Mastery of the logic of natural numbers is not the result of mastery of counting: evidence from late counters

To master the natural number system, children must understand both the concepts that number words capture and the counting procedure by which they are applied. These two types of knowledge develop in childhood, but their connection is poorly understood. Here we explore the relationship between the mastery of counting and the mastery of exact numerical equality (one central aspect of natural number) in the Tsimane’, a farming‐foraging group whose children master counting at a delayed age and with higher variability than do children in industrialized societies. By taking advantage of this variation, we can better understand how counting and exact equality relate to each other, while controlling for age and education. We find that the Tsimane’ come to understand exact equality at later and variable ages. This understanding correlates with their mastery of number words and counting, controlling for age and education. However, some children who have mastered counting lack an understanding of exact equality, and some children who have not mastered counting have achieved this understanding. These results suggest that understanding of counting and of natural number concepts are at least partially distinct achievements, and that both draw on inputs and resources whose distribution and availability differ across cultures.     

Best Practices for Teaming and Collaboration in the Interconnected Systems Framework

The Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF) blends school mental health practices, systems, and resources into all levels of a multitiered system of supports (e.g., positive behavior interventions and supports). The ISF aims to improve mental health and school performance for all students by emphasizing effective school-wide promotion and prevention; early identification; and social-emotional, behavioral, and mental health intervention. Teaming is 1 of 3 foundational components of quality ISF implementation at school, district, and state levels. After introducing the ISF, the authors highlight the core implementation components (i.e., teaming, data-based decision making, and evidence-based practices) and then elaborate on characteristics of well-functioning ISF teams. The authors provide a case example to illustrate each characteristic and review 5 measures teams may consider using to evaluate their functioning and SF implementation.     

“Hammered down on every side” versus “just being positive”: A critical discursive approach to health inequality

Socio‐economic and health inequality are strongly linked and are increasingly perpetuated by discourses of individual responsibility. However, little research from a critical discursive perspective has addressed how people affected themselves may account for this relationship. This research examined the ways in which people who are in debt, unemployed, or in insecure, minimum‐wage employment construct health and negotiate identities around it. Data from semistructured interviews with 6 participants were analysed and 3 main interpretative repertoires were identified: a medical repertoire of health as a lack of illness; health as adopting the “right” behaviours and attitudes; and health as being heavily influenced by external factors, such as income and life circumstances. The analysis focuses on how participants managed the tension between these latter 2 repertoires by adopting various subject positions around health: that it is “slipping” away from them; that it requires motivation; and that it is unattainable. Underpinning this is a “common‐sense” idea of health as something that is worked towards through culturally approved actions and attitudes.     

Priming insight in groups: Facilitating and inhibiting solving an ambiguously worded insight problem

We extend research on the priming of insight by studying group problem solving. Groups of 2–4 participants tried to solve an ambiguously worded problem in the presence of a prime that reinforced the dominant but incorrect interpretation of the problem, a prime that reinforced the uncommon but correct interpretation, or no prime. The paradigm involved participants asking questions of the experimenter that could only be answered “yes” or “no.” In Experiment 1, the prime was present throughout the solving period; in Experiment 2, it was removed prior to the solving period. In both experiments, the primes had their predicted effects. Patterns in the time taken to solve the problem supported the idea that groups stuck at the impasse were more or less able to restructure the problem, depending on the environmental context. Data from the questions asked and questionnaires converged with time taken to solve the problem, consistent with the view that restructuring a problem is an automatic process that produces insight. A comparison of the group data in Experiment 1 with individually tested participants’ data revealed that the insight of the groups benefited from their being able to recognize lines of questions to follow, to listen to answers to questions asked, and to evaluate and reject errors or assumptions.     

