Infant Pathways to Externalizing Behavior: Evidence of Genotype × Environment Interaction

To further the understanding of the effects of early experiences, 9-month-old infants were observed during a frustration task. The analytical sample was composed of 348 linked triads of participants (adoptive parents, adopted child, and birth parent[s]) from a prospective adoption study. It was hypothesized that genetic risk for externalizing problems and affect dysregulation in the adoptive parents would independently and interactively predict a known precursor to externalizing problems: heightened infant attention to frustrating events. Results supported the moderation hypotheses involving adoptive mother affect dysregulation: Infants at genetic risk showed heightened attention to frustrating events only when the adoptive mother had higher levels of anxious and depressive symptoms. The Genotype × Environment interaction pattern held when substance use during pregnancy was considered.     

Multilevel Mediation With Small Samples: A Cautionary Note on the Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling Framework

Multilevel structural equation modeling (ML-SEM) for multilevel mediation is noted for its flexibility over a system of multilevel models (MLMs). Sample size requirements are an overlooked limitation of ML-SEM (100 clusters is recommended). We find that 89% of ML-SEM studies have fewer than 100 clusters and the median number is 44. Furthermore, 75% of ML-SEM studies implement 2–1–1 or 1–1–1 models, which can be equivalently fit with MLMs. MLMs theoretically have lower sample size requirements, although studies have yet to assess small sample performance for multilevel mediation. We conduct a simulation to address this pervasive problem. We find that MLMs have more desirable small sample performance and can be trustworthy with 10 clusters. Importantly, many studies lack the sample size and model complexity to necessitate ML-SEM. Although ML-SEM is undeniably more flexible and uniquely positioned for difficult problems, small samples often can be more effectively and simply addressed with MLMs.     

A linguistic dissociation in Williams syndrome: Good at gender agreement but poor at lexical retrieval

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rareneuro-developmental disorder characterised byspared language in the face of serious deficitsin nonlinguistic cognitive abilities. Weconducted a study on ten WS individuals inwhich gender agreement and gender assignmentwere assessed by means of two tasks: gendercategorisation and gender concord. Subjectsperformed gender categorisation to real nounswhose gender was regular or exceptional giventheir ending, and to invented nouns which werecomposed of nonword or word stems and realword-endings. The same material was used in thegender concord task in which subjects had tomatch the items with the appropriate form ofthe article and the adjective carrying genderagreement. In the gender categorisation of realwords, WS were lower than controls but bothgroups demonstrated a similar sensitivity togender-ending regularities. In the gendercategorisation of nonwords, the results showeda clear dissociation. The WS subjects producedmore ending-consistent responses than thecontrols. Contrary to the controls, WS reliedheavily on the gender clue provided by theending even when the gender of the word evokedby the stem of the invented word was opposed tothat evoked by the ending. Participants with WSwere not influenced by the specific word evokedby the stem of the invented word. In the secondtask (concord task), the WS subjects performed well although lower than thecontrols. We concluded that the WS people werenot impaired in gender agreement which relieson syntactic rules and/or on the extraction ofregularities but experienced difficulties inretrieving lexical instances.     

Velocity profiling using inertial sensors for freestyle swimming

The ability to unobtrusively measure velocity in the aquatic environment is a fundamental challenge for engineers and sports scientists and important in assessing the skill level. The aim of this research was to develop a method for velocity profiling in freestyle swimming utilising a purpose-built inertial sensor. Seventeen swimmers with different experience levels participated in this study performing a total of 159 laps in the velocity range from 0.79 to 2.04 m s^?1. Data were collected using a triaxial accelerometer and a tethered velocity meter. The collected acceleration data were filtered using a 0.5 Hz Hamming-windowed FIR filter to remove the gravitational acceleration before the lap velocity profiles were calculated. These calculated lap velocity profiles were then compared with the velocity profiles measured by the velocity meter using Bland–Altman analysis. The scattering follows a normal distribution with a mean skewness of 0.96 ± 0.47 and kurtosis of 2.93 ± 1.12. The results show that an inertial sensor alone can be used to determine a lap velocity profile from single point acceleration records.     

Collaborative feedback and reflection for professional growth: preparing first-year pre-service teachers for participation in the community of practice

Teaching has been described as an emerging community of practice. Within such professional communities, the processes of reflection and collaborative dialogue, or critical transformative dialogue, are central to the maintenance and improvement of professional practice for individuals, and the field. This paper reports on the challenges experienced by a group of first-year pre-service teachers engaging in a process of reflection and critique with peers, as they participated in a program focused on the development of core practices of teaching. These pre-service teachers' responses indicated their growing understanding of the importance of engaging in ongoing critical dialogue, as part of the “unnatural” aspects of teaching. The paper concludes with a reflection on the value of feedback from the earliest stages of professional learning.     

