Educational electronic book activity supports language retention among children at risk for learning disabilities

The main purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of an activity with an educational electronic book (e-book) on language retention among children at risk for learning disabilities (LD) (seven weeks after the intervention). Two modes of the educational e-book were investigated: with and without metacognitive guidance. Seventy seven kindergarteners aged 4.5–7 were randomly divided into three groups: (1) reading an e-book which included metacognitive guidance (EBM); (2) reading an e-book which did not include metacognitive guidance (EB); (3) receiving the regular kindergarten program (control). The children’s vocabulary was assessed before the intervention, immediately after the intervention (post 1) and seven weeks later (post 2). Story comprehension was assessed only following the intervention (post 1 and 2). The findings showed a long-term effect of the activity with the e-book on vocabulary. However, for story comprehension, a decrease in recall of words and quotes and an increase in the recall of main ideas from the story were found seven weeks after the activity with the e-book. No significant difference in retention was found between the two intervention groups (with and without metacognitive guidance). The implications of these results for kindergarteners at risk for LD are discussed.     

“Authentic Tasks” and “Extreme Tasks”: Potential Approaches to Overcoming Incorrect Responses in Conservation Tasks

This study begins the task of mapping out two approaches that may be helpful in overcoming incorrect responses to conservation tasks, focusing on the non-conserved quantity. The incorrect responses, which were the result of over-generalizations of conservation, and gradually increased with age despite formal knowledge and minor perceptual input, were explained as being consistent with the intuitive rule “same A–same B.” The following paper presents initial findings, involving 60 students (5th, 7th, 9th grade), who were presented with “authentic tasks” and 40 9th grade students who were presented with “extreme tasks.” As data show, in both “authentic tasks” and extreme tasks, the percentage of participants’ correct responses was higher compared to students’ responses to formal analogue tasks, although there was no difference in participants’ declarative judgments. Indeed, further research is needed to improve students’ responses and judgments not only in analogous and everyday tasks but also on how learning tasks can be designed, and to understand the observed gap between the students’ performance and their declarative knowledge.     

Historiography of biomedicine: bio, medicine, and in between

History of biomedicine is a hybrid domain, intersecting with many other scholarly disciplines. From the 1970s, historians who investigated recent developments in medicine increasingly shared the approaches, presuppositions, and methods of inquiry of historians and sociologists of science and technology. One reason is that the increasing reliance of medicine on technologies, instruments, and drugs makes the demarcation between medicine, science, and industry more difficult. Another is the practice turn in the history of science, which gave greater attention to the ways scientists and physicians work. The impressive achievements of historians who applied these new approaches came, however, at a cost. The neglect of an earlier generation of historians of medicine may have limited more recent ambitions for understanding health and disease in society. Closer links with historians of science and technology and sociologists of science may have blurred the specificity of medicine as a domain grounded in the distinction between the normal and the pathological and lessened scholars' interest in the clinic as a unique site of the production of knowledge.