Predictors of reading delay in deaf adolescents: the relative contributions of rapid automatized naming speed and phonological awareness and decoding

Deaf readers often fail to achieve age-appropriate reading levels. In hearing children, two cognitive factors correlated with reading delay are phonological awareness and decoding (PAD) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) of visual material. In this study we explored the contribution of these factors to reading and reading delay in a sample of deaf students (N = 49, mean age 13 years) whose reading age (RA) was around 7 years. Although PAD performance was poor in the deaf students compared with RA-matched hearing controls, it nevertheless correlated with their RA. Whether tested in sign or speech, RAN was much faster in the deaf group than in RA-matched hearing controls but showed no direct relationship with reading level or reading delay. We conclude that in contrast to PAD, which is a factor in both deaf and hearing reading achievement, RAN may be only indirectly related to reading in deaf students.     

Conditioned reinforcement and complex discrimination: Can conditioned reinforcing value be specific to a complex of three cues?

The present experiment is concerned with the nature of the cues that might acquire conditioned reinforcing value, and the ways in which such cues might interact with one another. Red and green colored keylights were differentially paired with food dependent upon the houselight context (A or B) and the trial type (training or choice/forced). The duration of the colored keylights was varied between groups in an attempt to manipulate the effectiveness of the short-term memory of trial-type cues at the trial’s end. The red and green stimuli were of 30 sec duration for Group 30 and of 3 sec duration for Group 3. The results indicated that the choices of the pigeons in Group 30 were influenced by the houselight context present and by the keylight color. The choices of the pigeons in Group 3 seemed to be influenced by the houselight context present, the keylight color, and the memory of trial-type cues. Memory cues for trial antecedents were not overshadowed by presumably more salient external houselight stimuli for the pigeons in Group 3. Two alternative explanations for the results are discussed, and determined to be unlikely based on the results of an earlier experiment. The present results are related to a model of the conditioned reinforcing value of momentary stimuli and of transmission of conditioned reinforcing value.     

The Nature of Learning Styles and their Relationship to Cognitive Performance in Children

150 11‐year‐old children were given the following tests of learning style and personality: (a) the Group Embedded Figures Test, (b) a test of Levelling‐Sharpening, (c) the Verbal‐Imagery Code Test, (d) the Betts Test on Mental Imagery, (e) the Matching Familiar Figures Test and (f) the Junior Eysenck Personality Inventory. A factor analysis of the scores on the tests indicated four factors which were labelled: Differentiation, Representation, Response Efficiency and Neuroticism. Tests (a) and (b) loaded on Factor I, tests (c) and the extroversion of (J) on Factor II. One of the scores from (e) loaded on Factor III, and the neuroticism of (f) on Factor IV. In order to compare learning with cognitive performance, one measure which loaded highly on the factor was taken for each of the first three factors and used together with sex as a predictor of performance on the immediate recall of concrete and abstract prose passages. An analysis of variance indicated two significant interactions: (1) extroverts did better on the abstract than the concrete prose passage recall, while for the introverts the opposite was found, (2) all three style measures and sex interacted in their effect on prose recall.     

Stimulus duration and conditioned reinforcing value measured by a learning-tests procedure

The relationship between the duration of stimuli and their conditioned reinforcing effect was investigated using a learning-tests procedure. In Experiment 1, stimuli were the same duration on training (stimulus → reward) and test (choice response → stimulus). Ten- and 30-sec stimuli provided effective differential conditioned reinforcement but 3-sec stimuli did not. In Experiment 2, different pigeons had each combination of the 3- and 30-sec stimuli on training and test trials. Evidence of conditioned reinforcement was obtained only for the birds with 30-sec stimuli on both training and test. The results were interpreted as indicating that stimuli become effective conditioned reinforcers on test trials only when their duration exceeds the duration of differential short-term memory cues resulting from a difference in the events that precede them on training and test trials.     

做好“关系的领导管理”

关于“关系的领导管理”，我们并不陌生。事实上，领导就是关于各种关系的管理。来自内部和外部的各种关系构成了一个复杂的网络，关系的领导管理就是指协调、整合这些关系。     

Models for spaces of duration-limited signals

This paper is a study of models of spaces of duration-limited signals considered as set functions. Models for the space of bounded signals, signals of bounded area and signals of finite energy are considered. It is shown that by using set function models and a Stieltjes integral for set functions one can derive integral representations for all bounded linear operators on each of these spaces. It is also shown that impulse functions can be treated rigorously as signals of bounded area in these models without introducing singularities, or requiring impulses to be considered as functionals on a signal space rather than as signals. Finally, analogues to differentiation and indefinite integration are introduced. The applications of these models to physical problems are illustrated by reformulating lumped parameter electrical network theory in a set function formalism, and approximate solutions to the resulting equations are shown.     

Scaling-up successfully: Pathways to replication for educational NGOs

Non-government organisations (NGOs) are big players in international development, critical to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and constantly under pressure to ‘achieve more’. Scaling-up their initiatives successfully and sustainably can be an efficient and cost effective way for NGOs to increase their impact across a range of developmental outcomes, but relatively little attention has been paid in the education sector to how best this may be done and debates appear to have stalled. One approach to scaling-up is replication, on which this paper focuses. While there is no one universally applicable path through which an educational NGO can achieve successful replication, more can be done to support choice of the best path to follow, with respect to specific NGO circumstances and the context within which it operates – and hopes to operate in future. This paper presents four known paths to replication alongside new illustrative diagrams to explore their advantages and disadvantages, and highlights the need for a fifth approach that does not appear in current literature. ‘Network replication’ is proposed as new pathway that draws on known strengths of networks and offers a learning-oriented approach to scaling-up. While inevitably not without its potential problems, Network replication is a scaling-up option that deserves consideration.