Text Comprehension Training for Disabled Readers: An Evaluation of Reciprocal Teaching and Text Analysis Training Programs

Forty-six reading disabled adolescents were randomly assigned to one of three 25-hr instructional programs. Two programs provided training in expository text comprehension, and a third offered training in academic problem solving and organizational and study skills (an alternative treatment control). One reading comprehension program was designed to remediate a deficient knowledge base, forcing disabled readers to elaborate and further process new text knowledge, focusing on both specific informational content in a text and knowledge of text structure per se. The second program was patterned after the Palincsar and Brown (1984) reciprocal teaching techniques and focused on training four text comprehension strategies used by skilled comprehenders. Both the “knowledge-base” and the “strategy” training approaches were associated with significant improvement in disabled readers' comprehension skills, although training effects did not generalize across all aspects of reading comprehension performance. Strategy-trained readers applied the trained strategies with equal success on instructed and uninstructed text materials, providing strong evidence of transfer of learning. Knowledge-base readers also demonstrated successful transfer of specifically trained procedures (semantic mapping, text analysis) to unfamiliar text. In both programs, the best outcomes were obtained when specific strategies and operations were targeted for training.     

Localization of a peripheral target during parametric adjustment of saccadic eye movements

The aim of the experiment was to find out whether saccadiceve movements have any effect on perceived visual directions. ihe method was to alter the parameters of the oculomotor system so that the eye movement made in response to a peripheral target was inappropriate to the retinal locus of its image. It was found that this procedure had no effect on the perceived location of the peripheral target; and it was concluded that a specific retinal locus is more or less rigidly associated with a corresponding visual direction, but not with a particular magnitude of ocular rotation.     

Gender Representation in Television Commercials: Updating an Update

Sex Roles - We replicated the studies of O'Donnell and O'Donnell (1978) and Lovdal (1989) to analyze trends in gender representation in television commercials. A total of 757 commercials in...     

Infants perceiving and acting on the eyes: tests of an evolutionary hypothesis

It has been hypothesized that an evolutionarily ancient mechanism underlies the ability of human infants to detect and act upon the direction of eye gaze of another human face. However, the evidence from behavioral studies with infants is also consistent with a more domain-general system responsive to the lateral motion of stimuli regardless of whether or not eyes are involved. To address this issue three experiments with 4-month-old infants are reported that utilize a standard face-cueing paradigm. In the first experiment an inverted face was used to investigate whether the motion of the pupils elicits the cueing effect regardless of the surrounding face context. In the second experiment pupil motion and eye gaze direction were opposed, allowing us to assess their relative importance. In a third experiment, a more complex gaze shift sequence allowed us to analyse the importance of beginning with a period of mutual gaze. Overall, the results were consistent with the importance of the perceived direction of motion of pupils. However, to be effective in cueing spatial locations this motion needs to be preceded by a period of direct mutual gaze (eye contact). We suggest that evolution results in information-processing biases that shape and constrain the outcome of individual development to eventually result in adult adaptive specializations.     

Residential and community treatment services utilized by a sample of youth with severe emotional disturbances

Analyzed case records to determine the costs and service usage patterns for a group of 25 youth randomly selected from the case load of a regional mental health agency. Study participants had extensive histories of publicly supported psychiatric hospitalizations. An average of 36.2 contacts per youth (905 total contacts) with human services providers were documented. Approximately 2 out of every 5 contacts resulted in out-of-home placements. The estimated cost of providing services to the 25 youth exceeded 3 million dollars. The types and costs of treatment services provided to study participants are discussed.     

American Indian Secondary School Students' Preferences for Counselors

Researchers examined the importance of similar ethnicity and the preference for a counselor of the same sex among American Indian secondary school students.     

NUMBER AND QUALITY OF ROLES

We used longitudinal personality data to test whether number and quality of roles were associated with health and self-enhancement in 100 privileged midlife women. Number of roles (from the set of partner, parent, and worker) was not related to autonomy, individuality, and complexity, as had been hypothesized, but to respect for norms, being well-organized considering oneselt like other people. Through women with one role were lower in well-being than women with more than one, hierarchical multiple regression showed no advantage to number of roles after psychological health at age 21 was taken in to account. However, quality of role, as assessed by marital satisfaction and status level in work, was associated with contentment and effective functioning, respectively, even after antecedent psychological functioning was taken into account. Particular roles were associated with particular advantages. The enhancement model of the accumulation of roles is compared with Erikson's theory of the development of personality.     

Usage frequencies of complement-taking verbs in Spanish and English: Data from Spanish monolinguals and Spanish—English bilinguals

Verb bias, or the tendency of a verb to appear with a certain type of complement, has been employed in psycholinguistic literature as a tool to test competing models of sentence processing. To date, the vast majority of sentence processing research involving verb bias has been conducted almost exclusively with monolingual speakers, and predominantly with monolingual English speakers, despite the fact that most of the world’s population is bilingual. To test the generality of competing theories of sentence comprehension, it is important to conduct cross-linguistic studies of sentence processing and to add bilingual data to theories of sentence comprehension. Given this, it is critical for the field to develop verb bias estimates from monolingual speakers of languages other than English and from bilingual populations. We begin to address these issues in two norming studies. Study 1 provides verb bias norming data for 135 Spanish verbs. A second aim of Study 1 was to determine whether verb bias estimates remain stable over time. In Study 2, we asked whether Spanish—English speakers are able to learn verb-specific information, such as verb bias, in their second language. The answer to this question is critical to conducting studies that examine when, during the course of sentence comprehension, bilingual speakers exploit verb information specific to the second language. To facilitate cross-linguistic work, we compared our verb bias results with those provided by monolingual English speakers in a previous norming study conducted by Garnsey, Lotocky, Pearlmutter, and Myers (1997). Our Spanish data demonstrated that individual verbs showed significant similarities in their verb bias across the 3 years of data collection. We also show that bilinguals are able to learn the biases of verbs in their second language, even when immersed in the first language environment. Appendixes A–C, containing the bilingual norms discussed in the article, may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Effect of a kickboxing match on salivary cortisol and immunoglobulin A

The hypothesis that salivary cortisol would increase and salivary immunoglobulin A (IgA) decrease after a kickboxing match was tested among 20 male athletes. Saliva samples collected before and after the match were analyzed. Salivary cortisol and salivary IgA concentrations (absolute concentration, salivary IgAabs) and the secretion rate of IgA (salivary IgArate) were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. A Wilcoxon test for paired samples showed significant increases in salivary cortisol from pre- to postmatch. No significant changes were observed in salivary IgAabs or secretory IgArate and saliva flow rate. This study indicates that a kickboxing match might increase salivary concentration and thereafter it could be considered a significant source of exercise-related stress. On the other hand, the effect of a kickboxing match on mucosal immunity seems not to be relevant.     

A localist solution to the regress of epistemic justification

Guided by an account of the norms governing justificatory conversations, I propose that person-level epistemic justification is a matter of possessing a certain ability: the ability to provide objectively good reasons for one's belief by drawing upon considerations which one responsibly and correctly takes there to be no reason to doubt. On this view, justification requires responsible belief and is also objectively truth-conducive. The foundationalist doctrine of immediately justified beliefs is rejected, but so too is the thought that coherence in one's total belief system is sufficient, or indeed necessary, for justification. The problem of the regress is solved by exploiting the ‘localist’ idea that in order to possess the ability to justify any given belief, one only needs to be in a position to draw upon appropriate justified background beliefs to provide good reasons for holding the belief; one needn't be able to defend the relevant background beliefs, and so on, all at one sitting.