Temperament, emotion, and social interactive behavior in the strange situation: a component process analysis of attachment system functioning

This study examines the contributions of temperamentally and nontemperamentally based emotional reactions to the organization of social interactive behavior within the Strange Situation to better understand the emotional underpinnings of attachment system functioning. At 12 1/2 and 19 1/2 months, temperamental fear (assessed via maternal report) was related to independent per-episode dimensions of social interactive and distress behavior. Fear was moderately correlated with both distress and interactive dimensions at each age. Path-analytic models revealed that temperamental fear had direct effects on interactive behavior and also indirect effects mediated by preceding distress reactions. However, residualized measures of "context-specific" distress (with temperamental variance removed) were still highly consistent across Strange Situation episodes and also significantly predicted subsequent social interactive behavior; furthermore, stable distress reactions from 12 1/2 to 19 1/2 months significantly predicted concurrent stability in social interactive behavior. We discuss likely sources of "context-specific" emotional influences on Strange Situation behavior and also age-related differences in these findings.     

Young Voices on Climate Change: The Paul F-Brandwein 2010 NSTA Lecture

Lynne Cherry Brandwein Lecture March 2010 National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Conference, Philadelphia, PA. Young Voices on Climate Change: Inspired and Empowered Youth Tackle Climate Science and Find Climate Solutions. As a child, Lynne Cherry was profoundly connected to the natural world and a special place. She watched the destruction of her world. Now, through her Young Voices on Climate Change project, she is trying to give teachers and young people the tools to prevent planetary meltdown on a greater scale. Global climate change is upon us and the need for education and action is immediate. Outreach, visual storytelling, and scientific understanding are especially necessary in light of the recent polls that show that the public is becoming more confused and less concerned about climate change. Cherry’s climate book, co-authored with photojournalist Gary Braasch, and her Young Voices on Climate Change films feature climate solutions. They’re about win–win—save the environment, protect human health, reduce global warming gases, demonstrate youth making a difference with practical tools, motivate engagement in climate science, take pride in increased science literacy, reach young people through their hearts as well as their minds, and save money. Although young people can help their parents, peers and communities understand climate science, they can also show them that reducing CO₂ is in their economic interest, and spur them to take action. School carbon reduction initiatives are spilling over into communities yielding measurable results in both global warming gas reductions and significant monetary savings.     

ADORNO AND THE BORDERS OF EXPERIENCE: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NONIDENTICAL FOR A "DIFFERENT" THEORY OF BILDUNG

A bstract .  In this essay Christiane Thompson discusses the systematic outcomes of Theodor Adorno's philosophical work for a reworked theory of Bildung (an important term in the German tradition of philosophy and history of education). In his essay "Theory of Halbbildung ," Adorno revealed the inevitable failure of Bildung , on the one hand, and the necessity of Bildung (in view of a critique of society), on the other. After having exposed this contradiction, Thompson seeks to analyze Bildung 's systematic role by turning to Adorno's reflections on art and metaphysics. Adorno's concept of aesthetic experience hints at the possibility of a more genuine approach to Bildung and culture, one that makes the borders of our experience visible and, as a result, suggests a different relation to ourselves and to the world. She concludes by examining the critical dimensions of this different Bildung as well as its pedagogical relevance.     

Emotional regulation and emotional development

Current neofunctionalist views of emotion underscore the biologically adaptive and psychologically constructive contributions of emotion to organized behavior, but little is known of the development of the emotional regulatory processes by which this is fostered. Emotional regulation refers to the extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. This review provides a developmental outline of emotional regulation and its relation to emotional development throughout the life-span. The biological foundations of emotional self-regulation and individual differences in regulatory tendencies are summarized. Extrinsic influences on the early regulation of a child's emotion and their long-term significance are then discussed, including a parent's direct intervention strategies, selective reinforcement and modeling processes, affective induction, and the caregiver's ecological control of opportunity for heightened emotion and its management. Intrinsic contributors to the growth of emotional self-regulatory capacities include the emergence of language and cognitive skills, the child's growing emotional and self-understanding (and cognized strategies of emotional self-control), and the emergence of a theory of personal emotion in adolescence.     

