Test anxiety and comprehension efficiency: The role of prior knowledge and working memory deficits

The hypotheses that test anxiety is associated with a deficit in prior knowledge and/or working memory capacity, that anxiety impairs comprehension efficiency, and that deficits in knowledge and capacity underlie the efficiency impairment, were tested. In Study 1, high-anxiety students were characterized by lower scores in several vocabulary measures, compared with low-anxiety students. In Study 2, high-anxiety individuals showed inferior working memory capacity to low-anxiety individuals under evaluative stress conditions, but not under non-stress conditions. In Study 3 high-anxiety subjects exhibited lower efficiency scores than low-anxiety subjects in expository texts without a summary: The former employed a greater amount of reading time than the latter to acquire an equivalent amount of information. In addition, the disadvantage in efficiency associated with anxiety was removed when differences in vocabulary knowledge were partialled out statistically. Instead, that disadvantage was only reduced, but not eliminated, when differences in transitory working memory capacity were partialled out. Therefore, the prior knowledge deficit hypothesis accounts for the impairment in reading efficiency associated with high anxiety better than the transitory working memory reduction hypothesis.     

Building commitment to change: The role of perceived supervisor support and competence

Commitment to change is considered the glue that binds people and change goals. Still, few studies have explored how employees develop their commitment to organizational change. The present study examined the relationship between supervisor competence and support, and employee's commitment to change. Participants were 210 full-time employees from two public organizations that had recently faced major change interventions resulting from governmental directives. As predicted, perceived supervisor support fully mediated the positive relationship between competence and affective and normative commitment to change. On the other hand, supervisor competence was negatively related to continuance commitment to change. These findings illustrate how supervisors can shape employees' reactions to change.     

Do we access meaning when we name Arabic digits? Electrophysiological evidence

In this study, we evaluated whether the naming of Arabic digits required access to semantic information. Participants named pictures and Arabic digits blocked by category or intermixed with exemplars of other categories while behavioural and electrophysiological measures were gathered. Pictures were named slower and Arabic digits faster in the blocked context relative to the mixed context. Around 350–450 ms after the presentation of pictures and Arabic digits, brain waves were more positive in anterior regions and more negative in posterior regions when the blocked context was compared with the mixed context. The pattern of electrophysiological results suggests that pictures and Arabic digits are both processed semantically and they are subject to repetition effects during the naming task.     

Is schooling of migrants’ children more like that of their parents, their cousins, or their neighbours?

A natural way to look for signs of assimilation in migrants children is to compare their educational attainment to that of natives of the same age cohort (neighbours). However, background counts in these matters, so we look at the educational attainment of the previous generation (parents) as well as their social status. Using data for Portuguese in both France and Portugal together with data on the French, we show that the educational attainment of the second generation in France is much closer to that of the French than to that of those who stayed in Portugal (cousins). In this sense we can speak of assimilation.     

Metacognitive scaffolding boosts cognitive and neural benefits following executive attention training in children

Interventions including social scaffolding and metacognitive strategies have been used in educational settings to promote cognition. In addition, increasing evidence shows that computerized process‐based training enhances cognitive skills. However, no prior studies have examined the effect of combining these two training strategies. The goal of this study was to test the combined effect of metacognitive scaffolding and computer‐based training of executive attention in a sample of typically developing preschoolers at the cognitive and brain levels. Compared to children in the regular training protocol and an untrained active control group, children in the metacognitive group showed larger gains on intelligence and significant increases on an electrophysiological index associated with conflict processing. Moreover, changes in the conflict‐related brain activity predicted gains in intelligence in the metacognitive scaffolding group. These results suggest that metacognitive scaffolding boosts the influence of process‐based training on cognitive efficiency and brain plasticity related to executive attention.     

Long Term Child-Centered Play Therapy Effects on Academic Achievement with Normal Functioning Children

This follow up study with 23 normal functioning 1st graders examined the long-term effectiveness of Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) on academic achievement. Through the use of a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance, researchers examined the use of CCPT from pre-intervention to mid-intervention (16 sessions) to post-intervention (26 sessions). Results indicated that children who participated in 26 sessions of CCPT demonstrated statistically significant improvement on the Early Achievement Composite as measured on the Young Children’s Achievement Test (YCAT), along with increases in the Reading, Mathematics, and Spoken Language subscales. Participants showed statistically consistent improvement in academic scores of the full duration of the study. Overall, the findings imply that CCPT as a long term method can support academic achievement in the school system with normal functioning 1st grade students. The outcome suggests long term CCPT is an intervention for elementary/primary school counselors to use with children who have emotional or academic needs. The findings open the door for school counselors or outside professionals to use play therapy with children in the school system as a way of providing academic support and thereby promoting the field of play therapy in the school system.     

Executive functions and linguistic performance in SCD older adults and healthy controls

Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) might represent the preclinical phase of Alzheimer’s disease. Given the interest to characterize it, the present study explores (1) if there are differences in lexical retrieval (LexR) and sentence comprehension (SComp) between SCD and matched controls, and (2) the predictive value of demographic variables and executive functions in relation to LexR and SComp in each group. A sample of 135 participants voluntarily took part in this study (66 with SCD). They all completed the Trail Making, the Stroop, the Boston Naming, and the ECCO-Senior tests, as well as verbal fluency tasks (VF). Results show that (1) groups differ in LexR and in inhibition efficiency, and (2) VF is explained by years of formal education, particularly in the control group; SComp in the most complex items seems to rely in different strategies, related to flexibility in controls and to inhibition efficiency in SCD patients.     

Emptiness and Work: a Meaning-Making Perspective

This paper aims to put forward the foundation for building a theory of meaning-making based on emptiness. The theoretical perspective underlying the discussion is the cultural psychology of semiotic mediation. According to this perspective, meaning-making is the result of the process through witch human beings use signs to build their relationship with their environment. Three topics unfold in the paper. First, emptiness is defined as a potential absence. Second, the paper identifies the two ways in which emptiness enters into the meaning-making process, either fostering it or, to the contrary, blocking it. When it fosters meaning construction, emptiness acts as a catalytic factor, that is, as a reservoir of possibilities, in the sense of a future-oriented set of new meanings to be built by the agent. However, when emptiness plays the role of a blocking or anti-catalytic factor, emptiness become a hyper-generalized sign, i.e., an empty meaning. Third, this paper illustrates the applicability of these theoretical reflections on emptiness through the example of work. Specifically, both the burnout and the so-called “placardisation” phenomena are analyzed in terms of the anti-catalytic factors at play in work, which lead to feeling it as empty.