The Swedish WAIS-R factor structure and cognitive profiles for adults with dyslexia

Factor analysis of the Swedish version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) on a group of 88 adult individuals with dyslexia showed a three-factor structure with a verbal comprehension (VC) factor, a perceptual organization (PO) factor, and a freedom from distractibility (FD) factor. The results of this factor analysis support earlier findings from factor analyses of adults in the original U.S. normative sample and in different clinical groups. The profile of scores for the sample of individuals with dyslexia showed the expected pattern, with PO highest and FD lowest. The predicted pattern was also observed using Bannatyne's recategorization of WAIS-R subtests. As has been true for other typical and exceptional samples, women scored significantly higher than men on the Digit Symbol subtest. Related to this gender difference, Digit Symbol scores proved to be sensitive to problems associated with dyslexia only for men with dyslexia. Also, education level was shown to be related to verbal (V)-performance (P) IQ discrepancy, with larger P > V differences observed for participants with fewer years of formal schooling. Regardless of these gender and education differences, the characteristic factor score and Bannatyne patterns were identified for both men and women and for three different subsamples categorized by educational level.     

The similarity of siblings' attachments to their mother

Do siblings develop similar attachment relationships with their mother? Attachment theory suggests that brothers and sisters growing up in the same family are likely to relate in similar ways to their parents, at least when parental attachment representations and interactive styles remain stable across time. In the current study, sibling attachment data from three research groups (from Pennsylvania State University, Leiden University, and the University of Western Ontario) have been pooled to assemble a sufficiently large sample of observations (N = 138 sibling pairs) for a detailed comparison of sibling attachment relationships. Spacing between the births, differences in maternal sensitivity, and gender of siblings were examined as possible sources of concordance of nonconcordance. Attachment security (including disorganized attachment) of each sibling was assessed with the Strange Situation procedure between 12 and 14 months after birth. Maternal sensitivity was observed with the same rating scale in a laboratory play session in one of the studies and in home observations in the others. Sibling relationships were found to be significantly concordant when classified as secure/nonsecure (62% concordance, p < .01, 1-tailed, intraclass correlation = .23) but not when further subcategorized. Maternal insensitivity to both siblings (shared environment) was associated with concordance of sibling nonsecurity. Siblings of the same gender were more likely to form concordant relationships with their mother (68%; p < .01, 1-tailed, intraclass correlation = .37) than those of opposite gender. Same-sex sibling concordance was comparable to the concordance found for monozygotic twins in earlier studies. Genetic factors may, therefore, play a relatively small role in the development of attachment.     

Children's Difficulties in Text Comprehension: Assessing Causal Issues

In this article we consider the difficulties of children who have a specific reading comprehension problem. Our earlier work has shown that good and poor comprehenders differ, in particular, in their ability to make inferences, integrate information in text, understand story structure, and monitor their understanding. We outline some studies that illustrate the poor comprehenders' problems and present two studies that use a comprehension-age match design to explore the direction of causality between comprehension skill and other abilities. We also present data from the first and second stages of a longitudinal study, when the children were 7 to 8 and 8 to 9 years old. Multiple regression analyses show that a number of factors predict significant variance in comprehension skill even after "general ability" factors such as IQ and vocabulary have been taken into account. These findings suggest that, not only can children have comprehension problems in the absence of word recognition problems, but that distinctly different skills predict variance in word recognition and variance in comprehension. The data support the view that single-word reading skills and the ability to build integrated text representations make independent contributions to overall reading ability. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of children's problems in text comprehension, for deaf readers, and for remediation.     

日美课程改革的比较分析——美国学者谈日本教育改革

二战后受美国的影响,日本现行的课程模式是在美国初、中等教育课程结构的基础之上建立起来的。但是,日本课程结构的核心精华却有着丰富悠久的历史。它具有强烈的美学意识和热爱大自然的传统观念,并受到诸如日本神道教、佛教、孔子之道等各种不同道教思想的影响。如今人们访问日本学校不难发现这些特点随处可见。只有通过对这些方面的了解,人们才有可能较详尽地理解日本的教育改革。目前在任何一个国家都明显地表现出经济、社会、文化和政治对课程结构所产生的影响。在日本由于课程编制是由中央集权直接控制的,因而更加容易看到这些影响。     

Lipschitz-Nikolskii Constants of the Baskakov Operators

In this paper,we obtain Lipschitz-Nikolskii constants for the Baskakov operators V_n(f,x)。     

天灾对发展中国家的影响

比较一下一个发达国家(罗马尼亚)与一个发展中国家(尼加拉瓜)对天灾的社会反应可以看出一些明显差别,使人感到后者容易遭受天灾袭击。发展中国家的人民非常贫困,促使他们有甘冒风险的倾向,容易听天由命,因此他们继续居住在危险地区。     

隐藏的地震

大地震不仅可以发生在切割地表的断层上，而且也发生在褶皱地体之下的“盲”断层上。     

Gravity-oriented microfluidic device for uniform and massive cell spheroid formation

We propose a simple method for forming massive and uniform three-dimensional (3-D) cell spheroids in a multi-level structured microfluidic device by gravitational force. The concept of orienting the device vertically has allowed spheroid formation, long-term perfusion, and retrieval of the cultured spheroids by user-friendly standard pipetting. We have successfully formed, perfused, and retrieved uniform, size-controllable, well-conditioned spheroids of human embryonic kidney 293 cells (HEK 293) in the gravity-oriented microfluidic device. We expect the proposed method will be a useful tool to study in-vitro 3-D cell models for the proliferation, differentiation, and metabolism of embryoid bodies or tumours.