Coordinating attention to people and objects in mother-infant and peer-infant interaction

In a longitudinal study, infants 6-18 months of age were observed in their homes playing with their mothers and with peers. Of primary concern was how they coordinated their attention to people and objects. Observations were coded using a state-based scheme that included a state of coordinated joint engagement as well as states of person engagement, object engagement, onlooking, and passive joint engagement. All developmental trends observed were similar regardless of partner: person engagement declined with age, while coordinated joint engagement increased. Passive joint engagement, object engagement, and onlooking did not change with age. However, the absolute amount of some engagement states was affected by partner: both passive and coordinated joint engagement were much more likely when infants played with mothers. We conclude that mothers may indeed support or "scaffold" their infants' early attempts to embed objects in social interaction, but that as attentional capabilities develop even quite unskilled peers may be appropriate partners for the exercise of these capacities.     

From Interactions to Conversations: The Development of Joint Engagement During Early Childhood

This research traces the development of symbol‐infused joint engagement during mother–child interactions into the preschool years. Forty‐nine children, who had been previously observed as toddlers (L. B. Adamson, R. Bakeman, & D. F. Deckner, 2004 ), were systematically observed during interactions with their mothers at ages 3½, 4½, and 5½ during activities related to the past and future, internal states, and graphic systems. Although the amount of symbol‐infused joint engagement reached a ceiling by 3½, its focus continued to become more complex and its form more balanced. Individual differences in children's symbol‐infused joint engagement were stable across 4 years. These findings highlight both how joint engagement is transformed as conversational skills develop and how it remains rooted in earlier interactions and supported by caregiver's actions.     

An Expanded View of Joint Attention: Skill,Engagement, and Language in Typical Development and Autism

This study provides an expanded view of joint attention and its relation to expressive language development. A total of 144 toddlers (40 typically developing, 58 with autism spectrum disorder [ASD], 46 with developmental delay [DD]) participated at 24 and 31 months. Toddlers who screened positive for ASD risk, especially those subsequently diagnosed with ASD, had poorer joint attention skills, joint engagement during parent–toddler interaction, and expressive language. Findings highlight the dynamic relation between joint attention and language development. In the ASD and DD groups, joint engagement predicted later expressive vocabulary, significantly more than predictions based on joint attention skills. Joint engagement was most severely impacted when toddlers did not talk initially and improved markedly if they subsequently began to speak.     

Multimodality,learning and decision-making: children's metacognitive reflections on their engagement with video games as interactive texts

This study examines how 31 middle-school children conducted multimodal analyses of video games. Over four consecutive days, students played video games for 30 minutes and then wrote written reflections about the multimodal symbols within the game and how these symbols influenced their interpretation and decision-making processes during gameplay. Students produced 124 reflections in total, which were analysed via template analysis to determine how children metacognitively reflected on different types of multimodal symbols and used those symbols to comprehend the games and make decisions. Results illustrate how students engaged in metacognitive semantic and syntactic processes with a variety of multimodal symbols, such as written language, dynamic visuals and abstract symbols, during gameplay that aided their understanding of the games and influenced their decisions. This study contributes to the limited empirical research on video game literacies and illustrates children's meaning-making processes while engaged with video games as multimodal interactive texts.     

The relation of play and sensorimotor behavior to language in the second year

The concurrent and predictive relations of sensorimotor behavior and play to language in the second year were assessed. 19 preterm and 20 full-term infants were tested at 13 1/2 and 22 months of age. Functional play directed toward dolls and other persons and meaningfully related sequences of functional and symbolic acts at 13 1/2 months were associated with language measured at 13 1/2 months and 9 months later. Concurrent positive relations between sensorimotor behavior and language were found only at 22 months for object-permanence skills. There were no significant positive relations between sensorimotor behaviors at 13 1/2 months and language at 22 months. The consistent relations found between play and language in this research derived from the infants' ability to translate experience into symbols that are used as a means of interacting and communicating with others. Sensorimotor behavior and language were much more loosely associated in the same age period.     

