Basic numerical capacities and prevalence of developmental dyscalculia: the Havana Survey

The association of enumeration and number comparison capacities with arithmetical competence was examined in a large sample of children from 2nd to 9th grades. It was found that efficiency on numerical capacities predicted separately more than 25% of the variance in the individual differences on a timed arithmetical test, and this occurred for both younger and older learners. These capacities were also significant predictors of individual variations in an untimed curriculum-based math achievement test and on the teacher scores of math performance over developmental time. Based on these findings, these numerical capacities were used for estimating the prevalence and gender ratio of basic numerical deficits and developmental dyscalculia (DD) over the grade range defined above (N = 11,652 children). The extent to which DD affects the population with poor ability on calculation was also examined. For this purpose, the prevalence and gender ratio of arithmetical dysfluency (AD) were estimated in the same cohort. The estimated prevalence of DD was 3.4%, and the male:female ratio was 4:1. However, the prevalence of AD was almost 3 times as high (9.35%), and no gender differences were found (male:female ratio = 1.07:1). Basic numerical deficits affect 4.54% of school-age population and affect more boys than girls (2.4:1). The differences between the corresponding estimates were highly significant (α < .01). Based on these contrastive findings, it is concluded that DD, defined as a defective sense of numerosity, could be a distinctive disorder that affects only a portion of children with AD.     

Field independence, academic orientation, and achievement

The Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) of field independence was administered to 203 Jamaican sixth form (pre-university) students pursuing advanced-level (A-level) courses with either an arts or a science emphasis. The science-emphasis group obtained significantly higher scores on the GEFT than the arts-emphasis group. In addition, field independence was found to be important for the A-level success of students, regardless of whether they pursued arts- or science-emphasis courses. The implication of this finding to education at advanced level is discussed.     

Leaving whom? Motherless families: problems of termination for the female family therapist

The issue of planned termination is seldom addressed by family therapists. Given the goals and assumptions of most family work the concept may indeed be irrelevant, but there are circumstances where it is necessary not only to understand the principles of planned termination, but the factors in client, family and therapist which can make it difficult to terminate at all. This may be the case where a female therapist has been working with a family where father is the single parent (motherless family): the family may experience itself as incomplete and attempt to draw the therapist into the family to fill the gap left by mother and marital partner, and pari passu the therapist may assume that the family cannot well cope without her. Some strategies for resolving the problems of termination which may arise from such assumptions are described.     

The relation between language and cognition in 3- to 9-year-olds: the acquisition of grammatical gender in French

The French language has a grammatical gender system in which all nouns are assigned either a masculine or a feminine gender. Nouns provide two types of gender cues that can potentially guide gender attribution: morphophonological cues carried by endings and semantic cues (natural gender). The first goal of this study was to describe the acquisition of the probabilistic system based on phonological oppositions on word endings by French-speaking children. The second goal was to explore the extent to which this system affects categorization. In the study, 3- to 9-year-olds assigned gender categorization to invented nouns whose endings were typically masculine, typically feminine, or neutral. Two response conditions were used. In the determiner condition, children indicated the gender class by orally providing the determiner un or une marked for gender. In the picture condition, responses were given by pointing to the picture of a Martian-like female or male person that would be best called by each spoken pseudoword. Results indicated that as young as 3 years, children associated the determiner corresponding to the ending bias at greater than chance levels. Ending-consistent performance increased from 3 to 9 years of age. Moreover, from 4 years of age onward, sensitivity to endings affected categorization. Starting at that age, pictures were selected according to endings at greater than chance levels. This effect also increased with age. The discussion deals with the mechanisms of language acquisition and the relation between language and cognition.     

