No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This study examined cognitive development in student leaders and non-leaders. Participants included 60 students (30 student leaders and 30 non-leaders). Each group contained equal numbers of males and females. The Measure of Epistemological Reflection (MER) (Baxter Magolda & Porterfield, 1985) was administered to participants to measure certain indicators of cognitive development. Cognitive development refers to the increase in cognitive complexity that may occur in students during their college years and includes students' ways of making meaning from what they learn. Students' ways of making meaning refers to changes in students' attitudes towards the nature of knowledge and truth. This development can be measured by examining how students learn, make decisions, relate to their teachers and peers, and perceive knowledge. Analysis of these data revealed that leaders had significantly higher scores than did non-leaders. No gender differences were found, however, and no differences were found when female leaders were compared to female non-leaders or male leaders were compared to male non-leaders. This research has implications for several groups. First, this study might be useful to student affairs professionals who work with clubs and organizations. The results provided staff with baseline data about leaders' and non-leaders' cognitive reasoning skills. Such information may enable staff to develop purposeful interventions to promote growth in cognitive reasoning skills among student leaders. The results of this study may also be useful for other student affairs professionals who try to enhance their students' cognitive development levels. For example, residential life professionals may find the results of this study interesting. The results provided them with information about cognitive development in student leaders and non-leaders, which they may then compare with their own students' levels of cognitive development. Current students may also be interested in the cognitive reasoning levels of student leaders and non-leaders. They may use these findings to understand their own cognitive development and formulate goals for this development. / Master of Arts

No description available.

This longitudinal study charts the development and achievement in reading, language and memory skills of a representative group of children with Down syndrome in mainstream education. Twenty-four children with Down syndrome were followed over a 2 year period and compared to (i) children matched for reading age (N=31) and, (ii) average readers (N=42), from the same school classes as the children with Down syndrome. A battery of standardised assessments was administered annually to obtain measures of reading, language, memory, number skills, and general intelligence. On all three occasions the children with Down syndrome showed an uneven profile of development with advanced reading ability compared to their other cognitive skills. Two years after the initial assessment there was still no significant difference between the reading scores of the children with Down syndrome and the reading age control group indicating similar rates of progress in the two groups despite the children with Down syndrome being significantly delayed on all of the other measures. Although it was predicted that learning to read may enhance the language and memory skills of children with Down syndrome, partial correlations revealed no significant associations between reading and language ability once age and intelligence had been controlled for. This suggests that reading and language are independent cognitive skills in this age group of children. The relationship between reading and auditory STM was less clear as significant partial correlations were only found at some times. Furthermore, exploratory multiple regression analyses also suggested that there was no clear predictive relationship of language and memory development from early reading ability. Finally, reading strategies were examined longitudinally in an experimental task in which words and nonwords were presented via a computer. The Down syndrome and reading matched groups were similar in their ability to read words but the children with Down syndrome were significantly less accurate when reading nonwords. The results suggested that the majority of the children with Down syndrome were continuing to make progress using a logographic reading strategy. However, there was also some evidence that some children with Down syndrome (those who had the highest reading ages) had developed alphabetic skills.

Recent research has revealed that some adults tend to anthropomorphize more than others and that such people reason differently about nonhuman entities. Specifically, individuals who tend to anthropomorphize show greater concern for nonhuman entities and are more likely to be concerned for the environment. The proposed study extended this line of work to children, examining developmental patterns in anthropomorphism and behavior toward nonhuman entities. In one task children were asked whether or not different kinds of nonhuman entities (dogs, trees, robots, dolls) were capable of a range of psychological states (e.g., thinking, feeling). In a separate task with vignettes children were asked to judge the morality of actions that led to a negative consequence for a nonhuman target. The main prediction was that children who attributed more psychological properties to nonhuman entities would be more likely to exhibit concern for nonhuman targets in the moral stories. Overall, the results failed to capture a general relation between psychological attributions and moral judgments, perhaps owing to methodological shortcomings but perhaps also because children in our sample did not appear to exhibit general tendencies to anthropomorphize as adults have in previous research. / text