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Real-time verbal interactions between foreign language teachers and their students are of vital importance for language development, but classroom interactions are also multi-faceted and complex. The way a teacher understands and responds to learner utterances can be a powerful pedagogical strategy to scaffold learner language development. In this paper we present the Questions and Answers in English Language Teaching coding scheme which can be used to observe and describe the dynamics of teacher questions and student responses in language classrooms. We piloted the instrument in English as a foreign language lessons of four experienced teachers teaching 16 lessons in total. State Space Grids were used to visualize classroom dynamics and quantify intra-individual variability of each lesson. The results show that interactions between teachers and students have the tendency to self-organize and stabilize in one specific area of the grid. Lessons taught by three of the teachers revealed a dominant pattern formed by closed questions and short student responses. One teacher taught lessons in which more complex question and answer sequences were prevalent. These patterns of variability and stability show that teacher-student interactions have the properties of a shallow attractor state. The analysis of moment-to-moment turns in classroom interaction indicate that students in this study generally adapt their response to the level of teacher questions, but that teachers do not seem to adapt their questions to the level of the previous student answer. This suggests that, even for experienced teachers, scaffolding and adaptive teaching might be easier said than done.

Theories on children and adolescent emotion dynamics were reviewed using data from 102 ecological momentary assessment studies with 19,928 participants and 689 estimates. We examined age-graded differences in emotional intensity, variability, instability, inertia, differentiation, and augmentation/blunting. Outcomes included positive versus negative affect scales, discrete emotions (anger, sadness, anxiety, and happiness), and we compared samples of youth with or without mental or physiological problems. Multilevel models showed more variable positive affect and sadness in adolescents compared with children, and more intense negative affect. Our additional descriptive review suggests a decrease in instability of positive and negative emotions from early to late adolescence. Mental health problems were associated with more variable and less intense positive affect, and more intense anxiety and heightened sadness variability. These results suggest systematic changes in emotion dynamics throughout childhood and adolescence, but the supporting literature proved to be limited, fragmented, and based on heterogeneous concepts and methodology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Introduction: While disgust is functional in preventing contagion from pathogens, it also plays a role in various psychopathologies. Disgust responses toward dirt, bodily secretions, certain types of food, and sexual stimuli typically emerge during (early) childhood. However, there is a lack of research on how disgust develops. This cross‐ sectional study investigated whether there are age‐related differences in subjective, self‐reported disgust between early and late adolescence and whether there are differences for distinctive types of disgust (core‐disgust, sex‐related, food‐related). Methods: Using an online survey, 240 Dutch children (116 female, 124 male) aged 9 through 16 years rated the extent to which they found the different types of stimuli disgusting or not on a VAS scale.Results and Conclusions: The results showed that only the disgust responses to sex‐ related stimuli decreased with age, whereas disgust toward the other categories did not show any age‐related differences. Overall girls reported somewhat higher disgust ratings than boys for sex‐related stimuli, but not for the other categories. The present study offers important new angles for future research, which might further disentangle the mechanisms through which the changes occur.

Research on emotion dynamics as indices of emotion functioning has become muddled by conceptual confusion, methodological heterogeneity, and seemingly conflicting results. One way to address this chaos is the study of profiles of emotion dynamics across 12 emotions and how they differ between 246 adolescents. The interpretation of these dynamic profiles was guided by auxiliary variables including age, personality, depressive symptoms, and social experiences. During 6 days, 246 adolescents (M-age = 14.20; 65% female) rated nine times daily the intensity of 12 emotions (cheerful, happy, energetic, joyful, content, relaxed, anxious, worried, irritable, insecure, down, and guilty) and their social experiences with family, friends, and classmates. Additional baseline measures included neuroticism, extraversion (Revised Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Short Form), and depressive symptoms (Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale). A three-mode principal component analysis (3MPCA Tucker3-based) model was estimated on the person-specific dynamic parameters of emotional intensity (mean), variability (standard deviation), instability (mean squared successive difference), and inertia (autocorrelation). The 3MPCA identified three emotion-mode components (positive affect, negative affect, and irritability) and three dynamic-mode components (emotional intensity, lability, and inertia). Five individual-mode components captured interactions between these modes, of which positive affect explained most variation in the data. These emotion dynamic profiles correlated differently with social experiences. Additional 3MPCA model structures based on imputed data (correcting missing autocorrelations) and affect scale composites (low- and high-arousal positive and negative affect) showed strong resemblance. The identified emotion dynamic profiles capture meaningful interpersonal differences in adolescents' emotional experiences and change. Future work should focus on irritability and positive affect as these were uniquely informative in adolescents' emotional experiences.

