This review synthesised findings from 66 studies that focus on academic coping among children and youth from 2^nd to 12^th grade. Process studies suggest several pathways through which coping can contribute to academic success: by promoting persistence, mediating the effects of personal or interpersonal resources, and buffering students’ performance from academic risk.

Authors: Ellen A. Skinner & Emily A. Saxton

Source: Skinner, E. A. & Saxton, E. A. (2019). The development of academic coping in children and youth: A comprehensive review and critique. Developmental Review, 53,100870,  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2019.100870

This review synthesised findings from 66 studies that focus on academic coping among children and youth from 2^nd to 12^th grade. Results indicated that multiple approaches to academic coping predict educational performance and functioning, especially motivationally-relevant outcomes. Process studies suggest several pathways through which coping can contribute to academic success: by promoting persistence, mediating the effects of personal or interpersonal resources, and buffering students’ performance from academic risk. At every age, adaptive coping was more likely for students who experienced higher levels of personal and interpersonal assets, whereas maladaptive coping was higher among students with elevated levels of personal vulnerabilities and lower levels of interpersonal supports.

• To fulfil their educational potential, children need to learn how to deal constructively with the challenges and setbacks that they will inevitably encounter in their academic work.
• The notion of a coping repertoire presumes that students can show a range of coping responses over the arc of any stressful episode—from helplessness to comfort-seeking to strategising
• The profile or balance of students’ ways of dealing with stressors determines whether their reactions will be adaptive or maladaptive over time.
• Conceptually, research on academic coping is found at the intersection of three large and loosely related fields: coping, education, and developmental science.

The study

The aim of this review was to highlight the importance of research on the development of academic coping. It included 66 investigations that examined academic coping among children and youth. Different ways of academic coping used across studies were classified into approximately 12 core categories.

Research questions:

1. Does coping play a role in students’ academic functioning and success, and does this role differ for children and youth of different ages/in different grades?
2. What strategies do students use to cope with academic stressors, and does this pattern change as children and youth get older/move to higher grades?
3. What kinds of personal factors contribute to adaptive and maladaptive coping, and do these differ for children and youth of different ages/in different grades?
4. What kinds of interpersonal and classroom factors contribute to coping, and do these differ for children and youth of different ages/in different grades?

Summary

• Students who scored higher on two indicators of adaptive coping (problem-solving and adaptive profiles) that combined multiple constructive methods of coping, were more likely to achieve higher grades and achievement test scores. They were also likely to demonstrate better academic functioning, including higher levels of engagement, interest, feelings of effectiveness in dealing with school-related stress, adjustment to school transition, use of deeper learning strategies, pro-school behaviours, persistence, optimism, well-being, and life satisfaction.
• Students who scored higher on four indicators of maladaptive coping (escape, social isolation, opposition, and maladaptive profiles) were more likely to demonstrate lower academic performance and were more likely to evince poorer academic functioning, including higher levels of disengagement, effort withdrawal, feelings of ineffectiveness, difficulty adapting to school transitions, use of surface learning strategies, giving up in the face of difficulties, school-related burnout, and suspensions from school. (These connections held across grade levels and ages.)
• Students generally responded to stressors with adaptive strategies, primarily from the families of problem-solving, information-seeking (help-seeking), and support-seeking (comfort-seeking), as well as from other productive families such as accommodation (positive reappraisal) or self-reliance (self-encouragement).
• Students were less likely to rely on coping from maladaptive families; however, when they do they tend to use escape or submission (self-blame), and sometimes helplessness, social isolation, or delegation, and (most rarely) opposition, such as blaming others.
• From ages 7–11 years, children demonstrated high and steady levels of adaptive coping, with some indications of improvement toward the end of elementary school. At the same time, children showed relatively low levels of maladaptive coping, which may decrease even further as students reach the end of childhood.
• Early adolescence (ages 11–14 years) brings disruption in smooth functioning and adaptive coping declines. At the same time, reliance on maladaptive coping increases.
• During middle and late adolescence (ages 15–18 years), both adaptive and maladaptive coping seem to stabilise.
• In general, students cope more productively when they evince higher levels of perceived competence and control, relative autonomy, belonging, self-esteem, engagement, and mastery goals as well as lower levels of catastrophising appraisals, disaffection, and feelings of stress, anxiety, or threat.
• Students cope more adaptively when they see their peers, teachers, and parents as more focused on mastery goals; view their relationships with teachers as positive and with their parents and teachers providing higher levels of motivational and learning supports; experience their parents as authoritarian while providing unconditional positive regard; and their peers providing higher levels of support for learning and general support.
• Compared to boys, girls tend to utilise more support-seeking when they encounter academic difficulties.
• Academic coping has the potential to buffer students’ academic outcomes from the otherwise deleterious effects of some stressful life experiences.
• Adaptive coping may provide a motivational advantage (including increased persistence or coping efficacy) whereas maladaptive coping may act as a motivational liability that contributes to discouragement and withdrawal of effort.
• Students’ coping can predict changes in their academic performance and functioning over time; for example, adaptive coping predicts increased persistence and reduced likelihood of giving up.
• The most constructive ways to cope can be found among members of the problem-solving family, most likely because academic stressors are typically controllable and amenable to tactics such as acting directly, strategising, and exerting effort.
• Other adaptive ways of coping (such as information-seeking and self-reliance) are consistent correlates of good academic functioning.
• In terms of maladaptive families, the most consistent connections with poorer functioning are found with the methods of coping utilised least often at every age; namely, those from the ‘opposition’ family.

