Maternal Support for Play and Language across Early Childhood

Patterns of development in language and play for full term and preterm children from 6 to 54 months and the effects of maternal parenting strategies (i.e., maintaining attentional focus, use of directiveness) were examined. Significant risk differences in the growth of both language and play were found. The high risk children were more likely to show delays in both these skills. Maintaining had a positive influence on children's skills, while directiveness had a largely negative influence, especially at older ages. The relation between growth in play and language was stronger for the high risk, preterm, when compared to the low risk and full term, children, but only during the infancy and toddler period. Given that play and language development is more likely to be delayed for preterm, high-risk children and the relation between the development of these skills is stronger for high risk preterm children, particularly early, it would be important to provide the parents and educators with information about play and language development. For example, communicating the need to be consistent in using some interactive behaviors (e.g., maintaining) as children develop while modifying other behaviors (e.g., directiveness) would be essential.     

Effects of Maternal Employment on Maternal and Two-Year-Old Child Behavior

94 mothers with 2-year-old children were interviewd about their employment, role satisfaction, and social support and were observed in their homes at dinnertime and in a laboratory compliance task. Hierarchical multiple regressions were used to test main effects of employment, hours employed, and their interactions. Maternal employment adversely affected maternal behavior when satisfaction with social support or with the work role was low, but only in the laboratory. Positive main effects of employment on maternal behavior were observed in the home: employed mothers used less power assertion with their children. Mothers who worked longer hours used more guidance and were more responsive to their children in both settings. In both settings, the effect of poor-quality care on child behavior was greater when mothers were employed, and, in the laboratory, boys of employed mothers were more defiant than boys of nonemployed mothers and girls of employed mothers. Boys with more than one current arrangement were more likely than similarly situated girls to be defiant in the laboratory, but they were also less likely than girls to be cared for by fathers.     

Learning to be critically reflective: exploring fiction writing and adult learning

Many educators in adult, community and higher education contexts are concerned with fostering reflective learning amongst their students. This paper explores the concept of critical reflection and considers how engaging with fiction may be an innovative pedagogical approach to support critical learning opportunities. Drawing upon interviews with fiction writers, ways in which critical reflection may be encouraged in connection to reading and writing fiction are taken up by exploring three different thematic areas that relate to a Habermasian framework of knowledge constitutive approaches to learning. These different areas can be categorised as (a) technical-rational, (b) humanistic and (c) critical or emancipatory. The first of these considers critical reflection as a way to develop technical capacities as a creative writer. The next section takes up a humanistic framework to explore the value of individual and collective learning opportunities to enhance personal growth and critical reflection. The third area of discussion considers a deeper critical or emancipatory framework of learning through critical reflection which may lead to social change. The paper concludes by considering the value of arts-informed adult education approaches, such as those related to fiction writing, to enhance the development of critical reflection amongst adult learners.     

‘Just turn to us’: the persuasive features of contract cheating websites

Academic integrity is important to universities and students must abide by codes of academic conduct around assessment. Students are, however, subject to multiple pressures around assessment, some of which can push them to cheat. Modern contract cheating websites are the fronts for sophisticated, commercial operations that offer individually written assessment items for a fee; to combat their use we need a better understanding of the tools they use to persuade students to become customers. In this study we examined the persuasive features of 11 highly-visible contract cheating websites and mapped these features to a previously used persuasiveness framework. We find that contract-cheating websites use a variety of credibility, interactive and informative features designed to persuade students to use their services. In addition, the sites offer low-cost, customisable products available in very short timeframes. We suggest ways in which educators can encourage academic integrity by talking with their students about how the websites promulgate their ‘just turn to us’ message.     

Not Proved: Reply to Wynn

Findings on whether young infants look longer at incorrect addition and subtraction have been inconsistent or, as in our study, negative. We hypothesize that imprecise ordinal calculating with very small numbers of objects develops in late infancy and precise calculating in early childhood.     

Functional reading difficulties in Denmark

In this first Danish study of adult reading skills, 1124 adults between 18 and 67 years of age participated in an interview about reading habits and skills, and 445 were tested individually at home using six common texts. Great care was taken to ascertain that subjects were representative of the whole adult population and that the texts covered most types of everyday reading. Three percent of the participants were found to have severe functional reading difficulties and a further 9 percent to have moderate difficulties. Regression analyses found several unique predictors of reading difficulties: age (adults over 45 years reading more poorly than younger adults), limited basic education, no vocational training nor higher education, and a small amount of reading needed at work. The rate of poor readers was about four times higher among persons with low income than among others. Men and women read equally well although men tended to rate themselves lower as readers than women did. Methodological issues and some educational implications are discussed.     

Interactional power and support in digital inclusion of an adult with intellectual disabilities: a case study analysis

Digital inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities is not commensurate with those without disabilities. Societal, political, financial, individual and interpersonal barriers help explain this disparity. Caregivers can act as both support and gatekeeper to internet access and use by adults with intellectual disabilities. This study investigated micro-level interpersonal factors influencing access and use of the internet by an adult with intellectual disabilities to explore the balance and interplay of power and support around the processes of digital inclusion and online risk taking. Taking a case study approach, perspectives of three key stakeholders were gathered via interviews: the person with intellectual disabilities, his mother and a paid support worker. Perspectives and experiences were contrasted using systemic functional linguistic analysis of discourse to explore the ways power and support were represented in the language of negotiated digital inclusion. Dynamics between the parent and person with intellectual disabilities and between the parent and paid staff clearly influenced processes of digital inclusion and were affected by varying priorities, positions and perceptions of power to allow, disallow and monitor access and use of the internet. These had the power to shape and drive internet access. Language choices by the person with intellectual disabilities showed that he was not fully aware of the risks involved in engaging with certain aspects of digital inclusion but how he spoke about the internet indicated some autonomy in technology use. Supporting the development of digital competence, confidence and resilience in people with learning disabilities should be combined with support to increase self-awareness regarding digital risk. Those supporting people with intellectual disabilities towards digital inclusion need additional guidance on how to do this effectively for the people they support.     

Contextual cues and memory retrieval in rats: Alleviation of forgetting by a pretest exposure to background stimuli

With a relatively complex maze, reliable forgetting is clearly seen when the training-test interval is 25 days. This forgetting is evidenced by the longer time taken to run the maze and in an increase in the number of errors from the last training trial to the first test trial. In this case, forgetting is a lapse, not a loss, since performance attains the last training trial level at a subsequent test. Furthermore, a reminder which does not in itself contain sufficient information to facilitate performance of a naive animal, significantly improves maze performance of animals which have “forgotten,” even on the first retention test. With the use of additional control groups, it is shown that there must be a memory lapse before contextual cues can be demonstrated to be effective in facilitating memory retrieval.