Romain Martin

Bilingualism Enriches the Poor Enhanced Cognitive Control in Low-Income Minority Children

This study explores whether the cognitive advantage associated with bilingualism in executive functioning extends to young immigrant children challenged by poverty and, if it does, which specific processes are most affected. In the study reported here, 40 Portuguese-Luxembourgish bilingual children from low-income immigrant families in Luxembourg and 40 matched monolingual children from Portugal completed visuospatial tests of working memory, abstract reasoning, selective attention, and interference suppression. Two broad cognitive factors of executive functioning—representation (abstract reasoning and working memory) and control (selective attention and interference suppression)—emerged from principal component analysis. Whereas there were no group differences in representation, the bilinguals performed significantly better than did the monolinguals in control. These results demonstrate, first, that the bilingual advantage is neither confounded with nor limited by socioeconomic and cultural factors and, second, that separable aspects of executive functioning are differentially affected by bilingualism. The bilingual advantage lies in control but not in visuospatial representational processes.

Executive functioning and reading achievement in school: a study of Brazilian children assessed by their teachers as “poor readers”

This study examined executive functioning and reading achievement in 106 6- to 8-year-old Brazilian children from a range of social backgrounds of whom approximately half lived below the poverty line. A particular focus was to explore the executive function profile of children whose classroom reading performance was judged below standard by their teachers and who were matched to controls on chronological age, sex, school type (private or public), domicile (Salvador/BA or São Paulo/SP) and socioeconomic status. Children completed a battery of 12 executive function tasks that were conceptual tapping cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibition and selective attention. Each executive function domain was assessed by several tasks. Principal component analysis extracted four factors that were labeled “Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility,” “Interference Suppression,” “Selective Attention,” and “Response Inhibition.” Individual differences in executive functioning components made differential contributions to early reading achievement. The Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility factor emerged as the best predictor of reading. Group comparisons on computed factor scores showed that struggling readers displayed limitations in Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility, but not in other executive function components, compared to more skilled readers. These results validate the account that working memory capacity provides a crucial building block for the development of early literacy skills and extends it to a population of early readers of Portuguese from Brazil. The study suggests that deficits in working memory/cognitive flexibility might represent one contributing factor to reading difficulties in early readers. This might have important implications for how educators might intervene with children at risk of academic under achievement.

Attentional shifts induced by uninformative number symbols modulate neural activity in human occipital cortex

Number processing interacts with space encoding in a wide variety of experimental paradigms. Most intriguingly, the passive viewing of uninformative number symbols can shift visuo-spatial attention to different target locations according to the number magnitude, i.e., small/large numbers facilitate processing of left/right targets, respectively. The brain architecture dedicated to these attention shifts associated with numbers remains unknown. Evoked potential recordings indicate that both early and late stages are involved in this spatio-numerical interaction, but the neuro-functional anatomy needs to be specified. Here we use, for the first time, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate attentional orienting following uninformative Arabic digits. We show that BOLD response in occipital visual regions is modulated by the congruency between digit magnitude (small/large) and target side (left/right). Additionally, we report higher BOLD responses following large (8, 9) compared to small (1, 2) digits in two bilateral parietal regions, yielding a significant effect of digit magnitude. We propose and discuss the view that encoding of semantic representations related to number symbols in parietal cortex leads to shifts in visuo-spatial attention and enhances visual processing in the occipital cortex according to number-space congruency rules.

Prädiktoren der Sekundarschulempfehlung in Luxemburg: Ergebnisse einer Large-Scale-Untersuchung

