La Transición: parent perspectives on transition for Latino youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities

The transition to adulthood can be a challenging time for adolescents with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Its complexity, however, may be magnified for families who have immigrated to the United States. This study examined the transition expectations and experiences of six first-generation, Latino parents and their transition-aged (14–22) children with intellectual disability, autism, and/or multiple disabilities. Through individual interviews held in Spanish or English, parents offered insights into (1) their visions of success for their child, (2) the distinct barriers they face as immigrant families, and (3) their suggestions for schools and adult agencies related to supporting strong transitions. Their portraits of desired outcomes were quite individualized and reflected high expectations. Factors identified as inhibiting successful transitions included persistent language barriers, the views of certain professionals and community members, and exclusion from typical school experiences. Parents encouraged schools to support family advocacy, foster greater student independence, expand adult programming, and reduce segregated educational placements. We present implications for educators on working with Latino families, as well as offer recommendations for future research.     

Domain general constraints on statistical learning

All theories of language development suggest that learning is constrained. However, theories differ on whether these constraints arise from language-specific processes or have domain-general origins such as the characteristics of human perception and information processing. The current experiments explored constraints on statistical learning of patterns, such as the phonotactic patterns of an infants' native language. Infants in these experiments were presented with a visual analog of a phonotactic learning task used by J. R. Saffran and E. D. Thiessen (2003). Saffran and Thiessen found that infants' phonotactic learning was constrained such that some patterns were learned more easily than other patterns. The current results indicate that infants' learning of visual patterns shows the same constraints as infants' learning of phonotactic patterns. This is consistent with theories suggesting that constraints arise from domain-general sources and, as such, should operate over many kinds of stimuli in addition to linguistic stimuli.     

Kindergarten teachers adjust their teaching practices in accordance with children’s academic pre‐skills

This study examined the extent to which kindergarten children’s academic pre‐skills are associated with their teachers’ subsequent teaching practices. The pre‐skills in reading and math of 1268 children (655 boys, 613 girls) were measured in kindergarten in the fall. A pair of trained observers used the Classroom Assessment Scoring System instrument to observe 49 kindergarten teachers on their emotional support, classroom organisation and instructional support in kindergarten in the spring. The results of the multilevel modelling showed that low levels of academic pre‐skills in kindergarten classrooms in the fall predicted high classroom quality in the classrooms later on. The results suggest that the overall level of children’s academic pre‐skills in the classroom plays an important role in the ways in which teachers adapt their instructional practices to the needs of a particular classroom.     

On the influence of the architecture of poly(ethylene glycol)-based thermoresponsive polymers on cell adhesion

Thermoresponsive polymer surface coatings are a promising tool for cell culture applications. They allow for a mild way of cell detachment that preserves the activity of membrane proteins—a prerequisite for reliable cell analysis. To enlarge the application range of these coatings to cells with different adhesion properties, we synthesized various novel poly(ethylene glycol)-based thermoresponsive polymers and describe how (i) their chemical structure and (ii) their surface density affect their efficiency. In order to quantify the influence of both factors, the time for cell spreading and rounding efficiency were observed. As a result, efficiency of cell rounding, which is closely correlated to cell detachment, is less affected by both factors than the time needed for cell spreading. This time can effectively be adjusted by the molecular architecture which includes the length of the polymer backbone and the side chains. Based on this work, recommendations are given for future optimization of functionality of thermoresponsive polymer coatings for cell culture applications.     

Task‐focused behaviour and literacy development: a reciprocal relationship

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to examine the effect of task‐focused behaviour on reading fluency, spelling and comprehension; and (b) to examine the role of the different literacy skills in subsequent task‐focused behaviour. Two hundred and seven Finnish‐speaking children were followed from preschool until their fourth year at school and were tested for reading fluency, spelling and reading comprehension. The teachers also rated the children's task‐focused behaviour. The results showed that task‐focused behaviour was a significant predictor of later reading comprehension and spelling skills. However, all three literacy skills predicted subsequent task‐focused behaviour.     

Exploiting Hierarchy in Text Categorization

With the recent dramatic increase in electronic access to documents, text categorization—the task of assigning topics to a given document—has moved to the center of the information sciences and knowledge management. This article uses the structure that is present in the semantic space of topics in order to improve performance in text categorization: according to their meaning, topics can be grouped together into meta-topics, e.g., gold, silver, and copper are all metals. The proposed architecture matches the hierarchical structure of the topic space, as opposed to a flat model that ignores the structure. It accommodates both single and multiple topic assignments for each document. Its probabilistic interpretation allows its predictions to be combined in a principled way with information from other sources. The first level of the architecture predicts the probabilities of the meta-topic groups. This allows the individual models for each topic on the second level to focus on finer discriminations within the group. Evaluating the performance of a two-level implementation on the Reuters-22173 testbed of newswire articles shows the most significant improvement for rare classes.