Preschoolers’ Use of Talker Information in On‐Line Comprehension

A crucial part of language development is learning how various social and contextual language‐external factors constrain an utterance’s meaning. This learning process is poorly understood. Five experiments addressed one hundred thirty‐one 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children’s use of one such socially relevant information source: talker characteristics. Participants learned 2 characters’ favorite colors; then, those characters asked participants to select colored shapes, as eye movements were tracked. Results suggest that by preschool, children use voice characteristics predictively to constrain a talker’s domain of reference, visually fixating the talker’s preferred color shapes. Indicating flexibility, children used talker information when the talker made a request for herself but not when she made a request for the other character. Children’s ease at using voice characteristics and possible developmental changes are discussed.     

低龄儿童词义理解的制约因素

影响低龄儿童词义理解的因素主要有认知能力、社会化交往活动、母语类型、成人言语输入等等。本的结论是在个案调查的基础上得出的。相信这项工作能够给早期教育一些启发。     

Infants’ Social Experiences in Three African Sociocultural Contexts

This study introduces a peri‐urban context of poverty to the study of child development in Africa in contrast to the more typical assessments in middle‐class and rural contexts. Spot observations were used to assess universal caregiving behaviors toward seventy‐six 3‐month‐old infants. Results show that middle‐class infants experienced distal parenting behaviors instantiated by mothers, whereas rural children experienced proximal parenting practices in interactions with others. Infants growing up in poverty had mothers and other caretakers involved at mostly low levels. They experienced low levels of body contact, body stimulation, and object stimulation, and high levels of face‐to‐face positions. The study indicates that caregiving in the context of poverty does not necessarily follow familiar pathways and needs to be contextualized accordingly.     

Quantitative Linguistic Predictors of Infants’ Learning of Specific English Words

To evaluate which features of spoken language aid infant word learning, a corpus of infant‐directed speech (M. R. Brent & J. M. Siskind, 2001) was characterized on several linguistic dimensions and statistically related to the infants’ vocabulary outcomes word by word. Comprehension (at 12 and 15 months) and production (15 months) were predicted by frequency, frequency of occurrence in one‐word utterances, concreteness, utterance length, and typical duration. These features have been proposed to influence learning before, but here their relative contributions were measured. Mothers’ data predicted learning in their own children better than in other children; thus, vocabulary is measurably aligned within families. These analyses provide a quantitative basis for claims concerning the relevance of several properties of maternal English speech in facilitating early word learning.     

Developmental Differences in Infants’ Fairness Expectations From 6 to 15 Months of Age

The present research investigated the developmental trajectory of infants’ fairness expectations from 6 to 15 months of age (N = 150). Findings revealed a developmental transition in infants’ fairness expectations between 6 and 12 months, as indicated by enhanced visual attention to unfair outcomes of resource distribution events (a 3:1 distribution) relative to fair outcomes (a 2:2 distribution). The onset of naturalistic sharing behavior predicted infants’ fairness expectations at transitional ages. Beyond this period of developmental transition, the presence of siblings and infants’ prompted giving behavior predicted individual differences in infants’ fairness concerns. These results provide evidence for the role of experience in the acquisition of fairness expectations and reveal early individual differences in such expectations.     

Trajectories of Infants’ Biobehavioral Development: Timing and Rate of A‐Not‐B Performance Gains and EEG Maturation

This study examined how timing (i.e., relative maturity) and rate (i.e., how quickly infants attain proficiency) of A‐not‐B performance were related to changes in brain activity from age 6 to 12 months. A‐not‐B performance and resting EEG (electroencephalography) were measured monthly from age 6 to 12 months in 28 infants and were modeled using logistic and linear growth curve models. Infants with faster performance rates reached performance milestones earlier. Infants with faster rates of increase in A‐not‐B performance had lower occipital power at 6 months and greater linear increases in occipital power. The results underscore the importance of considering nonlinear change processes for studying infants’ cognitive development as well as how these changes are related to trajectories of EEG power.     

Parents’ Talk About Letters With Their Young Children

A literacy‐related activity that occurs in children's homes—talk about letters in everyday conversations—was examined using data from 50 children who were visited every 4 months between 14 and 50 months. Parents talked about some letters, including those that are common in English words and the first letter of their children's names, especially often. Parents’ focus on the child's initial was especially strong in families of higher socioeconomic status, and the extent to which parents talked about the child's initial during the later sessions of the study was related to the children's kindergarten reading skill. Conversations that included the child's initial were longer than those that did not, and parents presented a variety of information about this letter.     

