Accommodating disability in higher education: a closer look at the evidence for a mainstream framework of learning support

In a recently published research article in this journal, Avramidis & Skidmore (2004) argued that it is time we placed issues of disability provision more in the context of provision for the generic student. They presented a study based on the Learning for All Questionnaire (LfAQ), which investigated certain implied issues. Findings indicated a need for improved educational provision for all students. No differences were found between disabled and non-disabled students in perceived level of needs or support for university, tutoring and lecturing systems. This null finding was the same for the learning support needs of disabled versus non-disabled students, with both groups wanting identical changes to the way the university's central learning support service responds to learning needs. These findings were taken as calling for a move away from a ‘specialist’ framework of disability provision and towards a ‘mainstream’ framework instead, in which the needs of disabled students are accommodated within improvements made in learning for all. Further, the Disabled Students' Allowance should be given over to departments in order to help fund this change in ‘institutional habitus’. In this article, four serious failings of the study and analyses are outlined. When these are addressed in a disability-theoretic reanalysis of the LfAQ data, every main finding is reversed. It is concluded that educational provisions are generally adequate. Students would welcome changes but these are more to do with increasing levels of convenience rather than learning support issues. Furthermore, the LfAQ data actually refute rather than support a mainstream framework of disability provision

A child-centred exploration of the relevance of family and friends to theory of mind development

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2011 The Authors.Theory of Mind (ToM) is said to develop at around 4 years old. But some studies suggest it develops considerably earlier than this, with others suggesting it develops much later. Although several recent studies have found that social factors (like gender, family size, number of siblings, and number of friends) can impact on ToM, other studies contradict those findings. We wondered whether addressing several procedural issues and ensuring the task concerns real protagonists in real time, would bear on the above issues. Here, 114 children of 3–6 years completed four ToM tasks incorporating controls from experimental psychology, including randomly varying the order of ToM and non-ToM questions across participants. Now, children passed ToM tasks from around 5 years old, rather than 4 years or earlier. Girls did not develop ToM any earlier than boys. There was clear correlational evidence for the older-sibling effect and effects of friends but no reliable effects of nuclear or extended family. However, when these factors were set in the context of one another, the sibling effect was driven by a negative influence from younger siblings (as opposed to older siblings) and the friends effect was driven by friends at school (as opposed to friends at home). Finally, “friends” was a stronger predictor than siblings but memory (a cognitive factor) and age (a maturational factor) were the strongest predictors of all

Factors and processes in children's transitive deductions

Transitive tasks are important for understanding how children develop socio-cognitively. However, developmental research has been restricted largely to questions surrounding maturation. We asked 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds (N = 117) to solve a composite of five different transitive tasks. Tasks included conditions asking about item-C (associated with the marked relation) in addition to the usual case of asking only about item-A (associated with the unmarked relation). Here, children found resolving item-C much easier than resolving item-A, a finding running counter to long-standing assumptions about transitive reasoning. Considering gender perhaps for the first time, boys exhibited higher transitive scores than girls overall. Finally, analysing in the context of one recent and well-specified theory of spatial transitive reasoning, we generated the prediction that reporting the full series should be easier than deducing any one item from that series. This prediction was not upheld. We discuss amendments necessary to accommodate all our earlier findings

Getting one step closer to deduction: Introducing an alternative paradigm for transitive inference

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2008 Psychology Press.Transitive inference is claimed to be “deductive”. Yet every group/species ever reported apparently uses it. We asked 58 adults to solve five-term transitive tasks, requiring neither training nor premise learning. A computer-based procedure ensured all premises were continually visible. Response accuracy and RT (non-discriminative nRT) were measured as is typically done. We also measured RT confined to correct responses (cRT). Overall, very few typical transitive phenomena emerged. The symbolic distance effect never extended to premise recall and was not at all evident for nRT; suggesting the use of non-deductive end-anchor strategies. For overall performance, and particularly the critical B?D inference, our findings indicate that deductive transitive inference is far more intellectually challenging than previously thought. Contrasts of our present findings against previous findings suggest at least two distinct transitive inference modes, with most research and most computational models to date targeting an associative mode rather than their desired deductive mode. This conclusion fits well with the growing number of theories embracing a “dual process” conception of reasoning. Finally, our differing findings for nRT versus cRT suggest that researchers should give closer consideration to matching the RT measure they use to the particular conception of transitive inference they pre-held

Transitivity for height versus speed: To what extent do the under-7s really have a transitive capacity?

