194 children was tested on measures of working memory, phonological awareness, and non‐verbal ability, in addition to the school‐based baseline assessments in the areas of reading, writing, mathematics, speaking and listening, and personal and social development. Various aspects of cognitive functioning formed unique associations with baseline assessments; for example complex memory span with rated writing skills, phonological short‐term memory with both reading and speaking and listening skills, and sentence repetition scores with both mathematics and personal and social skills. Rated reading skills were also uniquely associated with phonological awareness scores. The findings indicate that the capacity to store and process material over short periods of time, referred to as working memory, and also the awareness of phonological structure, may play a crucial role in key learning areas for children at the beginning of formal education.     

Overlap and Uniqueness: Linguistic Componential Traits Contributing to Expressive Skills in English as a Foreign Language

This study identified robust predictors of expressive skills in academic English as a foreign language. The participants were 92 Korean-speaking learners of English. The field test of the Pearson Test of English Academic was used as a secondary data analysis. Four communicative skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and six enabling linguistic traits (written discourse, oral fluency, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, and vocabulary) were analyzed using writing and speaking skills as dependent variables. The greatest overlapping variance was found in the relationship between reading and writing. When listening and speaking skills were controlled, the unique variance accounted by reading in the prediction of writing became marginal. The results of this study demonstrated that L2 oral language skills became increasingly important to L2 writing outcomes as language proficiency improved over time.     

Dyadic Listening in Teams: Social Relations Model

Listening has powerful organizational consequences. However, studies of listening have typically focused on individual level processes. Alternatively, we hypothesized that perceptions of listening quality are inherently dyadic, positively reciprocated in dyads, and are correlated positively with intimacy, speaking ability, and helping-organizational-citizenship behavior, at the dyadic level. In two studies, teammates rated each other on listening and intimacy; in one, they also rated speaking ability, and helping-organizational-citizenship behavior, totaling 324 and 526 dyadic ratings, respectively. In both studies, social relations modeling suggested that the dyad level explained over 40 percent of the variance in both listening and intimacy, and yielded the predicted positive dyadic reciprocities. Furthermore, as predicted, listening perceptions correlated with intimacy, speaking ability, and helping behavior as reported by other workers, primarily at the dyadic level. Moreover, rating of listening, but not of speaking, by one dyad member, predicted intimacy reported by the other dyad member, and that intimacy, in turn, predicted helping-organizational-citizenship behavior. Counterintuitively, listening quality is more a product of the unique combination of employees than an individual difference construct. We conclude that perceived listening, but not perceived speaking, appears to be the glue that binds teammates to each other dyadically, and consequently affects helping.     

Shared language: overlap and segregation of the neuronal infrastructure for speaking and listening revealed by functional MRI

Whether the brain's speech-production system is also involved in speech comprehension is a topic of much debate. Research has focused on whether motor areas are involved in listening, but overlap between speaking and listening might occur not only at primary sensory and motor levels, but also at linguistic levels (where semantic, lexical, and syntactic processes occur). Using functional MRI adaptation during speech comprehension and production, we found that the brain areas involved in semantic, lexical, and syntactic processing are mostly the same for speaking and for listening. Effects of primary processing load (indicative of sensory and motor processes) overlapped in auditory cortex and left inferior frontal cortex, but not in motor cortex, where processing load affected activity only in speaking. These results indicate that the linguistic parts of the language system are used for both speaking and listening, but that the motor system does not seem to provide a crucial contribution to listening.     

Sentence comprehension and production in children with cochlear implants: Errorless procedures and equivalence-based instruction

Research supports equivalence-based instruction (EBI) and matrix training for increased listening and speaking skills in children with cochlear implants (CI). We incorporated errorless procedures to optimize the EBI and evaluated the effects on the auditory comprehension and verbal responding at-sentences level in six CI children who were readers and showed inaccurate tacting. Subject-verb-object sentences were arranged in two matrices; diagonal combinations were trained and evaluated non-diagonal combinations. EBI included stimulus fading and exclusion to directly teach the dictated sentence-picture matching; written-sentences construction upon dictation also was taught. Probes assessed the derived stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response relations. All participants learned the auditory-visual discriminations and the exclusion resulted in fewer errors than on a stimulus fading procedure. Five participants formed equivalence classes and increased verbal responding to equivalent stimuli, especially pictures tacting. They also showed recombinative generalization for both matrices. Professionals can incorporate errorless procedures to EBI for improving sentence comprehension, tacting, and productivity in CI children.     

