EXAMINATION OF THREE TECHNIQUES FOR IDENTIFYING FIRST-GRADE CHILDREN AT RISK FOR DIFFICULTY IN WORD IDENTIFICATION WITH AN EMPHASIS ON REDUCING THE FALSE NEGATIVE ERROR RATE

The success of early intervention programs created to prevent children from experiencing reading failure is contingent upon the accurate identification of children at risk for reading difficulties. The present study assessed 291 first graders (M Age = 79.7 months; 54.9% female, 45.1% male) on reading, intelligence, and phonological processing at the beginning and end of the academic year to determine the accuracy of three different approaches to identification. The first procedure used the calibration data from a reference group's discriminant analysis, the second simply determined the children who scored below the mean on all of the reading and phonological variables (Simple Computation), and the last used a weighting system (Complex Computation). The children were classified into good and poor reading groups based on composite reading scores determined by averaging their standard scores on Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test-Revised (Woodcock, 1987) at the end of the year. The poor readers were further classified, based on their scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (Dunn & Dunn, 1981) into groups containing children who had reading difficulties (RD) and children whose reading abilities were commensurate with their intelligence (intelligence commensurate, IC). Although all of the procedures provided relatively accurate identification, 80.2%, 87.3%, 89.7%, for the discriminant analysis, Simple Computation, and Complex Computation, respectively, the last procedure provided the best overall accuracy with the smallest percentage of false negatives (6.2%).     

Slaves,Fetuses, and Animals

This essay is an exploration in ethical rhetoric, specifically, the ethics of comparing the status of fetuses and animals to enslaved Africans. On the view of those who make such comparisons, the fetus is treated as a slave through abortion, reproductive technologies, and stem cell research, while animals are enslaved through factory farming, experimentation, and as laborers, circus performers, and the like. I explore how the apotheosis of the fetus and the humanization of animals represent the flipside of the subjugation and animalization of black people. At their ethical best, those who compare aborted fetuses and abused animals with enslaved black people have laudable ethical goals. The anti‐abortion right and the animal rights left, respectively, wish to abolish abortion (and associated reproductive technologies that harm prenatal life) and the unethical treatment of animals. They seek, respectively, to reimagine the ethical‐political status of the fetus and to criticize the animalization of animals, the practice of constructing them as beasts. While sympathetic to these goals, I worry about the comparative diminution of the historical, literal enslavement of black people. To what extent, I ask, does the comparative ethical rhetoric of fetal slaves and animal slaves affect historical constructions of black people as beastly and disposable?     

Blurring the Dichotomy of Good and Evil: The Idiosyncratic Helping Strategies Associated with Unmitigated‐Agentic and Unmitigated‐Communal Personalities

We theorized that unmitigated‐agentic personality constructs (UAPs)—prioritizing 'getting ahead’ over 'getting along’—and unmitigated‐communal personality constructs (UCPs)—prioritizing getting along over getting ahead—are associated with distinct affect‐regulatory helping strategies. In Study 1 (N = 179), UAPs, on average, related to greater negative‐affect versus positive‐affect induction helping tactics. In two experiments, UAPs, on average, related to a greater likelihood of selecting anger‐inducing versus love‐inducing or sadness‐inducing songs to help a target overcome a breakup (Study 2; N = 313) and greater selection of anger‐inducing and hubris‐inducing messages versus authentic‐pride‐inducing and love‐inducing messages to help a teammate struggling in a game (Study 3; N = 246). UCPs manifested the opposite patterns. Generally, these associations corresponded with helping‐strategy utility beliefs and were robust to moderators of helping target (self or other; Study 2) or altruistic versus selfish motives (Study 3). Study 4 (N = 205) provided some evidence of ecological validity in contexts of recalled everyday helping. Associations between personality constructs and relative helping strategies were about moderate in size (rs ~ .20) across these four studies. Findings suggest that UAPs are associated with helping strategies believed to promote ‘contemptuous’ self‐enhancement relative to ‘innocuous’ self‐enhancement and self‐transcendence, and vice versa for UCPs. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology