Is an intervention using computer software effective in literacy learning? A randomised controlled trial

Background: computer software is widely used to support literacy learning. There are few randomised trials to support its effectiveness. Therefore, there is an urgent need to rigorously evaluate computer software that supports literacy learning.

Methods: we undertook a pragmatic randomised controlled trial among pupils aged 11–12 within a single state comprehensive school in the North of England. The pupils were randomised to receive 10 hours of literacy learning delivered via laptop computers or to act as controls. Both groups received normal literacy learning. A pre‐test and two post‐tests were given in spelling and literacy. The main pre‐defined outcome was improvements in spelling scores.

Results: 155 pupils were randomly allocated, 77 to the ICT group and 78 to control. Four pupils left the school before post‐testing and 25 pupils did not have both pre‐ and post‐test data. Therefore, 63 and 67 pupils were included in the main analysis for the ICT and control groups respectively. After adjusting for pre‐test scores there was a slight increase in spelling scores, associated with the ICT intervention, but this was not statistically significant (0.954, 95% confidence interval (CI) – 1.83 to 3.74, p = 0.50). For reading scores there was a statistically significant decrease associated with the ICT intervention (?2.33, 95% CI ?0.96 to ?3.71, p = 0.001).

Conclusions: we found no evidence of a statistically significant benefit on spelling outcomes using a computer program for literacy learning. For reading there seemed to be a reduction in reading scores associated with the use of the program. All new literacy software needs to be tested in a rigorous trial before it is used routinely in schools.     

The Audiovisual Temporal Binding Window Narrows in Early Childhood

Binding is key in multisensory perception. This study investigated the audio‐visual (A‐V) temporal binding window in 4‐, 5‐, and 6‐year‐old children (total N = 120). Children watched a person uttering a syllable whose auditory and visual components were either temporally synchronized or desynchronized by 366, 500, or 666 ms. They were asked whether the voice and face went together (Experiment 1) or whether the desynchronized videos differed from the synchronized one (Experiment 2). Four‐year‐olds detected the 666‐ms asynchrony, 5‐year‐olds detected the 666‐ and 500‐ms asynchrony, and 6‐year‐olds detected all asynchronies. These results show that the A‐V temporal binding window narrows slowly during early childhood and that it is still wider at 6 years of age than in older children and adults.     

Sequence Learning in 4‐Month‐Old Infants: Do Infants Represent Ordinal Information?

This study investigated how 4‐month‐old infants represent sequences: Do they track the statistical relations among specific sequence elements (e.g., AB, BC) or do they encode abstract ordinal positions (i.e., B is second)? Infants were habituated to sequences of 4 moving and sounding elements—3 of the elements varied in their ordinal position while the position of 1 target element remained invariant (e.g., A B CD, C B DA)—and then were tested for the detection of changes in the target’s position. Infants detected an ordinal change only when it disrupted the statistical co‐occurrence of elements but not when statistical information was controlled. It is concluded that 4‐month‐olds learn the order of sequence elements by tracking their statistical associations but not their invariant ordinal position.     

Perception of dynamic and static audiovisual sequences in 3- and 4-month-old infants

This study investigated perception of audiovisual sequences in 3- and 4-month-old infants. Infants were habituated to sequences consisting of moving/sounding or looming/sounding objects and then tested for their ability to detect changes in the order of the objects, sounds, or both. Results showed that 3-month-olds perceived the order of 3-element sequences and that 4-month-olds perceived the order of 3- and 4-element sequences. In addition, results indicated that perception of moving sequences was more robust than of looming ones and that detection of order differences was not based on primacy cues. The current results show that perception of multisensory sequences and their structure emerges early in development, and a preliminary model of the development of sequence perception is offered.     

Infants' perception of the audible, visible, and bimodal attributes of multimodal syllables

Three experiments investigated 4-, 6-, and 8-month-old infants' perception of the audible, visible, and combined attributes of bimodally specified syllables. Ninety-six infants in each experiment were habituated to a person mouthing and uttering a syllable and then tested for detection of changes of either the audible, visible, or combined attributes of the syllable. When the attributes of the syllable were produced in an adult-directed manner, all three age groups discriminated the audible and bimodal attribute changes but only the 8-month-olds discriminated the visible one. When the difference between the familiar and novel attributes of the syllable was enhanced by testing with a novel syllable produced in an infant-directed manner, all three age groups detected all three types of changes. Finally, to test the possible role of audiovisual synchrony in responsiveness, infants were tested with an asynchronous syllable spoken either by the same person or by a novel person following habituation to a synchronous syllable. Results suggested that at four months infants attended primarily to the featural information, at six months primarily to the asynchrony, and at eight months to both features independently. These results help identify some of the important dimensions of multimodal speech during early development.     

20世纪本科生医学教育中的基础医学课程

本文论述了过去100年中基础医学科学在本科生医学课程中的作用和课程改革,讨论了进入21世纪之际仍然反映在医学教育中科学与技艺之间的紧张关系。