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2011 Psychology Press.Transitive inference underpins many human reasoning competencies. The dominant task (the “extensive training paradigm”) employs many items and large amounts of training, instilling an ordered series in the reasoner's mind. But findings from an alternative “three-term paradigm” suggest transitivity is not present until 7 + years. Interestingly, a second alternative paradigm (the “spatial task”), using simultaneously displayed height relationships to form premise pairs, can uphold the 4-year estimate. However, this paradigm risks cueing children and hence is problematic. We investigated whether a height-task variant might correspond to a more ecologically valid three-term task. A total of 222 4–6-year-olds either completed a modified height task, including an increased familiarisation phase, or a computer-animated task about cartoon characters running a race in pairs. Findings confirmed that both tasks were functionally identical. Crucially, 4-year-olds were at chance on both, whereas 6-year-olds performed competently. These findings contrast with estimates from all three paradigms considered. A theoretical evaluation of our tasks and procedures against previous ones, leads us to two conclusions. First, our estimate slightly amends the 7-year estimate offered by the three-term paradigm, with the difference explained in terms of its greater relevance to child experiences. Second, our estimate can coexist alongside the 4-year estimate from the extensive training paradigm. This is because, applying a recently developed “dual-process” conception of reasoning, anticipates that extensive training benefits a species-general associative system, while the spatial paradigm and three-term paradigm can potentially index a genuinely deductive system, which has always been the target of transitive research

What Stroop tasks can tell us about selective attention from childhood to adulthood

A rich body of research concerns causes of Stroop effects plus applications of Stroop. However, several questions remain. We included assessment of errors with children and adults (N = 316), who sat either a task wherein each block employed only trials of one type (unmixed task) or where every block comprised of a mix of the congruent, neutral, and incongruent trials. Children responded slower than adults and made more errors on each task. Contrary to some previous studies, interference (the difference between neutral and incongruent condition) showed no reaction time (RT) differences by group or task, although there were differences in errors. By contrast, facilitation (the difference between neutral and congruent condition) was greater in children than adults, and greater on the unmixed task than the mixed task. After considering a number of theoretical accounts, we settle on the inadvertent word‐reading hypothesis, whereby facilitation stems from children and the unmixed task promoting inadvertent reading particularly in the congruent condition. Stability of interference RT is explained by fixed semantic differences between neutral and incongruent conditions, for children versus adults and for unmixed versus mixed task. We conclude that utilizing two tasks together may reveal more about how attention is affected in other groups

Towards a resolution of some outstanding issues in transitive research: an empirical test on middle childhood

Transitive Inference (deduce B > D from B > C and C > D) can help us to understand other areas of sociocognitive development. Across three experiments, learning, memory, and the validity of two transitive paradigms were investigated. In Experiment 1 (N = 121), 7-year-olds completed a three-term nontraining task or a five-term task requiring extensive-training. Performance was superior on the three-term task. Experiment 2 presented 5–10-year-olds with a new five-term task, increasing learning opportunities without lengthening training (N = 71). Inferences improved, suggesting children can learn five-term series rapidly. Regarding memory, the minor (CD) premise was the best predictor of BD-inferential performance in both task-types. However, tasks exhibited different profiles according to associations between the major (BC) premise and BD inference, correlations between the premises, and the role of age. Experiment 3 (N = 227) helped rule out the possible objection that the above findings simply stemmed from three-term tasks with real objects being easier to solve than computer-tasks. It also confirmed that, unlike for five-term task (Experiments 1 & 2), inferences on three-term tasks improve with age, whether the age range is wide (Experiment 3) or narrow (Experiment 2). I conclude that the tasks indexed different routes within a dual-process conception of transitive reasoning: The five-term tasks indexes Type 1 (associative) processing, and the three-term task indexes Type 2 (analytic) processing. As well as demonstrating that both tasks are perfectly valid, these findings open up opportunities to use transitive tasks for educability, to investigate the role of transitivity in other domains of reasoning, and potentially to benefit the lived experiences of persons with developmental issues