Mother-child conversations about pictures and objects: referring to categories and individuals

The distinction between individuals (e.g., Rin-Tin-Tin) and categories (e.g., dogs) is fundamental in human thought. Two studies examined factors that influence when 2- to 3-year-old children and adults focus on individuals versus categories. Mother-child dyads were presented with pictures and toys (e.g., a picture of a boat or a toy boat). Conversations were coded for references to generic categories ("Dogs are furry"), ostensive labels ("This is a dog"), or specific individuals ("Lassie"). Overall, pictures generated more talk about categories; objects generated more talk about individuals. However, when objects could not be manipulated, speakers expressed relatively more category references. These results suggest that representations (in the form of pictures or objects-on-display) encourage young children and parents alike to think about categories.     

Ways to leave your lover: A conversational analysis of literature

A conversational analysis of lovers’ exiting dialogues in contemporary fiction revealed three metacommunicative strategies used to terminate a romantic relationship: (1) suspension of the conversational rule of “let it pass;”; (2) zero‐sum strategizing; and(3) consensus on dissensus (i.e., agreement to disagree). The study suggests that fiction is a viable source for conversational data. Particularly germane to research on disengagement strategies, fictive dialogue permits examination of the interactive work of communicators as they accomplish relationship termination.     

Mother-child mutually responsive orientation and conscience development: from toddler to early school age

We examined whether positive implications of mother-child mutually responsive orientation, demonstrated earlier at toddler and preschool age, extend longitudinally into early school age. The focus of the present study was on the long-term consequences of mutually responsive orientation for the development of conscience. Mutually responsive orientation encompassed shared cooperation and shared positive affect between mother and child. It was measured as a composite of those qualities observed in dyadic naturalistic interactions and reported by mothers, at toddler and preschool age. Children's conscience was assessed at early school age (N = 83) using multiple measures, including observations of moral behavior, alone and in the peer context, and moral cognition. Mother-child mutually responsive orientation at toddler and preschool ages predicted children's future conscience, even after controlling for the developmental continuity of conscience. Model-fitting analyses revealed that mutually responsive orientation at toddler age had a direct effect on future conscience, not mediated by such orientation at preschool age. The findings extend those of earlier work that revealed the importance of mother-child mutually responsive orientation for socialization, and they confirm the value of the relationship approach to social development, including long-term outcomes.     

From seeing and hearing to remembering: A conception of the instructional process

This article presents a conceptual schema of the instructional process which is intended to make a number of relevant findings from research more readily understood and applied by designers of instruction and instructional materials. It is based on severll summary sources of research-based findings and principles from the perception, memory, and concept formation literature. The basic conception is that learning is the product of an ongoing interactive process between learner and environment, and that instruction is a temporary and purposeful intervention in that process, the aim of which is the optimization of the learner-environment interaction.The schema is organized around relevant characteristics of the learner, i.e., four basic learner requirements (stimulation, order, strategy, and meaning). These basic learner requirements are subdivided into twenty limitations, particularities and qualities of the human information processing systems. The resulting picture of the human learner provides the basis for describing what the other part of the interaction — the instructional environment — should be like in order to provide an optimum fit between learner and environment. The schema subsumes and interrelates many of the research-based principles found in the literature and hence may make them more memorable and usable.1 Because of the generality of research findings referred to in this schema, few specific references will be given. However, the principles on which the schema is based are all properly credited in the sources noted earlier, e.g. Fleming and Levie (1978).This article is based on a paper presented at the IWAPP Festival 1980, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 1980.Note     

Human capital linkages to labour productivity: implications from Thai manufacturers

Human capital investment is a necessary condition for improving labour market outcomes in most countries. Empirical studies to investigate human capital and its linkages on the labour demand side are, however, relatively scarce due to limitations of firm-level data-sets. Using firm-level data from the Thai manufacturing sector, this paper aims to investigate the effects of skill and human capital on labour productivity. Costs and benefits of human capital improvement are compared indicating that hiring workers who have higher education as well as providing them with in-service training has a statistically and significantly positive impact on an increase in labour productivity. However, hiring workers who have higher education yields less benefit than costs which come from higher average wage expenditures. However, providing training should contribute more benefit than cost. Besides education and training measures, we also measure workers’ skill levels into cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills and find that skill in information technology is found to be the most important cognitive skill for increasing labour productivity among Thai manufacturers. Non-cognitive skills such as those in leadership, time-management and communication are also important and seem to have positive relationship to labour productivity among Thai manufacturers.     

Text remembering as a social process: the role of teacher-student interaction in the acquisition of structure strategy

Processes involved in learning from text were analysed as the result of social interactions in cultural settings, in which text remembering is defined in terms of mediated actions. Teacher–student dyads from two levels in adult education were presented with four expository texts and asked to study and remember them jointly. The analyses show different kind of actions both in study and recall of the texts. Results showed differences in the study and recall of the texts related to the educational level and phase. The general pattern of study and recall observed in more experienced students and in latter phases was characterised by a selective attention to the structural aspects of the texts. Teacher–student interaction could be promoting this form of study and recall of the texts. Teachers might have facilitated the acquisition and internalisation of new forms of remembering texts that are characteristic of school activities. These forms or remembering are social in a double sense: because of their origins, and because they are performed in interaction.     

Homi Jehangir Bhabha: remembering a scientist and celebrating his contributions to science, technology, and education in India

The focus of this paper is on the current developments in science education occurring in the posthumously built Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Mumbai and to offer context for various indigenous developments that are shaping science education in India today. In this paper, I describe the story of Homi Bhabha and his rich legacy of India’s atomic energy program. Specifically, I focus on the institutions built by Homi Bhabha, including the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and I examine how these institutions have enabled Indian scientists to contribute to the advancement of science knowledge in the world.     

Resistance to discrimination and subsequent resistance to extinction as a function of the sequence of partial S+ reward in differential conditioning

The effects of transitions from nonrewarded (N) to rewarded (R) trials (N-R transitions) on discriminative behavior in differential conditioning and subsequent resistance to extinction were investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1, groups given N-R transitions within S+ were more resistant to discrimination (ran fast in S?) and extinction than were groups given a partial reinforcement (PRF) schedule in S+ devoid of N-R transitions. Experiment 2 indicated that N-R transitions that occur when an N trial in S? is followed by an R trial in S+ are as effective in increasing resistance to discrimination, but not resistance to extinction, as are N-R transitions that occur within S+. The sequential effects obtained here were highly similar to those in conventional PRF and support the view that differential conditioning and PRF are highly interrelated phenomena. The results are discussed in terms of the extension of sequential theory to differential conditioning and the importance of internal reward-produced cues in discrimination learning.     

Strategic approaches to civic responsibility: The essential role of cocurricular events

Do cocurricular events on your campus reach their potential for developing students' sense of civic responsibility? The authors make four recommendations for making student learning the focus of these activities.     

运动员感知大型体育赛事服务质量指标的构建——以2016厦门国际马拉松赛为例

以PZB服务质量模型为修订基础,对参加2016厦门国际马拉松赛的运动员进行问卷调查,构建运动员感知服务质量指标体系.研究结果表明:大型体育赛事服务质量指标模型包括移情性、可靠性、有形性、保证性和响应性五个因素,其中以移情性影响最大,五个因素共可解释总变异量75.42%,内部一致性良好,具有收敛效度与区别效度.经复核效化验证,模型具有稳定性和有效性,指标体系适合运动员对大型赛事服务质量的评估.     

Your case will now be heard: sign language interpreters as problematic accommodations in legal interactions

This paper uses data from open-ended, videotaped interviews with 12 deaf people to examine their experiences negotiating access during interactions with legal authorities. In every case, these deaf persons preferred an accommodation that involved the use of an American Sign Language interpreter, and in every case, these accommodations were problematic. Three major themes emerged from the informants' narratives: difficulty obtaining the desired accommodation, dealing with a problematic accommodation, and enduring a partial accommodation. These findings suggest that accommodations involving sign language interpreters are not neutral and transparent and that they often have tangible effects on the experiences of and outcomes for deaf persons in the context of dealing with legal matters. Deaf people have very little control over the accommodation they receive and yet are held fully responsible for ensuring its efficacy. These results are discussed in relation to policies and procedures for ensuring that deaf persons have full access in their interactions with American legal institutions.     

Abusive parents' reports of child behavior problems: relationship to observed parent-child interactions

PURPOSE: We evaluated the hypothesis that abusive parents' reports may exaggerate rates of child behavior problems in a clinical sample. METHOD: The association between parental ratings of behavior problems and independent observations of child behaviors was examined in a sample of 205 clinic-referred families, 58 of which had a reported history of physical abuse. RESULTS: Relative to the comparison group, parents in the abuse group reported more externalizing problems in their children after controlling for parental psychopathology, and displayed more emotionally controlling and less supportive behavior during parent-child interactions. However, there was no association between abuse history and observed child behaviors during the interaction tasks. Abuse status significantly moderated the association between parent-reported externalizing behaviors and observed demanding behavior by the child; the association was significant among comparison families, but not in the abuse group families. CONCLUSIONS: Results indicate that abusive parents may over-report externalizing behavior problems in their children.     

