Learning To Read Words

The ease with which we process the written word belies its complexities and makes it easy to forget that it is a highly skilled behaviour and one that takes time to master. In this paper, I argue that our ability to read words has its roots in our capacity for language. Good progress has been made towards understanding how children discover the systematic relationship between speech sounds and the letters used to represents those sounds, very early in reading development. However, we understand much less about how beginning readers become skilled readers. To understand this, I argue that it is important to view the visual word recognition system within the context of a broader language system, one that incorporates a rich network of semantic and episodic knowledge.     

Resistance to Interference of Olfactory Perceptual Learning

The Psychological Record - Olfactory memory is especially persistent. The current study explored whether this applies to a form of perceptual learning, in which experience of an odor mixture...     

The Development of Cognitive Skills To Support Inquiry Learning

Establishing the value of inquiry learning as an educational method, it is argued, rests on thorough, detailed knowledge of the cognitive skills it is intended to promote. Mental models, as representations of the reality being investigated in inquiry learning, stand to influence strategies applied to the task. In the research described here, the hypothesis is investigated that students at the middle school level, and sometimes well beyond, may have an incorrect mental model of multivariable causality (one in which effects of individual features on an outcome are neither consistent nor additive) that impedes the causal analysis involved in most forms of inquiry learning. An extended intervention with 6th to 8th graders was targeted to promote (a) at the metalevel, a correct mental model based on additive effects of individual features (indicated by identification of effects of individual features as the task objective); (b) also at the metalevel, metastrategic understanding of the need to control the influences of other features; and (c) at the performance level, consistent use of the controlled comparison strategy. Both metalevel advancements were observed, in addition to transfer to a new task at the performance level, among many (though not all) students. Findings support the claim that a developmental hierarchy of skills and understanding underlies, and should be identified as an objective of, inquiry learning.     

Being Empathic: The Role of Motivation to Empathize and the Nature of Target Emotions

The effect of the observer's motivation to empathize and the nature of the target person's emotions on empathy was examined. The study distinguished intellectual empathy, the extent to which the observer takes the target person's perspective, and empathic emotion, the extent to which the observer feels the target emotions. Intellectual empathy was measured via attribution errors that the observer made in attributing the target person's situation, and empathic emotion by the congruence between the emotions of the target person and the observer. The first experiment showed that pleasant emotions and sadness elicited more empathic emotion than did shame and anger. The second experiment revealed that motivation increased intellectual empathy when the target person was sad, and empathic emotion when the target person was happy. Intellectual empathy and empathic emotion appeared to be distinguishable constructs and could correlate under certain conditions.     

初二学生的科学观及其与科学发现学习的关系

该研究旨在通过问卷法和实验法考察初二学生在自然科学领域中的认识论观念及其对学习过程和策略的影响.研究一发现,在科学的动态性、有限性、客观性、理论价值取向、公众性以及对科学的态度兴趣等六种基本观念上,初二学生总体上持有较混合的看法;对科学的积极态度与学习者的物理学习成绩相关显著.研究二考察了科学观对科学发现学习的影响.科学的公众性观念与灵活应用测验成绩相关显著,科学的客观性观念及智力水平对科学发现学习中的控制性实验策略有重要影响.     

Resistance To Change As A Function Of Stimulus-reinforcer And Location-reinforcer Contingencies

Pigeons responded on two keys in each component of a multiple concurrent schedule. In one series of conditions the distribution of reinforcers between keys within one component was varied so as to produce changes in ratios of reinforcer totals for key locations when summed across components. In a second series, reinforcer allocation between components was varied so as to produce changes in ratios of reinforcer totals for components, summed across key locations. In each condition, resistance to change was assessed by presenting response-independent reinforcers during intercomponent blackouts and (for the first series) by extinction of responding on both keys in both components. Resistance to change for response totals within a component was always greater for the component with the larger total reinforcer rate. However, resistance to change for response totals at a key location was not a positive function of total reinforcement for pecking that key; indeed, relative resistance to extinction for the two locations showed a weak negative relation to ratios of reinforcer totals for key location. These results confirm the determination of resistance to change by stimulus—reinforcer contingencies.     

