The Sweetest Girl of All

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-me/1738/thumbnail.jp

NEPC Review: Takes a Community (Bellwether Education Partners, February 2018) and Pre-K Teachers and Bachelor's Degrees (New America and Bellwether Education Partners, February 2018)

Reports from Bellwether and New America each review the current state of early childhood education (ECE) teacher preparation programs at the community college and university levels. Both raise awareness about the challenges facing the ECE workforce and educational institutions in dealing with the recent policy push to increase the required educational credentials for pre-K teachers. Specifically, these policies elevate the requirement from the Child Development Associate certificate to an associate&rsquo;s degree or to a bachelor&rsquo;s degree with early childhood specialization. The reports also illustrate innovative practices that some states and colleges are implementing to improve the quality, flexibility, mobility, and diversity of ECE teachers. They end with policy recommendations for states, colleges, and ECE leaders. The methods consist of simple literature reviews (which generally rely on think tank white papers, as opposed to peer-reviewed journal publications). The reports also incorporate informal interviews with ECE stakeholders and leaders, but the methodology and selection procedures used are unclear. Notwithstanding these limitations, the analyses appear sound and the conclusions and recommendations made are generally reasonable, supported by the relatively limited data available. The longer report from Bellwether on the role of community colleges appears useful for policymakers and the public, due to its depth and effectiveness in presentation. The report from New America is too short and rather awkward in presentation, which limits its effectiveness.</p

Digital media inhibit self-regulatory private speech use in preschool children: The “digital bubble effect”

Preschoolers spend much time with digital media and some are concerned about impacts on language development. Private speech (PS) is self-talk children use during play, representing a necessary form of self-regulation. This study examined whether modality (material vs. digital) matters for children's PS. Twenty-nine White 5-yr-olds (52% female) completed the Tower of London task twice - once as a material version and once on a tablet. Children used more PS on the material than digital version of the task (d=0.46). During the material task, the typical pattern of increased PS as difficulty increased appeared. However, during the digital task, PS declined as difficulty increased. Digital games may inhibit children's use of PS for self-regulation, having implications for executive function development

Negative Affectivity, Authoritarianism, and Anxiety of Infection Explain Early Maladjusted Behavior During the COVID-19 Outbreak

During the first phase of the COVID-19 outbreak, Italy experienced problems of public order and maladjusted behavior. This study assessed the role of negative affectivity, right-wing authoritarianism, and anxiety of COVID-19 infection in explaining a variety of the maladjusted behaviors (i.e., “China-phobic” discrimination, panic buying) observed with an Italian sample. Specifically, we examined the effect of Negative Affectivity and Right-Wing Authoritarianism on maladjusted behaviors, and the moderating role of anxiety of infection. Seven hundred and fifty-seven Italian participants completed an online survey between March 3rd to the 7th 2020, which was immediately before the lockdown. A moderated-mediation model was tested using a structural equation modeling approach. Results indicated that both Negative Affectivity and Right-Wing Authoritarianism were positively associated with COVID-19-related maladjusted behavior, and that Right-Wing Authoritarianism mediated the relationship between Negative Affectivity and maladjusted behavior. Furthermore, the effect of Right-Wing Authoritarianism on maladjusted behavior was greater for those with high anxiety of infection, and the indirect effect of Negative Affectivity on maladjusted behavior through Right-Wing Authoritarianism was moderated by infection anxiety. Findings highlight potential psychological paths that may inform communication strategies and public health initiatives aimed at promoting healthy behavior during an outbreak

Two-Way Immersion Classrooms during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Parent and Teacher Perceptions of Student Learning

The present study examined parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of student learning in Spanish–English Dual Language Education (DLE) programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants included 72 parents of students from kindergarten to second grade and eight teachers in two schools in the southeastern U.S. Parents retrospectively reported their perceptions of their children’s instruction and learning experiences in English and Spanish during the 2020–2021 school year. Teachers reported if their students had opportunities to practice oral bilingual skills and their perception of students’ improvement in English and Spanish skills. Parents reported that there were more opportunities to practice English than there were to practice Spanish. Teachers reported that remote instruction offered fewer opportunities than hybrid instruction did to practice oral language skills. Overall, the teachers agreed that students’ language skills in English and Spanish improved. Similarly, the parents agreed that students’ language skills improved; however, they reported that their English skills improved more than their Spanish skills did. Student and family background factors, such as language fluency and parental education, were negatively associated with barriers to remote access. Implications for future research and suggestions for supporting students attending DLE programs during remote instruction are offered

