Same-sex and cross-sex help exchanges in the classroom.

For this study, we combined interviews and naturalistic observations of the same children to examine same-sex and cross-sex help exchanges in reading and math classes among third- and fifth-grade boys and girls. Overall, girls were perceived by their classmates to be more academically competent and more likable as helpers than were boys. Nevertheless, girls were not the targets of cross-sex help seeking more than boys were. Both boys and girls sought help more frequently from same-sex than from opposite-sex classmates. When help seeking occurred between opposite-sex classmates, girls were more likely than boys to report liking these helpers as much as their same-sex helpers. The implications of these findings for children's learning and peer status are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why attend school? Chinese immigrant and European American preschoolers' views and outcomes.

The developing views of the purposes of school learning (PSLs) and related achievement among immigrant Chinese preschoolers and their European American (EA) age-mates were examined. Both culture and socioeconomic status (SES) were considered simultaneously, an often neglected research approach to studying Asian children. One hundred and fifty 4-year-olds—50 each of middle-class Chinese (CHM), low-income Chinese (CHL), and EA children—completed 2 story beginnings about school and were also tested for their language and math achievement. Results showed that 4-year-olds held sophisticated PSLs, ranging from intellectual to social and affect benefits. Large cultural and SES differences also emerged. CHM children mentioned more adult expectation and seriousness of learning than EA children who expressed more positive affect for self and compliance with adults. CHL children mentioned fewest PSLs. Achievement scores for oral expression of both immigrant groups were significantly lower than those of EA children despite similar reading and math achievement. Controlling for culture and SES, the authors found that children's articulated intellectual, but not other purposes, uniquely predicted their achievement in all tested domains. Cultural and SES influences on immigrant children are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The longitudinal relations of teacher expectations to achievement in the early school years.

There is relatively little research on the role of teacher expectations in the early school years or the importance of teacher expectations as a predictor of future academic achievement. The current study investigated these issues in the reading and mathematic domains for young children. Data from nearly 1,000 children and families at 1st, 3rd, and 5th grades were included. Child sex and social skills emerged as consistent predictors of teacher expectations of reading and, to a lesser extent, math ability. In predicting actual future academic achievement, results showed that teacher expectations were differentially related to achievement in reading and math. There was no evidence that teacher expectations accumulate but some evidence that they remain durable over time for math achievement. In addition, teacher expectations were more strongly related to later achievement for groups of children who might be considered to be at risk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Field dependence and the school achievement gap between Anglo-American and Mexican-American children.

Research supports the hypothesis that field dependence explains the poorer school achievement of Mexican-American children compared to Anglo-American children. To test that hypothesis, multiple regression and path analyses were used to interpret the relationships between culture, field dependence, and school achievement among 134 2nd-, 4th-, and 6th-grade Anglo-American and Mexican-American children. Results indicate that Mexican-Americans were significantly below Anglo-Americans in reading and math achievement, field independence was significantly correlated with both reading and math achievement, and Mexican-Americans were significantly more field dependent. Field dependence explains the cultural difference in math achievement but does not fully explain the cultural difference in reading achievement. Implications for understanding both field dependence and the nature of the observed cultural differences are discussed. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hypothesis confirmation: The joint effect of positive test strategy and acquiescence response set.

Hypothesis testers tend to ask hypothesis-consistent questions (i.e., they ask about features more likely under the hypothesis than under the alternative). Targets tend to acquiesce (i.e., they provide more yes than no answers). Because yes answers to hypothesis-consistent questions confirm the hypothesis being tested, hypothesis testers should generate hypothesis-confirming data. In the present study, naive hypothesis testers questioned naive targets about their personality traits and, on the basis of targets' answers, drew conclusions about these traits. As predicted, hypothesis testers tended to ask hypothesis-consistent questions, targets tended to acquiesce, and the data generated were consistent with the hypothesis being tested. On the basis of these data, hypothesis testers drew inferences in line with the hypothesis they were testing. Because hypothesis testers derived their conclusions from hypothesis-confirming data, more diagnostic data resulted in a greater confirmation bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Math anxiety in elementary and secondary school students.

