Online Story Comprehension among Children with ADHD: Which Core Deficits are Involved?

Children with ADHD have difficulty understanding causal connections and goal plans within stories. This study examined mediators of group differences in story narrations between children ages 7-9 with and without ADHD, including as potential mediators both the core deficits of ADHD (i.e., inattention, disinhibition, planning/working memory) as well measures of phonological processing and verbal skills. Forty-nine children with ADHD and 67 non-referred children narrated a wordless book and completed tasks assessing the core deficits of ADHD, phonological processing, and verbal skills. Results revealed that, although no shorter than those of non-referred children, the narratives of children with ADHD contained fewer elements relating to the story's causal structure and goal plan. Deficits in sustained attention accounted for the most variance in these differences. Results have implications for understanding and ameliorating the academic problems experienced by children with ADHD.     

The On-line Study of Sentence Comprehension: An Examination of Dual Task Paradigms

This paper presents three studies which examine the susceptibility of sentence comprehension to intrusion by extra-sentential probe words in two on-line dual-task techniques commonly used to study sentence processing: the cross-modal lexical priming paradigm and the unimodal all-visual lexical priming paradigm. It provides both a general review and a direct empirical examination of the effects of task-demand in the on-line study of sentence comprehension. In all three studies, sentential materials were presented to participants together with a target probe word which constituted either a better or a worse continuation of the sentence at a point at which it was presented. Materials were identical for all three studies. The manner of presentation of the sentence materials was, however, manipulated; presentation was either visual, auditory (normal rate) or auditory (slow rate). The results demonstrate that a technique in which a visual target probe interrupts ongoing sentence processing (such as occurs in unimodal visual presentation and in very slow auditory sentence presentation) encourages the integration of the probe word into the on-going sentence. Thus, when using such ‘sentence interrupting’ techniques, additional care to equate probes is necessary. Importantly, however, the results provide strong evidence that the standard use of fluent cross-modality sentence investigation methods are immune from such external probe word intrusions into ongoing sentence processing and are thus accurately reflect underlying comprehension processes.     

Resolution of activated background information in text comprehension

The present experiments explored the resolution of activated background information in text comprehension. In Experiment 1, participants read passages that contained an elaboration section that was either consistent or qualified (inconsistent but then corrected to be consistent) with respect to the subsequently presented target sentence (see O'Brien et al., 1998). However, the experiment used two target sentences, and several filler sentences were inserted between the first and second target sentence. The results showed that the reading times for the first target sentence in the qualified elaboration version were significantly longer than those in the consistent elaboration version. These were consistent with O'Brien's study, and further indicated that the basic process captured by the memory-based view appears to generalize to the Chinese reader better than does the here-and-now view. More importantly, the results showed that the reading times for the second target sentence in the qualified elaboration version were as long as those in the consistent elaboration version. These further indicated that the activation of background information not only maintained the coherence of the text, but also allowed for the relevant information to be updated, resulting in a unified information set. When the information was reactivated during ongoing reading, it would be in the form of unified information. In Experiment 2, the first target sentence in each passage from Experiment 1 was converted to a filler sentence, and the second target sentence became the target sentence. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the reading times for the target sentence in the qualified elaboration version were significantly longer than those for the consistent elaboration version. These indicated that the delay between the target sentences and the elaboration section was not responsible for the lack of differences in Experiment 1, and confirmed the conclusion of Experiment 1.     

First graders' literacy and self-regulation gains: The effect of individualizing student instruction

We examined the effect of individualizing student instruction (ISI; N = 445 students, 46 classrooms) on first graders' self-regulation gains compared to a business-as-usual control group. Self-regulation, conceptualized as a constellation of executive skills, was positively associated with academic development. We hypothesized that the ISI intervention's emphasis on teacher planning and organization, classroom management, and the opportunity for students to work independently and in small groups would promote students' self-regulation. We found no main effect of ISI on self-regulation gains. However, for students with weaker initial self-regulation, ISI was associated with greater self-regulation gains compared to peers in control classrooms. The ISI effect on self-regulation was greater when the intervention was more fully implemented.     

Strategic grouping in the spatial span memory task

Spatial short-term memory performance was examined in relation to participants’ strategies. A total of 20 adult participants viewed and reproduced sequences of locations that varied in length (five, six, seven, or eight locations) and spatial separability (a manipulation of the configurations). In trial-by-trial self-reports, participants described five types of strategies. Chunking the spatial sequences into groups of three or four locations was the sole strategy associated with increased accuracy. Participants demonstrated considerable variability in the strategies that they selected, suggesting that cognitive resources are allocated to strategy selection, execution, and monitoring in the spatial span task. Spatially separable sequences were more accurately recalled than nonseparable sequences, independent of strategic grouping, suggesting two levels of grouping in the spatial span task.     

The role of perceptual similarity of the task environments in children’s perseverative responding

Perseverative responding is often seen in children’s performance in a variety of contexts. One such context is symbolic comprehension in which 2- and 2½-year-olds demonstrate difficulty in appreciating the association of symbols (pictures and scale models) and their referents and show a high proportion of perseverative responding. Representational-level explanations of perseveration were explored in the current studies via examination of the impact of perceptual similarity of visual environments across trials. Across two experiments, children saw either a picture (Experiment 1) or a scale model (Experiment 2) of a hiding location of a room and were then encouraged to recover the toy from an identical room. Manipulating the perceptual similarity of the environments across successive trials affected performance and perseverative responding. These results highlight the critical role played by perceptual information not only in symbolic tasks but also in many other tasks and have important implications for theories of perseveration.     

The Effect of Differential Post-Weaning Environment on the Rigidity of an Animal's Behavior

Seventy-two first, second and third grade boys and girls were administered seriation problems involving different combinations of shape and color variation. Success rates and latency scores were influenced by shape variation, but not by color variation or grade level. The failure to obtain predicted interactions between the effects of grade level and stimulus variation was attributed to the clarity of the relevant stimulus dimension.     

Moral Virtue and Practical Wisdom: Theme Comprehension in Children,Youth, and Adults

The authors tested 3 hypotheses about the relation of moral comprehension to prudential comprehension by contrasting comprehension of themes in moral stories with comprehension of themes in prudential stories among third-grade, fifth-grade, and college students (n = 168) in Study 1, and among college students, young and middle-aged adults, and older adults (n = 96) in Study 2. In both studies, all groups were statistically significantly better at moral theme comprehension than prudential theme comprehension, suggesting that moral comprehension may develop prior to prudential comprehension. In Study 2, all groups performed equally on moral theme generation whereas both adult groups were significantly better than college students on prudential theme generation. Overall, the findings of these studies provide modest evidence that moral and prudential comprehension each develop separately, and that the latter may develop more slowly.     

Relationships Between Need for Cognition,Knowledge, and Verbal Ability

The authors investigated the relationships between need for cognition. knowledge, and verbal ability. Participants completed scales that measured their need for cognition, verbal ability, and knowledge about people and events that occurred during the Vietnam War era. Correlational analyses showed that the participants' need for cognition scores were modestly but positively correlated with verbal ability and knowledge and that verbal ability and knowledge were also positively correlated. The correlation between need for cognition and knowledge was small but significant when verbal ability was controlled. The conclusion drawn from these results is that need for cognition contributes to the acquisition of knowledge beyond the contribution of verbal ability.