Implications

• Middle or late elementary school may represent important developmental windows for interventions to enhance students’ personal motivational resources and to prevent the decline in coping for early adolescents over the transition to middle school.
• Researchers and practitioners should examine the ‘deep structure’ of classroom culture closely to understand how schools typically frame and respond to academic ‘problems’ and ‘failures’ in relation to coping.
• Reconsideration of all aspects of the student experience is advised, including the messages children and youth receive about learning goals, the creation of a sense of common purpose, the nature of the academic work students are assigned, penalties for mistakes and failure, the role of social comparison and competition, whether assignments and exams can be retaken, and how to build the trust and quality of students’ interpersonal relationships with teachers, friends, and classmates.
• A developmental approach to coping suggests that interventions should not aim to shield children and adolescents from academic stressors. Instead, educational and intervention programmes should be designed to carefully expose students to demands and challenges that are developmentally calibrated and individually manageable in nurturing contexts where multiple supports are available.
• Academic stressors can provide opportunities for students to build their ‘coping muscles’, developing a flexible repertoire of effective tools for dealing with problems and setbacks while also learning how to coordinate coping with situational requirements and the support of social partners. This may be especially important for students to learn how to recover and benefit from failures.

The present study presents a review of work on the development of children’s and adolescents’ expectancy and competence beliefs of academic achievement domains across the elementary and secondary school years and how these are calibrated to their performance. Expectancy and competence beliefs for different achievement tasks decline as children move from kindergarten through to 12^th grade. With age, children’s expectancy beliefs relate more strongly to their performance in achievement-related activities, which impact motivation and self-regulation for exams.

Authors: Katherine Muenks, Allan Wigfield, & Jacquelynne S. Eccles

Source: Muenks, K., Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J.S. (2018). I can do this! The development and calibration of children’s expectations for success and competence beliefs. Developmental Review, 48, 24-39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2018.04.001

The present study presents a review of work on the development of children’s and adolescents’ expectancy and competence beliefs of academic achievement domains across the elementary and secondary school years and how these are calibrated to their performance. The work reviewed stems from prominent achievement motivation theories: expectancy-value theory, social cognitive theory, self-worth theory, and self-determination theory. Expectancy and competence beliefs for different achievement tasks decline as children move from kindergarten through to 12^th grade. With age, children’s expectancy beliefs relate more strongly to their performance in achievement-related activities, which impact motivation and self-regulation for exams.

• Constructs of expectancies for success and broader competence beliefs have a long history in the achievement motivation field.

Social cognitive theory

• Bandura (1977, 1986, 1997) emphasised human agency and perceptions of efficacy as major determinants of individuals’ efforts to achieve.
• Self-efficacy is a multidimensional construct that can vary in strength, generality, and level of difficulty.
• Outcome expectations are beliefs that certain behaviours will lead to certain outcomes.
• Efficacy expectations are beliefs about ability to perform the behaviours necessary to produce the outcome. These are the major determinants of goal setting, activity choice, willingness to expend effort, and persistence.
• Self-efficacy is determined by previous performance, vicarious learning, verbal encouragement by others, and physiological reactions.

Effectance motivation and self-determination theory

• Effectance motivation (White, 1959) refers to the drive to engage in exploratory and mastery behaviours even when basic bodily needs are fully sated (as demonstrated by species from rats to humans).
• This theory states that the goals are to acquire competence and to influence one’s environment.
• Deci and Ryan’s (1985, 2000, 2016) self-determination theory focuses particularly on the role of autonomy and intrinsic motivation within development.
• Self-determination theory states that intrinsic motivation is only possible when individuals freely choose their own actions.
• Self-determination theory states that competence, autonomy, and relatedness are fundamental human psychological needs.

How are expectancy-related beliefs related to performance?

• The relationship between children’s expectancies and performance strengthen across the school years.
• Students’ ability self-concepts and value attributed to maths measured in high school could predict their college major choice.
• Students’ expectancies predict future performance even when controlling for previous performance.
• Self-concept and achievement are both mutual causes and effects.
• ‘Calibration’ is defined as the difference between students’ expected and actual performance.
• Students who are well-calibrated have accurate expectations of their performance, and students who are poorly calibrated over- or under-estimate their level of performance; thus, calibration can affect students’ motivation, study behaviour, and achievement.
• Personal, environmental, and social factors can influence students’ calibration accuracy.
• Higher-performing individuals are often better calibrators than low performers, and task- and item-level calibration accuracy decreases with more difficult tasks.
• Parents, teachers, and peers can influence students’ domain- and task-level calibration.
• Students’ calibration accuracy has important consequences for their well-being, motivation, self-regulation, effort, and performance.

How do teachers influence children’s beliefs?

