Agnes Tellings

Mode of acquisition of word meanings: The viability of a theoretical construct

This article examines the reliability and validity of the construct, mode of acquisition (MOA). The MOA of a word denotes the way in which the word’s meaning is learned. A word’s meaning can be acquired perceptually, linguistically, or by some combination of both. In Experiment 1, 26 student volunteers from third year special education courses rated 566 words, taken from reading texts in elementary school, on MOA. Our findings show that MOA ratings gradually change over grades, shifting from mainly perceptually acquired word meanings in Grade 1 texts to mainly linguistically acquired concepts in Grade 6 texts. In Experiment 2, 34 educational professionals completed a list on MOA, concreteness, or imageability. Judgments on the MOA proved to be different from judgments of concreteness and imageability. We suggest that the increasingly linguistic character of word meanings contribute to explaining some of the reading difficulties of deaf children.

In Search of Factors in Deaf and Hearing Children's Reading Comprehension

The present study examined whether specific item characteristics, such as mode of acquisition (MoA) of word meanings, make reading comprehension tests particularly difficult for deaf children. Reading comprehension data on nearly 13,000 hearing 7-to-12-year-olds and 253 deaf 7-to-20-year-olds were analyzed, divided across test levels from second to sixth grade (not necessarily corresponding to chronological age). Factor analyses across item scores suggested that, of the determinants studied, MoA—referring to the type of information (perceptual, linguistic, or both) used in word meaning acquisition—was the only factor that contributed significantly to deaf and hearing childrens reading comprehension. For hearing children, MoA influenced item scores at the third- and fourth-grade levels. For the deaf children, MoA influenced item scores through the sixth-grade level.

Ranked motives of long‐term care providing family caregivers

Family caregivers provide long-term care to their chronically ill loved ones and as a consequence they experience physical, relational and financial problems. This study investigates how long-term family caregivers rank 12 motives for caregiving. Motives are derived from the views of four philosophical anthropologists and are related to self-reported stress and joy and to several different background characteristics of respondents. Motives that focus on feelings concerning the relationship between caregiver and care recipient are more popular as a first choice than motives stemming from feelings of obligation or a general feeling of happiness and are also more popular than more self-directed motives. An analysis of full ranking data shows that two groups can be distinguished, one group of family caregivers with mixed motives and one group of family caregivers with motives that focus on reciprocal mutually equal relationships. The latter are mainly women taking care for a partner or a child, the former report high levels of stress. Implications for intervention programmes and health policy are being discussed.

Depth of reading vocabulary in hearing and hearing-impaired children

The main point of our study was to examine the vocabulary knowledge of pupils in grades 3–6, and in particular the relative reading vocabulary disadvantage of hearing-impaired pupils. The achievements of 394 pupils with normal hearing and 106 pupils with a hearing impairment were examined on two vocabulary assessment tasks: a lexical decision task and a use decision task. The target words in both tasks represent the vocabulary children should have at the end of primary school. The results showed that most hearing pupils reached this norm, whereas most hearing-impaired pupils did not. In addition, results showed that hearing-impaired pupils not only knew fewer words, but that they also knew them less well. This lack of deeper knowledge remained even when matching hearing and hearing-impaired children on minimal word knowledge. Additionally, comparison of the two tasks demonstrated the efficacy of the lexical decision task as a measure of lexical semantic knowledge.

Developing a Structural Model of Reading: The Role of Hearing Status in Reading Development Over Time

The purpose of the present study was to develop a structural model of reading based on the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002). Data from a 4-year longitudinal study of Dutch primary school children with and without hearing loss were used to conduct an exploratory analysis of how lexical components (i.e., decoding skills, lexical decision, and lexical use) relate to one another and to reading comprehension. Our structural model supports a positive role of the quality of the mental lexicon for reading comprehension. Furthermore, it was possible to apply the same conceptual model of reading development to both groups of children when incorporating hearing status as a grouping variable. However, a multigroup comparison model showed that the predictive values of the relations between the different tasks differed for the two groups.

