Gifted Achievers and Underachievers: A Comparison of Patterns Found in School Files

Underachievement in gifted students has perplexed educators and parents for decades. Researchers are continually looking for information about the nature and patterns of gifted underachievers that will enlighten those concerned. Counselors are particularly involved, because they often are asked to provide illumination and interventions. This study demonstrates how information in the cumulative school file, accessible to the school counselor, is a rich resource for understanding the patterns of achievement and underachievement among students identified as gifted and for use in planning interventions for students at risk for underachievement. Participants were gifted students (N = 153) who were determined to be either achievers or under-achievers, based on their grade point average at graduation. High and moderate achievers and moderate and extreme underachievers were compared on information found in the school file, such as attendance, tardiness, course selection, and onset and duration of underachievement. Results indicate that there are differences between achievers and underachievers on a number of variables found in the school files. Profiles of these groups are presented with suggestions for actions by counselors.     

Unilateral agraphia after section of the posterior half of the truncus of the corpus callosum

Children ranging in age from 3 to 12 tapped on a morse key with their index finger as fast as possible. After a control test, they concurrently tapped and recited a nursery rhyme, recited animal names, and memorized shapes. Previous results suggested that more interference in a motor task results from attempting at the same time to perform another task controlled by the same, than by a different, hemisphere. Right-handed tapping and talking both used left hemisphere space; left-handed tapping and talking were controlled by different hemispheres. Relative to silent tapping concurrent talking caused a greater drop in right-hand tapping rate than in left-hand tapping rate in both the rhyme and animal conditions. Interference by shape memorizing was equal across hands. The differential effect of speaking on right-hand preference indicates the left lateralization of speech output control. The size of this effect did not vary with increasing grade level. The findings support the view that speech output control is fully lateralized at least by age 3 years.     

Form and content in the conjoint treatment of sexual dysfunction: A controlled study

Forty eight couples with impotence, anorgasmia or loss of libido were randomly allocated to one of three treatment conditions: (i) modified Masters and Johnson (male and female therapist), (ii) modified Masters and Johnson (one therapist) and (iii) marital therapy and relaxation comparison procedure (one therapist). The major variables investigated were type of therapy, number of therapists (one or two) and sex of therapist. Post-treatment and one year follow-up assessments showed no significant difference in outcome between treatment approaches. No significant effects were found for sex of therapist and the interaction between sex of therapist and sex of presenter.     

Putting personal growth into an occupational psychology curriculum

This paper outlines an alternative approach to curriculum design in higher education focusing in particular on the introduction of personal growth into the programme, and on facilitating the selection by students of the optimal choice of options. It is argued that models of curriculum design need to take cognizance of at least four interested parties; and that in the resolutions of their divergent interests, curriculum designers must make clear their most potent values, as well as their theories and assumptions about the nature of learning. A brief outline follows of two courses based upon these propositions. Finally, evaluations by both trainers and students involved in these courses are presented.     

Conceptualizing Self-determination from a Behavioral Perspective: The Role of Choice,Self-control,and Self-management

The goal of education can be defined in many ways; but in searching the literature, we found that in most cases, people consider the goal of education to be developing a self-determined individual. Self-determination is an abstract term. Behavior analysts may find this term difficult to define. Therefore, it may be difficult to observe and measure whether “self-determined behaviors” have developed. Many other service providers use this term frequently; thus, behavior analysts working with these service providers must come to terms with this concept in order to better collaborate. We argue that self-determination can be operationally defined with the concepts of choice, self-control, and self-management. By using the measurable behaviors included in these concepts, we believe that services can be developed to teach self-determination skills. This paper explores these concepts and how they can contribute to an operational definition of self-determination, and ultimately, help behavior analysts work with other providers to effectively teach self-determination to individuals with developmental disabilities.

     

A Dyadic IRT Model

Psychometrika - We propose a dyadic Item Response Theory (dIRT) model for measuring interactions of pairs of individuals when the responses to items represent the actions (or behaviors,...     

EARSHOT: A Minimal Neural Network Model of Incremental Human Speech Recognition

Despite the lack of invariance problem (the many-to-many mapping between acoustics and percepts), human listeners experience phonetic constancy and typically perceive what a speaker intends. Most models of human speech recognition (HSR) have side-stepped this problem, working with abstract, idealized inputs and deferring the challenge of working with real speech. In contrast, carefully engineered deep learning networks allow robust, real-world automatic speech recognition (ASR). However, the complexities of deep learning architectures and training regimens make it difficult to use them to provide direct insights into mechanisms that may support HSR. In this brief article, we report preliminary results from a two-layer network that borrows one element from ASR, long short-term memory nodes, which provide dynamic memory for a range of temporal spans. This allows the model to learn to map real speech from multiple talkers to semantic targets with high accuracy, with human-like timecourse of lexical access and phonological competition. Internal representations emerge that resemble phonetically organized responses in human superior temporal gyrus, suggesting that the model develops a distributed phonological code despite no explicit training on phonetic or phonemic targets. The ability to work with real speech is a major advance for cognitive models of HSR.     

Why People Join Terrorist Groups in Kuwait: A Qualitative Examination

Qualitative interviews were conducted with nine members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda currently incarcerated in Kuwait's Central Prison. The semistructured interviews attempted to understand psychosocial factors in Kuwait that contributed to their decision to join extremist organizations. Interviews were analyzed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and the emergent themes identified the following core themes explaining their involvement: (1) religious identity development; (2) personal connections; (3) propaganda; (4) defense of Islam; and (5) social marginalization. Participants described a process whereby their religion became a central part of their personal identity. As their religious identity developed, they became involved in Islamic organizations where they met people involved with ISIS or Al-Qaeda. These social connections exposed them to jihadi propaganda which, in addition to increased military conflict in the Middle East, crystallized their beliefs that Islam is under attack, and they were religiously obligated to defend it. The results also identified societal factors that increased the probability of engaging in terrorism including relatively low levels of education, coming from low socioeconomic groups in Kuwait, and feeling socially marginalized by broader Kuwaiti society.