• When children start school, they begin to be evaluated by their teachers in systematic, formal, and normative ways. Partly as a result of this evaluation, they start to engage more systematically in social comparison with peers as way of judging their own abilities.
• Teachers’ general expectations for their students’ performance and teaching efficacy (confidence in their ability to influence their students through their teaching) predict students’ school achievement.
• Teachers who feel they are able to reach even the most difficult students, who believe in their ability to affect students’ lives, and who believe that teachers are an important factor in determining developmental outcomes, communicate these positive expectations and beliefs to their students.
• Person-specific expectations may be one of the most direct social influences on students’ developing expectancy beliefs.
• Teachers’ expectations for individual students are directly related to how well the student has achieved in the past; what is critical is how these perceptions translate into the teachers’ actual behavioural interactions with each of the students.
• During elementary school, students are often grouped by ability within classrooms for instruction in subjects such as reading and maths. In middle school and high school, between-classroom ability grouping or tracking is used more commonly, particularly in certain countries.
• It is believed that learners will be more motivated to learn if the material can be adapted to their current level of competence. The results for students placed in low ability and non-college tracks do not confirm this hypothesis.
• One important concern about ability grouping is to determine the relevant social comparison group for particular students.

Interventions to foster students’ expectancy-related beliefs

• Attribution retraining generally involves changing individuals’ failure attribution from a belief that failure is due to a lack of ability to lack of effort. The aim is to improve students’ task persistence and performance.
• Telling children to ‘try harder’ without providing specific strategies designed to improve performance may be unsuccessful if children increase their efforts and still do not succeed. Thus, combining strategy and attribution retraining provides greater success.
• Students’ mindsets can be changed from fixed to growing by emphasising how their brains grow and change through learning. This can lead them to revise their beliefs about intelligence.
• Self-efficacy training generally involves providing students with feedback to enhance their self-efficacy, as well as giving them some skill training so they can master the tasks they undertake.

The present five-year longitudinal study focused on children from pre-school to Grade 3. The developmental associations among oral language comprehension, task orientation, reading precursors, and reading fluency were examined, together with their role in predicting Grade 3 reading comprehension. Oral language comprehension, reading fluency, and task orientation each contributed uniquely to concurrent reading comprehension. Further, a reciprocal relationship was found between oral language comprehension and task orientation.

Authors: Janne Lepola, Julie Lynch, Noona Kiuru, Eero Laakkonen, & Pekka Niemi

Source: Lepola, J., Lynch, J., Kiuru, N., Laakkonen, E., & Niemi, P. (2016). Early oral language comprehension, task orientation, and foundational reading skills as predictors of Grade 3 reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 51(4), 373-390, doi: 10.1002/rrq.145

The present five-year longitudinal study focused on children from pre-school to Grade 3. The developmental associations among oral language comprehension, task orientation, reading precursors, and reading fluency were examined, in addition to their role in predicting Grade 3 reading comprehension. Oral language comprehension and task orientation were assessed from 90 Finnish-speaking students in pre-school, kindergarten, and Grade 3. Reading precursors were assessed at the first two timepoints and reading fluency at the third. Oral language comprehension, reading fluency, and task orientation each contributed uniquely to concurrent reading comprehension. Moreover, a reciprocal relationship was found between oral language comprehension and task orientation.

• Reading comprehension is based on two basic components: word decoding and oral language skills.
• Whereas skills such as phonological awareness and letter identification allow young readers to decode individual words, oral language skills (such as vocabulary and narrative comprehension) lay the foundation for deciphering meaning from text.
• When a reader constructs a coherent mental representation of a narrative, a number of cognitive skills are employed at the word, sentence, and text levels. These skills include activation of word meanings, understanding sentences, making inferences, monitoring comprehension, and understanding text structure.
• Children start to understand complex narratives from the age of 4 years.

The study

The present five-year study had two aims:

1. The longitudinal and concurrent roles of task orientation, oral language comprehension, reading precursors, and reading fluency in the prediction of reading comprehension in Grade 3 were examined.
2. It was investigated whether oral language comprehension, reading precursors, and task orientation follow independent pathways or are reciprocally related to each other from preschool to Grade 3.

Participants

The study included 90 Finnish-speaking children, who were followed from age 4 years (preschool), to age 6 years (kindergarten), and to age 9–10 years (Grade 3). At Time 1 (age 4 years) and Time 2 (age 6 years), letter knowledge, phonological awareness, vocabulary, listening comprehension, and inference making were assessed. At Time 3 (Grade 3), listening comprehension, inference making, text-reading speed and accuracy, and reading comprehension were assessed. Task orientation was assessed by preschool, kindergarten, and Grade 3 teachers.

Summary

• The findings suggest a reciprocal relationship between oral language comprehension and task orientation across time in the prediction of reading comprehension.
• The link between oral language comprehension and task orientation strengthened substantially from preschool to Grade 3.
• The modelling suggests that variations in reading comprehension is captured by the two components pertinent to the simple view of reading and task orientation.
• The results indicate that pathways to reading comprehension are propelled by behavioural factors relatively early—three years before the onset of formal reading instruction.
• Individual differences were conspicuously stable in oral language comprehension from age 4 to 9 years and in reading precursors from age 4 to 6 years.
• Continuity was observed in task orientation from preschool to Grade 3.
• The modelling of the links between reading precursors and oral language comprehension supported their developmental independence from preschool to kindergarten.
• The final model included narrative listening comprehension and inference making over the age range of 4–9 years, text reading fluency, and task orientation. This accounted for 76% of the variance in Grade 3 reading comprehension.
• A reliable prediction of Grade 3 reading comprehension can be based on listening comprehension and inference-making skills measured as early as the age of 4 years.
• It is suggested that task motivation facilitates text comprehension in at least two ways. First, strong task orientation implies an attempt to approach and master the learning task, simultaneously focusing on the meaning of instruction. Second, task orientation implies intellectual responsibility and high coherence standards and higher aspiration levels, which in turn results in better reading comprehension.
• Comprehension can be supported by discussing the explicit and implicit information in stories and identifying narrative elements and protagonists’ thoughts, feelings, and actions.

