Prominent Messages in Television Drama Switched at Birth Promote Attitude Change Toward Deafness

The study at hand employed a pre- versus posttest experimental design to test the effects of television drama Switched at Birth on viewers’ attitudes toward deafness. This program tells the story of two teenage girls (one of whom is deaf) and their struggles to relate to their peers and families after discovering they were switched as newborns. Two hundred eleven female adults completed pre- and postexposure measures utilizing Cooper, Rose, and Mason's (2004 Cooper , A. , Rose , J. , &; Mason , O. ( 2004 ). Measuring the attitudes of human service professionals toward deafness . American Annals of the Deaf , 148 , 385 – 389 .[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) Attitudes to Deafness measure, the items of which were categorized according to thematic dimensions. After exposure to one of three episodes, viewers’ attitudes toward deafness significantly improved overall, although significant differences in attitude changes varied by episodes and dimensions. The three thematic dimensions that were most strongly represented in the program (social interaction, deafness as a handicap, and language issues) appeared to show the strongest attitude change. Positive attitude changes were observed on social interaction and deafness as handicap dimensions, which was consistent with program content depicting positive deaf-hearing friendships and capable deaf characters. However, attitudes on the language issues dimension showed a negative shift, possibly due to the way that deaf characters communicated with hearing characters onscreen.     

Remembering Things Without Context: Development Matters

Spatial context supports memory retrieval in adults. To understand the development of these effects, context effects on object recognition were tested in neurotypical children ages 3 years to adulthood (n 3–6 years = 34, n 10–16 years = 32, n college age = 22) and individuals with Down syndrome (DS) ages 10–29 years (n = 21). Participants engaged in an object recognition task; objects were presented in scenes and either remained in that same scene or were removed at test. In some groups (< 4.5 years and with DS) context effects were present even though object recognition was poor. After 4.5 years, children demonstrated memory flexibility, while later in adolescence context effects reemerged, showing nonlinearity in the development of these effects.     

Eysenck's BIG THREE and communication traits: Communication traits as manifestations of temperament

Two studies are reported which sought to determine the possible limitations of the proposition that “temperament is manifest through communication.”; The results of earlier studies suggest that many communication related traits indeed are correlated with one or more temperament variables. In the present study Willingness to Communicate, Singing Apprehension, and Innovativeness were found to be associated with one or more of the BIG THREE temperament variables. Writing apprehension was found to have no meaningful relationship with any of the temperament variables. It is concluded that, while most important oral communication traits probably are correlated with one or more temperament traits, some other communication traits, like writing apprehension, may not be.     

Implementing Twitter in a Health Sciences Library

The NYU Health Sciences Libraries created an account on Twitter, a microblogging service, as a new outreach tool marketed to students, faculty, and staff. The team used Twitter to promote resources, events, and news. Twitter is a part of a pipeline of information that also includes the library's Web site and Facebook. Although it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of a social networking tool, the overhead of using Twitter is so low that it merits consideration.     

Functions of aggressive behavior and future functional impairment

The present study investigated relations between proactive and reactive functions of physical and relational aggression and functional impairment across early childhood. It was hypothesized that reactive functions of aggression would be associated with functional impairment. Hypotheses with regard to proactive functions of aggression were exploratory. Participants were 36 children (22 girls) from a longitudinal study. At Time 1 (M = 50.31 months old, SD = 10.97), observations of aggressive behavior were collected during preschool free-play. At Time 2 (M = 73.33 months old, SD = 10.88), parent-report of functional impairment was collected. Reactive physical aggression was a significant and unique predictor of future impairment when controlling for gender and all other types of aggression. Implications of these findings are discussed from a developmental perspective.     

Changes in Examination Performance in English Secondary Schools over the Course of a Decade: Searching for Patterns and Trends Over Time

The article explores changes in the examination performance of a random sample of 500 English secondary schools between 1992 and 2001. Using econometric methods, it concludes that: there is an overall deterministic trend in school performance but it is not stable, making prediction accuracy poor; the aggregate trend does not explain improvement over time at school level, where there is very considerable variation in improvement paths; there is a degree of persistence with respect to changes in performance at school level but it is short-lived; whilst there is evidence of a general upward trend across schools, there is a large amount of year-to-year variation and little evidence of sustained improvement at school level; and the model applied has little ability to forecast the direction of change for particular schools in the following year(s).     

Pupil Talk in Biology Practical Work‐‐a preliminary study

The development of a framework for analysing pupil talk is described and the reliability of scoring transcribed conversations using the framework discussed. Preliminary findings from this study on the talk occurring during small group practical work in biology focus on the forms of verbal interaction that occur, patterns of verbal interactions shown by individuals within groups and the possible link between such patterns and roles within the groups.