Towards a sociocognitive model of progression in spoken English

Current approaches to oral assessment of English in English secondary schools tend to concentrate more on ‘confidence’ and ‘participation’ than on the quality of children's thinking. This undermines the rich possibilities in classroom talk for cognitive development. Behavioural assessment approaches deny the essentially cognitive character of spoken English. This paper compares two brief representative extracts from a larger data‐set of students engaged in small group debate on the subject of abortion. One group of students are hindered in their discussion by an inability to conceptualize abstractly. It is suggested that a formative assessment approach based on a model of cognitive progression such as Vygotsky's could enable all students to develop as speakers by encouraging their teachers to focus more explicitly on the development of the quality of thinking. A sociocognitive framework for conceptual progression could guide teachers in their interpretation of peer debate in order to develop the quality of students' understanding and argument. Building on the work of Newman, Griffin and Cole, and Torrance and Pryor, further research should be conducted into the ways in which formative teacher–student and student–student assessment dialogue might enhance students' ability to think through talk.     

Fragile but real: children's capacity to use newly acquired words to convey preverbal memories

There is ongoing debate about children's ability to use subsequently acquired language to describe preverbal experiences. This issue was addressed experimentally in this investigation using a novel paradigm. Two-year-old children who lacked color words were individually taught to activate a bubble machine by selecting a particular color of bubble solution. The children then participated in weekly, experimenter-provided activities that fostered their acquisition of the color labels. After 2 months, their ability to apply the newly acquired words in reporting the original event was assessed. A significant proportion of the children demonstrated verbal recall when prompted in the presence of physical reminders of the event. These findings indicate that some early, preverbal memories are translated into words at a later time.     

False-performance feedback does not affect punching forces and pacing of elite boxers

Prior research indicates that providing participants with positive augmented feedback tends to enhance motor learning and performance, whereas the opposite occurs with negative feedback. However, the majority of studies were conducted with untrained participants performing unfamiliar motor tasks and so it remains unclear if elite athletes completing familiar tasks respond in a similar fashion. Thus, this study investigated the effects of three different versions of false-performance feedback on punching force (N), pacing (force over time) and ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) in 15 elite amateur male boxers. Athletes completed a simulated boxing bout consisting of three rounds with 84 maximal effort punches delivered to a punching integrator on four separate days. Day one was a familiarisation session in which no feedback was provided. In the following three days athletes randomly received false-positive, false-negative and false-neutral feedback on their punching performance between each round. No statistical or meaningful differences were observed in punching forces, pacing or RPE between conditions (P > 0.05; ≤ 2%). These null results could stem from the elite status of the athletes involved, the focus on performance rather than learning, or they may indicate that false feedback has a less potent effect on performance than previously thought.     

A validity study of the Kinetic school drawing technique

Kinetic School Drawings were obtained from 100 fifth-grade students. The drawings were analyzed along a number of dimensions thought to measure “negative” affect. Significant correlations with academic achievement were found for a number of measures, and the results of a stepwise multiple regression were significant. In general, the study supported the validity of the technique.     

An Analysis of Playground Surface Injuries

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of skill competence and tactical sophistication during a games unit conducted following the features of sport education provided by Siedentop (1994). One team of six players was followed through a 30-lesson season of “Ultimate.” Using Gréhaigne, Godbout, and Bouthier's (1997) formula for an efficiency index, together with a number of other measures of skill and tactical competence, it was determined that these students made significant improvements in selection and execution dimensions of the game. Furthermore, lower skilled students did not feel marginalized within their teams and believed they had equal opportunities for improvement. The key reasons for developing competence in this setting were the sufficient length of the season to allow for significant practice opportunities and the consistent team membership throughout season, which allowed all players to develop a sense of usefulness. This curriculum model provides one way students can develop skills through a system of game playing, provided sport education units are structured to prevent the more skillful players from dominating the games.     

Analyzing interdisciplinarity: Typology and indicators

Both funding agencies and scholars in science studies have become increasingly concerned with how to define and identify interdisciplinarity in research. The task is tricky, since the complexity of interdisciplinary research defies a single definition. Our study tackles this challenge by demonstrating a new typology and qualitative indicators for analyzing interdisciplinarity in research documents. The proposed conceptual framework attempts to fulfill the need for a robust and nuanced approach that is grounded in deeper knowledge of interdisciplinarity. As an example of using the framework, we discuss our empirical investigation of research proposals funded by a national funding agency in Finland.