The Superiority of Distributed Practice in Drill in Arithmetic

Abstract

Forty-three second and third grade non-readers who were diagnosed as having visual perceptual deficiencies were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received training in visual analysis, which included visual short-term memory, visual discrimination of letters and words, and remedial instruction. The control group received only remedial instruction. After seven months, there was no significant difference between the groups in visual perception or achievement of reading skills. However, there was a significant mean difference between pretest and posttest scores for both groups on all measures tested. Experimental subjects gained 8.9 months in reading achievement versus 9.2 months for controls, indicating that visual discrimination and visual memory of word training influenced the achievement of reading skills for this group to the same degree as did a remedial program without visual training.     

Neonatal state profiles: reliability and short-term prediction of neurobehavioral status

Observations were made on 40 newborns prior to hospital discharge in which states were scored every 10 sec in two 35-70-min periods separated by 6-48 hours. Newborns' states, particularly sleep states and crying, were fairly reliable across observation sessions. Cluster analyses identified 3 separable state profiles that subsequently differentiated infants on the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale with Kansas Supplements (NBAS-K) at 2 weeks of age. Additionally, state observations and NBAS-K exams showed significant agreement on individual differences in neurologically based measures, such as startles, tremulousness, and lability of state.     

Visual recognition memory: a predictor of later cognitive functioning in preterms

A number of preterms who had participated in a study of visual recognition memory when they were 6 months of age were seen at older ages to assess the predictive validity of the early visual measures for cognitive outcome. The Bayley scales were administered at 6, 12, and 24 months, the Stanford-Binet at 34 and 40 months, and the WISC-R at 6 years. Novelty scores, which reflect the relative amount of time infants look at new compared to familiar stimuli, constituted the measure of infant visual processing. These scores, obtained by averaging over performance on the 3 or 4 problems administered at 6 months of age, were consistently and significantly related to cognitive measures from 24 months to 6 years, with correlations ranging from r = .53 to r = .66. Parental education, which was unrelated to novelty scores, bore a strong relationship to outcome beginning at 24 months. Although both measures contributed uniquely to the variance in cognitive outcome at 24 months and 6 years, visual novelty scores made a stronger contribution than did parental education. Neither 6- nor 12-month Bayley scores, nor various perinatal variables, were related to outcome.     

Adrenocortical activity and the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale: moderating effects of the newborn's biomedical status

The Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale with Kansas Supplement (NBAS-K) was administered midway between feedings to 60 newborns who were between 32 and 122 hours old. 35 of the newborns were classified as extremely healthy and normal (Subgroup I), whereas 25 (Subgroup II) were characterized by slight perinatal problems including gestational age 36-37 weeks or 42+ weeks, and fetal distress during labor. All of the newborns were healthy enough to be cared for in a healthy newborn, Level I nursery. Immediately following administration of the NBAS-K, a blood sample was obtained for plasma cortisol determination. Correlations between behavioral responding on the NBAS-K and levels of plasma cortisol revealed few significant relations for the sample as a whole. When the 2 subgroups were examined separately, a number of significant relations emerged. Newborns in Subgroup I who were more competent in their motor control and state regulation capacities as assessed by Lester's Cluster Scores for the NBAS-K exhibited higher levels of plasma cortisol. In contrast, newborns in Subgroup II who exhibited a greater adrenocortical response to the examination showed more behaviors indicative of high behavioral arousal and distress. This pattern of relations for Subgroup II appeared to be mediated by the number of hours that had elapsed since delivery. As postpartum time increased, the strength of the association between adrenocortical activity and behavioral arousal/distress decreased for Subgroup II. A systems theory approach is used to interpret the difference in patterns of correlations found for the 2 subgroups.     

Infant visual attention in the paired-comparison paradigm: test-retest and attention-performance relations

The visual behavior of infants in the paired-comparison paradigm was assessed with multiple discrimination tasks week-to-week at 4 and 7 months and longitudinally from 4 to 7 months. Results indicated that although task-to-task reliability was extremely variable and typically low, most measures of infants' attention averaged across multiple tasks were reliable from 1 week to the next as well as relatively stable over the longer longitudinal period. Across all groups, infants who had shorter fixations (i.e., more fixations per fixed-exposure period) during the familiarization phase showed higher novelty preferences. While infants' shift rate during test phases was a reliable individual characteristic at 7 months, it was not at 4 months; rather, data suggested that the difficulty of the stimulus discrimination may be related to young infants' shift rate.     

