Student Attitudes Toward Child Behavior Problems

Abstract

This study investigated differences in verbal ability and school achievement of bilingual and monolingual children in grades 3,4, and 5. American children attending a Department of Defense school at Camp Zama, Japan, were classified as bilingual or monolingual based on information provided by parents. Children were also classified as being of high, middle, or low nonverbal ability in terms of the Nonverbal score of the Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Tests. Dependent variables were the Lorge-Thorndike Verbal Score and the 15 scores on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. At grade 3, bilingual and monolingual children performed similarly. By grade 4, monolingual children performed noticeably better than bilingual children on verbal or language type tests, and in grade 5 the differences were even more substantial. On relatively nonverbal tests, bilingual and monolingual children continued to perform similarly.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

The verbal and nonverbal behaviors of sixth grade children tutoring third grade children were analyzed. Results showed that when the tutee was doing well there was a greater proportion of positively toned affective statements made by the tutor, and when the tutee was doing poorly there were more negatively toned affective statements. Similarly, the nonverbal behavior of tutors tended to reflect the performance of the tutee. The relationship between verbal and nonverbal behavior was examined.     

Developmental issues in cognitive mapping: the selection and utilization of environmental landmarks

2 studies were conducted to investigate developmental differences in the ability to select and use environmental landmarks for cognitively organizing distance information from a walk. In experiment 1, second-grade, fifth-grade, and college subjects viewed a simulated walk and selected scenes that were high in potential landmark value. In experiment 2, children from the same grade levels first viewed the walk and then ranked distances among either the test scenes most frequently selected by their peers or those selected most frequently by adults. Results indicated that (a) adults and children may not spontaneously select the same features as real-world landmarks; (b) children are less capable than adults in judging the value of potential landmarks as distance cues; and (c) the ability to use environmental landmarks as cues for distance information developmentally precedes the ability to assess this potential information value.     

The Development of Spatial Skills in Elementary School Students

Through five waves of data collection, this longitudinal study investigated the development of spatial skills in 304 elementary school children (M_age = 7.64 years) as they progressed from the second to fourth grade. The study focused on whether multiple latent classes with different developmental profiles best explain development. Spatial skills were measured by tests featuring two‐dimensional figures. Mathematics achievement was measured by the statewide end‐of‐year test and was included as a distal outcome variable. The role of covariates, including socioeconomic status, verbal working memory, and gender, was also explored. The results indicate a need to view two‐dimensional spatial skills development as multidimensional with two developmental profiles predicted by socioeconomic status, verbal working memory, and gender. The developmental profiles predicted differences in mathematics achievement.     

Sixth graders in Israel recount their experience of verbal abuse by teachers in the classroom

AimThis study adopts a children’s rights perspective stated in Articles 3, 12, 19, 28 of the Convention on the Rights of Children (1989) with the goal of listening to Israeli children articulate their experience of verbal abuse by teachers in 6th grade classroomsMethodsA purposeful sample of sixty students was individually interviewed and content analysis was performed following Strauss’ (1987) constant comparative method.ResultsStudents reported teachers’ yelling, name-calling and put-downs when failing to pay attention, complete their work, or obtain good grades. They condemned teachers as particularly hurtful and cruel for publically humiliating them in class. However, awareness of teachers’ authority and fear of reprisal led to students’ silence and reluctance to report the abuse to their parents or principal. Covert opposition was nevertheless exhibited as students engaged in a silent monologue telling teachers they had no right to mistreat them (females), silently cursing (males) and/or withdrawing participation (both genders). Repeated public humiliation and scapegoating resulted in the loss of interest in teacher’s opinion and school and on rare occasions to the direct verbal confrontation or acting-out behaviour of the abused student.ConclusionThis study stresses the importance of gaining insight into the world of children by having them articulate their experience and denounce any form of abuse by teachers in the classroom. A child-safe school culture that listen to children’s view and make them feel safe when reporting any form of abuse in the classroom are preconditions to serving children’s best interests and wellbeing in schools.     

Relationships between cognitive variables,memory and phonological awareness in children with a specific reading difficulty

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between verbal short‐term memory, phonemic awareness, and reading ability, in children with a specific reading difficulty. The results confirmed the frequently reported finding that most, if not all children with a specific reading difficulty have poor phonological awareness. In addition, poor phonological awareness in the reading‐difficulty group was associated with significantly poorer nonword reading ability, and with poorer phonological memory. When the reading‐difficulty group was further subdivided with respect to Digit Span performance there was no difference in nonword reading with respect to this overall verbal short‐term memory measure. However, poor short‐term memory, regardless of phonological awareness level, was significantly associated with a lower WISC III Verbal IQ, in particular, significantly poorer performance on the WISC III Vocabulary, Comprehension and Similarities subtests, as well as with significantly poorer reading comprehension. In addition, poor short‐term memory regardless of phonological awareness ability was associated with poorer spelling and arithmetic performance.     

