Reliance on visual feedback from ocular accommodation on motor skills in children with developmental coordination disorder and typically developing controls

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) present with marked impairments in motor skills, including visual-motor integration. Oculomotor anomalies are more prevalent in children with DCD than typically developing children. Children with DCD further demonstrate altered use of visual feedback compared to typically developing controls. We investigated whether the accommodation system, a key component of the oculomotor system, contributes to visual feedback during fine and gross motor skills performance; and whether children with DCD demonstrate differences in reliance on visual feedback from accommodation. Minus dioptre lenses were used to maximally induce accommodation and impede accommodation dynamics. Children with DCD and typically developing controls performed motor skills tests assessing balance, upper limb coordination, visual-motor performance, gross and fine dexterity. Motor skills performance in controls was significantly affected by impeded accommodation in all tasks. Children with DCD demonstrated reliance on accommodation feedback in upper limb and visual-motor tasks only. Children with DCD may be less reliant on visual feedback obtained from accommodation due to adaptive mechanisms to overcome faulty information in the presence of oculomotor anomalies. These results strengthen our previous findings that accommodation anomalies contribute to motor skills impairment, and suggest that performance on these motor tasks is heavily reliant on visual feedback from accommodation.     

TRAINING RESIDENTIAL SUPERVISORS TO PROVIDE FEEDBACK FOR MAINTAINING STAFF TEACHING SKILLS WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEVERE DISABILITIES

We evaluated procedures for training supervisors in a residential setting to provide feedback for maintaining direct-service staff members' teaching skills with people who have severe disabilities. Using classroom-based instruction and on-the-job observation and feedback, 10 supervisors were initially trained to implement teaching programs themselves. The training improved supervisors' teaching skills but was insufficient to improve the quality of feedback they provided to direct-service staff regarding the staff members' teaching skills. Subsequently, classroom-based instruction and on-the-job observation and feedback that targeted supervisors' feedback skills were provided. Following training in provision of feedback, all supervisors met criterion for providing feedback to their staff. Results also indicated that maintenance of teaching skills was greater for direct-service staff whose supervisors had received training in providing feedback relative to staff whose supervisors had not received such training. The need for analysis of other variables that affect maintenance of staff performance, as well as variables that affect other important areas of supervisor performance, is discussed.     

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.     

The effects of modelling and instruction on the problem-solving performance of preschool children in Papua New Guinea and Australia(1)

Children from preschools in Australia (AUST) were compared with indigenous children from preschools at Hanuabada and Kaugere in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The effects of modelling and instruction, separately and together, on their performance in problem-solving tasks were evaluated. In addition, a within-culture comparison was made of the two PNG groups. ANCOVAS were computed with the factors group (PNG-AUST and Hanuabada-Kaugere), treatment condition (no modelling with no instruction, instruction alone, modelling alone, and instruction with modelling) and sex. Mental and chronological ages were included as covariates. The results showed that (a) the strategy adoptions were more frequent in the instruction with modelling and in the instruction alone conditions than in the control condition and the modelling alone condition was not different from the control condition, (b) PNG children in the three experimental conditions adopted the advocated strategy about three times as often as the Australian children, (c) no differences occurred between girls and boys in strategy adoptions but girls were quicker in completing the tasks than boys, and (d) chronological age was a predictor of group effects. These results were discussed in terms of a possible cognitive developmental mechanism in the performance of modelled behaviours.     

TRAINING COUNSELING SKILLS: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS AND SOCIAL VALIDATION

A community development perspective suggests the value of using local resources to solve local problems. Two low-income staff of a community service center served as nonprofessional counselors after receiving a training program consisting of written instructions, practice, and performance feedback. The effects of the 40-hour training program were positive for both counseling and problem-solving skills. There was also evidence of generalization of counseling performance across clients, problems, and time. In addition, expert judges' ratings of performance were obtained as a measure of social validity. These findings suggest that the training procedures are effective in enhancing the counseling and problem-solving skills of low-income nonprofessionals.     