Counting on fine motor skills: links between preschool finger dexterity and numerical skills

Finger counting is widely considered an important step in children's early mathematical development. Presumably, children's ability to move their fingers during early counting experiences to aid number representation depends in part on their early fine motor skills (FMS). Specifically, FMS should link to children's procedural counting skills through consistent repetition of finger‐counting procedures. Accordingly, we hypothesized that (a) FMS are linked to early counting skills, and (b) greater FMS relate to conceptual counting knowledge (e.g., cardinality, abstraction, order irrelevance) via procedural counting skills (i.e., one–one correspondence and correctness of verbal counting). Preschool children (N = 177) were administered measures of procedural counting skills, conceptual counting knowledge, FMS, and general cognitive skills along with parent questionnaires on home mathematics and fine motor environment. FMS correlated with procedural counting skills and conceptual counting knowledge after controlling for cognitive skills, chronological age, home mathematics and FMS environments. Moreover, the relationship between FMS and conceptual counting knowledge was mediated by procedural counting skills. Findings suggest that FMS play a role in early counting and therewith conceptual counting knowledge.     

The comprehension skills of children learning English as an additional language

Background Data from national test results suggests that children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL) experience relatively lower levels of educational attainment in comparison to their monolingual, English‐speaking peers. Aims The relative underachievement of children who are learning EAL demands that the literacy needs of this group are identified. To this end, this study aimed to explore the reading‐ and comprehension‐related skills of a group of EAL learners. Sample Data are reported from 92 Year 3 pupils, of whom 46 children are learning EAL. Method Children completed standardized measures of reading accuracy and comprehension, listening comprehension, and receptive and expressive vocabulary. Results Results indicate that many EAL learners experience difficulties in understanding written and spoken text. These comprehension difficulties are not related to decoding problems but are related to significantly lower levels of vocabulary knowledge experienced by this group. Conclusions Many EAL learners experience significantly lower levels of English vocabulary knowledge which has a significant impact on their ability to understand written and spoken text. Greater emphasis on language development is therefore needed in the school curriculum to attempt to address the limited language skills of children learning EAL.     

重视医患沟通产生的功效--从成功诊治一例寄生虫病妄想患者说起

良好医患沟通直接影响到医疗活动的正常进行,有效的医患沟通是构建和谐医患关系必要的途径和手段。而医患沟通技能和医患沟通方法是实现良好医患沟通的基础。本文从诊断、治疗一种罕见的精神性疾病---寄生虫病妄想个案过程中,具体应用医患沟通听、说基本活动的技能,融洽与患者交流,构建良好医患关系,成功治愈这一寄生虫病妄想患者。阐明临床医生不仅仅需要仁爱之心、专业的医学知识,还需重视医患沟通,掌握医患沟通技巧。     

The relationship between phonological processing and arithmetic in children with learning disabilities

Phonological processing skills have not only been shown to be important for reading skills, but also for arithmetic skills. Specifically, previous research in typically developing children has suggested that phonological processing skills may be more closely related to arithmetic problems that are solved through fact retrieval (e.g., remembering the solution from memory) than procedural computation (e.g., counting). However, the relationship between phonological processing and arithmetic in children with learning disabilities (LDs) has not been investigated. Yet, understanding these relationships in children with LDs is especially important because it can help elucidate the cognitive underpinnings of math difficulties, explain why reading and math disabilities frequently co-occur, and provide information on which cognitive skills to target for interventions. In 63 children with LDs, we examined the relationship between different phonological processing skills (phonemic awareness, phonological memory, and rapid serial naming) and arithmetic. We distinguished between arithmetic problems that tend to be solved with fact retrieval versus procedural computation to determine whether phonological processing skills are differentially related to these two arithmetic processes. We found that phonemic awareness, but not phonological memory or rapid serial naming, was related to arithmetic fact retrieval. We also found no association between any phonological processing skills and procedural computation. These results converge with prior research in typically developing children and suggest that phonemic awareness is also related to arithmetic fact retrieval in children with LD. These results raise the possibility that phonemic awareness training might improve both reading and arithmetic fact retrieval skills.

