Early educational foundations for the development of civic responsibility: an African experience

An innovative curriculum designed to foster the development of social responsibility among pre-adolescent children was introduced at a rural Zambian primary school. The curriculum invoked Child-to-Child principles focusing on health education, advancing a synthesis of Western psychological theories and African cultural traditions. The teacher sought to democratize the educational process through cooperative learning in mixed-gender, mixed-social-class, and mixed-ability study groups. Learners engaged in community service activities and contributed to the nurturant care of younger children. Young adults interviewed seventeen years after completing the program recalled their experience and reflected on how it had promoted their personal agency, cooperative disposition, and civic responsibility in early adulthood.     

Concurrent validity of the wide range assessment of visual motor abilities in typically developing children ages 4 to 11 years

Pediatric clinicians working with school-age children use the Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities (WRAVMA) as a method for evaluating visual perception and motor skills in children despite limited information on concurrent validity. Whether it may be substituted for the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI) and has suitable estimates of concurrent validity were examined with a convenience sample of 91 typically developing children ages 4 to 11 years. No systematic concurrent validity between the WRAVMA and the VMI emerged. Only two subtests of the WRAVMA (Matching with Visual Perception, and Pegboard with Motor Coordination) gave scores statistically significantly correlated with those on the VMI, and these correlations were weak, accounting for very small amounts of the shared variance. As such, they have low clinical relevance. These findings do not provide evidence of concurrent validity to support the use of WRAVMA as an alternative method for the VMI for assessing children's visual perception and motor skills.     

The involvement of epigenetic defects in mental retardation

Mental retardation is a group of cognitive disorders with a significant worldwide prevalence rate. This high rate, together with the considerable familial and societal burden resulting from these disorders, makes it an important focus for prevention and intervention. While the diseases associated with mental retardation are diverse, a significant number are linked with disruptions in epigenetic mechanisms, mainly due to loss-of-function mutations in genes that are key components of the epigenetic machinery. Additionally, several disorders classed as imprinting syndromes are associated with mental retardation. This review will discuss the epigenetic abnormalities associated with mental retardation, and will highlight their importance for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of these disorders.     

Treating Prepartum Depression to Improve Infant Developmental Outcomes: A Study of Diabetes in Pregnancy

Whether and how the co-occurrence of depression and diabetes in pregnancy may worsen infant development has not been reported. Pregnant women with diabetes and with (n?=?34) or without (n?=?34) major depressive disorder (MDD) were followed during pregnancy and 6-months postpartum. The MDD subset received randomly assigned treatment with cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) or supportive counseling (SC). Depression severity was measured with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI); infant developmental outcomes were measured with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID) and its Behavior Rating Scale (BRS). Infants of women with MDD had lower BRS scores (p?=?.02). Reduction in depression scores was associated with better infant outcomes on the BSID and BRS (p values <.03). These preliminary findings suggest depression occurring in pregnant women with diabetes is associated with poorer infant development and improvement in prepartum depression is associated with improvement in measures of infant development.     

Propose but verify: Fast mapping meets cross-situational word learning

We report three eyetracking experiments that examine the learning procedure used by adults as they pair novel words and visually presented referents over a sequence of referentially ambiguous trials. Successful learning under such conditions has been argued to be the product of a learning procedure in which participants provisionally pair each novel word with several possible referents and use a statistical-associative learning mechanism to gradually converge on a single mapping across learning instances [e.g., Yu, C., & Smith, L. B. (2007). Rapid word learning under uncertainty via cross-situational statistics. Psychological Science, 18(5), 414–420]. We argue here that successful learning in this setting is instead the product of a one-trial procedure in which a single hypothesized word-referent pairing is retained across learning instances, abandoned only if the subsequent instance fails to confirm the pairing – more a ‘fast mapping’ procedure than a gradual statistical one. We provide experimental evidence for this propose-but-verify learning procedure via three experiments in which adult participants attempted to learn the meanings of nonce words cross-situationally under varying degrees of referential uncertainty. The findings, using both explicit (referent selection) and implicit (eye movement) measures, show that even in these artificial learning contexts, which are far simpler than those encountered by a language learner in a natural environment, participants do not retain multiple meaning hypotheses across learning instances. As we discuss, these findings challenge ‘gradualist’ accounts of word learning and are consistent with the known rapid course of vocabulary learning in a first language.     

Time course of retrieving conceptual information: A speed-accuracy trade-off study

Words carry considerable information, but much of that information is not relevant in context. Research has shown that readers selectively activate and remember relevant information associated with words in different contexts, but it is not known when in processing this selection occurs. This experiment investigated whether context can change which properties are initially retrieved, using a speed-accuracy trade-off paradigm. Readers had to verify a property of a modifier-noun phrase (e.g., in the sentenceBoiled celery is soft) within a specified interval, from 300–3,000 msec after presentation. Results revealed that properties associated with the noun alone were activated sooner than were properties that required integration of the modifier with the noun. Thus, context did not serve to influence the initial retrieval of properties but only to activate or suppress properties later in processing.     

IQ on the rise: the Flynn effect in rural Kenyan children

Abstract - Multiple studies have documented significant IQ gains over time, a phenomenon labeled the Flynn effect. Data from 20 industrialized nations show massive IQ gains over time, most notably in culturally reduced tests like the Raven's Progressive Matrices. To our knowledge, however, this is the first study to document the Flynn effect in a rural area of a developing country. Data for this project were collected during two large studies in Embu, Kenya, in 1984 and 1998. Results strongly support a Flynn effect over this 14-year period, with the most significant gains found in Raven's matrices. Previously hypothesized explanations (e.g., improved nutrition; increased environmental complexity; and family, parental, school, and methodological factors) for the Flynn effect are evaluated for their relevance in this community, and other potential factors are reviewed. The hypotheses that resonate best with our findings are those related to parents' literacy, family structure, and children's nutrition and health.