Young children working together:Cooperative learning effects on group work of children in Grade 1 of primary education

It was examined whether cooperative learning within the Success for All (SfA) program led to improved group work behaviour of Grade 1 pupils. 168 pupils of six SfA schools and 144 pupils of four control schools participated. Positive and negative group work behaviour was observed during a group task, taking into account socioemotional ethos, group participation, and type of dialogue. Longitudinal multilevel analysis was used for the sequence of observed 20-s time intervals. SfA groups showed more positive and less negative group work behaviour compared to control groups, whilst controlling for several group characteristics. Results suggest that negative group work behaviour increased gradually during the whole task in control groups, while in SfA groups it increased only towards the end of the task. The findings indicate that cooperative learning may lead to improved group work behaviour of young pupils (6–7 years old)

Contrasting deficits on executive functions between ADHD and reading disabled children

BACKGROUND. The object of this study was to analyze the executive functioning of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or reading disability (RD) independent of their non-executive deficits. METHODS: Three carefully diagnosed groups of children, aged between 7 and 12 years (35 ADHD, 22 RD and 30 typically developing children), were tested on a wide range of tasks related to five major domains of executive functioning (EF): inhibition, visual working memory, planning, cognitive flexibility, and verbal fluency. Additional tasks were selected for each domain to control for non-executive processing. RESULTS: ADHD children were impaired on interference control, but not on prepotent and ongoing response suppression. ADHD showed deficits on visual working memory, planning, cognitive flexibility and phonetic fluency. RD children were impaired on phonetic fluency. The only EF measure that differentiated ADHD from RD was planning. CONCLUSIONS: The present sample of ADHD children showed several EF deficits, whereas RD children were almost spared executive dysfunction, but exhibited deficits in phonetic fluency

Home media and science performance:A cross-national study

This study examines the effects of media resources in the parental home on the science performance of 15-year-old students. It employs data from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) containing information on 345,967 respondents from 53 countries. Results show that media assets in the family home are indeed meaningful for children’s science performance, as a beneficial resource but also as a disadvantage. A positive reading climate in the parental home and the availability of computers benefits science performance. However, a television-rich home seems to hinder children’s school success. Furthermore, results indicate that, compared to less developed countries, in more modernized societies parental reading investments are even more beneficial to their children’s science performance, whereas a television-rich parental home is even more disadvantageous

In patients eligible for meniscal surgery who first receive physical therapy, multivariable prognostic models cannot predict who will eventually undergo surgery

Purpose Although physical therapy is the recommended treatment in patients over 45 years old with a degenerative meniscal tear, 24% still opt for meniscal surgery. The aim was to identify those patients with a degenerative meniscal tear who will undergo surgery following physical therapy. Methods The data for this study were generated in the physical therapy arm of the ESCAPE trial, a randomized clinical trial investigating the effectiveness of surgery versus physical therapy in patients of 45-70 years old, with a degenerative meniscal tear. At 6 and 24 months patients were divided into two groups: those who did not undergo surgery, and those who did undergo surgery. Two multivariable prognostic models were developed using candidate predictors that were selected from the list of the patients' baseline variables. A multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed with backward Wald selection and a cut-off of p < 0.157. For both models the performance was assessed and corrected for the models' optimism through an internal validation using bootstrapping technique with 500 repetitions. Results At 6 months, 32/153 patients (20.9%) underwent meniscal surgery following physical therapy. Based on the multivariable regression analysis, patients were more likely to opt for meniscal surgery within 6 months when they had worse knee function, lower education level and a better general physical health status at baseline. At 24 months, 43/153 patients (28.1%) underwent meniscal surgery following physical therapy. Patients were more likely to opt for meniscal surgery within 24 months when they had worse knee function and a lower level of education at baseline at baseline. Both models had a low explained variance (16 and 11%, respectively) and an insufficient predictive accuracy. Conclusion Not all patients with degenerative meniscal tears experience beneficial results following physical therapy. The non-responders to physical therapy could not accurately be predicted by our prognostic models.Orthopaedics, Trauma Surgery and Rehabilitatio

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

Relational event models in network science

Relational event models (REMs) for the analysis of social interaction were first introduced 15 years ago. Since then, a number of important substantive and methodological contributions have produced their progressive refinement and hence facilitated their increased adoption in studies of social and other networks. Today REMs represent a well-established class of statistical models for relational processes. This special issue of Network Science demonstrates the standing and recognition that REMs have achieved within the network analysis and networks science communities. We wrote this brief introductory editorial essay with four main objectives in mind: (i) positioning relational event data and models in the larger context of contemporary network science and social network research; (ii) reviewing some of the most important recent developments; (iii) presenting the innovative studies collected in this special issue as evidence of the empirical value of REMs, and (iv) identifying open questions and future research directions.ISSN:2050-1242ISSN:2050-125

Reading between the lines: contributing factors that affect Grade 5 student reading performance as measured across South Africa's 11 languages

This paper reports on the South African results of a study to identify and explain relationships between some major factors associated with successful reading at Grade 5. With 11 official languages, educational policy in South Africa advocates an additive bilingualism model and students in Grade 1 to 3 are taught in their mother tongue. Thereafter, the language of learning and teaching changes to a second language, which in most cases is English. With this complexity of issues, Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) was used to determine the effect of a number of explanatory variables at student- and school level on reading achievement as outcome variable, while controlling for language using the South African PIRLS 2006 data. Utilizing Creemers’ Comprehensive Model of Educational Effectiveness (Creemers and Reezigt, 1999) as theoretical point of departure, this paper will focus on the results of an overall South African model with student- and school level variables.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nere20gv201