The present study examines whether a new contextualised language intervention (CLI) or an existing decontextualised language intervention (DLI) resulted in greater changes in children’s language and narration than a no-treatment condition (CON). Both interventions were associated with statistically significant improvements on sentence- and discourse-level measures when compared to a no-treatment condition, with the CLI group performing the best.

Authors: Sandra Laing Gillam, Ronald B. Gillam, & Kellie Reece

Source: Gillam, S.L., Gillam, R.B., & Reece, K. (2012). Language outcomes of contextualized and decontextualized language intervention: Results of an Early Efficacy Study. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 43, 276-291, DOI: 10.1044/0161-1461(2011/11-0022)

The present study examines whether a new contextualised language intervention (CLI) or an existing decontextualised language intervention (DLI) resulted in greater changes in children’s language and narration compared to a no-treatment condition (CON). In the study, 16 children aged 6-9 years were randomly assigned to the CLI and DLI groups, and 8 children were assigned to the CON group. Children in the CLI and DLI conditions received group intervention sessions of 50 min 3 times per week for 6 weeks. Both interventions were associated with statistically significant gains on sentence- and discourse-level measures when compared to a no-treatment condition, with the CLI group performing the best.

• School-age children with specific language impairments (SLI) often demonstrate difficulty in comprehending and producing narratives.
• Difficulties in one area (such as comprehension) often affect the performance in other areas (such as literate language use).
• Deficits negatively impact the ability of children with SLI to profit from instruction in the classroom without some form of intervention.

The study

The present study employed a nonrandomised, parallel group design to provide a low-cost test of our revised intervention to facilitate a larger, more costly, and more internally valid investigation.

Research question:

1. Will children who receive CLI or DLI present greater improvements on sentence-level or narrative-level language measures compared to children in a no-treatment control group (CON)?

Participants

The study included 24 children with learning impairments (LI). Of these, 8 received CLI, 8 received DLI, and 8 formed a CON group. Intervention was provided in a public school in three sessions of 50 min per week over 6 weeks in small groups of 3 or 4 students.

The CLI intervention procedure

• The CLI was structured around children’s literature and incorporated both oral and written language whenever possible.
• Children were provided with multiple opportunities to talk about and share knowledge of the story content and use vocabulary and grammatical structures from the model stories.
• The clinician delivering the CLI encouraged the children to link relevant world knowledge and experiences to the vocabulary and sentence structures that were taught in each session.
• The specific intervention activities in the CLI included the following: listening to stories, answering comprehension questions, generating inferences, comparing/contrasting characters and actions across stories, discussing and defining the meanings of Tier 2 vocabulary, and brainstorming solutions to problems inherent in the stories.
• Tier 2 vocabulary includes words that are likely to be unfamiliar to children but represent ‘concepts’ with which children are familiar.

The DLI intervention

• Children in the DLI group answered questions and played games from the No-Glamour series published by LinguiSystems.
• The materials included a commercially packaged grammar game and situational drill cards designed to improve vocabulary, sentence complexity, and social language.
• Clinicians were instructed to engage the children in each game or card set for an average of 12.5 min.
• Clinicians were instructed to provide feedback in the form of focused stimulation, explanations, growth-relevant recasts, and vertical structures.
• Topic continuity or discontinuity was a critical difference between the DLI and CLI programs. Topics were discontinuous in the DLI program.

Summary

• The study assessed the language outcomes of children who participated in a CLI and those who participated in a DLI.
• Both the CLI and DLI programs incorporated activities that involved listening to short stories, asking or answering questions, and brainstorming solutions to problems. In addition, children in both groups were asked to define words and to generate sentences containing vocabulary words.
• The primary difference between the interventions was that the CLI condition provided more topic continuity across activities that were presented in functional, narrative-based intervention contexts.
• Children in all three groups achieved similar scores on five of the six measures before intervention. The only exception was the Recalling Sentences subtest, in which the children in the CLI group had significantly higher scores than the children in the CON group.
• After intervention, children in the CLI group achieved significantly higher scores than children in the CON group on Recalling Sentences and Formulated Sentences.
• Children in the DLI group achieved higher scores than children in the CON group on Formulated Sentences but not on Recalling Sentences.
• Only the CLI group performed significantly differently from the CON group on the TNL Narrative Language Ability Index.
• The CLI group performed significantly better than the CON group on the comprehension measure and the microstructure measure, but not on the macrostructure measure.
• For the sentence-level measures, there were large or very large effect sizes for both the CLI and DLI groups over the CON group.
• It could be argued that both interventions were effective for improving children’s sentence-level language skills.
• There were important group differences in the size of the effects. On average, the effect sizes for the CLI group were 81% larger than the effect sizes for the DLI group.
• The CLI approach yielded moderate effects (d = 0.43) on the general measure of narrative language ability and for the MISL macrostructure scale (d = 0.45), and large effects for the TNL Comprehension scale (d = 0.93) and MISL microstructure scale (d = 1.19).
• A finding of positive outcomes for children who received group therapy is promising news for clinicians whose caseload considerations prohibit or restrict the provision of individual treatment to children with LI.

