The present study examined the reliability and validity of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for ChildrenâFourth Edition (WISC-IV) for use with Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (D/HOH) children. The participants, who were psychologists working directly with D/HOH children, entered data on D/HOH children (n= 128) in encrypted Excel spreadsheets sent via email. Results revealed that 8 of the 10 WISC-IV subtests/composites assessed were significantly more reliable (p < .05) compared to the split-half internal consistency reliabilities reported in the WISC-IV Technical and Interpretive Manual (2003) for the normative sample. In addition, the mean Perceptual Reasoning Index (M = 93.21) and Verbal Comprehension Index (M = 80.86) for this sample were significantly lower (p < .001) than the population mean (M = 100). Although the mean Verbal Comprehension Index was not significantly lower than one standard deviation from the mean (M = 85) Interrelationships among the WISC-IV subtests for this sample were assessed through Pearson Product Moment correlations. Of the 44 correlations, 29 were significantly greater than zero (i.e., the 95% confidence interval did not contain zero). Overall, the results support the reliability of the WISC-IV for D/HOH children. However, the evidence for the validity of the WISC-IV with D/HOH children is inconclusive. Further research is needed to investigate the validity of the WISC-IV (e.g., convergence, test-criterion, factor structure) for use with D/HOH children.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the emotional messages in childrenâs picture books and how they differ by both gender and age. Specifically, I hypothesized that female characters would be illustrated and described in the text as more emotional than males especially with regards to love, sadness, and fear whereas male characters were hypothesized to be illustrated and described more often as angry than females. These differences were also considered by age of the character, especially for sadness and anger whereby adult males were hypothesized to be portrayed showing the least sadness and adults were hypothesized to be portrayed expressing more anger than children. Lastly, the present study was intended to examine the gender-emotion stereotypes in childrenâs picture books over time, and so a sample of current best-selling books published between 1950 and present were selected. Results revealed that gender-emotion stereotypes were less prevalent than expected, but that in fact females were portrayed expressing more love than males and males more anger than females. Further, adults were portrayed expressing more love and anger than children. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.

Narrative coherence, or the measure of how well a particular memory has been structurally organized and interpreted, is receiving increased attention from memory researchers, likely due to its presumed links with effective coping and long-term remembering. The current study shed light on this important but elusive construct by exploring factors that influenced coherence in children?s personal memory narratives of events that occurred in both the recent and distant past. Specifically, 112 4- to 8-year-old children were asked to remember parent-nominated events that transpired within the past 4 months. One year later, when the children were 5- to 9-years-old, they were asked to remember both the previously discussed events that occurred over a year in the past and more recent events that occurred within the past 4 months. The research employed a recently devised standardized coding scheme to examine the chronology and theme dimensions of coherence in the children?s memory narratives. Cross-sectional analyses revealed that 8-year-olds produced memory narratives that were significantly higher in both the theme and chronology dimensions of coherence than 4- and 6-year-olds. Multilevel modeling of children?s recent memories indicated that verbal comprehension scores related positively to both theme and chronology, but only the theme dimension was affected by memory breadth. Further, a child?s current reporting ability was found to be a significant influence on the theme and chronology of children?s narratives of events that transpired over a year in the past, but these dimensions of coherence were no longer affected by the initial breadth of that memory. Overall, the influences on children?s narrative coherence differ both between the theme and chronology dimensions and between recent versus distant memories. Implications for memory research are discussed.

Despite the attention researchers have given to the effects of repeated interviews on eyewitness testimony, relatively few investigations have examined the effects of an initial interview on children?s event memory. This study added to the literature by investigating the effects of an initial interview on recall, resistance to retroactive interference, and source monitoring errors. One hundred four-year-old children were engaged in a staged event and were interviewed about this event 4 weeks later. Two between-participant factors, the presence or absence of an initial interview and the administration or lack of administration of a related event during the retention interval, were varied orthogonally. Children in the initial interview group demonstrated greater recall and more elaborations of the target event, regardless of whether or not they had experienced the intervening event. Among the children who were exposed to the intervening event, those who had the initial interview made fewer source monitoring errors than did those who did not have the interview. The findings are interpreted as indicating that an initial interview enhances young children?s memory reports by strengthening the memory trace and consolidating the event representation, at least under some conditions.

The purpose of the proposed research was to investigate how contextual features of a situation affect cognitive performance. Specifically, this research explored the role that a social characteristic of the testing situation, group composition, had on memory performance. The study tested older adults (N=72) between the ages of 65 and 75 who were evenly divided into three testing conditions. In the minority status condition, one older adult was tested with two younger adult confederates whereas in the majority status condition, older adults were tested with two similarly aged individuals. The third condition involved individualized testing. It was expected that older adults would experience stereotype threat in the minority status condition and that this would result in poorer performance on a memory task relative to those in the majority status and alone conditions. Contrary to expectations, memory performance did not significantly differ between the three conditions, providing no support for the hypothesis that group composition at testing would be related to stereotype threat . In addition, no evidence was found that the hypothesized moderators (stigma consciousness, value placed on memory) and mediators (anxiety, evaluation apprehension, strategy use) were related to threat-based effects.

Treatment plan implementation (TPI) monitoring and feedback methods have increased TPI levels in single subject designs (e.g., DiGennaro, Martens, & McIntyre, 2005) and a randomized field trial (e.g., Noell, Witt, Slider, Connell, Gatti, et al., 2005). However, when procedures like these are innovative and require significant changes in regular practices, the level of teacher satisfaction is an important consideration (Eckert & Hintze, 2000), and the extent to which teachers view various monitoring and feedback methods as acceptable is unknown. The purposes of this research were to examine teachersâ acceptability ratings of specific TPI monitoring and feedback methods, differences in acceptability ratings between teachers with certain characteristics, and other TPI support methods that teachers identify. In this study, teachers completed a survey that assesses acceptability of specific monitoring and feedback methods, gathers information on various teacher characteristics, and provides teachers with an opportunity to write about other potential methods of TPI support. Results from this study suggested that there are significant differences between acceptability ratings regarding the personnel involved, frequency, communication format, and procedures of TPI monitoring and feedback methods. There was also a significant effect of primary teaching assignment on acceptability of TPI monitoring methods. Finally, teachers identified a variety of other potentially helpful TPI support methods.

