Developmental assessment, cultural context, gender, and schooling in Zambia

Multiple perspectives on the assessment of children's development at the school-community interface in rural areas of Zambia are discussed in the light of several empirical studies conducted between 1974 and 2005. A longitudinal trace study of a cohort of 46 young people born into a rural, Chewa community in Katete District found that girls' scores in early childhood on a battery of ecoculturally grounded cognitive tests correlated less well than they did for boys with two educational outcomes: number of grades of schooling completed, and adult literacy scores. Conversely, ratings of the children on indigenous conceptions of intelligence by adults familiar with the children in the context of their home village lives predicted the same outcomes better for girls than for boys. A separate, linked experiment compared the performance of 76 Katete school children with that of 84 school children in the capital city of Lusaka on the US standardized Draw-a-Person Test (DPT) and the Panga Munthu Test (PMT), an expanded version of one of the tests developed for the Zambian trace study. Analysis of the correlations among scores on these two tests, age, and teacher ratings suggests that aptitudes evident in the home and school domains are less well integrated for rural girls than for urban boys, and that for a low-income, rural population, the PMT taps the domain of home cognition better than school cognition, while the converse is true of the DPT. Implications for educational assessment in Zambia are discussed, and supportive documentation is cited from two ongoing programs of test development. The authors conclude that if educational testing is to support the process of enhancing educational equity across gender, family socioeconomic status, and residential location, its focus should be broadened to include other dimensions of psychological development such as multilingual and personal-social competencies.     

Links between parental psychological violence, other family disturbances, and children's adjustment

In a sample of 143 parent-child dyads from two-parent and separated families, this investigation documented the links between parental psychological violence and separation or divorce, severity of parental conflict, triangulation of the child in this conflict, and polarized parent-child alliances. The unique and combined contributions of all these variables to children's behavior problems were also assessed. Participants were parents, mostly mothers, and their 10-12-year-old child. They were recruited through schools, community organizations, and newspapers. Questionnaires were administered at home. Findings suggest that separated families undergo more relational disturbances than two-parent families (more severe conflicts, more triangulation, stronger parent-child alliances), but the amount of parental psychological violence was similar in both groups. Psychological violence was associated with the severity of parental conflict, especially in two-parent families. Triangulation of the child in parental conflict was another correlate of psychological violence. Once all variables were controlled for, psychological violence remained the only significant correlate of children's externalized behavior problems. These findings raise the importance of preventing psychological violence toward children, especially in families plagued with severe parental conflicts.     

Correlation between evening and morning waking EEG and spatial orientation

The prefrontal, frontal, and parietal EEG of 16 healthy young adults (seven men, nine women; age=22.57+/-4.2) was recorded during the waking state (eyes closed) in the evening before and the morning following a second consecutive night spent in a sleep laboratory. Following the morning EEG recording session, participants were tested in a human-size maze upon five learning trials of a four-intersection route. Results on the fifth trial served as the learning index. We found a significant positive correlation between time taken to carry out the route and prefrontal, frontal EEG alpha-2 (10.0-12.75 Hz), and sigma (11.5-14.5 Hz) frequency bands. We also found that prefrontal and frontal theta activity correlated negatively with number of errors. No correlation was found between performance and neither alpha-1 (8.0-9.75 Hz) nor parietal EEG activity. These results confirm the involvement of the prefrontal and frontal cortices in the mechanisms responsible for modulating spatial orientation.     

Effect of gaze orientation on tactilo-kinesthetic performance

Twenty-two normal right-handed subjects indicated with their index finger the midpoint of a horizontal rod that they could not see. Subjects performed this task while directing their gaze either centrally or toward four different locations (5 degrees or 30 degrees to the left or to the right of the midline). Results showed an overall leftward bias in rod bisection, which increased when subjects used their right hand and fixated a right-sided visual target. Thus, orienting of gaze can affect a nonvisual, tactilo-kinesthetic spatial task. The possible mechanisms of this interaction are discussed with respect to activation-orienting theories egocentric hypotheses and directional trends.     

The influence of handedness on profile and line drawing directionality in children,young, and older normal adults

One hundred twenty-two normal subjects--children, young and older adults (77 right-handers and 45 left-handers)--performed two drawing tasks in order to study their directionality trends. The first task consisted of drawing the profile of a face and in the second task subjects had to link two points in order to draw a line. The analysis of the drawing directionality revealed a significant effect of the age when right-handers drew profiles whereas this effect reached significance in left-handed subjects only when drawing lines. Left- and right-handers' performances across the two tasks were found to significantly differ. Results are discussed in terms of hemispheric and environmental factors.     

Respiratory feedback in the generation of emotion

This article reports two studies investigating the relationship between emotional feelings and respiration. In the first study, participants were asked to produce an emotion of either joy, anger, fear or sadness and to describe the breathing pattern that fit best with the generated emotion. Results revealed that breathing patterns reported during voluntary production of emotion were (a) comparable to those objectively recorded in psychophysiological experiments on emotion arousal, (b) consistently similar across individuals, and (c) clearly differentiated among joy, anger, fear, and sadness. A second study used breathing instructions based on Study 1's results to investigate the impact of the manipulation of respiration on emotional feeling state. A cover story was used so that participants could not guess the actual purpose of the study. This manipulation produced significant emotional feeling states that were differentiated according to the type of breathing pattern. The implications of these findings for emotion theories based on peripheral feedback and for emotion regulation are discussed.     

The Balance-Scale Dilemma: Either the Subject or the Experimenter Muddles Through

We examined two critiques of rule-assessment methodology: (a) the method does not take into consideration other rules that subjects use to solve problems, and (b) its multiple-choice format misrepresents subjects' cognitive level. In Study 1, high school students completed a paper-and-pencil, multiple-choice balance scale questionnaire. Their performance was assessed with Siegler's original rules and a revised set of rules that included an addition and a qualitative proportionality rule. Results showed that Siegler's Rule 3 was not homogeneous and that distinguishing specific patterns of answers among Rule 3 subjects increased the diagnostic value of the rule-assessment methodology. In Study 2, we compared rule-assessment methodology to the Piagetian clinical model. High school students solved balance-scale problems within each method. Results indicated an overall match between Piagetian levels and Siegler's rules, with the exception of Rule 3, suggesting again the pertinence of specifying alternative rules.     

Reduced short-term memory capacity in Alzheimer's disease: The role of phonological,lexical, and semantic processing

Individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are often reported to have reduced verbal short-term memory capacity, typically attributed to their attention/executive deficits. However, these individuals also tend to show progressive impairment of semantic, lexical, and phonological processing which may underlie their low short-term memory capacity. The goals of this study were to assess the contribution of each level of representation (phonological, lexical, and semantic) to immediate serial recall performance in 18 individuals with AD, and to examine how these linguistic effects on short-term memory were modulated by their reduced capacity to manipulate information in short-term memory associated with executive dysfunction. Results showed that individuals with AD had difficulty recalling items that relied on phonological representations, which led to increased lexicality effects relative to the control group. This finding suggests that patients have a greater reliance on lexical/semantic information than controls, possibly to make up for deficits in retention and processing of phonological material. This lexical/semantic effect was not found to be significantly correlated with patients’ capacity to manipulate verbal material in short-term memory, indicating that language processing and executive deficits may independently contribute to reducing verbal short-term memory capacity in AD.