A systematic and explicit instructional routine for comprehension monitoring in oral language contexts was developed for children in pre-kindergarten. Results indicated that children who received the instruction improved at identifying inconsistencies in short stories compared to those who received typical instruction, with a medium effect size (d = 0.57).

Authors: Young-Suk Grace Kim & Beth Phillips

Source: Kim, Y.-S. G. & Phillips, B. (2016). Five minutes a day to improve comprehension monitoring in oral language contexts. An exploratory intervention study with prekindergartners from low-income families. Top Lang Disorders, 36(4), 356-376, DOI: 10.1097/TLD.0000000000000103

Comprehension monitoring is not limited to the reading context, it also applies to the oral context for children’s listening comprehension, which is a critical foundation for reading comprehension. A systematic and explicit instructional routine for comprehension monitoring in oral language contexts was developed for children at pre-kindergarten. Instruction was provided in small groups for approximately 5 min a day for 4 days a week over 8 weeks. Results indicated that children who received the instruction were better at identifying inconsistencies in short stories compared to those children who received typical instruction, with a medium effect size (d = 0.57).

• Oral language comprehension is an essential skill for daily interactions and for reading comprehension.
• Recent emerging evidence suggests that language comprehension at the discourse level (commonly referred to as listening comprehension) draws on a highly complex set of abilities and knowledge. These include working memory, attentional control, vocabulary, syntax, inference making, perspective taking, and comprehension monitoring.
• Successful comprehension of texts (oral or written) requires construction of a coherent mental model, which has been called the situation model.
• A proposition is the basic unit idea/thought.
• Initial and elementary propositions should be interconnected to establish global coherence.
• The comprehender should evaluate and monitor their understanding of the text as the situation model is updated with incoming information.
• Comprehension monitoring is the ability to reflect on and evaluate one’s comprehension of text (spoken or written).
• Comprehension is typically measured by assessing a child’s ability to detect inconsistencies in stories.
• Good readers know when they fail to understand and are confused.
• Comprehension monitoring has been widely promoted as a strategy to help students resolve confusion or comprehension failure in the context of reading.

The study

The present study examines the potential effect of explicit instruction on comprehension monitoring in oral language contexts for children in pre-kindergarten from low socioeconomic family backgrounds. A brief instructional routine (lasting approximately 5 min a day) targeting inconsistency detection was developed. While Instruction was delivered in small groups (three to four children), the routine is flexible and appropriate for whole class or one-on-one instruction.

Participants

The study included 75 children at pre-kindergarten (mean age = 57 months), all of whom were recruited from high-poverty schools. Of the children, 41 were randomly assigned to the treatment condition and 34 were assigned to the comparison (practice-as-usual) condition. Five children dropped-out, leaving 70 children in the post-test.

Comprehension monitoring assessment:

• Children heard stories consisting of two to three sentences and were asked to identify whether the stories were silly or made sense.

The intervention

• Intervention was conducted in small groups of four children, typically four times per week for 8 weeks.
• Each lesson had a scaffolded learning format of I-do, we-do, and you-do.
• Lessons were sequenced, starting from external inconsistencies and transitioning to internal inconsistencies, because internal inconsistencies were initially too challenging.
• The ratio of inconsistent versus consistent stories was approximately two to one.
• At the end of each lesson, the interventionist concluded by stating ‘when you listen to a story, you have to listen carefully so that you know if the story is silly or makes sense to you. If the story does not make sense to you, then you should stop, think about it, and ask questions.’

Summary

• In this study, the effect of explicit instruction on children’s comprehension monitoring was examined.
• Explicit instruction on comprehension monitoring had a positive, medium sized effect after 8 weeks of small group instruction.
• The results indicate that children in pre-kindergarten can be taught to identify inconsistencies in short stories, regardless of whether they are external or internal.
• Children found comprehension monitoring instruction engaging and the silly and inconsistent stories amusing (when identified).
• One important aspect of the described instructional routine is its ease of use and flexibility.
• The lesson can be flexibly applied to varied group sizes such as individual children, small groups, or whole classes.
• During reading activities, the teacher may insert questions at appropriate moments about whether the focal part of the story makes sense to children and why.
• Teachers can employ a questioning strategy during conversations with individual children. For example, when things are not clear during a conversation, the teacher can explicitly request further information from the child by stating ‘This part does not make sense to me. Would you tell me more about _?’
• The overall concept is to enhance children’s monitoring of their own understanding of stories or utterances in daily interactions and probe further when something does not make sense.

In this research, a meta-analysis of 37 studies on vocabulary interventions from pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 was conducted to provide a fuller understanding of the impact of vocabulary on comprehension. Vocabulary instruction was found to be effective for increasing student abilities in comprehending text with custom measures less effective for standardised measures. Students with reading difficulties benefited more than three times as much as students without reading problems on comprehension measures.

