Reducing Child Whining Through Self-Instructional Parent Training Materials

Parents used self-instructional booklets to decrease their children's (age4-8) whining. In each of 9 families, a multiple-baseline design across three problems, whining and two other was used. Parent data indicate mean improvement of 26% of the maximum possible from baseline means, with 8 of 9 children showing improvement. All parent final consumer ratings were positive. All interobserver reliabilities exceeded 80% agreement weighted for occurrence and nonoccurrence. Correlations for two sets of data between frequencies of whining estimated by parents twice an hour and percent of intervals recorded for whining from observer interval data for the hour produced median correlations of .62 and .51. Percent agreement between observer and parent data, both using interval recording at the same time, produced a median coefficient of agreement weighted for occurrence and non-occurrence of 59%. Results suggest that parents using self-instructional materials alone could reduce children's whining from levels originally considered excessive to levels parents considered acceptable.     

Daily Behavior Report Cards with and without Home-Based Consequences: Improving Classroom Behavior in Low Income,African American Children with ADHD

Daily Behavior Report Cards (DBRC), which typically require teachers to evaluate students' daily behavior and parents to provide contingent consequences, are an effective and acceptable method for improving children's classroom behavior. The current study evaluated whether parent involvement is an essential treatment component or whether teacher feedback alone would be sufficient to produce children's behavior changes. The effectiveness of DBRC with teacher feedback to students and parent delivered consequences (PC) was compared to teacher feedback to students only (no parent delivered consequences, NPC) for increasing appropriate classroom behavior and academic productivity in African American, low income, elementary school children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Both treatments led to increased on-task behavior, although PC was superior to NPC. Academic productivity outcomes are less clear. Treatment implications and future directions for research on teacher feedback interventions are discussed.     

Early orthographic influences on phonemic awareness tasks: Evidence from a preschool training study

Experienced readers show influences of orthographic knowledge on tasks ostensibly tapping phonemic awareness. Here we draw on data from an experimental training study to demonstrate that even preschoolers show influences of their emerging orthographic abilities in such tasks. A total of 40 children were taught some letter-sound correspondences but not others. A selective effect of this training was found on their phonemic awareness task performance for the trained items. These findings point to the multidetermined nature of performance on tasks normally considered as measuring phonemic awareness and have implications for theories of the role of phonemic awareness in reading acquisition.     

基于视觉传播理论探索视觉素养与读片技能的整合

视觉素养是"读图"时代人们的基本文化素养,鉴于医学影像学的特点和要求,影像诊断学专业学生必须拥有良好的视觉素养。本文从视觉素养概念、视觉基本理论以及视觉素养培养的策略等方面探索了视觉素养与读片技能的整合。作者建议在影像诊断学中,应讲授有关视觉素养的基本知识。     

家——中华传统道德之根

中华传统道德重要的社会根源是家,其道德意识和范畴体系的起点是家。认识传统道德的局限进而批判其消极因素,要抓住家这个关键和出发点,更为重要的是,在弘扬中华道德的优良传统、建设社会主义新道德的时候,我们也要从家出发,以家为重要的起点。     

Reducing work-family conflict through different sources of social support

The present study examines the relationship between four sources of social support (i.e., spouse, relatives and friends, supervisor, and colleagues) and time and strain-based work-to-family and family-to-work conflict among 444 dual-earners. Gender differences with respect to the relationship between social support and work-family conflict were examined as well. The relationship between the sources of support and work-family conflict was tested using multiple regression analyses. Results showed that women reported more strain-based work-to-family conflict than men. Social support from spouse and from colleagues were related to family-to-work conflict, while none of the sources of social support were related to work-to-family conflict. Social support from supervisor and from colleagues were related differently to work-to-family conflict (time-based) and family-to-work conflict (strain-based) for men than for women. We conclude that social support is especially important in reducing family-to-work conflict.     

Partnership-Based, Community-Assisted Early Intervention for Literacy: An Application of the Participatory Intervention Model

Many schools, particularly those in low-income, urban neighborhoods serving children from diverse backgrounds, have a high percentage of students with literacy deficits and limited resources for providing remedial services. Addressing these needs requires the use of empirically supported reading intervention strategies and expanding the availability of qualified persons to implement these approaches. Just as importantly, students need to be educated in a culturally meaningful context by one or more individuals who are committed to addressing their educational, emotional, and social needs. One method of expanding the instructional work force and engaging students in attachments with caring adults in a culturally relevant context is to establish a community-assisted tutoring program, that is a program implemented by residents from the community who work in the school. This article describes the process of establishing a partnership-based, community-assisted early intervention program for literacy, based upon a participatory intervention model, by presenting two case illustrations. Challenges for school consultants in establishing such a program in schools are described and directions for future research and practice are outlined.     

Improving mother–child interaction in low‐income Turkish–Dutch families: A study of mechanisms mediating improvements resulting from participating in a home‐based preschool intervention program

This study examined whether the effects on cognitive and language outcomes of a recently developed home‐based educational intervention program, Opstap Opnieuw, for 4–6‐years‐old disadvantaged children could be explained by improved mother–child interaction. The present sample (n=30) was drawn from a larger sample of Turkish–Dutch families (n=181) for which in a previous study significant effects of Opstap Opnieuw were found on children's (first) language and cognitive pre‐math skill, 5 months after the program ended. The present study focused on two facets of interaction quality as possible mediators of these program effects: the mean cognitive distancing level of mothers' communication and instruction behaviour as an indicator of the cognitive and verbal stimulation provided, and the degree of cooperation as an indicator of mothers' social‐emotional support to their children. Both measures were based on systematic observation of mother–child interaction during sorting tasks. Participation in the program appeared to improve mothers' social‐emotional support behaviour substantially, but not their cognitive distancing behaviour. For Turkish (first language) vocabulary, about half of the program effect appeared to be mediated by the improved social‐emotional support. For cognitive pre‐mathematical skills, two‐thirds of the program effect appeared to be mediated by improved social‐emotional support. Mothers' cognitive distancing was moderately‐strongly related to children's vocabulary development, but did not mediate program effects. Some implications of the results are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Doctors and diversity: Using interfaith literacy and interfaith dialogue to improve patient care

In an increasingly diversifying world, how can doctors and other healthcare professionals improve patient care? Currently, many doctors do not understand how to approach religious differences or recognize their effect on patient health. Doctors must acquire interfaith literacy in medical school through required courses and learn the skills necessary to engage in interfaith dialogue with patients in their practice in order to provide the best patient care in areas with growing diverse patient populations.     

The relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in Spanish‐speaking children

In the last decades, a series of studies has explored the role of morphological awareness on reading comprehension. Path analysis studies performed in English have shown that morphological awareness benefits reading comprehension both directly and indirectly, through word decoding. This issue has seldom been explored in Spanish. The aim of this study was to replicate in Spanish the results previously found in English. We used path analysis to assess three alternative models of the relationship between morphological awareness, word decoding and reading comprehension in 4th grade Spanish‐speaking children. Contrary to English, we found that morphological awareness benefits reading comprehension only directly. We conclude that in Spanish, in which accurate and fluent pronunciation of written words can be achieved through grapheme‐to‐phoneme conversion rules, morphological awareness does not help the correct pronunciation of words. Thus, morphological awareness is not relevant for word decoding in Spanish but is related to reading comprehension since this type of morphological knowledge provides access to the semantic and syntactic information of new words.