Piloting ‘Clever Kids’: A randomized-controlled trial assessing feasibility,efficacy, and acceptability of a socioemotional well-being programme for children with dyslexia

Children with dyslexia are at elevated risk of internalizing (emotional) and externalizing (behavioural) problems. Clever Kids is a nine-week socioemotional well-being programme developed specifically for upper primary school children with dyslexia. In a small randomized-controlled trial, we tested the feasibility, efficacy, and acceptability of the Clever Kids programme. ‘Forty children (M_age = 10.45 years, 65% male) with clinically diagnosed dyslexia too part in the study. Children were randomized to either attend Clever Kids (n = 20) or to a wait-list control condition (n = 20). Coping skills, self-esteem, resilience, emotion regulation, and internalizing and externalizing symptoms were measured at pre-programme, post-programme, and at three-month follow-up. Recruitment and retention rates indicate high feasibility for further evaluation of the programme. There was a significant interaction between intervention condition and time for non-productive coping [F(2, 76) = 4.29, p = 0.017, f² = 0.11]. Children who attended Clever Kids significantly reduced their use of non-productive coping strategies, and this was maintained at three-month follow-up assessment. For all other outcomes, the interactions between intervention condition and time were non-significant. The programme appears acceptable to children with dyslexia and their families, but may be improved by further reducing the number of activities involving reading and writing. Clever Kids improved the coping skills of children with dyslexia; however, a larger trial is needed to replicate this finding and investigate whether programme attendance is associated with additional improvements in children’s socioemotional well-being.     

The Relationship Between Artificial and Second Language Learning

Artificial language learning (ALL) experiments have become an important tool in exploring principles of language and language learning. A persistent question in all of this work, however, is whether ALL engages the linguistic system and whether ALL studies are ecologically valid assessments of natural language ability. In the present study, we considered these questions by examining the relationship between performance in an ALL task and second language learning ability. Participants enrolled in a Spanish language class were evaluated using a number of different measures of Spanish ability and classroom performance, which was compared to IQ and a number of different measures of ALL performance. The results show that success in ALL experiments, particularly more complex artificial languages, correlates positively with indices of L2 learning even after controlling for IQ. These findings provide a key link between studies involving ALL and our understanding of second language learning in the classroom.     

Applying processing trees in social psychology

Processing tree models offer a powerful research framework by which the contributions of cognitive processes to a task can be separated and quantified. The present article reviews a number of applications of processing tree models in the domain of social psychology in order to illustrate the steps to be taken in developing and validating a given model and applying it to the measurement and comparison of processes across experimental and quasi-experimental conditions. Process dissociation models are discussed as special cases of processing tree models. Crucial assumptions of processing tree models are considered and methods to overcome violations of such assumptions are reviewed. In addition to the application of processing tree models for the analysis of social and cognitive processes, their value is also discussed for the elicitation of truthful responses to socially sensitive questions.     

Social cues and verbal framing in risky choice

We examined how people use social and verbal cues of differing priorities in making social decisions. In Experiment 1, formally identical life – death choice problems were presented in different hypothetical group contexts and were phrased in either a positive or negative frame. The risk‐seeking choice became more dominant as the number of kin in an endangered group increased. Framing effects occurred only in a heterogeneous group context where the lives at risk were a mixture of kin and strangers. No framing effect was found when the same problem was presented in the context of a homogeneous group consisting of either all kin or all strangers. We viewed the framing effects to be a sign of indecisive risk preference due to the differential effects of a kinship cue and a stranger cue on choice. In Experiment 2, we presented the life – death problem in two artificial group contexts involving either 6 billion human lives or 6 billion extraterrestrial lives. A framing effect was found only in the human context. Two pre‐conditions of framing effects appear to be social unfamiliarity of a decision problem and aspiration level of a decision maker. In Experiment 3, we analyzed the direction of the framing effect by balancing the framing. The direction of the framing effect depended on the baseline level of risk preference determined by a specific decision context. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Identity Through Time and Trope Bundles

