Shovels and Swords: How realistic and fantastical themes affect children's word learning

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Research has shown that storybooks and play sessions help preschool children learn vocabulary, thereby benefiting their language and school readiness skills. But the kind of content that leads to optimal vocabulary learning – realistic or fantastical – remains largely unexplored. We investigate this issue as part of a large-scale study of vocabulary learning in low-income classrooms. Preschoolers (N = 154) learned 20 new words over the course of a two-week intervention. These words were taught using either realistic (e.g., farms) or fantastical (e.g., dragons) storybooks and toys. Children learned the new words in both conditions, and their comprehension knowledge did not differ across conditions. However, children who engaged in stories and play with a fantastical theme showed significantly greater gains in their production knowledge. Reasons for and implications of this result are discussed

Narrative performance, peer group culture, and narrative development in a preschool classroom

Introduction This chapter uses the analysis of a preschool storytelling and story-acting practice to explore some of the ways that peer-oriented symbolic activities and peer group culture can serve as valuable contexts for promoting young children’s narrative development. In the process, it suggests the need to rethink, refine, and broaden the conceptions of the “social context” of development now used by most research in language socialization and development. There is a substantial and growing body of work on the role of social context in language development (Hoff 2006). In practice, most research on this subject has focused on delineating and analyzing various forms of adult–child interaction, usually dyadic, in which an adult caregiver transmits information, provides cultural models, and in other ways instructs, guides, corrects, and “scaffolds” the efforts of the less capable child. By comparison, research on the complementary role of peers in socialization and development has been, as Blum-Kulka and Snow (2004: 292) put it, relatively “peripheral and non-cumulative.” As the present volume helps to demonstrate, that situation has gradually been changing. But with some notable exceptions, the perspectives informing peer-oriented developmental research often remain limited in important respects. Even when interaction between children is studied, it is usually assimilated to the one-way expert–novice model, with an older sibling or other peer taking on the “expert” role. And both adult-oriented and peer-oriented research tend to reduce the social context of development, explicitly or in effect, to interactions between individuals and their direct consequences. © Cambridge University Press 2014

Supermarket Speak: Increasing Talk Among Low-Socioeconomic Status Families

Children from low-socioeconomic status (SES) families often fall behind their middle-class peers in early language development. But interventions designed to support their language skills are often costly and labor-intensive. This study implements an inexpensive and subtle language intervention aimed at sparking parent-child interaction in a place that families naturally visit: the supermarket. We placed signs encouraging adult-child dialogue in supermarkets serving low- and mid-SES neighborhoods. Using an unobtrusive observational methodology, we tested how these signs affected adult-child interactions. When signs were present in supermarkets serving low-SES neighborhoods, both the amount and the quality of talk between adults and children increased significantly, compared to when the signs were not present; signs had little effect in middle-SES supermarkets. This study demonstrates that implementing simple, cost-effective interventions in everyday environments may bolster children's language development and school readiness skills. © 2015 International Mind, Brain, and Education Society and Blackwell Publishing, Inc

Helminth fauna of Lebanon lizard, Phoenicolacerta laevis (Gray, 1838), (Squamata: Lacertidae) from Southern Turkey

In the years 2010 and 2014, fifty-four samples of Phoenicolacerta laevis from eight localities in Adana (n=6) and Hatay (n=48) were collected and examined for helminth parasites. New host and locality records were recorded. As a results of present study, three species of Digenea, Sonsinotrema tacapense, Prosthodendrium chilostomum, Brachylaima sp. (metacercaria); two species of Cestoda, Oochoristica tuberculata and Mesocestoides sp. and four species of Nematoda, Skrjabinodon medinae, Spauligodon sp., Thubunaea sp. and a larva of the Ascaridiidae Ascarididae gen. sp. were reported for lizard samples. We document new host records for all of helminth species reported here. Sonsionotrema tacapense (Digenea), and Thubunaea sp. (Nematoda) are recorded for the first time from Turkey. There are, to our knowledge, no reports of helminths for P. laevis in Turkey and also from its range

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

A new locality record of Triturus ivanbureschi Wielstra & Arntzen, 2013 (Amphibia: Salamandridae) in western Anatolia, Turkey

2-s2.0-85078803373The new locality for Triturus ivanbureschi is recorded in the inner part of western Anatolia. Morphological variation in a series of the thirteen newt specimens is also presented and morphological characteristics of the specimens compared with the previous studies in western Anatolia, Turkey. ©Biharean Biologist, Oradea, Romania, 2019

Isolation and preparation of monoclonal antibody to ovine Immunoglobulin M

Ovine immunoglobulin M was isolated from sheep serum using gel filtration and affinity chromatography. Polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies against this isotype were prepared. The specificity of the monoclonal antibody was investigated using SDS-Page, immunoblotting, an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and affinity chromatography. On immunoblotting, monoclonal anti-IgM reacted with a 70 kD protein which corresponded to ovine IgM

Üniversite öğrencileri için bilgisayar tabanlı sürdürülebilir dikkat testi norm çalışması

Sustained attention can be defined as being a basic component of attention and being ready for stimuli that develop frequently and unexpectedly over long periods of time. It is important to investigate sustained attention in e-learning environments where individuals spend a long time with digital screens. The aim of this study was to conduct a normative study of a computer-based sustained attention test. In the research, there are 201 participants from two different universities. According to the data obtained from the test developed according to the multi-object tracking paradigm, the sustained attention performance of male participants was higher than that of female participants. In addition to this finding, no significant difference was found between the groups in terms of age variables. With this sustained attention test, pre-evaluations can be made in the process of developing applications that take into account individual differences in the design of e-learning environments and allow different design proposals to be developed. © 2019, Ankara University. All rights reserved.Scopu

The effect of nest relocation on embryonic mortality and sex ratio of Loggerhead Turtles, Caretta caretta (Reptilia: Cheloniidae), at Dalyan Beach, Turkey

Marine turtles are globally endangered and one important conservation technique is nest relocation. This study assesses the relationship between nest site factors (wet nest depth, dry nest depth, total nest depth, nest diameter, distance to sea, moisture, clutch size and incubation duration) and embryonic mortality of natural and relocated nests at Dalyan beach, Turkey. Principal component analyses (PCA) revealed a three-factor structure for the natural nests and a four-factor structure for the relocated nests. The clutches in natural and relocated nests had a total of mortality ratio of 21% and 12%, incubation duration of 52 and 50 days, and estimated female ratio of 80% and 88%, respectively. Thus, mortality was lower and incubation faster in the relocated nests, but the proportion of females was higher. Hatching success in relocated nests (84.4%) was significantly higher than in natural nests (72.7%)