Alexia and the neural basis of reading

Three main types of acquired reading disturbance (alexia) have been described and accepted by clinicians. Each features a group of distinct findings and each is found following damage to a separate location within the language dominant hemisphere of the brain. Many different names have been applied to these entities, but posterior alexia, central alexia, and anterior alexia appear to represent both the clinical differentiations and the basic anatomical loci. A fourth type of acquired alexia, called deep dyslexia, has recently been reported, again with separate clinical findings and a different anatomical locus postulated. By comparison of the clinical features of the four alexias with features of alexia in Oriental languages and the reading competency of the nondominant hemisphere, a hypothetical neural basis for the act of reading can be outlined. Presented at the 33rd Annual Conference of The Orton Dyslexia Society, San Diego, California, November 1983.     

The demand for higher education in The Netherlands, 1950–1999

This paper investigates the role of economic factors in the university enrollment decision for the post-war period in The Netherlands. We include those factors standing at the heart of the idea that education is an investment. The econometric results suggest that students are not responsive to tuition fees, but financial support (the sum of loans and grants), the college premium on future labor market earnings, and the alternative wage are important in the enrollment decision.     

Semantic Innovation: Arithmetical and Algebraic Metaphors Within Narratives of Learning

This paper examines a theoretical perspective on the ways in which children progress in learning mathematics. It suggests that there is a difficulty in associating teaching discourses with the mathematics they locate. This can result in an incommensurability between alternative perspectives being offered. The paper resists attempts to privilege any particular account but rather demands an analysis of these discourses and their presuppositions. In developing these themes the paper invokes Ricoeur's analysis of time and narrative as an analytical approach to treating notions such as transition, development and progression in mathematical learning. His notion of semantic innovation is introduced. This embraces both the introduction of a new metaphor into a sentence or the creation of a new narrative which reorganises events into a new plot. The notion is utilised in arguing that the shift in the student's mathematical development from arithmetic to first order linear equations with unknowns reconfigures the contextual parameters governing the understanding of these mathematical forms. It is also utilised in showing how alternative approaches to accounting for such transitions suit different and perhaps conflicting outcomes. For example, demonstrating awareness of generality or performing well in a diagnostic test featuring the solution of linear equations.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Spacing effects and their implications for theory and practice

There is considerable evidence, gathered in a variety of settings and across many different types of materials and procedures, that spaced repetitions—regardless of whether they are in the form of additional study opportunities or successful tests—are a highly effective means of promoting learning. Research on spacing effects is reviewed and its theoretical and educational implications are examined. It is concluded that spacing effects can best be understood in terms of the accessibility hypothesis, and that spaced repetitions have considerable potential for improving classroom learning.     

Interference and Inhibition in Cognition and Behavior: Comments on the Commentaries

In our target article (Dempster & Corkill, 1999a) we presented an overview of recent work on interference and inhibition in cognition and behavior. The commentators provided highly informative feedback about a range of implications of this new body of work for educational psychology, including learning disabilities. In our response to the commentators, we reply to two relatively broad topics they touch on: consciousness and the functionalist tradition of American psychology. We also remark on two relatively narrow issues raised by the commentators: what constitutes irrelevant information and perseveration in the missing addend task.     

Longitudinal course of rapid naming in disabled and nondisabled readers

The Rapid Automatized Naming Test (Denckla and Rudel 1974) was studied cross-sectionally in an sample of kindergartners (n=342) at-risk for reading disability (Study 1), and longitudinally in an n=160 epidemiological normal sample of children tested in first, third, fifth, and eighth grades (Study 2). Study 1 showed faster absolute naming speeds for those with near perfect untimed alphabet recitation, but the stronger and more orderly relation (at r=.31, p<.0001) was between three levels of alphabet recitation accuracy and the relative number/letter naming speed advantage (ratio of mean number/letter naming speed minus mean color/object naming speed over mean color/object naming speed). In Study 2, the number/letter advantage was already strongly present by first grade, and did not increase significantly thereafter, but absolute naming times improved steadily across grades in an exponential decay function. In this sample, the relative number/letter advantage was not related to reading level. However, the absolute color/object naming speed was strongly related to reading level and vocabulary across grades. Norms for the Rapid Automatized Naming Test based on the epidemiological normal sample tested in Grades 1, 3, 5, and 8 are presented in the appendix.     

Grade Level and Gender Differences in the Writing Self-Beliefs of Middle School Students

The objectives of this study were to determine whether middle school students' writing self-efficacy beliefs make an independent contribution to the prediction of their writing competence and to explore grade level and gender differences in writing self-beliefs (N = 742). Writing self-efficacy was the only motivation construct to predict writing competence in a model that included writing self-concept, writing apprehension, perceived value of writing, self-efficacy for self-regulation, previous writing achievement, gender, and grade level. Girls were more competent writers than were boys, but there were no gender differences in writing self-efficacy beliefs. However, when students were asked whether they were better writers than their peers, girls expressed that they were better writers than were other boys or girls in their class or in their school to a greater degree than did the boys. These findings suggest that girls and boys may use a different metric when responding to traditional self-efficacy scales. Students in Grade 6 reported higher self-efficacy and found writing more valuable than did their older peers, and students in Grade 7 reported lower writing self-beliefs than did students in Grades 6 or 8.