Individual Differences in Infant Visual Attention: Four-Month-Olds' Discrimination and Generalization of Global and Local Stimulus Properties

Cognitive performance and development is negatively correlated with fixation duration patterns during infancy, and evidence suggests that long-looking infants may process visual information more slowly than short-looking infants. 3 experiments described here tested the possibility that these differences may be due to differential sensitivity to global and local visual information. Infants were administered discrimination and generalization tasks involving global and local information at varying levels of familiarization time. Results indicated that 4-month-olds process visual information in a global-to-local sequence. Both long- and short-looking infants were sensitive to both types of information, although long lookers required additional familiarization time to match the performance of short lookers. Finally, apparent "generalization" of global information at brief familiarization levels was traced to insensitivity to local stimulus properties. The results do not support the hypothesis that long- and short-looking infants are differentially sensitive to global versus local visual information at 4 months of age.     

Visual discrimination of letter-like forms and its relationship to achievement over time in children with learning disabilities

The purpose of this study was to better understand whether visual discrimination abilities are related to reading intelligence and other achievement areas in children with learning disabilities and normally achieving children. Children with visual discrimination problems were identified using the Gibson letter-like visual discrimination task. This task was given to a large sample of children with learning disabilities as well as a sample of normally achieving children. All children were followed throughout elementary school. Results indicated that children with learning disabilities who had visual discrimination problems at 6 or 7 years of age performed more poorly in reading and general achievement over the elementary school years in comparison to the other children with learning disabilities and compared to normally achieving children. Discussion centers around the importance of this skill for reading.     

The Effectiveness of an Instructional Videotape and Computer Presented Activities on Pre‐reading Skills with Three‐year‐old Children

An instructional videotape designed to improve visual discrimination in three‐year‐old children was produced to be used in conjunction with computer‐presented reading‐readiness activities. The videotape comprised four instructional sequences: discrimination of simple geometric shapes, pairs of houses, matchstick‐men, and biscuits baked in the shape of a man and a dog. There were three treatment conditions: (1) the computer activities alone, (2) video presentation without discussion and the computer activities, and (3) video presentation with group discussion of the contents and the computer‐presented activities. The performance of all groups was measured in terms of their scores on the 50 computer‐presented activities. The effectiveness of the instructional videotape was evaluated in terms of its ability to increase the performance of children on the computer‐presented activities. The results indicated that the performance increased from conditions one to three and hence that an instructional videotape can be effectively used with young children     

Visual and cardiac responses to animate and inanimate faces by young term and preterm infants.

Infants' looking and looking-away behaviors, as well as cardiac responses to mothers' spontaneous and imitative and to dolls' animated and still faces, were recorded for 18 term and 18 preterm infants when they were 3 months old. Infants spent less time looking at their mothers' than at the doll's faces, and their heart-rate levels were elevated while looking at mothers' faces. These effects were most pronounced for the preterm infants whose inferior scores on the animate visual item of the Brazelton neonatal scale suggested a continuity of visual inattentiveness to animate stimuli. Both groups also looked at the inanimate more than the animate doll's face and evidenced lower heart-rate levels during that situation. An information-processing/arousal-modulation interpretation was made for infant looking-away behavior and elevated heart rate during the more arousing mother's-face situations.     

Auditory and visual factors related to spelling success

Compared good and poor spellers at the third- and sixth-grade levels on seven tasks that measured visual and auditory discrimination, memory, analysis and synthesis skills. The results indicated that five tasks discriminated between good and poor spellers at the third-grade level: tasks requiring visual discrimination and visual memory of words; auditory discrimination, memory, analysis and synthesis; and auditory-visual integration. Two tasks discriminated between good and poor spellers at the sixth-grade level: tasks requiring auditory discrimination, memory, analysis and synthesis; and auditory-visual integration. Memory for words and sentences did not discriminate between good and poor spellers at either grade level.     

Type A behavior in preschool children: construct validation evidence for the MYTH

This study examined the construct validity of 1 measure of Type A behavior, the Matthews Youth Test for Health (MYTH), with preschool-age children. Convergent and discriminant validity evidence was obtained based on teacher ratings, intelligence test scores, and reaction time in a visual discrimination task. As predicted, Type A behavior was related to ratings of aggression and impatience, but not to intelligence. An experimental analysis was conducted of the conjoint effect of 2 situational variables, time constraint and incentive, on reaction time. Children classified as Type A or Type B on the basis of the MYTH participated in a visual discrimination task either with or without the presence of a time constraint and an incentive. As predicted, the reaction times of Type B children who worked without a time limit and an incentive were significantly longer than both groups of Type A children and the Type B children who worked with a time limit and an incentive. In summary, support was obtained for the construct validity of the MYTH when used with preschool-age children.     

