Assessing handwriting speed of children biliterate in English and Chinese

The assessment of multiliterate handwriting performance is rarely reported despite increased globalization. The present study describes the psychometric properties of a handwriting speed test developed for children who are biliterate in English and Chinese. This included interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, interitem correlation, construct validity, and concurrent validity. The test's reliabilities between two raters and over a 1-wk. interval were high with ICCs ranging from .89 to .99. Interitem correlation between the English and Chinese items was .87. The presence of age trends but not sex differences was a positive indicator of the test's validity. Correlations of .91 and 1.00 between the Chinese and the English items of the Handwriting Assessment Tool with the Chinese Handwriting Speed Test and Handwriting Speed Test, respectively, provided evidence of concurrent validity. These preliminary results showed the Handwriting Assessment Tool is reliable and is a potentially useful handwriting test for children biliterate in English and Chinese. The feasibility of assessing biliterate handwriting speed performance with the same set of scoring criteria for different writing systems was supported.     

Youth Homelessness and Vulnerability: How Does Couch Surfing Fit?

Youth homelessness is a problem characterized by high levels of vulnerability. The extent to which couch surfing — moving from one temporary housing arrangement to another — is part of youth homelessness is not well understood. Chapin Hall's Voices of Youth Count, a national research initiative, involves a multicomponent approach to studying youth homelessness. This study reports emerging findings regarding couch surfing and homelessness primarily from a national survey of 13,113 adults with youth ages 13–25 in their households or who are themselves ages 18–25. Findings suggest that couch surfing is relatively common, particularly among the older age group. Among households with 13‐ to 17‐year‐olds and 18‐ to 25‐year‐olds, 4.0% and 20.5%, respectively, reported that any of them had couch surfed in the last 12 months. There are notable social, economic, and educational differences, on average, between youth reporting homelessness and those reporting only couch surfing. However, most youth who report experiencing homelessness also report couch surfing, and these youth who experience both circumstances present high levels of socioeconomic vulnerability. Couch surfing encompasses a range of experiences, some of which likely include need for services. Interviews currently in the field, and expanded analysis of data, will contribute more nuanced policy insights.     

When My Object Becomes Me: The Mere Ownership of an Object Elevates Domain‐Specific Self‐Efficacy

Past research on the mere ownership effect has shown that when people own an object, they perceive the owned objects more favorably than the comparable non‐owned objects. The present research extends this idea, showing that when people own an object functional to the self, they perceive an increase in their self‐efficacy. Three studies were conducted to demonstrate this new form of the mere ownership effect. In Study 1, participants reported an increase in their knowledge level by the mere ownership of reading materials (a reading package in Study 1a, and lecture notes in Study 1b). In Study 2, participants reported an increase in their resilience to sleepiness by merely owning a piece of chocolate that purportedly had a sleepiness‐combating function. In Study 3, participants who merely owned a flower essence that is claimed to boost creativity reported having higher creativity efficacy. The findings provided insights on how associations with objects alter one's self‐perception.     

Movement cues and body orientation in recall of locations by blind and sighted children

Experiment 1 tested blind children's recall of locations with repeated and changed recall movements under normal and out-of-line body-to-target orientation. Changed movements produced target undershooting and inaccurate path-keeping by the older blind, particularly for horizontal directions. Errors by the younger blind depended more on body orientation.

Experiment 2 tested blindfolded sighted children under the same conditions, with four forms of coding instructions. The sighted showed no effect of body orientation, but changed movements had similar effects on target localization as for the older blind, regardless of instructions. Different forms of instructions affected bias from movement directions in near and far sectors of the display differently, and instructions to code by reference to the shape of the display surround eliminated the differences.

It was argued that blind and sighted children use extent and direction cues from the positioning movement in locating targets, and that these are not automatic effects but result from children's assessment of the informational conditions.