The development of independent sitting changes everyday opportunities for learning and has cascading effects on cognitive and language development. Prior to independent sitting, infants experience ...the sitting position with physical support from caregivers. Why does supported sitting not provide the same input for learning that is experienced in independent sitting? This question is especially relevant for infants with gross motor delay, who require support in sitting for many months after typically developing infants sit independently. We observed infants with typical development (n = 34, ages 4–7 months) and infants with gross motor delay (n = 128, ages 7–16 months) in early stages of sitting development, and their caregivers, in a dyadic play observation. We predicted that infants who required caregiver support for sitting would spend more time facing away from the caregiver and less time contacting objects than infants who could sit independently. We also predicted that caregivers of supported sitters would spend less time contacting objects because their hands would be full supporting their infants. Our first two hypotheses were confirmed; however, caregivers spent surprisingly little time using both hands to provide support, and caregivers of supported sitters spent more time contacting objects than caregivers of independent sitters. Similar patterns were seen in the group of typically developing infants and the infants with motor delay. Our findings suggest that independent sitting and supported sitting provide qualitatively distinct experiences with different implications for social interaction and learning opportunities.
Highlights
During seated free play, supported sitters spent more time facing away from their caregivers and less time handling objects than independent sitters.
Caregivers who spent more time supporting infants with both hands spent less time handling objects; however, caregivers mostly supported infants with one or no hands.
A continuous measure of sitting skill did not uniquely contribute to these behaviors beyond the effect of binary sitting support (supported vs. independent sitter).
The pattern of results was similar for typically developing infants and infants with gross motor delay, despite differences in age.
This study compared the content of supported vs. independent sitting experience during dyadic play in infants with typical development and infants with gross motor delay. We found that—for both groups—the amount of time infants and caregivers were positioned to view each other's face, and the amount of time each handled objects, varied between supported and independent sitters. Our findings suggest that independent sitting and supported sitting provide qualitatively distinct experience with different implications for social interaction and learning opportunities, and that caregiver‐supported sitting may not be a sufficient substitute for infants with delays in independent sitting.
Over the past decade, researchers have replicated and extended research on the preschool life skills (PLS) program developed by Hanley, Heal, Tiger, and Ingvarsson (2007). This review summarizes ...recent research with respect to maximizing skill acquisition, improving generality, evaluating feasibility and acceptability, and testing predictions of the initial PLS study. For each area, we suggest directions for future research.
Recent developments in higher education have seen a strong emphasis placed on making graduates 'job ready' for their work in the professions. A driver of this agenda has been the many mass-scale ...surveys conducted with business and industry about the abilities and general employability of graduates. This Australian-based study is focused on perceptions and attitudes around one such ability - professional writing skills. 'Discourse-based interviews' were conducted with managers and supervisors from a range of professional areas. Their responses were most interesting, and served, among other things, to challenge some of the emerging ideas about 'job readiness' in current debates about the directions of higher education.
Critical thinking is one of the core twenty-first century skills. This study designs the strategy of peer assessment based on the theory of knowledge building to improve a class of 33 undergraduate ...students' critical thinking skills in one semester. The context of knowledge building has four phases-idea generation, idea connection, idea improvement, and rising above-which are iterated by three rounds of peer assessment. In this study, the dependent variable was critical thinking skills, and the independent variable was peer assessment. Data sources include critical thinking skills surveyed, peer comments on Knowledge Forum and grades scored by students. The results showed that (1) students' critical thinking skills were significantly improved; (2) students' reports have risen in peer assessment; and (3) students' critical thinking skills are significantly correlated with peer assessment in the knowledge-building community with both peer comments and peer grades. The findings indicated that knowledge building created a positive culture for the promotion of critical thinking skills, comments that expressed strong disagreement could improve students' critical thinking skills, and the formation of community knowledge played a substantial role in promoting students' critical thinking skills.
Regarding the caliber of newly-graduated professionals, the software industry expresses discontent. Therefore, software industries spend on training these individuals to improve software development ...process-related skills. According to various research studies, one reason for the lack of skilled graduates is a gap between industry and academia. One of the vital areas of software development where that gap exacerbates is software testing. The study aims to find skills (testing skills, Soft skills, and technical skills) that the software industry demands from novice software testers and assess their relevant importance. To find the skills that the software industry requires from fresh graduates, we have analyzed 160 job advertisements. The results revealed that the software industry focuses on testing skills and demands technical and soft skills, as 98% of advertisements require testing-related skills. Regarding soft skills, 92% of advertisements demanded soft skills. The novice tester must have strong technical skills as 78% of job advertisements require different technical skills. Moreover, the industry at present is also considering personality traits and educational attainment when hiring novice software testers. This study intends to identify the skill set for the novice software tester required by the Pakistan software industry. Results of the study indicate that software companies want to hire fresh graduates who are proficient in testing skills along with technical and soft skills. Therefore, there is a need to incorporate identified skills in software testing courses to better prepare computing graduates for the role of a novice software tester.