We assessed math anxiety in 6th- through 12th-grade children (N?=?564) as part of a comprehensive longitudinal investigation of children's beliefs, attitudes, and values concerning mathematics. Confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence for two components of math anxiety, a negative affective reactions component and a cognitive component. The affective component of math anxiety related more strongly and negatively than did the worry component to children's ability perceptions, performance perceptions, and math performance. The worry component related more strongly and positively than did the affective component to the importance that children attach to math and their reported actual effort in math. Girls reported stronger negative affective reactions to math than did boys. Ninth-grade students reported experiencing the most worry about math and sixth graders the least. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Achievement attributions and self-instructions under competitive and individualistic goal structures.

Investigated whether competitive and individualistic goal structures elicit achievement cognitions that have been associated with helpless vs mastery-oriented children, respectively. 88 5th- and 6th-grade children were administered a novel achievement task in which a high vs low performance outcome was manipulated by varying the number of solvable puzzles across 2 sets of 6 puzzles, within either a competitive or individual goal structure. A "thought-matching" methodology was used to assess the type of frequency of Ss' thoughts. Results revealed that Ss made more ability attributions in the competitive than in the individual condition. In the individual condition, Ss displayed a mastery orientation in that they made more effort attributions and engaged in self-instructions and self-monitoring more than did Ss in the competitive condition. Ability attributions were predictive of Ss' positive and negative affective reactions. Results suggest that Ss were thinking about responses to the question "Was I smart?" in the competitive setting but were thinking about "How can I do this task?" in the individual setting. It is suggested that getting children to think about how to improve their performance may not be compatible with the focus of attention in competitive situations. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in math performance: The role of children's approach to schoolwork.

This research examined whether the tendency for girls to outperform boys in the classroom is due to differences in how girls and boys approach schoolwork. In 5th grade and then again in 7th grade, children (N=518) reported on how they approach schoolwork (i.e., achievement goals and classroom behavior), their learning strategies, and their self-efficacy in math; math grades and achievement test scores were also collected. Girls were more likely than boys to hold mastery over performance goals and to refrain from disruptive classroom behavior, which predicted girls' greater effortful learning over time. The sex difference in learning strategies accounted for girls' edge over boys in terms of grades. Girls did not do better on achievement tests, possibly because self-efficacy, for which there was also no sex difference, was the central predictor of performance on achievement tests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Shared book reading: When and how questions affect young children's word learning.

Shared book reading, and the conversation that accompanies it, can facilitate young children's vocabulary growth. To identify the features of extratextual questions that help 3-year-olds learn unfamiliar words during shared book reading, two experiments explored the impact of cognitive demand level, placement, and an approximation to scaffolding. Asking questions about target words improved children's comprehension and production of word–referent associations, and children with larger vocabularies learned more than children with smaller vocabularies. Neither the demand level nor placement of questions differentially affected word learning. However, an approximation to scaffolding, in which adults asked low demand questions when words first appeared and high demand questions later, did facilitate children's deeper understanding of word meanings as assessed with a definition task. These results are unique in experimentally demonstrating the value for word learning of shifting from less to more challenging input over time. Discussion focuses on why a scaffolding-like procedure improves children's acquisition of elaborated word meanings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Responses of A and B subjects to normal, neurotic, schizophrenic, and ambiguous communications.

Investigated the initial reactions of 20 A and 20 B undergraduates to "encounter situations" in which they were asked for help by 4 hypothetical patients communicating in normal, neurotic, schizophrenic, or ambiguous styles. For each patient communication, Ss responded to the following questions: (a) "What might he mean?" (b) "What might he be feeling?" (c) "How would you feel in this situation?" (d) "What do you think you would do?" Results indicate that (a) A's more frequently interpreted patient communications symbolically than did B's; and (b) A's exhibited greater congruence than B's, as indicated by their greater use of feeling words in describing their reactions to the hypothetical patients. Results were related to previous A-B findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender differences in beliefs and achievement: A cross-cultural study.

