Ethnic Variations in Personal Social Networks and Parenting

Ecological perspectives emphasize social network influences on child rearing, but do these effects vary with ethnicity, and are they mediated by parental well-being? Low-income parents ( N = 500) of ethnically and ecologically diverse backgrounds completed a multidimensional hierarchical social map and measures of parental self-esteem and child-rearing practices. Consistent with prior ethnographic studies, American Indians had frequent interchanges with an interconnected web of kin; Hispanic¹ parents had large, close-knit social networks but a smaller number of people who provided emotional support; and Anglo parents had structurally diffuse but emotionally supportive networks. Within-ethnicity regression analyses, covarying psychosocial risk, revealed that the affective but not structural dimensions of social networks were consistently related to parenting. Parental self-efficacy was strongly related to child-rearing practices across all ethnic groups, and mediated the effects of social support. Implications for the social ecology of child rearing and the central role of parental self-appraisals are discussed.     

Medical Student Video Use and Summative Exam Performance during the First-Year Pre-Clinical Coursework and Implications in Distance Education

ABSTRACT

Medical student use of lecture video (live-streaming and/or recorded) at a regional medical school campus that utilized distance educational technology to deliver first-year pre-clinical lecture content, was examined. Additionally, medical student video lecture use was compared to student performance on summative exams and final course grades. All learners achieved desired scientific competencies across all courses irrespective of their use of live-streamed or recorded video formats. Throughout the course of the year, medical student video use partitioned into one of two groups: students that only watched lecture in live-streaming format, and those that watched lecture only in recorded format. Interestingly, those medical students that predominantly preferred view lectures using the live-streaming format tended to achieve better summative test scores and final course grades compared to their peers that primarily utilized recorded video to obtain lecture content. Retrospectively, dimensions of personality scores were compared between the two groups (live-streaming viewers versus recorded viewers), and, of the five dimensions of personality, only the domain of conscientiousness differed between the two groups. This study suggests that, while medical students reached academic milestones utilizing either recorded or live-streamed video for obtaining lecture content during their first-year pre-clinical courses, there may be factors of learner personality influencing video use preference which in turn enhances student performance on summative exams and final course grades. These findings may have implications in curriculum design for other distance educational formats emphasizing classical scientific competencies in post-undergraduate study that rely on video delivery of lecture content.     

Walther Merck 70 Jahre

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Small-scale deceit: deception as a marker of two-, three-, and four-year-olds' early theories of mind

This research report summarizes the results of a study into the abilities of 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children to deceptively lead others into false beliefs, and is intended to help arbitrate a growing controversy as to when young persons first acquire some theory-like understanding of other minds. Utilizing a novel hide-and-seek board game as a context within which to observe children's spontaneous use of deceptive strategies, a total of 50 subjects between the ages of 2 1/2 and 5 were tested. In contrast to the competing findings of others, which are claimed to establish that children younger than approximately 4 suffer a cognitive deficit that wholly blocks them from the possibility of entertaining any sort of contrastive beliefs about beliefs, the results of this study show that even 2 1/2-year-olds are capable of already successfully employing a range of deceptive strategies that both trade upon an awareness of the possibility of false beliefs and presuppose some already operative theory of mind.     

Fledgling Theories of Mind: Deception as a Marker of Three-Year-Olds' Understanding of False Belief

3 studies involving more than 70 3- and 4-year-olds were carried out in an effort to better secure an earlier but controversial set of findings interpreted as demonstrating that children younger than 4 already have a grasp of the possibility of false belief, and consequently deserve to be credited with some authentic if fledgling theory of mind. These studies, which relied on a measure of deceptive hiding rather than more familiar "unexpected change" procedures for indexing false belief understanding, all demonstrated that even the youngest of these subjects: (a) accurately anticipated the likely impact of their deceptive strategies on both the behaviors (Study 1) and beliefs (Study 3) of their opponents, and (b) were able to selectively employ these same methods of information management as a means of helping as well as hindering the efforts of others (Study 2).     

Galileo's ‘Jumping-Hill’ Experiment in the Classroom – A Constructivist's Analysis

Historical elements can improve scienceteaching if they are suitably introduced into theclassroom. Galileo's jumping-hill experiment can betaken as an example. The following considerations showthat the reproduced experiment can stimulate ananimated discussion in the classroom, even if itsprecise historic circumstances are not mentioned. Onthe other hand, the historical dimension brings somecolour into the lesson, which increases attention.