Interactive electronic storybooks for kindergartners to promote vocabulary growth

The goals of this study were to examine (a) whether extratextual vocabulary instructions embedded in electronic storybooks facilitated word learning over reading alone and (b) whether instructional formats that required children to invest more effort were more effective than formats that required less effort. A computer-based "assistant" was added to electronic storybooks. The assistant posed extratextual vocabulary questions. Questions were presented in a multiple-choice format so that children could respond by clicking on the picture that best represented the target word. In Experiment 1 (N=20), children read stories with and without questions. Children learned more words when reading with questions than without. Expressive vocabulary was particularly affected by question insertion. In Experiment 2 (N=27), we used two methods for teaching words: one requiring more effort on the part of children (questions) and one requiring less effort ("hotspots" that provide definitions). Results revealed that questions were more beneficial than just providing a definition or synonym of the target word. Implications for designing new e-book apps are discussed.     

Developmental changes in attentional performance in urban children from eight to thirteen years

Abstract

In an earlier study of an epidemiological sample of 435 urban 8-year-old children, factor analytically-derived components of attention, as assessed by neuropsychological tests, were identified and were found to be significantly related to adaptive functioning. In this study we followed that cohort longitudinally and assessed developmental changes in specific aspects of attentional function into early adolescence. Significant reductions in omission errors and improvements in reaction times were found from ages 8 to 13 years on different versions of the Continuous Performance Task, a measure of sustained attention, with the effects varying by task difficulty level and subjects' gender. Significant improvements across age also were found on measures of the ability to focus attention and execute a response, shift attentional focus, and encode information in memory. In general, the most rapid changes in attention occurred between ages 8 to 10 years with more gradual changes occurring between ages 10 to 13. The results highlight the importance of developmental epidemiological approaches for assessing and predicting the normal evolution of attentional function in school-aged children.     

Probabilities in implicit learning

The visual system possesses a remarkable ability in learning regularities from the environment. In the case of contextual cuing, predictive visual contexts such as spatial configurations are implicitly learned, retained, and used to facilitate visual search-all without one's subjective awareness and conscious effort. Here we investigated whether implicit learning and its facilitatory effects are sensitive to the statistical property of such implicit knowledge. In other words, are highly probable events learned better than less probable ones even when such learning is implicit? We systematically varied the frequencies of context repetition to alter the degrees of learning. Our results showed that search efficiency increased consistently as contextual probabilities increased. Thus, the visual contexts, along with their probability of occurrences, were both picked up by the visual system. Furthermore, even when the total number of exposures was held constant between each probability, the highest probability still enjoyed a greater cuing effect, suggesting that the temporal aspect of implicit learning is also an important factor to consider in addition to the effect of mere frequency. Together, these findings suggest that implicit learning, although bypassing observers' conscious encoding and retrieval effort, behaves much like explicit learning in the sense that its facilitatory effect also varies as a function of its associative strengths.     

Modeling collective choice: decision‐making on complex intellective tasks

Three studies examined group problem‐solving on complex intellective tasks. In Study 1, a decision model proposed by Laughlin and Hollingshead ( 1995 ) provided the best fit to actual group choices. This study also compared three‐person group versus individual performance with time constrained and number of problems unconstrained, with individuals solving non‐significantly more problems and groups obtaining significantly superior trials‐to‐solution scores. In Study 2, one member of each group was given additional information on how to perform the task and member extroversion was measured. Neither factor significantly impacted the decision‐making process. In Study 3, task expertise was assessed prior to the group interaction. Results indicate that group members were twice as likely to adopt an option proposed by an expert compared to other group members. Together these studies demonstrate that group problem solving is governed jointly by qualities of the task and qualities of the group members. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parent–child interactions and relational aggression in peer relationships

The major aim of this review is to propose new ways of thinking about the role of parents in the development and course of children’s relationally aggressive behavior. An important theoretical framework from which to start thinking about linkages between parenting and relational aggression is provided by attachment theory. Attachment theory proposes that early family experiences are an important basis for the development of later peer relationships. Recent studies are only beginning to suggest possible linkages between children’s parental attachment and relational aggression. One possible reason for the scant research is that theoreticians studying these constructs have not yet developed a conceptual framework combining the two, but rather have focused on different characteristics of different interpersonal contexts. Based on the premise that both relational aggression and attachment are relational constructs and given the already established correlations between insecure attachment and physical aggression, this paper will attempt to devise a heuristic model that may serve as an aid to discover links between parent–child interactions, attachment, and relational aggression. Finally, implications for future studies of relational aggression are discussed.     

