A longitudinal assessment of the home literacy environment and early language

This longitudinal assessment concentrated on the relation between the home literacy environment (HLE) and early language acquisition during infancy and toddlerhood. In study 1, after controlling for socio‐economic status, a broadly defined HLE predicted language comprehension in 50 infants. In study 2, 27 children returned for further analyses. Findings revealed that the HLE measured in infancy predicted language production in toddlerhood and maternal redirecting behaviours measured in toddlerhood were negatively associated with expressive language. Results across both studies indicate the importance of a broadly defined HLE (including joint attention and parent–child conversation) for language development. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of the HLE in supporting both receptive and expressive vocabulary growth in the second and third years of life. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘I Remember When I Learned That!’ developmental and gender differences in children's memories of learning episodes

Eighty 4‐ to 9‐year‐old children answered factual knowledge questions in math, science and social studies during one‐on‐one interviews. Children indicated whether they had known or guessed each answer, and whether they (a) remembered the moment they learned the answer (episodic response) or (b) did not remember. For episodic responses, children provided memory narratives of learning episodes. One third of children's responses identified a learning episode. There was a developmental trend in which older children were more episodic than younger children, and when children knew and provided correct answers, there was a gender difference in which females were more episodic than males. Developmental and gender differences in the characteristics of memory narratives were also apparent. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measuring gratitude at work

ABSTRACT

The role of gratitude in the workplace is understudied, despite its potential for promoting well-being and achievement in organizational contexts. We developed and evaluated a measure of workplace-specific gratitude called the Gratitude at Work Scale (GAWS). In Study 1 (N = 207), we used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to identify a two-factor structure. The two subscales (Gratitude for Supportive Work Environment, Gratitude for Meaningful Work) had good estimated internal consistency and incrementally predicted burnout after controlling for trait gratitude and workplace satisfaction. In Study 2 (N = 269), we replicated the GAWS two-factor structure, found further evidence for construct validity, and uncovered strong two-week temporal stability. In Study 3 (N = 161), the GAWS was sensitive to manipulations of workplace attitudes following a writing task. The GAWS has initial psychometric support and may be useful when studying workplace functioning and well-being.

(142 words)     

Sustainable development goals and nationally determined contributions: the poor fit between agent-dependent and agent-independent policy instruments

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which serve as the primary feature of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which serve as a vital instrumental of the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement, have clear synergies. Both are focused, in part, on responding to challenges presented to human well-being. There are good practical reasons to integrate development efforts with a comprehensive response to climate change. However, at least in their current form, these two policy instruments are ill-suited to this task. Where SDGs are focused on supporting considerations of human flourishing to which policy needs to respond, NDCs, in their current form, are dependent on the determinations of the nations that generate them. I conclude that the best means of integrating these two policy initiatives require moving past the subjective foundations of NDCs.     

Birth of the subject: the ethics of monitoring development programmes

NGO-based and rigorously monitored development programmes are bringing about important and positive socio-economic changes in the developing world. However, there are numerous instances of the employment of aggressive and grueling monitoring techniques which objectify the subject of development, the primary stakeholder, claiming development results as the successful achievement of goals of the donor or implementing organization. It is in this context that one can speak of an ethic of monitoring development programmes. The paper argues that such an ethic can be positively based on principles like empowering people through development work without hurting their sense of self-worth, the principle of trust and partnership and, negatively, never striving to objectify any person or people for the achievement of some objective, even if this objective is in itself honourable and desirable. The paper contends that if development is freeing the subject, the central player, to exercise their capability to live their life to the fullest, then development monitoring and development work in general has to enhance freedom, autonomy and openness.     

