Time Reading in Middle and Secondary School Students: The Influence of Basic-Numerical Abilities

Abstract

Time reading skills are central for the management of personal and professional life. However, little is known about the differential influence of basic numerical abilities on analog and digital time reading in general and in middle and secondary school students in particular. The present study investigated the influence of basic numerical skills separately for analog and digital time reading in N?=?709 students from 5th to 8th grade. The present findings suggest that the development of time reading skills is not completed by the end of primary school. Results indicated that aspects of magnitude manipulation and arithmetic fact knowledge predicted analog time reading significantly over and above the influence of age. Furthermore, results showed that spatial representations of number magnitude, magnitude manipulation, arithmetic fact knowledge, and conceptual knowledge were significant predictors of digital time reading beyond general cognitive ability and sex. To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first to show differential effects of basic numerical abilities on analog and digital time reading skills in middle and secondary school students. As time readings skills are crucial for everyday life, these results are highly relevant to better understand basic numerical processes underlying time reading.     

Infants' ability to categorise on the basis of rhyme

Two experiments are described, which investigated 7 - to 13-month-old infants' abilities to categorise syllables according to their ending sounds, or rhymes. Using the Conditioned Headturn (CHT) Procedure, infants were conditioned to turn their head when one set of rhyming CVCs changed to another set of rhyming CVCs. Even the 7 -month-old infants demonstrated an ability to categorise according to rimes. The infants could be separated into three different groups: those who conditioned but did not succeed in a rhyming task; those who succeeded at one rhyming task but not a second; and those infants who succeeded on two rhyming tasks. The infants in the second group were showing an early sensitivity to rhyme. However, they appeared to be learning a very specific rule, listening only for one category of rhyme. The third group of infants was able to extend the initial rule they learned to include new rhymes. This group learned not only to highlight one particular rhyme, but were also able to abstract the previously learned rule to new rhymes, thereby demonstrating a higher level of sophistication in their categorisation of rhymes. These results are discussed in relation to the ontogeny of language learning, and work demonstrating a relationship between rhyming ability and competence in reading and writing.     

Who wrote that? Automaticity and reduced sense of agency in individuals prone to dissociative absorption

Dissociative absorption (DA) is a tendency to become completely immersed in a stimulus while neglecting to attend to one’s surroundings. Theoretically, DA implies automatic functioning in areas that are outside the focus of attention. This study examined whether high absorbers indeed act more automatically, i.e., with decreased meta-consciousness for, and therefore poor memory of, their own actions, along with reduced sense of agency (SoA). High and low absorbers (N = 63) performed three DA-promoting tasks: choice-reaction time (CRT), Tetris, and free writing. Participants were tested on memory of task details and self-reported their state SoA. As hypothesized, trait DA was correlated with impaired autobiographical memory for self-generated writing. However, DA was not related to episodic memory disruptions in externally-generated content tasks (Tetris, CRT). In most tasks, DA was associated with decreased SoA. Absorbers’ specific difficulty in identifying self-generated content suggests that their memory failures stem from reduced accessibility to self-actions and intentions.     

Transforming career stories through poetry: a group-based career counselling intervention

ABSTRACT

Contemplating the school to work transition in the insecure and unpredictable twenty-first century world of work can be anxiety inducing for college students. Consequently, college students may develop disempowered career stories in which they feel ill prepared to explore career prospects or engage with the world of work. This paper describes a career counselling intervention aimed at transforming the disempowered career stories of college students into more empowered versions. Grounded in career construction theory and designed as a group modality, the intervention employs poetry therapy to enhance the development of internally defined and motivated career stories among the group participants. Although this paper highlights the Kenyan context, the intervention itself can easily be adapted to other contexts.     

Booming clangs and whispering ghosts: Attending to the reflexive echoes in IPA research

ABSTRACT

In this article, we propose reflexivity can be revealed through a deliberate adjunct to the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) process. This adjunct, which we refer to as “echoes,” is a mixture of the participant’s and researcher’s words and experiences resonating with each other during the research process. We argue that explicitly recognising echoes gives a heightened sensitivity to both the researcher’s own place and being in the research, and to the other in relation to the researcher. Exploring the echoes enables the researcher to work with, rather than dismiss, his or her own presuppositions and exposes greater phenomenological sensibility toward the research subject and is-ness of that phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to outline how attending to echoes is a strategy for IPA researchers to promote and overtly journal reflexivity as central within their research practices. To exemplify how echoes can be used, practical examples from a doctoral research project are given to demonstrate how resonance can explicate reflexivity in the IPA process.