Intervening Processes Between Youths’ Exposure to Community Violence and Internalizing Symptoms Over Time: The Roles of Social Support and Coping

The roles of social support and coping as intervening processes between exposure to community violence and internalizing symptoms were examined longitudinally among a community sample of 667 middle school students in the inner city. After controlling for potential confounders (e.g., social desirability, victimization and witnessing of family violence, guardian's psychological symptomatology), internalizing symptoms at Year 2 were predicted by hypothesized changes over 1 year, such that increased community violence exposure, decreased guardian and peer support, and increased use of defensive and confrontational behavioral coping were related to more internalizing symptoms of anxiety, depression and PTSD, although some of these relations varied by gender. The relations between internalizing symptoms at Year 3 and increased changes in exposure to community violence over 2 years were moderated by social support and/or coping, such that decreased guardian support and increased use of defensive and confrontational coping were generally associated with more symptoms for boys exposed to community violence. Girls who witnessed increased community violence and who increased their use of defensive or confrontational coping experienced more internalizing symptoms. The findings underscore the importance of developmental and contextual considerations in the design and implementation of interventions.     

Synaesthesia,creativity and art: What is the link?

It has been suggested that individuals with synaesthesia may show heightened creativity as a result of being able to form meaningful associations between disparate stimuli (e.g. colour, sound). In this study, a large sample (N=82) of people with various kinds of synaesthesia were given two psychometric tests of creativity (Remote Associates Test, Alternate Uses Test) and were also asked about the amount of time engaged in creative arts (visual art, music). There was a significant tendency for synaesthetes to spend more time engaged in creative arts and this was, at least in part, dependent upon the type of synaesthesia experienced. For example, synaesthetes experiencing vision from music were far more likely to play an instrument than their other synaesthetic counterparts. There was no relationship between this tendency and the psychometric measures of creativity, but synaesthetes did outperform controls on one of the two psychometric measures (Remote Associates). We conclude that the tendency for synaesthetes to be more engaged in art is likely to have a different mechanism to psychometric measures of creativity, and that there is no direct link between them. Although synaesthetes may well perform better on some measures of creativity, we suggest that synaesthetes have better bottom‐up access to certain associations, but are not necessarily better able to use them flexibly (in divergent thinking).     

Writing nonsense: the interaction between lexical and sublexical knowledge in the priming of nonword spelling

The task of spelling nonwords to dictation necessarily requires the operation of a sublexical or assembled sound-to-spelling conversion process. We report an experiment that shows a clear lexical priming effect on nonword spelling (e.g., /vi:m/ was spelled as VEME more often following the prime word "theme" and as VEAM more often following "dream"), which was larger for lexically low-probability (or low-contingency) than for common (or high-contingency) spellings. Priming diminished when an unrelated word intervened between the prime word and target nonword and did so more for the production of low- than for high-contingency spellings. We interpret these results within an interactive model of spelling production that proposes feedback from the graphemic level to both the lexical and assembled spelling processes.     

Men in the Office,Women in the Kitchen? Contextual Dependency of Gender Stereotype Activation in Spanish Women

In a set of two studies, we tested whether gender-stereotypical associations are automatically activated by Spanish women in a categorization task, and how this process is conditioned by the context in which the target is presented (kitchen vs. office). We hypothesized that gender stereotypes would be activated implicitly when the target (men vs. women) appeared in an office context (associated with male dominant roles), but not when they appeared in a kitchen context (traditionally associated with female roles). The studies were conducted with two samples (N?=?44; N?=?47) of female undergraduate students from the University of Granada (Spain). In both studies, a priming effect was found, indicating that a traditional, role-congruent stereotype pattern (men-competence, women-warmth) emerged when primes appeared in an office context, but not in a kitchen context. Further, negative competence traits were evaluated faster when a male prime was presented in the context of a kitchen (role-incongruent). The purpose of Study 2 was to clarify the implicit nature of this contextual contingency effect by manipulating the controllability of the priming effect (i.e., Stimulus Onset Asynchrony duration-SOA, and restricted response time). The results of Study 1 were replicated in only the short SOA condition, which implies faster and presumably less controlled processing of the stimuli. Theoretical implications for stereotyping and gender role research are discussed.