Infants’ Preference for Social Interactions Increases from 7 to 13 Months of Age

This study examined 7-to-13.5-month-old middle-class Western infants’ visual orienting to third-party interactions in parallel with their social attention behavior during own social interactions (Leipzig, Germany). In Experiment 1, 9.5- to-11-month-olds (n = 20) looked longer than 7- to-8.5-month-olds (n = 20) at videos showing two adults interacting with one another when simultaneously presented with a scene showing two adults acting individually. Moreover, older infants showed higher social engagement (including joint attention) during parent–infant free play. Experiment 2 replicated this age-related increase in both measures and showed that it follows continuous trajectories from 7 to 13.5 months (n = 50). This suggests that infants’ attentional orienting to others’ interactions coincides with parallel developments in their social attention behavior during own social interactions.     

Automatic assessment of cognitive and emotional states in virtual reality-based flexibility training for four adolescents with autism

Tracking students’ learning states to provide tailored learner support is a critical element of an adaptive learning system. This study explores how an automatic assessment is capable of tracking learners’ cognitive and emotional states during virtual reality (VR)-based representational-flexibility training. This VR-based training program aims to promote the flexibility of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in interpreting, selecting and creating multimodal representations during STEM-related design problem solving. For the automatic assessment, we used both natural language processing (NLP) and machine-learning techniques to develop a multi-label classification model. We then trained the model with the data from a total of audio- and video-recorded 66 training sessions of four adolescents with ASD. To validate the model, we implemented both k-fold cross-validations and the manual evaluations by expert reviewers. The study finding suggests the feasibility of implementing the NLP and machine-learning driven automatic assessment to track and assess the cognitive and emotional states of individuals with ASD during VR-based flexibility training. The study finding also denotes the importance and viability of providing adaptive supports to maintain learners’ cognitive and affective engagement in a highly interactive digital learning environment.     

The rhetorical construction of the nation in education: the case of Flanders

This paper examines what can be learnt from ‘new rhetoric’ (focusing on the work of the American rhetorician Kenneth Burke [1897–1993]) about (national) identity and discusses how nationalism can be taught from such a rhetorical perspective. Despite the ‘deconstruction’ of nation(alism) as a grand narrative, there is a new tendency towards emphasizing national identity, caused by trends such as globalization and multiculturalism. In the language and literature teaching curriculum, this paradoxical situation often causes frictions for teachers who very often are expected to teach standard language and national literature. The hypothesis is that rhetoric is a tool to deal with these tensions in the curriculum. This paper focuses on Flanders as a case‐study. Together with pre‐service teachers it analysed the rhetorical construction of Flanders from a dramatistic perspective. It is argued that Burke’s concepts are useful tools to make students ‘symbol‐wise’: to understand the way national symbols work, and to develop critical engagement with, as well as on behalf of, those symbols.     

穆时英新感觉小说的变异修辞艺术探析

文章在变异修辞理论观照下,阐述穆时英小说是如何突破语言的常规,通过搭配变异、辞格变异、符号变异实现其语言陌生化的,并进而分析文学语言应如何增强摇撼人心的艺术表现力,使文本散发出奇峭而浓郁的馨香。     

Predicting Language Development in Children At Risk: The Effects of Quality and Frequency of Caregiver Reading

Reading to children has been advocated as a way to enhance language and literacy skills (A. G. Bus, M. H. van IJzendoorn, & A. D. Pellegrini, 1995). However, little is known about reading with children under age 3 (K. L. Fletcher & E. Reese, 2005), particularly in at-risk samples (A. van Kleeck, 2003). In the current study of 87 primary caregivers and their 24-month-old children enrolled in an early intervention program, we tested a theoretical model of the relations among 24-month-old children's language, caregivers' reported frequency of reading with children, and caregivers' reading strategies on children's language and attention using path models. Path models indicated that caregivers' use of expansions and questions with their 24-month-old children during reading was related to children's expressive language at 30 months. Caregivers' use of labeling, expansions, and questions was related to 24-month-old children's attention during reading. Although children's language skills at 24 months were associated with the reported frequency of caregiver reading in the home, only caregivers' use of questions had a relationship with frequency of reading. Reading practices that promote language development and engagement during reading observed in this at- risk sample have implications for reading intervention efforts with young children.     

