Sibling Adjustment and Maternal Well-Being: An Examination of Families With and Without a Child With an Autism Spectrum Disorder

Differences in sibling social, behavioral, and academic adjustment and maternal well-being in families with (n = 20) and without (n = 23) a preschooler with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were explored. Results are interpreted to suggest that mothers of children with autism report more daily hassles, life stress, and depression than mothers without a child with ASD. There were no significant differences in parent and teacher reports of older siblings' social, behavioral, and academic adjustment in families with and without a child with ASD. Sibling behavioral adjustment was, however, significantly related to maternal well-being. Because families with children with ASD often experience more parenting stress and depression, siblings may be more vulnerable to the cumulative risks over time.     

Consultative instructor supervision and evaluation

Organizations vary greatly in how they monitor training instructors. The methods used in monitoring vary greatly. This article presents a systematic process for improving instructor skills that result in better teaching and better learning, which results in better‐prepared employees for the workforce. The consultative supervision and evaluation model breaks monitoring into two distinct phases: supervision, for the purpose of improving instruction, and evaluation, for the purpose of rating instructors for promotion, retention, raises, and bonuses.     

On the global knowledge components in an information security curriculum–a multidisciplinary perspective

Because of the borderless feature of the Internet, information security threats could come from anywhere around the globe. In this research, we propose adding global knowledge components in the information security curriculum using a multi-disciplinary approach. We argue that a global perspective has been lacking in the current information security curriculum. We then propose several knowledge components to be added in the curriculum to enhance the global perspective. We also examine how to incorporate knowledge from various related disciplines, including political science, criminal justice, and business administration. Through our empirical study on faculty from various disciplines and the industry practitioners with first-hand information security knowledge, we confirm that the proposed knowledge components are relevant to the information security education and practice. Analyzing the similarities and differences among responses from various disciplines, we also found that albeit different disciplines have slightly different emphases on the curriculum components, they all tend to agree on the importance of adding the global perspectives in information security education. Our research could be of value to the educators in the information security field when considering incorporating a global perspective into the curriculum. It could also shed some lights when examining the relevance of global information security to various disciplines.     

农村留守妇女社会支持网络研究

农村留守妇女作为民工流动的保障前提,她们的生活状况却往往被人忽视。文章描述了农村留守女社会支持网现状,分析缺社会支持网缺失的原因,并提出了其社会支持网的构建途径。     

日据时期台湾人民抗日斗争述论

从1895年《马关条约》签订,到1945年二战结束,在日本对台湾长达50年的殖民统治过程中,台湾人民为反抗日本殖民统治,维护国家主权和领土完整进行了不屈不挠的斗争。在台湾人民波澜壮阔的抗日斗争中,要求回归祖国,维护祖国统一始终是台湾人民的不懈追求。台湾人民的抗日斗争,得到了大陆人民的支持,沉重打击了日本在台湾的殖民统治,体现了中国人民维护祖国统一的坚定决心和顽强意志,为全民族的抗战和世界反法西斯战争的胜利做出了自己应有的贡献。     

A model for using a concept inventory as a tool for students' assessment and faculty professional development

This essay describes how the use of a concept inventory has enhanced professional development and curriculum reform efforts of a faculty teaching community. The Host Pathogen Interactions (HPI) teaching team is composed of research and teaching faculty with expertise in HPI who share the goal of improving the learning experience of students in nine linked undergraduate microbiology courses. To support evidence-based curriculum reform, we administered our HPI Concept Inventory as a pre- and postsurvey to approximately 400 students each year since 2006. The resulting data include student scores as well as their open-ended explanations for distractor choices. The data have enabled us to address curriculum reform goals of 1) reconciling student learning with our expectations, 2) correlating student learning with background variables, 3) understanding student learning across institutions, 4) measuring the effect of teaching techniques on student learning, and 5) demonstrating how our courses collectively form a learning progression. The analysis of the concept inventory data has anchored and deepened the team's discussions of student learning. Reading and discussing students' responses revealed the gap between our understanding and the students' understanding. We provide evidence to support the concept inventory as a tool for assessing student understanding of HPI concepts and faculty development.     

Team Research at the Biology–Mathematics Interface: Project Management Perspectives

The success of interdisciplinary research teams depends largely upon skills related to team performance. We evaluated student and team performance for undergraduate biology and mathematics students who participated in summer research projects conducted in off-campus laboratories. The student teams were composed of a student with a mathematics background and an experimentally oriented biology student. The team mentors typically ranked the students'' performance very good to excellent over a range of attributes that included creativity and ability to conduct independent research. However, the research teams experienced problems meeting prespecified deadlines due to poor time and project management skills. Because time and project management skills can be readily taught and moreover typically reflect good research practices, simple modifications should be made to undergraduate curricula so that the promise of initiatives, such as MATH-BIO 2010, can be implemented.     

Do different components of working memory underlie different subgroups of reading disabilities?

The purpose of this study was to determine the components of working memory (WM) that underlie less skilled readers' comprehension and word recognition difficulties. Performance of 3 less skilled reading subgroups---children with reading disabilities (RD) in both word recognition and comprehension; children with comprehension deficits only; and children with low verbal IQ, word recognition, and comprehension (poor readers)--was compared to that of skilled readers on WM, short-term memory (STM), processing speed, executive, and phonological processing measures. Ability group comparisons showed that (a) skilled readers outperformed all less skilled readers on measures of WM, updating, and processing speed; (b) children with comprehension deficits only outperformed children with RD on measures of WM, STM, phonological processing, and processing speed; and (c) children with RD outperformed poor readers on WM and phonological processing measures. A hierarchical regression analysis showed that (a) subgroup differences on WM tasks among less skilled readers were moderated by a storage system not specific to phonological skills, and (b) STM and updating contributed significant variance to WM beyond what was contributed by reading group classification. The latter finding suggested that some differences in storage and executive processing emerged between skilled and less skilled readers that were not specific to reading.     

Foundations for self-awareness: An exploration through autism

Developmental psychopathology holds promise for elucidating the structure of self-awareness. Here we studied social emotions in matched groups of children and adolescents with and without autism. Our aims were to determine whether there are potentially dissociable aspects of self-awareness, and to reconsider how the qualities of young children's engagement with other persons influences the development of their sense of self. Parent interviews yielded evidence that children with autism are limited in social-relational and emotional domains of self-awareness; for example, few were reported to show guilt, embarrassment, or shame. Yet according to parent report, most were affected by the moods of others, showed some degree of pity and concern, and manifested jealousy. When presented with videotaped scenes, participants with autism were similar to those without autism in identifying pride, guilt, and shame, and they were able to describe their own experiences of pride and, more rarely, guilt. In situations designed to elicit emotions, participants with autism were rated as showing pride, but they manifested lesser degrees and atypical qualities of guilt and coyness. Relatively few showed personal forms of self-consciousness when asked to pose for a photograph. We argue that in order for children to achieve depth in self-awareness, and to relate to themselves as occupying a distinctive stance within a framework of mutual self-other relatedness, they need to identify with the attitudes of other people. We interpret the present studies in terms of dissociations among three forms of social emotion: "person-centered" qualities of relational self-awareness that require identification and are specifically limited among children with autism, more diffuse modes of relational self-consciousness, and a third group of social emotions, epitomized by jealousy, situated in a separate developmental line. We propose a rebalancing of emotion theory that gives greater prominence to children's developing forms of interpersonal and intra-psychic relatedness.