Children with ADHD have significant attentional problems that affect their academic performance. Because many of the typical symptoms of ADHD manifest themselves in classrooms, these attentional problems may have an impact on comprehension and its course of development. This is a significant area of interest because the academic success of a child requires being able to recall and comprehend information. Effective comprehension requires being able to understand both causal (why?) and factual (what?) questions. The purposes of this study are use the television viewing methodology and 1) to employ a longitudinal investigation and compare patterns of developmental change among children with ADHD and comparison children in attention and comprehension, 2) examine if cognitive engagement, as indexed by long looks, increases with age for each group, and 3) investigate how look lengths relate to comprehension for each group. Participants were 59 children with ADHD and 101 comparison children. Children viewed two 12-minute episodes of the Rugrats television program at time one and two episodes at time two, approximately 18-months later. Each of the children viewed the television program in one of two viewing conditions, toys-present and toys-absent. Results provide insight into the problems in attention and comprehension experienced by children with ADHD. First, the preciously observed difficulties in sustaining attention with toys-present for children with ADHD are stable across time and a wide age range. Second, as they got older children with ADHD did not exhibit the same increase in time spent in long looks as comparison children. Third, the older high IQ children with ADHD fell behind comparison children in their recall of factual information as they got older. Fourth, as they became older, high IQ children with ADHD did not show improvement in their causal recall with toys present, in contrast to comparison children. Finally, although there was some support for the hypothesis that time spent in long looks is associated with comprehension of the televised material, it did not account for group differences in recall. Several implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Thesis: The structures and processes used in narrating are reflective of processes of thought. These processes will determine the grammatical structures selected to represent them. The nature of the story idea is related to the level of commitment to, and involvement with" the telling as social Interaction. Texts: The thesis is based on two texts, the first, an oral narrative telling of an event in family history, and the second, several group constructed endings to a traditional oral tale. Each text consists of several tellings, as well as questioning and discussion of the story. The thesis is in two parts, corresponding to these texts.ArgwmeM:1. The child telling is in dialogue with previous telling voices.2. The child constructs 'history' through a search for meaning at the present time.3. Questions open up spaces in a narrative in which the child works on meaning.4. The child uses language in specific ways to achieve specific narrative outcomes.5. As the narrative develops, further voices from the storying event shape the story.6. The question in the story becomes a tool for realizing thought.7. The nature of the story determines the nature of the thought provoked.8. Stages in constructing a story can represent stages in an argument.9. Thought, as it is realized, may be represented in text.10. The time of narrating Is the time of story innovation and change for the teller.

The overall aim of the research was to understand the potential impact of sustained part-time working on women’s identities with regards to motherhood and work. Despite an implicit assumption in public discourse, policy and research that mothers will resume full-time careers once their children are ‘older’, half of working mothers with their youngest child at secondary school are working part-time (ONS, Q3, 2011). Often in the literature ‘good’ part-time working has been framed as short-term (see for example Tilly, 1996). The part-time ‘hidden brain drain’ (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2005) has been described as a waste of education and skills (Connolly and Gregory, 2010) and contributing to gender inequality (Walby, 2007). This PhD explored the life stories of twenty university educated, partnered mothers of older children (youngest at secondary school), who had mostly worked part-time since becoming mothers. Dialogic narrative analysis (Frank, 2010) was used to explore how these women made sense of where they had ended up through their story telling. A key finding is that for these women ‘becoming’ a part-time working mother was neither an informed ‘choice’, nor a fixed orientation, but was an ongoing process of negotiation, within a matrix of inter-related, constantly shifting and interacting tensions. Compromises to their jobs often became more extensive than expected and a continuing need to ‘be there’ for teenagers was unanticipated. Damage to ‘career’ is conceptualised as a ‘creeping trauma’. This is considered in light of the mothering stories indicating this was a price worth paying. The majority of women were engaging in a narrative of reorientation, using various strategies to reframe standards of ‘good’ working and the meaning of work within life. Success in reorientation differed according to individual experiences of constraints and opportunities.

