Testing the double-deficit hypothesis in an adult sample

The double-deficit hypothesis of dyslexia posits that reading deficits are more severe in individuals with weaknesses in phonological awareness and rapid naming than in individuals with deficits in only one of these reading composite skills. In this study, the hypothesis was tested in an adult sample as a model of reading achievement. Participants were parents of children referred for evaluation of reading difficulties. Approximately half of all participants reported difficulty learning to read in childhood and a small subset demonstrated ongoing weaknesses in reading. Structural equation modeling results suggest that the double-deficit hypothesis is an accurate model for understanding adult reading achievement. Better reading achievement was associated with better phonological awareness and faster rapid automatized naming in adults. Posthoc analyses indicated that individuals with double deficits had significantly lower reading achievement than individuals with single deficits or no deficits.     

Peer‐assisted Student Support at the University of Glamorgan: innovating the learning process?

This article analyses the overall performance of the Peer‐Assisted Student Support (PASS) Scheme in the Business School at the University of Glamorgan. Observations were made over a seven‐week period to measure the effectiveness of the scheme in terms of enhancing the student learning process. Weekly attendance was measured to establish patterns of demand in terms of age, gender and mentored subject area. Further quantitative and qualitative research was undertaken to provide an insight into the perceived benefits of the scheme in relation to student social development and academic performance. The empirical findings of this article show that PASS attendance is female dominated. Moreover, the research suggests that contrary to previous research, the majority of benefactors reside in the under‐21 age group. The findings also highlight that academic and laboratory‐based subjects are a considerable strain on PASS resources and more significantly superior academic performance is positively correlated with regular PASS attendance.     

A Review of Methods for Missing Data

This paper reviews methods for handling missing data in a research study. Many researchers use ad hoc methods such as complete case analysis, available case analysis (pairwise deletion), or single-value imputation. Though these methods are easily implemented, they require assumptions about the data that rarely hold in practice. Model-based methods such as maximum likelihood using the EM algorithm and multiple imputation hold more promise for dealing with difficulties caused by missing data. While model-based methods require specialized computer programs and assumptions about the nature of the missing data, these methods are appropriate for a wider range of situations than the more commonly used ad hoc methods. The paper provides an illustration of the methods using data from an intervention study designed to increase students’ ability to control their asthma symptoms.     

School‐based Management — pointing directions for twenty‐first century elementary and middle school principals

As man rushes to the dawn of the twenty‐first century, his society and our own system of education are engulfed in widespread changes. One of these provocative changes is the new move to the site‐based management concept whereby principals become the chief school officers of their own school site. The school principal, in essence, is to have complete control and responsibility over his/her school — the superintendent does not dictate, but rather, negotiates all school business with his principals. In light of this new movement, these two authors draw a parallel between past and present expectations of building principals and submit a planning model for on‐site managerial administrators to inspect, study and implement in accordance with their own needs. The reader is provided with an array of perspectives with which on‐site administrators must deal if total assumption of school‐site business and school programming becomes a reality in the USA and universally.     

Associative structure of integrated temporal relationships

According to the temporal-coding hypothesis (TCH; Savastano & Miller, Behavioural Processes 44:147–162, 1998), acquired associations include temporal information concerning the interval between the associated elements. Moreover, the TCH posits that subjects can integrate two independently acquired associations that share a common element (e.g., S2–S1 and S1–US), which results in the creation of a third association with its own temporal relationship (S2–US). Some evidence has suggested that such temporal integration occurs at the time of testing (Molet, Miguez, Cham, & Miller, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 38:369–380, 2012). Here we report two fear-conditioning experiments with rats conducted to identify the associative structure of the integrated temporal relationship. The goal was to distinguish between two possible associative structures that could exist following an initial test on which temporal integration occurs: (1) Conditioned responding to S2 on subsequent tests could be the result of recurring successive activation of two independently learned temporal maps that remain independently stored in memory (i.e., S2–S1 plus S1–US). (2) Temporal integration at the moment of initial testing could result in the formation of a direct S2–US (or S2–response) temporal map. Integration was found to occur at test and to produce a new association that was independent of associations with the common element (S1). However, the associative status of S1 appeared to modulate whether or not the new association with S2 was US-specific (S2–US) or directly activated a fear response (S2–response).