Jill Hohenstein

Superior efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy for urban crack cocaine abusers: Main and matching effects

This study evaluated the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and 12-step facilitation (12SF) in treating cocaine abuse. Participants (N = 128) were randomly assigned to treatment conditions and assessed at baseline and at Weeks 4, 8, 12, and 26. Treatment lasted for 12 weeks. It was hypothesized that participants treated with CBT would be significantly more likely to achieve abstinence from cocaine than participants treated with 12SF. A series of patient-treatment matching hypotheses was also proposed. Across 2 different outcome variables, it was found that participants in CBT were significantly more likely to achieve abstinence than participants in 12SF. In addition, some support for matching hypotheses was found, suggesting that both psychotherapies may be differentially effective for identified subgroups of persons that abuse cocaine.

Causal status effect in children's categorization

The current study examined the causal status effect (weighing cause features more than effect features in categorization) in children. Adults (Study 1) and 7-9-year-old children (Study 2) learned descriptions of novel animals, in which one feature caused two other features. When asked to determine which transfer item was more likely to be an example of the animal they had learned, both adults and children preferred an animal with a cause feature and an effect feature rather than an animal with two effect features. This study is the first direct demonstration of the causal status effect in children.

Use of Questions in Exhibit Labels to Generate Explanatory Conversation among Science Museum Visitors

Research suggests that conversations at museums contribute to, as well as serve as evidence for, learning. Many museums use labels to provide visitors with information as well as stimulate conversation about exhibit topics. However, most studies on exhibit labels do not centre on conversations. This investigation uses a Vygotskian framework to examine the ways questions in exhibit labels can stimulate conversations in a science museum. We examined the questions and explanations that appeared in conversation occurring under three label conditions (Current Label, Added question “Why is this here?”, and Simplified Text plus Question) at three exhibits in a science museum. Each exhibit (a model of a Victorian workshop, a sectioned 1959 Austin Mini Cooper, and a bowl that survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan) was videotaped for approximately 6 hr in each condition. Findings based on 464 conversations at these exhibits indicated that our guiding question affected visitors’ conversations; however, adding the question had different effects at different exhibits. For example, at the Mini‐Cooper exhibit, people asked more open‐ended questions with the question added than in the current label condition. At this exhibit there were also more open‐ended questions used in conjunction with explanatory responses when the question was present. In contrast, the guiding question at the Hiroshima bowl exhibit had no effect. These results imply that it is important to consider the nature of the exhibit when designing labels that will optimally facilitate learning conversations.

Language-Related Motion Event Similarities in English- and Spanish-Speaking Children

The relation between thought and language was explored using 2 experiments testing monolingual Spanish- and English-speaking childrens responses to visual motion event stimuli. In a match-to-sample task (Experiment 1) 7-year-old English speakers fixated on videos matching the manner (rather than path) of a target video more often than Spanish-speaking 7-year-olds and both 3.5-year-old groups. In Experiment 2 the same children viewed novel motion events paired with audio descriptions containing a novel verb. These descriptions syntactically implied that the verb referred to either manner or path. Children then fixated on the video matching the novel verb. Although all children fixated on manner more often in the manner condition, an interaction effect showed that only 7-year-olds were biased by lexical tendencies in verb learning. These results suggest that some nonlinguistic thought may be linked to, among other things, linguistic structure.

Supporting Student Learning: A Comparison of Student Discussion in Museums and Classrooms

ABSTRACT Research indicates that school trips to informal science institutions can result in cognitive and affective gains; however, less is known about the mechanisms by which such learning may occur. This article takes a sociocultural perspective that discourse is one of the main modes of learning, and thus examines the talk that occurs among students both during a visit and during follow-up lessons in the classroom. Transcripts from students in 4 primary school classes and 1 secondary school class provide evidence that most of the talk among students in both settings was consistent with cooperative interactions. In addition, talk reflecting cognitive and affective engagement seems to have appeared more frequently during the visit than back in the classroom.

Parent–child talk about motion: Links to children’s development of motion event language

This study investigated the motion event language children and their parents engaged in while playing a board game. Children are sensitive to differences in manner and path at infancy, yet adult-like motion event expression appears relatively late in development. While multiple studies have examined how exposure to parent speech generally relates to very young children’s language, none looks at motion event language and learning in 3- to 7-year-olds. This study aimed to examine the opportunities for children to learn motion event language through engaging with their parents, using a constructivist view of language learning. Parent–child conversation of Spanish-speaking (21) and English-speaking (24) families was examined for lexical and syntactic differences in motion event expressions. Results demonstrated English-speaking parents used more manner verbs and Spanish-speaking parents used more specific path verbs. English-speaking parents also used more general path verbs than did Spanish speakers. These differences mapped onto children’s production of motion event language. Parental speech may provide the potential for children to gradually learn about motion event language typology.

Two-year-olds' productivity with verbal inflections *

Previous research has examined childrens ability to add inflections to nonsense words. The current experiments were designed to determine whether children, ranging in age from 1;9 to 2;10 (N = 34), could demonstrate productivity by dropping verbal inflections. In Experiment 1, children added -ed and -ing to novel stems, and dropped them from novel inflected forms and did so largely appropriately. In Experiment 2, they dropped -ing from verbs, but not from nouns, suggesting that when young children drop inflections they tend to do so appropriately, and not simply for ease of pronunciation.

Teachers’ self-efficacy: progressing qualitative analysis

ABSTRACT Teacher self-efficacy has predominantly been explored using quantitative instruments such as Likert scales-based questionnaires. Several researchers have questioned these methods, suggesting they offer only a limited view of the concept. This paper considers their claim by exploring the self-efficacy of UK secondary science teachers participating in a two-year professional development programme using both traditional quantitative scales and qualitative methods, including interviews and lesson observations. The findings support the suggestion that traditional quantitative scales do not fully capture teacher self-efficacy and highlight inconsistencies between self-efficacy assessments through the different research approaches. We argue that to achieve a more complete and comprehensive picture of teacher self-efficacy, it is essential that traditional quantitative approaches are better triangulated and integrated with other sources of data, in particular lesson observations. We offer an emerging approach of how qualitative data sources might be used to develop this comprehensive picture.

English and Chinese children’s motion event similarity judgments

Abstract This study explores the relationship between language and thought in similarity judgments by testing how monolingual children who speak languages with partial typological differences in motion description (English and Chinese) respond to visual motion event stimuli. Participants were either Chinese- or English-speaking, 3-year-olds, 8-year-olds and adults (32 in each group) who judged the similarity between caused motion scenes in a match-to-sample task. The results suggest, first of all, that the two younger groups of 3-year-olds are predominantly path-oriented, irrespective of language, as evidenced by their significantly longer fixation on path-match videos rather than manner-match videos in a preferential looking scheme. Using categorical measurement of overt choices, older children and adults also showed a shared tendency of being more path-oriented. However, the analysis using continuous measurement of reaction time revealed significant variations in spatial cognition that can be related to linguistic differences: English speakers tended to be more manner-oriented while Chinese speakers were equally manner- and path-oriented. On the whole, our findings indicate a likelihood that children’s non-linguistic thought is similar prior to internalising the lexicalisation pattern of motion events in their native languages, but shows divergences after such habitual use, thus suggesting that the pattern of non-linguistic thought may be linked, among other things, to linguistic structure.