Serial rapid naming skills in children with reading disabilities

This study compared the performance of children with reading disability (RD) and normal reading achievement (NRA) on tasks of serial rapid naming, verbal fluency, letter-based word retrieval, and articulatory speed. The groups, composed of children at two discrete age levels, one younger and one older, were matched for age, gender, and neighborhood school. Analyses of the on-line measurement of the children’s serial rapid naming indicated that the children with RD had significantly larger reaction times and production durations than their NRA peers despite similar levels of accuracy. They also performed significantly worse on the categorical verbal fluency task, the letter-based word retrieval task, and the test of articulatory speed. The findings suggest that both access and post-access processes, such as oral-motor inefficiency that extends the duration of word production, may be implicated in the slower serial rapid naming that has typified many samples of children with RD. This work was supported in part by Basil O’Connor Research Grant 5-340 from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, a Scholarly and Creative Activity Award and sabbatical leave from California State University, Long Beach and grant #DCO 1904-01 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the NIH to the first author.     

Cross-cultural differences in maternal perceptions of cries of low- and high-risk infants

The tape-recorded cries of low- and high-risk newborn infants were rated by 150 inner-city Anglo-American, Black-American, and Cuban-American mothers during the hospital lying-in period following childbirth. Half of each cultural group was primiparous and half was multiparous. The mothers rated the cries along 4 perceptual and 6 caregiving response scale items. Reliable differences were found between low- and high-risk infant cries on all perceptual responses with the effects of culture and parental experience affecting the degree of differences. Generally, Anglo-American mothers found the cries more distressing, urgent, arousing, and sick sounding than Black-American mothers, while Cuban-American mothers showed similarities to both Black- and Anglo-American mothers depending on the scale items. The ratings on the caregiving response scale items paralleled cultural differences found on the perception scale items and previous reports of the mother-infant interaction patterns of other Anglo-, Black-, and Cuban-American samples. The results are discussed as being important in developing nonethnocentric views of the functional significance of the behaviors of the infant at risk, yet as providing evidence of the cross-cultural significance of the cry sound of the infant at risk.     

Help‐Seeking and Non‐Help‐Seeking Students' Perceptions of Own and Peers' Mental Health Functioning

Help‐seeking (HS) students and non‐help‐seeking (NHS) students were compared on their perceptions of (a) their own level of mental health functioning and (b) the average level of mental health functioning of their (NHS or HS) peers. Results showed that NHS students' perceptions of HS students' self‐ratings were similar to HS students' self‐ratings of functioning but that HS students underestimated the level of functioning of their NHS peers. Implications of the findings for campus outreach and future research are discussed.     

Investigating the Relations Among Pre-Service Teachers’ Teaching/Learning Beliefs and Educational Technology Integration Competencies: a Structural Equation Modeling Study

Journal of Science Education and Technology - With the rapid developments in technology, training of pre-service teachers in terms of technology integration has become a crucial issue for all...     

Samples of stimuli,responses, and reinforcers: Effect of incongruent sample type,serial position,and mode of presentation

In two matching-to-sample experiments, pigeons’ performance with samples of stimuli (red and green), number of responses (1 and 20), and reinforcers (food and no food) was assessed. Samples of red, 20 responses, and food were associated with the red comparison stimulus, and samples of green, 1 response, and no food were associated with the green comparison stimulus. On interference trials, three sample types were presented on each trial, and two of the samples (congruent) were associated with the correct comparison and the third sample (incongruent), with the incorrect comparison. Performance on interference trials was compared with that on control trials in which either two (Experiment 1) or three (Experiment 2) congruent samples were presented. It was found that presentation of an incongruent sample reduced matching accuracy markedly, and about equally, whether samples were presented successively or in compound. Although the type of sample that was incongruent was without effect, matching accuracy declined strongly as the recency of the incongruent sample increased. Serial position of the incongruent sample also influenced the shape of the retention function on interference trials. Presentation of the incongruent sample either first or second resulted in accuracy decreasing across the retention interval, whereas presentation of the incongruent sample last in the input sequence resulted in increasing accuracy across the retention interval. The theoretical implications of the findings are considered.     

AN EXAMINATION OF THE CONTEXT EFFECT IN ITEM SAMPLING

Item sampling and/or multiple matrix sampling techniques have been recommended for a variety of purposes. For some of these purposes, it must be assumed that examinee performance on a set of items is unaffected by the conditions under which the items are taken (i.e., no context effect exists). In this paper factors that may lead to a context effect among high school students are discussed. The net effect of such factors on examinee scores for an English test and a mathematics test is investigated empirically. For the English test there was little support for the existence of a context effect, However, a definite context effect was found for the mathematics test.