This paper brings together two theories that I have propounded separately elsewhere. The first is the view that concrete individuals are constituted completely by tropes, that they are trope bundles. The second and more recently developed theory is that of the two major categories of concrete individuals, continuants and occurrents, the latter are ontologically more basic than the former and that continuants are to be viewed as invariants among occurrents under equivalence relations. The latter theory embodies on its own an account of the nature of identity through time of things that are in time but not extended in time. The question is whether this view is compatible with the trope bundle account of concrete particulars, and, assuming it is (both theories being separately attractive) whether bringing them together entails any modifications (other than complexity) to either theory. After examining likely metaphysical difficulties the tentative conclusion is that the attractiveness of the trope bundle theory persists despite the marriage, but that the mental picture of what tropes and trope bundles are must be overhauled. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Introduction: The university revisited

Although universities are asked to play a role in the European knowledge society, the precise scope and meaning of this role is still under discussion. A major issue in this debate is the trend to adapt universities to economic needs and demands of society. In view of taking a critical stance against a one-sided economic interpretation of activities and functions of universities, their so-called “public” role is increasingly stressed in the debate as a crucial responsibility of universities that should not be marginalized and therefore deserves our attention. In this paper, which is the introduction to a special issue on the public role of the university, we want to stress the importance of addressing the question of “the role of universities in the Europe of knowledge” in an open way and thus, without prejudices against or in favour of possible answers. It is our contention that a critical view of what is happening in universities today cannot simply rely on authoritative ideas or principles that are vaguely reminiscent of our university traditions. Consequently, this introductory paper pleas for a firmer argumentative and a richer empirical basis that takes account of the fact that our background (horizon) has thoroughly changed in comparison to traditions that still implicitly inform our judgement of what universities can do, should do or should not do. Finally, we will discuss the way in which the articles collected in this issue are intended stimulating and supporting the debate on the public role of the university in Europe.

African American Children’s Depressive Symptoms: The Prospective Effects of Neighborhood Disorder, Stressful Life Events, and Parenting

The prospective effects of observed neighborhood disorder, stressful life events, and parents’ engagement in inductive reasoning on adolescents’ depressive symptoms were examined using data collected from 777 African American families. Multilevel analyses revealed that stressful life events experienced at age 11 predicted depressive symptoms at age 13. Furthermore, a significant interaction between neighborhood disorder and parents’ engagement in inductive reasoning was found, indicating that parental use of inductive reasoning was a protective factor for depressive symptoms particularly for youths living in highly disordered neighborhoods. The importance of examining correlates of depressive symptoms from a contextual framework, focusing on individuals, families, and neighborhood contexts, is emphasized.     

The effects of individual differences and task difficulty on inattentional blindness

Most studies of inattentional blindness—the failure to notice an unexpected object when attention is focused elsewhere—have focused on one critical trial. For that trial, noticing the unexpected object might be a result of random variability, so that any given individual would be equally likely to notice the unexpected object. On the other hand, individual differences in the ability to perform the primary task might make noticing more likely for some individuals than for others. Increasing the difficulty of the primary task has been shown to decrease noticing rates for both brief static displays (Cartwright-Finch & Lavie, 2007) and dynamic monitoring tasks (Simons & Chabris, 1999). However, those studies did not explore whether individual differences in noticing arise from differences in the ability to perform the primary task. For our Experiment 1, we used a staircase procedure to equate primary task performance across individuals in a dynamic inattentional blindness task and found that the demands of the primary task affected noticing rates when individual differences in accuracy were minimized. In Experiment 2, we found that individual differences in primary task performance did not predict noticing of an unexpected object. Together, these findings suggest that although the demands of the primary task do affect inattentional blindness rates, individual differences in the ability to meet those demands do not.     

ENHANCING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A PLAY INTERVENTION BY ABOLISHING THE REINFORCING VALUE OF STEREOTYPY: A PILOT STUDY

An alternating treatments design compared one condition in which a child with autism was allowed to engage in stereotypy freely prior to the intervention (abolishing operation component) to a second condition without the free‐access period. Levels of stereotypy and problem behavior were lower and levels of functional play were higher in the condition with the abolishing operation component. These data provide preliminary support for the use of abolishing operations in interventions to increase the play skills of children with autism.