Children’s development of a theory of mind

A critical review of the literature on the theory of mind is presented. Consistent with the “early onset” view, it is suggested that important precursors of a theory of mind are found much earlier than the age of 4. Research on emotional development and intentional communication is reviewed to suggest that some rudimentary understanding of other people’s minds occurs before the age of 2. Later, 3-year-olds’ engagement in pretense and deception demonstrates a more sophisticated understanding of other people’s mental states. Limitations of the false belief task for determining the acquisition of a theory of mind will be discussed with reference to findings in the adult literature.     

Virtual worlds and moral evaluation

Consider the multi-user virtual worlds of online games such as EVE and World of Warcraft, or the multi-user virtual world of Second Life. Suppose a player performs an action in one of these worlds, via his or her virtual character, which would be wrong, if the virtual world were real. What is the moral status of this virtual action? In this paper I consider arguments for and against the Asymmetry Thesis: the thesis that such virtual actions are never wrong. I also explain how the truth of the Asymmetry Thesis is closely aligned with the possibility of what Edward Castronova has called closed synthetic worlds. With some qualifications, the ultimate conclusion is that the Asymmetry Thesis is false and that these closed worlds are impossible.     

Improving SET Response Rates: Synchronous Online Administration as a Tool to Improve Evaluation Quality

Institutions of higher education continue to migrate student evaluations of teaching (SET) from traditional, in-class paper forms to online SETs. Online SETs would favorably compare to paper-and-pencil evaluations were it not for widely reported response rate decreases that cause SET validity concerns stemming from possible nonresponse bias. To combat low response rates, one institution introduced a SET application for mobile devices and piloted formal synchronous classroom time for SET completion. This paper uses the Leverage Salience Theory to estimate the impact of these SET process changes on overall response rates, open-ended question response rates, and open end response word counts. Synchronous class time best improves SET responses when faculty encourage completion on keyboarded devices and provide students SET completion time in the first 15 min of a class meeting. Full support from administrators requires sufficient wireless signal strength, IT infrastructure, and assuring student access to devices for responses clustering around meeting times.     

Prediction of College Major Persistence Based on Vocational Interests, Academic Preparation, and First-Year Academic Performance

We hypothesized that college major persistence would be predicted by first-year academic performance and an interest-major composite score that is derived from a student’s entering major and two work task scores. Using a large data set representing 25 four-year institutions and nearly 50,000 students, we randomly split the sample into an estimation sample and a validation sample. Using the estimation sample, we found major-specific coefficients corresponding to the two work task scores that optimized the prediction of major persistence. Then, we applied the estimated coefficients to the validation sample to form an interest-major composite score representing the likelihood of persisting in entering major. Using the validation sample, we then tested a theoretical model for major persistence that incorporated academic preparation, the interest-major composite score, and first-year academic performance. The results suggest that (1) interest-major fit and first-year academic performance work to independently predict whether a student will stay in their entering major and (2) the relative importance of two work task scores in predicting major persistence depends on the entering major. The results support Holland’s theory of person-environment fit and suggest that academic performance and interest-major fit are key constructs for understanding major persistence behavior.     

Strategies of bilingual teaching

In many countries the question is posed — should school instruction be delivered in the pupils mother tongue (l1) or in another language (L2)? Cognitive problems may be aggravated or ameliorated by emotional or motivational tones. A frequently used strategy has been to impose the majority L2 on minority L1 speakers, sometimes with mass failure results. Even if L1 is acceptable, serious retardation in the development of literacy occurs when the initial instruction is delivered in L2. Even with strong positive motivation towards learning L2, literacy instruction in L2 still causes cognitive confusion. Less commonly initial literacy instruction is delivered in the pupils L1 even though the goal is literacy in L2. This avoids cognitive confusion, but if the L1 speakers have adopted negative attitudes to their own language the strategy does not survive. Rarer still is the strategy to deliver instruction part of the day in L1 and part in L2; little research evidence is available on this approach but indications are favorable.