A Comparison of Phonological Awareness Skills in Early French Immersion and English Children

This 2-year study examined the effects of early second language exposure on phonological awareness skills. Syllable, onset-rime and phoneme awareness skills of 72 anglophone children attending English or French immersion programs in primary and grade 1 were investigated. Three-way mixed ANOVAS revealed the following effects and interactions. In terms of grade effect, grade 1 students performed significantly better than primary students on phoneme and onset-rime tasks. A stimulus language effect was observed for the three levels of phonological awareness. All children performed better on English tasks than on French ones. Interaction effects of stimulus language by program were revealed for phoneme as well as syllable tasks. Posthoc analyses revealed that French students performed better on English phoneme and syllable tasks than on French, while English students performed better than French immersion students on French syllable tasks. Correlational analyses revealed significant relationships between reading and phoneme and onset-rime phonological awareness tasks regardless of program of instruction (English, French immersion) or language of reading test (English, French). Syllable awareness was only significantly correlated with the French non-word reading task for the French immersion students.     

How to play with patients who would rather remain remote

Playful technique with negativistic, schizoid patients is described and further explained. They are seen as closing their mind, imagination, needs, and feelings to protect themselves against the terrifying dangers of human relatedness (vulnerability, need, hurt, loss, fusion, destruction). The analyst, while respecting the schizoid patient's need for protection, affirmation, and validation, seeks creative ways of engaging the patient more closely. Playful technique with schizoid patients combines the analyst's sensitive, playful attitude with an invitation to playful action as an experiment with new feelings, longings, hopes, and expectations. Playful engagement is one technique for attempting to engage patients not now open to verbal interpretation. To succeed with such patients, the analyst needs to connect with the core of their protectiveness and thereby come to enjoy their defensive powers, tolerate their need of the analyst, and not feel insulted. The analyst's light, playful approach to these patients' life-and-death terrors of hating and loving aims to show them that they have grossly exaggerated the powers of their hatred and their love.     

On the possibility and desirability of constructing a neutral conception of disability

Disagreement about the properattitude toward disability proliferates. Yetlittle attention has been paid to an importantmeta-question, namely, whether ``disability' isan essentially contested concept. If so, recentdebates between bioethicists and the disabilitymovement leadership cannot be resolved. Inthis essay I identify some of the presumptionsthat make their encounters so contentious. Much more must happen, I argue, for anydiscussions about disability policy andpolitics to be productive. Progress depends onconstructing a neutral conception ofdisability, one that neither devaluesdisability nor implies that persons withdisabilities are inadequate. So, first, I clearaway the conceptual underbrush that makes usthink our idea of disability must bevalue-laden. Second, I sketch someconstituents of, and constraints upon, aneutral notion of disability. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Metalinguistic Awareness in Children: A Developmental Progression

The purpose of this study was to determine if a developmental order exists in the metalinguistic ability of children to make judgments about the form of language while simultaneously attending to a meaningful linguistic context. The stimulus material consisted of a short story into which 20 nonsense lexical items had been substituted. The 20 stimuli were comprised of phonotactically illegal and legal sequences of phonemes. In addition, the lexical items had been positioned to replace either structure or content words within the story. The participants were 90 Caucasian children who were divided into nine age groupings from 4;0 to 12;11. Baseline data were obtained from 10 adults. All subjects were required to respond to the audio-recorded stimuli by pressing a button whenever a nonsense item was perceived. The data were analyzed for both number of correct responses and reaction times. Results revealed a major shift in metalanguage ability occurring between 7 and 8 years of age. The 8- to 12-year-olds responded correctly to more items and at significantly faster rates than the 4- to 7-year-olds. The adults outperformed the children on all tasks, showing that metalanguage development continues beyond childhood.     

Revealing Personal Secrets

Both the health benefits and the potential drawbacks of revealing personal secrets (i.e., those that directly involve the secret keeper) are reviewed. Making the decision to reveal personal secrets to others involves a trade-off. On the one hand, secret keepers can feel better by revealing their secrets and gaining new insights into them. On the other hand, secret keepers can avoid looking bad before important audiences (such as their bosses or therapists) by not revealing their secrets. Making a wise decision to reveal a personal secret hinges on finding an appropriate confidantúsomeone who is discreet, who is perceived by the secret keeper to be nonjudgmental, and who is able to offer new insights into the secret.     

How College Students With and Without Disabilities Perceive Themselves and Each Other

This study explored how college students with (n = 80) and without disabilities (n = 76) rated themselves, how each group rated members of the other group, and how each group perceived that the other group would rate them on a 24-item personality instrument that was designed to assess five factors of personality: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and culture. Results revealed that the two groups rated each other in a stereotypical manner: Students with disabilities were seen as more conscientious and cultured than were students without disabilities, whereas students without disabilities were seen as more extraverted and emotionally stable than were students with disabilities. When the students rated themselves, however, no such differences between the two groups emerged. Implications of the results for clinical practice are discussed.     

Mirror masturbation

A case is presented of an analytic patient who reported adolescent and adult mirror masturbation in the context of a struggle for psychic differentiation and separation from his mother. A model is elaborated in which magical manipulation and transformation of the self- and object images are facilitated by masturbatory mirror play. The role of impersonation and transformation as another man or woman is explored. Visual hunger, traumatic overstimulation, incestuous games, and fear of actually committing incest with a seductive parent are proposed as genetic contributants . Mirror masturbation is understood as a dramatic play which defends against castration anxiety and attempts to master childhood sexual overstimulation by active repetition and re-creation.