Clusters of word properties as predictors of elementary school children's performance on two word tasks

Often, the classification of words does not go beyond “difficult” (i.e., infrequent, late-learned, nonimageable, etc.) or “easy” (i.e., frequent, early-learned, imageable, etc.) words. In the present study, we used a latent cluster analysis to divide 703 Dutch words with scores for eight word properties into seven clusters of words. Each cluster represents a group of words that share a particular configuration of word properties. This model was empirically validated with three data sets from Grades 2 to 4 children who made either a lexical decision task or a use decision task with a selection of the words. Significant differences were found between the clusters of words within the three data sets. Implications for further study and for practice are discussed.

Vocabulary development in children with hearing loss: The role of child, family, and educational variables

In the present study we examined the effect of hearing status on reading vocabulary development. More specifically, we examined the change of lexical competence in children with hearing loss over grade 4-7 and the predictors of this change. Therefore, we used a multi-factor longitudinal design with multiple outcomes, measuring the reading vocabulary knowledge in children with hearing loss from grades 4 and 5, and of children without hearing loss from grade 4, for 3 years with two word tasks: a lexical decision task and a use decision task. With these tasks we measured word form recognition and (in)correct usage recognition, respectively. A GLM repeated measures procedure indicated that scores and growth rates on the two tasks were affected by hearing status. Moreover, with structural equation modeling we observed that the development of lexical competence in children with hearing loss is stable over time, and a childs lexical competence can be explained best by his or her lexical competence assessed on a previous measurement occasion. If you look back, differences in lexical competence among children with hearing loss stay unfortunately the same. Educational placement, use of sign language at home, intelligence, use of hearing devices, and onset of deafness can account for the differences among children with hearing loss.

Dutch elementary school children’s attribution of meaning to written pseudowords

Grade two through six elementary school Dutch children were asked to perform a lexical decision task including 90 pseudowords constructed by changing one or two letters in a Dutch word. Subsequently, the children were asked about the meaning of pseudowords they had not crossed out and that they, apparently, had considered to be words. Multiple regression analyses on the lexical decision task showed that the older children were more hindered by the morphemic structure of a pseudoword than by its orthographic neighbors. The younger children, in contrast, were less hindered by the morphemic structure of a pseudoword and more hindered by its orthographic neighbors. Word length was a (small) predictor only for grade 6. Moreover, the answers of the children reflected that in their construction of meanings for the pseudowords they were hindered both by the morphemic structure and by the orthographic neighbors of the pseudowords.

