Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Resilience and Severe Burns

To define resilience and its components for individuals with severe burns, the authors integrated findings of a general literature review with opinions offered by 39 burn survivors through individual interviews. Results indicate that core factors influencing resiliency include social support (cultural influences and community, school, personal, and familial support,), cognitive skills (intelligence, coping style, personal control, and assignment of meaning), and psychological resources. Counseling strategies to strengthen resilience are suggested.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.     

Biased expectations of burned or traumatized children and adolescents as revealed through predictions of Rorschach responding

This study examines helper bias through predictions of burned and traumatized children's and adolescents' Rorschach responding on ten content variables: human, fictional human, animal, anatomy, blood, clothing, explosion, food, fire, and sex. Two groups of helpers consisting of 139 inexperienced individuals and 48 members of the American Burn Association who worked directly with patients were asked to predict Rorschach content responding for children and adolescents who had been severely burned (n = 86) or traumatized (n = 75). Inaccurate and inconsistent predictions are interpreted as evidence of biased expectations which could influence the therapeutic relationship between helpers and patients. To control for the confound of Rorschach knowledge, 11 psychologists with Rorschach expertize also made predictions. An analysis of Rorschach responding in the two groups of children and adolescents is also presented.     

TRAINING CONSERVATION OF QUANTITY (LIQUIDS) IN WEST AFRICAN (BAOULE) CHILDREN

A developmental ‘lag’ is found in the Conservation of Quantity (Liquids) in a sample of 73 rural, schooled Baoulé children (Ivory Coast, West Africa) aged 7 to 14 years. This study was designed to investigate if this ‘lag’ could be reduced or bridged through training and whether it could be attributed to differences in ‘performance’ or in ‘competence’. A sub-sample of 28 children aged 7 to 9 years was divided into two matched groups, one being trained for Conservation of Liquids and the other for Class Inclusion (Lavallée and Dasen in press). Statistically significant training effects were observed, which generalized to other concrete operational concepts and remained stable over at least one month. Since no ‘actualization’ or very fast learning occurred, the ‘lag’ was attributed to differences in competence; the training was sufficient to bridge the developmental lag.     

Cognitive abilities and disabilities in infantile autism: A review

The literature on various aspects of learning and performance in autistic children is reviewed and interpreted as indicating very little that is specific to autism. Inadequate and inconsistent methodology precludes generalizations concerning the nature of the disorder. It is suggested that future research should be particularly concerned with controlling for developmental influences on performance, and with investigation of the higher functioning autistic children who are less governed by retardation factors. The current evidence is considered to support a hypothesis concerning abnormal hemisphere functioning in this group of children.