ZusammenfassungMit dieser Studie wurde anhand einer Stichprobe von 2925 Schülern aus luxemburgischen Grundschulen geprüft, inwieweit die Leistungen von Schülern luxemburgischer Grundschulen und Merkmale ihres sozialen Hintergrundes Eingang finden in die Sekundarschulempfehlungen, die am Ende ihrer Grundschulzeit ausgesprochen wurden. Zur Analyse des Gewichts unterschiedlicher Prädiktoren für die Sekundarschulempfehlung wurde ein Zweiebenenmodell der logistischen Regression verwendet. Im Wesentlichen ergaben sich folgende Befunde: Schulnoten und Ergebnisse aus standardisierten Schulleistungstests stellten die stärksten Prädiktoren für die Sekundarschulempfehlung dar. Nach den individuellen Schülerleistungen war der Elternwunsch der stärkste Prädiktor für die Sekundarschulempfehlung. Darüber hinaus hingen sowohl die Nationalität als auch der sozioökonomische Status der Schüler mit der Sekundarschulempfehlung zusammen. Selbst bei Kontrolle ihrer schulischen Leistungen erhielten Schüler mit Migrationshintergrund seltener eine Empfehlung für den höchsten Schulzweig als Schüler ohne Migrationshintergrund. Ein hohes Klassenleistungsniveau führte bei Kontrolle der individuellen Leistungen seltener zu Empfehlungen für den höchsten Schulzweig als ein niedriges Klassenleistungsniveau.AbstractThis study used a sample of 2925 primary school students in Luxembourg to test the extent to which students’ performance and their social background influence the recommendations for secondary school type that are made at the end of primary schooling. A two-level model of logistic regression was used in order to analyse the importance of various predictors. The main findings were as follows: School marks and the results from standardized testing were the strongest predictors for a secondary school recommendation. After individual student performance, the strongest predictors were parental wishes. Further factors related to the school recommendation were nationality and socio-economic status. Even after controlling for student performance, students with migration background received a recommendation for academic-track secondary schooling less often than students without. A high performance class leads, after controlling for individual performance, less often to a recommendation for academic track secondary schooling than a low performance class.

Relationships between number and space processing in adults with and without dyscalculia.

A large body of evidence indicates clear relationships between number and space processing in healthy and brain-damaged adults, as well as in children. The present paper addressed this issue regarding atypical math development. Adults with a diagnosis of dyscalculia (DYS) during childhood were compared to adults with average or high abilities in mathematics across two bisection tasks. Participants were presented with Arabic number triplets and had to judge either the number magnitude or the spatial location of the middle number relative to the two outer numbers. For the numerical judgment, adults with DYS were slower than both groups of control peers. They were also more strongly affected by the factors related to number magnitude such as the range of the triplets or the distance between the middle number and the real arithmetical mean. By contrast, adults with DYS were as accurate and fast as adults who never experienced math disability when they had to make a spatial judgment. Moreover, number-space congruency affected performance similarly in the three experimental groups. These findings support the hypothesis of a deficit of number magnitude representation in DYS with a relative preservation of some spatial mechanisms in DYS. Results are discussed in terms of direct and indirect number-space interactions.

A Meta-Analysis on the Effectiveness of Bilingual Programs in Europe

The effectiveness of bilingual programs for promoting academic achievement of language minority children in the United States has been examined in six meta-analyses. The present meta-analytic study investigates this topic for the first time in the European context. Thorough literature searches uncovered 101 European studies, with only 7 meeting the inclusion criteria. Two studies were excluded from further analyses. Results from the random-effects model of the five remaining studies indicate a small positive effect (g = 0.23; 95% confidence interval [0.10, 0.36]) for bilingual over submersion programs on reading of language minority children. Thus, this meta-analysis supports bilingual education—that is, including the home language of language minority children—in school instruction. However, the generalizability of the results is limited by the small number of studies on this topic. More published studies on bilingual education in Europe are needed as well as closer attention to the size of the effects.

