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.     

Instructors Learn to Help Students Apply Principles

Abstract

The Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Tests, verbal and nonverbal, were administered to 115 eighth-grade boys and 150 eighth-grade girls who had taken the tests in grade three or four. Estimated true changes in IQ from grades three and four to grade eight were calculated. It was found that 1) estimated true (E.T.) nonverbal changes were more than three times as great as (E.T.) verbal changes for both boys and girls, 2) both verbal and nonverbal IQ scores tended to rise, 3) grades three, four, and eight verbal IQ scores correlated more highly with each other than did grades three, four, and eight nonverbal IQ scores, and 4) there was no significant product moment correlation between (E.T.) verbal and (E.T.) nonverbal IQ change scores.     

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.     

Longitudinal Consistency of Elaboration Scores

Sixty kindergarten, sixty second grade, and sixty fourth grade students performed several memory tasks under one of six conditions. The conditions differed as to the method of presentation of information. The study focused on developmental changes in children’s use of verbal, nonverbal, and spatial-positional cues for memory. The results, in general, showed consistent trends suggestive of a developmental change in representational ability, such that younger children tended to rely on visual cues and older children tended to rely on verbal cues to retain information. Children in all grades performed better when both visual and verbal cues were available and demonstrated an ability to utilize spatial-positional cues for retention.     

Nonassertive expression of parental approval and disapproval and its relationship to child disturbance.

Assertiveness and affective quality of voice intonation were compared for approving, neutral, and disapproving statements made by 20 sets of parents of elementary-aged children who demonstrated emotional or behavioral disturbances in school and 20 sets of parents of "normal" control children. For mothers, a significant interaction (p = .01) was found between parental group and verbal affect: mothers of "normal" control children demonstrated more assertive voice intonation when expressing affective verbal content (approval or disapproval) than when making neutral statements; mothers of "disturbed" children demonstrated less assertive voice intonation when expressing affective verbal content than when making neutral statements. Differences between mothers on affective quality of voice did not reach statistical significance. No significant differences were found for fathers.     

Children's use of a verbal-nonverbal consistency principle to infer truth and lying

Children's use of a verbal-nonverbal consistency principle to infer truth and lying was investigated in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, kindergarten (5-year-olds), second- (7-year-olds), and fourth-grade (9-year-olds) children judged the truthfulness of stimulus persons whose verbal communication and nonverbal communication varied in valence (positive, neutral, and negative). In Experiment 2, children from the same 3 grades were presented part of the verbal communications on audiotape and a similar set of general verbal communications. They were asked to predict what facial expression the speaker would show if he or she was telling the truth or lying. The findings yielded by both experiments indicated that the use of the verbal-nonverbal consistency principle increased with age. Use of that principle was demonstrated by fourth grade children who judged that telling the truth, as opposed to lying, was shown by a consistency between the affective valence of the verbal and the nonverbal communications.     

Locus of control and tutor's instructional style as determinants of cross-age tutoring effectiveness

Junior high students serving as cross-age tutors taught their elementary school tutee an analogy lesson in the presence of observers who recorded tutor teaching behaviors and tutee learning as a function of students' internal-external control. Based upon results demonstrating that externals outperform internals when another person provides feedback regarding response accuracy, it was hypothesized that tutorial instruction would benefit external learners more than internal learners. Correlations between tutee externality and task performance (though in the expected direction) were not significant and failed to support the hypothesis. On the other hand, hypotheses regarding tutor behaviors were confirmed. As predicted, internal tutors expected to be more successful teachers, used more verbal and nonverbal cues in their teaching, expended more noticeable effort, and taught more analogies than external tutors. The implications of these results for the conduct of tutoring programs in schools was discussed.     

The Assessment of Teacher Affective Sensitivity

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to develop and validate a simulation device to measure a teacher's ability to identify verbal and nonverbal emotions expressed by students (teacher affective sensitivity). The scale consists of videotaped excerpts of teacher-learner interactions and accompanying multiple-choice instrumentation. Respondents select the answer from each multiple-choice item that they believe most accurately describes the affective state of the pupil viewed on the monitor. Previously produced media focusing on classroom interactions were used to obtain the examples of learner affective expressions. Expert judges constructed two multiple-choice items for each simulation episode. Pilot test administrations allowed for numerous scale revisions. Finally, assessments of scale reliability, and scale construct, predictive, concurrent, and content validity were made.     