Research Highlights

• Relationships between phonological processing and various arithmetic skills were investigated in children with learning disabilities (LDs) for the first time.
• We found phonemic awareness was related to arithmetic involving fact retrieval, but not to arithmetic involving procedural computation in LDs.
• The results suggest that phonemic awareness is not only important to skilled reading, but also to some aspects of arithmetic.
• These results raise the question of whether intervention in phonemic awareness might improve arithmetic fact retrieval skills.

     

The development of communication: When a bad model makes a good teacher

Five experiments were conducted on what 6-year-old children learn about communication by switching listener and speaker roles with competent and incompetent adults and peers. Experiment I demonstrated that children become better communicators to adults after listening to competent adults, competent peers, and incompetent peers, but not incompetent adults. The age of the listener was shown to have an effect in Experiment II, with children becoming less effective communicators when speaking to a peer after listening to an incompetent peer but better communicators when speaking to an adult after listening to an incompetent peer. Experiments III, IV, and V were designed to determine why children do not improve or deteriorate after listening to incompetent adults. It is not deficient memory: Children remember well the ambiguous messages of adults (Experiment IV). It is not implicit demands to be polite to an adult (Experiment III). It is that children think the ambiguous messages of an adult are competent (Experiment V). Mixing the authority and prestige of an adult with incompetent messages leads the child to ignore the adult's behavior as a standard for his or her own performance. These results suggest that social learning of communication skills might occur best when the child can learn what not to do by interacting with peers and what to do when interacting with adults.     

The relationship of social power to visual displays of dominance between men and women

Two studies, with undergraduate subjects, investigated how sex and situation-specific power factors relate to visual behavior in mixed-sex interactions. The power variable in Study 1 was expert power, based on differential knowledge. Mixed-sex dyads were formed such that members had complementary areas of expertise. In Study 2, reward power was manipulated. Consistent with expectation states theory, both men and women high in expertise or reward power displayed high visual dominance, defined as the ratio of looking while speaking to looking while listening. Specifically, men and women high in expertise or reward power exhibited equivalent levels of looking while speaking and looking while listening. High visual dominance ratios have been associated with high social power in previous research. Both men and women low in expertise or reward power looked more while listening than while speaking, producing a relatively low visual dominance ratio. In conditions in which men and women did not possess differential expertise or reward power, visual behavior was related to sex. Men displayed visual behavior similar to their patterns in the high expertise and high reward power conditions, whereas women exhibited visual behavior similar to their patterns in the low expertise and low reward power conditions. The results demonstrate how social expectations are reflected in nonverbal power displays.     

A matter of time: rapid motor memory stabilization in childhood

Are children better than adults in acquiring new skills (‘how‐to’ knowledge) because of a difference in skill memory consolidation? Here we tested the proposal that, as opposed to adults, children's memories for newly acquired skills are immune to interference by subsequent experience. The establishment of long‐term memory for a trained movement sequence in adults requires a phase of memory consolidation. This results in substantial delayed, ‘offline’, performance gains, which nevertheless remain susceptible to interference by subsequent competing motor experience for several hours after training, unless sleep is afforded in the interval. Here we compared the gains attained overnight (delayed gains) by 9‐year‐olds and adults after training on a novel finger‐to‐thumb movement sequence, with and without subsequent interference by repeating a different movement sequence. Our results show that, in 9‐year‐olds, but not in adults, an interval of 15 min. between the training session and interfering experience sufficed to ensure the expression of delayed, consolidation phase, gains. Nevertheless, in the 9‐year‐olds, as well as in adults, the gains attained with no interference were significantly larger. Altogether, our results show that while the behavioral expressions of childhood and adult consolidation processes are similar, procedural memory stabilizes, in the waking state, at a much faster rate in children. We propose that, in children, rapid stabilization is a mechanism whereby the constraints on consolidating new experiences into long‐term procedural memory are relaxed at the cost of selectivity.     