Memory Profile of Children with Nonverbal Learning Disability

The aim of this study was to compare visual and verbal memory in children with nonverbal learning disability (NLD) using the Children's Memory Scale and to identify the profile of strengths and weaknesses in visual memory abilities. Performance was significantly lower on measures of visual than verbal memory, indicating that children with NLD have deficits in visual memory despite adequate verbal memory. A unique pattern of performance emerged for the visual but not the verbal subtests. Performance on the Faces Immediate subtest was well below average, although other measures of visual memory were within the average range. Hence, it appears that children with NLD have a specific deficit on immediate memory for faces. This facial memory deficit may be linked to a deficit in right hemisphere functioning, which has already been implicated in facial processing and may also be linked with other disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder) in which similar facial processing deficits have been documented. More research is needed to further understand the visual memory profile of children with NLD and to inform instruction and remediation.     

Language and literacy in nonvocal children with cerebral palsy

Metalinguistic and literacy abilities were studied in twenty-seven nonvocal cerebral palsied school children. The participants of the study were presented four tests of phonological awareness: rhyme recognition, sound identification, phoneme synthesis and word length analysis. Their verbal comprehension was measured using a semantic and a syntactic task. Two tests of nonverbal memory: the visual sequential task from ITPA and Corsi blocks and the Digit Span task from WISC, were also included. These measures were related to their reading and spelling ability. The nonvocal children performed on a lower level on the reading and spelling tasks than did the children of two comparison groups, one matched for mental age and one for mental and chronological age. There were no differences in phonological awareness or in verbal memory. The disabled children performed worse on the verbal comprehension task than the children in the comparison groups. Although the reading and spelling results were low in the nonvocal group there were children showing some literacy skills. A within-group analysis performed in the nonvocal group showed that the reading children performed better on all memory tests, and on the sound identification and the word length analysis tasks than the nonreading ones. They also showed better results on verbal comprehension, the semantic task and used more symbols in their communication. Synthetic speech was more often used in reading and spelling education in the reading subgroup than in the nonreading. Metalinguistic abilities and possibility of acoustic rehearsal are discussed as important factors in reading and spelling acquisition in the nonvocal population.     

Developmental associations between verbal and visual short-term memory and the acquisition of decoding skill

This study longitudinally investigated the relationships between verbaland visual short-term memory (STM) and the acquisition of decoding from thepre-reading through the early acquisition stages in 63 Hebrew-speakingchildren Test waves occurred in kindergarten, first grade and second grade.IQ, visual and verbal STM and decoding ability were assessed. The dataindicated that while both verbal and visual STM in kindergarten were significantlycorrelated to later decoding skill, pre-reading visual STM was a stronger predictor.The results further showed that pre-reading performance on the WISC-R BlockDesign test predicted later decoding ability, while performance on theWISC-R Vocabulary test did not. Lastly decoding skill in grade 1 was foundto predict only visual in grade 2. These results indicate that visualparameters may make a crucial contribution to the acquisition of decodingskills. The size of pre-reading visual STM capacity appears to play a rolein this process. The relationship between visual STM and decoding may bebidirectional, as learning to decode appears to develop visual STM. It issuggested that either language-related or task-related factors may accountfor these counter-to-mainstream results.     

Visual Skills and Chinese Reading Acquisition: A Meta-analysis of Correlation Evidence

This paper used meta-analysis to synthesize the relation between visual skills and Chinese reading acquisition based on the empirical results from 34 studies published from 1991 to 2011. We obtained 234 correlation coefficients from 64 independent samples, with a total of 5,395 participants. The meta-analysis revealed that visual skills as a global construct had a medium correlation effect size (r?=?0.32) associated with Chinese reading acquisition. The various visual processing skills differed in their relation to Chinese reading acquisition in different stages. Visual perception, speed of processing visual information, and pure visual memory had low-to-moderate correlations with Chinese reading acquisition in the lower grades (i.e., below second grade), whereas these relations did not retain their magnitude for children in the higher grades (i.e., second through sixth grades). By contrast, visual–verbal association skill was found to account for 34 and 41 % of the variance in children’s Chinese reading acquisition in both lower and higher grade levels, respectively. Greater attention to this construct can significantly benefit reading research and instructional practice. No regional differences between studies in Mainland China and Hong Kong were found in the meta-analysis.     