Relation of wait-time and rewards to the development of language,logic, and fate control: Part II-Rewards

In Part I it was shown that by varying the duration of pauses in two locations the length of student statements increased, the number of alternative explanations offered multiplied, and the overall probability of receiving a reply increased. It was noted, as well, that in natural situations where there was a high incidence of teacher sanctioning behavior, regardless of whether it was predominantly positively toned, the verbal performance of students engaged in inquiry appeared to be negatively influenced even when there were reasonable wait-times. That is, even in those rare naturally occurring cases where pauses were longer than the mean of one second, and in experiments where pauses and rewards were independently manipulated if sanctioning behaviors were intense, the positive influence on inquiry of the longer pauses appeared to be somewhat mitigated. It became necessary, then, to study reward patterns in the context of inquiry in order to discover whether, in general, overt verbal rewards which we found occurring with tremendous frequency in natural settings, helped or hindered the progress of student inquiry.     

Executive function and early reading skills

The purpose of this study was to examine how executive function skills in verbal and nonverbal auditory tasks are related to early reading skills in beginning readers. Kindergarteners (N = 41, aged 5 years) completed verbal (phonemes) and nonverbal (environmental sounds) Continuous Performance tasks yielding measures of executive function (misses, false alarms, and shift) as well as reaction time and D-Prime (sensitivity). Year-end measures of early reading skill included tests of phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, as well as reading (words and nonwords). The children made more errors on the verbal than the nonverbal tasks, suggesting that executive function abilities may differ by task. Adding to the literature on the role of inhibitory skills in reading, verbal inhibitory executive function skills were tied more closely to early reading than other verbal or nonverbal skills when age, short-term memory, and vocabulary were controlled.     

Feelings on feedback: Children’s emotional responses during mathematics problem solving

Theories of learning emphasize the importance of both the cognitive and affective state of the learner. The current study focused on children’s affective reactions to corrective feedback during mathematics problem solving. Eighty-seven elementary school children (M age = 7.6 years, 41% female, 68% White) solved mathematical equivalence problems during an online video call and received trial-by-trial feedback on their answers. Trained researchers used children’s facial expressions, tone of voice, and verbal statements to quantify their positive and negative affect on each trial. Overall, children tended to express more positive affect than negative affect. However, negative affect was more prominent when the child was incorrect and received negative feedback, and higher negative affect was associated with lower accuracy and lower persistence on the task. These results provide novel empirical evidence for the role of emotions during children’s STEM learning in a non-evaluative context.     

he Effects of Transgressors’ Affective Reactions on Children's Moral Judgments

Abstract

The present study investigated the degree to which transgressors’ affective reactions influence children's moral judgments. Eighteen children at each of three different grade levels (first‐, second‐, and third‐grade) were required to make judgments of the goodness or badness of four different transgressors.The transgressors acted out of good or bad intent, produced low or high levels of damage and displayed the affective reactions of happiness, sadness or neutrality because of the outcomes they produced.

Results showed that the transgressors’ affective reactions significantly influenced the children's moral judgments. More importantly, the children excluded intention information when they evaluated transgressors who displayed reactions of happiness. But, they did not exclude intentions when they evaluated transgressors who displayed reactions of sadness or neutrality. A number of hypotheses were offered to account for the means by which reactions of happiness block children's use of intent information.     

Nonverbal learning disability,school behavior,and dyslexia

The aims of the study were to investigate whether children showing a low nonverbal/high verbal (LNV) WISC-R profile are more likely to exhibit behaviors conducive to school failure than children with a low verbal/high nonverbal (LV) profile, and to examine the relationships among these behaviors, the LNV/LV profiles, and reading ability. The 65 subjects included 27 LNV and 38 LV children, aged 5 to 11 years. Results confirmed earlier findings (Badian 1986) that LNV children are perceived by their teachers as significantly poorer than LV children in many behaviors associated with school success. There was a dichotomy, however, between LNV good and poor readers. All LNV subjects displayed problems in organizational skills, but those who were dyslexic were poorer in social behavior (e.g., acceptance of criticism and peer relationships) than either LNV good readers or LV good or poor readers. It was concluded that children with a low nonverbal/high verbal profile and a probable right hemisphere dysfunction, who appear to be dyslexic in the early school years, are at high risk for both social behavior problems and school failure, and that these children are a more high-risk group than poor readers with a low verbal/high nonverbal profile.     

Persistent arithmetic, reading, or arithmetic and reading disability

The achievement of 1,075 school children was followed to the end of grade 7 or 8. Retrospective details of birth, medical history, and infant adaptive behavior, as well as current information about preschool behavior, were provided by parents before kindergarten entry when their children were ages four to five. At that time, each child was given language, preacademic, and visual-motor tests, and a short-form verbal IQ was obtained. For grades 1 to 8, a mean 6.9 percent qualified as low in arithmetic (including 3.9 percent low only in arithmetic) and 9 percent as low in reading (including 6 percent low only in reading). Groups of children with persistent disability in arithmetic only (2.3 percent), reading only (6.6 percent), and arithmetic plus reading (3.4 percent) were compared on all variables, and gender differences were examined. The specific arithmetic group was superior to the other two groups in preschool verbal IQ and language, and had suffered more birth problems and illness. As found by Rourke and his colleagues (e.g., Rourke and Finlayson 1978) for older children, boys with a specific arithmetic disability showed a preschool profile with high verbal scores and low nonverbal scores. Many gender differences were found for the total sample, but few for the learning disability subgroups.     