Investigation on the improvement and transfer of dual-task coordination skills

Recent research has demonstrated that dual-task performance in situations with two simultaneously presented tasks can be substantially improved with extensive practice. This improvement was related to the acquisition of task coordination skills. Earlier studies provided evidence that these skills result from hybrid practice, including dual and single tasks, but not from single-task practice. It is an open question, however, whether task coordination skills are independent from the specific practice situation and are transferable to new situations or whether they are non-transferable and task-specific. The present study, therefore, tested skill transfer in (1) a dual-task situation with identical tasks in practice and transfer, (2) a dual-task situation with two tasks changed from practice to transfer, and (3) a task switching situation with two sequentially presented tasks. Our findings are largely consistent with the assumption that task coordination skills are non-transferable and task-specific. We cannot, however, definitively reject the assumption of transferable skills when measuring error rates in the dual-task situation with two changed tasks after practice. In the task switching situation, single-task and hybrid practice both led to a transfer effect on mixing costs.     

Impact of guided exploration and enactive exploration on self-regulatory mechanisms and information acquisition through electronic search.

Following instruction in basic skills for electronic search, participants who practiced in a guided exploration mode developed stronger self-efficacy and greater satisfaction than those who practiced in a self-guided exploratory mode. Intrinsic motivation was not affected by exploration mode. On 2 post-training tasks, guided exploration participants produced more effective search strategies. expended less effort, made fewer errors, rejected fewer lines of search, and achieved higher performance. Relative lack of support for self-regulatory factors as mediators of exploration mode impacts was attributed to the uninformative feedback from electronic search, which causes most people to remain at a novice level and to require external guidance for development of self-efficacy and skills. Self-guided learning will be more effective on structured tasks with more informative feedback and for individuals with greater expertise on dynamic tasks.     

Kindergarten children's sensitivity to geometry in maps

Geometrical concepts are critical to a host of human cognitive achievements, from maps to measurement to mathematics, and both the development of these concepts, and their variation by gender, have long been studied. Most studies of geometrical reasoning, however, present children with materials containing both geometric and non-geometric information, and with tasks that are open to multiple solution strategies. Here we present kindergarten children with a task requiring a focus on geometry: navigation in a small-scale space by a purely geometric map. Children spontaneously extracted and used relationships of both distance and angle in the maps, without prior demonstration, instruction, or feedback, but they failed to use the sense information that distinguishes an array from its mirror image. Children of both genders showed a common profile of performance, with boys showing no advantage on this task. These findings provide evidence that some map-reading abilities arise prior to formal instruction, are common to both genders, and are used spontaneously to guide children's spatial behavior.     

Training generalized spatial skills

Spatial transformation skills are an essential aspect of cognitive ability. These skills can be improved by practice, but such improvement has usually been specific to tasks and stimuli. The present study investigated whether intensive long-term practice leads to change that transcends stimulus and task parameters. Thirty-one participants (14 male, 17 female) were tested on three cognitive tasks: a computerized version of the Shepard-Metzler (1971) mental rotation task (MRT), a mental paper-folding task (MPFT), and a verbal analogies task (VAT). Each individual then participated in daily practice sessions with the MRT or the MPFT over 21 days. Postpractice comparisons revealed transfer of practice gains to novel stimuli for the practiced task, as well as transfer to the other, nonpracticed spatial task. Thus, practice effects were process based, not instance based. Improvement in the nonpracticed spatial task was greater than that in the VAT; thus, improvement was not merely due to greater ease with computerized testing.     

Behavioral interventions to improve performance in collegiate football

Using a multitreatment withdrawal design, this study evaluated the differential effects of publicly posted plus verbal feedback, goal setting plus verbal feedback, and publicly posted feedback, verbal feedback, and goal setting together on the performance of 3 collegiate football players in practice scrimmages. Also assessed was whether the changes in practice behavior generalized to games. The dependent variables were performances on three wide receiver skills. The results show that public posting with verbal feedback, goal setting, and public posting with verbal feedback and goal setting were effective in improving player performance to a 90% criterion level during practice, and these changes generalized to game performance.     

Performance Assessment: Is Creative Thinking Necessary?

The study examined the relationship between creative thinking ability of 13 to 14‐year old female students and their ability in tackling problem solving situations in the science laboratory. The latter has been variously labeled as hands‐on problem‐solving tasks, scientific investigations, and performance assessment. No tutoring or guidance concerning how to solve the problem was provided. The scientific concepts embedded in the tasks are within the scope of the 13 to 14‐year old students, but the setting for the tasks are novel and not likely to be dealt with by their class teacher during the course of instruction. The solution process for these tasks is likely to involve the following components: preliminary trialing, planning, performing, communicating, interpreting and reflecting on the task to provide feedback for further refinement of the task (Department of Education & Science, U.K., 1987; Toh, 1990). The paper looks into the correlation of creative thinking ability and each of the six performance components, as well as the overall performance.     