We developed a teacher professionalisation intervention, called "Language as a Tool for Learning Science", that focuses on language use during early elementary science lessons, based on video feedback coaching. The aim of this study was to investigate possible changes in teacher student behaviour during this intervention, by analysing teacher-student language during science lessons. Seventeen teachers participated with small teaching groups of 4-6-year-old students. All task-related communication was coded for teacher questions, teacher language, student language, and reasoning skills. The results show that teachers in the intervention group increasingly used open-ended questions, and students used more utterances related to reasoning. The language of teachers in the intervention group also increased in complexity and sophistication. The students' language also increased in complexity, but also in the control group. These findings offer insights into effective forms of professional development for teachers in early elementary education.

We fully endorse Arocha’s (2021) thesis about the fundamental importance of studying variability in real, observable processes and agree with his critique of the standard practice of psychological research. However, we regret that Arocha’s article does not acknowledge a rich body of research that has been around for almost three decades and that does exactly what Arocha recommends. This research is based on the theory of complex dynamic systems. We discuss its main implications for a research focus on concrete psychological processes, as they occur in individual cases (including real interacting groups). Variability over time is used as a main source of information about the nature of the underlying processes. Various examples of empirical studies, model building, and process-oriented methodology are discussed, and Arocha’s examples of perceptual control theory (PCT) and observation-oriented modeling (OOM) are put in the perspective of the complex dynamic systems approach, which is fully compatible with scientific realism as advocated by Arocha.

Though it is commonly agreed upon that the development of feeding problems in early childhood is a complex process, much of the research on these problems has a component-oriented focus, and very little attention is paid to the mechanisms that lead to these kinds of problems in individual children. The aim of this theoretical paper is to interpret the development of feeding problems in early childhood from a complex dynamical systems viewpoint. In addition to its focus on self-organization and nonlinearity, this approach defines several central properties of development: soft-assembly, embodiment, iterativity, the emergence of higher-order properties, and intra-individual variability. In this paper, I argue that each of these properties is highly relevant for understanding feeding problems and discuss the implications of this for both clinical practice and research purposes.

Item does not contain fulltext In the weaning period, infants are introduced to solid food after being fed solely on milk, which involves a deliberate reorganization of the infant-caregiver feeding interaction. This multiple case study, involving 5 dyads with 10 repeated observations, analyzed its dynamical structure using Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis. The results showed that an optimal interaction occurs when the caregiver is leading by roughly 1-2 seconds. During the weaning period, all dyads showed signs of increased synchronization, although there are interesting differences between dyads. These findings indicate that infant-caregiver dyads co-regulate their behavior within a relatively short period. 7 p.

Early feeding problems occur frequently across the population, but have a higher incidence in children with Down syndrome (DS). Early identification can possibly be improved with the help of a valid screening instrument based on caregiver reports. In a previous study, we investigated the concurrent validity of the Dutch version of the Montreal Children's Hospital Feeding Scale (MCH-FS, SEP in Dutch) in a sample of typically developing toddlers, and we found a correlation between the score on the instrument and observed behavior during a regular meal. The current pilot study was a replication in a sample of children with DS (aged 1; 0–3; 0) and their primary caregivers (n = 32). The results showed that children in the sample did not score higher on the SEP than children in their respective norm groups. In addition, when caregivers reported more symptoms of feeding problems on the SEP, children showed more food refusal and negative affect during the observed meal. This suggests that the screening instrument is particularly associated with negative mealtime interactions. This is in contrast with earlier results, which mainly indicated a relation with eating skills.