Dilemmas of citizenship: young people's conceptions of un/employment rights and responsibilities

This paper draws on the concept of ideological dilemmas in order to explore how a sample of young people constructed potentially contrary themes of liberal citizenship in discussions of un/employment. The study took place in the context of recent policy developments in the UK which have sought to place a renewed emphasis upon notions of responsible citizenship in relation to both welfare and education policy. A total of 58 participants were interviewed in 24 semi-structured group interviews. In response to direct questions on un/employment, participants could resolve dilemmas concerning welfare rights and the responsibility to contribute to society by emphasizing a criterion of effortfulness, thereby adopting a primarily individualistic explanation of unemployment. In other contexts however, this could be replaced by an emphasis on social explanations of unemployment. In particular, participants could treat immigration as a cause of unemployment. These findings are interpreted in terms of people's capacity to construct rhetorical strategies based upon different ideological themes in particular contexts. They are discussed in relation to previous research on social policy discourse and recent debates regarding the appropriateness of seeking to identify ideological themes in discourse.     

Synesthesia and memory: color congruency, von Restorff, and false memory effects

In the current study, we explored the influence of synesthesia on memory for word lists. We tested 10 grapheme-color synesthetes who reported an experience of color when reading letters or words. We replicated a previous finding that memory is compromised when synesthetic color is incongruent with perceptual color. Beyond this, we found that, although their memory for word lists was superior overall, synesthetes did not exhibit typical color- or semantic-defined von Restorff isolation effects (von Restorff, 1933) compared with control participants. Moreover, our synesthetes exhibited a reduced Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory effect (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Taken as a whole, these findings are consistent with the idea that color-grapheme synesthesia can lead people to place a greater emphasis on item-specific processing and surface form characteristics of words in a list (e.g., the letters that make them up) relative to relational processing and more meaning-based processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

Influences of problem format and SES on preschoolers’ understanding of approximate addition

Recent studies suggest that 5-year-olds can add and compare large numerical quantities through approximate representations of number. However, the nature of this understanding and its susceptibility to environmental influences remain unclear. We examined whether children's early competence depends on the canonical problem format (i.e., arithmetic operations presented on the left side). Sixty children from middle-to-high-SES backgrounds (Experiment 1) and 47 children from low-SES backgrounds (Experiment 2) viewed events that required them to add and compare large numbers. Events were shown in a canonical or noncanonical format. Children from both SES backgrounds performed above chance on the approximate addition tasks, but children from middle-to-high-SES backgrounds performed significantly better. Moreover, children from middle-to-high SES backgrounds performed better when problems were presented in the canonical format, whereas children from low-SES backgrounds did not. These results suggest that children's understanding of approximate number is affected by some of the same environmental factors that affect performance on exact arithmetic tasks.     

“Hunting with a knife and … fork”: Examining central coherence in autism,attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder,and typical development with a linguistic task

A local processing bias, referred to as “weak central coherence,” has been postulated to underlie key aspects of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Little research has examined whether individual differences in this cognitive style can be found in typical development, independent of intelligence, and how local processing relates to executive control. We present a brief and easy-to-administer test of coherence requiring global sentence completions. We report results from three studies assessing (a) 176 typically developing (TD) 8- to 25-year-olds, (b) individuals with ASD and matched controls, and (c) matched groups with ASD or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The results suggest that the Sentence Completion Task can reveal individual differences in cognitive style unrelated to IQ in typical development, that most (but not all) people with ASD show weak coherence on this task, and that performance is not related to inhibitory control. The Sentence Completion Task was found to be a useful test instrument, capable of tapping local processing bias in a range of populations.     

Best Research from the Community Indicators Consortium 2009: Introduction to the Special Issue

This editors’ introduction provides some introductory comments for this special issue of Applied Research on Quality of Life dedicated to best research from the 2009 Community Indicators Consortium conference in Bellevue, Washington. In addition, it includes an edited version of the keynote address presented to this conference by Stephen Bezruchka of the University of Washington School of Public Health on the topic of “What indicators should be presented to Americans so we don’t die so young?”     

Having Our Say: African American Women,Diversity, and Counseling

African American female counseling professionals contribute greatly to the multicultural growth of the counseling profession by spurring the profession's evolution and defining new paradigms and counseling activities. Despite their contributions, they face serious organizational, intrapersonal, and interpersonal challenges to their success in academia. This article seeks to elucidate the challenges to African American female counseling professionals and offers systemic and personal strategies that will facilitate the profession's evolution to culturally competent, ethical, and intentional helping orientations and worldviews.