Counselor Applications of Research Findings to Practice: Learning To Stay Current

There is evidence that many counselors currently perceive research as irrelevant to their work, possibly because the present model of training counselors to solve problems is inadequate. The authors point out ways in which applied training can be restructured so that counselors will be better able to apply research findings to their practice.     

How To Do Things with Art

In this article, I argue that speech act theory can be altered to accommodate art objects as evocative illocutionary speech acts that are aimed toward reaching understanding. To do this, I discuss the example of Zen Buddhism's use of the kōan, an aesthetic object that can be seen as evoking a given experience from its auditors for the purpose of reaching understanding on a point that the teacher wishes to make. I argue that such a reading of art as evocative can be merged with hypothetical intentionalism insofar as it recognizes a certain orientation on the part of the auditor to approach art in a certain way. In the case of kōans and other artworks, the approach is one of considering what claim an author may want to convey through the auditor's experience of the artwork.     

Learning from women with psychosis

The article describes psychoanalytic reflections in the work of a consultant psychiatrist responsible for a recently developed female intensive care unit. The manifestations of aggression were observed to be different from that of male patients. The behavioural manifestation of aggression by women was linked to the themes of secrets, and of hidden aggression, which are described in the analytic literature as feminine characteristics. The relationships between women as sibling inpatients and with female staff may explain some of the difficulties in managing aggression. Hidden aggression in the dyad of female-to-female transferences and countertransference may contribute to problems in all female inpatient settings. Bringing together the themes of psychosis and of women from a psychoanalytic perspective, the author suggests that the care pathway leading to transfer to the intensive care unit may exacerbate psychotic symptoms in acute states, due to specific vulnerabilities of women. The provision of specialized inpatient services for women may be more therapeutic if female development and the nature of their relationships were better understood.     

Learning with a computer-based advisor

The subject of this paper is the design of a computer-based educational advisory system called LOLA (Leeds On-Line Advisor). Implemented in SMALLTALK-80, LOLA attempts to address some of the problems which arise when students are required to manage their own learning, a decision-making process of importance particularly in tertiary education. LOLA demonstrates how Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques can be incorporated in the design of instructional systems. LOLA provides advice to students about what to study, how and when to study topics. The work was supervised by J.R. Hartley and benefited from many helpful discussions with K. Tait and Professor N. Sheehy.     

The Therapeutic Process with Children with Learning Disorders

Abstract

Clinicians who work with children and adolescents with learning disorders must be aware of the relationship between the learning disorder and the psychopathology the children present. This article offers a conceptual framework, based on psychoanalytic self psychology, to understand the modifications that are necessary in the treatment of this population. The author suggests that, in contrast to other approaches, it is not possible to conceptualize the treatment of these children as having a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rather, the therapeutic process is open-ended and conceived as occurring during a series of moments. The moments may be categorized as concordant, complementary, or disjunctive. During concordant moments a holding environment is created; during complementary moments the transference and countertransference is addressed; and during disjunctive moments the ruptures that inevitably occur during treatment are dealt with.     

Learning overhypotheses with hierarchical Bayesian models

Inductive learning is impossible without overhypotheses, or constraints on the hypotheses considered by the learner. Some of these overhypotheses must be innate, but we suggest that hierarchical Bayesian models can help to explain how the rest are acquired. To illustrate this claim, we develop models that acquire two kinds of overhypotheses--overhypotheses about feature variability (e.g. the shape bias in word learning) and overhypotheses about the grouping of categories into ontological kinds like objects and substances.     

Stimulus Control with Computer Assisted Learning

Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) has been shown to be an efficient learning-teaching procedure. Although there is an extensive educational software tradition using CAL approaches, few of them have demonstrated a better student performance than standard drill and practice methods. The purpose of this study was (a) to evaluate the effectiveness of the Let's Play With... software program, and (b) to evaluate the effectiveness of a prompt (i.e. a blinking object) used in the program. The educational software Let's Play With... was designed to teach basic concepts involving shapes and body positions to preschool students. The software structure follows a behavioral design and uses a stimulus control procedure. The study was carried out with 64 preschool students in the Cadiz (Spain) School District. Statistically significant differences were found between the experimental group and a control group.