The present study was aimed at investigating the effects of a video feedback coaching intervention for upper-grade primary school teachers on students’ cognitive gains in scientific knowledge. This teaching intervention was designed with the use of inquiry-based learning principles for teachers, such as the empirical cycle and the posing of thought-provoking questions. The intervention was put into practice in 10 upper-grade classrooms. The trajectory comprised four lessons, complemented with two premeasures and two postmeasures. The control condition consisted of 11 upper-grade teachers and their students. The success of the intervention was tested using an established standardized achievement test and situated measures. In this way, by means of premeasure and postmeasure questionnaires and video data, an assessment could be made of the change in students’ scientific knowledge before, during, and after the intervention. In this study, we primarily focused on the dynamics of students’ real-time expressions of scientific knowledge in the classroom. Important indicators of the effect of the intervention were found. Through focusing on the number of explanations and predictions, a significant increase could be seen in the proportion of students’ utterances displaying scientific understanding in the intervention condition. In addition, students in the intervention condition more often reasoned on higher complexity levels than students in the control condition. No effect was found for students’ scientific knowledge as measured with a standardized achievement test. Implications for future studies are stressed, as well as the importance of enriching the evaluation of intervention studies by focusing on dynamics in the classroom.

From the literature, we know that young children engage in inquiry as an organized activity aimed either at confirming or refuting the relevance of certain ideas. The current study provides a characterization of changes in inquiry using a multiple case study of four 5-year old children. Three computer-based tasks were presented to the children as multi-variable problem solving situations concerning moving objects. A description of the temporal unfolding of real-time action on a short-term time scale and long-term time scale of learning and development is provided. The results indicated that the development of inquiry did not follow linear growth but included advances and relapses, exploratory states and transitions. The data were compatible with the view that the child's thinking and acting form a complex dynamic system.

This paper aims to gain insight into language production and academic language of 4- and 5-year-old students and their teachers in the course of a teacher intervention during kindergarten science education. The study is based on videotaped classroom observations, and specifically focuses on the academic language use of students (Nintervention = 18, Ncontrols = 26) and teachers (Nintervention = 5, Ncontrols = 5). The results suggest that this general teacher intervention yields interesting changes in language use and production. Patterns of change over time confirm the idiosyncratic and non-linear nature of these changes. Science lessons represent an appropriate context in which to acquaint students with academic language, which can be used as a basis to build upon more sophisticated language skills.

Premature children or infants with neonatal pathologies have a higher risk of developing communicative problems. This pilot study aimed to explore communicative behaviour between the mothers and the infants during the hospitalization in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and follow-up paediatric visit. The verbal interactions in the NICU were observed using an Observational Scale (N-EOV-INC). Observations at follow-up were carried out in 9 mothers and their high-risk children at infant's age around 9 and 11 months. The results show that the number of words produced by the mother during follow-up was associated both with the number of verbal interactions initiated by the mother and infant replies during NICU stay. The infant's verbal responses during neonatal admission were also related with the number of words uttered by the mother at follow-up. Our study is a first exploratory investigation on the communicative interaction between mothers and their high-risk children. Fil: Hauser, Maria Paulina. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Psicologia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina Fil: van Dijk, Marijn. University of Groningen; Países Bajos

Studying real-time teacher-student interaction provides insight into student's learning processes. In this study, upper grade elementary teachers were supported to optimize their instructional skills required for co-constructing scientific understanding. First, we examined the effect of the Video Feedback Coaching intervention by focusing on changes in teacher-student interaction patterns. Second, we examined the underlying dynamics of those changes by illustrating an in-depth micro-level analysis of teacher-student interactions. The intervention condition showed significant changes in the way scientific understanding was co-constructed. Results provided insight into how classroom interaction can elicit optimal co-construction and how this process changes during an intervention.

Learning implies change. Inside and outside schools, we aim for students to change into people with more skills and knowledge as well as with a growing sense of agency and responsibility. Furthermore, education itself is subject to constant change. In this article, we examine change in 3 case studies in the context of individual music lessons from a complex dynamic systems approach. Three beginning string instrument students and their teacher were followed for 18months (28 lessons per dyad) by means of video observations. We combine cluster analyses on longitudinal data with qualitative illustrations of moment-to-moment teacher-student transactions to gain insight into how and why change in teaching and learning occurs. The 3 cases show distinct profiles of change: the development of strong suboptimal attractor states, the emergence of optimal attractor states, and a profile that is characterized by falling back into suboptimal attractor states. We discuss how optimal and suboptimal learning and teaching trajectories can unfold over time and how a mixed methods approach can provide valuable new insights for both practice and future research.