Verbal memory and phonological processing in dyslexia

This study examines whether two frequently reported causes of dyslexia, phonological processing problems and verbal memory impairments, represent a double‐deficit or whether they are two expressions of the same deficit. Two‐hundred‐and‐sixty‐seven Dutch children aged 10–14 with dyslexia completed a list‐learning task and several phonological tasks, together with a number of reading and spelling tests. The results indicate that phonological deficits and verbal memory impairments in dyslexia stem from the same root, which seemingly reflects an inaccurate encoding of the phonological characteristics of verbal information. This phonological encoding deficit is a negative predictor for both the reading and spelling skills of dyslexic children.     

The effectiveness of multimedia programmes in children's vocabulary learning

The present experiment investigated the effect of three different presentation modes in children's vocabulary learning with a self-guided multimedia programmes. Participants were 135 third and fourth grade children who read a short English language story presented by a computer programme. For 12 key (previously unknown) words in the story, children received verbal annotations (written translation), visual annotations (picture representing the word), or both. Recall of word translations was better for children who only received verbal annotations than for children who received simultaneously visual and verbal annotations or visual annotations only. Results support previous research about cognitive load in e-learning environments, and show that children's learning processes are hindered by limited working memory. This finding implies a challenge for multimedia programmes designed for children and based on self-regulated learning.     

Longitudinal effects of verbal ability,memory capacity,and phonological awareness on reading performance

This study addresses the longitudinal relationship among verbal ability, memory capacity, phonological awareness, and reading performance. Data from 92 German children were used to explore the exact relation among these variables. Indicators of verbal ability, memory capacity, and phonological awareness were assessed in kindergarten and again after the first grade. The interrelationships among these factors, and the subsequent influence they have on decoding speed and reading comprehension during the second grade were examined via structural equation modeling procedures. Overall, the results of the longitudinal analyses show that the relationship of memory capacity and phonological awareness remains stable over time, and that memory capacity predicts performance on phonological awareness tasks in both kindergarten and second grade. Phonological awareness proved to be a significant predictor of decoding speed, which in turn considerably influenced reading comprehension.     

应用表象训练技术提高弱智儿童表象清晰度和表象记忆实验研究

为提高弱智儿童表象清晰度和表象记忆能力,对北京地区48名弱智 被试进行的表象训练实验研究结果表明:被试整体训练后的清晰度和记忆成 绩均高于训练前的成绩,且差异显著;轻度与中度被试的清晰度成绩差异显 著;重度被试的记忆训练成绩均高于中度和轻度被试,且差异显著;高清晰组 的记忆成绩训练前后差异显著,低清晰组则不显著;说明表象训练技术对提 高弱智儿童的表象清晰度和记忆力是有效的,清晰度越高,对记忆提高的帮 助越大。在教学中,应加强和应用此项技术,提高认知能力,开发其潜能。     

An Investigation of The Effects of A Seventh and Eighth Grade Core Program

Abstract

The writer (Ogletree) conducted a creativity study in England, Scotland, and Germany, which included 1,165 primary school children. Results showed that creativity scores (using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) were a function of socioeconomic background. In all countries, children of upper class families obtained significantly higher creativity scores (verbal and nonverbal) than children of middle and lower class families. The same significant difference was evident in middle class children to lower class children. This was true when analyzed within countries, by age, grade, and sex. There was no evidence to support the contention that youngsters of lower class backgrounds performed better on nonverbal tasks than their higher class peers, although they did make a better showing on the nonverbal tasks than on the verbal tasks.     

Imagery deficits in nonverbal learning disabilities

This study reports the observations gathered from 11 children referred to consulting services because of learning difficulties at school and diagnosed with nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLD). These children had an average verbal IQ, but a WISC-R performance IQ lower than the verbal IQ by at least 15 points and experienced difficulties especially in mathematics and drawing. The children completed a battery of four tasks requiring visuospatial working memory and visual imagery: a memory task composed of pictures and their positions (Pictures task), a task that required them to memorize the positions filled in a matrix (Passive Matrix task), a task that required them to imagine a pathway along a matrix (Active Matrix task) and a task that required them to learn groups made up of three words, using a visual interactive imagery strategy (TV task). In comparison to a control group of 49 children, children with NVLD scored lower in all the tasks, showing deficits in the use of visuospatial working memory and visual imagery. By contrasting subgroups of children of different ages in the control group, it was possible to show that some tasks did not show a clear developmental trend. Thus the deficits shown by the children with NVLD cannot simply be attributed to a developmental delay of these children, but seem to reflect a more severe disability.     

