Children's Divergent Thinking Improves When They Understand False Beliefs

This research utilized longitudinal and cross sectional methods to investigate the relation between the development of a representational theory of mind and children's growing ability to search their own minds for appropriate problem solutions. In the first experiment 59 pre-school children were given three false-belief tasks and a divergent thinking task. Those children who passed false-belief tasks produced significantly more items, as well as more original items, in response to divergent thinking questions than those children who failed. This significant association persisted even when chronological age, verbal and nonverbal general ability were partialed out. In a second study 20 children who failed the false-belief tasks in the first experiment were re-tested three months later. Again, those who now passed the false-belief tasks were significantly better at the divergent thinking task than those who continued to fail. The associations between measures of divergent thinking and understanding false-beliefs remained significant when controlling for the covariates. Earlier divergent thinking scores did not predict false-belief understanding three months later. Instead, children who passed false-belief tasks on the second measure improved significantly in relation to their own earlier performance and improved significantly more than children who continued to fail. False-belief task performance was significantly correlated to the amount of intra-individual improvement in divergent thinking even when age, verbal and nonverbal skills were partialed out. These findings suggest that developments in common underlying skills are responsible for the improvement in understanding other minds and searching one's own. Changes in representational and executive skills are discussed as potential causes for the improvement

Spelling pronunciation and visual preview both facilitate learning to spell irregular word

Spelling pronunciations are hypothesized to be helpful in building up relatively stable phonologically underpinned orthographic representations, particularly for learning words with irregular phoneme-grapheme correspondences. In a four-week computer-based training, the efficacy of spelling pronunciations and previewing the spelling patterns on learning to spell loan words in Dutch, originating from French and English, was examined in skilled and less skilled spellers with varying ages. Reading skills were taken into account. Overall, compared to normal pronunciation, spelling pronunciation facilitated the learning of the correct spelling of irregular words, but it appeared to be no more effective than previewing. Differences between training conditions appeared to fade with older spellers. Less skilled young spellers seemed to profit more from visual examination of the word as compared to practice with spelling pronunciations. The findings appear to indicate that spelling pronunciation and allowing a preview can both be effective ways to learn correct spellings of orthographically unpredictable words, irrespective of age or spelling ability. Copyright © 2006 by The International Dyslexia Association®

Tribology of Medical Devices

Importance of tribology in a number of medical devices and surgical instruments is reviewed, including artificial joints, artificial teeth, dental implants and orthodontic appliances, cardiovascular devices, contact lenses, artificial limbs and surgical instruments. The current focus and future developments of these medical devices are highlighted from a tribological point of view, together with the underlying mechanisms

Dearth and the English revolution : the harvest crisis of 1647-50

This article reconstructs the nature and scale of dearth in the late 1640s, emphasizing the coincidence of economic distress with constitutional crisis. It reconsiders the parish register evidence for subsistence crisis; examines the responses of central and local government; analyses the role of popular agency, especially though petitioning campaigns, in prompting reluctant magistrates to regulate the grain markets along lines stipulated by the late Elizabethan and early Stuart dearth orders, which had not been proclaimed since 1630; and accordingly suggests that the late 1640s represents a missing link in the historiography of responses to harvest failure

Middle to Late Devensian glaciation of north-east Scotland: implications for the north-eastern quadrant of the last British-Irish ice sheet

We present a review of over 175 years of research into the Middle to Late Devensian (Weichselian) glaciation of north-east Scotland based crucially on both its lithostratigraphic and geomorphic records. The location of the region, and surrounding seabed, makes this unusually detailed record significant for deciphering the former interactions and dynamics of Scottish and Scandinavian ice within the North Sea Basin (NSB), which continue to be controversial. A twelve-stage event stratigraphy is proposed based on a parsimonious interpretation of stratigraphic relationships, till lithology and regional clast fabrics, striae, subglacial bedforms, ice-marginal features and published geochronometry at critical sites. The record of regional glaciation supports converging evidence that the north-eastern quadrant of the last British and Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) reached its maximum spatial extent in the late Middle- to early Late Devensian and later re-expanded following widespread internal glacial reorganisations, marine transgression and partial retreat from the central NSB. Retreat was interrupted by several glacial readvances of limited extent. Field-captured data helps identify important events that are not clearly resolved from remote sensing alone, particularly regarding growth phases of the last glaciation

Frontiers in the Acquisition of Literacy

Learning to read, and to spell are two of the most important cultural skills that must be acquired by children, and for that matter, anyone learning a second language. We are not born with an innate ability to read. A reading system of mental representations that enables us to read must be formed in the brain. Learning to read in alphabetic orthographies is the acquisition of such a system, which links mental representations of visual symbols (letters) in print words, with pre-existing phonological (sound) and semantic (comprehension) cognitive systems for language. Although spelling draws on the same representational knowledge base and is usually correlated with reading, the acquisition processes involved are not quite the same. Spelling requires the sequential production of letters in words, and at beginning levels there may not be a full degree of integration of phonology with its representation by the orthography. Reading, on the other hand, requires only the recognition of a word for pronunciation. Hence, spelling is more difficult than reading, and learning to spell may necessitate more complete representations, or more conscious access to them. The learning processes that children use to acquire such cognitive systems in the brain, and whether these same processes are universal across different languages and orthographies are central theoretical questions. Most children learn to read and spell their language at the same time, thus the co-ordination of these two facets of literacy acquisition needs explication, as well as the effect of different teaching approaches on acquisition. Lack of progress in either reading and/or spelling is also a major issue of concern for parents and teachers necessitating a cross-disciplinary approach to the problem, encompassing major efforts from researchers in neuroscience, cognitive science, experimental psychology, and education. The purpose of this Research Topic is to summarize and review what has been accomplished so far, and to further explore these general issues. Contributions from different perspectives are welcomed and could include theoretical, computational, and empirical works that focus on the acquisition of literacy, including cross-orthographic research

Computers and 'the mind': An intervention study

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between computer use and the development of social metacognition in young children by using an intervention design. Fifty-nine preschool children were given three false-belief tasks, and the results showed a significant and positive correlation between computer use and false-belief understanding. The children were then put into one of three groups. Those who did not have a computer at home and failed the false-belief tasks were matched on birth-order and number of siblings and put into either an intervention or control group. All of the other children formed an age-comparison group. Children in the intervention group were provided with a home computer for a period of two and one-half months and then both this group and the controls were re-tested on the false-belief tasks. The controls then received the computers for a period of six weeks, and both soups were again re-tested. Children in the intervention group did not make greater gains on false-belief tasks when compared with the controls. Analysis of the computer time-interval data showed that gains for both groups were associated with the average interaction time, which probably represents interactive quality. This suggests that it is the communicational requirements of computer interaction that may foster the development of false-belief understanding in young children