Impact of early code‐skill and oral‐comprehension training on reading achievement in first grade

In a 3‐year longitudinal study, we examined the relationships between oral language development, early training and reading acquisition on word‐identification and reading‐comprehension tests administered to a sample of 687 French children. Hierarchical linear models showed that both phonological awareness and oral comprehension at the age of 4 years were relevant to reading acquisition 2 years later. These two broad skills explained separate parts of the variance on both outcome measures, while revealing opposite effects: phonological skills explained more variance for alphabetic reading skills and oral comprehension explained more variance for reading comprehension. We also assessed the effects of two preschool training programmes focusing on either phonological awareness or comprehension skills. The results showed that phonological awareness training had a positive effect on alphabetic scores, and comprehension training had a positive effect on reading comprehension. These results provide insight into early oral instruction and contribute to the theoretical debate about the linguistic predictors of literacy acquisition.     

Long‐term teacher effects on pupils' learning gains

Many studies have demonstrated that a teacher has a substantial impact on how much pupils learn. However, research on the long‐term effects of teachers is scarce, and the results obtained so far are inconsistent. Some studies have concluded that teacher effects are relatively permanent, while others claim that they fade away more or less rapidly over time. The present study was conducted at the elementary‐school level in France. Multilevel random crossed models were used to assess teacher effects over a period of two school years. The assessments showed that the pupils' test scores in French and mathematics after two years were linked to the second‐year teachers but not to the first‐year ones. These results suggest that teacher effects on pupils' learning gains wear off quickly over time. In other words, ‘immediate’ teacher effects on learning do seem to exist, but not long‐term ones. The merits of multilevel random crossed models in this research field are presented, and the potential limitations of the results obtained are discussed.     

The Relationship of Maternal Employment to Early Adolescent Daily Experience With and Without Parents

This study examines how maternal work may shape pre- and young adolescents' daily life experience. According to the procedures of the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), 295 10– 13-year-old children carried electronic pagers for 1 week and completed self-report forms in response to random signals sent every other hour. Their daily experience did not differ by maternal employment status, with the following exceptions: full-time maternal employment was associated with more time doing homework with mothers and less time in general leisure, while part-time employment was associated with more time doing sports with parents. Relative to those with nonemployed mothers, youth with part-time employed mothers reported more positive daily moods and higher self-esteem, while youth reported time with full-time employed mothers to be the friendliest. While children with employed mothers spent no less time with family, parents, friends, in class or alone, they spent more time alone with fathers.     

Early Training in Oral Comprehension and Phonological Skills: Results of a Three-Year Longitudinal Study

A sample of 1,273 4-year-old children were followed for 3 years. The children participated in 1 of 2 comprehension training programs, or in a phonological awareness training program. The comprehension programs explored the possibility of improving young children's oral comprehension in an educational setting. The first focused on the component skills of comprehension; the second involved storybook reading. Phonological awareness and oral language comprehension skills were measured repeatedly in the course of the study. The data were analyzed using multilevel growth-curve models. The results showed that it is possible to improve oral comprehension if the training focuses on its component skills and extends over 2 semesters. When these conditions were met, training effects still existed 9 months after the program had ended. Finally, phonological training improved phonological awareness but not comprehension, and comprehension-skill training improved oral comprehension but not phonological awareness.     

The Effects of Changes in Racial Identity and Self‐Esteem on Changes in African American Adolescents’ Mental Health

This study assessed the unique effects of racial identity and self‐esteem on 259 African American adolescents’ depressive and anxiety symptoms as they transitioned from the 7th to 8th grades (ages 12–14). Racial identity and self‐esteem were strongly correlated with each other for males but not for females. For both males and females, an increase in racial identity over the 1 year was associated with a decrease in the prevalence of depressive symptoms over the same period, even with self‐esteem controlled. It was concluded that racial identity may be as important as self‐esteem to the mental health of African American adolescents, and it explains variance in their mental health not associated with feelings of oneself as an individual.     

Distinct Profiles of Relationships With Mothers,Fathers, and Best Friends and Social-Behavioral Functioning in Early Adolescence: A Cross-Cultural Study

Adolescents’ dyadic relationships are likely influenced by the cultural context within which they exist. This study applied a person-oriented approach to examine how perceived support and negativity were manifested across youths’ relationships with mothers, fathers, and best friends, simultaneously, and how distinct relationship profiles were linked to adaptive and maladaptive functioning (aggression, anxious-withdrawal, prosociality) within and across cultures. Participants resided in metropolitan areas of South Korea, the United States, and Portugal (10–14 years; N = 1,233). Latent profile analyses identified relationship profiles that were culturally common or specific. Additional findings highlighted commonality in the relations between a high-quality relationship profile and adaptive functioning, as well as cultural specificity in the buffering and differential effects of distinct relationship profiles on social-behavioral outcomes.     

Diacritics improve comprehension of the Arabic script by providing access to the meanings of heterophonic homographs

The diacritical markers that represent most of the vowels in the Arabic orthography are generally omitted from written texts. Previous research revealed that the absence of diacritics reduces reading comprehension performance even by skilled readers of Arabic. One possible explanation is that many Arabic words become ambiguous when diacritics are missing. Words of this kind are known as heterophonic homographs and are associated with at least two different pronunciations and meanings when written without diacritics. The aim of the two experiments reported in this study was to investigate whether the presence of diacritics improves the comprehension of all written words, or whether the effects are confined to heterophonic homographs. In Experiment 1, adult readers of Arabic were asked to decide whether written words had a living meaning. The materials included heterophonic homographs that had one living and one non-living meaning. Results showed that diacritics significantly increased the accuracy of semantic decisions about ambiguous words but had no effect on the accuracy of decisions about unambiguous words. Consistent results were observed in Experiment 2 where the materials comprised sentences rather than single words. Overall, the findings suggest that diacritics improve the comprehension of heterophonic homographs by facilitating access to semantic representations that would otherwise be difficult to access from print.     

Continuity,stability, and change in daily emotional experience across adolescence

This longitudinal study examined change in adolescents' daily range of emotional states between early and late adolescence. A sample of 220 youth provided reports on their daily emotions at random times during two 1-week periods. At Time 1 they were in the fifth through eighth grades; 4 years later, at Time 2, they were in the ninth through twelfth grades. Results showed that average emotional states became less positive across early adolescence, but that this downward change in average emotions ceased in grade 10. The results also showed greatest relative instability between youth in the early adolescent years--correlations over time were lower--with stability increasing in late adolescence. Lastly, the study found that adolescents' average emotions had relatively stable relations to life stress and psychological adjustment between early and late adolescence. As a whole, the findings suggest that late adolescence is associated with a slowing of the emotional changes of early adolescence.     

Daily Companionship in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence: Changing Developmental Contexts

The study employs time-sampling data to examine age differences in the quantity and quality of children's and young adolescents' daily experience with their families, friends, and alone. Participants (ages 9-15) carried electronic pagers for 1 week and reported their companionship, location, and affect at random times when signaled by the pagers. Findings show a dramatic decline in amount of time spent with family, with older students reporting half as much time with their families as younger students. Among boys, this family time was replaced by time spent alone; among girls, by time alone and with friends. Affect reported when with family became less positive between the fifth and seventh grade, but was more positive again in the ninth grade for boys. Affect with friends became more favorable across this age period; affect when alone did not vary. These age differences suggest changes in adolescents' daily opportunities for cognitive growth, emotional development, and social support.