Shared Entertainment,Shared Opinions: The Influence of Social TV Comments on the Evaluation of Talent Shows

The present research investigated whether co-viewer comments in social TV interactions are able to enhance or weaken media effects. With the example of talent shows, the valence of co-viewer comments (pro/contra/none) as well as the type of content (antisocial behavior vs. conventional performance) were varied in an experiment (N = 117). Results showed that participants’ own comments and their private attitudes about the judges varied in line with comment valence. Findings suggest that social TV viewers are prone to social influence of their co-viewers, which might amplify problems regarding the portrayal of antisocial behavior in reality TV.     

Writing and reading knowledge of Spanish/English second-generation bilinguals

Written bilingualism represents a particular type of bilingualism that is not frequently approached. The aim of this study was to investigate the writing and reading abilities of second-generation immigrants, Spanish–English bilinguals in South Florida. 58 participants (36 females, 22 males; 18–39 years of age) were selected. Both parents were native Spanish speakers and the home language was Spanish; 37 were born in the United States and 21 were born in a Latin American country, but arrived to the US before the age of 10. Equivalent reading and writing tests were administered both in Spanish and English. Performance was significantly higher in English than in Spanish in the following tests: reading aloud (speed and errors), writing sentences, spontaneous writing number of words, and spontaneous writing errors (spelling and grammatical). When comparing those participants born in the US and abroad, no significant differences were found in Spanish, but in English; participants born in the US did better in reading aloud (errors), and spontaneous writing errors (spelling and grammatical). It was concluded that reading and writing abilities are in general higher in English than in Spanish in this group of bilinguals, which is correlated with the language used in the school they attended. This study emphasize the importance to analyze not only oral but also written bilingualism. Toward the future, it would be particularly important to study written bilingualism in other types of bilingualism.     

Cognitive and environmental predictors of early literacy skills

Not all young children benefit from book exposure in preschool age. It is claimed that the ability to hold information in mind (short-term memory), to ignore distraction (inhibition), and to focus attention and stay focused (sustained attention) may have a moderating effect on children’s reactions to the home literacy environment. In a group of 228 junior kindergarten children with a native Dutch background, with a mean age of 54.29 months (SD = 2.12 months), we explored therefore the relationship between book exposure, cognitive control and early literacy skills. Parents filled in a HLE questionnaire (book sharing frequency and an author recognition checklist as indicator of parental leisure reading habits), and children completed several tests in individual sessions with the researcher (a book-cover recognition test, PPVT, letter knowledge test, the subtests categories and patterns of the SON, and cognitive control measures namely digit span of the KABC, a peg tapping task and sustained attention of the ANT). Main findings were: (1) Children’s storybook knowledge mediated the relationship between home literacy environment and literacy skills. (2) Both vocabulary and letter knowledge were predicted by book exposure. (3) Short-term memory predicted vocabulary over and above book exposure. (4) None of the cognitive control mechanisms moderated the beneficial effects of book exposure.     

Forms and practices of accountability in education

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability -     

From teaching from the heart to teaching with a heart: Segmenting filipino college students’ views of their teachers’ caring behavior and their orientations as cared-for individuals

Caring, as a universal human phenomenon, should permeate elementary, secondary and tertiary level instruction. The practice of teaching, especially at the tertiary level, is not only substantial and procedural but relational as well. To teach with a heart is the essence that makes teaching a form of caring. When teaching is viewed as a form of caring, teachers become relational geniuses in their own right. This study is an attempt to segment Filipino college students’ views (n=1000) of their teachers’ caring behavior and their orientations as cared-for individuals. The identified clusters of teacher roles that indicate caring behavior imply that acts of teaching become acts of caring depending on how the teachers, theefficient cause of education, perform their ordinary tasks in the context ofextraordinariness. Such extraordinariness spells out a big difference in the way teachers practice the so-calledsingle loop caring or caring visibility anddouble- loop caring or caring presence. The former refers to teaching from the heart while the latter pertains to teaching with a heart. Interestingly, the extent to which teachers’ caring behavior is felt and experienced by the students positively shapes their orientations as cared-for individuals.     

Metacognitive monitoring in university classes: anticipating a graded vs. a pass-fail test affects monitoring accuracy

Three field studies tested the hypothesis that anticipating a graded test as opposed to a pass-fail test enhances metacognitive monitoring. Participants were teacher candidates who completed a mid-term and a final test in psychology courses. Each participant chose whether the result of the final test should be evaluated with one of five grades or with a pass-fail decision. In both tests, participants answered true–false inference items about the contents of the course and indicated their confidence in the correctness of each answer. When a graded test was expected, confidence and the absolute accuracy of the confidence judgments increased and bias decreased to a greater extent than when a pass-fail decision was expected. However, expecting a grade increased participants’ confidence not only in correct answers but also in incorrect answers (Study 1). Feedback and instructions emphasizing the importance of accurate discrimination between correct and incorrect answers did not weaken this effect (Study 2). The generalizability of the findings was investigated by reanalyzing the test results of participants in eight other psychology courses (Study 3). The results are discussed in terms of the motivational consequences of grading.