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Das Zusammenwirken von primären und sekundären Herkunftseffekten im Zusammenhang mit der Entstehung sozial selektiver Bildungsbeteiligung wird untersucht. Dazu wird eine Studie vorgestellt, die sich in Anlehnung an R. Boudons mikrosoziologischer Theorie mit der Kompensation von primären und sekundären Herkunftseffekten auf die gymnasiale Beteiligung in der Sekundarstufe I befasst. Bezug genommen wird zudem auf R. Becker und V. Müller-Benedict, die in ihren Untersuchungen ebenfalls versucht haben, die Auswirkungen einer Manipulation von primären und sekundären Herkunftseffekten auf die Bildungsbeteiligung sozial schwächerer Gruppen abzuschätzen. In einem ersten Schritt werden die von Müller-Benedict und Becker durchgeführten Analysen zur Neutralisation von primären und sekundären Herkunftseffekten mit den Daten der TIMSS-Übergangsstudie repliziert und die Konsequenzen dieser Neutralisation untersucht. In der Studie wurden 4768 Eltern, Schüler und Lehrkräfte in einer für die Bundesrepublik repräsentativen Stichprobe im Verlauf des vierten Schuljahrs dreimal befragt. Danach wurde simuliert, welche Folgen die Beseitigung des primären und sekundären Herkunftseffektes auf die weitere Schullaufbahn hat. Die abschließenden Befunde der Analysen zum definierten Erfolgskriterium berücksichtigen sowohl die gymnasiale Quote in der Arbeiterschicht als auch den Aspekt der leistungsadäquaten Beschulung und bilden wichtige Ansatzpunkte für weitere bildungspolitische Maßnahmen.
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The title BiTe describes a research project that examines the development of competences within the domain of integrated picture and text processing in school. This study started with cognitive psychological considerations for mental processes which represent the basis for knowledge acquisition through texts and pictures. According to the model of integrated text and picture comprehension of Schnotz and Bannert (2003) the common processing of verbal and visual information puts special demands on students. In order to cope with these demands students require competencies beyond pure reading comprehension which typically have not been taught at school. Therefore, the aim of the BiTE project is to measure the competence to process text and picture information in an integrated way by developing a theoretical model (Schnotz et al., 2010). According to this model, the integrative processing of texts and pictures is based mainly on structural mapping processes which are linked to each other. Depending on the number of elements involved and their relationships to each other, three hierarchical levels can be differentiated to which specific integration requirements can be assigned. In order to examine the theoretical model’s assumptions, a set of tasks was developed and tested in a pilot study. The structural assumption of the competence of integrating text and picture information was evaluated by comparing different test models. However, the multi-dimensional models could not fit the structure sufficiently due to high correlations between the individual scales. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
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Der Zweck des Beitrages wird darin gesehen, verschiedene Ansätze und Konzepte, mit denen eine mögliche Interaktionsbeziehung zwischen Lese- und Medienkompetenz formuliert werden könnte, näher zu überprüfen. Einleitend werden zunächst verschiedene Ebenen des psychologischen Interaktionsbegriffs voneinander abgegrenzt. Hierzu gehört die Unterscheidung zwischen deskriptiv-objekttheoretischer und explanativ-metatheoretischer Verwendung des Begriffs. Folgende Varianten werden im Einzelnen behandelt: (1) Interaktionskonzepte in der ``Dispositionismus-Situationismus-Kontroverse''. (2) Mechanistisch-unabhängige Interaktionsmodelle. (3) Mechanistisch-abhängige Interaktionsmodelle. (4) Dynamische Interaktionsmodelle. Es folgt die Hinwendung zu Interaktionen zwischen Mediennutzung und Lesekompetenz, wobei bestehende Ansätze referiert und mögliche Perspektiven aufgezeigt werden.
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Investigated whether there is an unintentional ethnic bias in teachers' evaluations of immigrant students. Data from a large-scale field assessment, the Cognitively Activating Instruction and the Development of Students' Mathematical Literacy Study (COACTIV) conducted in 2003/2004 through the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) were used. The final sample consisted of 2,088 students (between 13 and 18 years of age) and 305 teachers. Students were given two mathematical problems, one considered more linguistically complex than the other. The teachers were asked to predict whether the students would be able to solve the problems, and the predictions were compared to the students' actual performance. Multilevel analyses were used to determine whether performance was over- or underestimated or accurate and whether the students' immigration and language background played a role in the evaluations. Results revealed that teachers had a tendency to overestimate the performance of all students but that they were significantly more likely to overestimate the performance of bilingual immigrant students, specifically on mathematical word problems. It is concluded that teachers may be unaware of the language comprehension difficulties that immigrant students face and should be trained to evaluate the teaching material for potential problems.
