The impact of the mass media on source commitment

The purpose of this study was to explore the role of the mass media in creating source commitment. The results showed that the type of source commitment studied in the experiment was not significantly affected by the preparation and transmission of mass media messages.     

Access's Unsung Hero: The [Impending] Rise of Embedded Metadata

The “Advances in Library Data and Access” column examines technological advances internal and external to libraries. The focus is on how library data is created and used. The strength of the column is its broad, international focus and contributors are encouraged to explore issues and recent advances in information technology relevant to their geographical region, as well as the larger, global audience. Interested authors are invited to submit proposals and articles to the column editor at moulaisonhe@missouri.edu. Please include “IILR Submission” in the subject line of the e-mail.     

Evaluating individualized educational programs: A recommendation and some programmatic implications

The character of urban schools and the practices of school personnel have been influenced by a variety of sociopolitical factors. Currently, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (P.L. 94–142) is having impact on schools in general and especially on urban schools, which typically have many students affected by this law. This paper describes certain aspects of the law which have posed problems for schools, and makes suggestions about how such problems can be resolved. Schools are required to identify goals and to evaluate educational progress on anindividual student basis. This requirement can be met by using the Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) technique. Using an illustrative GAS-modified individualized educational program (IEP), advantages and disadvantages of this technique are discussed. Certain potential problems are identified and suggestions made so that administrators and other school personnel can be successful in their attempts to comply with requirements to evaluate educational progress in conjunction with IEPs.     

Rhythms of dialogue in infancy: coordinated timing in development.

Although theories of early social development emphasize the advantage of mother-infant rhythmic coupling and bidirectional coordination, empirical demonstrations remain sparse. We therefore test the hypothesis that vocal rhythm coordination at age 4 months predicts attachment and cognition at age 12 months. Partner and site novelty were studied by recording mother-infant, stranger-infant, and mother-stranger face-to-face interactions in both home and laboratory sites for 88 4-month-old infants, for a total of 410 recordings. An automated dialogic coding scheme, appropriate to the nonperiodic rhythms of our data, implemented a systems concept of every action as jointly produced by both partners. Adult-infant coordination at age 4 months indeed predicted both outcomes at age 12 months, but midrange degree of mother-infant and stranger-infant coordination was optimal for attachment (Strange Situation), whereas high ("tight") stranger-infant coordination in the lab was optimal for cognition (Bayley Scales). Thus, high coordination can index more or less optimal outcomes, as a function of outcome measure, partner, and site. Bidirectional coordination patterns were salient in both attachment and cognition predictions. Comparison of mother-infant and stranger-infant interactions was particularly informative, suggesting the dynamics of infants' early differentiation from mothers. Stranger and infant showed different patterns of vocal rhythm activity level, were more bidirectional, accounted for 8 times more variance in Bayley scores, predicted attachment just as well as mother and infant, and revealed more varied contingency structures and a wider range of attachment outcomes. To explain why vocal timing measures at age 4 months predict outcomes at age 12 months, our dialogue model was construed as containing procedures for regulating the pragmatics of proto-conversation. The timing patterns of the 4-month-olds were seen as procedural or performance knowledge, and as precursors of various kinesic patterns in the outcomes of 12-month-olds. Thus, our work further defines a fundamental dyadic timing matrix--a system that guides the trajectory of relatedness, informing all relational theories of development.