Cross-modal transfer as a function of similarities between training tasks in classical conditioning of the rabbit

The present experiments examined transfer of training from visual to auditory sensory modalities in classical conditioning of the rabbit’s nictitating membrane response. Experiment 1 examined transfer from initial training with a single visual CS to subsequent auditory discrimination training, and Experiment 2 examined transfer from visual discrimination training to auditory discrimination training. The major findings were that (1) initial conditioning of a visual CS facilitated the overall rate of CR acquisition to the auditory CSs separate from the requirements for discrimination learning (Experiments 1 and 2), and (2) initial visual discrimination training facilitated auditory discrimination learning (Experiment 2). Thus, the animals appeared to encode separately both contiguous CS-US relations and CS+ versus CS? relations during initial visual training. The results are discussed with respect to theories of extradimensional transfer.     

Orthogonal stimulus variation and attention in dimensional contrast

These experiments examined one way in which the allocation of attentional resources can change performance during a visual discrimination task. Pigeons were trained to discriminate visual forms under conditions that produced dimensional contrast. In three experiments, negative training stimuli differed from positive stimuli either along a primary physical dimension alone or along both a primary dimension and an orthogonal dimension. When a negative stimulus differed from positive stimuli along two dimensions, discrimination of that negative stimulus improved. For one type of visual form, discrimination of the positive stimuli declined with orthogonal variation in a negative stimulus, whereas for other visual forms, there was no decline in performance. These results are consistent with a model of dimensional contrast that suggests that differences in the allocation of attentional resources determine discrimination performance. The results also indicate that the organization of stimulus dimensions plays a crucial role in the allocation of attentional resources in these settings.     

Perceptual Learning: 12‐Month‐Olds’ Discrimination of Monkey Faces

Six‐month‐olds reliably discriminate different monkey and human faces whereas 9‐month‐olds only discriminate different human faces. It is often falsely assumed that perceptual narrowing reflects a permanent change in perceptual abilities. In 3 experiments, ninety‐six 12‐month‐olds’ discrimination of unfamiliar monkey faces was examined. Following 20 s of familiarization, and two 5‐s visual‐paired comparison test trials, 12‐month‐olds failed to show discrimination. However, following 40 s of familiarization and two 10‐s test trials, 12‐month‐olds showed reliable discrimination of novel monkey faces. A final experiment was performed demonstrating 12‐month‐olds’ discrimination of the monkey face was due to the increased familiarization rather than increased time of visual comparison. Results are discussed in the context of perceptual narrowing, in particular the flexible nature of perceptual narrowing.     

Learning While Testing

Abstract

This study investigated the performance of preschool and kindergarten children with visual discrimination exercises drawn from reading readiness materials prior to visual discrimination training. The exercises contained three sources of stimuli: representations of objects, letters, and words. Results indicate that many preschoolers and most kindergartners measured possess the skills necessary to successfully perform visual discrimination exercises. The 8s were able to discriminate representations of objects and letters equally well; however, word stimuli were significantly harder to discriminate than either representations of objects or letters. Results indicate that visual discrimination training should be provided to pre-readers on a selected basis.     

Oral language facility,verbal intelligence and performance on tests of psycholinguistic ability

The performance of 152 children in the age range 7 years 5 months to 7 years 11 months on a battery comprising the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA), the English Picture Vocabulary Test 2 (EPVT), a test of auditory discrimination, a sentence repetition test and an orally administered verbal intelligence test was compared with the complexity and fluency of spoken language recorded from each child. Only a moderate correlation was found between the ITPA total score and the length‐complexity index (LCI) from the language samples. Moderate correlations were found between the LCI and several auditory‐vocal channel subtests from the ITPA; however, with the influence of verbal intelligence partialled out most of these were reduced to low or nonsignificant levels. The scores from the Manual Expression subtest in the visual‐motor channel were found to correlate as highly with LCI as did the ITPA total score.

This relationship was maintained to two situations, (i) when the factor of verbal intelligence was controlled statistically, (ii) when a sub‐sample of subjects within a narrow IQ range was selected for separate analysis. The Verbal Expression subtest also showed moderate correlation with LCI in four out of five analyses, thus lending support to the “process” construct in the ITPA model. No connection was found between any of the psycholinguistic subtests and fluency of language production. The validity of the ITPA as a test of oral language performance was questioned.     