This study explored bidirectional sequential relations between the real-time language use of teachers and pupils in naturalistic science lessons from a dynamic approach. It also compared experienced teachers (N = 22) with relative starters (student teachers, N = 8) when it comes to such relations. Verbal interactions were transcribed and coded at the utterance level for syntactic complexity, lexical density of content word use, and open-ended teacher questions. The sequential analyses provided evidence for the existence of a bidirectional relation in our data, meaning that both teachers and pupils are sensitive to each other’s use of complex and dense language. In addition, the use of open-ended teacher questions was related to complex and dense pupil utterances. The comparison between experienced teachers and student teachers revealed that the sequential patterns were stronger in the case of experienced teachers, suggesting that there are more flexible adaptation processes in this group.

Under the premise that language learning is bidirectional in nature, this study aimed to investigate syntactic coordination within teacher-student interactions by using cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA). Seven teachers’ and a group of their students’ interactions were repeatedly measured in the course of an intervention in early science education. Results showed changes in the proportion of recurrent points; in case of simple sentences teachers and students became less coordinated over time, whereas in case of complex sentences teachers and students showed increasing coordination. Results also revealed less rigid (more flexible) syntactic coordination, although there were no changes in the relative contribution of teacher and students to this. In the light of the intervention under investigation this is an important result. This means that teachers and students learn to use more complex language and coordinate their language complexity better in order to co-construct science discourse. The application of CRQA provides new insights and contributes to better understanding of the dynamics of syntactic coordination.

Aim: We determined the prevalence of feeding problems and their association with perinatal risk factors in three-year-old children born preterm and compared them with a full-term reference group.Methods: This pilot study assessed feeding problem scores in 35 preterm children, with a median gestational age of 30 weeks (range 26-32) and median birthweight of 1260 grams (730-2250), who were enrolled during their admission to a neonatal intensive care unit. These were compared with existing data on 248 term children from child healthcare centres at the age of three. We excluded children with severe perinatal complications from the reference group. The Screeningslijst Eetgedrag Peuters (SEP), a validated Dutch version of the Montreal Children's Hospital Feeding Scale, was used to identify feeding problems.Results: We found no difference in SEP scores between the preterm children and the reference group (p = 0.217) and did not identify any perinatal risk factors for developing feeding problems. Only 23% of the parents of preterm or term children with moderate-to-severe feeding problems consulted a medical professional.Conclusion: Using a parental report instrument showed that the prevalence of feeding problems in three-year-old preterm children was low and similar to that of term children.

Traditional analyses of reasoning and interactions often describe the building of knowledge by comparing general outcomes of group data (e.g., averages, frequencies and percentages) and as a result, often neglect the underlying individual processes. In this paper, we present a case study of two dyads of children (four to six years old) working on a problem-solving task and aim to capture the moment-to-moment changes in a time serial data set. Particularly, we present the changes in the types of interactions and scientific reasoning skills (SRS) during a single problem-solving task. The three descriptive techniques implemented in the data analysis are: (1) a time-series analysis to track the behaviours from moment to moment; (2) transition matrices to describe behaviour changes; and (3) a hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) with a hybrid clustering technique used to detect dyadic patterns. Our results describe the intra-individual variability of the dyads, supporting the assumption of the n...

Because feeding problems have clear negative consequences for both child and caretakers, early diagnosis and intervention are important. Parent-report questionnaires can contribute to early identification, because they are efficient and typically offer a 'holistic' perspective of the child's eating in different contexts. In this pilot study, we aim to explore the concurrent validity of a short screening instrument (the SEP, which is the Dutch MCH-FS) in one of its target populations (a group of premature children) by comparing the total score with the observed behavior of the child and caretaker during a regular home meal. 28 toddlers (aged 9-18 months) and their caretakers participated in the study. Video-observations of the meals were coded for categories of eating behavior and parent-child interaction.The results show that the total SEP-score correlates with food refusal, feeding efficiency, and self-feeding, but not with negative affect and parental instructions. This confirms that the SEP has a certain degree of concurrent validity in the sense that its total score is associated with specific 'benchmark' feeding behaviors: food refusal, feeding efficiency and autonomy. Future studies with larger samples are needed to generalize the findings from this pilot to a broader context. Fil: Van Dijk, Marijn. University of Groningen; Países Bajos Fil: Bruinsma, Eke. University of Groningen; Países Bajos Fil: Hauser, Maria Paulina. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Psicologia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina

