Preschoolers Use Emotion in Speech to Learn New Words

Two experiments examined 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds' use of vocal affect to learn new words. In Experiment 1 (n = 48), children were presented with two unfamiliar objects, first in their original state and then in an altered state (broken or enhanced). An instruction produced with negative, neutral, or positive affect, directed children to find the referent of a novel word. During the novel noun, eye gaze measures indicated that both 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds were more likely to consider an object congruent with vocal affect cues. In Experiment 2, 5‐year‐olds (n = 15) were asked to extend and generalize their initial mapping to new exemplars. Here, 5‐year‐olds generalized these newly mapped labels but only when presented with negative vocal affect.     

Students' use of the energy model to account for changes in physical systems

The aim of this study is to explore the ways in which students, aged 11–14 years, account for certain changes in physical systems and the extent to which they draw on an energy model as a common framework for explaining changes observed in diverse systems. Data were combined from two sources: interviews with 20 individuals and an open‐ended questionnaire that was administered to 240 students (121 upper elementary school students and 119 middle school students). We observed a wealth of approaches ranging from accounts of energy transfer and transformation to responses identifying specific objects or processes as the cause of changes. The findings also provide evidence that students do not seem to appreciate the transphenomenological and unifying nature of energy. Students' thinking was influenced by various conceptual difficulties that are compounded by traditional science teaching; for instance, students tended to confuse energy with force or electric current. In addition, the comparison between the responses from middle school students and those of elementary school students demonstrates that science teaching and maturation appeared to have a negligible influence on whether students had constructed a coherent energy model, which they could use consistently to account for changes in certain physical systems. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 444–469, 2008     

The Properties and the Nature of Light: The Study of Newton’s Work and the Teaching of Optics

The history of science shows that for each scientific issue there may be more than one models that are simultaneously accepted by the scientific community. One such case concerns the wave and corpuscular models of light. Newton claimed that he had proved some properties of light based on a set of minimal assumptions, without any commitments to any one of the two models. This set of assumptions constitutes the geometrical model of light as a set of rays propagating in space. We discuss this model and the historical reasons for which it had the head-primacy amongst the relevant models. We argue that this model is indispensable in structuring the curriculum in Optics and attempt to validate it epistemologically. Finally, we discuss an approach for alleviating the implicit assumptions that students make on the nature of light and the subsequent interference of geometrical optics in teaching the properties of light related to its wave-like nature.     

The development of mental processing: efficiency,working memory,and thinking

This Monograph aims to contribute to the information processing, the differential, and the developmental modeling of the mind, and to work these into an integrated theory. Toward this aim, a longitudinal study is presented that investigates the relations between processing efficiency, working memory, and problem solving from the age of 8 years to to the age of 16 years. The study involved 113 participants, about equally drawn among 8-, 10-, 12-, and 14-year-olds at the first testing; these participants were tested two more times spaced one year apart. Participants were tested with a large array of tasks addressed to processing efficiency (i.e., speed of processing and inhibition), working memory (in terms of Baddeley's model, phonological storage, visual storage, and the central executive of working memory), and problem solving (quantitative, spatial, and verbal reasoning). Confirmatory factor analysis validated the presence of each of the above dimensions and indicated that they are organized in a three-stratum hierarchy. The first stratum includes all of the individual dimensions mentioned above. These dimensions are organized, at the second stratum, in three constructs: processing efficiency, working memory, and problem solving. Finally, all second-order constructs are strongly related to a third-order general factor. This structure was stable in time. Structural equation modeling indicated that the various dimensions are interrelated in a cascade fashion so that more fundamental dimensions are part of more complex dimensions. That is, speed of processing is the most important aspect of processing efficiency, and it perfectly relates to the condition of inhibition, indicating that the more efficient one is in stimulus encoding and identification, the more efficient one is in inhibition. In turn, processing efficiency is strongly related to the condition of executive processes in working memory, which, in turn, is related to the condition of the two modality-specific stores (phonological and visual). Finally, problem solving is related to processing efficiency and working memory, the central executive in particular. All dimensions appear to change systematically with time. Growth modeling suggested that there are significant individual differences in attainment in each of the three aspects of the mind investigated. Moreover, each of the three aspects of the mind as well as their interrelations change differently during development. Mixture growth modeling suggested that there are four types of developing persons, each defined by a different combination of performance in these aspects of the mind. Some types are more efficient and stable developers than others. These analyses indicated that processing efficiency is a factor closely associated with developmental differences in problem solving, whereas working memory is associated with individual differences. Modeling by logistic equations uncovered the rates and form of change in the various dimensions and their reciprocal interactions during development. These findings are discussed from the point of view of information processing, differential, and developmental models of thinking, and an integrative model is proposed.     

Perceived seriousness of pupils' undesirable behaviours: the student teachers' perspective

The effective management of pupils' undesirable behaviours in the classroom represents a major challenge for teachers. In order to better comprehend the difficulties facing them it is important to examine how they perceive pupil behaviours at different stages of their professional development. The present study examined the effects of teaching experience and pupil and teacher gender on student teachers' perceptions of the seriousness of various forms of undesirable behaviours. A structured questionnaire was completed by 243 student teachers, regarding the perceived seriousness of 25 behaviours in boys and girls. Results indicated that both teaching experience and pupil gender were important moderators of their perceptions. For instance, novice student teachers rated overtly antisocial behaviours as serious, whereas their experienced counterparts gave higher ratings of seriousness to internalising forms of behaviour. A degree of gender stereotyping was also apparent in the perceptions of mainly novice teachers. The accumulation of teaching experience may help direct teacher attention to more subtle aspects of pupil behaviour difficulties and may reduce gender stereotyping.