Beyond the International Relations framework: an essay in descriptive global ethics

Discussions of global ethics—about the types of ethical claim made on individuals and groups, not only states, by individuals and groups around the world—have had to move beyond the categories inherited in the International Relations discipline. Many important positions are not captured by a framework developed for discussion of inter-state relations. The blindspots seem to reflect an outmoded expectation that (i) giving low normative weight to national boundaries correlates strongly with (ii) giving more normative weight to people beyond one's national boundaries, and vice versa; in other words that these two dimensions in practice reduce to one. The paper develops an enriched categorisation. We need to recognise the separate importance of the two dimensions, and thus distinguish various types of ‘cosmopolitan’ position, including many varieties of libertarian position which give neither national boundaries nor pan-human obligations much (if any) importance.     

The phonological store abandoned

Baddeley and Larsen (2007) argue that a number of key findings reported by Jones, Macken, and Nicholls (2004) and Jones, Hughes, and Macken (2006) pointing to shortcomings of the phonological store construct arise from the store being abandoned with long lists. In our rejoinder we point out that Baddeley and Larsen use a procedure in which retrieval from the supposed phonological storage would not—according to their own theory—have been possible, and we present theoretical, empirical, and logical problems with their “store abandonment” argument and highlight a number of difficulties associated with the interpretation of suffix and prefix effects. We conclude that our data are still problematic for the phonological store construct and suggest that a reformulation of short-term memory theory needs to embody (or indeed focus exclusively upon) perceptual and effector systems rather than bespoke storage modules.     

Cognate effects in sentence context depend on word class,L2 proficiency,and task

Length effects in the lexical decision latencies of children might indicate that children rely on sublexical processing and essentially approach the task as a naming task. We examined this possibility by means of the effects of neighbourhood size and articulatory suppression on lexical decision performance. Sixty-six beginning and 62 advanced readers performed a lexical decision task in a standard, articulatory suppression, or tapping condition. We found length effects on words and nonwords in the children's lexical decisions. However, the effects of neighbourhood size were similar to those reported for adult lexical decisions, rather than the effects previously found in children's naming. In addition, no effect was found of articulatory suppression. Both findings suggest that, despite clear length effects, children do not adopt a naming task approach but, like adults, base lexical decisions mainly on a lexical search. These results pose a challenge for several computational models of reading.     

Phonological,visual, and semantic coding strategies and children's short-term picture memory span

Three experiments addressed controversies in the previous literature on the development of phonological and other forms of short-term memory coding in children, using assessments of picture memory span that ruled out potentially confounding effects of verbal input and output. Picture materials were varied in terms of phonological similarity, visual similarity, semantic similarity, and word length. Older children (6/8-year-olds), but not younger children (4/5-year-olds), demonstrated robust and consistent phonological similarity and word length effects, indicating that they were using phonological coding strategies. This confirmed findings initially reported by Conrad (1971), but subsequently questioned by other authors. However, in contrast to some previous research, little evidence was found for a distinct visual coding stage at 4 years, casting doubt on assumptions that this is a developmental stage that consistently precedes phonological coding. There was some evidence for a dual visual and phonological coding stage prior to exclusive use of phonological coding at around 5–6 years. Evidence for semantic similarity effects was limited, suggesting that semantic coding is not a key method by which young children recall lists of pictures.     

The influence of ongoing task absorption on preschoolers’ prospective memory with peripheral cues

ABSTRACT

Prospective memory (PM) represents the ability to perform a planned action after a certain delay. Substantial increases of PM have been shown across the ages of preschool children. However, previous studies have mostly focused on PM tasks, in which the PM cue was presented centrally (i.e. inside the centre of attention). The current study examined developmental differences between 3-, 4-, and 5-year old preschoolers using PM tasks, in which the PM cue was presented peripherally and investigated the influence of ongoing task absorption on children’s performance on such tasks. Results showed that PM performance increased over preschool age and that it was affected by ongoing task absorption, with significantly better PM performance on a low- versus a high-absorbing ongoing task. Importantly, age differences were only present in the low- but not in the high-absorbing condition, showing that preschoolers’ PM improves when less cognitive resources are absorbed by the ongoing task.