Authors: Amy M. Elleman, Endia J. Lindo, Paul Morphy, & Donald L. Compton

Source: Elleman, A.M., Lindo, E.J., Morphy, P., & Compton, D.L. (2009). The impact of vocabulary instruction on passage-level comprehension of school-age children: A meta-analysis. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 2(1), 1-44, DOI: 10.1080/19345740802539200

In this research, a meta-analysis of 37 studies on vocabulary interventions from pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 was conducted to provide a fuller understanding of the impact of vocabulary on comprehension. Vocabulary instruction was found to be effective for increasing student abilities in comprehending text with custom measures less effective for standardised measures. Students with reading difficulties benefited more than three times as much as students without reading problems on comprehension measures.

• The ability to understand and gain knowledge from text is a fundamental skill required in every school subject and in everyday life.
• Large numbers of school-age children experience significant problems in learning to read.
• The knowledge hypothesis states that words are part of larger knowledge structures. Further, these knowledge structures (not the words per se) affect a person’s comprehension.
• The aptitude hypothesis postulates there is no causal relationship between vocabulary and comprehension.
• According to the reciprocal hypothesis, most of children’s growth in vocabulary occurs incidentally, not through instruction or conversation. This learning occurs incrementally over time through multiple exposure to words in varied contexts.
• While the two studied hypotheses provide a viable explanation for the relationship between vocabulary and comprehension, they are not mutually exclusive and each probably provides a partial explanation.

The study

The present meta-analysis asks the following questions concerning comprehension outcomes for students from pre-Kindergarten through to Grade 12:

1. Does vocabulary instruction affect passage-level comprehension?
2. What methodological characteristics are associated with effect size and need to be controlled to avoid confounding of the findings?
3. Do the same factors that affect comprehension influence vocabulary improvements in the same way?
4. Are the effects in vocabulary associated with the effects in comprehension?

Data

This meta-analysis included 37 articles that met the eligibility criteria. All eligible reports were coded for effect size and study characteristics. The d statistic was used as an effect size, which was calculated by taking the difference between the intervention group and the control group means and dividing by the pooled standard deviations of the means.

Summary

• Although a positive overall effect of vocabulary training on comprehension assessed with custom measures was found, the effect for standardised measures was minimal.
• The overall positive effects found for custom measures suggest that vocabulary training increases comprehension for all students.
• Students identified as having reading problems benefitted more than students with no indicated reading problem by a factor of three.
• Students with reading difficulties made equivalent improvements in vocabulary knowledge as those students without reading difficulties.
• If students learn target words contained in the text, it can free up cognitive resources that can be allocated for the higher level processes of integrating text.
• Improvements in comprehension may be due to increased knowledge of the topics and the words learned.
• Regardless of the type of vocabulary instruction used, the same effects were produced on comprehension.
• Studies that utilised higher levels of discussion were associated with larger effects for vocabulary outcomes.
• Practitioners should use high levels of discussion to promote vocabulary development.

The present study found that action gamers have better lane-keeping and visuomotor-control skills compared to non-action gamers. Action gaming generally improves the responsiveness of the sensorimotor system to input error signals. The findings support a causal link between action gaming and enhancement of visuomotor control, with the suggestion that action video games can be beneficial training tools.

Authors: Li Li, Rongrong Chen, & Jing Chen

Source: Li, L., Chen, R., & Chen, J. (2016). Playing action video games improves visuomotor control. Psychological Science, 27(8) 1092–1108, DOI: 10.1177/0956797616650300

The present study found that action gamers have better lane-keeping and visuomotor-control skills than non-action gamers. For this study, non-action gamers were trained with both action and nonaction video games. After playing a driving or first-person-shooter video game for 5 to 10 hours, their visuomotor control improved significantly. Non-action gamers displayed no such improvement after playing a non-action game. Action gaming generally improves the responsiveness of the sensorimotor system to input error signals, and the findings support a causal link between action gaming and enhancement in visuomotor control. It is further suggested that action video games can be beneficial training tools.

• Playing action video games has been shown to result in a wide range of benefits for both basic and higher-level visual functions, such as contrast sensitivity, motion-direction discrimination, visuospatial resolution, visuospatial attention, and top-down guidance in visual searches.
• Gamers have enhanced eye-hand coordination and faster reaction times.

The study

The present study consists of four experiments:

1. How do people who do/do not frequently play action video games perform on a common driving task (lane keeping)?
2. Develop a visuomotor-control task for specifically examining visuomotor control underlying driving in action gamers
3. Non-action gamers played either a driving game or non-action game
4. Non-action gamers played either a first-person-shooter game or non-action game

Participants

Experiment 1 involved 12 action gamers and 12 non-action gamers. Action gamers reported playing ≥5 hours per week, while non-action gamers reported playing <1 hour per month.

Experiment 2 involved 14 action gamers and 14 non-action gamers.

Experiment 3 involved 12 non-action gamers (who were randomly assigned to either action group and trained to play a driving game) and a control group (who were trained to play a non-action game). Training consisted of playing the video game for 10 sessions, each lasting 1 hour.

Experiment 4 involved 16 non-action gamers who were randomly assigned to action and control groups. The action group played a first-person-shooter game.

Summary

• With action gamers, their precision error was 57% smaller, their response amplitude was 24% larger, and their response delay was 29% shorter compared to non-action gamers.
• Action gamers had superior performance on the visuomotor-control task compared to non-action gamers.
• Different types of action video games have both common and different effects on the sensorimotor system.
• The findings of the current study support the claim that easily accessible action video games can be cost-effective training tools to help people improve the essential visuomotor-control skills used for driving.

