Refine
Has Fulltext
- no (34)
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (34) (remove)
Language
- English (34) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (34)
Keywords
- Reading comprehension (4)
- Reading strategies (4)
- Self-regulated learning (3)
- Bilingualism (2)
- Metacognition (2)
- inclusion (2)
- Approximate number system (1)
- Co-regulation (1)
- Cognitive development (1)
- Cognitive tool (1)
Institute
- Department Grundschulpädagogik (34) (remove)
Background: The aim of the present study was to investigate the psychometric characteristics of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) in a sample of dementia patients and their spousal caregivers. Methods: We investigated the reliability and validity of the 14-item PSS in a sample of 80 couples, each including one spouse who had been diagnosed with mild to moderate dementia (mean age 75.55, SD = 5.85, 38.7% female) and one spousal caregiver (mean age 73.06, SD = 6.75, 61.3% female). We also examined the factor structure and sensitivity of the scale with regard to gender differences. Results: Exploratory factor analysis of the PSS revealed a two-factor solution for the scale; the first factor reflected general stress while the second factor consisted of items reflecting the perceived ability to cope with stressors. A confirmatory factor analysis verified that the data were a better fit for the two-factor model than a one-factor model. The two factors of the PSS showed good reliability for patients as well as for caregivers ranging between alpha = 0.73 and alpha = 0.82. Perceived stress was significantly positively correlated with depressive symptomatology in both caregivers and patients. Mean PSS scores did not significantly differ between male and female patients nor did they differ between male and female caregivers. Conclusion: The present data indicate that the PSS provides a reliable and valid measure of perceived stress in dementia patients and their caregivers.
Does competent bilingualism entail advantages for the third language learning of immigrant students?
(2018)
This study examined the role of immigrant bilingualism in third language learning (L3 = English). It focused on the respective effects of students' competence in the minority language (L1 = Turkish or Russian) and language of instruction (L2 = German). We analyzed a sample of 8752 German 10th-grade students (N = 7964 monolinguals, N = 436 Turkish-German students, N = 352 Russian-German students) and drew on standardized tests in L1, L2, and L3. OLS-regression models showed L3 advantages for balanced bilinguals at a high level in both language groups compared to their average monolingual peers when third variables were controlled, while advantages in the L2 dominant bilinguals could only be observed in the Russian-German sample. Balanced bilinguals at a low level and L1 dominants attained lower L3 levels than monolinguals. However, comparisons with comparably high proficient monolinguals, as well as further analyses with the bilingual samples separately, revealed that only L2 competence – and not L1 competence – explained immigrant students' L3 proficiency. Our findings indicate that the advantages of immigrant bilinguals in L3 learning mainly depend on their competence in the language of instruction.
Letter knowledge is considered an important cognitive foundation for learning to read. The underlying mechanisms of the association between letter knowledge and reading skills are, however, not fully understood. Acquiring letter knowledge depends on the ability to learn and retrieve sound–symbol pairings. In the current study, this process was explored by setting preschool children’s (N = 242, mean age = 5.57 years) performance in the acquisition and retrieval of a paired associate learning (PAL) task in relation to their letter knowledge as well as to their performance in tasks assessing precursors of reading skills (i.e., phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, phonological short-term memory, backward recall, and response inhibition). Multiple regression analyses revealed that performance in the acquisition of the PAL task was significantly associated with phonological awareness and backward recall, whereas performance in the retrieval of the PAL task was significantly associated with rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, and backward recall. Moreover, PAL proved to be mediating the relation between reading precursors and letter knowledge. Together, these findings indicate that the acquisition of letter knowledge may depend on a visual–verbal associative learning mechanism and that different factors contribute to the acquisition and retrieval of such visual–verbal associations.
Learning handwriting
(2021)
Skilled handwriting of single letters is associated not only with a neat final product but also with fluent pen-movement, characterized by a smooth pen-tip velocity profile. Our study explored fluency when writing single letters in children who were just beginning to learn to handwrite, and the extent to which this was predicted by the children's pen-control ability and by their letter knowledge. 176 Norwegian children formed letters by copying and from dictation (i.e., in response to hearing letter sounds). Performance on these tasks was assessed in terms of the counts of velocity inversions as the children produced sub-letter features that would be produced by competent handwriters as a single, smooth (ballistic) action. We found that there was considerable variation in these measures across writers, even when producing well-formed letters. Children also copied unfamiliar symbols, completed various pen-control tasks (drawing lines, circles, garlands, and figure eights), and tasks that assessed knowledge of letter sounds and shapes. After controlling for pen-control ability, pen-movement fluency was affected by letter knowledge (specifically children's performance on a task that required selecting graphemes on the basis of their sound). This was the case when children retrieved letter forms from dictated letter sounds, but also when directly copying letters and, unexpectedly, when copying unfamiliar symbols. These findings suggest that familiarity with a letter affects movement fluency during letter production but may also point towards a more general ability to process new letter-like symbols in children with good letter knowledge.
Searching for an adequate method to investigate human development (especially the development of theoretical thinking) Vygotsky and his collaborators developed the causal genetic method The basic idea of this method consists in the investigation of psychic functions and structures by their formation under controlled conditions'(for instance via a formation experiment in classroom). But is this method also applicable in instructional settings using modern communications media? This paper is an attempt to find. an answer to the question: By what means is the investigation of the formation of theoretical thinking realizable through the application of the causal-genetic method in instructional settings using hypermedia and distance learning? However, a closer examination of the question itself shows that there are three interrelated aspects, namely: the investigation and formation of theoretical thinking; distance learning using modern communications media; the causal-genetic method. It will be shown that in a formation experiment learning with a hyper-media- educational program, which is based on the theory of learning- activity,' students reach a new level of cognitive development which is characterized by the growing ability of complex and dialectical thinking