Is Workplace Harassment Hazardous to Your Health?

We examined cross-sectional and lagged effects of sexual harassment (SH) and generalized workplace harassment (GWH) on incidence of self-reported illness, injury, or assault in a sample of over 1,500 university employees. SH and GWH, but not other job stressors, were related to increased odds of illness, injury, or assault. This was true when SH, GWH, and illness, injury, or assault were measured at the same time point, as well as when SH and GWH were measured in year prior to illness, injury, or assault.The data presented here are part of an ongoing longitudinal study of workplace harassment conducted at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Illinois at Chicago. This research was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (grants AA09989 and AA13332). Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, April 2004, Chicago, Illinois. The data were collected by the Survey Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.     

Finger gnosia: a predictor of numerical abilities in children?

This paper aimed to test the specificity of predicting power of finger gnosia on later numerical abilities in school-age children and to contribute to the understanding of this effect. Forty-one children were tested in the beginning of Grade 1 on finger gnosia, left-right orientation (another sign of the Gerstmann "syndrome"), and global development. Fifteen months later, numerical and reading abilities were assessed. Analyses of the results indicated that, contrary to the general measures of cognitive development, performance in the finger gnosia test was a good predictor of numerical skills 1 year later but not of reading skills, which proves the specificity of that predictor. The same conclusion was also true for the left-right orientation. However, finger gnosia could equally predict performance in numerical tasks that do or do not rely heavily on finger representation or on magnitude representation. Results are discussed in terms of the localizationist and the functional hypotheses.     

Individual Accountability in Cooperative Learning Groups at the College Level: Differential Effects on High,Average, and Low Exam Performers

Over a three-semester period in a large undergraduate human development course, students were assigned to 5–7 member groups to work together in preparing for an exam in one of the five content units in the course. Their exam performance was tracked over three units: a baseline unit in which students worked only individually, a unit in which they worked in cooperative teams, and a follow-up unit in which the formal cooperative team structure was removed. Three different bonus-credit contingencies were used in the cooperative learning unit across the three semesters: (a) awarding full bonus credit to each individual in the group if the group as a whole improved its exam performance by the specified amount, (b) awarding partial bonus credit to each individual in the group if the group as a whole improved it exam performance by the specified amount and full bonus credit to each individual who also improved by the specified amount, and (c) awarding full bonus credit to an individual in the group if both the group and the individual improved exam performance by the specified amount. The three contingencies produced somewhat similar patterns of change for low and average performers, but the high performers fared better under the last two contingencies than under the group-only contingency.     

A Review of Self-Management Interventions Targeting Academic Outcomes for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

The purpose of this review was to report on the effectiveness and focus of academic self-management interventions for children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders. Twenty-two studies published in 20 articles and involving 78 participants met inclusionary criteria. The overall mean effect size (ES) across those studies was 1.80 (range –0.46 to 3.00), indicating effects were generally large in magnitude and educationally meaningful. Self-monitoring interventions were the predominant type of self-management technique used by researchers. The mean ES for intervention types were self-evaluation (1.13), self-monitoring (1.90), strategy instruction techniques (1.75), self-instruction techniques (2.71), and multiple-component interventions (2.11). Interventions targeted improvement in math calculation skills more than any other area. The mean ES by academic area were math interventions (1.97), writing (1.13), reading (2.28), and social studies (2.66). There was evidence to support a claim of the generalization and maintenance of findings. Implications, limitations, and areas for future research are discussed.     

Explicit Instruction With or Without High-<Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis> Sequences: Which is More Effective to Teach Multiplication Facts?

Basic fact acquisition is an important component for developing higher-order math skills. However, getting students with a history of academic noncompliance to engage in activities related to skills acquisition can be difficult. Prior research demonstrates that engagement increases when nonpreferred activities are preceded by a series of brief activities with a high probability of completion. This technique, called high-p task/request sequences, was not fully explored within the context of skill acquisition. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of adding high-p sequences to explicit instruction on the math fact acquisition of three elementary-age students in a learning support classroom. Results showed no differences in fact acquisition between explicit instruction and explicit instruction with an added high-p component. However, the high-p sessions took nearly twice as long to complete when compared to explicit instruction alone. Implications for instructional efficiency and limitations of the high-p procedures for acquisition tasks are discussed.     

Mnemonics Strategy Development: Improving Alphabetic Understanding In Turkish Students,At Risk for Failure in EFL Settings

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of integrated mnemonics on consonant letter naming and consonant sound production for three 4th grade Turkish students, at-risk for failure in an English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classroom. Mnemonic picture cards, where the target consonant letter was embedded as an integral part of the picture, were developed (e.g., the letter C as the clock, the letter D as the drum). Results showed that (a) all three students reached mastery on consonant letter naming, and (b) all three students showed marked improvement for consonant sound production, with one student reaching mastery. Letter-sound correspondence performance remained near instructional levels one week post-intervention. Generalization data showed students could produce some words that began and ended with consonant sounds, once consonant letter-sound correspondence was mastered.     

A Comparison of Results and Acceptability of Functional Behavioral Assessment Procedures with a Group of Middle School Students with Emotional/Behavioral Disorders (E/BD)

There is currently controversy over the validity and applicability of functional behavioral assessment (FBA) procedures with students with emotional/behavioral disorders (E/BD). A set of FBA procedures, including teacher and student interviews and direct classroom observations, were carried out with eight students with disabilities (7 classified E/BD, one classified LD). Results indicated that when all three methods (teacher/student interviews, classroom observations) yielded a ranking for a function they agreed 64% of those occasions. For those situations in which there was overall disagreement there was agreement between teacher interview and classroom observations most of the time. Social validity data indicated that both students and teachers felt that the assessment procedures were a useful and productive process.