Temperament, Emotion, and Cognition at Fourteen Months: The MacArthur Longitudinal Twin Study

200 pairs of twins were assessed at 14 months of age in the laboratory and home. Measures were obtained of temperament, emotion, and cognition/language. Comparisons between identical and fraternal twin correlations suggest that individual differences are due in part to heritable influences. For temperament, genetic influence was significant for behavioral observations of inhibition to the unfamiliar, tester ratings of activity, and parental ratings of temperament. For emotion, significant genetic influence was found for empathy and parental ratings of negative emotion. The estimate of heritability for parental report of expression of negative emotions was relatively high, whereas that for expression of positive emotions was low, a finding consistent with previous research. For cognition and language, genetic influence was significant for behavioral indices of spatial memory, categorization, and word comprehension. Shared rearing environment appears influential for parental reports of language and for positive emotions, but not for other measures of emotion or for temperament.     

The relative effects of pre- and postattention directing devices on learning from a “walk-through” museum exhibit

Twenty-eight seventh and eighth grade students were randomly assigned to two treatments and a control as they entered the Florida State Museum. All subjects were given set induction materials saying in effect: (1) Treatment-Study the wall panel which is part of the cave exhibit and describes the many biologic relationships and organisms in the cave at the cave entrance. Continue into the cave and study the habitat. When you exit the cave you will be given a test to see how much you learned; (2) Treatment II-Enter the cave and study that habitat. When you exit at the other end, study the wall panel which is part of the cave exit and describes the many biologic relationships and organisms in the cave. After studying this panel you will be given a test to see how much you learned; (3) Control-You will take a walk through exhibits depicting a variety of Florida Habitats and later see a film on the Habitats of Florida that are represented in the museum. Then you will be given a test to determine how much you know about one type of habitat. Both treatments and the control spent equivalent time at their tasks and were confronted with either the cave exhibit as described or the equivalent control experiences. A 25 item criterion test was designed to measure the acquisition of conceptual and factual knowledge and specific attentional factors relative to both the cave and the instructional panel. A Kr-20 indicated that this instrument had a reliability coefficient of 0.80. It was anticipated that the panel, used as an attention directing and controlling device prior to entering the cave (Treatment I) or upon exiting the cave (Treatment II), would function as a forward-shaping or backward review prompting adjunct, hence both should be significantly more effective than the control. This was confirmed (df 2,28; F 8.09) p < 0.01. It was also expected that the forward shaping panel would be more effective than the backward review panel in the tradition of inserted questions in prose research. Although the differences were in this direction, they were not significant (p≤ 0.10).     

Visual and auditory memory: Relationships to reading achievement

In two experiments, visual and auditory memory was tested for good and for poor readers from the upper elementary grades. Under experimenter-blind conditions, no reading group differences existed for single mode presentation in recognition frequency or recognition latency. With a multimodal presentation, latencies for poor readers were similar to those for the single mode presentation. Good readers, however, had significantly faster latencies with multiple input. Generally, results supported dual coding and self-terminating memory search hypotheses for previously encoded stimuli. Implications of the latency differences between reader groups were discussed with respect to the reading process and reading theory.     

The Aboriginal Boys’ Training Home,Kinchela, 1924–1970, and the Development of a Culture of Physical Fitness and Sport 1

Kinchela Boys’ Home on the mid‐north coast of New South Wales, was established by the state’s Aborigines Protection Board for Aboriginal boys and youths in 1924 and closed in 1970. By the 1930s the place had become known as a notorious carceral, poorly managed and psychologically isolated. An overdue government enquiry in 1940 concluded that it was not fulfilling its ‘requirements’ as a place of training and had many ‘shortcomings’. Reform and reconstruction were in the air, but did not occur until after the Second World War. The reshaping of post‐war Kinchela involved a vigorous sports and physical education programme for inmates as well as agricultural training. This article explores the development of a sporting culture and ethos at Kinchela in the 1950s and how it gained a local and state‐wide reputation. Some of its inmates became ‘sporting stars’. Consideration is given to the relationships with local outside sporting bodies and community organisations, particularly in surf life‐saving, boxing, athletics and rugby league. The approach developed was a version of the Rousseauian myth of child rescue that had been dominant in the western world since the well‐known mid‐nineteenth century French experiment at Mettray, the Agricultural College for Delinquent Boys.     

Generic examples: Seeing the general in the particular

This paper explores some of the ambiguities inherent in the notions of generality and genericity, drawing parallels between natural language and mathematics, and thereby obliquely attacking the entrenched view that mathematics is unambiguous. Alternative ways of construing 2N, for example, suggest approaches to some of the difficulties which students find with an algebraic representation of generality. Examples are given to show that confusion of levels is widespread throughout mathematics, but that the very confusion is a source of richness of meaning.     

Reviews: 10

Salmon, Gilly (2002) E-tivities Kogan Page (London (& Stylus, Sterling VA)) ISBN 0-7494-3686-7 223 pp £19.99
http://www.kogan-page.co.uk kpinfo@kogan-page.co.uk     

Supporting Early Childhood Social-Emotional Well Being: The Building Blocks for Early Learning and School Success

The period of early childhood sets the stage for how well children view themselves, each other, and their world. Shared positive emotional experiences between caregivers and children serve as building blocks for the development of social and emotional well-being in infants and toddlers. Incorporating the three principles of promotion, prevention, and intervention within a systems framework (child–parent–environment) will enable early childhood practitioners to foster the emotional health and well-being of all children and families, especially those individual children who are more vulnerable due to the presence of multiple risk factors. The primary intent of the authors of this paper is to discuss the importance of attending to the social and emotional well being of very young children as a primary focus of early learning and school success.     

Knowledge systems and the colonial legacies in African science education

This review surveys Femi Otulaja and Meshach Ogunniyi’s, Handbook of research in science education in sub-Saharan Africa, Sense, Rotterdam, 2017, noting the significance of the theoretically rich content and how this book contributes to the field of education as well as to the humanities more broadly. The volume usefully outlines the ways in which science education and scholarship in sub-Saharan Africa continue to be impacted by the region’s colonial history. Several of the chapters also enumerate proposals for teaching and learning science and strengthening academic exchange. Concerns that recur across many of the chapters include inadequate implementation of reforms; a lack of resources, such as for classroom materials and teacher training; and the continued and detrimental linguistic, financial, and ideological domination of African science education by the West. After a brief overview of the work and its central issues, this review closely examines two salient chapters that focus on scholarly communications and culturally responsive pedagogy. The scholarly communication section addresses the ways in which African science education research may in fact be too closely mirroring Western knowledge constructions without fully integrating indigenous knowledge systems in the research process. The chapter on pedagogy makes a similar argument for integrating Western and indigenous knowledge systems into teaching approaches.