Age and schooling effects on early literacy and phoneme awareness

Previous research on age and schooling effects is largely restricted to studies of children who begin formal schooling at 6 years of age, and the measures of phoneme awareness used have typically lacked sensitivity for beginning readers. Our study addresses these issues by testing 4 to 6 year-olds (first 2 years of formal schooling in the United Kingdom) on a sensitive dynamic measure of phoneme awareness and tests of early literacy. There were significant effects of both age and schooling on the dynamic measure of phoneme awareness, word reading, spelling, and letter name knowledge, but there were no significant Age × Time interactions. This indicates that older children within this age group generally outperform their younger classmates (although they do not make faster progress) and that this advantage is developed prior to the start of school.     

Singaporean kindergartners' phonological awareness and English writing skills

This article describes the phonological awareness and English writing skills among a sample of 297 Singaporean kindergarten children, stratified by ethnicity (Chinese, Malay, and Indian), and examines the relationship between oral language and writing skills in this multilingual population. Overall, Singaporean kindergartners, nearly all of whom were bilingual, scored higher on English writing but lower on English oral language skills than U.S. norms. Despite literacy instruction that emphasized whole-word memorization, phonological awareness statistically significantly predicted English writing scores, controlling for English vocabulary, ethnicity, sex, and an interaction between English vocabulary and sex. The current study's findings highlight the possibility of developing high literacy skills among bilingual learners with low oral language skills. In addition, the study demonstrates children's development of phonological awareness in the absence of phonological awareness or phonics instruction and supports the theory that both alphabetic (phonological) processes and logographic (whole-word) processes contribute to successful English literacy achievement.     

Memory for incidentally perceived social cues: Effects on person judgment

Dynamic face cues can be very salient, as when observing sudden shifts of gaze to a new location, or a change of expression from happy to angry. These highly salient social cues influence judgments of another person during the course of an interaction. However, other dynamic cues, such as pupil dilation, are much more subtle, affecting judgments of another person even without awareness. We asked whether such subtle, incidentally perceived, dynamic cues could be encoded in to memory and retrieved at a later time. The current study demonstrates that in some circumstances changes in pupil size in another person are indeed encoded into memory and influence judgments of that individual at a later time. Furthermore, these judgments interact with the perceived trustworthiness of the individual and the nature of the social context. The effect is somewhat variable, however, possibly reflecting individual differences and the inherent ambiguity of pupil dilation/constriction.     

Individual differences in emotional processing and autobiographical memory: interoceptive awareness and alexithymia in the fading affect bias

The capacity to perceive internal bodily states is linked to emotional awareness and effective emotional regulation. We explore individual differences in emotional awareness in relation to the fading affect bias (FAB), which refers to the greater dwindling of unpleasant compared to pleasant emotions in autobiographical memory. We consider interoceptive awareness and alexithymia in relation to the FAB, and private event rehearsal as a mediating process. With increasing interoceptive awareness, there was an enhanced FAB, but with increasing alexithymia, there was a decreased FAB. Further, the effects of interoceptive awareness were partially mediated by private rehearsal of pleasant events. We provide novel evidence that capacity for emotional awareness and thus effective processing is an important factor predictive of the FAB. Moreover, our results imply an important role for maintaining positive affect in the FAB. Our findings offer new insights into the effects of interoception and alexithymia on autobiographical memory, and support concepts of the FAB emerging as a result of adaptive emotional regulation processes.     

汉语语音范畴性知觉在儿童早期阅读中的作用

本研究以172名幼儿园中、大班和小学一年级的5~7岁儿童为研究对象, 测查了语音范畴性知觉、语音意识、短时记忆和汉字识别, 并通过群体差异比较、分层回归和结构方程建模的方法, 探讨了语音范畴性知觉、语音意识和早期阅读的关系。结果发现:(1)5~7岁儿童的语音范畴性知觉、语音意识能力随年龄的增加而显著提高;(2)语音范畴性知觉能力与语音意识, 特别是韵母意识和音节意识显著相关;(3)在语音与早期汉字识别能力的发展模型中, 语音范畴性知觉不直接影响汉字识别, 其对早期阅读的影响是通过语音意识的中介来实现的。     

基于多传感器数据的航空管制员情境意识的计算

航空管制人员保持良好的情境意识是确保空中交通以安全、高效方式运行的必要条件。如果在管制员工作过程中, 能准确监测其情境意识状态, 并在情境意识丧失前给予及时告警, 那么将会极大地提高管制绩效和减少空中两机相撞的概率。目前, 国外评价管制员情境意识的方法虽然不少, 但这些方法基本都是诊断性质和回溯性质的, 无法对管制员的情境意识进行监测或预警。管制员的情境意识受个体差异、任务等多种因素的影响, 同时, 其也可以由某些指标来表征, 如某些作业绩效指标和生理指标。为了能够实现对航空管制员情境意识的准确监控及告警, 拟通过雷达管制模拟实验、心理测量、专家评定等方法采集多传感器数据, 分别建立基于表征指标和基于影响变量的情境意识计算模型, 并比较其预测性能。该研究结果可为管制员情境意识的实时监测提供支持。     

The family as its own reflecting team: a family therapy method

Social research has suggested that people, in general, tend to overestimate their skills and abilities. Interestingly, research has found that peers are better predictors of a person's behaviour than self‐assessment, suggesting that others know us better than we know ourselves. Family therapists should be aware that family members might not give accurate accounts of themselves. In order to overcome this problem, therapists should incorporate peer assessments into therapy. Reflecting teams and videotaping do incorporate peer assessments, yet these methods can be impractical. This article describes a method of family therapy using enactments as a means of setting up the family as its own reflecting team. The method suggests that the family and therapist switch roles several times during the enactment, and then encourages a discussion on the peer observations on how each person addresses a problem in the family. Case examples illustrate how feedback from peers promotes insights.     

病历书写中的质量缺陷

病历书写中的质量缺陷存在于主诉、病史、体格检查、病程记录、诊断等各个方面。提高医学生病历书写质量及临床思维能力,是完成高质量病历书写的关键。同时病历书写有关的法律、法规相继出台,对病历书写提出了新的挑战。