Prädiktoren der Sekundarschulempfehlung in Luxemburg

ZusammenfassungMit dieser Studie wurde anhand einer Stichprobe von 2925 Schülern aus luxemburgischen Grundschulen geprüft, inwieweit die Leistungen von Schülern luxemburgischer Grundschulen und Merkmale ihres sozialen Hintergrundes Eingang finden in die Sekundarschulempfehlungen, die am Ende ihrer Grundschulzeit ausgesprochen wurden. Zur Analyse des Gewichts unterschiedlicher Prädiktoren für die Sekundarschulempfehlung wurde ein Zweiebenenmodell der logistischen Regression verwendet. Im Wesentlichen ergaben sich folgende Befunde: Schulnoten und Ergebnisse aus standardisierten Schulleistungstests stellten die stärksten Prädiktoren für die Sekundarschulempfehlung dar. Nach den individuellen Schülerleistungen war der Elternwunsch der stärkste Prädiktor für die Sekundarschulempfehlung. Darüber hinaus hingen sowohl die Nationalität als auch der sozioökonomische Status der Schüler mit der Sekundarschulempfehlung zusammen. Selbst bei Kontrolle ihrer schulischen Leistungen erhielten Schüler mit Migrationshintergrund seltener eine Empfehlung für den höchsten Schulzweig als Schüler ohne Migrationshintergrund. Ein hohes Klassenleistungsniveau führte bei Kontrolle der individuellen Leistungen seltener zu Empfehlungen für den höchsten Schulzweig als ein niedriges Klassenleistungsniveau.AbstractThis study used a sample of 2925 primary school students in Luxembourg to test the extent to which students’ performance and their social background influence the recommendations for secondary school type that are made at the end of primary schooling. A two-level model of logistic regression was used in order to analyse the importance of various predictors. The main findings were as follows: School marks and the results from standardized testing were the strongest predictors for a secondary school recommendation. After individual student performance, the strongest predictors were parental wishes. Further factors related to the school recommendation were nationality and socio-economic status. Even after controlling for student performance, students with migration background received a recommendation for academic-track secondary schooling less often than students without. A high performance class leads, after controlling for individual performance, less often to a recommendation for academic track secondary schooling than a low performance class.

Concept maps: A useful and usable tool for computer-based knowledge assessment? A literature review with a focus on usability

The concept map is now widely accepted as an instrument for the assessment of conceptual knowledge and is increasingly being embedded into technology-based environments. Usability addresses how appropriate (for a particular use) or how user-friendly a computer-based assessment instrument is. As we know from human-computer interaction research, if the interface is not user-friendly, a computer-based assessment can result in decreased test performance and reduced validity. This means that the usability of the interface affects the assessment in such a way that if the test is not user-friendly, then the test taker will not be able to fully demonstrate his/her level of proficiency and will instead be scored according to his/her information and communication technology (ICT) literacy skills. The guidelines of the International Test Commission (2006) require usability testing for such instruments and suggest that design standards be implemented. However, we do not know whether computer-conducted concept map assessments fulfill these standards. The present paper addresses this aspect. We conducted a systematic research review to examine whether and how researchers have studied and considered usability when conducting computer-based concept map assessments. Only 24 out of 119 journal articles that assessed computer-based concept maps discussed the usability issue in some way. Nevertheless, our review brings to light the idea that the impact of usability on computer-based concept map assessments is an issue that has received insufficient attention. In addition, usability ensures a suitable interaction between test taker and test device; thus, the training effort required for test use can be reduced if a tests usability is straight forward. Our literature review, however, illustrates that the interplay between usability and test use training has mostly been neglected in current studies.

Forty years on: Childhood intelligence predicts health in middle adulthood.

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether childhood general intelligence, fluid intelligence (Gf), and crystallized intelligence (Gc) predict various health outcomes in middle adulthood. METHOD This prospective longitudinal study followed a nationally representative sample of 717 Luxembourgers. Intelligence and socioeconomic status (SES) were measured at age 12; physical, functional, and subjective health were assessed at age 52. RESULTS Childhood general intelligence and fluid intelligence showed substantial positive effects on adult health outcomes, whereas the corresponding effects of crystallized intelligence were considerably smaller. CONCLUSION Childhood intelligence incrementally predicts various dimensions of adult health across 40 years-even in a country in which all citizens are guaranteed access to high-quality health care.

What You See Is What You (Don’t) Get: A Comment on Funke’s (2014) Opinion Paper

In an opinion paper published in this journal, Funke (2014) argues that two different types of assessment instruments for complex problem solving (CPS), computer-simulated microworlds (CSMs), and minimal complex systems (MCSs), might require different types of causal cognition. CPS denotes the ability to successfully deal with new, intransparent, and dynamically changing problem situations (Funke, 2001) and is considered one of the most important skills of the 21st century. Given the recent attention CPS has received from both academic and educational stances, for instance, through the Programme for International Student Assessment, which tested CPS in 15-year-old students across more than 40 countries (OECD, 2014), the topic addressed by Funke (2014) is both timely and of high relevance.