The correlates and influences of career‐related continuous learning: Implications for management professionals

Management personnel are increasingly aware that career success depends on the ability to continuously learn and adapt to the environment. However, scant attention has been paid to how learning activities contribute to managerial success. This study examines the degree to which involvement in career‐related continuous learning affects managerial career success. Career success as defined in this study comprises both objective (ascendancy) and subjective (organizational commitment, professional commitment, career satisfaction) elements. Five hypotheses are tested using linear regression modeling. Results indicate that as individuals increase participation in career‐related continuous learning, their managerial career success increases as well.     

Impact of family abuse on running away, deviance, and street victimization among homeless rural and urban youth

PROBLEM: Various demographic and familial risk factors have been linked to runaway behavior. To date, there has not been a systematic investigation of the impact of size of community on runaway behavior. This study will compare runaways from smaller cities and rural areas to their urban counterparts. METHODS: A convenience sample of 602 adolescents was interviewed between 1995 and August of 1996 in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, USA. Multiple regression was used to examine the association between gender, neglect, sexual abuse, physical abuse, geographic and family structure change, and community size of first runaway to predict age at first runaway, deviant subsistence strategies, and street victimization. RESULTS: Findings indicate that adolescents exposed to neglect (beta=-.20) and sexual abuse (beta=-.16) ran away sooner and were more likely to be victimized on the street. Rural adolescents who experienced higher levels of physical abuse relied more heavily on deviant subsistence strategies (beta=.15) and remained in abusive homes longer (beta=.15) than their similarly situated urban counterparts. CONCLUSIONS: Rural youth who have been subjected to elevated levels of familial abuse are at greater risk of deviant subsistence strategies, which increase the likelihood of street victimization.     

Early risk, attention, and brain activation in adolescents born preterm

The relations among early cumulative medical risk, cumulative environmental risk, attentional control, and brain activation were assessed in 15-16-year-old adolescents who were born preterm. Functional magnetic resonance imaging found frontal, temporal, and parietal cortex activation during an attention task with greater activation of the left superior-temporal and left supramarginal gyri associated with better performance. Individual differences in early cumulative risk are related to patterns of brain activation such that medical risk is related to left parietal cortex activation and environmental risk is related to temporal lobe activation. The findings suggest that early risk is related to less mature patterns of brain activation, including reduced efficiency of processing and responding to stimuli.     

Syntactic skills in sentence reading comprehension among Chinese elementary school children

The present study examined the role of syntactic skills for reading comprehension in Chinese. Two hundred and seventy-two Chinese children were tested on their phonological processing, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and literacy skills at Grades 1 and 2. Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that syntactic skills, in terms of word order, connective usage, and knowledge of morphosyntactic structure (measured by an oral cloze task) in Grade 1, significantly predicted sentence reading comprehension in Grade 2 after controlling for the children’s age, IQ, and word level reading-related cognitive skills in Grade 1, and word reading in Grade 2. As in alphabetic languages, syntactic skills are essential for reading comprehension in Chinese. The unique roles of individual syntactic skills for understanding sentences in Chinese are discussed.     

The Hong Kong Behaviour Checklist for Primary Students: Developing a brief dyslexia screening measure

The authors report on the development of a brief dyslexia screening measure based on revising the 65-item Hong Kong Behaviour Checklist of Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing. Teachers’ ratings of 1063 primary students aged 6–14 years on the behaviour checklist provided data for its psychometric evaluation using traditional measurement and Rasch measurement model analyses. Rasch scaling suggested that the revised 36-item checklist could be regarded as a unidimensional scale that assesses global dyslexic dysfunction, and receiver operating characteristics analysis suggested that a score of 18 could be an optimal cut-off score when it is used as a dyslexia screening measure. The validity of this revised checklist was supported by its substantial and significant correlations with external measures of literacy and cognitive skills. Implications of the findings for the use of adaptive testing to provide an effective procedure for screening are discussed.     

Virtual and Physical Experimentation in Inquiry-Based Science Labs: Attitudes, Performance and Access

This study investigated the learning dimensions that occur in physical and virtual inquiry-based lab investigations, in first-year secondary chemistry classes. This study took place over a 2 year period and utilized an experimental crossover design which consisted of two separate trials of laboratory investigation. Assessment data and attitudinal data were gathered and analyzed to measure the instructional value of physical and virtual lab experiences in terms of student performance and attitudes. Test statistics were conducted for differences of means for assessment data. Student attitudes towards virtual experiences in comparison to physical lab experiences were measured using a newly created Virtual and Physical Experimentation Questionnaire (VPEQ). VPEQ was specifically developed for this study, and included new scales of Usefulness of Lab, and Equipment Usability which measured attitudinal dimensions in virtual and physical lab experiences. A factor analysis was conducted for questionnaire data, and reliability of the scales and internal consistency of items within scales were calculated. The new scales were statistically valid and reliable. The instructional value of physical and virtual lab experiences was comparable in terms of student performance. Students showed preference towards the virtual medium in their lab experiences. Students showed positive attitudes towards physical and virtual experiences, and demonstrated a preference towards inquiry-based experiences, physical or virtual. Students found virtual experiences to have higher equipment usability as well as a higher degree of open-endedness. In regards to student access to inquiry-based lab experiences, virtual and online alternatives were viewed favorably by students.     

The effect of task structure on diffusion dynamics: Implications for diffusion curve and network-based analyses

Theoretical analyses within the broad field of social learning research give mixed conclusions on whether the shape of a diffusion curve can be used to infer that a learned trait increases through social or asocial learning. Here we explore how factors such as task structure (e.g., multiple-step tasks), task abandonment, subgoal learning, and neophobia affect the shape of the diffusion curve for both asocially learned and socially learned behavior. We demonstrate that, whereas social learning increases the likelihood of S-shaped curves, sigmoidal patterns can be generated by entirely asocial processes, and cannot be reliably interpreted as indicators of social learning. Our findings reinforce the view that diffusion curve analysis is not a reliable way of detecting social transmission. We also draw attention to the fact that task structure can similarly confound interpretation of network-based diffusion analyses, and suggest resolutions to this problem. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://lb.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.