Young Children's Long-Term Retention of a Pediatric Examination

Children at ages 3, 5, and 7 ( N = 187) provided reports of their physical examinations immediately following the checkup and after a delay of either 1, 3, or 6 weeks, or only after 3 weeks. The protocol used for all interviews consisted of initial general prompts, followed by increasingly specific questions as needed. Recall of standard features of the examinations was scored, along with responses to questions concerning acts that did not occur. Retention of the event was extensive and accurate. Although clear age effects were observed in recall, the delay interval did not strongly affect performance over the 6-week period. The amount of forgetting was significant at ages 3 and 5, but not at age 7. With increasing age, a greater percentage of the features was spontaneously recalled. When presented with incongruous questions, all children evidenced rates of correct denials that exceeded chance and few errors of commission. The initial interview did not affect delayed recall. Implications for children's testimony are discussed.     

Student knowledgeability,student sex,class size,and class level: Their interactions and influences on student ratings of instruction

Student knowledgeability, class size, and class level were found to significantly influence students' ratings of instruction. In general, the more knowledgeable the student in an area, the higher his ratings of courses and instructors in that area. Also, large courses and advanced courses were most highly rated by students. The effect of student sex on student ratings of instruction varied as a function of the particular aspect of instruction being evaluated. Significant interactions among the four main effects were also found across the judgmental dimensions students utilized in evaluating instruction, as assessed by factor analysis. Student knowledgeability and class size were found to be the main predictors of student ratings on these dimensions.     

Prediction of School Outcomes Based on Early Language Production and Socioeconomic Factors

Early differences in family SES, child language production, and IQ were related to outcomes in early elementary school in the present prospective, 10-year longitudinal study. In a prior study of family interactional variables associated with language learning, major differences in parenting (i.e., time, attention, and talking) were found to be associated with differences in child productive vocabulary between 7 to 36 months of age, and child IQ, favoring higher-SES parents. Lower-SES children were exposed less often than higher-SES children to diverse vocabulary through their parents' attention and talking, and they were prohibited from talking more often. In the current study, 32 children involved in the earlier study were repeatedly assessed between 5 to 10 years of age, while in kindergarten through third grade. Results indicated that SES-related differences in child language prior to school were predictive of subsequent verbal ability, receptive and spoken language, and academic achievement assesed on standardized tests in kindergarten through grade 3. However, none of the predictor variables were related to direct measures of elementary schooling. When combined with a composite SES indicator, early child language production significantly increased the variance accounted for in the prediction of elementary language and academic competencies in each subsequent year in elementary school. Implications are discussed in terms of the stability of performance on language and academic performance measures of children who entered school with different early language learning experiences, and the need to consider early home- and school-based intervention designed to prevent or ameliorate these trends.     

妈妈的作家梦

“总有一天,妈妈会成为一名作家的。”她告诉我们。要是我没有打开那个旧松木箱子就好了,因为在我找到的那层褥子下面放着那个熟悉的盒子,上面用铅笔写着“采用信”。如今,上面残存的妈妈平素最喜欢佩戴的玫瑰的淡淡芳香扑面而来,我再次凝视着妈妈的作品盒。此刻,如烟的往事潮水般汹涌而来, 无尽的悲伤像浓雾一样弥漫了我的整个身心。她那成为一名作家的美好梦想最终也没能成为现实。我最初知道妈妈非常想成为一名作家     

Teleware: Instrumentation for Tele-learning

The domain of Tele-Learning may be a new one, but it has many roots. In essence, it can be defined as telematics applied for learning-related purposes. Examples of tele-learning may be defined by category relating to purpose. Thus five purposes of using 'Teleware' may be the publication and dissemination of information, such as through Web sites; structured communications through e-mail; collaboration through groupware; information and resource handling through search engines; and specific applications for course delivery and support. An alternative perspective relates to aspects of the user-interface and human- computer interactions, ranging from the software engineering world, to the importance of a cognitive and social fit in terms of potential usability and dissemination. In practice however, evaluating teleware to ensure tele-learning may take place requires an appropriate model. This paper outlines the 3-G model, which hypothesises that an individual's likelihood of using a telematics application in teaching or learning can be expressed as a vector sum of three vectors–'gewin' or perceived pay-off, 'gemak' or level of difficulty or discomfort in making use of the application, and 'genot' or subjective personal interest in and response to the application. This model has the potential to provide a helpful interpretative framework in a number of investigations into the complex relationship between telematics materials and facilities, and the learning they may generate. It can also be used to assess the potential of new developments, such as Cyberlibraries, lesson-support environments, and course- support environments, that are emerging. © 1999 IFIP, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers     

Differential ability scales: Profiles of learning-disabled subtypes

The purpose of this study was to determine whether distinct subgroups of children with learning disabilities could be identified using a single, recently developed instrument—the Differential Ability Scales (DAS). Ward's method of cluster analysis was used to group 83 school-verified children with learning disabilities from the standardization sample. The following six subgroups were identified: (a) generalized, (b) high functioning, (c) normal, (d) underachievement, (e) borderline, and (f) dyseidetic. Not all subgroups displayed the expected discrepancy between intelligence and achievement associated with the current definitions of I.D. In subsequent discriminant analyses, both achievement and diagnostic subtests were necessary for accuracy in classification. This study provided evidence of the DAS's ability to diagnose the learning disabled differentially and provided distinct profiles for LD subgroups. Administration of the diagnostic subtests along with achievement subtests can provide the clinician with valuable diagnostic information for LD.     

Can short-form WISC-R IQ tests identify children with high full scale IQ?

Forty-seven talented fourth graders were assessed on different WISC-R short-form combinations in order to determine which short-form was the most effective predictor of high Full Scale WISC-R IQ. The short-form combinations of Similarities + Object Assembly + Vocabulary subtests (SI-OA-VO) or Similarities + Object Assembly subtests (SI-OA) were more effective in this regard than eight other WISC-R short-form combinations, the Slosson Intelligence Test, and school grades in Math, Language, and Reading combined. The findings are of relevance to gifted assessment.     

A comparison of the peabody individual achievement test,the metropolitan achievement test,and the otis-lennon mental ability test

In order to clarify the concurrent validity of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) and the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT), product-moment correlations were computed for all subscores and total scores for 26 normal-range public school third-grade girls and boys. The reading comprehension subtests correlated.81, spelling.88, and PIAT Mathematics with MAT Total Math.64. Correlations were computed for the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test and the PIAT General Information subtest as.77, and the Otis-Lennon and the PIAT Total Test scores as.79. Concurrent validity of the PIAT with both tests is tentatively considered adequate except in the area of mathematics, in which the PIAT, relative to the MAT, appears to be reflecting ability to handle math concepts (.68) more accurately than math computation (.41) or math problem solving (.56). Correlations with IQ partialed out suggest the PIAT Total Test, and PIAT and MAT reading and spelling measures, are relatively uninfluenced by IQ variations, whereas with IQ held constant, the weak positive correlations between the PIAT and MAT math subtests became essentially random relationships.