Culture - the hen and the egg of human cognition

Culture refers to shared meanings, common knowledge and behavioral patterns of groups and societies. These knowledge structures or models of reality are conceptual tools for coordinating social interactions and communications and regulating adaptive behavioral strategies. Their construction and maintenance depend on groups' structure and cultural artifacts and also on the changing environmental demands. The article presents the Donald's model of cultural and cognitive evolution, according to which three major transitions in the representations of reality have taken place during the evolution of hominids along with the accompanying changes in the social structure, technology and cultural artifacts: from episodic to mimetic culture, then to mythic culture and finally to theoretic culture. The author examines ontogenetic correlates to the proposed evolutionary model of modern mind and tries to assess the role of social interaction in the development of capacity for symbolic representations

Replicable personality types in childhood and adolescence: A Slovenian cross-sectional study

The present study explored individual constellations of five personality dimensions (personality types) and their internal replicability with a sample of 4- to 14-year-olds (N = 1341). Employing an age- and culture-decentered assessment tool the target participants were rated by their mothers and the procedure by Asendorpf et al. (2001) was followed to derive personality types. Several cluster solutions were investigated with the one representing four personality types appearing the most interpretable. The average type included individuals (26%) expressing mean levels of conscientiousness, extraversion, openness/intellect, and neuroticism, and a relatively high level of agreeableness. The reserved children/adolescents (35 %) scored below-average in openess/intellect, relatively low in conscientiousness and extraversion, and they were rated relatively high for neuroticism. The wilful participants (30 %) were high in openness/intelect and within the average range they appeared relatively extraverted and disagreeable. The resilient type turned out to be the least capacious as it captured extremly conscientious, extraverted, open, emotionally stable and relatively high agreeable individuals. More girls than boys were classified as average and the boys were, in comparison to the girls, more often assigned to the wilful and to the reserved personality types. The wilful type was the most common in early childhood, the reserved type memberhip was the most frequent in middle and late childhood, and early adolesscents were the most frequently classified to the average type

Učenci s priseljenskim ozadjem pri pouku na daljavo v drugem valu epidemije bolezni Covid-19 v Sloveniji

The paper presents a study on the effective adaptation of distance learning for students with an immigrant background in the second wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in Slovenia. The online survey of a small sample of teachers indicates a decline in ICT equipment-related problems compared to the first wave, while learning and language problems and the social isolation effects persisted. Teachers adapted the teaching approaches and learning assistance individually to the perceived language and learning problems and personal distress of students. Plurilingual approaches prove to be effective in enabling an inclusive multicultural learning environment and should be strengthened also in the school classes.V prispevku predstavljamo rezultate raziskave o učinkovitih prilagoditvah pouka na daljavo za učence s priseljenskim ozadjem v drugem valu epidemije v Sloveniji. Odgovori majhnih vzorcev učiteljev (N = 29) na spletno anketo nakazujejo upad težav z opremo IKT v primerjavi s prvim valom, medtem ko so se še vedno prisotne težave, povezane z učenjem in učnim jezikom ter posledicami socialne izolacije. Učitelji so individualizirali način poučevanja in učne pomoči glede na zaznane jezikovne in učne težave ter osebne stiske. Raznojezični pristopi so se izkazali za učinkovite pri zagotavljanju inkluzivnega poučevanja v večkulturnih okoljih in bi jih veljalo krepiti tudi pri pouku v šoli

The Slovenian version of the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation Scale – Preschool Edition (OLSP): the second preliminary validation

The contribution presents the first part of the second validation study on the Slovenian version of the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation Scale – Preschool Edition (OLSP). The study was implemented with a sample of 95 Slovenian kindergarten children aged from 2;6 to 6;5 years, uniformly sampled by age and gender. OLSP was filled out by the childrens' kindergarten teachers as well as their assisstants. The obtained results show that internal consistency and interrater reliability of the eight basic and the four composite scales of OLSP are satisfactory. No significant gender differences were obtained for any of the scales. The Dependent-Autonomous scale was positively related to the childrens' age, while the Internalizing Problems and General Adaptation composite scales related to age in the expected direction with medium effect sizes. However, the age differences on the latter did not reach statistical significance mainly due to small sample size

Presentation of the first pilot version of the social competence and behavior evaluation scales - preschool edition (OLSP) and their construct validity

The contribution presents the first Slovenian version of the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation - Preschool Edition (OLSP) scale. It was translated and adapted from the American original (SCBE) of the authors LaFreniere and Dumas (1995). 18 preschool teachers participated in the first pilot study of this instrument, which presents the first step towards its standardisation in Slovenia. Using the OLSP and the Questionnaire of Behavioral Reactions - VVR (Horvat, 1985), the teachers evaluated behaviours of 95 children aged between 64 and 75 months, all living in Ljubljana. The results of the study support relevant internal consistency of all basic and composite OLSP scales. The Slovenian translation of the SCBE was further established to be a valid instrument since all of the basic scales constituded the same composite scales as they did in the original American studies. In addition, the basic and the composite scales converged towards the same constructs as did the similar scales of children's behaviors in kindergarten, which have already been well established in Slovenia (VVR). To increase the reliability of the instrument, we constructed the second pilot version of OLSP considering the correlation estimates of the original and additional items with the corresponding basic scales

Social behavior and sociometric status of pre-school children attending kindergartens

The measures of temporal reliability and criterion validity of the Slovenian version of Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation Scale – Preschool Edition (SV-P) are presented and discussed in the present contribution. Test-retest reliability indexes of the basic and composite scales were obtained with a sample of 39 children assessed in a two-month interval, while the temporal stability coefficients were obtained with an independent sample of 48 children evaluated after a six-month interval. All of the temporal reliability measures were proven sufficiently high. Sociometric indicators of a child's popularity and peer rejection were chosen as an external criterion to verify the concurrent validity of the SV-P. All of the children attending the same kindergarten groups as the target children (N=54) participated in a sociometric test. It was implemented in a form of combined nomination and paired-comparison technique using a group photo of the children in a kindergarten group. The results of the composite scales of SV-P – Social Competence, Internalizing Problems, Externalizing Problems and Genaral Adaptation – were related to the children's sociometric positions within the kindergarten group in the expected directions and to a satisfactory degree. In addition, the results obtained by the sociometric procedure with a sample of 210 children were analysed. They highlight the proportions of kindergarten children classified into different sociometric statuses - popular, neglected, rejected, controversial and average – and suggest that during the early childhood the children clearly prefer their same-sex peers