Gender differences on tests of achievement in reading and mathematics, and on tests of cognitive ability, were assessed. Ss were children in kindergarten and Grades 1 and 5 in elementary schools in Taiwan, Japan, and the US (ns?=?1,975 to 4,266). Few gender differences were observed on curriculum-based tests of math computation and reading. Boys were more effective, however, in solving word problems and in answering questions involving estimation, visualization, and measurement. Cognitive tests revealed some gender differences at the 5th-grade level in all 3 cultures. Children and their mothers tended, as early as the 1st grade, to believe that boys were better at math and girls were better at reading. Children in the 3 cultures differed consistently in their scores in reading and math, but there were very few interactions between gender and location. The lack of frequent significant interactions between gender and location indicated the gender effects for both achievement scores and ratings were equivalent across Chinese, Japanese, and American contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social comparison in the classroom: The relationship between academic achievement and self-concept.

One hypothesis derived from social comparison theory is that the relationship between academic achievement and self-concept can best be understood in terms of the child's achievement standing compared with that of classmates. This hypothesis was tested on 159 6–12 yr old academic underachievers in 17 self-contained classrooms. Ss were administered the Metropolitan Achievement Test and the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale. When relative within-classroom achievement standing was not considered, reading achievement was not significantly related to self-concept, although mathematics achievement was. When relative within-classroom achievement standing was considered, both reading and math achievement were found to be significantly related to self-concept. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Competence and tutorial role as status variables affecting peer-tutoring outcomes in public school settings.

Investigated the effects of status level and status congruence on achievement and satisfaction of junior high school classmates undergoing same-age peer tutoring, thereby conceptually replicating the S. Rosen et al (see record 1978-06539-001) experiment with college students. There were 107 same-sex pairs who were formed so that the tutor had greater (the status-congruent condition), equal, or lesser initial math competence than the tutee. Two weeks were devoted to daily tutor training and tutoring, weekly reviews, and weekly assessments of achievement and attitudes. Then, partners exchanged roles for another 2-wk round of such activity. Two multivariate contrast analyses clearly supported and cross-validated the prediction that satisfaction and perceived achievement (and in 1 analysis, actual achievement) are greater on becoming the tutor than the tutee, particularly if one was initially the more competent partner. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The incredible (and sometimes incredulous) child witness: Child eyewitnesses' sensitivity to source credibility cues.

Witnesses who receive misleading postevent information usually perform more poorly on memory tests than do witnesses who receive only unbiased information. This effect is especially pronounced for young children. For adults, the credibility of the source of the misleading information moderates this effect; misinformation presented by a credible source impairs performance to a greater degree than does misinformation presented by a noncredible source. In the present experiment, preschool children listened to a story accompanied by several illustrations. Later, they watched a videotape of a child, a credible adult, or a discredited adult answering questions about the story. For some children, the person in the videotape provided misleading information. The children's memory reports were impaired only when misinformation was presented by the credible adult, indicating that even young children are sensitive to source credibility cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A question of compensation: The social life of the fundamental dimensions of social perception.

This research examines the impact of the compensation effect between the fundamental dimensions of warmth and competence on behavioral confirmation. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with 2 groups that varied on 1 of the 2 dimensions and asked to select the questions that they wanted to pose to learn more about the groups. Participants preferred to ask negative (positive) questions about the unmanipulated dimension to the high (low) group. In Experiment 2, participants rated the 2 groups on the basis of na?ve people answers to those questions. As predicted, compensation emerged. Experiment 3 involved interactions among 3 participants, 1 interviewing the other 2 using the questions selected in Experiment 1. Ratings of targets' reactions again showed compensation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond the pages of a book: Interactive book reading and language development in preschool classrooms.