A controlled evaluation of systematic desensitisation and social skills training for socially inadequate psychiatric patients.

A controlled study of systematic desensitisation and social skills training was carried out on a sample of socially inadequate psychiatric patients. The results showed that both treatments led to significant improvements in the patients' social lives, which, in the case of social skills training were maintained at 6 months follow-up. Neither treatment, however, led to significantly greater anxiety reduction, improvements in social skills or clinical adjustment than the untreated control. Systematic desensitisation ran into a number of procedural difficulties and there was a substantial drop-out rate during treatment. Both treatments are discussed in the light of these mixed results and suggestions made for further research in this area.     

Improving Listening Skills in English as a Foreign Language by Reading Rather than Listening: A Cognitive Load Perspective

This study investigated the consequences of simultaneously reading and listening to the same materials when learning English as a foreign language. During acquisition, native Arabic‐speaking university students were asked to learn some English words and sentences either by reading them or by simultaneously reading and listening to the same spoken material. Following acquisition students were given reading, writing, and listening tests. The findings from the three experiments indicated that participants exposed to reading alone performed better on listening tests than participants exposed to a reading and listening condition. No differences were found on the reading and writing tests. The results, discussed within a cognitive load theory framework, suggest that at least some categories of learners will enhance their listening skills more by reading the materials only rather than simultaneously reading and listening. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The development of comprehension and reading‐related skills in children learning English as an additional language and their monolingual,English‐speaking peers

Background. A significant number of pupils in UK schools learn English as an additional language (EAL). Relative differences between the educational attainment of this group and monolingual, English‐speaking pupils call for an exploration of the literacy needs of EAL learners. Aims. This study explores the developmental progression of reading and listening comprehension skills and a range of reading‐related skills in EAL learners, whose first language is of South Asian origin, and their monolingual peers. Sample. Participants were 39 children learning EAL and 39 monolingual, English‐speaking children who were all in school Year 3 at the start of the study. Method. Children completed standardized measures of comprehension, vocabulary, reading accuracy, and reading fluency in school Year 3 and again in Year 4. Results. The results suggest that, although children learning EAL often demonstrate fast and accurate reading accuracy skills, lower levels of vocabulary knowledge place significant constraints on EAL learners' comprehension of spoken and written texts. Conclusions. Reciprocal relationships between vocabulary and comprehension may lead to increasing gaps in reading comprehension between monolingual and EAL pupils over time. It is proposed that support for the development of vocabulary skills in children learning EAL is needed in early years' classrooms.     

Effects of Training Reflective Listening in a Corporate Setting

A communication skills training of insurance company employees was devised and evaluated. Study 1 compared trained and untrained employees on their Reflective listening (RL; Rogers, 1951) skills before and after a 16-hr training, as they conversed with a confederate who rated them, and their responses were categorized. In a follow-up Study 2, some of the employees audiotaped conversations with customers, and their responses were categorized as well. In a validation Study 3, students rated conversations by employees who used more or less RL. Results showed that training increased RL, and that the skills were subsequently transferred to an authentic setting. Results did not show that trained employees were evaluated differently than untrained. Implications of the results are discussed.     

The efficacy of remote video-based behavioral skills training and awareness training on public speaking performance

This study evaluated the efficacy of (a) remote video-based behavioral skills training (BST) with added speech outlines on teaching public speaking behaviors and (b) remote video-based awareness training (AT) on speech-disfluency rates. A multiple-baseline design across speech behaviors was used to evaluate the training. Remote video-based BST and AT were effective at teaching public speaking behaviors and reducing speech disfluencies, respectively, for both participants. In addition, performance generalized to increased audience size. Although expert ratings of perceived public speaking effectiveness improved following BST, the ratings did not improve and some worsened following AT. Both participants reported satisfaction with video-based BST and AT. One participant reported greater comfort, confidence, overall ability, and less anxiety as a public speaker following BST. Both participants reported greater improvements in those categories following AT. Our results suggest that public speaking behaviors can be taught using remote video-based BST and speech disfluencies can be reduced using remote video-based AT.