The “Hidden” Technology of Effective Parent Consultation: A Guided Participation Model for Promoting Change in Families

Parenting interventions based on social learning principles are amongst the most effective interventions available to prevent and manage social, emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents. The most successful programs employ active skills training methods (modeling, rehearsal, practice, feedback and homework) to teach new parenting skills. However, effective parent consultation also involves a broader range of interpersonal and process skills such as building a collaborative relationship, facilitating parent receptivity to new ideas or skills, managing within session resistance, and important micro skills associated with clinical tasks such as promoting parents self-regulation, independent problem solving and autonomy. This paper aims to articulate the “hidden” technology of effective parent consultation and identify implications for research on mechanisms of change in parenting interventions and practitioner training.     

Cognitive sex differences: speed and problem-solving strategies on computerized neuropsychological tasks

Skill, strategy, and laterality measures obtained through computerized neuropsychological tasks, a reaction time (RT) test, and a visuospatial problem-solving test, the Perceptual Maze Test, were analyzed in relation to sex and handedness of 56 high-school students. Boys were significantly faster than girls on most RT subtasks (including a response-inhibition task) and made more two-choice RT response errors for right-sided stimuli, which may be interpreted as resulting from a less cautious strategy. In maze performance, boys were superior to girls. An analysis of separate phases of the maze-solution process suggested that boys preferentially used an impulsive-global strategy. Girls, using a more reflective-sequential task-solving strategy, were significantly slower, without hitting more targets. Compared to all other groups, left-handed girls (strongly left-handed) had lower performance on maze tasks with no target information, particularly in left-sided solution pathways. Results were interpreted as reflecting differences in hemispheric competence and activation patterns between the sexes. Signs of a less differentiated lateralization and slight dysfunction of visuospatial skills in the left-handed girls were discussed.     

The effects of cumulative practice on mathematics problem solving

This study compared three different methods of teaching five basic algebra rules to college students. All methods used the same procedures to teach the rules and included four 50-question review sessions interspersed among the training of the individual rules. The differences among methods involved the kinds of practice provided during the four review sessions. Participants who received cumulative practice answered 50 questions covering a mix of the rules learned prior to each review session. Participants who received a simple review answered 50 questions on one previously trained rule. Participants who received extra practice answered 50 extra questions on the rule they had just learned. Tests administered after each review included new questions for applying each rule (application items) and problems that required novel combinations of the rules (problem-solving items). On the final test, the cumulative group outscored the other groups on application and problem-solving items. In addition, the cumulative group solved the problem-solving items significantly faster than the other groups. These results suggest that cumulative practice of component skills is an effective method of training problem solving.     

Capturing the Naturally Occurring Superior Performance of Experts in the Laboratory: Toward a Science of Expert and Exceptional Performance

ABSTRACT— Expertise researchers have traditionally shied away from studying the highest levels of achievement in favor of studying basic cognitive processes, such as memory and categorization. In this article, we present a different approach that is focused on capturing superior (expert) performance on representative tasks that reveal the essential characteristics of expertise in a given domain. In domains where expert performance is measurable, acquisition is gradual and the highest levels are only attained after 10 years of intense preparation—even for the most "talented." Analyses of reproducibly superior performance show that it is mediated by physiological adaptations and cognitive skills acquired as a result of the cumulative effects of special practice activities (deliberate practice). It appears that the genes necessary to attain such adaptations and expert skills can be activated in healthy children—the only clear exceptions to date being genes that control body size and height. Our knowledge of how experts acquire their superior skills provides insights into the potential for human adaptation and skill acquisition and has important implications for theories of the structure of general and expert cognition, as well as for training interventions in applied psychology and education.     