Learning to control variables: Main effects and aptitude treatment interactions of two rule-governed approaches to instruction

The study investigated the relative effectiveness of two rule-governed approaches to teaching children how to control variables. In the elaborative-rules treatment students were given a mnemonic to stimulate recall of three elements of a well-designed experiment: causes, effects, and controls. In the organized-rules treatment students were given a well-organized set of six rules that provided detailed direction with respect to the same three elements of an experiment. Intact classes of grade-5 students (n = 283 students) were randomly assigned to two treatments and a control condition consisting of existing teacher practice; after four weeks control-group classes were reassigned to the rules treatments. Student achievement was observed prior to the implementation of conditions, after instruction, and three months later. Both rules treatment outperformed traditional instruction. The organized-rules method was slightly more effective overall, but the elaborative-rules approach had a slightly greater benefit for two groups which tend to be disadvantaged in science achievement: females and field-dependent students.     

A general approach for calculating the likelihood of dyadic interactions: Applications to sex preferences in rat pups and agonistic interactions in adults

We introduce a general approach for calculating the expected frequency of different types of dyadic interactions between animals and illustrate it with two applications. The first application determines whether there are sex contact biases between male and female Norway rat pups. We hypothesized that opposite-sex contact biases should be small, because it is likely that differences in contact based on the sex of animals would interfere with other biological functions, such as group temperature regulation. We found a small but significant bias of 3% in opposite-sex contacts. The second application reanalyzed J. B. Calhoun’s (1962) data on antagonistic encounters between rats for two factors (sex and birth location), each with two levels. The results of these two applications suggest that sex contact biases among pups are predictive of agonistic encounters among adults and that this approach has general application to the analysis of dyadic interactions among animals.     

Predicting the outcomes of physical events: two-year-olds fail to reveal knowledge of solidity and support

Two-year-olds' (N = 153) knowledge of solidity was tested in four search tasks adapted from infant looking-time experiments. In Experiment 1, 2-year-olds failed to search in the correct location for a falling ball after a hidden shelf that blocked its trajectory had been inserted in the apparatus. Experiment 2 extended this finding by showing that 2-year-olds failed to take into account the effects of either removing or inserting a shelf in their search for a toy dropped behind a screen. Experiment 3 examined sensitivity to the constraint provided by a solid barrier on horizontal motion. In all three experiments, 2-year-old children searched initially at the location where they saw the object during familiarization. Experiment 4, using multiple test trials but no familiarization to a pretest location, also showed that 2-year-olds failed to take the presence or absence of a barrier into account when planning where to search for a toy they had seen dropped behind a screen. In all of these studies, 2-year-olds showed no evidence of representing solidity and support constraints on the trajectories of falling objects. Experiments 1 and 3 also included 2 1/2-year-olds (N = 31), who succeeded on these search tasks. The implications of the poor performance of 2-year-olds, in the face of success by very young infants on looking-time measures of sensitivity to similar constraints on object motion, are discussed.     

Online professional development for environmental educators: strategies to foster critical thinking and social interactions

Abstract

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer opportunities for professional development of environmental educators globally, yet we lack understanding of participants? cognitive and social learning processes and of how instructors can enhance these processes. Based on the Community of Inquiry framework, we used a survey and coded participant discussion board and Facebook posts to examine the cognitive, social, and teaching presence in the Environmental Education: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Addressing Wicked Problems MOOC, offered by Cornell University. Rather than train educators in a specific curriculum, the goal of the MOOC is to expand educators? critical and transdisciplinary thinking about the field of environmental education and to enhance social interactions to support learning, educators, and knowledge co-creation. Results indicate that cognitive presence is higher on the discussion board whereas social presence is higher on Facebook. Over half of cognitive posts focused on exploration, a lower level of learning, whereas just less than a fifth reflected higher level integration, suggesting room for enhancing cognitive learning. Our results suggest strategies to encourage higher levels of thinking and more meaningful social interactions to foster learning, educator support, and co-creation of knowledge, thereby improving online professional development.