Child care and family processes: Bi-directional relations between child care quality,home environments,and maternal depression

The current study examined whether within-family changes in child care quality and quantity predicted subsequent changes in home environment quality and maternal depression across early childhood (6 to 54 months of age). Data were drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 1239; 77% White; 48% female; data collection from 1991 to 1996), and were analyzed using Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models. Within-family increases in child care quality predicted modest increases in home environment quality (β = .13–.17). These effects were most robust from child age 6 to 15 months. Increases in child care quality produced small, statistically non-significant, reductions in depression. Time-specific increases in child care quantity were not consistently predictive of either outcome.     

Cross-cultural examination of test anxiety among US and Singapore students on the Test Anxiety Scale for Elementary Students (TAS-E)

In the present study, the similarity of the factor structure of the Test Anxiety Scale for Elementary Students (TAS-E) and cultural and gender differences in test anxiety were examined in a sample of 1322 US and Singapore elementary students. The similarity of the factor structure of the TAS-E, a measure of test anxiety, was examined to determine whether the same test score interpretation could be made across culture and gender. Coefficient of congruence and salient variable similarity index values indicated that the pairs of matched factors (Physiological Hyperarousal, Social Concerns, Task Irrelevant Behaviour, Worry and Total Test Anxiety factors) of the TAS-E were similar across culture and gender. Results of a 2?×?2 ANOVA and 2?×?2 MANOVA with follow-up ANOVAs revealed that Singapore males scored higher than US males and US females scored higher than Singapore females on the TAS-E Total Test Anxiety scale and the Physiological Hyperarousal subscale. Singapore males also scored higher than US males on the TAS-E Worry subscale. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

On the potential for using immersive virtual environments to support laboratory experiment contextualisation

This paper explores the hypothesis that embedding a laboratory activity into a virtual environment can provide a richer experimental context and hence improve the understanding of the relationship between a theoretical model and the real world, particularly in terms of the model's strengths and weaknesses. While an identified learning objective of laboratories is to support the understanding of the relationship between models and reality, the paper illustrates that this understanding is hindered by inherently limited experiments and that there is scope for improvement. Despite the contextualisation of learning activities having been shown to support learning objectives in many fields, there is traditionally little contextual information presented during laboratory experimentation. The paper argues that the enhancing laboratory activity with contextual information affords an opportunity to improve students’ understanding of the relationship between the theoretical model and the experiment (which is effectively a proxy for the complex real world), thereby improving their understanding of the relationship between the model and reality. The authors propose that these improvements can be achieved by setting remote laboratories within context-rich virtual worlds.