Working and Playing Together: Prediction of Preschool Social-Emotional Competence from Mother-Child Interaction

The impact of mother-child interaction on preschoolers' social-emotional competence was evaluated. Twenty-five girls and 23 boys (mean age = 44 mos) and their mothers were videotaped performing four play/teaching tasks. Preschool teachers completed the Baumrind Preschool Behavior Q-Sort and the Behar Problem Behavior Questionnaire. Mother-child interaction aggregates represented task orientation, positive emotion, and allowance of autonomy/reliance on mother. Results indicated that specific maternal interaction aggregates coherently predicted the children's Positive Social Behavior, Assertiveness, and Sadness in the preschool setting. Child aggregates were less effective predictors of teachers' ratings. Several gender differences in the prediction of social-emotional competence were found (e.g., maternal allowance of autonomy predicted girls' sadness, but boys' sadness was predicted by their own negative emotion). These findings' contributions to the parent-child literature are discussed.     

Play as the Leading Activity of the Preschool Period: Insights from Vygotsky, Leont'ev, and Bakhtin

Cultural-historical psychology identifies play as the leading activity in preschool development. Vygotsky's (1967, 1978) seminal work outlined two categories of leading influences: play makes a foundational contribution to the development of semiotic mediation, and it involves active appropriation of social roles and rules and other integral aspects of social organization. Leont'ev's (1981) concept of appropriation and Bakhtin's (1981) concepts of heteroglossia and ideological becoming are used to elaborate and extend Vygotsky's original work, particularly with regard to creativity in preschool play. The paper concludes with a consideration of the pedagogical implications of the cultural-historical view on play, including the use of play to cultivate understanding of the arbitrary nature of signs and the appropriation of the social roles and organizational patterns of society.     

The 'Simple View' of Reading: Some evidence and possible implications

This article explores components of reading accuracy and comprehension in 14 teenagers. The study contrasted the explanatory power of decoding and listening comprehension subskills (the 'simple view of reading'; Gough & Tunmer, 1990), and 'verbal cognitive ability' (a more traditional psychometric model). Research also investigated teenagers' literacy self-percepts. Listening comprehension was the best predictor of reading comprehension, although reading accuracy was an additional predictor. Decoding skills best predicted reading accuracy. Reading self-percepts correlated with decoding but not comprehension skills. Possible uses of 'the simple view of reading' for conceptualisations of literacy problems, interventions and effective professional roles are considered.     

Reasons for Changing Answers: An Evaluation Using Personal Interviews

Researchers investigating answer changing have consistently found the preponderance of changes on objective items to be from wrong to right, but little is understood about the mechanisms involved in this phenomenon. In this study, personal interviews were combined with instruction in answer-changing research to investigate further the processes involved in answer changing. Students changed answers and gained from changing, with those in the upper two thirds of the classes gaining the most. Each test-taking strategy produced a mean gain, but particular strategies were not significantly correlated with percentage of gain or percentage of change. Most students reported changing answers for thoughtful reasons such as rereading, rethinking, or remembering more information; very few changes were due to clerical errors. For each reason, most changes were wrong-to-right. We conclude that reconsideration of test items is probably underestimated in answer-changing studies. The role of memory should be considered in why people change and in how successful they judge their changing to have been.     

One-to-One Computing and Student Achievement in Ohio High Schools

This study explores the impact of one-to-one computing on student achievement in Ohio high schools as measured by performance on the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT). The sample included 24 treatment schools that were individually paired with a similar control school. An interrupted time series methodology was deployed to examine OGT data over a period of 5 to 8 years. Overall student performance and content-specific achievement in math, reading, science, social studies, and writing were not significantly affected by the introduction of 1:1 computing. Treatment schools using a netbook device produced the greatest overall change in scores.     

Zinc: what is its role in biology?

Zinc is as common as iron in biology. It is usually thought to be a trace element required only for catalysis. Here it is shown that the role of zinc is much more fundamental not only in catalysis but in inhibitory control. There may well be several such control elements—calcium, iron, manganese, magnesium, and zinc.     

Browsing mixed structured and unstructured data

Both structured and unstructured data, as well as structured data representing several different types of tuples, may be integrated into a single list for browsing or retrieval. Data may be arranged in the Gray code order of the features and metadata, producing optimal ordering for browsing. We provide several metrics for evaluating the performance of systems supporting browsing, given some constraints. Metadata and indexing terms are used for sorting keys and attributes for structured data, as well as for semi-structured or unstructured documents, images, media, etc. Economic and information theoretic models are suggested that enable the ordering to adapt to user preferences. Different relational structures and unstructured data may be integrated into a single, optimal ordering for browsing or for displaying tables in digital libraries, database management systems, or information retrieval systems. Adaptive displays of data are discussed.     

Maintenance of responding when reinforcement becomes delayed

In four experiments with rats, we examined the persistence of behavior when reinforcement was switched from immediate to delayed. In Experiment 1, lever pressing elicited by instrumental training with immediate reinforcement continued when a 20-sec delay of reinforcement was introduced (easy-to-hard condition), whereas when the delay condition was introduced from the start (hard-to-hard condition), responding remained low throughout. A similar result was obtained in Experiment 2, in which lever pressing was elicited by a classical conditioning (autoshaping) procedure. In Experiment 3, rats initially trained with delayed reinforcement continued to respond at a low rate when switched to immediate reinforcement (hard-to-easy condition). By measuring magazine entry (goal tracking) as well as lever pressing (sign tracking) in Experiment 4, we confirmed that such transfer effects at least partly involve the persistence of whatever type of behavior was initially dominant.     

Open Source software in US higher education: Reality or illusion?

As institutions of Higher Education try to balance limited resources with the rising costs of technology, some institutions are turning to Open Source software for campus-wide applications such as course management systems and portals. The assumption is that Open Source will provide the flexibility to build pedagogically sound learning environments while increasing technology efficiencies. This paper outlines the current state of Open Source software deployment in US Higher Education based on a survey of 772 Chief Academic Officers and Chief Information Officers conducted in 2006. The results indicate that Carnegie classification is a critical differentiator of awareness, adoption, and perceptions of Open Source software applications, with perceived cost of ownership being the key driver of Open Source adoption. Moreover, the study shows that institutions have made little progress in the development of polices and procedures for Open Source regulatory compliance and security. The study serves as a baseline for future research into the conditions for successful use of Open Source for supporting integrated learning environments that deliver campus-wide efficiencies.