Submitted by Cássia Santos (cassia.bcufg@gmail.com) on 2014-09-15T15:54:41Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertacao Thaiza Aparecida da Silva.pdf: 3241526 bytes, checksum: 5e9569a828df8e83dd8373a995eedf9d (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2014-09-16T14:59:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertacao Thaiza Aparecida da Silva.pdf: 3241526 bytes, checksum: 5e9569a828df8e83dd8373a995eedf9d (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-09-16T14:59:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertacao Thaiza Aparecida da Silva.pdf: 3241526 bytes, checksum: 5e9569a828df8e83dd8373a995eedf9d (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-09-05 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Motivated by a personal need to improve my knowledge on children teaching practices, I conducted this research in a language school in Goiânia. This research was developed in a group under my responsibility with children aged 7-8 years. The general goal of this study is to comprehend at what extend the storytelling activity as well as other ludic activities contribute to a foreign language learning process. More specifically, this study aims to investigate (i) the role of pair-wise collaboration among children in storytelling activities; (ii) the strategies developed by children during their story-telling interaction as well as in other ludic activities and their function and (iii) if storytelling activity can elicit clues about the development of children’s autonomy to search for other sources of reading. To achieve these objectives, this study is oriented by an ethnographic qualitative approach and by the Vygostskian sociocultural studies about the process of teaching and learning a language. The results have shown that collaborative pair work using ludic activities as storytelling, domino, role play, and memory games can be a pedagogic tool in a foreign language classroom. / Partindo de uma necessidade pessoal de aprimorar meus conhecimentos na prática de ensino para crianças, desenvolvi esta pesquisa em uma escola de idiomas em Goiânia onde atuo como professora de inglês. A pesquisa em questão foi realizada em uma turma sob minha responsabilidade com crianças de 7-8 anos. O objetivo geral deste estudo é compreender em que medida a atividade de contação de histórias e outras atividades lúdicas contribuem para o processo de aprendizagem de uma LE. De modo mais específico este estudo investiga (i) o papel do trabalho colaborativo entre as crianças durante as atividades de contação de histórias; (ii) as estratégias desenvolvidas pelas crianças durante a interação na (re)contação de histórias e em outras atividades lúdicas bem como suas funções e (iii) a relação entre a contação de histórias e o desenvolvimento de autonomia nas crianças para buscar outras fontes de leitura. Para alcançar tais objetivos, este estudo orienta-se pela abordagem qualitativa de natureza etnográfica e pelos estudos socioculturais vygotskyanos relacionados ao ensino e aprendizagem de línguas. Os resultados mostram que o trabalho colaborativo – a partir das atividades de contação de histórias e outras atividades lúdicas como o dominó, a dramatização e os jogos de memória – pode ser uma ferramenta pedagógica na sala de aula de língua estrangeira.

Comprehending the complex universe of the child that lives in the context of a shelter, upon the eyes of diverse social actors made up the goal of the present research. Semi structured interviews were performed with the technical staff of the institution who included the manager, social worker and secretary as well as four professionals responsible for the care of the children in the home houses known as social mothers and two employees who were responsible for substituting the social mothers when they did not come to work known as substitutes. Interviews furnished important subsidies for the comprehension of aspects that involved the reality of the sheltered child, as follows: concepts of the technical staff and workers upon the child in this context as well as aspects regarding the development and learning of the children; concepts on the family of origin and relevant aspects of bonding situations in the institutional context. Considering that the child is one of these social actors, potent and able to express him/herself, story workshops, that sought, through fairy tales, to bring out narratives in the sheltered children, were performed in three groups of children from 5 (five) to 7 (seven) years old. Seeking strategies to improve the research performed with the children, small groups were chosen as to provide a space for conversation and expression of subjectivity toward their classmates. Nine workshops were performed with group 1 (7 years), nine with group 2 (6 years), and seven with group 3 (5 years). Diverse scholars of fairy tales were used and in the context of constructed stories featured by children, Jerome Bruner, who believed that fairy tales were important for the construction of the narrative thinking, was priority. Initially children appeared to be distant to the universe of fairies, dreams, fantasies so adult like due to their experiences, however it was possible to perceive that besides contributing for the narrative construction, the fairy tales made possible the expressions of daily experiences and was capable of redeeming childhood fantasy if they had been experienced by the narrator as true and appropriated, which can be determined by the experience and situations that involved the children. / Compreender o complexo universo da criança que vive em contexto de abrigo, sob o olhar de diversos atores sociais, empreendeu o objetivo desta pesquisa. Foi realizado para este estudo, entrevistas semi-estruturadas com a equipe técnica da instituição, entre os quais, o gestor, a assistente social e o secretário, bem como, quatro profissionais responsáveis pelos cuidados às crianças nas casas lares, conhecidas como mães sociais e duas funcionárias responsáveis por fazer a cobertura de faltas das mães sociais, conhecidas como mães folguistas. As entrevistas ofereceram subsídios importantes para compreender aspectos que envolvem a realidade da criança abrigada, a saber: concepções da equipe técnica e dos funcionários acerca da criança neste contexto, bem como, aspectos referentes ao desenvolvimento e aprendizagem das crianças; concepções acerca da família de origem e aspectos relevantes sobre situações de vínculos dentro do contexto institucional. Considerando a criança como um desses atores sociais, potente e capaz de se expressar, foi realizado com três grupos de crianças de 5 (cinco) a 7 (sete) anos de idade, oficinas de histórias infantis, que buscaram, através dos contos de fadas, suscitar as narrativas das crianças, inseridas nesse contexto. Buscando estratégias para melhorar a pesquisa realizada com crianças, priorizou-se trabalhar com grupos pequenos, a fim de que pudessem ter espaço para conversação e expressão da subjetividade diante dos seus pares. Foram realizadas nove oficinas com o grupo 1 (7 anos), nove com o grupo 2 (6 anos), e sete com o grupo 3 (5 anos). Foram utilizados diversos estudiosos sobre os contos de fadas, e no contexto das narrativas construídas, protagonizadas pelas crianças, priorizou-se Jerome Bruner, teórico que acredita nos contos de fadas como importantes na construção do pensamento narrativo. As crianças demonstraram inicialmente estarem muito distantes do universo das fadas, dos sonhos, das fantasias, tão adultificadas por suas vivências, mas foi possível perceber que, além dos contos de fadas contribuírem para construções narrativas das crianças, possibilitou expressões das vivências do cotidiano e se mostrou capaz de resgatar a fantasia infantil, se esses, forem vivenciados pelo narrador, com verdade e apropriação, determinando situações de envolvimento nas crianças. / Mestre em Psicologia Aplicada