The Implications of Adolescents’ Academic Word Knowledge for Achievement and Instruction

The purpose of the current study was to determine relationships between orthographic and morphological awareness of academic words and achievement across content areas. Participants (n = 256), diverse seventh and eighth graders, took three word knowledge measures; two standardized achievement measures were used as outcomes. Orthographic awareness of academic words explained variance in achievement, beyond overall breadth of vocabulary knowledge, with significant changes in R² ranging from 0.02 to 0.08. Morphological awareness of academic words explained variance in achievement, beyond overall breadth of vocabulary knowledge, with significant changes in R² ranging from 0.06 to 0.16.     

Action-control beliefs and behaviors as predictors of change in adjustment across the transition to middle school

Abstract

We examined longitudinal changes in young adolescents’ (N=368) action-control beliefs, coping behaviors, and adjustment (i.e., positive and negative affect, depression, aggression) across the transition from elementary school to middle school. Results indicated greater inter-individual instability in adjustment during this transition than during the previous school year. Using ordinary least-squares (OLS) growth models to extract intra-individual change scores for each variable (i.e., slopes and intercepts), we conducted a series of stepwise regressions to determine which features of control beliefs and coping behaviors best predicted changes in adjustment across the transition to middle school. We found that negative coping behaviors (i.e., antisocial coping) consistently predicted negative changes in the adjustment variables (e.g., greater depression, more aggression), whereas positive beliefs and behaviors did not consistently predict changes in the adjustment variables.     

DETERMINATION AND EVALUATION OF RATE MEASUREMENTS IN THE ANALYSIS OF SPACE MEDICAL DATA

Measures of rate of change and of rate of rate of change are developed for application to physiological and psychological data. Examples are given of the use of these measures with heart-rate data for comparisons within and between subjects. It is shown that the measures provide information over and above that offered by means and variances, and that the measures appropriately reflect the impact of external variables.     

Basic Response Time Tools for Studying General Processing Capacity in Attention,Perception, and Cognition

One of the more important constructs in the study of attention, perception, and cognition is that of capacity. The authors reviewed some of the common meanings of this construct and proposed a more precise treatment. They showed how the distribution of response times can be used to derive measures of process capacity and to further illustrate how these measures can be used to address important hypotheses in cognition.     

A Comparative Study of Groups of High and Low Intelligence in Learning a Maze

In accordance with the determination of base-line heart rate and running in an activity wheel, 14 Long-Evans male rats were given ten 30 minute sessions of Immobile-Avoid conditioning followed by 30 minute sessions of Active-Avoid conditioning. Control Ss were yoked to the experimental Ss.

Experimental Ss made significantly fewer responses in the immobile-avoid period and significantly more responses in the active-avoid period than did the yoked control Ss. Heart rate was correlated with skeletal activity both for experimental and control Ss. For experimental Ss, low heart rate was concomitant with a low amount of activity in the immobile-avoid period and high heart rate was concomitant with greater skeletal activity in the active-avoid period.

These results support the position that heart rate is secondary to responses of the somatic-motor system and that heart rate during immobile-avoid or active avoid conditioning is more closely related to the level of somatic-motor activity than to the emotional stress which purportedly motivates instrumental avoidance behavior.     

The Gettier Intuition from South America to Asia

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail...     

Adolescents’ Involvement in Cyber Bullying and Perceptions of School: The Importance of Perceived Peer Acceptance for Female Adolescents

Young people are spending increasing amounts of time using digital technology and, as such, are at great risk of being involved in cyber bullying as a victim, bully, or bully/victim. Despite cyber bullying typically occurring outside the school environment, the impact of being involved in cyber bullying is likely to spill over to school. Fully 285 11- to 15-year-olds (125 male and 160 female, M _age = 12.19 years, SD = 1.03) completed measures of cyber bullying involvement, self-esteem, trust, perceived peer acceptance, and perceptions of the value of learning and the importance of school. For young women, involvement in cyber bullying as a victim, bully, or bully/victim negatively predicted perceptions of learning and school, and perceived peer acceptance mediated this relationship. The results indicated that involvement in cyber bullying negatively predicted perceived peer acceptance which, in turn, positively predicted perceptions of learning and school. For young men, fulfilling the bully/victim role negatively predicted perceptions of learning and school. Consequently, for young women in particular, involvement in cyber bullying spills over to impact perceptions of learning. The findings of the current study highlight how stressors external to the school environment can adversely impact young women’s perceptions of school and also have implications for the development of interventions designed to ameliorate the effects of cyber bullying.     

The statistical properties of the Survivor Interaction Contrast

The Survivor Interaction Contrast (SIC) is a powerful tool for assessing the architecture and stopping rule of a model of mental processes (Townsend & Nozawa, 1995). Despite its demonstrated utility, the methodology has lacked a method for statistical testing until now. In this paper we briefly describe the SIC then develop some basic statistical properties of the measure. These developments lead to a statistical test for rejecting certain classes of models based on the SIC. We verify these tests using simulated data, then demonstrate their use on data from a simple cognitive task.     

Age-related declines in general cognitive abilities of Balb/C mice are associated with disparities in working memory, body weight, and general activity

A defining characteristic of age-related cognitive decline is a deficit in general cognitive performance. Here we use a testing and analysis regimen that allows us to characterize the general learning abilities of young (3-5 mo old) and aged (19-21 mo old) male and female Balb/C mice. Animals' performance was assessed on a battery of seven diverse learning tasks. Aged animals exhibited deficits in five of the seven tasks and ranked significantly lower than their young counterparts in general learning abilities (aggregate performance across the battery of tasks). Aging added variability to common core performance (i.e., general learning ability), which translated into increased variability on the individual cognitive tasks. Relatedly, general learning abilities did not differ between the two ages among the best quartile of learners (i.e., cognitive abilities were spared in a subsample of the aged animals). Additionally, working memory capacity (resistance to interference) and duration (resistance to decay) accounted for significantly more of the variability in general learning abilities in aged relative to young animals. Tests of 15 noncognitive performance variables indicated that an increase in body weight (and an associated decrease in general activity) was characteristic of those aged animals which exhibited deficient general learning abilities. These results suggest the possibility that general cognitive deficits in aged animals reflect a failure of specific components of the working memory system, and may be related to variations in body weight and an associated decrease in activity.