Cognitive Neuroscience Perspectives on Motivation and Learning: Revisiting Self‐Determination Theory

The Self‐Determination Theory of motivation (SDT) has significantly guided educational policy and research. It maintains that learning succeeds when brought about by autonomous rather than controlled motivation, and that extrinsic reward motivation cannot engender effective learning. We present an alternative approach, rooted in recent insights from the neurobiology of memory. In exploring environments to reap rewards, people pursue interrogative goals, accompanied by dopamine‐based hippocampus activation, leading to the formation of rich relational memories. In contrast, seeking to avoid punishment or loss involves imperative goals, with amygdala activation driving the perirhinal cortex to form disjoint item memories. We suggest that structuring learning and evaluation to diminish failure and increase repeated opportunities for successful performance, as in gamification, may engender effective learning incorporating broad perspectives and rich associations. This may occur even in the absence of intrinsic motivation to master a particular subject. Employing this insight in instructional design may benefit many educational frameworks.     

Early social communication development in infants with autism spectrum disorder

Social-communication differences are a robust and defining feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but identifying early points of divergence in infancy has been a challenge. The current study examines social communication in 9- to 12-month-old infants who develop ASD (N = 30; 23% female; 70% white) compared to typically developing (TD) infants (N = 94, 38% female; 88% white). Results demonstrate that infants later diagnosed with ASD were already exhibiting fewer social-communication skills using eye gaze, facial expression, gestures, and sounds at 9 months (effect size: 0.42–0.89). Moreover, three unique patterns of change across distinct social-communication skills were observed within the ASD group. This study documents that observable social-communication differences for infants with ASD are unfolding by 9 months, pointing to a critical window for targeted intervention.     

Lies and Truth: A Study of the Development of the Concept

This study examined the developmental questions of when children begin to use the terms lie and truth, how they understand them, and when their understanding approaches that of adults. 150 subjects in 5 groups (nursery schoolers, preschoolers, first graders, fifth graders, and adults) were presented a series of 8 short puppet plays that systematically varied the presence of absence of the 3 prototype elements: factuality of a statement, the speaker's belief in the factuality or falsity of the statement, and the speaker's intent to deceive the listeners. The interactions of age, factuality, and belief most fully accounted for the use of the terms lie and truth. Persons at different ages differentially weighed the prototypic elements. Responses of fifth graders were transitional between those of the younger children and adults. The results are interpreted as supporting the development of definitional prototypes for these moral concepts.     

Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Early Years Language Intervention

Research into the long‐term effects of language delay reflects an increasing concern that many children’s needs are not being met by current early years educational practice. This paper reports on a two‐part intervention designed to improve language skills within a nursery setting. In the first part of the intervention, a directly taught small group was found to be effective in improving language skills in children with language delay. However, in the second part of the intervention, creation of a “language rich” nursery environment was not fully implemented by nursery staff. A baseline assessment of all the nursery children revealed that alongside the high incidence of language delay in the nursery population there was also a high incidence of delay in non‐verbal reasoning skills as assessed by a single sub‐test from the British Ability Scales II Early Years. The findings raise the question: how can educational psychologists and speech and language therapists work together with teaching staff to create a “language rich” environment in the early years that will address the needs of all children?     

U.S. Virtual School Trial Period and Course Completion Policy Study

Abstract

Variation in policies virtual schools use to calculate course completion and retention rates impacts the comparability of these quality metrics. This study surveyed 159 U.S. virtual schools examining the variability in trial period and course completion policies—two policies that affect course completion rates. Of the 86 respondents, almost 70% had trial periods that varied from 1 day to 185 days. Course completion definitions varied from remaining in the course irrespective of the final grade to receiving an A– in the course. Such wide variation renders the completion and retention rate metrics useless. We recommend virtual schools adopt consistent measures for calculating student retention to allow meaningful comparisons among virtual schools and between virtual and brick-and-mortar schools.     

Just for Sport!? Sport,Gambling and Politics in Israel

By adopting a developmental approach, this essay describes and analyses the key processes that led to the establishment and institutionalization of sports gambling in Israel. The socio-historic examination of these processes (1951–1971) suggests that sports gambling in Israel was primarily designed to satisfy a convergence of political interests among governmental decision-makers, leaders of sports institutions and powerful private entrepreneurs.     

Not quite normal: Consequences of violating the assumption of normality in regression mixture models

Regression mixture models are a new approach for finding differential effects which have only recently begun to be used in applied research. This approach comes at the cost of the assumption that error terms are normally distributed within classes. The current study uses Monte Carlo simulations to explore the effects of relatively minor violations of this assumption, the use of an ordered polytomous outcome is then examined as an alternative which makes somewhat weaker assumptions, and finally both approaches are demonstrated with an applied example looking at differences in the effects of family management on the highly skewed outcome of drug use. Results show that violating the assumption of normal errors results in systematic bias in both latent class enumeration and parameter estimates. Additional classes which reflect violations of distributional assumptions are found. Under some conditions it is possible to come to conclusions that are consistent with the effects in the population, but when errors are skewed in both classes the results typically no longer reflect even the pattern of effects in the population. The polytomous regression model performs better under all scenarios examined and comes to reasonable results with the highly skewed outcome in the applied example. We recommend that careful evaluation of model sensitivity to distributional assumptions be the norm when conducting regression mixture models.