Does chroma on the line increase attention to the line in pigeons?

Two groups of pigeons received differential discrimination training on the presence vs absence of a vertical line on a white surround. The line was green for one group and black for a second group. Generalization tests along the angularity dimension showed that both green and black lines produced equally steep gradients. The results suggested that the addition of chroma to the line does not increase attention to the line.     

Phonological awareness,speech development,and letter knowledge in preschool children

Phonological awareness has been shown to be one of the most reliable predictors and associates of reading ability. In an attempt to better understand its development, we have examined the interrelations of speech skills and letter knowledge to the phonological awareness and early reading skills of 99 preschool children. We found that phoneme awareness, but not rhyme awareness, correlated with early reading measures. We further found that phoneme manipulation was closely associated with letter knowledge and with letter sound knowledge, in particular, where rhyme awareness was closely linked with speech perception and vocabulary. Phoneme judgment fell in between. The overall pattern of results is consistent with phonological representation as an important factor in the complex relationship between preschool children’s phonological awareness, their emerging knowledge of the orthography, and their developing speech skills. However, where rhyme awareness is a concomitant of speech and vocabulary development, phoneme awareness more clearly associates with the products of literacy experience.     

Orthographic processing and visual sequential memory in unexpectedly poor spellers

Does unexpectedly poor spelling in adults result from inferior visual sequential memory? In one experiment, unexpectedly poor spellers performed significantly worse than better spellers in the immediate reproduction of sequences of visual symbols, but in a second experiment, the effect was not replicated. Poor spellers were also no worse at the immediate recognition of symbol sequences. Overall, the results indicate that inferior visual memory is not characteristic of unexpectedly poor spellers. However, they do have less efficient orthographic processing skill: they were significantly slower and more error prone than better spellers at classifying both regularly and strangely spelt words, as well as at detecting letter transpositions in long words. They can thus be considered as subtly worse word readers than better spellers. While the findings question the notion of unexpectedly poor spelling in relation to normal adults, they provide confirmation of the intimate relationship between reading and spelling processes.     

The Linguistic Mass/Count Distinction as an Indicator of Referent Categorization in Monolingual and Bilingual Children

This study examines the acquisition of the linguistic mass/count distinction in English by bilingual (Spanish-English) children. The goal of the study is to explore whether bilingual children, like their monolingual peers, can draw information from the linguistic context in which a new noun id presented to determine whether the new word refers to an object or a substance. Results indicate that at 7 years of age, even bilinguals who are strong in English do not yet draw such inferences. By 9 years of age, however, bilinguals who are strong in English have response patterns similar to those of their monolingual peers but bilinguals who have lower English abilities still lag behind their monolingual peers in drawing such inferences.     

Enhancing the quality of early childhood education: A follow-up evaluation of an experiential, collaborative training model for head start

The study is a follow-up evaluation of a Collaborative Training curriculum for Head Start. The previous curriculum was enhanced by adding parent exemplars and demonstrations in trainees' classrooms. Two Head Start teachers and two parent volunteers from each of 70 classrooms were randomly assigned to either the enhanced Collaborative Training (CT) or Workshop Training (WT) approach. CT teachers and parents were involved conjointly in experiential training that included receiving guided practice and feedback from exemplary peers. WT consisted of a series of workshops conducted by outside trainers for separate groups of parents and teachers. Training methods were compared with respect to (a) trainees' reports of satisfaction with training and collaboration, and (b) observed levels of adult-adult and adult-child classroom interactions. CT teachers and parents reported significantly greater levels of satisfaction with the training, as well as significantly greater levels of collaboration than WT participants. Teacher-teacher and parent-teacher observations indicate that CT trainees showed higher levels of positive classroom interactions than WT trainees. With respect to adultchild classroom interactions, CT teachers demonstrated significantly more praise, supportive physical contact, and positive interactions in instruction than WT teachers. CT parents showed higher levels of adult-child classroom interactions across all observed categories compared to their WT counterparts. Implications of these findings for further research were discussed.