Children's syllogistic reasoning

Most theories of the development of deductive ability propose that children acquire formal rules of inference. An alternative theory assumes that reasoning consists of constructing a mental model of the situation described in the premises, scanning the model for an informative conclusion, and then searching for alternative models that refute this conclusion. Hence, performance should reflect two principal factors: the difficulty of constructing a model, which depends on the “figure” of the premises, and the number of models that have to be evaluated to respond correctly. In Experiment 1, two groups of children (9- to 10- and 11- to 12-year-olds) drew conclusions from 20 pairs of syllogistic premises. The results confirmed that children are affected both by figure and by number of models. Experiment 2 corroborated these findings for all 64 possible forms of syllogistic premises. The development of reasoning ability may therefore depend on the acquisition, not of formal rules of logic, but of procedures for manipulating models.     

On the Irrelevance of Phonological Similarity to the Irrelevant Speech Effect

Irrelevant background speech disrupts immediate recall of visually presented items. Salame and Baddeley (1982) found that increasing the phonological similarity between the irrelevant speech and the visual items greatly increased this disruption. In contrast, Jones and Macken (1995) found little evidence for such an increase. The present experiments directly manipulated the phonological similarity of the irrelevant speech background and the to-be-remembered visual items. Experiments 1-4 compared background speech that shared virtually no phonemes with the visual stimuli with background speech that shared all of the phonemes of the visual stimuli. No effectof phonological similarity was found.Experiment5 replicatedthe method of Salame and Baddeley's critical experimentbut nottheir results. With regard to the two primary explanations ofthe irrelevant speech effect, these data present a strong challenge to the phonological store hypothesis while offering some support to the changing state hypothesis.     

The Social Context of Infant Intention Understanding

Traditional looking-time paradigms are often used to assess infants' attention to sociocognitive phenomena, but the link between these laboratory scenarios and real-world interactions is unclear. The current study investigated hypothesized relations between traditional social-cognitive looking-time paradigms and their real-world counterparts in caregiver–infant social interaction. Seventy-five 10- to 12-month-old infants participated in a structured play session with their caregiver, as well as a traditional looking-time paradigm targeting intentional action. Infants' ability to quickly parse intentional displays correlated with several key qualities of their everyday interactions. In particular, caregiver and infant interaction quality, maternal supportiveness, caregiver and infant joint engagement skill, and social attentiveness in infants correlated with faster habituation to looking-time displays. These results support a linkage between social-cognitive looking-time laboratory paradigms and more naturalistic partner interaction, at this key age. The data provide external validation for the large body of social-cognitive findings emerging from laboratory looking-time paradigms and contribute to a growing literature tracking the developmental trajectory of infants' understanding of people during the first 2 years.     

Gender and Leadership: A Frame Analysis of University Home Web Page Images

With calls for (business) leaders to contribute to greater global fairness and social justice (BAWB 2006; Maak and Pless Journal of Business Ethics, 88, 537–550, 2009), this paper considers gender equality on University home web page images as one means of communicating equal access to leadership roles for both men and women. Although there are many paths for leadership development, one important purpose of Universities is to create people who will potentially become leaders in our society (Shapiro 2005). We analyzed the home web pages at 24 leading universities to identify implicit messages about gender roles, building on implicit leadership theory and leadership prototypes. Using an adapted version of Goffman’s frame analysis (1979), our results suggest depiction of gender equality in university home web pages, in contrast to studies of print advertisements (cf., Kang Sex Roles, 37(11/12), 979–996, 1997; Lindner Sex Roles, 51(7/8), 409–421, 2004). Our results also identify specific opportunities to depict greater equity and to continue to expand the potential for both women and men to be seen as being capable and belonging on this leadership path.     

Integrating Diabetes Self-Management Interventions for Mexican-Americans into the Catholic Church Setting

Churches provide an innovative and underutilized setting for diabetes self-management programs for Latinos. This study sought to formulate a conceptual framework for designing church-based programs that are tailored to the needs of the Latino community and that utilize church strengths and resources. To inform this model, we conducted six focus groups with mostly Mexican-American Catholic adults with diabetes and their family members (N = 37) and found that participants were interested in church-based diabetes programs that emphasized information sharing, skills building, and social networking. Our model demonstrates that many of these requested components can be integrated into the current structure and function of the church. However, additional mechanisms to facilitate access to medical care may be necessary to support community members’ diabetes care.     

Gratitude to God,Self‐Rated Health,and Depressive Symptoms

This study has three goals. The first is to see whether the opportunity to engage in volunteer work at church fosters friendships with co‐religionists. The second goal is to see whether the support these friends provide bolsters feelings of gratitude to God. The third goal is to see whether feelings of gratitude to God are associated with health and depressive symptoms. The following linkages in our conceptual model elaborate and extend these objectives: (1) people who go to church more often will be more likely to participate in volunteer work through their congregations; (2) individuals who perform volunteer work at church will have more friends among their co‐religionists; (3) people who have more friends where they worship will report receiving more emotional support from fellow congregants; (4) those who receive more support from co‐religionists will feel more grateful to God; and (5) individuals who are more grateful to God will rate their health in a more favorable manner and experience fewer symptoms of depression. Data from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey provide support for each of these relationships.     

Assessing spelling in kindergarten: Further comparison of scoring metrics and their relation to reading skills

Early reading and spelling development share foundational skills, yet spelling assessment is underutilized in evaluating early reading. This study extended research comparing the degree to which methods for scoring spelling skills at the end of kindergarten were associated with reading skills measured at the same time as well as at the end of first grade. Five strategies for scoring spelling responses were compared: totaling the number of words spelled correctly, totaling the number of correct letter sounds, totaling the number of correct letter sequences, using a rubric for scoring invented spellings, and calculating the Spelling Sensitivity Score (Masterson & Apel, 2010b). Students (N = 287) who were identified at kindergarten entry as at risk for reading difficulty and who had received supplemental reading intervention were administered a standardized spelling assessment in the spring of kindergarten, and measures of phonological awareness, decoding, word recognition, and reading fluency were administered concurrently and at the end of first grade. The five spelling scoring metrics were similar in their strong relations with factors summarizing reading subskills (phonological awareness, decoding, and word reading) on a concurrent basis. Furthermore, when predicting first-grade reading skills based on spring-of-kindergarten performance, spelling scores from all five metrics explained unique variance over the autoregressive effects of kindergarten word identification. The practical advantages of using a brief spelling assessment for early reading evaluation and the relative tradeoffs of each scoring metric are discussed.