The Family Environment of “Quick-Witted” Persons: Birth Order,Family Communication Patterns,and Creative Facility

“Creative facility” refers to the ease, rapidity, or fluency with which people are able to formulate and produce novel, appropriate messages. Previous research indicates that people differ in this regard and that the phenomenon is linked to various personality and cognitive-style variables. This study aims to investigate whether aspects of family structure (i.e., birth order) and family processes (i.e., family communication patterns) are related to creative facility. Results indicated a significant interaction between birth order and family conversation orientation such that, for first-borns, higher levels of conversation orientation were associated with slower message production. No effects were observed for family conformity orientation. Among the implications of the findings is the need to assess birth order in studies of family communication patterns.     

Extinction of a taste aversion in the absence of the consummatory response

Rats were initially conditioned to avoid saccharin presented orally and were then given 40 intravenous injections of saccharin or saline. Those injected with saccharin showed more rapid extinction of the aversion to saccharin presented orally. Results are related to studies of shock avoidance using curarized subjects.     

The prediction of academic and clinical performance in medical school

Prior studies have suggested the importance of distinguishing between performance in the earlier and later years of medical education. Factor analysis of grades by year and faculty ratings of clinical and general medical competence for 661 medical students identified two uncorrelated factors clearly reflecting this distinction. The clinical performance factor, accounting for 48% of the communality of the matrix, was more or less unpredictable from aptitude and premedical academic achievement indices; it was marginally predictable from scales on the Adjective Check List. The academic performance factor, accounting for 31% of the variance among criteria, was forecast with acceptable accuracy (cross-validated R=0.43) by equations based on the Medical College Admission Test and premedical grade point average. Future study should stress the clinical performance factor; this criterion appears to be more important than academic attainment, and it is also less accurately predicted by current measures.     

An Examination of a Small‐Group Decoding Intervention for Struggling Readers: Comparing Accuracy and Automaticity Criteria

In this study, we compared methods to improve the decoding and reading fluency of struggling readers. Second‐grade poor readers were randomly assigned to one of the two practice conditions within a repeated reading intervention. Both interventions were in small groups, were 20–28 min long, took place 2–4 days per week, and consisted of phonemic awareness training, letter sound practice, and practice in word families. Students in the accuracy condition (n= 27) practiced each page until they reached 98 percent accuracy while students in the accuracy + automaticity condition (n= 29) practiced until they reached rate (30–90 cwpm) and accuracy criteria. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed no differences between practice conditions in decoding accuracy, reading comprehension, and grade‐level text reading fluency. Significant differences favoring the accuracy + automaticity group were found in measures of decoding automaticity.     

Performance Indicators in Indonesian Universities: The Perception of Academics

This study aimed to explore the perceptions of Indonesian academics towards the implementation of Performance Indicators (PIs) on teaching and research. The study was a case study using semi‐structured interviews, conducted with 30 academics in three state universities in Indonesia. The results of the study revealed academics believed that outcome indicators used in PIs for control mechanisms have neglected the humane side of the teaching and learning process, and scientific research. Academics also perceived that PIs are valuable for improving daunting workplace conditions and poor institutional culture if they are used for the improvement of internal management. The findings of this study, if seriously considered, may provide information for policy makers to revisit and refine the existing indicators used to measure academics’ teaching and research performance. This can be implemented by taking into account the collegial nature, organised anarchy, of a bottom‐up approach that emphasises the emancipation of academics to determine what elements of their teaching and research should be covered and be measured. This research argues that indicators used for PIs can be a blend of quantitative and qualitative measures, which compensate for each other.