The current investigation was designed to examine the provision of cognitive stimulation to preschool-aged children from high-risk families. Participants were drawn from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, a prospective, longitudinal investigation of individuals recruited in 1976-77 from lower SES neighbourhoods who were rated by childhood…

Background: Schools in K-12 have generated mission statements as ways of focusing their efforts and energies in specific areas. These mission statements vary by institutional setting as a function of the stakeholders and constituent groups who facilitate their development. To date, no studies were located in which the mission statements of…

This study examined relationships between the caregiving environment, severity of disability, and several aspects of family ecology for 102 adolescents with disabilities. Family ecology variables included poverty status, parental intelligence, social support, and marital quality. The disability categories were mental retardation; orthopedic…

Over the past decade, there has been a worldwide search for caretaking factors which protect children from poverty, poor health, and neglect. This search has shifted in focus from unchangeable risk factors to conditions and behaviors that can be taught to caregivers. These conditions seem to be: (1) based in species-wide needs; (2) specific to…

To test two competing paradigms of the arousal-learning relationship--(1) increases in subject arousal will lead to increased learning in all but extreme cases of excitation, and (2) high subject arousal yields poor immediate memory but high ultimate memory--92 college students were presented with a tape recorded message in varying classroom…

A longitudinal study investigated maternal social support and its relationship to mother/child stress, the amount of stimulation provided the child, and the child's cognitive development. The data presented here represent the 18 to 24 month follow-up on a subset of families studied in 1981 and 1982 concerning current maternal social support and…

A site in Milwaukee was selected for a series of high-risk population survey. This area was rated in the lowest category for Milwaukee in terms of median educational level and income, and in the highest in terms of population density per living unit, percent housing rated as dilapidated, and unemployment. A pool of candidates composed of mothers…

Children in open and traditional classrooms were observed and tested on physiological and performance measures. The children were categorized into subgroups according to their arousal level. Analyses of variance revealed that performance of high-arousal children in open classrooms decreased over time in contrast to all other subgroups. (Author/AL)

Scores on the Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME), designed to reflect parental support of early cognitive and social development, were correlated with elementary school achievement five to nine years later. Results supported the predictive value of the instrument for school achievement among low-income families. (Author/DB)

Recommends the use of visual art games to organize learning for short time periods. Outlines strategies for seven visual art games adaptable for most age and skill levels. Based on familiar games such as "I-Spy" or "Bingo," these activities deal with artistic terms or concepts, artists, artworks, and art history. (LS)

Describes an active participation exercise that demonstrates the propagation of action potentials (the ability to transmit information through the neural network, dependent upon chemical interactions in the brain). Students assume the structure and function of the network by lining up around the room and communicating through hand signals and…

This study explores the meanings that learners of English as a foreign language give to teachers' gestures. It is a qualitative, descriptive study of the perceived functions that gestures perform in the EFL classroom, viewed mainly from the language learners' perspective. The data for the study was collected through interviews with twenty-two…

Background: Rett syndrome (RS) is a pervasive developmental disorder with cognitive and neuromotor impairments (including loss of handiness and loss of communicative skills). Objective: To verify whether girls with RS use their gaze intentionally, by observing their performance in three cognitive tasks: (1) verbal instruction condition (look at…

Synaptic plasticity is thought to contribute to memory formation. Serotonin-induced facilitation of sensory-motor (SN-MN) synapses in "Aplysia" is an extensively studied cellular analog of memory for sensitization. Serotonin, a modulatory neurotransmitter, is released in the CNS during sensitization training, and induces three temporally and…