Self-Talk: An Interdisciplinary Review and Transdisciplinary Model

The present work synthesises the self-talk literature and constructs a transdisciplinary self-talk model to guide future research across all academic disciplines that engage with self-talk. A comprehensive research review was conducted, including 559 self-talk articles published between 1978 and 2020. These articles were divided into 6 research categories: (a) inner dialogue, (b) mixed spontaneous and goal-directed organic self-talk, (c) goal-directed self-talk, (d) spontaneous self-talk, (e) educational self-talk interventions, and (f) strategic self-talk interventions. Following this, critical details were extracted from a subsample of 100 articles to create an interdisciplinary synthesis of the self-talk literature. Based on the synthesis, a self-talk model was created that places spontaneous and goal-directed organic self-talk as well as educational and strategic self-talk interventions in relation to variables within their nomological network, including external factors (e.g. task difficulty), descriptive states and traits (e.g. emotions), behaviour and performance, metacognition, and psychological skills (e.g. concentration)

The case for measuring and reporting bilingualism in developmental research

Many children around the world grow up bilingual, learning and using two or more languages in everyday life. Currently, however, children’s language backgrounds are not always reported in developmental studies. There is mounting evidence that bilingualism interacts with a wide array of processes including language, cognitive, perceptual, brain, and social development, as well as educational outcomes. As such, bilingualism may be a hidden moderator that obscures developmental patterns, and limits the replicability of developmental research and the efficacy of psychological and educational interventions. Here, we argue that bilingualism and language experience in general should be routinely documented in all studies of infant and child development regardless of the research questions pursued, and provide suggestions for measuring and reporting children’s language exposure, proficiency, and use

Effects of age on American Sign Language sentence repetition.

The study of deaf users of signed languages, who often experience delays in primary language (L1) acquisition, permits a unique opportunity to examine the effects of aging on the processing of an L1 acquired under delayed or protracted development. A cohort of 107 congenitally deaf adult signers ages 45–85 years who were exposed to American Sign Language (ASL) either in infancy, early childhood, or late childhood were tested using an ASL sentence repetition test. Participants repeated 20 sentences that gradually increased in length and complexity. Logistic mixed-effects regression with the variables of chronological age (CA) and age of acquisition (AoA) was used to assess sentence repetition accuracy. Results showed that CA was a significant predictor, with increased age being associated with decreased likelihood to reproduce a sentence correctly (odds ratio [OR] = 0.56, p = .010). In addition, effects of AoA were observed. Relative to native deaf signers, those who acquired ASL in early childhood were less likely to successfully reproduce a sentence (OR = 0.42, p = .003), as were subjects who learned ASL in late childhood (OR = 0.27, p < .001). These data show that aging affects verbatim recall in deaf users of ASL and that the age of sign language acquisition has a significant and lasting effect on repetition ability, even after decades of sign language use. These data show evidence for life-span continuity of early life effects

Verbal thinking and inner speech use in autism spectrum disorder

The extent to which cognition is verbally mediated in neurotypical individuals is the subject of debate in cognitive neuropsychology, as well as philosophy and psychology. Studying “verbal thinking” in developmental/neuropsychological disorders provides a valuable opportunity to inform theory building, as well as clinical practice. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive, critical review of such studies among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ASD involves severe social-communication deficits and limitations in cognitive/behavioural flexibility. The prevailing view in the field is that neither cognition nor behaviour is mediated verbally in ASD, and that this contributes to diagnostic features. However, our review suggests that, on the contrary, most studies to date actually find that among people with ASD cognitive task performance is either a) mediated verbally in a typical fashion, or b) not mediated verbally, but at no obvious cost to overall task performance. Overall though, these studies have methodological limitations and thus clear-cut conclusions are not possible at this stage. The aim of the review is to take stock of existing empirical findings, as well as to help develop the directions for future research that will resolve the many outstanding issues in this field