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The project described in this paper was designed for an undergraduate course titled the "Psychology of Adulthood and Aging". This course, capped at 20 students, is typically comprised of psychology, pre-nursing, and family studies students. The student learning objectives (SLO's) for the course are: (1) to understand and apply current theory and research techniques in the interdisciplinary field of gerontology; (2) to demonstrate effective written, oral, and interpersonal communication skills; (3) to learn about ways to provide services to aging adults by interacting with a local community service provider; and (4) to identify and give examples of sociocultural forces that shape adult development. The goal of the service-learning project described in this paper is to facilitate these learning objectives through the lens of life stories from older adults (65+) in the local community. Student teams (typically 2-3 students) were paired with non-cognitively impaired older adults aged from a local adult day health facility. The outputs of this class project were a professionally published life story of the adult interviewee, student reflections throughout the semester documenting experiences with the project, and a term paper exploring a comprehensive theory of aging through the lens of the life story they wrote.

The main goals of the study were to replicate and measure the test-retest reliability of a previously used preschool working memory task, to analyze the relationship between working memory and school readiness above and beyond attention and an indicator of overall development, and to investigate these relationships for gender differences. Participants included 40 (20 girls and 20 boys) 3- and 4-year olds, and testing was broken into two sessions spaced 1 week apart. The test-retest reliability of preschool working memory was found to be r = 0.60. Further analyses demonstrated that while attention and working memory were significantly correlated with one another, working memory was a significant predictor of school readiness above and beyond the predictive ability of children's sustained attention. Specifically, for boys, working memory was a significant predictor of school readiness above and beyond both attention and developmental status, but this was not the case for girls. These findings highlight the utility of this preschool working memory methodology as well as the importance of working memory above and beyond other related constructs at this stage of child development. Additionally, and perhaps worthy of consideration in future research, these findings also suggest notable gender-based differences in working memory during the preschool period.

Previous research has demonstrated mixed findings pertaining to the risk conferred by variation from Mainstream American English (MAE) for African American children in our education system. Based on the research on language, behavior, and reading, the present study sought to examine the relative and combined contributions of culturally appropriate measures of risk status for disordered language and density of dialect use and classroom behavior (both competencies and problems) in predicting reading ability in a sample of typically developing African American elementary school students. 53 African American Kindergartner's (27 boys, 26 girls) were followed up with two years later in 2nd grade. In Kindergarten, children were screened for density of dialect use and risk of language impairment; teachers rated each child on behavior, social/emotional adjustment, and academic performance. Reading achievement was assessed in 2nd grade. Risk for disordered language development was the best predictor of 2nd grade reading, outperforming density of dialect use. Positive classroom behaviors were more predictive of reading than negative behaviors. This research supports the notion that language, classroom behavior, and reading achievement are intertwined in a complex manner and that when designing interventions for one, the entire system must be considered.

This study examined relations between parenting, shared reading practices, and child development. Participants included 28 children (M = 24.66 months, SD = 8.41 months) and their parents. Measures included naturalistic observations of parenting and shared reading quality, assessments of child cognitive and language development, and home reading practices. Higher quality parenting was found to be significantly, positively correlated with higher quality shared reading interactions. Of the specific domains of parenting behaviors assessed, teaching behaviors demonstrated the strongest relationship with shared reading quality. Parental self-report of reading frequency was not correlated with observed shared reading quality. Shared reading quality was predictive of children's receptive language outcomes; the addition of shared reading frequency did not improve prediction. Early childhood educators can benefit from knowing the potential importance of specific parenting practices and high-quality parent-child shared reading interactions in facilitating children's language development.

This study describes the developmental trajectories of language skills in infants with substantiated maltreatment histories over a 5-year period and evaluates the effect of three different custodial placements on their language trajectories over time: in-home (remaining in the care of the biological parent/parents), nonkin foster care, and nonparental kinship care. Participants included 963 infants reported to child protective services prior to their first birthday and whose maltreatment was substantiated. Results from covariate-controlled growth modeling revealed no significant placement effects. Across all groups, children’s auditory and expressive communication scores decreased significantly from Wave 1 (intake) in the infants’ first year to Wave 4, when children were about 3.5 years of age, then improved to baseline levels by Wave 5, when children were about 6 years old. Despite these fluctuations, children’s average language scores in each placement group remained below the population mean at each wave of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]