Visie van mantelzorgers op zorgverantwoordelijkheid

SamenvattingDeze studie gaat over de visie(s) van mantelzorgers op de verdeling van zorgverantwoordelijkheid tussen overheid, cliënten, mantelzorgers en zorgverzekeraars. Er is aan de hand van Latente Cluster Analyse onderzocht of er verschillende clusters van mantelzorgers van elkaar te onderscheiden zijn en of er een relatie is tussen het behoren tot een cluster en het ervaren van zorgstress en/of zorgvreugde en diverse achtergrondkenmerken. Drie clusters van mantelzorgers zijn van elkaar te onderscheiden: ‘samen zorgen’; ‘individu zorgt’ en ‘overheid zorgt’. Mantelzorgers uit cluster 1 hebben zowel een grote voorkeur voor overheidszorgverantwoordelijkheid als voor individuele zorgverantwoordelijkheid. Mantelzorgers uit cluster 2 hebben de voorkeur voor individuele zorgverantwoordelijkheid en mantelzorgers uit het derde cluster prefereren een hoge mate van overheidszorgverantwoordelijkheid. Niet werkende mantelzorgers en mantelzorgers met een laag opleidingsniveau hebben meer kans om tot cluster 2 (individu zorgt) te behoren en dit cluster heeft een grotere kans op zorgstress. De drie clusters kunnen als uitgangspunt dienen voor beleidsmakers en beroepkrachten in hun plan van aanpak voor het ondersteunen van mantelzorgers.AbstractViews of family caregivers on sharing care responsibilityIn this study, we asked family caregivers about their opinion on division of care responsibility between the government, family caregivers, clients, and health insurers. We investigated whether different clusters of respondents could be distinguished -using Latent Cluster Analysis- and what the relation is with perceived stress and joy and with several background characteristics. Three clusters of respondents could be distinguished: a ‘caring together’, a ‘caring individually’, and a ‘government-responsible caring’ cluster. Family caregivers in cluster 1 attach great importance to both governmental responsibility and individual responsibility. Family caregivers who belong to cluster 2 want themselves to take full responsibility for caregiving, and caregivers in cluster 3 want the government to take most of the responsibility for caregiving. Unemployed caregivers and caregivers with lower educational attainment have a higher chance to belong to the ‘caring individually’ cluster and this group has relatively more self-reported stress. Policymakers and professionals should bear these three clusters in mind when developing care policy and care guiding practice.Keywords: family care, care responsibility, health care policy, attitudes, caregiving support

Partners in de gezondheidszorg: visies van mantelzorgers op gedeelde zorgverantwoordelijkheid tussen overheden, clienten, mantelzorgers en zorgverzekeraars

SamenvattingDeze studie gaat over de visie(s) van mantelzorgers op de verdeling van zorgverantwoordelijkheid tussen overheid, cliënten, mantelzorgers en zorgverzekeraars. Er is aan de hand van Latente Cluster Analyse onderzocht of er verschillende clusters van mantelzorgers van elkaar te onderscheiden zijn en of er een relatie is tussen het behoren tot een cluster en het ervaren van zorgstress en/of zorgvreugde en diverse achtergrondkenmerken. Drie clusters van mantelzorgers zijn van elkaar te onderscheiden: ‘samen zorgen’; ‘individu zorgt’ en ‘overheid zorgt’. Mantelzorgers uit cluster 1 hebben zowel een grote voorkeur voor overheidszorgverantwoordelijkheid als voor individuele zorgverantwoordelijkheid. Mantelzorgers uit cluster 2 hebben de voorkeur voor individuele zorgverantwoordelijkheid en mantelzorgers uit het derde cluster prefereren een hoge mate van overheidszorgverantwoordelijkheid. Niet werkende mantelzorgers en mantelzorgers met een laag opleidingsniveau hebben meer kans om tot cluster 2 (individu zorgt) te behoren en dit cluster heeft een grotere kans op zorgstress. De drie clusters kunnen als uitgangspunt dienen voor beleidsmakers en beroepkrachten in hun plan van aanpak voor het ondersteunen van mantelzorgers.AbstractPartnership in health care: views of family caregivers on sharing care responsibility with government, clients and health insurersIn this study, we asked family caregivers about their opinion on division of care responsibility between the government, family caregivers, clients, and health insurers. We investigated whether different clusters of respondents could be distinguished -using Latent Cluster Analysis- and what the relation is with perceived stress and joy and with several background characteristics. Three clusters of respondents could be distinguished: a ‘caring together’, a ‘caring individually’, and a ‘government-responsible caring’ cluster. Family caregivers in cluster 1 attach great importance to both governmental responsibility and individual responsibility. Family caregivers who belong to cluster 2 want themselves to take full responsibility for caregiving, and caregivers in cluster 3 want the government to take most of the responsibility for caregiving. Unemployed caregivers and caregivers with lower educational attainment have a higher chance to belong to the ‘caring individually’ cluster and this group has relatively more self-reported stress. Policymakers and professionals should bear these three clusters in mind when developing care policy and care guiding practice.Keywords: family care, care responsibility, health care policy, attitudes, caregiving support