Levels of phonological awareness in preliterate and literate Spanish-speaking children

Evidence of phonological awareness levels usually comes from English-speaking children. The evidence in Spanish is scarce. The present study examined the phonological awareness of syllables, onsets–rimes, and phonemes, extending the Treiman and Zukowski (1991) results to preliterate and literate Spanish-speaking children. The sample comprised preschoolers, kindergarteners and first-graders. Children found syllables easier than onset–rime units, and onset–rime units easier than phoneme units (Experiments 1 and 2). Preliterate children found ending units easier than beginning units. However, literate children were best at initial linguistic units, particularly initial syllables. Results on the phonological awareness task and on the masked priming lexical decision task support that the phonological awareness development is sensitive to the orthographic units used by children from the time they begin to read (Experiment 3). For all children, initial continuant consonants were easier than stop consonants.     

Improving sleep,cognitive functioning and academic performance with sleep education at school in children

We aimed at measuring the impact of a school-based sleep education program (ENSOM: ‘EN’ for ‘ENfant’ and SOM for ‘SOMmeil’ in French) on sleep, cognitive functioning and academic performance in children. In contrast with existing sleep education programs, ENSOM was designed by sleep experts with the intent of being autonomously achieved by teachers. One-hundred and thirty children aged 8–9 years took part in control versus ENSOM interventions. Compared to the control intervention, total sleep time was extended by 31 min per night, sleep efficiency improved by 2.9%, and sleep latency and wake after sleep onset were shortened by 7.7 and 4.5 min respectively after the ENSOM program. Sleep improvement remained significant at one-year follow-up. Attention, executive functioning, academic performance and parents' sleep knowledge also improved significantly. Given the frequency of sleep curtailment in children, school-based programs could be an efficient method to implement sleep education on a large scale.     

Comparing cognitive load and self-regulatory depletion: Effects on emotions and cognitions

Prior research has found both similar and different effects of self-regulatory resource depletion and cognitive load. To resolve these seeming contradictions, we experimentally compared the effects of cognitive load and self-regulatory depletion. Ego depletion led participants to pay more attention to pain and to persist less on a pain test, whereas load had opposite effects (Study 1). Load distracted people from processing and reacting to negative emotional content of pictures (Study 2), and boosted positive feelings even without an overt emotion induction (Study 3), whereas depletion did not change how people felt relative to control. Depletion and load had equivalent null effects on visual recognition memory (Study 2) but different effects on semantic processing involving emotional connections (Study 3). Taken together, results suggest that load distracts attention away from, whereas ego depletion undermines top-down control over the processing of pain and negatively-valenced content. We discuss implications for learning and instruction.     

Cognitive apprenticeship in a CAL-environment for functionally illiterate adults

When cognitive apprenticeship principles are compared with adult learning theories and in particular with learning theories concerning functionally illiterate adults, they have several aspects in common. In order to check these resemblances in practice and to explore at the same time the way in which the cognitive apprenticeship methods can be operationalized in a computer aided learning environment for adult basic education students, a computer program was designed in the domain of arithmetic.This article describes an experiment with this computer program in which the use of the operationalized cognitive apprenticeship methods was studied together with the effects of modelling and coaching on student performance.The results concerning the implementation of modelling and coaching showed that adult basic education students make little use of optional materials in the computer program. As a consequence of this no conclusions can be drawn concerning the effects of modelling and coaching on student performance.     

Becoming literate in Chinese: a comparison of native‐speaking and non‐native‐speaking children

How do native Chinese‐speaking (CS) and non‐Chinese‐speaking (NCS) children learn to read and write in Chinese? In the present study, 29 CS and 34 NCS second and third graders aged 76 to 122 months (M = 93.65) participated in an experiment where they were taught 16 new Chinese characters in one of four conditions – copy, radical, phonological and look–say. Results showed that the copying condition best facilitated writing of Chinese characters for both groups, whereas radical knowledge facilitated only CS children's writing. NCS children benefited more from the phonological condition than from the look–say condition in learning to read Chinese. These results highlight the effectiveness of copying practice for all children learning to write Chinese. However, approaches to reading and writing Chinese may differ somewhat depending on the Chinese background knowledge of the children as well. Teaching children Chinese should be geared towards the strengths of different groups for learning.     

Relation between cognitive and motor performance in 5- to 6-year-old children: results from a large-scale cross-sectional study

The relation between cognitive and motor performance was studied in a sample of 378 children aged 5-6. Half of these children had no behavior problems; the others were selected for externalizing (38%) or internalizing problems (12%). Quantitative and qualitative aspects of motor performance were related to several aspects of cognition, after controlling for the influence of attention. No relation between global aspects of cognitive and motor performance was found. Specific positive relations were found between both aspects of motor performance, visual motor integration and working memory, and between quantitative aspects of motor performance and fluency. These findings reveal interesting parallels between normal cognitive and motor development in 5- to 6-year-old children that cannot be ascribed to attention processes.     

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.     

Teacher influence on pupil cognitive performance

Following the U.S. financial crisis of 2008, demands on our social safety nets grew as federal, state, and local revenues declined. Projected shortfalls are forcing deep cuts in state and local services including education. It is too early to know fully the nature of the cuts or impacts on various communities and constituencies. This article looks to recent reform history to understand the shaping of educational priorities in the context of shrinking public coffers, disenchantment with public institutions, and anxiety about individual and collective positions in the global economy. I employ Steven Lukes's (2005) multidimensional view of power to examine the emergence of performance accountability policy as part and parcel of a neo-liberal reconsideration of schooling. From this recounting, I raise questions about the preference and press for particular reform priorities—reconstitution and pay for performance models of remuneration—ensconced in No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.     

出土文献与"秦世不文"论的终结

近数十年来,东周时代的秦出土文献骤增,为秦国文学乃至重新认识秦文学提供了可能.根据目前的资料,东周时代的秦文学大致经历了春秋时期(襄公至哀公)、战国早中期(厉公至武王)以及战国后期(昭襄王至秦王政)三个发展阶段.春秋秦文学是西周礼乐文化与秦嬴勇武激越的民族精神相交融的产物,可谓"礼乐文学".战国早中期的秦国建立起以法为尊的单一文化体系,养成任法、功利的文化精神,薄于艺文.战国后期,外来文化因素增多,秦文学具有显著的"国际主义"特色,可谓"诸子文学";"民间文学"也是此期秦文学的重要组成部分,相关作品具有显著的文学史价值.所谓"秦世不文"应重新加以审视.     

Writing motivation and performance in Chinese children

Reading and Writing - This study examined the relationships between writing motivation and written composition performance in Chinese among 388 Chinese children in Grades 3 to 5 in accordance with...     

Domain-specific knowledge and memory performance in children

Developmental studies assessing the impact of domain-specific knowledge on memory are discussed. In the first section of the review, different ways through which domain-specific knowledge relates to strategy use in memory tasks are briefly summarized. Empirical evidence indicating nonstrategic effects of the knowledge base are discussed next. In particular, findings based on the expert-novice paradigm are used to compare the knowledge structure and memory performance of experts and novices of different ages, and to explore how individual differences relate to the acquisition and use of domain-specific knowledge. The review shows that domain-specific knowledge permits children to process and remember domain-related information more efficiently, apply strategies more effectively, and integrate novel information more easily than domains for which they have less detailed knowledge. If the knowledge base is particularly rich, it exerts a greater influence than other sources of memory development (i.e., memory capacity, strategies, and metamemory) combined.