State-Dependent Memory in Infants

Why do infants remember some things and not others? Human infants frequently cycle through different states such as calm attentiveness, wakeful activity, and crying. Given that cognitive processes do not occur in isolation, such fluctuations in internal state might influence memory processing. In the present experiment, declarative memory in 9-month-old infants (N = 96) was heavily state dependent. Infants exhibited excellent retention of a deferred imitation task after a 15-min delay if their state at encoding was identical to their state at retrieval (e.g., calm). Infants failed to exhibit retention if their state at encoding was different from their state at retrieval (e.g., calm vs. animated). Infant memory processing depends on internal cues.     

What Counts? Sources of Knowledge in Children’s Acquisition of the Successor Function

Although many U.S. children can count sets by 4 years, it is not until 5½–6 years that they understand how counting relates to number—that is, that adding 1 to a set necessitates counting up one number. This study examined two knowledge sources that 3½- to 6-year-olds (N = 136) may leverage to acquire this “successor function”: (a) mastery of productive rules governing count list generation; and (b) training with “+1” math facts. Both productive counting and “+1” math facts were related to understanding that adding 1 to sets entails counting up one number in the count list; however, even children with robust successor knowledge struggled with its arithmetic expression, suggesting they do not generalize the successor function from “+1” math facts.     

A writing story： Opening up to judgement-Individual assessment as system assessment or writing as school

This is a writing story about trying to create just classroom assessment practices not excluding anybody and therefore an attempt to explore what an opening up to judgment, and in my view, what assessment focused on learning might mean and subsequently imply. Social justice and democracy is at stake. How to develop and improve our assessment literacy？ How to develop trustworthy and good assessment systems？ What are our tools and what methods can we use？ Given a discussion about either summative or formative assessment and preferably both, this is primarily an attempt to think about principals before turning to instruments or starting with the beginning and beyond rather than the endpoint. I argue for keeping classroom assessment as an indefinite problem, a problem not to be solved or a term not to be understood once and for all. That will hopefully foster cultural pluralism and heterogeneity around the term： learning more, learning all, all learning. Ultimately this is about the linguistic conditions for change; but as a move from language to law and as aporetic thinking and through the pivoting but liberating effects of writing; a writing both positioning and giving direction. Through language and as a right to philosophy that is. It is about creating a heteroglossia of a fresh writing inscribed in, through and with otherness; ＂another logic＂ that is.     

Metacognition, Theory of Mind, and Self-Control: The Relevance of High-Level Cognitive Processes in Development, Neuroscience, and Education

ABSTRACT— The cognitive control of behavior is critical for success in school. The emergence of self-control in development has been linked to the ability to represent one's own and others' mental states (theory of mind and metacognition). Despite rapid progress in exploring the neural correlates of both mind reading and executive function in recent years, to date, the implications of these high-level cognitive processes for issues relevant to education have hardly been addressed. The present special issue brings together developmental perspectives on the relation of self-control, theory of mind, and metacognition; theoretical and empirical contributions on the implications of theory of mind and self-control for teaching and learning; and brief reviews of the state of the art in cognitive neuroscience on these high-level cognitive processes in adolescents and adults.     

Young Children's Differentiation of Hypothetical Beliefs from Evidence

The claim that preadolescent children fail to differentiate between hypothetical beliefs and evidence is investigated in 2 studies. First-and second-grade children were presented with 2 conflicting hypotheses and asked to choose an empirical test to decide between them. In Study 1, the majority of first graders and almost all second graders correctly chose a conclusive test. They elaborated the logic of such a test and distinguished it from an inconclusive test. There was no evidence that children of this age misinterpret the task of hypothesis testing as one of generating a desirable effect. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings; in a task that posed a genuine scientific problem, first and second graders spontaneously generated empirical procedures for gathering indirect evidence to decide between alternative hypotheses. Our results indicate that young elementary school children distinguish between the notions of "hypothetical belief" and "evidence." These findings are discussed in light of their failure on other scientific thinking tasks.     

Improving College Enrollment of At-Risk Students at the School Level

Many federal, state, and local education policy priorities are aimed at preparing high school students, especially those at risk, to be college- and career-ready when they graduate from high school. A number of programs across different institutional entities have been initiated to achieve these goals, encompassing individual partnerships with schools. Many of these programs include a variety of interventions, ranging from college and course counseling to college visits. Although there have been some evaluations of the larger federal programs, and some state and district programs, few have examined national observational data on the impact of these programmatic efforts on college enrollments. This study uses the HSLS:09 database to investigate the impact of specific treatments in at-risk schools on college enrollments. Results show that several of these programmatic initiatives have a positive effect on college enrollment; however, the effects are small compared to some of those reported by other national studies.     

INTELLIGENT DISCOVERY SYSTEMS (IDS)

In the literature on Intelligent Computer‐Aided Instruction (ICAI), and more widely, in that on artificial intelligence in education, we can distinguish, as a general rule, between intelligent tutoring systems and learning environments (also called micro‐worlds). In this article, we have attempted to merge these two approaches so as to produce a synthesis which we propose calling intelligent discovery systems.     

Family and nonfamily support in relation to burnout and work engagement among Italian teachers

Italy had traditionally been considered a family‐oriented culture where support from relatives is primary. The major purpose of this study was to clarify the benefits of social support inside and outside the family for schoolteachers in Italy, focusing on the teacher burnout and work engagement. Findings indicated that the family was by far the most significant source of support. School colleagues who felt close to each other resembled each other in terms of burnout and work engagement. Difficult interactions with colleagues were associated with burnout more extensively at later stages of the teaching career; supervisor support was linked with burnout at an early stage.     

Moderate Alcohol Consumption and Psychological Stress during Pregnancy Induce Attention and Neuromotor Impairments in Primate Infants

This study examined the effect of moderate alcohol and/or psychological stress during prenancy on off-spring growth and behavior in 33 rhesus monkey infants ( Macaca mulatta ). Infants were derived from 1 of 3 groups of female: (1) alcohol-consuming,0.6g/Kg, Daily throughou gestation (equivalet, to 1-2 drinks), beginning 5 day prior to breeding;(2) alcohol-consuming (as above) and exposed to mild psychological stress(removal from home cage and exposed to 3 random noise bursts); (3) sucrose-consuming, equivolemic, and equicaloric to the alcohol solution.Beginning on day 4 postpartum, intantrs underwent brief weekly separations from their mother for assessment of growth, behavior, and facial dimensions. Results indicated that moderate alcohol consumption throughout pregnancy was sufficient to affect attention and neuromotor functioning, even though the infants were normol in birthweight, gestational length, and facial dimensions, Moreover, alcohol-induced neuromotor impairments were exacerbated by maternal exposure to psychological stress, and males from the alcohol/stress condition had reduced birthweights. Finally, although all females consuming alcohol produced viable offspring, alcohol accompanie by stress during gestation resulted in 23% fetal losses (abortion and stillbirths).     

TALENT AND INTELLIGENCE

Specific outstanding abilities are found at all levels of general cognitive functioning, and are independent of it Furthermore, people who are gifted in a particular area but differ widely in general intelligence nevertheless seem to utilise similar mental processes and structures. Thus idiot‐savant musicians remember, as well as generate, musical patterns derived from familiar musical rules, and their ability is not based on rote memory. Calendri‐cal calculators use the rules and structures on which the Gregorian Calendar is based to calculate dates rapidly. Children with low intelligence but outstanding drawing ability need less visual information for the identification of pictures than those who cannot draw but have high IQ's.