Large inflows of less educated immigrants may reduce wages paid to comparably-educated, native-born workers. However, if less educated foreign- and native-born workers specialize in different ...production tasks, because of different abilities, immigration will cause natives to reallocate their task supply, thereby reducing downward wage pressure. Using occupational task-intensity data from the O*NET dataset and individual US census data, we demonstrate that foreign-born workers specialize in occupations intensive in manual-physical labor skills while natives pursue jobs more intensive in communication-language tasks. This mechanism can explain why economic analyses find only modest wage consequences of immigration for less educated native-born workers.
This paper argues that e-skills - capabilities associated with the use and development of digital technologies - enhance regions' ability to draw on existing know-how and create new industrial paths. ...The empirical analysis focuses on the relationship between e-skills and technological diversification for a panel of European regions in the period 2000-12. It constructs novel indices of regional e-skill endowment distinguishing between basic users, professional users and expert developers of information and communication technologies. The econometric results show that e-skills foster technological diversification dynamics in European regions, and that this effect is particularly strong for less-developed regions, and for low levels of relatedness.
The Movement Assessment Battery for Children-Second Edition (MABC-2) is a recent revision of the well-known Movement Assessment Battery for Children (MABC). The MABC-2 is designed to identify and ...describe impairments in motor performance of children and adolescents 3 through 16 years of age. The Performance Test and the Checklist have been standardized using a larger, more representative normative sample. The evolution of the MABC-2 and research using the MABC is presented to provide a context for the MABC-2. The content of the MABC-2 is described including the scoring format, standardization sample, reliability, and validity. The MABC-2 includes four new items, the revision of some items, the creation of a 3- through 6-year and 11- through 16-year age bands, the combination of the 7- through 8- and 9- through 10-year age bands, and a system to assist with score interpretation. The Checklist has been reorganized and the total number of items reduced to 30. The primary weakness of the MABC-2 is the lack of evidence on reliability and validity. The quality, comprehensiveness, and rigor of reliability and validity studies reported in the test manual are variable. Considering the strengths and weakness of the MABC-2, it appears to be a clinically useful instrument, however, until further reliability and validity studies are completed, therapists should be guarded when basing their clinical decisions solely on MABC-2 test results.
We present a meta-analysis of studies that compare figurative language comprehension in individuals with autism spectrum disorder and in typically developing controls who were matched based on ...chronological age or/and language ability. A total of 41 studies and 45 independent effect sizes were included based on predetermined inclusion criteria. Group matching strategy, age, types of figurative language, and cross-linguistic differences were examined as predictors that might explain heterogeneity in effect sizes. Overall, individuals with autism spectrum disorder showed poorer comprehension of figurative language than their typically developing peers (Hedges’ g = –0.57). A meta-regression analysis showed that group matching strategy and types of figurative language were significantly related to differences in effect sizes, whereas chronological age and cross-linguistic differences were not. Differences between the autism spectrum disorder and typically developing groups were small and nonsignificant when the groups were matched based on the language ability. Metaphors were more difficult to comprehend for individuals with autism spectrum disorder compared with typically developing controls than were irony and sarcasm. Our findings highlight the critical role of core language skills in figurative language comprehension. Interventions and educational programmes designed to improve social communication skills in individuals with autism spectrum disorder may beneficially target core language skills in addition to social skills.
Sources that contribute to variation in mathematical achievement include both numerical knowledge and general underlying cognitive processing abilities. The current study tested the benefits of ...tablet‐based training games that targeted each of these areas for improving the mathematical knowledge of kindergarten‐age children. We hypothesized that playing a number‐based game targeting numerical magnitude knowledge would improve children's broader numerical skills. We also hypothesized that the benefits of playing a working memory (WM) game would transfer to children's numerical knowledge given its important underlying role in mathematics achievement. Kindergarteners from diverse backgrounds (n = 148; 52% girls; Mage = 71.87 months) were randomly assigned to either play a number‐based game, a WM game, or a control game on a tablet for 10 sessions. Structural equation modeling was used to model children's learning gains in mathematics and WM across time. Overall, our results suggest that playing the number game improved kindergarten children's numerical knowledge at the latent level, and these improvements remained stable as assessed 1 month later. However, children in the WM group did not improve their numerical knowledge compared to children in the control condition. Playing both the number game and WM game improved children's WM at the latent level. Importantly, the WM group continued to improve their WM for at least a month after playing the games. The results demonstrate that computerized games that target both domain‐specific and domain‐general skills can benefit a broad range of kindergarten‐aged children.
We tested the benefits of engaging in tablet‐based games that target either domain‐specific or domaingeneral skills in a diverse population of kindergarten‐aged children. Structural equation modeling was used to determine children’s learning gains in mathematics and working memory across time. The results suggest that computerized games that target both domain‐specific and domain‐general skills can lead to broad and longitudinal benefits that go beyond the trained task.
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