Sequence and priming in 15 month-olds' reactions to brief arm restraint: evidence for a hierarchy of anger responses

Brief, gentle arm restraint is widely used in experimental studies of children's anger, but the pattern of responses generated by such restraint has been incompletely described. We now describe a hierarchy of responses within trials as well as an escalation across trials that have both methodological and theoretical significance. Mothers of 87 15-month olds prevented them from playing with a toy by restraining their arms on two consecutive 30 sec trials. Physical struggling was the first and most frequent response; children who struggled were significantly more likely to vocalize, and those who vocalized were significantly more likely to show facial expressions of anger. The children's responses became more probable, rapid, and intense during Trial 2 restraint. Overall, the hierarchy was orderly enough to meet criteria for Guttman scalability. The particular sequence observed suggests situational, as opposed to bio-energetic, ordering of responses. Methodologically, the two trial paradigm is a simple, ecologically valid model for studying anger escalation that parallels the "attack priming" of aggression in other species. The magnitude and persistence of anger priming may provide novel measures of anger regulation. Theoretically, the existence of an orderly response hierarchy is consistent with previous observations suggesting that, within a situational context, the sequential appearance of specific behaviors may indicate progressive increases in anger intensity.     

Playing Who We Are Together: Commentary on Henry Kronengold’s “Hey Toy Man”

The two-year treatment of a girl, aged 6–8, as described in Henry Kronengold’s “Hey Toy Man,” was conducted mainly through patient-led, but co-constructed dramatic play. Co-constructed here is meant to convey that it was improvisational and sometimes a reciprocal, even spontaneous, improvisation. Often the girl controlled the therapist, insisting on her story, while therapist tried to introduce ameliorative changes in the storyline. The therapist did not verbally interpret the play. The contribution of this commentary is a close study of the two-person dramatic play sequences, in line with theoretical interests in play in child treatment and co-construction as a lens on the adult analytic process. How did the sequences evolve? What may have been communicated and have been therapeutic in and through the playing itself? What relational dilemmas were explored or evaded? What implicit realizations and mutual recognitions may have occurred? Was there also disowning of unwanted self states and experiences in the play? The child’s perceptions of the therapist’s counter-transference is one line of interest. Perspectives from psy- choanalytic field theory (Baranger, M. &; Baranger, W. (2008), Ferro, A. (1999) are applied.     

Using robots at work during the COVID-19 crisis evokes passion decay: Evidence from field and experimental studies

The growing trend of introducing robots into employees' work lives has become increasingly salient during the global COVID-19 pandemic. In light of this pandemic, it is likely that organisational decision-makers are seeing value in coupling employees with robots for both efficiency- and health-related reasons. An unintended consequence of this coupling, however, may be an increased level of work routinisation and standardisation. We draw primarily from the model of passion decay from the relationship and clinical psychology literature to develop theory and test a model arguing that passion decays as employees increasingly interact with robots for their work activities. We demonstrate that this passion decay leads to an increase of withdrawal behaviour from both the domains of work and family. Drawing further from the model of passion decay, we reveal that employees higher in openness to experience are less likely to suffer from passion decay upon more frequent interactions with robots in the course of work. Across a multi-source, multi-wave field study conducted in Hong Kong (Study 1) and a simulation-based experiment conducted in the United States (Study 2), our hypotheses received support. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Processing complex graphemes in handwriting production

Recent studies on handwriting production and neuropsychological data have suggested that orthographic representations are multilevel structures that encode information on letter identity and order, but also on intermediate-grained processing units such as syllables and morphemes. This study on handwriting production examined whether orthographic representations also include a graphemic-processing level. French adults wrote words containing an embedded one-, two-, or three-letter grapheme (e.g., a in clavier, ai in prairie, ain in plainte) on a digitizer. The results for letter duration revealed that the timing of movement processing depends on grapheme length (e.g., the duration of a for one-letter graphemes was shorter than that for two-letter graphemes, which, in turn, was shorter than that for three-letter graphemes). Two- and three-letter graphemes start to be processed before we start to write them. The results therefore revealed that orthographic representations also encode information on grapheme complexity.