The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of motor skills training on arithmetical abilities among 80 Grade 1 students. One result indicated that the intervention group (who received training in fine motor skills for 10 min) exhibited greater improvements in performance on an arithmetic task and a pegboard compared to the active control group (who read their favourite book for 10 min).

Authors: Atsushi Asakawa, Taro Murakami, & Shinichiro Sugimura

Source: Asakawa, A.; Murakami, T.; Sugimura, S. (2019). Effect of fine motor skills training on arithmetical ability in children. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 16(3), 290-301, DOI: 10.1080/17405629.2017.1385454

The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of motor skills training on arithmetical abilities among 80 Grade 1 students. One result demonstrated that the intervention group (who received training in fine motor skills for 10 min) achieved improved performance on an arithmetic task and a pegboard compared to the active control group (who read their favourite book for 10 min). These findings suggest that the training presented in this study is an appropriate programme for improving fine motor skills and that fine motor skills have a significant influence on arithmetical abilities in children (with a medium effect size).

• When learning arithmetic at an early stage, children tend to use their fingers to represent and count numbers.
• Based on the embodiment theory, claims have been made that finger movements are related to arithmetic development.

Possible explanations for the link between arithmetical abilities and fine motor skills:

• Brain areas governing these two abilities are close to each other; hence, they might exhibit similar developmental patterns.
• The executive function might mediate the relationships.
• Numerical operation is not merely abstract thinking—it is also based on physical, embodied experiences.

The study

The purpose of this study was to clarify the effect of fine motor skills training on arithmetical ability in children in the first grade of primary school.

Hypothesis:

• The training programme in this study is only expected to influence fine motor skills and arithmetical abilities, not finger gnosis.

Participants

The study involved 80 Grade 1 students, who were randomly assigned to either a fine motor training group or a control group. In the intervention group, fine motor skills training was conducted instead of a reading activity (which was continued in the control group) for 3 weeks after pre-test.

Fine motor skills training

• Bead stringing: children were required to string as many beads as possible with one hand at a time for one minute.
• Finger opposition: children performed finger opposition movements (thumb to index, medium, ring, and little fingers) with each hand five times.
• Pulling each finger: children placed their hands in front of their chest with the right palm facing them and left palm facing away. They clasped the fingers of both hands together and pulled their left hand towards their right side while pulling their right hand to the left.

Summary

• The arithmetic scores of the fine motor training group showed improvement after the 3 week intervention period, whereas those in the reading group showed no improvement.
• It appears that fine motor skills have a significant influence on arithmetical abilities (given the medium effect size).
• For the first time, the present study has provided evidence suggesting there may be a causal relationship between fine motor skills and arithmetical abilities.
• Fine motor skills training does not improve finger gnosis.
• According to the ‘brain’ view, the brain areas underlying both finger movement and arithmetical ability are close to each other.
• According to the ‘mediation’ view (which proposes that executive function mediates the relationship between fine motor skills and arithmetical ability), it is possible that arithmetic abilities develop because of improvements in executive function through fine motor skills training.
• According to the ‘embodiment’ view, numerical operations are not merely abstract thinking—they are also based on physical, embodied experiences.
• The results cannot confirm whether the mediation or embodiment view best fits the results.

The present study assessed the impact of a teacher-implemented visuomotor intervention programme of teaching cursive letter knowledge to children aged 5 years. While there was greater improvement in letter recognition following the visuomotor intervention, results were mixed for letter handwriting.

Authors: Florence Bara & Nathalie Bonneton-Botté

Source: Bara, F. & Bonneton-Botté, N. (2018). Learning letters with the whole body: Visuomotor versus visual teaching in kindergarten. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 125(1), 190-207. Doi: 10.1177/0031512517742284

The present study assessed the impact of a teacher-implemented visuomotor intervention programme for teaching cursive letter knowledge to children aged 5 years. A programme in which letters were explored with the arm and whole body was compared with a typical visual training programme. There was greater improvement in letter recognition following the visuomotor intervention although results were mixed for letter handwriting. This indicates a combination of both visuomotor and visual training might be the most efficient method.

• Letter knowledge acquisition is an important component of a child’s literacy development and is one of the strongest predictors of subsequent reading and spelling abilities.
• When learning involves both perceptual and motor systems, there is an interaction between perception and action.
• Visual representations of letters are linked to motor representations through handwriting.
• Related to perception and the motor interaction process, some studies with young children have shown that overt (rather than just passive) motor action further enhances letter perception.
• Formal pencil-and-paper writing depends upon an accurate visual representation of the letters, a degree of coordination between visual perception and finger movements, and sufficiently developed fine motor skills.
• Impaired handwriting is frequently associated with developmental coordination disorder. In particular, it has been closely linked to fine motor manipulative disability and to coordination problems.
• An efficient letter knowledge intervention must include both handwriting practice and direct instruction in letter knowledge.

The study

This study investigated a novel kindergarten-level multisensory teaching intervention for letter knowledge, whereby alphabet letters are taught through gross motor movements—pupils are asked to produce letters with their arms or whole body and without using a pencil. As gross motor development occurs earlier than fine motor development, gross motor movements should be particularly helpful for young children or those with disabilities.

