Fifty years of research on the intelligence of deaf and hard-of-hearing children: a review of literature and discussion of implications

In 1965, McCay Vernon drove a stake through the heart of the long-established "truth" that deaf people were inferior to hearing people. Launched by Aristotle, emboldened by the 1880 Conference of Milan, and reiterated in the twentieth century through the biased research of many psychologists, this falsehood persisted until the publication of this classic review paper. Vernon succinctly spotlights biases in IQ assessment of deaf children resulting from improper testing methods, research participant sampling, even the experience level of the evaluators themselves. Brief and scholarly, the paper had enormous impact not only on future research regarding cognition and deaf people but on clinical practice as well. Within this paper, insights are evident which Vernon has continued to elucidate throughout his long career. He was arguably the first psychologist to view the deaf population as a heterogeneous one, noting how various hearing loss etiologies differentially affect cognition and other psychological characteristics. His later research, notably that which focused on rubella, deafblind, and deaf forensic populations, has been similarly pioneering. McCay Vernon's extensive professional impact stems not only from his prolific, readily applied research work but also from his generous and vigorous activities as a teacher, a mentor, and advisor. - Robert Q. Pollard, Jr.     

Symmetry properties of tetraammine platinum（Ⅱ） with C2v and C4v point groups

Let G be a weighted graph with adjacency matrix A=[aij]. An Euclidean graph associated with a molecule is defined by a weighted graph with adjacency matrix D=[d/ij], where for i≠j, dij is the Euclidean distance between the nuclei i and j. In this matrix dij can be taken as zero if all the nuclei are equivalent. Otherwise, one may introduce different weights for different nuclei.Balasubramanian (1995) computed the Euclidean graphs and their automorphism groups for benzene, eclipsed and staggered forms of ethane and eclipsed and staggered forms of ferroeene. This paper describes a simple method, by means of which it is possible to calculate the automorphism group of weighted graphs. We apply this method to compute the symmetry of tetraammine platinum(Ⅱ) with C2v and C4v point groups.     

Implementation of a new PC based controller for a PUMA robot

This paper describes the replacement of a controller for a programmable universal machine for assembly (PUMA) 512 robot with a newly designed PC based (open architecture) controller employing a real-time direct control of six joints. The original structure of the PUMA robot is retained. The hardware of the new controller includes such in-house designed parts as pulse width modulation (PWM) amplifiers, digital and analog controllers, I/O cards, signal conditioner cards, and 16-bit A/D and D/A boards. An Intel Pentium IV industrial computer is used as the central controller. The control software is implemented using VC programming language. The trajectory tracking performance of all six joints is tested at varying velocities. Experimental results show that it is feasible to implement the suggested open architecture platform for PUMA 500 series robots through the software routines running on a PC. By assembling controller from off-the-shell hardware and software components, the benefits of reduced and improved robustness have been realized.     

关于英语任务型教学的几点讨论

英语任务型教学是指教师将教学内容分割为一个或多个具体的活动任务,让学习者通过运用语言完成指定的任务来学习语言。在这种教学方法中,学习者的重点是放在语言的功能上,而不是在语言的结构上。其教学目的是使学生懂得语言的形式、意义和功能,使学生懂得不同形式的语言结构可以表示同一种功能,同一种结构也可以用来表示不同的功能,最终让学生运用语言完成不同的任务,达到交际目的。在英语任务型教学中,教师要激起学生完成任务的兴趣(即调用学生大脑已存有的相关知识),接着让学生在完成任务的过程中重新建构自己的英语知识体系(即讲授新课),…     

Maternal representations of the infant: associations with infant response to the still face

Mothers' representations of their infants may influence early development of emotional self-regulation. This study examined the associations between characteristics of mothers' (N = 100) narratives about their 7-month-old infants, maternal depression, and their infants' affect regulation during the Still Face procedure. Findings showed that (1) mothers' representations were linked with individual differences in their infants' behavior across the Still Face procedure, (2) the association between mothers' representations and their infants' behavior was mediated by parenting behavior, and (3) mothers' representations explained unique variance in their infants' affect regulation beyond the contribution of maternal depression. Although infants' displays of positive affect diminished while mothers held a still face, only infants of mothers in the balanced representation category returned to high levels of positive affect upon resuming interaction. These findings highlight the role of maternal representations in the process by which dyads repair temporary disruptions in interaction, as well as individual differences in infants' and mothers' responses to the Still Face.     

高等师范院校转型中教师信息素质培养对策

信息素质是教师素质中最重要的内容之一,信息素质教育是高等师范院校转型中教师教育的一个重要组成部分。教师的信息素质关系到素质教育的实施和我国教育信息化进程,提高教师的信息素质势在必行。文章针对目前高等师范院校转型中教师信息素质方面存在的问题,探索了提高高师信息素质教育的对策。     

Comparisons of adopted and nonadopted adolescents in a large, nationally representative sample

There are conflicting findings about whether adopted children have more psychological and behavioral problems than nonadoptees. Research results are discrepant partly because many previous studies were based on small clinical samples or on samples biased by self-selection. A nationally representative school survey (Add Health) was used to compare adopted (n = 1,587) and nonadopted adolescents (total N = 87,165) across a wide variety of measures. Standardized mean differences show that adopted adolescents are at higher risk in all of the domains examined, including school achievement and problems, substance use, psychological well-being, physical health, fighting, and lying to parents. Demographic and background variable breakdowns show that the effect sizes for differences between adopted and nonadopted adolescents were larger for males, younger or older adolescents, Hispanics or Asians, and adolescents living in group homes or with parents of low education. Distributional analyses revealed approximately a 1:1 ratio of adopted to nonadopted adolescents in the middle ranges of the outcome variables but a ratio of 3:1 or greater near the tails of the distributions. These data clearly show that more adopted adolescents have problems of various kinds than their nonadopted peers; effect sizes were small to moderate based on mean differences, but comparisons of distributions suggest much larger proportions of adopted than nonadopted adolescents at the extremes of salient outcome variables.     

An adaptive finite element procedure for crack propagation analysis

INTRODUCTION The finite element method (FEM) has proved to be very well suited for the study of fracture mechanics. Nevertheless, modelling the propagation of a crack through a finite element mesh turns out to be difficult because of the modification of the mesh topology. Use of crack propagation laws based on stress inten-sity factor range is the most successful engineering application of fracture mechanics. The stress intensity factors are a very important parameter in fracture analys…     

Naming difficulties in children with dyslexia: application of the tip-of-the-tongue paradigm

The present study used the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experimental paradigm in a picture naming task to explore the source of the naming deficits of children with dyslexia. Compared with a control group of typically developing readers, the children with dyslexia showed fewer correct responses and spontaneous recalls, more don't know (DK) and TOT responses, and less accurate feeling of knowing (FOK) judgments. When they failed to retrieve a target word, the children with dyslexia did not differ from the control group in the partial semantic information they provided, but they gave less valid and more invalid partial phonological information. The children with dyslexia also benefited less from phonological cues. The phonologically related responses of the children with dyslexia elicited during the administration of the TOT procedure were related to their performance on a phonological awareness test. These findings suggest that the naming problems of children with dyslexia arise because of their difficulty in accessing the phonological word forms after the corresponding abstract lexical representation has been successfully accessed. The results are discussed in relation to the claim that two-stage models of naming can be profitably used in the early identification and treatment of reading disabilities.