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This paper analyses, using a cross-sectional design, the relationship between academic qualifications during the initial training of primary school teachers and their professional development. Among all graduates of 13 promotions, from year 2004 to 2016, we selected the 15% of those students with the best qualifications and the 15% with the worst ones from each promotion. All participants answered the same questionnaire on employability, participation in induction programmes, participation in continuing education programmes, and professional motivation. Analyses performed included distribution analyses using chi-square and independent group comparisons with Student's t-test. Participants with better grades showed higher employability rates, increased participation in initial education programmes, and more motivation towards their profession. Continuing education programmes were only slightly affected by initial grades. These results support academic positions in Spain that defend the need to apply measures to select those candidates with the best grades to become teachers.

Background: Previous research has consistently evidenced that children with speech and language difficulties suffer more bullying victimisation during middle school years, whereas other educative stages remain less explored. Moreover, there are divergent results in previous evidence about the types of victimisation (physical, verbal, relational) youths may experience. Aims: To examine the retrospective developmental trajectories of bullying victimisation in adults with and without self-reported oral language difficulties across seven educational stages (preschool to university). Special attention was given to the prevalence and types of victimisation. Methods & Procedures: A total of 336 participants (ages between 18 and 65, M = 30.3) from a sample of 2259 participants that fully answered an online survey were classified as having experienced oral language difficulties (LD) not associated with a biomedical condition. A comparable control group (n = 336; ages between 18 and 72, M = 30.0) was randomly selected for statistical between-groups contrasts. Responses to the California Bullying Victimization Scale--Retrospective (CBVS-R) were analysed by generalised estimating equations (GEE) including language groups, types of bullying, and educational stages as explanatory variables. Specific language group comparisons in terms of percentages were conducted using chi-square tests. Outcomes & Results: GEE results suggested that experiencing LD was associated with an overall increase in the likelihood of bullying victimisation, Wald's X[superscript 2] (1) = 8.41, p < 0.005 for the main effect of the LD group, along almost all educational stages, Wald's X[superscript 2] (6) = 3.13, p = 0.69 for the LD group × educational stage interaction. Finally, a higher proportion of participants in the LD group reported having suffered teasing behaviours at the second cycle of elementary, the first cycle of secondary, and baccalaureate. They also reported with a higher proportion being physically hurt at preschool and having received sexual comments at the second cycle of elementary, Wald's X[superscript 2] (93) = 259.87, p < 0.001 for the LD group × educational stage × type of bullying interaction. Conclusions & Implications: People with oral language difficulties experience more bullying victimisation behaviours than their typically developing peers. Heightened bullying prevalence in children with language difficulties seems to emerge as early as 6-9 years old and persists along the rest of schooling. Not all victimisation forms seem to show differential increased rates in people with speech/language difficulties, evidencing important implications for bullying assessment. Results highlight the need to provide particular support to individuals with language difficulties against bullying during the entire schooling.

Previous research indicates that developmental contexts influence language development. These developmental contexts include bilingualism, which is the focus of the current paper. This study analyses the influence that the acquisition of a language, Catalan, has when the simultaneous acquisition of another similar language, Spanish, occurs. This influence is examined according to degree of exposure to the languages. The parents of 801 children completed the Catalan version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI-II questionnaire, which assesses the acquisition of vocabulary, morphology and grammatical complexity. Subjects were divided into three groups according to age and linguistic context (Catalan monolingual, medium bilingual and familiar bilingual). The results do not reveal substantial differences according to linguistic context. However, children aged 26--30 months with a medium bilingual profile show a higher level of vocabulary as compared to the other groups. The results are discussed in relation to the sociolinguistic context, caregiver diversity, typological distance between the languages and developmental stages of language acquisition. [Translation from Spanish by Jennifer Martin.]