Hypotheses:

• A whole-body visuomotor training programme would be more efficient than a visual letter exploration programme.
• An improvement in hand-writing quality and fluency can be expected.

Participants

The study involved 72 normally-developing kindergarten pupils (aged 5 years) living in France, who were assigned to either the whole-body visuomotor or visual exploration training programme.

Interventions

• The pupils were divided into groups of 6–10 and underwent a 45 min session in which two letters were successively learned.
• All children completed six sessions over six weeks.
• The 12 letters used for training sessions and their order of presentation were chosen according to their frequency in the French language and because they represented different types of letters.
• Each visuomotor and visual training session started by giving the name and the sound of the letter and ended with letter-recognition and letter-handwriting tasks.
• The visual training sessions included visual exploration, where a letter was displayed on the board and pupils were asked to draw the letter with their eyes.
• Whole body visuomotor training sessions included exploration with the arm (where the teacher drew the letter in the air with their arm and pupils were required to repeat this action) and exploration with the body (where the letter was drawn on the ground and each pupil walked round the outline). These exercises initially conducted with eyes open, then with eyes shut.

Summary

• The main finding was that letter recognition improved more following the visuomotor training programme than with the visual training programme. This implies a strong relationship between the visual and the motor systems in reading and writing processes.
• Regarding the kinematic measures, the visuomotor training programme only had a positive effect on stroke direction. It is interesting to note that a gross motor movement can transfer to a fine motor movement with the hand.
• An unexpected result was that handwriting fluency improved more following the visual training programme than with the visuomotor training programme.
• The present study provides support for a gross-motor visuomotor intervention to promote such specific components of letter learning as improving letter recognition and improving two aspects of letter writing (stroke direction and overall quality). It should be noted that handwriting speed and fluency improved more with a visual instructional method.
• A question emerges as to whether the combined use of visuomotor training and visual letter exploration might prove to be a more effective teaching method than either technique used alone.

In this study, a software application for elementary school-age children was specifically developed with the aim of improving the operational efficiency of working memory. Short-term effects of the programme could not be proven and only the visuo-spatial Corsi block span exhibited a training effect over a period of three months.

Authors: Claudia Maehler, Christina Joerns, & Kirsten Schuchardt

Source: Maehler, C.; Joerns, C.; Schuchardt, K. (2019). Training working memory of children with and without dyslexia. Children, 6(47), doi: 10.3390/children6030047

A software application for elementary school-age children was specifically developed for this study, with the aim of improving the operational efficiency of working memory. The phonological loop, the visuo-spatial sketchpad, and the central executive were trained in 18 sessions over a period of 6 weeks. The trained test group was composed of Grade 3 students, of which 43 were and 27 were not affected by dyslexia. The untrained control group comprised 41 Grade 6 students with dyslexia and 28 without dyslexia. Short-term effects of the programme could not be proven and only the visuo-spatial Corsi block span exhibited a training effect over a period of three months.

• Reading problems become evident from the start of a child’s school career, manifesting as difficulties in reciting the alphabet or through delayed (or incorrect) character recognition.
• While affected children improve overall in their literary language performances, they continually lag behind compared to unimpaired fellow students.
• It is no longer controversial that dyslexia constitutes a phonological information processing disorder.
• Dyslexia is accompanied by working memory deficits, particularly in the phonological loop.

The study

The present study evaluates the long-term effects of a training programme. The short-term effects immediately following training sessions have already been reported. The findings substantiate performance improvements in the visuo-spatial sketchpad and central executive subsystems for the group of typically-developing third-grade students, and only in the central executive for the children with dyslexia.

Research questions:

• Can training effects be maintained over a longer period or could they occur after a certain period of time?
• Can dyslexic children with notably poor working memory performance benefit from the training (show a long-term effect) with regard to their working memory performance?

Participants

Participants in the study were 139 Grade 3 students from both rural and urban areas. They were assigned to four groups according to whether they had dyslexia and whether they participated in training. The groups were dyslexia trained (n = 43), dyslexia untrained (n = 41), control group trained (n = 27), and control group untrained (n = 28). All children were examined within a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up design, while school performance, intelligence, and working memory capacity were assessed at pre-test and working memory performance was tested at follow-up.

Training

A computer game training-method named AGENT 8-1-0 comprised of 18 training sessions. Five working memory tasks were assigned in each session: two games for improving the phonological loop’s capacity, one game for the visuo-spatial sketchpad, and two games for stimulation of the central executive.

Summary

• Neither dyslexia-unaffected nor affected children experienced long-term improvement in working memory performance—only the visuo-spatial Corsi block yielded substantial training results.
• For children with dyslexia, and especially disadvantageous initial working memory performance regarding the three subsystems of working memory, no performance increase through training could be determined.
• Very intensive practice (tri-weekly sessions of 45 minutes over a course of 6 weeks) does not enable the children to process and memorise greater quantities of information over a longer period.
• Within the present controversy over the trainability of working memory, the results seem to support the sceptics regarding the efficacy of such endeavors.
• If increases in capacity through memory expansion or improved automatic processing appear to be impossible, an intervention must focus on the remaining determinants of memory capacity (especially on memory strategies and meta-memory).
• For children with dyslexia, the recommendation of a functional exercise treatment for reading and writing remains valid. Specifically, this should include applied strategies and self-monitoring of the individual reading and writing processes.