Cognitive abilities of street children: Low-SES Bolivian boys with and without experience of living in the street

Objectives: This study compared results on cognitive tests measuring nonverbal visualization and reasoning, executive functions, and creativity between 36 boys with experience of living in the street and 31 housed yet socioeconomically equivalent boys, in Bolivia.

Results: The street children scored significantly higher on the creativity measure, which is discussed in relation to contextual relevance. No significant differences were found on the other cognitive tests. Time elapsed after living in the street and drug use were strongly associated with cognition, while age was not. Both groups scored below average compared to Western norms. The results are discussed in terms of the cultural relevance of the tests and the impact of socioeconomic status, stress, and stimulation on cognition.     

Polite Girls and Creative Boys? Students' Gender Moderates Accuracy of Teachers' Ratings of Creativity

The aim of this study was to examine whether, and to what extent, teachers are able to recognize the creativity of their students. The study measured the creative abilities, creative attitude, creative activity, as well as intrinsic motivation, intelligence, and school functioning of 589 Polish high school students, while their teachers (N = 178) rated students' creativity. The structural equation model (SEM) demonstrated that the accuracy of teachers' ratings of students' creativity is generally low—the latent factor of students' creativity reliably, however weakly, predicted teachers' ratings. The accuracy of teachers' ratings was moderated by gender: Only in the case of male students did the latent creativity factor reliably predict teachers' ratings. Students' school functioning emerged as a key factor positively associated with the perception of students as creative.     

Adults' Acquisition of Novel Dimension Words: Creating a Semantic Congruity Effect

The semantic congruity effect is exhibited when adults are asked to compare pairs of items from a series, and their response is faster when the direction of the comparison coincides with the location of the stimuli in the series. For example, people are faster at picking the bigger of 2 big items than the littler of 2 big items. In the 4 experiments presented, adults were taught new dimensional adjectives (mal/ler and borg/er). Characteristics of the learning situation, such as the nature of the stimulus series and the relative frequency of labeling, were varied. Results revealed that the participants who learned the relative meaning of the artificial dimensional adjectives also formed categories and developed a semantic congruity effect regardless of the characteristics of training. These findings have important implications for our understanding of adult acquisition of novel relational words, the relationship between learning such words and categorization, and the explanations of the semantic congruity effect.     

Writing product and process in children with English as an additional language

ABSTRACT

Children draw on limited cognitive resources to write and these resources are under more demand when writing in English as an additional language (EAL). This study investigated the relationship between writing process measures along with two language measures, phonological awareness and lexical retrieval, and measures of writing product. Thirty-nine EAL children took part in the study and their writing was digitised so that execution speed, burst length, and the pattern of pauses were available for analysis. The results found that lexical retrieval was significantly associated, indirectly through execution speed and burst length, with the number of words, lexical richness, and writing quality. The results are discussed in the context of common underlying proficiency theory and lexical retrieval as part of the translation process of writing.     

O'NEILL'S JOURNEY

This paper considers some of the processes through which Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) dramatically shaped his inner life and through which he created his plays. These processes at their finest are evident in his composition of Long Day's Journey into Night (1941a). During its 21‐month composition, the play went through three different versions, as evidenced by the playwright's handwritten and typed materials (O'Neill, unpublished, a, b, c, d). This paper posits that each version reflects O'Neill's changing state of mind as he began to master his instinctual life, developing increasingly rich characters and creating a painful, deeply tragic vision. Thus, this paper shows that O'Neill's great artistic achievement reflected a great psychological one.     

The relation between verbal and visuospatial memory and autobiographical memory

The basic-systems approach (Rubin, 2005, 2006) states that autobiographical memory is supported by other cognitive systems and argues that autobiographical memories are constructed from interactions between cognitive systems, such as language, vision and emotion. Although deficiencies in one or more of the basic systems influence the properties of autobiographical memories, little is known about how these cognitive abilities and autobiographical memory are related. To assert whether participants with stronger cognitive abilities also perform better on autobiographical memory tests, participants who completed verbal and visuospatial memory tests also recorded one personal event, which they recalled after a certain interval. Participants who performed well on the verbal memory tests also had better retention for the personal event, providing support for the basic-systems approach to autobiographical memory and preliminary support for the view that people have more memories from adolescence and early adulthood because the memory system works optimally in these lifetime periods.     

Visual Feedback in Written Imaginal Exposure for Posttraumatic Stress: A Preliminary Study

This study investigated the visual feedback hypothesis, which states that visual feedback from written trauma narratives contributes to the efficacy of written imaginal exposure for posttraumatic stress via the reuptake of traumatic content during production of the narrative. We tested a college sample (n = 61) with clinically elevated posttraumatic stress as measured with the Impact of Events Scale. Participants were randomly assigned to a writing with visual feedback condition, a writing without visual feedback condition, or a control condition. The hypothesis was not supported: Writing with and without visual feedback equally reduced intrusion and avoidance symptoms. Exploratory analyses, however, showed increased intrusion symptoms immediately after writing with visual feedback, which was in contrast with decreased symptom levels in the other conditions. These findings are in line with previous findings regarding immediate symptom development following writing interventions for posttraumatic stress and call for further exploration of the visual feedback hypothesis.     

Randomized controlled trial of expressive writing for psychological and physical health: the moderating role of emotional expressivity

The current study assessed main effects and moderators (including emotional expressiveness, emotional processing, and ambivalence over emotional expression) of the effects of expressive writing in a sample of healthy adults. Young adult participants (N=116) were randomly assigned to write for 20 minutes on four occasions about deepest thoughts and feelings regarding their most stressful/traumatic event in the past five years (expressive writing) or about a control topic (control). Dependent variables were indicators of anxiety, depression, and physical symptoms. No significant effects of writing condition were evident on anxiety, depressive symptoms, or physical symptoms. Emotional expressiveness emerged as a significant moderator of anxiety outcomes, however. Within the expressive writing group, participants high in expressiveness evidenced a significant reduction in anxiety at three-month follow-up, and participants low in expressiveness showed a significant increase in anxiety. Expressiveness did not predict change in anxiety in the control group. These findings on anxiety are consistent with the matching hypothesis, which suggests that matching a person's naturally elected coping approach with an assigned intervention is beneficial. These findings also suggest that expressive writing about a stressful event may be contraindicated for individuals who do not typically express emotions.     

Peer and Teacher-Selected Peer Buddies for Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Role of Social,Emotional, and Mentalizing Abilities

This study examined mentalizing abilities, social behavior, and social impact of adolescents who expressed the willingness to become peer buddies for adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders, and adolescents selected by their teachers and peers. Twenty-seven teachers and 395 adolescents from public high schools completed mentalizing abilities, social status, behavioral, and peer buddy nomination measures. Findings suggest that social status and preference play a significant role in the selection of peer buddies by both teachers and classmates. Furthermore, more advanced Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities and the engagement in prosocial behaviors differentiated peers selected as buddies from other classmates. When compared with nonparticipating students, adolescents who expressed willingness to participate were more often girls, and were more prosocial. Agreement between teacher and peer nominations of best peer was moderate.     

构思策略教学改善小学写困生故事文质量的实验研究

采用实验组、控制组前后测实验设计,运用SRSD策略教学模式,对23名小学写困生进行构思策略的训练。实验结果表明,在训练之前,实验组与控制组学生在故事文的长度、6项分质量指标及总体质量上的得分差异均不显著;但在接受策略教学后,实验组学生所写的后测故事文在情节吸引力、条理清晰度和总体质量上的平均得分均显著优于控制组学生,其总体质量的改善效应为0.80。因此,构思策略的教学能显著改善小学写困生的故事文写作质量。