Maintenance of responding when reinforcement becomes delayed

In four experiments with rats, we examined the persistence of behavior when reinforcement was switched from immediate to delayed. In Experiment 1, lever pressing elicited by instrumental training with immediate reinforcement continued when a 20-sec delay of reinforcement was introduced (easy-to-hard condition), whereas when the delay condition was introduced from the start (hard-to-hard condition), responding remained low throughout. A similar result was obtained in Experiment 2, in which lever pressing was elicited by a classical conditioning (autoshaping) procedure. In Experiment 3, rats initially trained with delayed reinforcement continued to respond at a low rate when switched to immediate reinforcement (hard-to-easy condition). By measuring magazine entry (goal tracking) as well as lever pressing (sign tracking) in Experiment 4, we confirmed that such transfer effects at least partly involve the persistence of whatever type of behavior was initially dominant.     

Listening to our Students: Understanding the factors that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students' academic success

While the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education in Australia has doubled in recent years, the gap between their attainment and the attainment of other Australians has remained consistent. It is essential to elucidate the factors that promote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students' academic success, not in order to justify the exclusion of these students from tertiary education, but to refine and develop curriculum and management strategies which promote their academic success. This study focuses on Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander students' experiences in a diploma program offered in block mode, in order to better understand the ‘on-’ and ‘off-’ campus experiences which are related to academic success and the factors which challenge or enhance students' study. The research yields important findings related to students' motivations to enrol and their definitions of academic success; the challenges they experience in making the transition to tertiary study; the vulnerability of our students' determination to succeed; the effects of being in a program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students; and the ways in which minor challenges, if unresolved, can accumulate to interfere with students' study.     

Neurobehavioral and Psychosocial Issues in Klinefelter Syndrome

Klinefelter Syndrome (KS) is a relatively common (1/500 to 1/1,000) genetic syndrome caused by an extra X chromosome in males, leading to an XXY karyotype. In most cases, the physical and neurobehavioral characteristics of KS are relatively mild, and KS is not usually associated with moderate or severe mental retardation. However, KS is often associated with significant language‐based learning disabilities and executive dysfunction, making it a plausible genetic model for understanding the neurobiology of these areas of cognition that are so fundamental to learning in a classroom. Additionally, the psychosocial aspects of KS, which can have a significant impact on school performance and learning, have been explored only on an anecdotal level. We have conducted pilot studies in a small group of KS adolescents and adults to begin to identify the social, emotional, and adaptive behavior issues facing KS subjects and have identified several areas for further research. This includes characterization of mild maladaptive behaviors, as well as significant strengths in other areas. Further work is needed to determine how the social‐emotional and cognitive features of the disorder interact or change over the lifetime of subjects and how the learning disabilities respond to hormonal or cognitive‐based therapy.     

NCME 2007 Presidential Address: The Concordance Table: An Invitation to Misuse Test Scores

This article discusses a particular type of concordance table and the potential for test score misuse that may result from employing such a table. The concordance that is discussed is typically created between scores on different, nonequatable versions of a test that share the same or close to the same test title. These concordance tables often appear in the context of relating scores on computerized adaptive and paper‐and‐pencil versions of the same test. When such a table is presented in a complete point‐by‐point fashion, relating each reported score on the scale of the new version of the test to a reported score on the scale of the old version of the test, test score users will typically treat the table as if it represented an equating of scores between the two versions, and directly replace scores on the new version of the test by scores on the old version. This clearly represents a misuse of the test scores. Suggestions for avoiding this misuse of test scores from concordance tables are provided.     

Meaning of life as a protective factor of positive affect in acculturation: A resilience framework and a cross-cultural comparison

Although research has demonstrated a strong linkage between meaning of life and positive emotion, few studies have examined this association in the context of acculturation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive effects of meaning of life and acculturative stressor on positive affect in a sample of Chinese international students in Australia and Hong Kong, and to compare these effects between the two groups. Four hundred mainland Chinese postgraduate students at six universities in Hong Kong and 227 Chinese international students at the University of Melbourne in Australia completed a questionnaire that included measures of acculturative stressor, meaning of life, positive affect, and demographic information. The analyses revealed that (1) meaning of life had a strong positive contribution to predict positive affect in acculturation, and acculturative stress had a negative impact on positive affect within both samples; (2) social interaction had a significant negative predictive effect on positive affect in both samples, and academic work served as a significant negative predictor of positive affect in the Hong Kong sample; and (3) meaning of life was found to mediate the relationship between acculturative stress and positive affect in both samples. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.