Three Factors in L2 Reading Ability: Using Rauding Theory to Reanalyze a Study by Nassaji and Geva

This study investigated whether structured or unstructured questioning strategies, combined with two levels of domain knowledge and text coherence, significantly affect text memory and text learning. Results of this study suggest that high domain knowledge and structured questioning strategies are the most reliable predictors of text memory and text learning. Several main effects favoring high domain knowledge arose on text memory and, to a lesser extent, text learning measures. Significant results involving structured questioning techniques (i.e., signal words and generic question stems) were detected primarily through interaction effects and one main effect. While not always significantly superior, generic question stem participants outperformed their signal word and unguided questioning counterparts on the majority of text memory and text learning variables.     

‘Be careful,or you'll act corruptly and make a carved image for yourselves,in the form of a figure,the likeness male or female’ (Deut. 4:16): A commentary on Norenzayan's Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict (2013)

Norenzayan's book is an ambitious attempt to integrate recent research from behavioral economics and social psychology, particularly priming studies, into a book about religion. If the account is meant as an explanation of religion or big religion, it does not succeed. If it has more modest aims, namely to describe how surveillance institutions, of which big religion is one important class, can sometimes lead to cooperation and conflict, then it is quite successful in doing so.     

Neighborhood Crime and School Climate as Predictors of Elementary School Academic Quality: A Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis

Past research has found negative relationships between neighborhood structural disadvantage and students’ academic outcomes. Comparatively little work has evaluated the associations between characteristics of neighborhoods and schools themselves. This study explored the longitudinal, reciprocal relationships between neighborhood crime and school-level academic achievement within 500 urban schools. Results revealed that higher neighborhood crime (and particularly violent crime) predicted decreases in school academic achievement across time. School climate emerged as one possible mechanism within this relationship, with higher neighborhood crime predicting decreases in socioemotional learning and safety, but not academic rigor. All three dimensions of school climate were predictive of changes in academic achievement. Although this research supports a primarily unidirectional hypothesis of neighborhoods’ impacts on embedded settings, additional work is needed to understand these relationships using additional conceptualizations of neighborhood climate.     

Recent frege studies

MICHAEL D. RESNIK, Frege and the philosophy of mathematics. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1980. 244 pp. $16.50.

HANS D. SLUGA, Gottlob Frege. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. xi + 203 pp. £ 12.95.     

Time-dependent impairment of inhibitory avoidance retention in rats by posttraining infusion of a mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase inhibitor into cortical and limbic structures

Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) is abundantly expressed in postmitotic neurons of the developed nervous system. MAPK is activated and required for induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) in the CA1 area of the hippocampus, which is blocked by the specific inhibitor of the MAPK kinase, PD 098059. Recently it was demonstrated that MAPK is activated in the hippocampus after training and is necessary for contextual fear conditioning learning. The present work tests the role of the MAPK cascade in step-down inhibitory avoidance (IA) retention. PD 098059 (50 microM) was bilaterally injected (0.5 microl/side) into the CA1 region of the dorsal hippocampus or entorhinal cortex at 0, 90, 180, or 360 min, or into the amygdala or parietal cortex at 0, 180, or 360 min after IA training in rats using a 0.4-mA foot shock. Retention testing was carried out 24 h after training. PD 098059 impaired retention when injected into the dorsal hippocampus at 180 min, but not 0, 90, and 360 min after training. When infused into the entorhinal cortex, PD 098059 was amnestic at 0 and 180 min, but not at 90 and 360 min after training. The MAPKK inhibitor also impairs IA retention when infused into the parietal cortex immediately after training, but not at 180 or 360 min. Infusions performed into amygdala were amnestic at 180 min, but not at 0 and 360 min after training. Our results suggest a time-dependent involvement of the MAPK cascade in the posttraining memory processing of IA; the time dependency is different in the hippocampus, amygdala, entorhinal cortex, or parietal cortex of rats.     

Categoricity Theorems and Conceptions of Set

Two models of second-order ZFC need not be isomorphic to each other, but at least one is isomorphic to an initial segment of the other. The situation is subtler for impure set theory, but Vann McGee has recently proved a categoricity result for second-order ZFCU plus the axiom that the urelements form a set. Two models of this theory with the same universe of discourse need not be isomorphic to each other, but the pure sets of one are isomorphic to the pure sets of the other.This paper argues that similar results obtain for considerably weaker second-order axiomatizations of impure set theory that are in line with two different conceptions of set, the iterative conception and the limitation of size doctrine.     

Mental maps in memory retrieval and comprehension.

How do people use spatial information stored in maps? This question has been explored in a number of domains, such as memory and language comprehension, with differing results. Some studies of how experimentally learned maps are organised in memory, using primed recognition, have found temporal information to influence mental map organisation. In contrast, studies of narrative comprehension, using probe identification and anaphoric reading times, have observed spatial effects. This study combines these two research traditions and shows that the organisation observed in long-term memory differs from the organisation in narrative comprehension, even when both tasks refer to the same map.     

The Role of School-based Group Mentoring in Promoting Resilience among Vulnerable High School Students

This study examined the role of participation in a year-long school-based group mentoring program, Project Arrive (PA), on increasing resilience during the first year of high school among students identified as being at high risk for school dropout. Participants were 114, ninth grade students taking part in one of 32 PA mentoring groups, and 71 statistically matched comparison students (53% male, 75% eligible for free/reduced-price lunch, 62% Latinx). Using a propensity score with inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to reduce selection bias, and a multi-level model to account for non-independence of data within mentoring groups, we examined changes from pre-test to program exit on seven external resilience resources (developmental supports and opportunities) and four internal resilience assets (personal strengths). At program exit, PA participants had higher adjusted means than comparisons on six external resources, including school support, school belonging, school meaningful participation, peer caring relationships, prosocial peers, and home meaningful participation. PA participants also had higher adjusted means on one internal asset, problem solving. Results point to the promise of group mentoring as an approach for increasing resilience among academically vulnerable adolescents.