日本文化中的非语言交际与日语跨文化教学

跨化交际包括不同化间的语言和非语言交际。传统上的日语教学重视语言交际，而忽视非语言交际的教学，从而影响到跨化交际活动的进行。通过对非语言交际的认识，以及中日两国化中非语言交际现象的对比研究，揭示非语言交际的重要性，从而为日语教学中的非语言跨化交际教学提出建议。     

Visual processing of verbal and nonverbal stimuli in adolescents with reading disabilities

This study investigated whether a group of children with reading disabilities (RD) were slower at processing visual information in general (compared to a group of children of comparable age and a group of children of comparable reading level), or whether their deficit was specific to the written word. Computerized backward masking and temporal integration tasks were used to assess the speed of visual information processing. Stimulus complexity (simple, complex) and type (verbal, nonverbal) were varied, creating a 2 x 2 matrix of stimulus conditions: simple nonverbal, complex nonverbal, simple verbal, and complex verbal. Adolescents with RD demonstrated difficulties in processing rapidly presented verbal and nonverbal visual stimuli, although the effect was magnified when they were processing verbal stimuli. Thus, the results of this study suggest that some youth with reading disabilities have visual temporal processing deficits that compound difficulties in processing verbal information during reading.     

Effects of Tutor‐Tutee Intimacy,Tutoring Conditions and Tutor Background on College Student Tutor Satisfaction

Path analysis was used to examine the effects of tutor‐tutee intimacy, tutoring conditions and background variables on overall tutor satisfaction, as well on specific satisfaction from achievements, rewards, and relationships. University student tutors (n = 472), who worked with younger children under the auspices of the PERACH Project in Israel, participated in the study. Results revealed higher satisfaction among tutors who reported greater intimacy with tutees and who were able to hold tutorial sessions without difficulty. More intimate tutoring relations were found when pairs were matched by ethnicity, when telephone contact with the tutee was easy, when sessions were easily held, and for female same‐sex pairs.     

A Comparison of Reading Ages with Menta1 Ages

Abstract

This study examines the differences in verbal concept development between Indian and non-Indian 5- and 6-year-old children entering kindergarten and first grade in a Canadian school. The Boehm Test of Basic Concepts was used as a measure of verbal concept development. Results indicate that significant differences exist between groups in favor of non-Indian Ss. Implications for intervention programs which will insure that Indian children have mastered simple verbal concepts used in conversation and in classroom instruction are briefly discussed.     

Parental family stress during pregnancy and cognitive functioning in early childhood: The Generation R Study

We investigated whether parental family stress during pregnancy is associated with cognitive functioning in early childhood in a population-based cohort (n = 3139). Family stress was assessed using the Family Assessment Device at the 20th week of pregnancy and was reported by mothers and fathers. Mothers completed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, measuring children's verbal cognitive functioning, when children were 18 months and they completed the Parent Report of Children's Abilities, measuring nonverbal cognitive functioning, when children were 2 years old. Maternal prenatal family stress was related to children's low word comprehension and poorer nonverbal cognitive development independent of paternal reports. In a subset of 639 children, maternal prenatal family stress was also associated with observational assessments of poor effortful control at age 37 months. Paternal prenatal family stress was only related to poorer nonverbal cognitive development, independent of the mother. When both parents had high levels of prenatal family stress, children displayed particularly poor nonverbal cognitive development. These findings emphasize the significance of parental prenatal family stress for child developmental outcomes.     

Scaffolding Narrative Skills: A Meta-Analysis of Instruction in Early Childhood Settings

Research Findings: Children’s ability to tell stories and to understand the stories of others typically emerges in early childhood, supported by primary caregivers and educators. This article reviews instruction designed to foster children’s narrative skills in preschool and kindergarten settings and examines the effects using meta-analysis. The review covers more than 3 decades (1980–2013) of experimental research (k = 15 studies, 28 effects). The findings showed that verbal scaffolding, alone or in combination with other strategies, was the predominant teaching approach. The meta-analysis revealed average effects (weighted for sample size) for narrative expression (.50) and a slightly larger effect for comprehension (.58). These effects were unrelated to the duration of instruction. However, when verbal strategies were combined with nonverbal ones, such as engaging children in enacting stories or in telling stories with props, the effects for expression increased (i.e., children’s storytelling improved more from pretest to posttest). Practice or Policy: The review indicates promising strategies for supporting narrative skills. Furthermore, the studies identified can serve as a resource for practitioners by suggesting diverse kinds of verbal scaffolds, complementary nonverbal approaches, and storybooks that have been used effectively to foster narrative competencies among young children.