Cognitive profiling in Chinese developmental dyslexia with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders

The cognitive profiles of children with Developmental Reading Disorder (RD) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD) have been extensively studied in alphabetic language communities. Deficits in phonological processing and rapid naming have been implicated as core features of RD although whether the latter is a deficit specific to RD remains controversial. Similar research aiming to explore the cognitive profiles of children with both RD and ADHD in non-alphabetic language communities is limited. The specificity of rapid naming deficit to RD among Chinese has yet to be studied. In the first study, 43 Chinese children with confirmed diagnoses of RD + ADHD were assessed on their cognitive abilities in relating to reading. In the second study, the specificity deficit hypothesis of rapid naming to RD but not ADHD was examined. A digit naming test was administered to the RD + ADHD group (43 subjects) and an ADHD only group (49 subjects). In regard to cognitive profiling, rapid naming and orthographic knowledge were found to be the most common deficits among the Chinese RD + ADHD group. This co-morbid group was also found to have a significant deficit performance on the rapid naming task than the ADHD only group. The present findings support the double dissociation hypothesis in cognitive deficit between RD and ADHD. The results of both studies are discussed with reference to the findings of the Western counterparts.     

Attributional (explanatory) thinking about failure in new achievement settings

Attributional (explanatory) thinking involves the appraisal of factors that contribute to performance and is instrumental to motivation and goal striving. Little is understood, however, concerning attributional thinking when multiple causes are involved in the transition to new achievement settings. Our study examined such complex attributional thinking in the transition from high school to university, a shift from familiar to novel learning environments, in the context of Weiner’s attribution theory (1972, 1985, 1995, 2006). At the start of the academic year, students rated the extent to which each of six common attributions contributed to poor performance to ascertain their relative importance to each other. A fixed order of attributions was reported as contributing to poor performance that was identical across five independent cohorts of first-year students (effort, test difficulty, strategy, professor quality, ability, luck, respectively). Cluster analysis revealed that students differed in combining these attributions into clusters suggesting diminished or enhanced control over poor performance. These differences in attribution clusters were associated with cognitive and affective outcomes at the start of Term 1, and with course grades and GPA at the end of Term 2. Student differences in complex attributional thinking are discussed in terms of transitions to new achievement settings.     

Race/ethnicity and the start of child care: A multi-level analysis of factors influencing first child care experiences

Early childhood education and care experiences play an important role in children's development and school readiness with, in general, sustained exposure to high quality, center-based care leading to positive outcomes. Hispanic parents have been shown to be less likely than others to place their children in center-based care, particularly when children are very young—a pattern that contrasts African American parents’ tendency for earlier use of center-based care. This paper examines child care choice from a contextual perspective. Using a multi-level modeling approach, we consider ethnicity and race, at the individual and neighborhood levels, in relation to the age at which children first participate in non-parental care and the type of care they first experience. Using data from the ECLS-K, the 1990 Census and other contextual sources, we demonstrate that Hispanic parents’ later use of care is explainable by economic and work participation factors at the family level, while neighborhood proportion of Hispanic individuals is associated with delayed entry into child care. In contrast, the observed early use of care among African American families persists after accounting for economic and work factors, and appears independent of differences in neighborhood context. Limitations and implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Teacher professional identity as multidimensional: mapping its components and examining their associations with general pedagogical beliefs

Research on teachers’ professional identity integrates many constructs that are treated independently in most cases. This study described the associations between components of teacher professional identity and their association with teachers’ general pedagogical beliefs. Secondary teachers (n = 236) completed a survey about several components of their identity (self-efficacy beliefs, motivation to become a teacher, affective commitment and perceived type of expertise) and general pedagogical beliefs (constructivist and direct transmission). Multidimensional scaling revealed that the components could be mapped on two dimensions: form of motivation and degree of subject specificity. The resulting map revealed four meaningful groups of components. Furthermore, whereas direct transmission general pedagogical beliefs were found to be strongly tied to an identity grounded in the subject taught, constructivist beliefs were independent of identity components. This study provides new insight into the structure of teacher professional identity and its relevance for teaching.     

Verbal and spatial encoding of text

Two experiments were conducted which examined conjoint retention of spatial and verbal information in memory. The first experiment examined processing of text with simultaneous active dual coding. With spatial and verbal information from experiment one, the second experiment examined the effects of introducing dual coding prior to text processing and keyed recall to what was encoded prior to reading. Recall of both concrete features and events referring to these features was keyed to constructive encoding processes. Even minimal cueing produced better recall than no cues. Spatial primers produced not only better recall of features, but subjects who encoded spatial primers demonstrated increased ability to recall those primers. Results were interpretet in terms of dual coding theory for encoding and retrieval.     

Structural Zeros and Their Implications With Log‐Linear Bivariate Presmoothing Under the Internal‐Anchor Design

In equating, when common items are internal and scoring is conducted in terms of the number of correct items, some pairs of total scores (X) and common‐item scores (V) can never be observed in a bivariate distribution of X and V; these pairs are called structural zeros. This simulation study examines how equating results compare for different approaches to handling structural zeros. The study considers four approaches: the no‐smoothing, unique‐common, total‐common, and adjusted total‐common approaches. This study led to four main findings: (1) the total‐common approach generally had the worst results; (2) for relatively small effect sizes, the unique‐common approach generally had the smallest overall error; (3) for relatively large effect sizes, the adjusted total‐common approach generally had the smallest overall error; and, (4) if sole interest focuses on reducing bias only, the adjusted total‐common approach was generally preferable. These results suggest that, when common items are internal and log‐linear bivariate presmoothing is performed, structural zeros should be maintained, even if there is some loss in the moment preservation property.     

College Students with Disabilities: Factors Influencing Growth in Academic Ability and Confidence

Research in Higher Education - Using large-scale longitudinal data, this study sought to examine factors influencing two important student development outcomes in students with disabilities...     

Partial Identification of Answer Reviewing Effects in Multiple-Choice Exams

Does reviewing previous answers during multiple-choice exams help examinees increase their final score? This article formalizes the question using a rigorous causal framework, the potential outcomes framework. Viewing examinees’ reviewing status as a treatment and their final score as an outcome, the article first explains the challenges of identifying the causal effect of answer reviewing in regular exam-taking settings. In addition to the incapability of randomizing the treatment selection (reviewing status) and the lack of other information to make this selection process ignorable, the treatment variable itself is not fully known to researchers. Looking at examinees’ answer sheet data, it is unclear whether an examinee who did not change his or her answer on a specific item reviewed it but retained the initial answer (treatment condition) or chose not to review it (control condition). Despite such challenges, however, the article develops partial identification strategies and shows that the sign of the answer reviewing effect can be reasonably inferred. By analyzing a statewide math assessment data set, the article finds that reviewing initial answers is generally beneficial for examinees.