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Studies have established a positive correlation between print exposure and language development in kindergarten children. Title recognition tests allow for an objective and efficient assessment of print exposure. Participants indicate whether selected book titles are known to them. To minimize guessing, the test also includes distractor items. We report the results of 2 validation studies of the Title Recognition Test for Kindergarteners (TRT-VS), including its psychometric properties. Study 1 investigates its reliability and item parameters in a sample of children and young adults. In Study 2, the TRT-VS showed moderate-to-strong correlations with phonological awareness and vocabulary in a sample of kindergarteners. In comparison, correlations between a home literacy environment questionnaire (HLE) and precursors of reading were substantially lower. The TRT-VS and the HLE were moderately correlated. In a structural equation model, the TRTVS fully mediated the influence of the HLE on precursors of reading, indicating that the title recognition by children not only measures the quantity of home reading activities, but also their effects on language development. Taken together, the results suggest that the TRT-VS is a reliable and valid measure for the assessment of early reading activities, and the first instance of a title recognition test for preconventional readers that does not suffer from floor effects when completed by kindergarteners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
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In this article we introduce the K-TRT (The Children Title Recognition Test), an economic and objective method to assess children’s print exposure in German. The K-TRT is modeled on other recognition measures commonly used in English: Children have to indicate which titles from a list of children’s books they know. In order to prevent guessing, the list also comprises distractor items. First, the development and structure of the K-TRT are described. Next, the results from two validation studies are reported. In Study 1, the reliability and distribution of the test scores were examined in a sample of children and adults. In Study 2, we report differential correlations of the K-TRTwith vocabulary and reading fluency measures in Grades 2, 4, and 6. Together, results indicate that the K-TRTis a reliable and valid measure of children’s print exposure. All items and their parameters are provided in the article. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
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Current models of morphological processing differ in their assumptions about the recognition of compound words. The relative contribution of the first and second constituent and the whole-word remains unsolved. Particularly for beginning readers, the first constituent might have a privileged role attributable to more sequential decoding strategies. In a series of lexical decision experiments, the influence of constituent and whole-word frequencies on compound recognition was examined in German developing readers as well as adults. Results showed that whole-word and first constituent frequency interactively influenced response times in children. For adults, an effect of whole-word frequency only was obtained for the children’s stimuli set, and noninteracting effects of whole-word frequency and first constituent frequency were found when using adult frequency measures. Together, the results suggest that developing readers already decompose compounds and that hybrid interactive models of morphological processing are most suitable to explain compound recognition across development. The applicability of amorphous models is also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)
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Investigated the differential role of learning materials integrating text with pictures in geography and biology classes compared to German language arts instruction as well as the accuracy of teachers' diagnostic judgments concerning materials and student competencies from teachers who majored in different subjects. Furthermore, it was examined whether teachers with different majors systematically differ in their pedagogical beliefs and motivation to use text-picture materials and if these differences predict both the quantity as well as the quality of instruction using both text and pictures. Teacher questionnaires and test data from 2 independent studies that included a total of 215 teachers (mean age 44 years) with biology/geography or German major and their students from all school tracks. Teachers completed questionnaires assessing their use of materials with text-picture integration, diagnostic skills regarding students' picture-text integration competencies (Study 1), as well as their beliefs and motivations regarding picture-text integration and instructional quality and quantity (Study 2). The results showed that teachers did not sufficiently manage to judge these learning materials and that a variation between teachers was not systematically attributable to their subject major. At the same time, differences observed between teachers in pedagogical beliefs and motivation had consequences for both the quantity and quality of instruction using both text and pictures. Implications for further research and educational practice are discussed.
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Introduces childLex, an online database of German read by children. childLex is based on a corpus of children's books and comprises 10 million words that were syntactically annotated and lemmatized. childLex reports linguistic norms for lexical, superlexical, and sublexical variables in three different age groups: 6-8 years (Grades 1-2), 9-10 years (Grades 3-4), and 11-12 years (Grades 5-6). Here, it is described how childLex was collected and analyzed. In addition, information about the distributions of word frequency, word length, and orthographic neighborhood size, as well as their intercorrelations is provided. Finally, it is explained how childLex can be accessed using a Web interface.
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Presented the newly developed Teacher Cultural Beliefs Scale (TCBS) which assesses teachers' beliefs about dealing with cultural diversity in the classroom. Two studies were conducted to test the measurement model and reliabilities in different samples and to examine the construct validity of its two subscales Multiculturalism and Egalitarianism. Study 1 was a cross-sectional study which involved 433 student teachers with a mean age of 28 years. Subjects completed the TCBS during the beginning of their first or second student teaching year. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the two-factor structure and measurement invariance of the scale. Study 2 involved 340 teaching and educational-science college students with a mean age of 25 years who completed a shortened version of the TCBS as well as German versions of the behavioral subscale from the Motivation to Control Prejudiced Reactions (MCPR) scale, an adapted version of the Pluralism and Diversity Attitude Assessment (PADAA), and scales to measure acculturation and authoritarianism. Results showed that the two TCBS subscales are valid in measuring motivation to control prejudiced behavior although these two beliefs may differentially affect prejudice. In conclusion, beliefs regarding multiculturalism and egalitarianism were found to have distinct and different approaches to dealing with diversity in the classroom.
