Investigating the predictive roles of working memory and IQ in academic attainment

There is growing evidence for the relationship between working memory and academic attainment. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether working memory is simply a proxy for IQ or whether there is a unique contribution to learning outcomes. The findings indicate that children’s working memory skills at 5 years of age were the best predictor of literacy and numeracy 6 years later. IQ, in contrast, accounted for a smaller portion of unique variance to these learning outcomes. The results demonstrate that working memory is not a proxy for IQ but rather represents a dissociable cognitive skill with unique links to academic attainment. Critically, we find that working memory at the start of formal education is a more powerful predictor of subsequent academic success than IQ. This result has important implications for education, particularly with respect to intervention.     

USING COMPLEX AUDITORY—VISUAL SAMPLES TO PRODUCE EMERGENT RELATIONS IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Six participants with autism learned conditional relations between complex auditory‐visual sample stimuli (dictated words and pictures) and simple visual comparisons (printed words) using matching‐to‐sample training procedures. Pre‐ and posttests examined potential stimulus control by each element of the complex sample when presented individually and emergence of additional conditional relations and oral labeling. Tests revealed class‐consistent performance for all participants following training.     

Semantic false memories in the form of derived relational intrusions following training

Contemporary behavior analytic research is making headway in characterizing memory phenomena that typically have been characterized by cognitive models, and the current study extends this development by producing "false memories" in the form of functional equivalence responding. A match-to-sample training procedure was administered in order to encourage participants to treat groups of unrelated English words as being interchangeable. Following training, participants were presented with a list of words from within one of the groups for a free recall test and a recognition test. Results showed that participants were more likely to falsely recall and recognize words that had been assigned to the same group as the list words during prior training, relative to words not assigned to the same group and relative to words that co-occurred with list words. These results indicate that semantic relatedness can be experimentally manipulated in order to produce specific false memories.     

混合模式调查下的测量不变性：跨文化视角

混合模式调查收集数据的有效性需以模式间测量等同为前提.以往调查模式间的测量等同研究尚未考虑文化因素的影响.本研究通过两个自我创新能力评价量表,基于中美两国数据,运用多组确认性因子分析法考察了将由网络调查和纸笔调查构成的混合调查模式应用于自我能力和行为评估时的测量等同问题.结果在美国的样本中发现创新能力评价量表在两种调查模式下具有测量不变性,而在中国的样本中只发现强因子测量不变性,提示混合模式调查下测量不等同的出现是调查模式和文化因素共同导致的结果.我们认为,集体主义文化扩大与强化了纸笔调查和网络调查之间的匿名感知差异,进而受访者可能在网络调查中呈现出“满意决策”作答行为或在线下的调查中呈现出“社会称许性作答行为”,从而增加了出现测量不等同的可能性.     

Interplay of Biomechanical Constraints and Kinematic Strategies in Selecting Arm Postures

In this study, the authors examined the interplay between biomechanics and control strategies in the resolution of excess degrees of freedom at the joint level. Seven participants made aimed arm movements from 30 starting points and several starting postures to targets. Final arm postures for movements to a target exhibited substantial joint angle variation. Through regression modeling and by comparing observed final arm postures with biomechanically plausible postures, the authors identified 3 kinematic strategies: (a) Maintain deviations from the average angle at the starting point to the joint's final posture; (b) make torso rotations that are a fixed proportion of shoulder rotations; and (c) adopt a characteristic combination of 4 wrist-positioning approaches. The results demonstrated that kinematic strategies can account for substantial variance in final arm postures, if one takes into account 2 types of individual differences—those that arise inevitably from biomechanical constraints and those that reflect choices in movement strategy.     

The mathematical abilities of children with cochlear implants

Research has shown that cochlear implants give rise to improvements in speech recognition and production in children with profound hearing loss but very few studies have explored mathematical abilities in these children. The current study compared the mathematical abilities of 24 children with cochlear implants (mean age 10 years 1 month) to a control group of 22 hearing children (mean age 9 years 8 months). The math questions were categorized into questions that tapped into arithmetic or geometrical reasoning. It was predicted that the cochlear implant group would perform below the hearing group on the arithmetic questions but not the geometrical reasoning questions. Unexpectedly, the results showed that the cochlear implant group performed significantly below the hearing group on both types of math questions, but that this difference was mediated by language skill as assessed by vocabulary knowledge. The clinical implications of these results and possible future research results are considered.     

The Idea of an Exact Number: Children's Understanding of Cardinality and Equinumerosity

Understanding what numbers are means knowing several things. It means knowing how counting relates to numbers (called the cardinal principle or cardinality); it means knowing that each number is generated by adding one to the previous number (called the successor function or succession), and it means knowing that all and only sets whose members can be placed in one‐to‐one correspondence have the same number of items (called exact equality or equinumerosity). A previous study (Sarnecka & Carey, 2008) linked children's understanding of cardinality to their understanding of succession for the numbers five and six. This study investigates the link between cardinality and equinumerosity for these numbers, finding that children either understand both cardinality and equinumerosity or they understand neither. This suggests that cardinality and equinumerosity (along with succession) are interrelated facets of the concepts five and six, the acquisition of which is an important conceptual achievement of early childhood.     

序列本体感觉学习获得稳定的自我中心空间表征*

通过同步视觉或者序列本体感觉,被试学习不规则场景。学习完毕之后,在面对学习方向、自主旋转240°、和持续旋转直至迷向3种运动条件下,被试随机指出各个物体的位置。迷向导致同步视觉学习组指向的内部一致性显著变差,而序列本体感觉学习组不受迷向影响。离线的相对位置判断任务表明两组被试的环境中心空间表征没有差异。这证明通过序列本体感觉学习被试也可以形成稳定的自我中心空间表征,支持了空间快照理论的扩展和空间认知的功能等价假说。     

Investigating the Relationship Between Attention and Working Memory in Clinical and Community Samples

The first aim of the present study was to investigate whether differences in core deficits in ADHD subtypes lead to dissociable working memory profiles. The second aim was to compare the working memory profiles of inattentive students with those identified as having poor working memory, as they exhibit very similar behavioral profiles. Finally, the relationship between working memory and academic attainment in these groups were also of interest. Four groups of 9-year-olds were recruited: a community sample of children with inattentive symptoms, a clinically diagnosed group of children with ADHD-Combined, children with low working memory, and a healthy comparison group. They were assessed on measures of working memory, IQ, academic attainment, and sustained attention. The findings indicated that the combined and inattentive subtypes could not be distinguished on the basis of their working memory profile. In contrast, those with inattentive symptoms did better on the short-term memory tasks than the low working memory group. The majority of all three atypical groups performed very poorly in reading and math. This pattern can be interpreted as reflecting the link between working memory and academic attainment, even in those with attention problems.