The Social Sensitivity of Preschoolers in Peer Conflicts: Do Children Act Differently with Different Peers?

This study sought to demonstrate that many aspects of preschoolers' peer conflict behavior are sensitive to the subtle change in social situation that occurs when a child plays with a different partner. Twenty-seven pairs of preschoolers were videotaped over four 15-minute play sessions; in the fourth session, half of the pairs played with a different partner, while half were with the same partner. Frequency and theme of conflicts, strategies used, frequency of yielding to partner, and percentage of conflicts solved were observed. Initiating and negotiating behavior in early sessions better predicted behavior in the fourth session for the same-partner (vs. change-partner) group, and thus emerged as behaviors sensitive to social context changes. Results indicate that preschoolers have a remarkably varied array of conflict behaviors and that much of their conflict behavior is sensitive to influences inherent to social interaction with a specific partner. Ways in which the apparent sophistication in young children's social understanding can inform developmental approaches to early childhood education as well as both preventative and therapeutic conflict resolution programs are discussed.     

Static and animated graphics in learning from interactive texts

Animating the graphics in electronic documents may increase readers’ willingness to study them but may impair or distort the processes of gist comprehension. Experiment 1 confirmed that, compared with static diagrams, animation increased readers willingness to study a range of graphic genres (maps, time-lines, drawings of unfamiliar objects). Total reading time was also increased but readers’ differential access of static and animated graphics confounded the interpretation of immediate and delayed retention tests. Experiment 2 contrasted the effects of accessing the graphics before or during reading. Scores on a quiz immediately after reading were significantly higher when the graphics were seen before rather than during reading, suggesting that readers found it difficult to integrate the graphics while still building the gist of the text. Scores on both an immediate and a delayed quiz were significantly higher when the graphics were static rather than animated. One pointer to the cause of the decrement with animated graphics was that the quiz performance of readers having animated graphics correlated with their scores on a picture memory test, whereas those of readers with static graphics did not. In contrast the delayed quiz scores of readers with static graphics showed a significant interaction with their performance on a digit memory task. Readers with high scores on digit memory benefited from accessing the graphics while reading, but readers with low scores on the digit test were impaired by such access during reading. This suggests that the cognitive skills needed for integrating text with animated graphics may differ from those needed for dealing with static graphics.     

Historically Black Colleges and University students' and faculties' views of school psychology: Implications for increasing diversity in higher education

This study investigates Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCU) students' and faculties' knowledge related to school psychology. A total of 165 students and 14 faculty members completed inventories that assessed the understanding and views of various psychological disciplines. Results indicated that HBCU students rated their perceived knowledge of school psychology significantly lower than all psychological disciplines. In addition, these students have significantly fewer sources of information for school psychology than comparable disciplines. Although more than 90% of students stated that they would attend graduate school, the majority was only somewhat interested in school psychology as a career choice. Furthermore, HBCU psychology faculty members stated that the American Psychological Association and the National Association of School Psychologists do not actively recruit or provide information to their students. Results are discussed in terms of increasing the number of African American school psychologists. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The interface between arts practice and research: attitudes and perceptions of Australian artist‐academics

Whilst an academic working in the arts may have been appointed as a consequence of artistic accomplishment and a capacity to teach, the research that underpins such work is an intrinsic part of its production and also needs to be recognised. In Australia, the ability of the artist‐academic to translate research into a form that is respected and rewarded is an issue of contention. This paper gathers responses to this issue. Perceptions of and attitudes to creative work as research are canvassed alongside life decisions arising from those perceptions and attitudes. This research occurs in the context of a new Australian framework for the evaluation of research. This framework offers some recognition of the research that supports creative practice. Thus, the long‐standing experience of compromise reported by the Australian artist‐academics interviewed for this study are discussed alongside new policies that seek to construct methodologies for its amelioration.     

Comparing cognition by integrating concept learning,proactive interference,and list memory

This article describes an approach for training a variety of species to learn the abstract concept of same/different, which in turn forms the basis for testing proactive interference and list memory. The stimulus set for concept-learning training was progressively doubled from 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 . . . to 1,024 different pictures with novel-stimulus transfer following learning. All species fully learned the same/different abstract concept: capuchin and rhesus monkeys learned more readily than pigeons; nutcrackers and magpies were at least equivalent to monkeys and transferred somewhat better following initial training sets. A similar task using the 1,024-picture set plus delays was used to test proactive interference on occasional trials. Pigeons revealed greater interference with 10-s than with 1-s delays, whereas delay time had no effect on rhesus monkeys, suggesting that the monkeys’ interference was event based. This same single-item same/different task was expanded to a 4-item list memory task to test animal list memory. Humans were tested similarly with lists of kaleidoscope pictures. Delays between the list and test were manipulated, resulting in strong initial recency effects (i.e., strong 4th-item memory) at short delays and changing to a strong primacy effect (i.e., strong 1st-item memory) at long delays (pigeons 0-s to 10-s delays; monkeys 0-s to 30-s delays; humans 0-s to 100-s delays). Results and findings are discussed in terms of these species’ cognition and memory comparisons, evolutionary implications, and future directions for testing other species in these synergistically related tasks.