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G-I transfer denotes an increase in individual performance due to group interaction, for example, because of acquiring certain skills or knowledge from the other group members. Whereas such G-I transfer has been successfully shown for problem-solving tasks, evidence for G-I transfer on quantitative estimation tasks is scarce. We address this research gap with a focus on how often a group has to interact in order to fully exploit the benefit of this learning effect. Results from two experiments support the idea that a single group interaction is sufficient to induce a stable G-I transfer, which reduces group members’ metric error. Smaller metric errors indicate that people improved their representation of the correct upper and lower boundaries, or what range of values is plausible. In contrast to nominal groups, both members of continuously interacting groups and members of groups with only one initial interaction exhibited stable G-I transfer, and the size of this transfer did not significantly differ between the latter two conditions. Furthermore, we found evidence for differential weighting of group members’ individual contributions that goes beyond sheer individual capability gains under certain circumstances, namely in tasks with a population bias.
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In social cognition, knowledge-based validation of information is usually regarded as relying on strategic and resource-demanding processes. Research on language comprehension, in contrast, suggests that validation processes are involved in the construction of a referential representation of the communicated information. This view implies that individuals can use their knowledge to validate incoming information in a routine and efficient manner. Consistent with this idea, Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that individuals are able to reject false assertions efficiently when they have validity-relevant beliefs. Validation processes were carried out routinely even when individuals were put under additional cognitive load during comprehension. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the rejection of false information occurs automatically and interferes with affirmative responses in a nonsemantic task (epistemic Stroop effect). Experiment 4 also revealed complementary interference effects of true information with negative responses in a nonsemantic task. These results suggest the existence of fast and efficient validation processes that protect mental representations from being contaminated by false and inaccurate information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
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In the present study we measured the eye movements of a large sample of 2nd grade German speaking children and a control group of adults during a silent reading task. To be able to directly investigate the interaction of word length and frequency effects we employed controlled sentence frames with embedded target words in an experimental design in which length and frequency were manipulated independently of one another. Unlike previous studies which have investigated the interaction of word length and frequency effects in children, we used age-appropriate word frequencies for children. We found significant effects of word length and frequency for both children and adults while effects were generally greater for children. The interaction of word length and frequency was significant for children in gaze duration and total viewing time eye movement measures but not for adults. Our results suggest that children rely on sublexical decoding of infrequent words, leading to greater length effects for infrequent than frequent words while adults do not show this effect when reading children’s reading materials. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
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This study investigated the reading behavior of 15-year-old students while reading texts and answering corresponding multiple-choice questions. The availability of the texts during question answering was manipulated experimentally. Allocation of resources to several cognitive processes at the word, sentence, and text level was measured by decomposing word-by-word reading times in mixed-model analyses. Results showed that resource allocation was systematically related to measures of verbal ability and test performance. Students with higher verbal ability and better comprehension encoded infrequent concepts more carefully, spent more time on conceptual integration, and updated their situation model more carefully. In addition, reading time components associated with high-level integration processing proved more important when students were unable to reread the texts during question answering. This finding provides support for the claim that test performance without text availability is more sensitive to the quality of the mental representation that readers form online while reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
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Background German children do not formally learn letter‐sounds before school entry. In this study, we evaluated kindergarten children's sensitivity to the frequency of letters and visually similar symbols in child‐directed texts, how it develops and whether it predicts early reading abilities. Method In a longitudinal study from kindergarten to primary school, children were asked to judge whether a presented alphabetic (e.g., A) or non‐alphabetic symbol (e.g., #) was a letter. High and low frequency was varied for both types of symbols. Furthermore, we analysed whether later reading abilities were predicted by this letter judgement ability. Results Before school entry, children had difficulties in distinguishing frequent non‐alphabetic symbols from letters. Furthermore, letter judgement in kindergarten predicted reading abilities in first grade. Conclusions Children derive some knowledge about letters from the frequency of co‐occurrence of letters and symbols in texts. The ability to distinguish letters from non‐alphabetic symbols predicts early reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
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Background: In Germany, there is a substantial gap in reading literacy between monolingual children and their L2-speaking peers. Nevertheless, it is still unclear where these performance differences are rooted. Methods: We investigated children of grades 5, 6 and 7 with comparable socio-economic status, who completed a battery of tests assessing their linguistic and executive functioning skills as well as their reading performance on the letter, word, sentence and text level. Results: Whereas L1 speakers showed better linguistic skills, there was no difference between groups in executive functioning. After controlling for individual differences on each level of reading, groups only differed in text comprehension. This effect, however, disappeared when participants’ linguistic skills were additionally controlled. Conclusions: In sum, results show that reading problems in L2 speakers cannot be attributed to deficits on specific component processes of reading, but to a lack of linguistic skills, which negatively affects reading comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)
