Effect on Mood of Thinking About Extreme Emotional Terms

The hypothesis that being asked to think about extreme emotional terms influences mood in the direction of the polarity of the terms was tested in three experiments. Subjects answered items about their mood before and after being asked to think about nine extreme, positive emotional terms (e.g., ecstatic) or nine extreme, negative emotional terms (e.g., wretched). It was found that when subjects were asked to think about extreme, positive emotional terms, mood changed in a positive direction, and when they were asked to think about extreme negative emotional terms, mood changed in a negative direction. The effect on mood of being asked to think about extreme emotional terms did not depend on whether the subjects were asked just to think about the terms(Experiment 1), to think about the terms in relation to the self (Experiment 2), or to think about the meaning of the terms (Experiment 3).     

Reading and Social Imagination: What Relationally Oriented Reading Instruction Can Do for Children

Twenty-two second and third grade children experiencing difficulties with social relationships and reading comprehension participated in small group Relationally Oriented Reading Instruction for eight weeks. Developmental and literacy assessments done before and after the reading intervention showed statistically significant improvements in the understanding of text and in social imagination. Analysis of writing samples resulted in a typology of relationally oriented response. Together these data provide initial evidence linking the understanding of texts to the development of other relational capacities like social imagination, and indicate that purposeful use of picture books within relationally oriented reading instruction may enhance this development.     

A Dialogic Account of Sense-Making in Scientific Argumentation and Reasoning

This article identifies aspects of argumentation in scientific practice that are key for scientific sense-making and articulates how engagement in these aspects happens both inter-mentally (between people) and intra-mentally (an individual's reasoning). Institutionally, peer review exerts critique on new knowledge claims in science and is comprised by a search for errors, which can be expressed as generation and evaluation of alternative possibilities that contrast with the new knowledge claim. Critique influences construction of claims, and this interplay motivates progress in sense-making. A classroom experiment is presented in which a high school physics class simulated the social interactions between authors and reviewers. These students’ subsequent ability to engage in various forms of sense-making is contrasted with a control class that did the same activity but without simulating the relevant social interactions. The results suggest important support for a principled, practice-based way to simulate scientific discourse in classrooms to support sense-making.     

Co-reference and reasoning

Memory &; Cognition - Co-reference occurs when two or more noun phrases refer to the same individual, as in the following inferential problem: Mark is kneeling by the fire or he is looking at...