Neurolinguistic Programming and other Nonsense
I have very little knowledge of Neurolinguistic Programing (NLP) other than the fact that over the past 4 years I've attended about 10 conferences a year (Psych, SLP, OT, Spec-Ed) and each of them have about 3-4 exhibitors touting NLP books and products. It certainly as its fans and they are a VERY vocal group. It also has its detractors. The Neurologica Blog has a post related to the latter. It is worth a read and can be found by CLICKING HERE.
School Achievement, Perceptions Of Ability And Interest Change As Children Age
An interesting little study that likely verifies what most of us would of expected in that "[c]hildren in early grades may like a subject in which they don't feel very competent, or they may feel competent in a subject in spite of poor grades. But by the end of high school, children generally feel most interested in subjects in which they feel they are the strongest."
I think most of us would of expected that and we certainly see avoidance of certain courses and topic areas once a child has experienced repeated failure. The cases I find interesting though are those where the child (or adult even) do not appear to have a good awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses despite repeatedly poor performance. I recall one case I had with a college/university level student who was in an engineering style program that was particularly mathematics heavy (4 of his 6 classes were essentially one form or another of math). His responses to the Academic Competency Evaluation Scales (ACES) suggested that he felt he was at or above grade level for mathematics, but that it was not an essential skill area for his program. His WIAT-II results displayed a math composite of below the 10th percentile and in the mid-range of elementary grade equivalence. Clearly some perception, self-monitoring, and achievement discrepancies there.
CLICK HERE for a more complete article summary. The original article can be found in: Child Development, Vol. 78, Issue 2, I like to do it, I'm able and I know I am: Longitudinal Couplings between Domain-Specific Achievement, Self-Concept, and Interest
Executive Functioning and Early Achievement
I will certainly have to pick up the aforementioned Child Development journal as another press release has popped out from it that I am particularly interested in. The article looks at self-regulation and it's role, beyond intelligence, to predict performance on early achievement measures. What is of key interest is that the sample group was three to five year olds. More and more research these days is pointing out the early childhood and pre-school aspects of executive functioning ability development. Less than a decade ago, many EF theorists felt we could not even consider executive skills prior to age 8 or even as early as high school. New and stronger tools are becoming available to evaluate this domain and will certainly bring with it new research and methodologies for working within these populations.
You can read an in-depth summary of the article by CLICKING HERE.
I will certainly be snagging a copy of this article in the next week and will post a more in-depth review.
Kickboxing Causes Brain-Damage
From the "No Duh" file (aging myself with that term aren't I). This one is a little more neuro oriented than psychoed but I thought it was amusing that this was actually the first time that being kicked in the head has been proven to lead to some problems. CLICK HERE for more.
