The Prevention of Reading Difficulties

The purpose of this article is to provide practical advice about methods to prevent reading failure that is grounded in the new knowledge we have acquired about reading and learning to read over the past 2 decades. Recent research on reading is used to establish a set of facts about reading and reading growth that is relevant to establishing instructional objectives and methods for the prevention of reading difficulties. Within the context of our current understanding of the reasons many children find it difficult to learn to read, the article also identifies the instructional conditions that need to be in place to prevent the development of reading difficulties in all but a very small proportion of children. The article concludes with a discussion of issues and procedures for the early identification of children who are likely to experience difficulties learning to read.     

Fostering young children's representation, planning, and reflection: A focus in three current early childhood models

Many educators and developmental psychologists have pointed to the development of symbolic thought and representational abilities as a set of fundamental capacities that underlie the development of self-regulation, problem solving, planning, and higher level thought processes. While many early childhood programs value children's development of symbolic capacities, three approaches, High/Scope, Tools of the Mind, and Reggio Emilia, were analyzed in terms of one context from the array of strategies and experiences that characterizes the approach in order to examine the distinctive way that three different preschool programs apply the theoretical construct of representational development to pedagogical strategies.     

New Perspectives on Agency in Early Modern Philosophy

ABSTRACT

This introductory article outlines the themes and aims of this special issue, which offers new perspectives on early modern debates about agency in two ways: First, it recovers writings on agency and liberty that have been widely neglected or that have received insufficient attention, including writings by Anne Conway, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, William King, Gabrielle Suchon, Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet, Mary Astell, and Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Second, it reveals the richness of early modern debates about agency and liberty.     

Source Monitoring: ERP Evidence for Greater Reactivity to Nontarget Information in Older Adults

Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were collected concurrently with stimulus presentation during a source monitoring task. Younger adults were less likely than older adults to make source monitoring errors and their ERP records showed far greater discrimination between target stimuli and familiar but nontarget foils. Older adults not only made more source errors but produced high amplitude late positivities to the nontarget foils even when these foils were correctly rejected. Under divided attention conditions, younger adults performance was similar to that of the older adults both behaviorally and electrophysiologically. These data illustrate the role that attentional resources play in the ability to inhibit response tendencies and suggest that age differences in source monitoring may be more related to attentional control than inefficiencies in the encoding of contextual information. As well, they suggest that the ERP late positivity may represent a more general response to item salience rather than serve as an index of recollection as is the current view.     

Predictive model for early math skills based on structural equations

Early math skills are determined by higher cognitive processes that are particularly important for acquiring and developing skills during a child's early education. Such processes could be a critical target for identifying students at risk for math learning difficulties. Few studies have considered the use of a structural equation method to rationalize these relations. Participating in this study were 207 preschool students ages 59 to 72 months, 108 boys and 99 girls. Performance with respect to early math skills, early literacy, general intelligence, working memory, and short‐term memory was assessed. A structural equation model explaining 64.3% of the variance in early math skills was applied. Early literacy exhibited the highest statistical significance (β = 0.443, p < 0.05), followed by intelligence (β = 0.286, p < 0.05), working memory (β = 0.220, p < 0.05), and short‐term memory (β = 0.213, p < 0.05). Correlations between the independent variables were also significant (p < 0.05). According to the results, cognitive variables should be included in remedial intervention programs.     

Concurrent validity of the differential ability scales,second edition with the Mullen Scales of Early Learning in young children with and without neurodevelopmental disorders

Estimates of intelligence in young children with neurodevelopmental disorders are critical for making diagnoses, in characterizing symptoms of disorders, and in predicting future outcomes. The limitations of standardized testing for children with developmental delay or cognitive impairment are well known: Tests do not exist that provide developmentally appropriate material along with norms that extend to the lower reaches of ability. Two commonly used and interchanged instruments are the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL), a test of developmental level, and the Differential Ability Scales, second edition (DAS-II), a more traditional cognitive test. We evaluated the correspondence of contemporaneous MSEL and the DAS-II scores in a mixed sample of children aged 2–10 years with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), non-ASD developmental delays, and typically developing children across the full spectrum of cognitive ability. Consistent with published data on the original DAS and the MSEL, scores on the DAS-II and MSEL were highly correlated. However, curve estimation revealed large mean differences that varied as a function of the child’s cognitive ability level. We conclude that interchanging MSEL and DAS-II scores without regard to the discrepancy in scores may produce misleading results in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of children with and without ASD, and, thus, this practice should be implemented with caution.     

Current knowledge on motor disorders in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Motor symptomatology in autism is currently poorly understood, and still not included in the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnostic criteria, although some studies suggest the presence of motor disturbances in this syndrome. We provide here a literature review on early motor symptoms in autism, focusing on studies on psychomotor issues (tone, postural control, manual dexterity, handedness, praxis). The approach adopted in research to study altered motor behaviors is generally global and there is no detailed semiology of the motor or neuromotor disorders observed in people with ASD. This global approach does not enable understanding of the neuro-developmental mechanisms involved in ASD. Identification of clinical neuro-psychomotor profiles in reference to a standard would help to better understand the origin and the nature of the disorders encountered in ASD, and would thus give new directions for treatment.     

认知抑制与人际宽恕:特质宽恕的调节作用

采用《特质宽恕量表》测量了102名大学生的特质宽恕能力,并通过Flanker任务和情景回忆法评估了被试的认知抑制和人际宽恕水平,目的是探讨特质宽恕、认知抑制与人际宽恕三者之间的关系。结果发现:(1)认知抑制、特质宽恕与人际宽恕各维度之间存在两两显著相关(除认知抑制与仁慈动机之外);(2)特质宽恕对回避、报复和仁慈动机均具有预测作用,而认知抑制则只对报复动机具有预测作用;(3)特质宽恕与认知抑制对回避动机具有负向的调节作用,对仁慈动机具有正向的调节作用。     

Cognitive empathy modulates the visual perception of human-like body postures without imitation

To examine the mechanism of visual perception of human-like body postures, we conducted a posture recognition task, a questionnaire survey, and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). The majority of participants perceived the pseudo-posture as a human posture in the early stage (78%), but only approximately half of them reported the imagination of bodily movement (66%). These results suggest that the majority of observers perceive pseudo-postures as human postures in the early stage of perception, but this human posture perception does not necessarily lead to the visualisation of bodily movement. In a group of who received the pseudo posture as a human-posture regardless of the perception stages, the participants who imagined bodily movement (64%) showed significantly higher scores than those who did not on the Fantasy subscale of the IRI. Highly empathic participants are more likely to detect a kinematic relation between the pseudo-postures.