Dimensionality of Modernity in Singapore Among Chinese Adolescents

The present study examined the relationships between aspects of individual modernity among Chinese adolescents in Singapore aged fifteen years (N = 250, M = 122, F = 128). The Aspects chosen are those seen by Inkeles (1969), changes that occur in a country's modernization as being required in order to cope with the various need for achievement, efficient time-management, future-planning and autonomous decision-making. While there is strong interdependence among achievement motivation, future-planning and time-management of both genders, autonomy emerges as a separate dimension.     

Mode of acquisition as a factor in deaf children's reading comprehension

This article examines the role of mode of acquisition (MoA) of word meanings in reading comprehension: children acquire word meanings using perceptual information (e.g., hearing, seeing, or smelling the referent) and/or linguistic information (e.g., verbal explanations). A total of 72 deaf and 99 hearing children between 7 and 15 years of age performed a self-paced reading task. Comprehension scores increased with age in both groups, but reading speed increased over age only for the hearing participants. For both groups, reading times on linguistically acquired words were longer than on perceptually acquired words. Although deaf children scored lower than hearing children in both conditions, comprehension scores for both groups were lower on linguistic items than on perceptual items. Thus, MoA influences reading comprehension, but the deaf show difficulty on both the perceptual and the linguistic items.     

The Impact of Parental Involvement on the Quality of Day‐care Centres

The children, parents and professional staff of four intercultural day‐care centres for disadvantaged families in France were filmed in the course of their interactions over a 6‐month period. These interactions were analysed according to three different methods used in cognitive psychology: task analysis, analysis of the symbols used for communication and analysis of the structures of the pedagogical assistance provided. The results show that, for a given child, the presence of other parents participating in the day‐care centre alongside the professional staff helps to create an environment rich in cognitive interactions. This environment enhances the child's cognitive development by providing diversity and disequilibrium, both of which are useful and necessary conditions for cognitive operation. This in turn will affect the relation between the degree of disadvantage and the degree of cognitive interaction. These results suggest that cognitive effects of socially disadvantaged milieu may be attenuated by encouraging children and parents to increase their participation in the day‐care centres.     

Dutch elementary school children??s attribution of meaning to written pseudowords

Grade two through six elementary school Dutch children were asked to perform a lexical decision task including 90 pseudowords constructed by changing one or two letters in a Dutch word. Subsequently, the children were asked about the meaning of pseudowords they had not crossed out and that they, apparently, had considered to be words. Multiple regression analyses on the lexical decision task showed that the older children were more hindered by the morphemic structure of a pseudoword than by its orthographic neighbors. The younger children, in contrast, were less hindered by the morphemic structure of a pseudoword and more hindered by its orthographic neighbors. Word length was a (small) predictor only for grade 6. Moreover, the answers of the children reflected that in their construction of meanings for the pseudowords they were hindered both by the morphemic structure and by the orthographic neighbors of the pseudowords.     

An Evaluation of the Informedia Digital Video Library System at the Open University

The past decade has seen the evolution of physical educational resource collections into digital libraries, a process which has opened up a whole new range of uses beyond the traditional ones of reference and individual study in a fixed location. It is becoming more common for institutions of learning to regard their teaching and learning resource materials as important assets that can be shared, incorporated into new courses and accessed remotely by students. With the inclusion of multiple media (text, video and audio), the potential of digital libraries is further enhanced. Early adopters of this technology are information specialists and authors of learning materials, and in some cases, students. Evaluations of digital libraries that are currently underway at various institutions are aiming to determine whether the technology is usable and cost‐effective. We also see a focus on the kinds of learning activities that can be supported with digital resources and the best ways of organising and describing them. The evaluation described in this paper is primarily concerned with issues of usability and identifying potential areas of use. A planned second phase of the project will delve more deeply into costs and benefits for users in specific contexts of use.     

The effect of ball impact location on racket and forearm joint angle changes for one-handed tennis backhand groundstrokes

Recreational tennis players tend to have higher incidence of tennis elbow, and this has been hypothesised to be related to one-handed backhand technique and off-centre ball impacts on the racket face. This study aimed to investigate for a range of participants the effect of off-longitudinal axis and off-lateral axis ball–racket impact locations on racket and forearm joint angle changes immediately following impact in one-handed tennis backhand groundstrokes. Three-dimensional racket and wrist angular kinematic data were recorded for 14 university tennis players each performing 30 “flat” one-handed backhand groundstrokes. Off-longitudinal axis ball–racket impact locations explained over 70% of the variation in racket rotation about the longitudinal axis and wrist flexion/extension angles during the 30 ms immediately following impact. Off-lateral axis ball–racket impact locations had a less clear cut influence on racket and forearm rotations. Specifically off-longitudinal impacts below the longitudinal axis forced the wrist into flexion for all participants with there being between 11° and 32° of forced wrist flexion for an off-longitudinal axis impact that was 1 ball diameter away from the midline. This study has confirmed that off-longitudinal impacts below the longitudinal axis contribute to forced wrist flexion and eccentric stretch of the wrist extensors and there can be large differences in the amount of forced wrist flexion from individual to individual and between strokes with different impact locations.     

Relationship between nonwestern teacher attitudes toward pupils and their authoritarianism

This study investigated the relationship of authoritarianism and teachers' attitude toward their pupils of graduate students in the Middle East. It was found that those individuals scoring high on authoritarianism had less positive attitudes toward pupils. Further, Moslems were more authoritarian and had less positive attitudes toward pupils than Christians. The sex of the respondent was not related to his or her attitude.     

Depth of reading vocabulary in hearing and hearing-impaired children

The main point of our study was to examine the vocabulary knowledge of pupils in grades 3–6, and in particular the relative reading vocabulary disadvantage of hearing-impaired pupils. The achievements of 394 pupils with normal hearing and 106 pupils with a hearing impairment were examined on two vocabulary assessment tasks: a lexical decision task and a use decision task. The target words in both tasks represent the vocabulary children should have at the end of primary school. The results showed that most hearing pupils reached this norm, whereas most hearing-impaired pupils did not. In addition, results showed that hearing-impaired pupils not only knew fewer words, but that they also knew them less well. This lack of deeper knowledge remained even when matching hearing and hearing-impaired children on minimal word knowledge. Additionally, comparison of the two tasks demonstrated the efficacy of the lexical decision task as a measure of lexical semantic knowledge.     

Identifying knowledge practices in an infodemic era: Rediscovering the professional identities of LIS professionals in an infodiverse environment

The professional identity of librarians is established with regard to the current understanding of their knowledge practices. The global phenomenon of false and untrustworthy information circulating on social media platforms paints a new issue that librarians must conquer. Messages, content, news, and information on the web make it challenging for librarians to educate users as to where the sources come from and the need to evaluate for credibility and trustworthiness. During the pandemic, and with a surge of information disorders on social media, the World Health Organization recommended building resilience to misinform-ation and engaging and empowering communities to take positive action. This research seeks to explore the relationship between professional identities and the participation of librarians in an infodiverse environment, specifically by exploring how Filipino librarians applied aspects of their knowledge practices to the evaluation of social media health information during the pandemic.