Reviews

Annals of Dyslexia -     

Effectiveness of a “Grass Roots” Statewide Enrichment Program for Gifted Elementary School Children

Enrichment programs provide learning opportunities for a broader or deeper examination of curricular or extracurricular topics and are popular in gifted education. Herein, we investigated the effectiveness of a statewide extracurricular enrichment program for gifted elementary school children in Germany. The program implemented a ”grass roots“ strategy by which local units developed and offered the enrichment courses, which spanned a broad array of topics. The courses targeted different outcomes, including students' cognitive abilities, school achievement, interests, creativity, self-control, self-concept, and social competencies. We compared third-grade students attending the enrichment program (N =423) with nonattending third-grade students (N = 2,328) by means of a propensity score analysis. Specifically, we controlled for potential selection effects and estimated the average causal effect of the enrichment program for children attending the program. The findings revealed positive program effects on academic achievement but not on the other targeted outcomes.     

The Structure and Coherence of Competence from Childhood through Adolescence

The structure and coherence of competence from childhood (ages 8–12) to late adolescence (ages 17–23) was examined in a longitudinal study of 191 children. Structural equation modeling was utilized to test a conceptual model and alternative models. Results suggest that competence has at least 3 distinct dimensions in childhood and 5 in adolescence. These dimensions reflect developmental tasks related to academic achievement, social competence, and conduct important at both age levels in U.S. society, and the additional tasks of romantic and job competence in adolescence. As hypothesized, rule-breaking versus rule-abiding conduct showed strong continuity over time, while academic achievement and social competence showed moderate continuity. Results also were consistent with the hypothesis that antisocial behavior undermines academic attainment and job competence.     

Facilitation and impairment of conditioning in the preweanling rat after prior exposure to the conditioned stimulus

Olfactory aversion conditioning of preweanling rats, 10 or 18 days postnatal, was tested after some had been given nonreinforced experience with the to-be-conditioned odor stimulus. In three experiments, it was established that the amount of prior exposure to the CS determined the effectiveness of conditioning. For both ages, odor-shock conditioning was more likely impaired with longer durations of preexposure. This effect was more apparent in the older animals. Low to moderate degrees of prior exposure to the CS under some conditions facilitated, rather than impaired, olfactory conditioning in the 10-day-old rat. This result is in agreement with one previous study in which facilitation in learning was reported for this age after short-term preexposure to the CS. The present study adds to previous data on differential effects of CS preexposure on conditioning. Although the conditions under which facilitation rather than impairment occurs are not yet clear, age-related differences in the effects of CS preexposure were apparent in the present experiments.     

Morphological processing during visual word recognition in Hebrew as a first and a second language

The present study examined whether sublexical morphological processing takes place during visual word-recognition in Hebrew, and whether morphological decomposition of written words depends on lexical activation of the complete word. Furthermore, it examined whether morphological processing is similar when reading Hebrew as a first language (L1) or as a second language (L2), and whether L1’s morphological background, Semitic or Indo-European, modulates morphological processing in L2 Hebrew (a Semitic language), among proficient readers. To reveal the sublexical processing of the Hebrew morphemes, the Root (R) and the Pattern (P), a lexical-decision task was conducted, in which all critical stimuli were non-word letter-strings manipulated to include or exclude real Hebrew morphemes. Different combinations of real (+) and pseudo (?) morphemes yielded four types of non-words (+R+P; +R?P; ?R+P, ?R?P). Three groups of proficient Hebrew readers were tested: L1 Hebrew, L1 English-L2 Hebrew, and L1 Arabic-L2 Hebrew. Results demonstrated significant differences in latency and accuracy of responses to the four morphological conditions, indicating that sublexical morphological processing occurs during visual word-recognition of morphologically structured letter-strings in Hebrew. Importantly, the activation of real Hebrew morphemes occurred in non-word stimuli, indicating that morphological processing in Hebrew is separable from lexical activation. Moreover, the same pattern of results was observed in all three L1 groups, indicating that proficient L2 readers exhibit morphological processing strategies that are tuned to the L2 morphology, regardless of their L1 background.