儿童问题解决中的类比迁移

儿童问题解决中的类比迁移是儿童认知发展中的一个基本问题,但在儿童发展研究中却一直没有得到足够的重视。在对儿童问题解决中的类比迁移研究进行回顾和总结的基础上,特别是仔细分析最近十年里的类比迁移研究,该文总结出了儿童问题解决中类比迁移研究的发展趋势,主要包括从探讨迁移是否存在到验证迁移是一种早期能力、从关注迁移的年龄差异到关注促进迁移的有关因素、从关注迁移是否是基本能力到关注迁移的加工机制、从描述迁移技能到领域概化、从关注近迁移到关注远迁移。最后,该文对未来儿童问题解决中的类比迁移研究进行了展望     

PARENT EDUCATION INTERVENTION RESULTS IN DECREASED CHALLENGING BEHAVIOR AND IMPROVED TASK ENGAGEMENT FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES DURING ACADEMIC TASKS

Children with developmental disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder often engage in challenging behavior when presented with academic demands. Parents of school‐age children with such diagnoses are commonly asked to assist their child with academic tasks but may struggle to do so as a result of challenging behavior. This study evaluated the effects of a parent education intervention on the challenging behaviors and task engagement of three school‐age children with disabilities during academic activities. Parent education consisted of (i) weekly didactic instruction; (ii) modeling; (iii) role‐play; and (iv) in vivo coaching and performance feedback. Using a non‐concurrent multiple baseline across participants with embedded individual multi‐element design, this study demonstrates that a parent education intervention results in decreases in challenging behavior and increases in task engagement. These results suggest that parent education focused on addressing challenging behavior during one‐to‐one instruction may facilitate completion of academic tasks. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

AN EXTENSION OF INCIDENTAL TEACHING PROCEDURES TO READING INSTRUCTION FOR AUTISTIC CHILDREN

In an extension of incidental teaching procedures to reading instruction, two autistic children acquired functional sight-word reading skills in the context of a play activity. Children gained access to preferred toys by selecting the label of the toy in tasks requiring increasingly complex visual discriminations. In addition to demonstrating rapid acquisition of 5-choice discriminations, they showed comprehension on probes requiring reading skills to locate toys stored in labeled boxes. Also examined was postteaching transfer across stimulus materials and response modalities. Implications are that extensions of incidental teaching to new response classes may produce the same benefits documented in communication training, in terms of producing generalization concurrent with skill acquisition in the course of child-preferred activities.     

Task characteristics and performance in interpersonal cognitive problem solving

The authors examined the extent to which performance on interpersonal cognitive problem-solving (ICPS) tasks is affected by whether the goals within the dilemmas to be addressed are sex typed. Fifty children, aged 7-8 years old, were tested for the core ICPS skills of Alternative Solutions Thinking (AST) and Consequential Thinking (CT) on a series of 8 social problem-solving tasks, 4 having goals characteristically more attractive to boys and 4 with goals more attractive to girls. A 2 x 2 MANOVA was used to compare the performances of boys and girls on each set of sex-typed tasks with the 3 dependent variables of liking for the tasks, number of alternative solutions suggested, and the number of consequences anticipated. As expected, liking for the tasks was higher if the activities were characteristically associated with the participant's own gender (p < .001), although the different tasks did not produce any significant gender differences in the numbers of AST or CT suggestions they prompted. Gender differences in children's peer relationships were considered, and the implications of these results for the format of ICPS interventions are noted.     

First demonstration of effective spatial training for near transfer to spatial performance and far transfer to a range of mathematics skills at 8 years

There is evidence that spatial thinking is malleable, and that spatial and mathematical skills are associated (Mix et al. [2016] Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 1206; Mix et al. [2017] Journal of Cognition and Development, 18, 465; Uttal et al. [2013] Psychological Bulletin, 139, 352). However, few studies have investigated transfer of spatial training gains to mathematics outcomes in children, and no known studies have compared different modes of spatial instruction (explicit vs. implicit instruction). Based on a sample of 250 participants, this study compared the effectiveness of explicit and implicit spatial instruction in eliciting near transfer (to the specific spatial skills trained), intermediate transfer (to untrained spatial skills) and far transfer (to mathematics domains) at age 8. Spatial scaling and mental rotation skills were chosen as training targets as previous studies have found, and proposed explanations for, associations between these skills and mathematics in children of this age (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 2016 and 1206). In this study, spatial training led to near, intermediate and far transfer of gains. Mental visualization and proportional reasoning were proposed to explain far transfer from mental rotation and spatial scaling skills respectively. For most outcomes, except for geometry, there was no difference in the effectiveness of implicit (practice with feedback) compared to explicit instruction (instructional videos). From a theoretical perspective, the study identified a specific causal effect of spatial skills on mathematics skills in children. Practically, the results also highlight the potential of instructional videos as a method of introducing spatial thinking into the classroom.