Beneath the surface of classroom interaction: Reflections on the microworld of education

This article deals with the microworld of the classroom, i.e., the imbedded, largely unconscious, close to invisible, and to an extent suppressed social processes in teaching. It includes some afterthoughts about a research project with the aim of understanding how the teacher–pupil relation is constructed in classroom interaction. Thomas Scheff’s social psychological framework constituted the theoretical basis for the project. The main data were collected by means of video documentation and consist of a number of closely analysed episodes. The result indicates that nonverbal behaviour in classrooms, to a great extent, is constituted by an informal system of rules in which emotions play a crucial part. But it also reveals the existence of two dimensions in classroom interaction – one surface dimension and one micro dimension – that in significant measure stand in opposition to each other.     

An Ecological View of School Satisfaction in Adolescence: Linkages Between Social Support and Behavior Problems

This study investigated the relationships among school satisfaction, social support, and problem behaviors in adolescents. Modest associations were found between school satisfaction and the demographic variables of gender, race, age, and grade level. Support from teachers, parents, and classmates contributed unique variance to ratings of school satisfaction; with teacher support contributing the most unique variance. School satisfaction mediated the relationship between social support and internalizing and externalizing behaviors. School satisfaction did not moderate the relationship between social support and problem behavior; however, it did serve as a protective factor across all levels of social support. Implications are discussed, including suggestions for developing interventions that focus on increasing support for adolescents in efforts to improve school satisfaction and reduce problem behaviors.     

Verbal social primes alter motor contagion during action observation

We investigated whether prosocial and nonsocial word primes prior to action observation modify subsequent initiation and execution of the observer's own reach-to-grasp actions. Participants observed a model performing exaggeratedly curved (vertical deviation) or natural straight reaches to a vertical dowel and always performed a straight reach to a dowel themselves. Observing curved movements slowed initiation times and increased the vertical deviation of the participants’ movements. Observing curved movements enhanced vertical deviation only in the prosocial word primes condition. We suggest that social context priming can modulate initiation of movement as well as the extent of motor contagion (in this case, the extent of vertical deviation) between model and observer.     

The Positive Plus Program: Affirmative classroom management to improve student behavior

This study describes the Positive Plus Program, a multicomponent intervention combining behavior‐specific praise with an interdependent group contingency and teacher feedback. An elementary school teacher wanting to improve her classroom management skills implemented the Positive Plus Program. Four second‐grade students participated in the study, and each of the students emitted disruptive behavior in class previously. This study, using an ABAB design, indicated that when the teacher reliably delivered high levels of behavior‐specific praise and awarded points, disruptive behavior was less likely. Student outcomes showed increased academic engagement and decreased off‐task motor and verbal behavior from pre‐ to post‐intervention. Teacher ratings indicated high levels of social validity. In light of these findings, implications for future research and implementation are discussed.     

Deactivation in the sensorimotor area during observation of a human agent performing robotic actions

It is well established that several motor areas, called the mirror-neuron system (MNS), are activated when an individual observes other’s actions. However, whether the MNS responds similarly to robotic actions compared with human actions is still controversial. The present study investigated whether and how the motor area activity is influenced by appearance (human vs. robot) and/or kinematics (human vs. robot) of the observed action using near-infrared spectroscopy. The results showed that there was a strong interaction between these factors, revealing strong deactivations in sensorimotor areas when the subject saw a human agent performing robotic actions, which was significantly different from responses when observing the human agent acting in a human way and the robot agent performing robotic actions. These results indicate that MNS activity is sensitive to congruency between the appearance and kinematics of the agent, especially when the agent has a human appearance. We discuss the experience-dependent characteristics of MNS sensitivity to observed actions.     

The Good Behavior Game in preschool classrooms: An evaluation of feedback

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a popular group contingency implemented to decrease disruptive behavior in classrooms. However, despite numerous replications of the GBG, there are few direct comparisons evaluating the effectiveness of specific components of the GBG. In the present study, we directly compared the type of feedback delivered during the GBG on the effectiveness of the GBG to reduce disruptive behavior in two preschool classrooms. Results showed that delivering vocal feedback (e.g., “raise your hand”) alone or in combination with visual feedback (i.e., hatch marks) was superior to no feedback or visual feedback alone during the GBG. These results suggest that different variations of the GBG are not equally effective and that a collection of effective procedural variations from which teachers can choose would be beneficial.     

The Good Behavior Game: A brief review

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a group contingency that reduces disruption and increases engagement in various contexts. In recent years, researchers have extended the GBG in at least 3 ways: (a) demonstrating its efficacy with novel populations, settings, and behaviors, (b) examining procedural variations that improve contextual fit, and (c) using more comprehensive data collection methods to explore the behavior of individual students and indirect effects. The purpose of the current review is to summarize recent advances, discuss implications of recent studies and potential mechanisms for the general efficacy of the GBG, and suggest future directions.     

Quality home visits: Activities to promote meaningful interactions

Examination of and support for specific practices that promote high-quality home visiting are essential as family support programs continue to expand across the country. The current study used direct observation of 91 home visits across 41 home visitors to examine relations among interaction partners, content of the interactions, the home-visitors’ activities, and quality of home-visitors’ practices and family-members’ engagement within programs funded by the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program. More time spent in triadic interactions focused on child-related content, as measured by the Home Visit Rating Scale-Revised, was related to higher quality of family engagement in home visits, as measured with the Home Visit Observation Rating Scales. Time spent in adult-focused interactions and administrative tasks, however, was related to lower quality of home-visiting practices and family engagement. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The Science of Philosophy

If philosophy consists of conceptual analysis, is it thereby debarred from being a science? This article argues that it is not and that philosophy so conceived is a science. The argument takes the form of careful attention to the meaning of “science,” “experiment,” “empirical,” and related words. Philosophy is a formal science. This does not mean it is not part of the humanities. The role of observation in other kinds of science is investigated. There is more methodological homogeneity in the various sciences, including philosophy, than has been recognized, despite some clear differences. Seeing this helps restore philosophy to its rightful place in the academic firmament.     

Cue abstraction and ideal prototype abstraction in estimation tasks

This study investigates abstracted processes and introduces a new prototype abstraction model adapted to estimation tasks. This prototype abstraction model assumes that the processing of whole exemplar patterns supports the detection of the underlying statistics necessary for the abstraction of two extreme prototypes on the continuous criterion dimension of the task. The prototypes are stored in memory as valid reference points for future similarity-based judgments. This prototype model was compared with the cue abstraction model, which assumes that people abstract cue weights in learning and add the cue information from exemplars to infer their criterion values varying on the continuous dimension. This study hypothesises that the training mode and the number of exemplars in training interact and affect subsequent model performance at test. The results from an experiment confirmed this hypothesis and showed that observational training supports an efficient prototype abstraction and feedback training supports an efficient cue abstraction.