A substantial percentage of the population suffers from the effects of reading difficulties. These reading difficulties are caused by a wide array of proximate factors, some cognitive in nature, others emotional. This thesis examines whether some proximate factors, which contribute to reading difficulties, may be caused by underlying attributes which coincidentally also may provide strength in other areas of endeavor. One such proximate factor is interchanging letters, reading the word saw when was is indicated. Another such factor, symbol or letter reversing such as reading a b when a d is indicated, is most pronounced before the age of four and substantially decreases, but not entirely, over the next few years. Reversing letters presents a weakness when reading, but it may result from an underlying attribute which, coincidentally, also could underlie strength in spatial relations. This thesis examined the relationship between each factor and one type of spatial ability (mental rotation). It was hypothesized that spatial ability would be positively correlated with (a) frequency of reversals, as well as with, (b) frequency of interchanges. Experimentation was performed to test these hypotheses. The correlations found were not statistically significant. A statistically significant positive correlation was observed between frequency of symbol-letter reversals and frequency of letter interchanges. Furthermore, the frequency of these reversals and interchanges were each found to be substantially higher than had been anticipated. These results were especially interesting because they relate to a college population that might have been assumed, for the most part, to be free of such errors. Collectively, further study with a larger sample is needed in order to more fully test the hypotheses.

A large amount of research and development in the United States takes place at universities. In spite of the great number of research projects that have been done on industry-university research collaboration and industry-university research centers, the university faculty member has been relatively neglected in these studies. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to determine what information was available about faculty involved in industry-university collaboration. Limitations of the literature are discussed. Though the literature provides a general description of faculty involvement in industry-university collaboration, there is a strong need for further research in this area. This study sought to determine the kinds of benefits and outcomes that faculty members receive from their involvement in industry-university research centers and whether these benefits predict outcomes related to publications and satisfaction. Faculty from industry-university research centers nationwide were surveyed about their center involvement. Results showed variables at three organizational levels, the university, the center, and the individual, predicted satisfaction and scholarly productivity of the faculty member. The receipt of benefits by the faculty member (such as support for graduate students, access to equipment, opportunities for consulting, opportunities for research contracts, chances for promotion and tenure, and interaction with faculty) positively influenced outcomes related to satisfaction, theses and dissertations, total publications and presentations, publications and presentations with students, and publications and presentations with member scientists. Further, faculty symmetry with industry also predicted satisfaction and scholarly productivity.

Research has indicated that aging is associated with declines in executive functioning, as well as with significant neuronal loss in associated brain regions. Interestingly, research has also indicated relatively less age-related decline in regions of the brain linked to affective processing, and no significant age differences in performance on tasks assessing affective functioning. Given that older adults experience executive declines, it may be that the selective preservation of affective processing structures in the brain results in a greater reliance on affective processing systems compared to younger adults. This shift in reliance on affective processing may be reflected in increased dependence on less resource-demanding, automatic processing mechanisms, as well as maintenance in performance on tasks dependent on processing of affective information. The current work is an attempt to examine the relative influence of deliberative versus affective processes of younger (ages 18-30, M = 18.6) and older (ages 63-73, M = 71.8) adults using a social judgment task. Participants read a series of descriptions that varied in the number of positive and negative traits they contained. A subset of these traits was relevant to performance in a particular occupation. Participants were required to either make an overall impression judgment (based on all traits) or a job-related judgment (based only on the relevant subset of traits). Results indicate that all participants were able to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant attributes and made more accurate general impression ratings than job effectiveness ratings. The hypothesized lower levels of performance in older adults in the job judgment condition due to the presumed involvement of executive processes in distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant traits was not supported in spite of lower observed levels of functioning of older adults on a variety of executive functioning tasks. Social judgment abilities appear to be relatively well preserved in healthy older adults. It may be that social judgment tasks are unique in that performance on these tasks draws from relatively well preserved brain systems, or is maintained as a result of greater social expertise, permitting older adults to exhibit continued high levels of functioning.

The purpose of the current research was to investigate how parents? beliefs about children?s emotions are related to children?s outcomes. There were three specific aims of the current research: 1) assess the direct relationship between parents? beliefs about children?s emotions and children?s engagement during a problem solving discussion, 2) assess the direct relationships between parents? beliefs about children?s emotions and children?s security in the parent-child relationship and children?s perceptions of their parents emotional availability as well as the moderating effect of parents? stress on this relatinship, and 3) explore the moderating and mediating relationships between parents? beliefs about children?s emotions, children?s perceptions of the parent-child relationship, and children?s engagement behavior during a problem solving discussion with their parent. Participants were African American (n = 41), European American (n = 4), and Lumbee Native American (n = 38) parents and their 4th or 5th grade children. Contrary to hypotheses, parents? beliefs did not directly relate to children?s engagement or children?s perceptions of the parent-child relationship. Howerver, parents? stress in the last 24 hours moderated the relationship between parents? beliefs and children?s perceptions of their attachment security. The relationship between parents? beliefs that negative emotions are good and children?s engagement was moderated by children?s security in the parent-child relationship. In addition, parents? reported daily stress from the last 24 hours was related to children?s engagement during the problem solving discussion.