The effects of a book reading technique called interactive book reading on the language and literacy development of 4 yr olds from low-income families were evaluated. Teachers read books to children and reinforced the vocabulary in the books by presenting concrete objects that represented the words and by providing children with multiple opportunities to use the book-related words. The teachers also were trained to ask open-ended questions and to engage children in conversations about the book and activities. This provided children with opportunities to use language and learn vocabulary in a meaningful context. Children who were in the interactive book reading intervention group scored significantly better than children in the comparison group on Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—III and other measures of receptive and expressive language. Book reading and related activities can promote the development of language and literacy skills in young children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive capacity engagement during and following interspersed mathemagenic questions.

Investigated the effects of 2 types of interspersed "mathemagenic" postquestions (superordinate and subordinate) on cognitive capacity engagement during reading and subsequent performance on a recall posttest, using the secondary task paradigm. (Mathemagenic influence refers to the generally facilitative effect of postquestions on learning.) 120 undergraduates served in 1 of 4 conditions by reading the prose passages developed by R. Bruning (1968): mathemagenic questions only, secondary task only, mathemagenic questions and secondary task, or neither. Interspersed, superordinate postquestions were associated with higher levels of cognitive capacity engagement than subordinate postquestions both during the processing of the question and during subsequent reading. On a cued recall achievement test, more main ideas were recalled than details, and the group that received neither secondary task probes nor questions performed more poorly than the other groups on both types of questions. An effect of the secondary task probe itself, especially on recall of main ideas, is interpreted as a task-demand component of the orienting response. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative peer reactions from the perspective of the reactor.

Conducted 2 studies to examine negative social reactions from the perspective of rejecting peers. The purpose of Study 1 was to test an attributional model of negative peer reactions in which perceptions of responsibility and specific emotions mediate between deviant peer characteristics and negative social responses. The more children perceived atypical classmates to be responsible for their idiosyncrasies, the more anger and less sympathy they reported. Anger increased rejection and decreased social support, whereas sympathy facilitated social support. In Study 2, the effects of responsibility perceptions and affective reactions (annoyance) on social responses were tested with an experimental design. Perceived responsibility influenced liking and support, whereas annoyance affected sympathy, support, and rejection. The results are discussed with respect to intervention programs that would improve children's social acceptance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Classification in context: An alternative approach to identifying early reading disability.

This study evaluated an alternative method of identifying early reading difficulty. L. S. Fuchs and D. Fuchs (1998) proposed that academic problems could be indexed by a dual discrepancy on level and slope of performance, relative to classmates, on curriculum-based measurement tasks. From a sample of 694 1st- and 2nd-grade children, we identified 47 children as dually discrepant in reading and compared them with 17 children identified as IQ-reading achievement discrepant and 28 children identified as low achieving. The dually discrepant children were younger and more impaired on phonological processes and teacher ratings of academic competence and social behaviors. This group also reflected the gender and racial distributions of the population. Single-point measures of fluency and phonological awareness were not sensitive indicators of reading problems, suggesting that ongoing assessment and evaluation may be necessary for valid identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Childhood depression, locus of control, and school achievement

Childhood depression and locus of control (as assessed by a 20-item peer nomination inventory and the Children's Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale, respectively) were studied as they relate to each other and to measures of school achievement and intellectual functioning. Ss were 452 male and 492 female 4th and 5th grade public school children. Measures of achievement included standardized reading and math scores and teacher ratings of work/study habits and school achievement. The Draw-A-Person Test was used as an index of intellectual functioning. Locus of control and depression were positively related. All measures of achievement were negatively related to both external locus of control and depression. The negative relationship also held for IQ, although it was not as strong. The joint association of depression and locus of control with achievement and IQ was evidenced by a significant correlation between canonical variates representing these 2 sets of variables. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)