Categorical discrimination of objects and pictures by pigeons

With a three-choice instrumental discrimination procedure, pigeons were taught to distinguish small spherical objects from nonspherical objects. Spherical objects were defined as positive, nonspherical objects as negative. A device allowing an automatic presentation of the stimuli was employed. The subjects actually pecked the objects, and grain rewards were presented directly beside the correct objects. Acquisition was rapid, with the birds reaching a criterion of 80% correct choices within less than 150 trials. There was evidence that more than 200 objects were remembered individually over 3 months. Pigeons transferred the discrimination of spherical/nonspherical objects to novel objects. The criteria by which the birds judged the sphericity of objects seemed to be similar to those applied by humans. They could apply the categorization in a relational manner and generalize it to apply to photographs and drawings of objects. The categorization competence was retained for at least 3 months.     

The Timing of Prenatal Exposure to Maternal Cortisol and Psychosocial Stress Is Associated With Human Infant Cognitive Development

The consequences of prenatal maternal stress for development were examined in 125 full-term infants at 3, 6, and 12 months of age. Maternal cortisol and psychological state were evaluated 5 times during pregnancy. Exposure to elevated concentrations of cortisol early in gestation was associated with a slower rate of development over the 1st year and lower mental development scores at 12 months. Elevated levels of maternal cortisol late in gestation, however, were associated with accelerated cognitive development and higher scores at 12 months. Elevated levels of maternal pregnancy-specific anxiety early in pregnancy were independently associated with lower 12-month mental development scores. These data suggest that maternal cortisol and pregnancy-specific anxiety have programming influences on the developing fetus.     

Correction for prematurity and its consequences for the assessment of the very low birth weight infant

The consequences of correcting developmental test scores for the degree of prematurity were studied in 2 cohorts of children each composed of demographically matched groups of preterm and full-term infants. The children were administered the Bayley Scales at 4, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months of age; the Stanford-Binet at 3 years; the Reynell Developmental Language Scales at 2, 3, and 4 years; and the McCarthy Scale of Children's Abilities, the ITPA Grammatic Closure, the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test, the Beery Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at 5 years. At each point in time, except some language measures at 5 years, the uncorrected scores of the preterms were significantly lower than those of the full-terms. Although the corrected scores were significantly lower early in development, they were not lower at 5 years, with the exception of the Beery VMI, a measure of perceptual-motor skills. In the first year the corrected scores were typically more highly correlated with 3-year and 5-year test scores. From 12 months on the uncorrected scores were usually more highly correlated. The same pattern was evident for the prediction of developmental delay. Correction for degree of prematurity appears to be appropriate in the first few months. After that point, slightly more accurate prediction is achieved by using the uncorrected scores. Early test scores are significantly influenced by the degree of biological maturity, but the impact of environmental influences increases with development.     

An evaluation of the effectiveness of a computer‐assisted reading intervention

Background

A cost‐effective method to address reading delays is to use computer‐assisted learning, but these techniques are not always effective.

Methods

We evaluated a commercially available computer system that uses visual mnemonics, in a randomised controlled trial with 78 English‐speaking children (mean age 7 years) who their schools identified as needing reading support. School‐based individual tutorials usually took place 2–3 times/week. Only the experimental group received the intervention in the first 10 months; thereafter, both the experimental and control groups received the intervention for 6 months.

Results

After 10 months, the experimental group had significantly higher standardised scores than the waiting list control group of decoding, phonological awareness, naming speed, phonological short‐term memory and executive loaded working memory.

Conclusions

The computer‐assisted intervention was effective, and this suggests that this medium can be used for reading interventions with English‐speaking children. What is already known about this topic

• There are comparatively few randomised controlled trial evaluations of computer‐based reading interventions.
• Meta‐analyses report small positive effect sizes for such interventions with English‐speaking children.
• The use of visual mnemonics to improve reading has rarely been investigated.

What this paper adds

• The findings suggest that computer‐based interventions for English‐speaking, struggling readers can be effective.
• The effects extended beyond the targeted abilities, and a longer intervention was more effective than a shorter one.
• Apart from spelling, the mean reading and reading related standardised scores for children at the end of the intervention were above or just below 100.

Implications for theory, policy or practice

• Computer‐based interventions can be used to support English‐speaking, struggling readers, and their effects can go beyond targeted abilities.
• The use of visual mnemonics and the development of the intervention programme over a number of years could have contributed to this success.
• The role of visual mnemonics as a help for struggling readers deserves further investigation.