Beneath the surface of classroom interaction: Reflections on the microworld of education

This article deals with the microworld of the classroom, i.e., the imbedded, largely unconscious, close to invisible, and to an extent suppressed social processes in teaching. It includes some afterthoughts about a research project with the aim of understanding how the teacher–pupil relation is constructed in classroom interaction. Thomas Scheff’s social psychological framework constituted the theoretical basis for the project. The main data were collected by means of video documentation and consist of a number of closely analysed episodes. The result indicates that nonverbal behaviour in classrooms, to a great extent, is constituted by an informal system of rules in which emotions play a crucial part. But it also reveals the existence of two dimensions in classroom interaction – one surface dimension and one micro dimension – that in significant measure stand in opposition to each other.     

Beneath the surface of the therapeutic interaction: the psychoanalytic method in modern dress

This study represents a new generation of psychotherapy process research, using multiple perspectives on the data of the analytic situation, including impressions of the treating analyst, ratings of complete sessions by clinical judges, and objective linguistic measures. Computerized measures of language style developed in the framework of multiple code theory were applied to verbatim session recordings from a psychoanalytic case; the measures are illustrated in microanalyses of the process in two sessions. The results show agreement between the linguistic measures and clinical ratings based on a psychoanalytic perspective. The linguistic measures look beneath the surface of the therapeutic interaction by relying largely on lexical items of which clinicians are not likely to be explicitly aware, and enable a new perspective on the therapeutic discourse as seen in the graphic images of the microprocess. While the results of this study were limited to a single case, the automatized measures can be readily applied to large samples and in repeated single case designs. Two goals of process research, using measures such as those developed in this study, are discussed: to develop measures of mediating variables that can be used to identify specific treatment effects in comparative outcome studies; and, beyond this pragmatic aim, to assess development of capacities for self-exploration and self-regulation as psychoanalytic treatment goals.     

Phonological storage and executive function deficits in children with mathematics difficulties

Children with mathematics difficulties suffer from working memory deficits. This study investigated the deficit profile of phonological storage and executive functions in working memory among children with mathematics difficulties. Based on multiple instruments and two assessment points, 68 children were screened out of 805 fifth graders. Of these 68 children, 18 were classified as children with only mathematics difficulties (MD), 20 were classified as children with mathematics and reading difficulties (MDRD), and 30 were typically developing (TD) peers matched on age and general ability. Measures for phonological storage, dual-task performance, inhibition, and updating of verbal and numerical materials were administered individually. Results showed that compared with the TD group, children with MD exhibited storage and inhibition deficits specific to numerical information and dual-task deficits of both verbal and numerical information, whereas children with MDRD showed extensive deficits on phonological storage and executive functions on both verbal and numerical tasks. Moreover, executive function deficits were not confined to phonological storage deficits. Implications of the findings for the working memory deficit profile and working memory training among children with mathematics difficulties were discussed.     

Declarative memory deficits and schizophrenia: problems and prospects

Cognitive deficits are among the most important factors leading to poor functional outcomes in schizophrenia, with deficits in declarative memory among the largest and most robust of these. Thus far, attempts to enhance cognition in schizophrenia have shown only modest success, which underlies increasing efforts to develop effective treatment strategies. This review is divided into three main parts. The first section delineates the nature and extent of the deficits in both patients with schizophrenia and in their adult, non-psychotic relatives. The second part focuses on structural and functional abnormalities in the hippocampus, both in people with schizophrenia and in animal studies that model relevant features of the illness. The third section views problems in declarative memory and hippocampal function from the perspective of elevated rates of common medical disorders in schizophrenia, with a focus on insulin insensitivity/diabetes. The likelihood that poor glucose regulation/availability contribute to declarative memory deficits and hippocampal abnormalities is considered, along with the possibility that schizophrenia and poor glucose regulation share common etiologic elements, and with clinical implications of this perspective for enhancing declarative memory.     

Phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia in a highly literate subject: A developmental case with associated deficits of phonemic processing and awareness

This paper describes some aspects of reading and writing in a highly literate subject who has unusual difficulty in reading and spelling non-words. No cerebral trauma is indicated, and she performs at above average levels on standard tests of reading, spelling and cognitive ability. Only digit span is significantly impaired. Although auditory phoneme discrimination is normal, she performs poorly on aural tasks, like rhyme judgement and homophone matching, that require awareness of phonemic structure, and she is impaired at segmenting heard words into their component sounds.

Tests of immediate memory confirm abnormal span and indicate a failure to use normal phonological coding in immediate recall. We argue that a deficit in phonological processing underlies impaired performance on tasks of reading, spelling and immediate memory.     

