Children’s use of phonological encoding when reading for meaning

The role of phonological recoding in children’s reading was investigated by means of a task requiring comprehension of sentence meaning: The child’s task was to decide whether a sequence of printed letter strings was a meaningful sentence or not. Meaningless sentences that are meaningful when phonologically recoded (e.g., “He ran threw the street”) produced more incorrect responses than did meaningless sentences that remain meaningless when phonologically recoded (e.g., “He ran sew the street”). The difference in error rates between the two sentence types diminished as a function of age. Control experiments showed that these results were not due to visual similarity effects, nor to imperfect ability to spell homophones. It was concluded that very young readers rely extensively on phonological recoding when reading for meaning; as they grow older, reliance on visual encoding becomes progressively more important.     

Where and when to look: Sequential effects at the millisecond level

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - Learning and imitating a complex motor action requires to visually follow complex movements, but conscious perception seems too slow for such tasks....     

Gender Stereotyping of Children's Toys: A Comparison of Parents and Nonparents

Parents and nonparents were compared to examinedifferences in the use of gender stereotyping toclassify children's toys. Gender-stereotyping was alsoexamined based on the age of the child. Parents and nonparents were sampled from a predominantlywhite, middle and upper middle class population.Subjects rated the appropriateness of 206 toys for useby girls and/or boys and were in general agreementregarding toys identified as gender-stereotyped. Ingeneral, feminine toys were stereotyped more thanmasculine toys although parents were more gender neutralin their ratings of toys than nonparents. Comparisons across mothers and fathers suggest thatinteractions with children may influence parentalperceptions of gender-appropriateness differentially formothers and fathers and is partly dependent on the sex of the child(ren). Finally, it appears thatwhile toys are gender stereotyped for all age groups,there is more flexibility in gender stereotyping of toysfor infants and toddlers.     

The Generation of the Romantic Ideal by a Self-Disordered Patient

This article examines the therapeutic process of a patient thought to be suffering from an idealistic perfectionism. After extensive research on topics of specialness, indulgence, and grandiosity, concepts such as Kernberg’s vision of narcissistic disorder and Kohut’s vision of self-disorder are used to assess the patient’s progress in treatment.     

Perceptions of Violence and Crime as Aggression by Turkish—Islamic Families in Johannesburg

This study explored perceptions of aggression of Turkish-Islamic families with adolescent children in a large South African city. Participants were from four Turkish families with adolescent children (father = 4, mothers = 4; children = 5). Data were collected via interviews and analyzed. The families considered aggression to comprise crime and violence. They also considered it a universal phenomenon.     

Nutrition et intelligence

This article provides an overview of the literature on the relation between intelligence and nutrition. The first two sections introduce some data on the prevalence of malnutrition across the planet, and show how studies of animal cognition can help to understand the impact of malnutrition on human cognitive functioning. The third section introduces the effects of general “denutrition” and of iron, zinc, iodine, and vitamin deficiencies. The last two sections emphasize the impact of breastfeeding on intellectual and academic performance, and the importance of breakfast with regard to the ability to learn.     

Visual and proprioceptive recognition of cursive letters in young children

Two experiments investigated visual and proprioceptive recognition of cursive letters in young children. In Experiment 1, children aged 3-5 years were asked to recognize a visually presented target letter after a 3s inspection time, from among two distracters: a highly and a moderately similar letter. Visual letter recognition improved rapidly between 3 and 5 years and was a function of the "uniqueness" of letter shape and of letter frequency. In Experiment 2, children aged 4-6 years were asked to recognize a target letter from among 2 distracters, after having traced over the letter in a "blind" condition, with their hand guided by the experimenter. Proprioceptive recognition developed more slowly than visual recognition, and was not a function of letter frequency. The results are discussed in terms of integration versus differentiation of perceptual information, and of the tendency to base recognition on local rather than global similarity.     

Young infants' generalization of emotional expressions: effects of familiarity

From birth, infants are exposed to a wealth of emotional information in their interactions. Much research has been done to investigate the development of emotion perception, and factors influencing that development. The current study investigates the role of familiarity on 3.5-month-old infants' generalization of emotional expressions. Infants were assigned to one of two habituation sequences: in one sequence, infants were visually habituated to parental expressions of happy or sad. At test, infants viewed either a continuation of the habituation sequence, their mother depicting a novel expression, an unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, or an unfamiliar female depicting a novel expression. In the second sequence, a new sample of infants was matched to the infants in the first sequence. These infants viewed the same habituation and test sequences, but the actors were unfamiliar to them. Only those infants who viewed their own mothers and fathers during the habituation sequence increased looking. They dishabituated looking to maternal novel expressions, the unfamiliar female's novel expression, and the unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, especially when sad parental expressions were followed by an expression change to happy or to a change in person. Infants are guided in their recognition of emotional expressions by the familiarity of their parents, before generalizing to others.     

Review of three tests of motor proficiency in children

The present purpose is to provide clinicians, occupational and physical therapists, and educators with a comparative analysis of three tests of motor proficiency. The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, Movement Assessment Battery for Children, and Tufts Assessment of Motor Performance were developed to assess the motor skills of children with developmental delays. The selection criteria, interrater reliability, reproducibility, and recommended use of each test are reported here. Recommendations for use of each test include standardization of the sample population to ensure its appropriateness.