Young Children’s Representations of Spatial and Functional Relations Between Objects

Three experiments investigated changes from 15 to 30 months of age in children’s (N = 114) mastery of relations between an object and an aperture, supporting surface, or form. When choosing between objects to insert into an aperture, older children selected objects of an appropriate size and shape, but younger children showed little selectivity. Further experiments probed the sources of younger children’s difficulty by comparing children’s performance placing a target object in a hole, on a 2‐dimensional form, or atop another solid object. Together, the findings suggest that some factors limiting adults’ object representations, including the difficulty of comparing the shapes of positive and negative spaces and of representing shapes in 3 dimensions, contribute to young children’s errors in manipulating objects.     

‘The art of democracy’: Young people's democratic learning in gallery contexts

In this article the authors report on research which aimed to explore the opportunities for democratic action and learning in a number of artist‐led gallery education projects in the south‐west of England. The research takes an approach to citizenship learning and democracy that is less focused on citizenship as a specific subject in the formal school curriculum and the achievement of specific citizenship outcomes that can follow from it. Rather, it is more focused upon understanding how democratic practices that are embedded in the day‐to‐day lives of young people contribute to their democratic learning and participation as citizens. Drawing upon conceptual categories and concepts that illuminate the process, the authors demonstrate the nature and character of young people's democratic learning. An implication arising from this is the need for practice‐orientated research in other contexts (e.g. work, leisure and home) to fully understand the nature of democratic learning.     

‘Fitting in’ or ‘standing out’: Working‐class students in UK higher education

Drawing on case studies of 27 working‐class students across four UK higher education institutions, this article attempts to develop a multilayered, sociological understanding of student identities that draws together social and academic aspects. Working with a concept of student identity that combines the more specific notion of learner identity with more general understandings of how students are positioned in relation to their discipline, their peer group and the wider university, the article examines the influence of widely differing academic places and spaces on student identities. Differences between institutions are conceptualised in terms of institutional habitus, and the article explores how the four different institutional habituses result in a range of experiences of fitting in and standing out in higher education. For some this involves combining a sense of belonging in both middle‐class higher education and working‐class homes, while others only partially absorb a sense of themselves as students.     

Revisiting the Emergence of Young Children’s Literacy: One Child Tells Her Story

This article explores the progression of one child’s literacy from 4 months to 38 months. The emergence of literate behaviour is interpreted in the light of current theories such as those of Halliday and Dyson. One of the most significant aspects of this emergence is shown to be interaction with others in authentic literacy activities, a feature which has a number of implications for teachers and researchers alike.     

‘The best day in my whole entire life’ – Young Children,Wellbeing and the Arts

For more than 25 years, a large percentage of young Australian children has been involved in arts and cultural experiences, but very little systematic information has been gathered to understand what they gain from these encounters. This article investigates young children’s cultural engagement and wellbeing within a festival experience – as creators making work for an exhibition at the festival, and as consumers participating in theatre, dance and festival activities. The case study involved 105 children (64 girls and 41 boys, aged 7 years 11 months to 9 years 1 month) and used a mixed methods approach incorporating quantitative surveys, qualitative focus groups and participant observation. Though the surveys did not show any changes in children’s views of wellbeing before, during or after the festival, focus group conversations revealed almost unanimous perspectives of positive wellbeing after the festival. The findings indicate that children’s wellbeing is a complex phenomenon that may be best explored using composite standpoints of children, teachers, parents and artists for achieving a clearer understanding.     

浅议河北省新型经济发展对外语人才知识结构需求

当前河北省处于经济转型发展阶段,在发展外向型经济同时加快服务业与工农业协同跨界创新发展。这种经济模式对外语人才需求日益增加,而各行各业对外语从业人员的知识结构需求又各有不同,研究表明目前河北省外语人才知识结构相对合理,然而也存在着一些问题,需要进一步改进外语人才培养模式,以便更好地为河北省外向型经济服务。     

杜甫《漫兴绝句九首》其七稚子一词辨证

文章通过对杜甫诗《漫兴绝句九首》其七做多角度的比较与分析,论述了诗句“笋根稚子无人见”中的“稚子”应为“雉子”的理由。     

Setting or mixed ability? Teachers’ views of the organisation of pupils for learning

This paper examines how staff in schools formulate decisions about pupil organisation. A small sample of primary and secondary schools from across Scotland was involved in the study.
In 1996 Her Majesty's Inspectors published a report entitled Achievement for All (SOEID, 1996) which, it was envisaged, would form the basis of school evaluations into the effectiveness of classroom organisation. This report, and in particular the six principles on which it suggested effective organisational arrangements should rest, formed the organising framework for the study.
The study had three main aims:

• 1. 

  to ascertain the extent to which the principles outlined in the HMI report had been used by school staff when making decisions about which form of organisation to use