"语音意识与语音智力同质说"初证

以128名小学一、三年级的学生为被试,以英语语音意识测验和言语智力测验为工具,采用因素分析的技术,初步探讨了“语音意识与语音智力同质说”的合法性问题。结果表明:(1)围绕小学一、三年级的英语语音意识和言语智力测验数据而进行的探索性因素分析,都抽取了唯一的公因子;(2)围绕小学一、三年级的英语语音意识和言语智力测验数据而进行的验证性因素分析也发现,小学一、三年级的语音智力结构模型,都具有出色的拟合度。这些结果都说明:“语音意识与语音智力同质说”具有合法性。     

Neurocognitive development and externalizing problems: the role of inhibitory control deficits from 4 to 6 years

Executive processes have been posited as important regulators of externalizing problems (EP), but there has been little research on the relation between executive dysfunction and EP in early childhood. During the preschool period, maturation of the prefrontostriatal circuitry parallels increases in inhibitory control (IC). Poor IC development could result in elevated levels of aggressive, disruptive, and impulsive behavior. In this investigation, the development of the relation between IC and EP was examined in preschool and early elementary school children using the Day/Night and Tapping tasks. Children with more EP made more incorrect responses on both IC tasks, consistently across age and sex. The associations between EP and response latencies differed across children, however, with longer latencies on the Tapping task being most characteristic for boys with high levels of EP. This association was not apparent for girls. Two prominent aspects of early EP, aggressive and inattentive behavior, showed only weak unique associations with IC performance. These findings imply that diminished IC accompanies elevated EP as early as the preschool years, and that this decrement persists into the elementary school-age years for both girls and boys, and that accuracy and response latency may confer different information about the development of IC.     

Phonological Short-term Memory and the Learning of Novel Words: The Effect of Phonological Similarity and Item Length

The investigation of a patient with a selective impairment of phonological short-term memory has recently provided evidence that this system may be involved in long-term learning of novel words, for which a pre-existing semantic representation is not available (Baddeley, Papagno, & Vallar, 1988). The present series of experiments in normal subjects explored this hypothesis. We assessed the effects of phonological similarity and item length, which reflect the operation of the phonological short-term store and the rehearsal component of verbal memory, upon paired associate long-term learning of auditorily presented words and non-words. Phonological similarity affected the learning of novel words more than known words (Experiment 1); when a delay was interposed between presentation and recall, the disruptive effect was confined to novel words (Experiment 2). Also word length disrupted the learning of novel words, but not of known words (Experiment 3). These results tie in with neuropsychological evidence to suggest a role for phonological short-term memory in the learning of new words, and they have developmental implications for the study of language acquisition.     

Extracting Phonological Patterns for L2 Word Learning: The Effect of Poor Phonological Awareness

An implicit word learning paradigm was designed to test the hypothesis that children who came to the task of L2 vocabulary acquisition with poorer L1 phonological awareness (PA) are less capable of extracting phonological patterns from L2 and thus have difficulties capitalizing on this knowledge to support L2 vocabulary learning. A group of Chinese-speaking six-grade students took a multi-trial L2 (English) word learning task after being exposed to a set of familiar words that rhymed with the target words. Children’s PA was measured at grade 3. Children with relatively poorer L1 PA and those with better L1 PA did not differ in identifying the forms of the new words. However, children with poorer L1 PA demonstrated reduced performance in naming pictures with labels that rhymed with the pre-exposure words than with labels that did not rhyme with the pre-exposure words. Children with better L1 PA were not affected by the recurring rime shared by the pre-exposure words and the target words. These findings suggest that poor L1 PA may impede L2 word learning via difficulty in abstracting phonological patterns away from L2 input to scaffold word learning.     

Possible psychometric problems in a test for selective deficits of conceptualization

We administered a modified version of the test of Semenza, Denes, Lucchese, and Bisiacchi (Brain and Language, 10, 243-248 (1980)) for selective deficits in conceptualization to a group of normals and psychiatric patients. Analysis of the results obtained with the normal sample revealed several psychometric problems. The two components of the test (one for thematic and one for class relationships) each had poor internal consistency and were significantly different from each other on a measure of discriminating power. It is not clear if our results are related to difficulty in applying the test to an English-speaking population or reflect inherent psychometric problems.     

