Working memory components as predictors of children's mathematical word problem solving

This study determined the working memory (WM) components (executive, phonological loop, and visual–spatial sketchpad) that best predicted mathematical word problem-solving accuracy of elementary school children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 (N = 310). A battery of tests was administered to assess problem-solving accuracy, problem-solving processes, WM, reading, and math calculation. Structural equation modeling analyses indicated that (a) all three WM components significantly predicted problem-solving accuracy, (b) reading skills and calculation proficiency mediated the predictive effects of the central executive system and the phonological loop on solution accuracy, and (c) academic mediators failed to moderate the relationship between the visual–spatial sketchpad and solution accuracy. The results support the notion that all components of WM play a major role in predicting problem-solving accuracy, but basic skills acquired in specific academic domains (reading and math) can compensate for some of the influence of WM on children’s mathematical word problem solving.     

Children’s effortful control and academic achievement: do relational peer victimization and classroom participation operate as mediators?

Given that early academic achievement is related to numerous developmental outcomes, understanding processes that promote early success in school is important. This study was designed to clarify how students’ (N = 291; M age in fall of kindergarten = 5.66 years, SD = 0.39 year) effortful control, relational peer victimization, and classroom participation relate to achievement, as students progress from kindergarten to first grade. Effortful control and achievement were assessed in kindergarten, classroom participation and relational peer victimization were assessed in the fall of first grade, and achievement was reassessed in the spring of first grade. Classroom participation, but not relational peer victimization, mediated relations between effortful control and first grade standardized and teacher-rated achievement, controlling for kindergarten achievement. Findings suggest that aspects of classroom participation, such as the ability to work independently, may be useful targets of intervention for enhancing academic achievement in young children.     

Field and observer modes of remembering

Abstract

Nigro and Neisser (1983) contrasted two ways of remembering personal experiences: the rememberer may ‘see’ the event from his or her perspective as in normal perception, or ‘see’ the self engaged in the event as an observer would. Several factors contribute to the determination of perspective, but Nigro and Neisser also reported that many subjects claimed they could change to another perspective at will. We sampled personal memories from several life periods and assessed ability to change the initially reported perspective. Changing was easier for recent or vividly recalled events, harder for older and less vividly recalled events. Memory perspectives may differ in other aspects than their imagery. A second study was conducted to determine whether affective experience is altered when perspectives are changed. The affect experienced decreased when shifting from a field to an observer perspective, but did not change with the converse shift. These studies provide further evidence that remembering is more than retrieval. The information that enters awareness is determined by the information sources in memory and the organisational scheme adopted for recollection.     

ERNAN MCMULLIN ON CONTINGENCY,COSMIC PURPOSE,AND THE ATEMPORALITY OF THE CREATOR

This article reviews, and offers supportive reflections on, the main points of Ernan McMullin's provocative 1998 article, “Cosmic Purpose and the Contingency of Human Evolution,’’ reprinted in this issue of Zygon. In it he addresses the important science‐theology issue of how the Creator's purpose and intention to assure the emergence of human beings is consonant with the radical contingency of the evolutionary process. After discussing cosmic and biological evolution and critically summarizing recent solutions to this question by Keith Ward, John Polkinghorne, Arthur Peacocke, Alvin Plantinga, and others, who presuppose in different ways that God is subject to time, McMullin compellingly argues for the traditional position, that God is unconditioned by time, and this enables God to work purposefully through contingency, randomness, and chance just as easily as through law‐like regularity.     

Short-Term Memory and Working Memory in Children with Blindness: Support for a Domain General or Domain Specific System?

The study explored the contribution of two component processes (phonological and executive) to blind children's memory performance. Children with blindness and sight were matched on gender, chronological age, and verbal intelligence and compared on measures of short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM). Although the measures were highly correlated, the results from two experiments indicated that the blind children were superior to sighted children on measures of STM, but not on measures of WM. The results supported the notion that children with blindness have advantages on memory tasks that draw upon resources from the phonological loop. However, comparable performance between the ability groups on WM measures suggests there are domain specific aspects in the executive system.     

BEYOND THE BONDAGE OF BOUNDARIES

This narrative seeks to describe a route towards the roots of personal and cultural identity through shared journeys of loss and grief. It attempts to find lived spaces for spiritual growth and reconciliation through the complexity of shared experiences and through the search for ways of transcending the boundaries of cultural identity and culturally prescribed ways of grieving. The complex interplay of these juxtaposing themes and interconnecting tensions and paradoxes provides opportunities for new ways of being and the possibility of transcendence of barriers such as gender, ethnicity, culture, language difference, and social class. This is achieved in consideration of context and environment and through the metaphor of ''pushing out the boundaries of lived experience beyond common understanding.''     

THEOLOGY FROM A FRACTURED VISTA: SUSAN NEIMAN'S EVIL IN MODERN THOUGHT

Evil in Modern Thought, Susan Neiman's account of the intellectual trajectory of modernity, employs the trope “homeless” to articulate deep difficulties that affirmations of divine transcendence and of human capacities to acknowledge transcendence face in a contemporary context thoroughly marked by fragmentation, fragility, and contingency. The “hospitality” of the Incarnation, which makes a fractured world a place for divine welcoming of the human in all its contingency and brokenness, is proposed as locus for theological engagement with Neiman's appropriation of a Kantian sense of hope as the readiness to resist evil in a world seemingly bereft of welcome.     

The Application of Constraint Semantics to the Language of Subjective Uncertainty

This paper develops a compositional, type-driven constraint semantic theory for a fragment of the language of subjective uncertainty. In the particular application explored here, the interpretation function of constraint semantics yields not propositions but constraints on credal states as the semantic values of declarative sentences. Constraints are richer than propositions in that constraints can straightforwardly represent assessments of the probability that the world is one way rather than another. The richness of constraints helps us model communicative acts in essentially the same way that we model agents’ credences. Moreover, supplementing familiar truth-conditional theories of epistemic modals with constraint semantics helps capture contrasts between strong necessity and possibility modals, on the one hand, and weak necessity modals, on the other.