Moral decision-making is influenced by various factors, including personality and language. In this cross-sectional study, we investigated the Foreign-Language effect (FLe) in early, highly proficient, Catalan-Spanish bilinguals and examined the role of several personality dimensions in their responses to moral dilemmas. We obtained a multilevel data structure with 766 valid trials from 52 Catalan-dominant undergraduate students who read and responded anonymously to a computerized task with 16 standardized moral dilemmas, half in Catalan and half in Spanish. Results of a multilevel multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that consistent with previous research, participants gave more utilitarian responses to impersonal than personal dilemmas. The language of the dilemma had no effect on the response (dichotomous: utilitarian vs. deontological), decision time, or affective ratings, contradicting the hypothesis of shallower emotional processing of the information in the second language. Interestingly, cruelty features of psychopathy were significantly associated with an enhanced proportion of utilitarian decisions irrespective of the language or the nature of the dilemmas. Furthermore, cruelty features interacted with participants' assessment of dilemma aspects like vividness and verisimilitude. Overall, our findings suggest that early bilinguals immersed in a dual-language context using close Romance languages do not show the FLe and that personality traits like cruelty can modulate moral decisions regardless of language or dilemma type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Children with a diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI) present impaired oral comprehension. According to the simple view of reading, general amodal linguistic capacity accounts for both oral and reading comprehension. Considering this, we should expect SLI children to display a reading comprehension deficit. However, previous research regarding the association between reading disorders and SLI has yielded inconsistent results. Aims: To study the influence of prior oral comprehension competence over reading comprehension during the first years of reading acquisition of bilingual Catalan-Spanish children with SLI (ages 7-8). Methods & Procedures: We assessed groups of bilingual Catalan-Spanish SLI and matched control children at ages 7 and 8 with standardized reading comprehension tasks including grammatical structures, sentence and text comprehension. Early oral competence and prior non-verbal intelligence were also measured and introduced into regression analyses with the participants' reading results in order to state the relation between the comprehension of oral and written material. Outcomes & Results: Although we found no significant differences between the scores of our two participant groups in the reading tasks, data regarding their early oral competence, but not non-verbal intelligence measures, significantly influence their reading outcome. Conclusions & Implications: The results extend our knowledge regarding the course of literacy acquisition of children with SLI and provide evidence in support of the theories that assume common linguistic processes to be responsible for both oral and reading comprehension.

This paper analyses, using a cross-sectional design, the relationship between academic qualifications during the initial training of primary school teachers and their professional development. Among all graduates of 13 promotions, from year 2004 to 2016, we selected the 15% of those students with the best qualifications and the 15% with the worst ones from each promotion. All participants answered the same questionnaire on employability, participation in induction programmes, participation in continuing education programmes, and professional motivation. Analyses performed included distribution analyses using chi-square and independent group comparisons with Student's t-test. Participants with better grades showed higher employability rates, increased participation in initial education programmes, and more motivation towards their profession. Continuing education programmes were only slightly affected by initial grades. These results support academic positions in Spain that defend the need to apply measures to select those candidates with the best grades to become teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The profiles of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) differ greatly according to the language they speak. The Surface Hypothesis attempts to explain these differences through the theory that children with SLI will incorrectly produce elements in their language with low phonological weights or that are produced in a non-canonical prosodic structure. Aims: Previous studies have shown that the most characteristics errors produced by Catalan and Spanish-speaking children with SLI include function word omission (morpho-syntax) and weak syllable omission (phonology). The omission of function words points to a morpho-syntactic explanation of SLI, while weak syllable omission supports a phonological explanation of SLI. Yet, function words are weak syllables; thus, it is possible that the same mechanism underlies both problems. Methods & Procedures: Data were extracted from spontaneous language produced by five children with SLI and five comparison children matched for age and MLU-w. They were assessed on two occasions: at 3;10 and 4;9 years of age. These interviews were then transcribed and the morphological and phonological errors coded. A non-parametric mean analysis and various regression analyses were conducted. Outcomes & Results: The results show that function word omission and weak syllable omission were the most characteristic errors made by Spanish and Catalan-speaking children with SLI and established that omissions increase as prosodic weight decreases. They also indicated that weak syllabic omission may explain most function word omissions. Conclusions & Implications: The data support the Surface Hypothesis and suggest that the same impaired mechanism may underlie the morphological and phonological problems SLI children display. (Contains 8 tables and 12 figures.)

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: We characterized the impact of several bilingualism-related factors on the executive control of Spanish-Catalan bilinguals. Design/methodology/approach: Participants self-reported information regarding their age of acquisition, second language proficiency and frequency of natural language switching, and performed non-linguistic tasks tapping into specific executive control subcomponents, including inhibition, switching and updating. Data and analysis: Data were analyzed by means of a structural equation model (SEM) approach. Findings/conclusions: Results revealed that the frequency of natural language switching positively modulated the executive control performance of Spanish-Catalan bilinguals, while neither age of acquisition nor second language proficiency had an effect. Moreover, we found that the impact of natural language switching exerted general-processing influences, affecting all subcomponents of executive control. Findings are discussed in relation to context-specific effects on the cognitive system of a particular bilingual population. Originality: The current study applied an SEM approach to provide new evidence on the previously ambiguous relation between bilingualism-related factors and executive control. Significance/implications: Our findings suggest that the frequency of natural language switching does globally influence the executive control of Spanish-Catalan bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]