Children with autism illuminate the role of social intention in word learning

To what extent do children with autism (AD) versus typically developing children (TD) rely on attentional and intentional cues to learn words? Four experiments compared 17 AD children (M age=5.08 years) with 17 language- and 17 mental-age-matched TD children (M ages=2.57 and 3.12 years, respectively) on nonverbal enactment and word-learning tasks. Results revealed variability in all groups, but particularly within the AD group. Performance on intention tasks was the most powerful predictor of vocabulary in the AD group but not in the TD groups. These findings suggest that word learning cannot be explained exclusively by either attentional or intentional processes, and they provide evidence of a special role for intentional understanding in the vocabulary development of AD children.     

Predictors and outcomes of low-income fathers’ reading with their toddlers

Most studies of parent–child bookreading have focused on mothers reading to their children. Though the role of fathers in children's lives is widely emphasized, we know almost nothing about father–child bookreading, particularly among low-income families. The present study was designed to examine how often low-income fathers report reading to their children and what the predictors and effects of paternal bookreading are. The fathers in this study were participants in the national evaluation of Early Head Start (EHS) and were recruited via mothers enrolled in the EHS study. Participating fathers were interviewed at home and their children's cognitive and language development were assessed using standardized measures from ages 2 to 5. Results demonstrated a wide variety in frequency of bookreading among fathers. Fathers were more likely to read to their children frequently if they spoke English at home, if they had a high school education, and if their children had better language skills. Fathers’ bookreading predicted children's cognitive outcome. Paternal bookreading did predict children's language outcomes but only for children whose fathers had at least a high school education.     

Learning for work and working to learn： Challenges within a changing UK higher education system

Higher education in the United Kingdom is currently undergoing major changes. In the foreseeable future, it will also undergo farther change. The nature of these changes can be attributed to several key areas-government demand for change, industry demand for change and student demand for change. The UK, like many other major economies and not for the first time in recent history, is having to face the implications of severe skills shortages in its workforce, coupled with the increasing competitiveness of more globalised workforees and workplaces. A recent major government report has set out the country＇s skills agenda until 2020 and UK higher education is starting to wrestle with the implications of these changes, some of which challenge the traditional preserves of university education. This paper will focus on the implications of these skills shortages and the impact that is having on UK higher education. In particular, reference will be made to the impact of the new 2 years vocational Foundation Degrees, to the shift from supply-led to demand-led higher education, the increasing integration and tensions of work-based learning and to the accreditation of Continuous Professional Development （CPD） within an academic framework. This paper presents one story of the growing and changing relationship between higher education and industry.     

Effortful Control, Surgency, and reading skills in middle childhood

We examined the associations between components of temperament and children’s word and pseudo-word reading skills, in a school-age sample using a within-family internal-replication design. We estimated the statistical prediction of word and pseudo-word reading in separate regression equations that included the main effects of, and two-way interaction between, Surgency and Effortful Control. Children with better Effortful Control scores showed better reading skills. Surgency was unrelated to reading skills, but moderated the effect of Effortful Control. The positive association between reading skills and Effortful Control was present only for children who were low in Surgency. Thus, reading achievement in school-age children is optimized by strong Effortful Control, but these processes may be disrupted for those children who are high in Surgency.     

Quality and relevance of domain-specific search: A case study in mental health

When searching for health information, results quality can be judged against available scientific evidence: Do search engines return advice consistent with evidence based medicine? We compared the performance of domain-specific health and depression search engines against a general-purpose engine (Google) on both relevance of results and quality of advice. Over 101 queries, to which the term ‘depression’ was added if not already present, Google returned more relevant results than those of the domain-specific engines. However, over the 50 treatment-related queries, Google returned 70 pages recommending for or against a well studied treatment, of which 19 strongly disagreed with the scientific evidence. A domain-specific index of 4 sites selected by domain experts was only wrong in 5 of 50 recommendations. Analysis suggests a tension between relevance and quality. Indexing more pages can give a greater number of relevant results, but selective inclusion can give better quality.     

Update: The Invisible Farmer: securing Australian farm women’s history

This article reviews the Invisible Farmer project – the largest study of Australian women on the land – a third of the way through its three year funding period. It introduces the aims of this collaborative and multidisciplinary project, focusing on the role of records and oral histories in the creation of new narratives, and the task of raising public awareness of the important historical and contemporary contributions made by Australian women farmers. We examine the way digital platforms work to curate records and promote research, and outline the important role that the Australian Women’s Register, a core project of the Australian Women’s Archives Project, will play in achieving outcomes.     

Researching and conceptualising the field

This concluding paper examines the contributions in this Guest Issue by locating them within the ongoing debates about the role and contribution of social science research, particularly through the production of journals. Set in the context of on-going attacks on the relevance of social science research and the failure to respond to major crises that affect us all, I argue that the field of educational leadership is an important site for showing the dangers of becoming relevant and accepting that a constructed crisis is a crisis. I argue for intellectual work within the field of educational leadership, and use the critical and socially critical traditions to illuminate this. The papers in this Guest Issue are located in these traditions, and so I examine the contribution made through problematising educational leadership, examining the realities of working lives in schools and conceptualising alternative ways of thinking about professional practice.     

A comparison of verbal output and receptivity in relation to attraction and communication satisfaction in interpersonal relationships

This study tested relationships among verbal output, behavioral receptivity, attraction, and communication satisfaction in a variety of longer and shorter term relationships of differing levels of liking. Two behaviorally referenced reports on others were developed to measure perceived behavioral output and perceived behavioral receptivity. The study tested hypotheses within the attraction paradigm. Results generally supported the notion of an important reinforcement value of high behavioral receptivity and moderate verbal output. Substantial proportions of highly verbal people appeared to be below average in receptivity.     

Deviant Peer Factors During Early Adolescence: Cause or Consequence of Physical Aggression?

This study investigated reciprocal relations between adolescents' physical aggression and their perceptions of peers' deviant behaviors and attitudes. Analyses were conducted on four waves of data from 2,290 adolescents (ages 10–16) from three urban middle schools. Autoregression models revealed reciprocal relations between peer factors (i.e., friends' problem behavior, peer pressure for fighting, friends' support for fighting) and adolescents' reporting of their aggressive behavior. Bidirectional relations were also found between peer pressure for fighting and adolescents' frequency of physical aggression based on teacher ratings. Findings were consistent across sex, grade, and time. Findings suggest that multiple dimensions of peers' behaviors uniquely play a role in the development of adolescents' aggression and have important implications for interventions to reduce problem behaviors.     

Human Trafficking: Preparing Counselors to Work with Survivors

The global crisis of human trafficking involves the exploitation of people for personal gain and affects millions. Survivors often present with symptoms that are not identifiable to untrained clinicians. In this article, we discuss the importance for counselor training, as well as counselor self-efficacy and competency in addressing the needs of human trafficking survivors.