Three hundred and ninety‐one children (195 girls;
Place value concepts were measured longitudinally from kindergarten (2017) to first grade (2018) in a diverse sample (
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10383389
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Child Development
- Volume:
- 93
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0009-3920
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 778-793
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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M age = 9.56 years) attending Grades 1 and 5 completed implicit and explicit measures of math attitudes and math self‐concepts. Math grades were obtained. Multilevel analyses showed that first‐grade girls held a strong negative implicit attitude about math, despite no gender differences in math grades or self‐reported (explicit) positivity about math. The explicit measures significantly predicted math grades, and implicit attitudes accounted for additional variance in boys. The contrast between the implicit (negativity for girls) and explicit (positivity for girls and boys) effects suggest implicit–explicit dissociations in children, which have also been observed in adults. Early‐emerging implicit attitudes may be a foundation for the later development of explicit attitudes and beliefs about math. -
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Abstract Implicit and explicit self‐esteem are not commonly measured in the same children. Using a cross‐sectional design, data from 354 Croatian children (184 girls) in Grade 1 (
M age = 7.55 years) and Grade 5 (M age = 11.58 years) were collected in Spring 2019. All children completed explicit and implicit self‐esteem measures; math and language grades were obtained. For the explicit measure, older children showed lower self‐esteem than younger children, and girls showed lower self‐esteem than boys. For the implicit measure, there were no age effects, and girls showed higher self‐esteem than boys. Although both types of self‐esteem were positively associated with academic achievement, implicit self‐esteem was associated more strongly with language than with math achievement. Discussion is provided about why self‐esteem relates to academic achievement during childhood. -
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Abstract Background The language of the science curriculum is complex, even in the early grades. To communicate their scientific observations, children must produce complex syntax, particularly complement clauses (e.g.,
I think it will float ;We noticed that it vibrates ). Complex syntax is often challenging for children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and thus their learning and communication of science may be compromised.Aims We asked whether recast therapy delivered in the context of a science curriculum led to gains in complement clause use and scientific content knowledge. To understand the efficacy of recast therapy, we compared changes in science and language knowledge in children who received treatment for complement clauses embedded in a first‐grade science curriculum to two active control conditions (vocabulary + science, phonological awareness + science).
Methods & Procedures This 2‐year single‐site three‐arm parallel randomized controlled trial was conducted in Delaware, USA. Children with DLD, not yet in first grade and with low accuracy on complement clauses, were eligible. Thirty‐three 4–7‐year‐old children participated in the summers of 2018 and 2019 (2020 was cancelled due to COVID‐19). We assigned participants to arms using 1:1:1 pseudo‐random allocation (avoiding placing siblings together). The intervention consisted of 39 small‐group sessions of recast therapy, robust vocabulary instruction or phonological awareness intervention during eight science units over 4 weeks, followed by two science units (1 week) taught without language intervention. Pre‐/post‐measures were collected 3 weeks before and after camp by unmasked assessors.
Outcomes & Results Primary outcome measures were accuracy on a 20‐item probe of complement clause production and performance on ten 10‐item unit tests (eight science + language, two science only). Complete data were available for 31 children (10 grammar, 21 active control); two others were lost to follow‐up. Both groups made similar gains on science unit tests for science + language content (pre versus post,
d = 2.9,p < 0.0001; group,p = 0.24). The grammar group performed significantly better at post‐test than the active control group (d = 2.5,p = 0.049) on complement clause probes and marginally better on science‐only unit tests (d = 2.5,p = 0.051).Conclusions & Implications Children with DLD can benefit from language intervention embedded in curricular content and learn both language and science targets taught simultaneously. Tentative findings suggest that treatment for grammar targets may improve academic outcomes.
What this paper adds What is already known on the subject We know that recast therapy focused on morphology is effective but very time consuming. Treatment for complex syntax in young children has preliminary efficacy data available. Prior research provides mixed evidence as to children’s ability to learn language targets in conjunction with other information.
What this study adds This study provides additional data supporting the efficacy of intensive complex syntax recast therapy for children ages 4–7 with Developmental Language Disorder. It also provides data that children can learn language targets and science curricular content simultaneously.
What are the clinical implications of this work? As SLPs, we have to talk about something to deliver language therapy; we should consider talking about curricular content. Recast therapy focused on syntactic frames is effective with young children.
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Abstract Background Students' tendencies to seek feedback are associated with improved learning. Yet, how soon this association becomes robust enough to make predictions about learning is not fully understood. Such knowledge has strong implications for early identification of students at‐risk for underachievement via digital learning platforms.
Objectives We sought to understand how early in the academic year students' end‐of‐year learning outcomes could be predicted by their performance and feedback‐seeking behaviours within a digital learning platform. We analysed data collected at different time points in the academic year and across different cohorts of students within the context of high school advanced placement (AP) Statistics courses.
Methods High school students enrolled in AP Statistics spanning three academic years between 2017 and 2020 (
N = 726;M age = 16.72 years) completed 3 or 4 homework assignments, each 2 and 3 months apart.Results and conclusions Across the three cohorts, and even as early as the first assignment, a model consisting of demographic variables (gender, race/ethnicity, parental education), assignment performance, and interaction with the digital score report explained significant variation in students' final course grades (
R 2 = 0.314–0.412) and AP exam scores (κ = 0.583–0.689). Students' assignment performance was positively associated with end‐of‐year learning outcomes. Students who more frequently checked their digital score reports tended to receive better learning outcomes, though not consistently across cohorts.Implications These findings further an understanding of how students' early performance and feedback‐seeking behaviours within a digital learning platform predict end‐of‐year learning outcomes.
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Abstract Dispersal evolves as an adaptive mechanism to optimize individual fitness across the landscape. Specifically, dispersal represents a mechanism to escape fitness costs resulting from changes in environmental conditions. Decades of empirical work suggest that individuals use local habitat cues to make movement decisions, but theory predicts that dispersal can also evolve as a fixed trait, independent of local conditions, in environments characterized by a history of stochastic spatiotemporal variation. Until now, however, both conditional and fixed models of dispersal evolution have primarily been evaluated using emigration data (stay vs. leave), and not dispersal distances: a more comprehensive measure of dispersal. Our goal was to test whether conditional or fixed models of dispersal evolution predict variation in dispersal distance in the stream salamander
Gyrinophilus porphyriticus. We quantified variation in habitat conditions using measures of salamander performance from 4 yr of spatially explicit, capture–mark–recapture (CMR) data across three headwater streams in the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in central New Hampshire, USA. We used body condition as an index of local habitat quality that individuals may use to make dispersal decisions, and survival probability estimated from multistate CMR models as an index of mortality risk resulting from the long‐term history of environmental variation. We found that dispersal distances increased with declining survival probability, indicating that salamanders disperse further in risky environments. Dispersal distances were unrelated to spatial variation in body condition, suggesting that salamanders do not base dispersal distance decisions on local habitat quality. Our study provides the first empirical support for fixed models of dispersal evolution, which predict that dispersal evolves in response to a history of spatiotemporal environmental variation, rather than as a conditional response to current habitat conditions. More broadly, this study underscores the value of assessing alternative scales of environmental variation to gain a more complete and balanced understanding of dispersal evolution.