也谈语言符号的任意性

对于Saussure提出的语言符号任意性原则,国内外一些语言学家先后发表了不同的看法,从象似性的角度对任意性原则提出了质疑,认为符号的任意性原则是不正确的。通过探讨Saussure的观点即语言符号任意性原则,认为：就单个符号而言,任意性依然是不可动摇的原则。象似性原则应该被看作是对Saussure理论的补充,而不是任意性原则的替代物,否则就不利于全面揭示语言符号特征的多样性和复杂性。     

Signs,symbols and metaphor: linking self with text in inquiry-based learning

The focus in this article is on the role of symbol and metaphor in the development of student self-awareness and engagement in the process of learning. It draws on a case-study which explored the process of an inquiry-based learning project in an Indigenous learning centre in a school in New South Wales, Australia. The data used for this article were taken from the first stage of the inquiry project – the construction of a shared language for learning. The article argues that developing a rich and local language for learning, that links to the collective consciousness of a community through metaphors and symbols, is a crucial prerequisite for inquiry-based learning. It reveals how the naming of native Australian animals as icons for learning power, the co-construction of a learning story and the creation of a self-portrait as a learner collage provide mechanisms through which the students can performatively re-represent and recall their identities as learners. The processes enable the students to make connections between self and the meanings carried in the pictorial texts to develop self-awareness and responsibility for their own learning. It also provides the learners and their mentors with the necessary symbols and metaphors to scaffold the process of the inquiry in ways that allowed them to use the metaphors associated with the symbols to talk about change and to begin to engage with the formal requirements of the curriculum.     

Infant joint attention, temperament, and social competence in preschool children

Infant joint attention has been observed to be related to social-emotional outcomes in at-risk children. To address whether this relation is also evident in typically developing children, 52 children were tested at 12, 15, 24, and 30 months to examine associations between infant joint attention and social outcomes. Twelve-month initiating and responding to joint attention were related to 30-month social competence and externalizing behavior, even when accounting for 15-month temperament ratings, 24-month cognition and language, and demographic variables. These results suggest that, in addition to associations with language and cognition, infant joint attention reflects robust aspects of development that are related to individual differences in the emergence of social and behavioral competence in childhood.     

Technology,learning and instruction: distributed cognition in the secondary English classroom

In this paper, we analyse interactions between secondary students and pre‐service teachers in an online environment in order to understand how their meaning‐making processes embody distributed cognition. We begin by providing a theoretical review of the ways in which literacy learning is distributed across learners, objects, tools, symbols, technologies and the environment in modern English language arts classrooms. This is followed by a case study where we identify how programme values, textual resources and cultural schema function as distributed tools. In traditional schools, with an emphasis on taking standardised tests, the learning environment is designed on the view that learning is a transaction that happens solely ‘inside the head’. Unfortunately, this pushes many students to the margins of classroom engagement and participation. By analysing students' and pre‐service teachers' online discourse, we argue that virtual spaces can facilitate critical dialogue and can act as catalysts for a distributed theory of mind.     

Fostering Peer Dialogic Engagement in Science Classrooms with an Educational Videogame

This study examines the design and enactment of a secondary physics unit on electromagnetism. The unit used an educational videogame to support peer dialogic engagement in a Singapore secondary school by engaging learners with qualitative physics phenomena. As an example of game-based learning, the unit includes activities and resources that organize a recurring progression of playing and interacting around science that we term play-centered cycles. We incorporate two complementary, qualitative analyses to consider how a recurring progression of playing with and talking about science-mediated peer dialogic engagement across two separate classes. Findings demonstrate that peer dialogic engagement occurred within each play-centered cycle for both classes but that the nature of such engagement varied across cycles and student teams. Additionally, comparative case analyses of focal teams’ peer dialogic engagement illuminate how the design of play-centered cycles productively supported play and learning while also highlighting emerging tensions for sustaining dialogic engagement. Findings underscore the plausibility of this approach to fostering science learning by articulating two principles for designing science learning environments that can guide ongoing efforts to enlist videogames and play in the service of talking about and learning science.

     

Promoting Linguistically Diverse Students’ Short-Term and Long-Term Understanding of Chemical Phenomena Using Visualizations

Ensuring that all students, including English language learners (ELLs) who speak English as a second language, succeed in science is more challenging with a shift towards learning through language-intensive science practices suggested by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Interactive visualization technologies have the potential to support science learning for all students, including ELLs, by providing explicit representations of unobservable scientific systems. However, whether and how such technologies can be beneficial for these underserved students has not been sufficiently investigated. In this study, we examine the short-term and long-term effects of interactive visualizations in improving linguistically diverse eighth-grade students’ understanding of properties of matter and chemical reactions during inquiry instruction. The results show that after interacting with the visualizations, both ELLs and non-ELLs showed significant improvement in their understanding of the target concepts at the molecular level on both the immediate test and the delayed test (3 months after the study). In particular, aligned with the goals of the NGSS, all students, including ELLs, were able to demonstrate their understanding of how energy and matter are involved in chemistry through developing molecular models, critiquing models, and constructing scientific explanations. This study shows the potential benefits of using interactive visualizations during inquiry instruction as a resource to help all students, including ELLs who are traditionally underserved in mainstream classrooms, develop a more coherent understanding of abstract concepts of molecular processes during chemical phenomena.     

