Exploring the Space Between Good and Poor Spelling: Orthographic Quality and Reading Speed

ABSTRACT

Variations in the accuracy and stability of a word’s spelling can be used to gauge the quality of its underlying orthographic representation. The Lexical Quality Hypothesis (LQH) contends that words with higher quality cognitive representations should be accessed more efficiently than those with lower quality representations. If this is the case, deviations in spelling accuracy and stability should be reflected in differences in reading times. Here, 90 teenage participants read 30 words; reading times were recorded. After a 2-week delay, the students spelled these same words 3 times each to gain a measure of orthographic quality. In line with the LQH, faster reading speeds were observed for words with higher spelling accuracy and stability, even for words that were not always spelled perfectly. To our knowledge, our findings provide the first empirical support for the notion that orthographic quality exists along a continuum, both within and across individuals.     

Science and thinking: The write connection

The effective use of writing in science instruction may open the way for students to grow in their ability to exercise higher order thinking skills (Bland & Koppel, 1988). Scinto (1986) makes a compelling case for writing as a means of stimulating thinking when he states: The production of written text demands more elaborate strategies of preplanning. Written language demands the conscious organization of ensembles of propositions to achieve its end. The need to manipulate linguistic means in such a conscious and deliberate fashion entails a level of linguistic self-reflection not called forth in oral discourse (p. 101).     

A social learning explanation of moral development

This paper presents a social learning explanation of moral development. From a social learning perspective, children abstract an array of generative rules which guide moral judgments and behaviors. Unfortunately, this social learning position has been misunderstood. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to clarify these misunderstandings and to discuss the educational implications of a social learning approach to moral development.     

Exposure to Parental Depression in Adolescence and Risk for Metabolic Syndrome in Adulthood

The psychosocial consequences of living with a depressed parent have been well characterized. Less well known, however, is how this exposure is predictive of later physical health problems. The present study evaluated how parental depression across youths’ adolescence (ages 11–18) was associated with youth metabolic syndrome at age 25 (n = 391). Youth self-regulation and health behaviors were considered as possible moderators of the link between parental depression and youth metabolic syndrome. Analyses revealed that parental depression in adolescence was associated with a composite score reflecting metabolic syndrome components in early adulthood. Furthermore, self-regulation and health behaviors moderated this link, such that links between parental depression and the metabolic syndrome existed only for youth with low self-regulation or unhealthy behaviors.     

Role-based results redistribution for collaborative information retrieval

We describe a new approach for algorithmic mediation of a collaborative search process. Unlike most approaches to collaborative IR, we are designing systems that mediate explicitly-defined synchronous collaboration among small groups of searchers with a shared information need. Such functionality is provided by first obtaining different rank-lists based on searchers’ queries, fusing these rank-lists, and then splitting the combined list to distribute documents among collaborators according to their roles. For the work reported here, we consider the case of two people collaborating on a search. We assign them roles of Gatherer and Surveyor: the Gatherer is tasked with exploring highly promising information on a given topic, and the Surveyor is tasked with digging further to explore more diverse information. We demonstrate how our technique provides the Gatherer with high-precision results, and the Surveyor with information that is high in entropy.     

Linking Maternal Efficacy Beliefs, Developmental Goals, Parenting Practices, and Child Competence in Rural Single-Parent African American Families

With a sample of 139 rural, single-parent African American families with a 6- to 9-year-old child, we traced the links among family financial resource adequacy, maternal childrearing efficacy beliefs, developmental goals, parenting practices, and children's academic and psychosocial competence. A multimethod, multiinformant design was used to assess the constructs of interest. Consistent with the hypothesized paths, financial resource adequacy was linked with mothers' sense of childrearing efficacy. Efficacy beliefs were linked with parenting practices indirectly through developmental goals. Competence-promoting parenting practices were indirectly linked with children's academic and psychosocial competence through their association with children's self-regulation.     

Perceived discrimination and the adjustment of African American youths: a five-year longitudinal analysis with contextual moderation effects

Longitudinal links between perceived racial discrimination and later conduct problems and depressive symptoms were examined among 714 African American adolescents who were 10-12 years old at recruitment. Data were gathered 3 times over a 5-year period. Hypotheses were tested via latent curve modeling and multiple-group latent growth modeling. Increases in perceived discrimination were associated with increased conduct problems and depressive symptoms. This association was weaker when youths received nurturant-involved parenting, affiliated with prosocial friends, and performed well academically. For conduct problems, the association was stronger for boys than for girls; for depressive symptoms, no gender differences emerged. The findings thus identify contextual variables that moderate the contribution of perceived discrimination to African American youths' adjustment.     

A MODEL FOR DETERMINING COMPARABLE PROGRAM COSTS IN POSTSECONDARY OCCUPATIONAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Determining and analyzing unit costs in higher education has been variously discussed for decades. This article presents the rationale and operational guidelines of a method for determining comparable costs in two‐year college occupational and technical programs that is reasonable to adapt and use by many colleges without developing a new financial data system. Forms and procedures are also included to encourage adoption