Sound-symbol learning in children with dyslexia

This study evaluated the effect of sound-symbol association training on visual and phonological memory in children with a history of dyslexia. Pretests of phonological and visual memory, a sound-symbol training procedure, and phonological and visual memory posttests were administered to children with dyslexia, to children whose dyslexia had been compensated through remedial training, and to age- and reading level-matched comparison groups. Deficits in visual and phonological memory and memory for sound-symbol associations were demonstrated in the dyslexia group. For children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been remediated, the sound-symbol training scores were significantly associated with word and pseudoword reading scores and were significantly lower than those of the comparison groups. Children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been compensated showed significantly less facilitation of phonological memory following the training than did typical readers. Skilled readers showed some reduction in accuracy of visual memory following the training, which may be the result of interference of verbalization with a predominantly visual task. A parallel decrease was not observed in the children with dyslexia, possibly because these children did not use the verbal cues. Children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been compensated seemed to have difficulty encoding the novel sounds in memory. As a result, they derived less phonological memory advantage and less visual memory interference from the training than did typical readers. Children in the compensated dyslexia group scored lower on sound-symbol training than their age peers. In other respects, the scores of these children were equivalent to those of the typically reading comparison groups. Children in the compensated dyslexia group exhibited higher phonological rehearsal, iconic memory, and associative memory scores than children in the dyslexia group. Implications for the remediation of dyslexia are discussed.     

Are working memory deficits in readers with learning disabilities hard to change?

This study investigated whether changes in the working memory (WM) performance of readers with learning disabilities (LD) is related to a general or domain-specific system. The study compared readers with LD, chronologically age-matched (CA-M), and reading level-matched (RL-M) children's WM performance for phonological, visual-spatial, and semantic information under initial (no probes or cues), gain (cues that bring performance to an asymptotic level), and maintenance (asymptotic conditions without cues) conditions. The main findings indicated that (a) CA-M children were superior in performance to readers with LD across initial, gain, and maintenance conditions, (b) readers with LD showed less change (as reflected in effect size scores, slopes for the quadratic curve) on both visual-spatial and verbal (phonological and semantic) WM tasks across gain and maintenance conditions than the CA-matched children, and (c) the performance of readers with LD was superior to the RL-M children's performance on initial conditions, but inferior on gain and maintenance conditions. Taken together, the results suggest that a general system moderated the changes in retrieval of phonological, visual-spatial, and semantic information in readers with LD.     

Sensory, cognitive, and linguistic factors in the early academic performance of elementary school children: The Benton-IU project

Standardized sensory, perceptual, linguistic, intellectual, and cognitive tests were administered to 470 children, approximately 96% of the students entering the first grade in the four elementary schools of Benton County, Indiana, over a 3-year period (1995--1997). The results of 36 tests and subtests administered to entering first graders were well described by a 4-factor solution. These factors and the tests that loaded most heavily on them were reading-related skills (phonological awareness, letter and word identification); visual cognition (visual perceptual abilities, spatial perception, visual memory); verbal cognition (language development, vocabulary, verbal concepts); and speech processing (the ability to understand speech under difficult listening conditions). A cluster analysis identified 9 groups of children, each with a different profile of scores on the 4 factors. Within these groups, the proportion of students with unsatisfactory reading achievement in the first 2 years of elementary school (as reflected in teacher-assigned grades) varied from 3% to 40%. The profiles of factor scores demonstrated the primary influence of the reading-related skills factor on reading achievement and also on other areas of academic performance. The second strongest predictor of reading and mathematics grades was the visual cognition factor, followed by the verbal cognition factor. The speech processing factor was the weakest predictor of academic achievement, accounting for less than 1% of the variance in reading achievement. This project was a collaborative effort of the Benton Community School Corporation and a multidisciplinary group of investigators from Indiana University.     

Syntactic Cues Help Disambiguate Objects Referred to With Count Nouns: Illustration With Malay Children

Children employ multiple cues to identify the referent of a novel word. Novel words are often embedded in sentences and children have been shown to use syntactic cues to differentiate between types of words (adjective vs. nouns) and between types of nouns (count vs. mass nouns). In this study, we show that children learning Malay (N = 67), a numeral classifier language, can use syntactic cues to perform even finer-grained disambiguation–between count nouns. The manipulation of congruence between lexical and syntactic cues reveals a clear developmental trajectory: while 5-year-olds use predominantly lexical cues, older children increasingly rely on syntactic cues, such that by 7 years of age, they disambiguate between objects referred to with count nouns using syntactic rather than lexical cues.