Only the right noise? Effects of phonetic and visual input variability on 14‐month‐olds' minimal pair word learning

Seminal work by Werker and colleagues (Stager & Werker [1997] Nature, 388, 381–382) has found that 14‐month‐old infants do not show evidence for learning minimal pairs in the habituation‐switch paradigm. However, when multiple speakers produce the minimal pair in acoustically variable ways, infants' performance improves in comparison to a single speaker condition (Rost & McMurray [2009] Developmental Science, 12, 339–349). The current study further extends these results and assesses how different kinds of input variability affect 14‐month‐olds' minimal pair learning in the habituation‐switch paradigm testing German learning infants. The first two experiments investigated word learning when the labels were spoken by a single speaker versus when the labels were spoken by multiple speakers. In the third experiment we studied whether non‐acoustic variability, implemented by visual variability of the objects presented together with the labels, would also affect minimal pair learning. We found enhanced learning in the multiple speakers compared to the single speaker condition, confirming previous findings with English‐learning infants. In contrast, visual variability of the presented objects did not support learning. These findings both confirm and better delimit the beneficial role of speech‐specific variability in minimal pair learning. Finally, we review different proposals on the mechanisms via which variability confers benefits to learning and outline what may be likely principles that underlie this benefit. We highlight among these the multiplicity of acoustic cues signalling phonemic contrasts and the presence of relations among these cues. It is in these relations where we trace part of the source for the apparent paradoxical benefit of variability in learning.     

Classroom ethnic diversity,teacher support,and peer victimization: Evidence from four European countries

We investigated how classroom ethnic diversity is associated with peer victimization, effects of ethnic minority/majority status, and if individual teacher support can buffer potentially negative effects of ethnic diversity. Using two theoretical perspectives (balance of power, ethnic competition), we hypothesized that (1) victimization is more prevalent at intermediate ethnic diversity and less prevalent at lower and higher ethnic diversity, (2) this curvilinear link is stronger for ethnic majority than minority students, and (3) peer victimization at intermediate levels of ethnic diversity is lower when teacher support is high. We conducted multilevel analyses based on the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU). The analytical sample included 17,882 students, nested in 882 classrooms. Although our hypotheses received no support, the findings showed that diversity was linked to less victimization for ethnic minority student. Teacher support was linked to less victimization for ethnic minority students at every level of classroom diversity but especially when diversity was low and to less victimization for ethnic majority students in classrooms with intermediate to high ethnic diversity. We discuss our findings in light the theoretical approaches and underscore the role of teachers as a protective resource.     

Education, not democracy? The apolitical dewey

In German-speaking countries, John Dewey came to be considered a school reformer, an advocate of the project method and as the propagator of a cognitivistic psychology of learning. His ideas on socio-political reform, on the other hand, were ignored, partly intentionally, partly due to a lack of familiarity with them in detail. His major pedagogical work,Democracy and Education received little attention. In what follows, this selective view of Dewey is discussed mainly on the basis of internal pedagogical theoretical positions.     

A real‐world rational agent: unifying old and new AI

Explanations of cognitive processes provided by traditional artificial intelligence were based on the notion of the knowledge level. This perspective has been challenged by new AI that proposes an approach based on embodied systems that interact with the real‐world. We demonstrate that these two views can be unified. Our argument is based on the assumption that knowledge level explanations can be defined in the context of Bayesian theory while the goals of new AI are captured by using a well established robot based model of learning and problem solving, called Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC). In our analysis we consider random foraging and we prove that minor modifications of the DAC architecture renders a model that is equivalent to a Bayesian analysis of this task. Subsequently, we compare this enhanced, “rational,” model to its “non‐rational” predecessor and a further control condition using both simulated and real robots, in a variety of environments. Our results show that the changes made to the DAC architecture, in order to unify the perspectives of old and new AI, also lead to a significant improvement in random foraging.     

Switching attention between modalities: further evidence for visual dominance

The present study examined cross-modal selective attention using a task-switching paradigm. In a series of experiments, we presented lateralized visual and auditory stimuli simultaneously and asked participants to make a spatial decision according to either the visual or the auditory stimulus. We observed consistent cross-modal interference in the form of a spatial congruence effect. This effect was asymmetrical, with higher costs when responding to auditory than to visual stimuli. Furthermore, we found stimulus-modality-shift costs, indicating a persisting attentional bias towards the attended stimulus modality. We discuss our findings with respect to visual dominance, directed-attention accounts, and the modality-appropriateness hypothesis.     

Vom Formalismus zum Strukturalismus

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Persistent career indecision over time: Links with personality,barriers, self-efficacy,and life satisfaction

Taking control over one's career requires the ability to make career decisions; thus, remaining in a state of career indecision is problematic. However, the stability of career indecision has not yet been investigated using advanced statistical modeling approaches. We present two studies of German university students applying three-wave, longitudinal designs. Study 1 investigated the stability of career indecision by means of latent state-trait analysis within two samples with different time lags (Sample 1: N = 363, 7 weeks; Sample 2: N = 591, 6 months). The results indicated that career indecision was determined by a stable component (i.e., trait career indecisiveness) that was associated with lower core self-evaluations, lower occupational self-efficacy, and higher perceived career barriers. Study 2 (N = 469) examined career indecision over one year. We found that the stable career indecision component explained 5% of the variance in student life satisfaction beyond self-evaluated generalized indecisiveness.     

A meta-analytic approach to the association between inhibitory control and parent-reported behavioral adjustment in typically-developing children: Differentiating externalizing and internalizing behavior problems

Impairments in inhibitory control (IC) are traditionally seen as a vital aspect in the emergence and course of maladaptive behavior across early childhood. However, it is currently unclear whether this view applies to both the externalizing and internalizing domain of parent-reported behavioral adjustment. Furthermore, past (meta-analytic) developmental research and theory characterizing this association have largely neglected the vast heterogeneity of IC measures and conceptualizations. The present meta-analyses examined the association of IC with parent-reported externalizing (N = 3160, 21 studies) and internalizing (N = 1758, 12 studies) behavior problems, assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), in non-clinical populations of children aged 2–8 years. They further investigated the moderating effects of a priori IC categorization, according to a recently proposed two-factor model of IC (“Strength/Endurance” account, Simpson & Carroll, 2019). In line with previous research in the clinical domain, the current results corroborate the notion of a robust, but small association between IC and externalizing behavior problems (r = ?0.11) in early childhood. However, although frequently proposed in the literature, no significant linear association could be identified with internalizing behavior problems. Furthermore, in both meta-analyses, no significant moderating effects of IC categorization could be revealed. These findings enhance our knowledge about the cognitive underpinnings of early-emerging maladaptive behavior, indicating that different subtypes of IC are statistically related with externalizing, but not internalizing behavior problems. Overall, the small association of IC ability with behavior problems in non-clinical populations provokes broader questions about the role of IC in behavioral adjustment.