Moving Beyond Phonological Awareness: The Role of Phonological Awareness Skills in Arabic Reading Development

In the current research we investigate the role of early phonological awareness skills on reading development in diglossic Arabic. Two-hundred and six Arabic speaking first graders, composed of 25 at-linguistic risk pupils (LR group) and 181 normally developing readers, representing the found heterogeneity in the classroom participated in this study. For this purpose, phonological training program was developed where we followed the pupils’ development in both phonological awareness skills and reading development in second grade. As indicated by the study results, higher achievements in phonological awareness measures was noted among HG group in first grade. After Training, significant improvement in phonological awareness was noted among both groups, where LR group was able to close the gaps in phonological awareness skills with HG group. When examining the relationship between phonological awareness and reading performance, moderate positive correlation was found within HG group whereas strong positive relationship was encountered with the LR group. Despite the progress in phonological awareness skills and its strong relationship with reading, LR group showed lower reading performance when compared to HG group. The study results are discussed in relation to its scientific and didactic implications on Arabic reading acquisition.     

语音训练对幼儿英语语音意识和字母知识的促进

语音意识是影响英语阅读能力的关键因素。本研究结合语音教学法的思想,采用自编的教学材料和语音游戏,通过字母故事和语音训练游戏,训练儿童的语音意识。研究者在北京市一所普通幼儿园选取了无英语学习经验的3岁左右中国幼儿63名,随机分为实验组和控制组,经过8周的语音教学实验,发现接受语音教学的实验组儿童在音节意识、音韵意识、音素意识和字母识别等方面较接受普通英语教学的控制组都有显著提高。结果表明早期有针对性的语音训练可能能够更快地提高幼儿的语音意识。     

Beneath the veil of thought suppression: Attentional bias and depression risk

Although cognitive theory predicts that depression-prone individuals possess negative information-processing biases, the reliable detection of this type of cognitive vulnerability has proved difficult. The present study tested the idea that depression-relevant, cognitive biases are often elusive because at-risk individuals actively try to suppress depressive thinking. The study employed a novel measure of information processing that involves the identification of words imbedded in a letter grid. A cognitive load - designed to disrupt thought suppression - caused a negative attentional shift among individuals at risk for depression (because of a previous episode), leading them to identify negative words at a rate equivalent to currently dysphoric participants. The hypothesised role of mental control was further supported by the fact that the load-related, attentional shift was strongly associated with chronic thought suppression.     

Introduction to Diving Beneath the Waves: In Memory of Tom Ravenette

Recent explorations of the relationship between narrative and self, particularly those tied to social constructionism, have served as a valuable corrective to the still prevalent tendency in psychology to divorce the self from its social surround. Yet certain of these explorations, by privileging the social over the individual, have led to a vision of selfhood that is problematic in its own right. Specifically, it is argued that, even though the "tools" employed in the construction of selfhood are social in nature, the configurational acts through which this construction occurs are better conceived in poetic terms, as imaginative labor seeking to give form and meaning to experience. In considering the poetic construction of selfhood, this article attempts to articulate further the relationship between narrative and self, the cultural dimension of personal experience, and the importance of the idea of narrative for expanding the scope of psychological knowledge.     

Exploring the Phenotype of Phonological Reading Disability as a Function of the Phonological Deficit Severity: Evidence from the Error Analysis Paradigm in Arabic

The dominant error types were investigated as a function of phonological processing (PP) deficit severity in four groups of impaired readers. For this aim, an error analysis paradigm distinguishing between four error types was used. The findings revealed that the different types of impaired readers were characterized by differing predominant error types. The dysphonetic errors predominated in readers with severe PP deficit and the morphological errors predominated in those with moderate deficits. Finally, readers with attention difficulties showed a predominance of semiphonetic errors. These findings were discussed in relation to reading disability subtypes and their clinical implications.     

Naming problems do not reflect a second independent core deficit in dyslexia: Double deficits explored

The double deficit hypothesis states that naming speed problems represent a second core deficit in dyslexia independent from a phonological deficit. The current study investigated the main assumptions of this hypothesis in a large sample of well-diagnosed dyslexics. The three main findings were that (a) naming speed was consistently related only to reading speed; (b) phonological processing speed and naming speed loaded on the same factor, and this factor contributed strongly to reading speed; and (c) although general processing speed was involved in speeded naming of visual items, it did not explain the relationship between naming speed and reading speed. The results do not provide support for the existence of a second independent core naming deficit in dyslexia and indicate that speeded naming tasks are mainly phonological processing speed tasks with an important addition: fast cross-modal matching of visual symbols and phonological codes.     

Development of Phonological Awareness

Abstract— Phonological awareness is critical for learning to read in alphabetic languages like English. This report summarizes normal development of phonological awareness as it has been revealed through recent multidisciplinary and cross-cultural research. We argue that a consensus on the definition of phonological awareness has emerged, that research has identified a general sequence of phonological awareness development that is universal across languages, and that certain characteristics of spoken and written languages influence the rate of normal development and levels of phonological awareness that are normally achieved.