The relation between naming and literacy in children with word-finding difficulties

Difficulties with picture naming tasks are associated with literacy problems. Children with dyslexia, when given naming tasks, are slower to produce words and have a higher proportion of errors (Wolf and Bowers, 1999). However, little is known about the relation between literacy and naming in other populations. This study investigates this relation in 20 children (aged 6:6 – 7:11) with word-finding difficulties (WFDs). The children in our sample performed very poorly on assessments of naming, but unlike children with dyslexia, were found to have decoding and spelling abilities within the normal range. In addition, their abilities on phonological awareness tasks were at a similar level to their decoding abilities. In contrast, performance on reading comprehension and language comprehension was significantly worse than for decoding, spelling and rhyme awareness. The implications of our findings for models concerned with understanding the relation between naming speed and literacy abilities are discussed

Understanding the Uninsured: Tailoring Policy Solutions for Different Subpopulations

Segments the uninsured into subgroups by legal status, eligibility for public programs such as Medicaid, and income level, and presents various policy options for expanding coverage in each subgroup, including mandates and private market solutions

Childhood Obesity: The Role of Health Policy

This first policy report from the CPRC and the NICHQ Childhood Obesity Action Network was released on March 18, 2008 in Miami Florida as part of the Second Childhood Obesity Congress

Evaluation of a digital consultation and self-care advice tool in primary care: a multi-methods study

Digital services are often regarded as a solution to the growing demands on primary care services. Provision of a tool offering advice to support self-management as well as the ability to digitally consult with a General Practitioner (GP) has the potential to alleviate some of the pressure on primary care. This paper reports on a Phase II, 6-month evaluation of eConsult, a web-based triage and consultation system that was piloted across 11 GP practices across Scotland. Through a multi-method approach the evaluation explored eConsult use across practices, exposing both barriers and facilitators to its adoption. Findings suggest that expectations that eConsult would offer an additional and alternative method of accessing GP services were largely met. However, there is less certainty that it has fulfilled expectations of promoting self-help. In addition, low uptake meant that evaluation of current effectiveness was difficult for practices to quantify. The presence of an eConsult champion(s) within the practice was seen to be a significant factor in ensuring successful integration of the tool. A lack of patient and staff engagement, insufficient support and lack of protocols around processes were seen as barriers to its success

Talking with their feet : student absenteeism and compulsory schooling

Universal access to elementary schooling is a goal that was largely achieved in western democracies by the mid twentieth century. Yet, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, students’ access to schooling appears to be back on the agenda; this time, students themselves rather than our social systems are regulating their access to school. Increasingly, schools throughout Australia and in several other OECD countries are recording a worrying decline in student attendance in the compulsory years, prompting a certain amount of societal ‘fear’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘moral panic’. This paper reviews the literature on student attendance and absenteeism as a feature of contemporary schooling. It begins with an account of how this literature variously defines absenteeism – its discursive categories – and where it locates the ‘problem’. The ‘solutions’ that flow from these accounts are also explicated, specifically in relation to their regulatory effects on students and on the education they are offered. The paper’s critical reading of these problems of and solutions for student absenteeism seeks to highlight the institutional authoring of such student behaviour and of students as ‘other’. It also uncovers the silences in the literature, particularly in relation to cultural difference, student subjectivity and teacher pedagogy – what teachers are doing (and not doing) to/with students. The paper concludes that issues of low socio-economic status do not feature very loudly in the literature (and, we suspect, in practice), despite being strongly associated with students who respond to the demands and relevance of schooling by ‘talking with their feet’

Collaborating to Support Student Success: Exploring Free e-Text Access at Illinois State University

A number of studies have shown a connection between the cost of textbooks and student success in higher education. While Milner Library has traditionally contributed to student success on many levels, we wished to address particular challenges to student success and equity that have been magnified by COVID. In Fall 2020 a project team of librarians from a variety of departments secured funding for a coordinated effort to license available e-textbooks for Spring 2021 courses. Major goals of this project are to help alleviate textbook costs for students and explore the potential impact of these savings on student success. In this panel, we will describe project planning and progress to date, share some preliminary findings, and emphasize the contributions brought by each librarian’s role and specialized knowledge

Document Delivery as a Supplement or Replacement for Serial Subscriptions

Increasing serials costs and shrinking budgets present challenges for academic libraries to continue providing sufficient access to scholarly articles. Rapid document delivery services can serve as an effective means to fill the gap caused by serials cancellations. This column examines several of the existing document delivery service providers and addresses issues involved in their implementation

Computational Propaganda: Targeted Advertising and the Perception of Truth

Social media has become an effective medium for the execution of cyberpsychological threats by adopting language to influence perceptions based on personal interests and behaviours. Targeted messages can be refined for maximum effect and have been implicated in changing the outcome of democratic elections and the decreasing uptake of vaccinations. However, computational propaganda and cyberpsychological threats are not well understood within the cybersecurity community. To address this, we adopt the theoretical model of the illusory truth effect to posit that how information is presented online, may solidify views in an \u27undecided\u27 group with \u27some\u27 knowledge of an argument. We test this hypothesis by employing an explanatory sequential design. We first analyse a dataset containing adverts related to Brexit to determine influential terms using the corpus linguistics method. Analysing term frequencies, collocational and concordance information, the results of our quantitative analysis indicate that function words such as the personal pronouns ‘we’ or the definite article ‘the’ play a significant role in the construction of computational propaganda language. We then conducta qualitative analysis of a Facebook ad related to Brexit to further understand how the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ elements are realised in computational propaganda language, that is, who is targeted and what is the underlying message. We found that understanding these, one can gain insights into a threat actor’s motivation, opportunity and capability and, thus, allows a defensive response to be put into place. In turn, how an audience responds, may provide insight on the impact of the threat