Nonstandard maternal work schedules: Implications for African American children's early language outcomes

In this study, observed maternal positive engagement and perception of work–family spillover were examined as mediators of the association between maternal nonstandard work schedules and children's expressive language outcomes in 231 African American families living in rural households. Mothers reported their work schedules when their child was 24 months of age and children's expressive language development was assessed during a picture book task at 24 months and with a standardized assessment at 36 months. After controlling for family demographics, child, and maternal characteristics, maternal employment in nonstandard schedules at the 24-month timepoint was associated with lower expressive language ability among African American children concurrently and at 36 months of age. Importantly, the negative association between nonstandard schedules and children's expressive language ability at 24 months of age was mediated by maternal positive engagement and negative work–family spillover, while at 36 months of age, the association was mediated only by negative work–family spillover. These findings suggest complex links between mothers’ work environments and African American children's developmental outcomes.     

The intentionality model and language acquisition: engagement, effort, and the essential tension in development.

The purpose of the longitudinal research reported in this Monograph was to examine language acquisition in the second year of life in the context of developments in cognition, affect, and social connectedness. The theoretical focus for the research is on the agency of the child and the importance of the child's intentionality for explaining development, rather than on language as an independent object. The model of development for the research is a Model of Intentionality with two components: the engagement in a world of persons and objects that motivates acquiring a language, and the effort that is required to express and articulate increasingly discrepant and elaborate intentional state representations. The fundamental assumption in the model is that the driving force for acquiring language is in the essential tension between engagement and effort for linguistic, emotional, and physical actions of interpretation and expression. Results of lag sequential analyses are reported to show how different behaviors--words, sentences, emotional expressions, conversational interactions, and constructing thematic relations between objects in play--converged, both in the stream of children's actions in everyday events, in real time, and in developmental time between the emergence of words at about 13 months and the transition to simple sentences at about 2 years of age. Patterns of deviation from baseline rates of the different behaviors show that child emotional expression, child speech, and mother speech clearly influence each other, and the mutual influences between them are different at times of either emergence or achievement in both language and object play. The three conclusions that follow from the results of the research are that (a) expression and interpretation are the acts of performance in which language is learned, which means that performance counts for explaining language acquisition; (b) language is not an independent object but is acquired by a child in relation to other kinds of behaviors and their development; and (c) acquiring language in coordination with other behaviors in acts of expression and interpretation takes work, so that acquiring language is not easy.     

Theories of change and outcomes in home-based Early Head Start programs

Programs to promote children's early development are based on a set of assumptions, explicit or implicit, about intended outcomes and how the program will effect change. The “theories of change” were examined in ten home-based programs in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project (EHSREP), using data collected through multiple interviews with program staff. All home-based programs indicated that parenting outcomes were among their highest three priorities, while only 4 of 10 programs said that child outcomes were in their top priorities. The pattern of outcome differences between randomly-assigned program and control group participants reflected the programs’ theories of change in several ways. Early Head Start home-based programs showed positive impacts on 9 of 9 parenting outcomes, including parental supportiveness, home language and learning supports, emotional responsiveness, and family conflict when children were 24 months of age. Significant program impacts on child cognitive skills (Bayley MDI scores) and social behavior (observed child engagement of parent during play) were found when children were 36 months of age. Mediation analyses showed that the 54% of the program impact on 36-month child cognitive scores was mediated by 24-month program impacts on parental supportiveness, language and learning support, emotional responsiveness, and family conflict, and 47% of the program impact on 36-month child engagement of parent was mediated by 24-month impacts on parental supportiveness, language and cognitive stimulation, and emotional responsiveness. Results from mediation analyses were consistent with these home-based programs’ theories of change, supporting the efficacy of focusing on parent change as a mechanism for child outcomes in home visiting programs.