Investigation of Poor Academic Achievement in Children with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is a neurogenetic developmental disorder that presents with progressive muscular weakness. It is caused by a mutation in a gene that results in the absence of specific products that normally localize to muscle cells and the central nervous system (CNS). The majority of affected individuals have IQs within the normal range, generally with lower verbal than performance IQ scores. Prior work has demonstrated selective deficits on tests of verbal span and immediate memory. For the current study, 26 boys with DMD (and normal intellectual function) and their unaffected siblings were evaluated. Paired comparisons demonstrated that the children with DMD had significantly poorer academic achievement scores than their siblings, even though their vocabulary levels and home and educational environments were comparable. Children with DMD also had more behavioral concerns, physical disabilities, and poorer verbal memory spans. Linear regression indicated that behavioral concerns, executive function, and physical disability did not contribute substantially to academic performance, whereas performance on verbal span did. DMD presents with a selective developmental aberration in verbal span that has wide‐ranging consequences on learning skills.     

Assessing School Readiness: Validity and Bias in Preschool and Kindergarten Teachers' Ratings

As a part of efforts to evaluate and monitor the increasing public investment in early childhood education, teachers are being asked to assess children's school readiness. In this study, preschool teachers and kindergarten teachers rated children's skills in three areas (kindergarten readiness, academic skills, and communication skills), and these ratings were compared with direct assessments of the children's skills. Ratings by both groups of teachers tended to be more highly related to basic skills, such as counting and number naming, than to abilities such as solving applied problems and using expressive and receptive vocabulary. Preschool teachers' ratings had a lower association with children's observed skills and abilities than kindergarten teachers' ratings. Ratings of children attending Head Start were systematically inflated, but this relationship was mediated to a significant extent by the teachers' levels of education. More educated teachers rated children in a manner consistent with the children's directly assessed skills. Implications of these findings for informing future efforts to assess school readiness by using teacher ratings are discussed.     

冠军由基因决定吗?

本文要点: ◆遗传型是机体全部遗传基因的总和,代表了个体的遗传潜力.在决定个体的解剖、生化、生理、行为等特性或遗传表型(如褐色的眼睛、75kg的体重、50 ml/kg/min的最大摄氧量等)上起主导作用.     

The Uncertain Future for Digital Visual Collections in the University

Digital documents in the networked information environment fundamentally change the ways that visual materials can be used in education and scholarly discourse. These new uses raise questions about research library strategies with regard to digitized visual materials as a part of their collections, challenge assumptions underlying intellectual property rights for images and their scope, and offer ways in which visual literacy can become a more integral part of the common educational experience.     

That vision thing.

The 1991 Janet Doe lecturer describes the vision held by the founders of the Medical Library Association of medical information being readily accessible to health professionals no matter how far they were located from major medical centers, and traces the pursuit of this vision to current outreach activities.     

Neuropsychological classification and treatment of dyslexia.

Evidence shows that initial and advanced learning to read are predominantly mediated by the right and left cerebral hemispheres, respectively. Premature reliance on left-hemispheric reading strategies may result in L-type dyslexia, characterized by hurried and inaccurate reading. P-type dyslexia, characterized by a slow and fragmented style of reading, may result from the inability to shift from the predominant generation of right-hemispheric reading strategies to the predominant generation of left-hemispheric reading strategies. Results of investigations concerning the validity of the L/P-typology are discussed, as are the reading effects of hemisphere-specific and hemisphere-alluding stimulation in children with L- and P-type dyslexia.