This article describes a study on mutuality in mother–child interaction during reading and playing sessions. Within mother–child interaction, mutuality is seen as important in language acquisition. The study was executed within a group of Netherlands Antillean mother–child dyads who participated in an intervention programme. Mutuality was operationalised as balance in conversation, joint involvement, affection, and more practical elements such as asking questions. Twelve participants were observed at least once. In five cases, repeated measures were also collected. Group data revealed that only few differences exist between the outcomes of the reading and playing sessions. The differences that were found, concerning balance and affection, were favourable to the play situations. However, large inter- and intra-individual differences were found in all observed measures of mutuality, which suggests the importance of idiographic research methods. The practical implication is that researchers and interventionists should be sensitive to individual differences and be careful with applying group data to individuals.

The complex dynamic systems theory approach to second language development has great explanatory power in accounting for the development of speaking as an emergent process. CDST approaches focus on the process of development, rather than on the products of learning, and often include the learner’s variability over time as an important source of information. In this chapter a CDST perspective is given of speaking in a second language. The individually owned and variable process of speaking development is illustrated with longitudinal speaking data of identical twins as they learn English as a second language in Taiwan. Our observations emphasize the individual nature of the development of speaking in a second language, which has important implications for effective language teaching for L2 speaking.

In this essay, we discuss an emergent developmental science. It provides an approach to development that redefines its theoretical and methodological basis in the general theory of complex dynamic systems. Its methodological research choices are in line with a focus on actual developmental processes, as they occur in individual cases, such as individual children, families, or relationships. Intraindividual variability based on frequent short-term as well as long-term measurements provides an important source of information. Theoretically, we advocate a model of a network of dynamically interacting components, generating a wide variety of developmental trajectories, in line with the idiosyncratic nature of developmental systems.

Interactions that occur between teacher and student during instrumental music lessons are complex and multifaceted and embrace a full range of promotive and demotive factors that not only underpin effective learning, but also have an impact on whether children will persist with their learning long-term (McPherson, Davidson, & Faulkner, 2012). Such interactions also provide the context in which students gain a sense of personal control and autonomy over their learning (Evans, McPherson, & Davidson, 2012). In this article, we present new ways of conceptualizing autonomy by taking the teacher–student interaction as a unit of analysis to examine the processes of co-regulation of student autonomy. In Study 1, we performed an in-depth qualitative analysis of four teacher – student dyads in individual string lessons. We found large differences between these dyads in the way autonomy is co-regulated from moment to moment. These differences are theorized to be in part connected to the general need for autonomy of the student. In addition, we found that teachers have different ways of dealing with students’ expressions of autonomy in lessons. In Study 2, we tested whether large moment-to-moment differences between the teacher’s and student’s levels of autonomy (‘out-of-synch’ moments) contributed to macro-level student outcomes. Here, we found a positive relation between the amount of out-of-synch per lesson and, respectively, students’ motivation and progress.

The aim of this study was to look at within-teacher differences in scaffolding behaviors and patterns over longer periods of time. We analyzed scaffolding on different levels of increasing complexity, ranging from frequencies of scaffolding behaviors to measures of the variability of the teacher–student scaffolding interactions. We tested whether the scaffolding behaviors and patterns were systematically different when the same teacher interacted with four different students, and whether these patterns changed over the course of 18 months. Overall, the findings confirm that differences in scaffolding patterns in the interaction with different children exist, especially between the high-performing student and the other below-average performing students. Specifically, the teacher–student interaction with the high-performing student showed higher levels of contingent scaffolding and more intra-individual variability in the interactional patterns. In general, little evidence was found for systematic increases or decreases of scaffolding quality and intra-individual variability measures over time.

The aim of this study was to investigate interpersonal coordination in young children during dyadic problem solving, by using Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA). We examined the interactions of seven dyads of children (Mage= 5.1 years) in a longitudinal design (6 sessions) with a sequence of problem-solving tasks increasing in difficulty. An innovative implementation of CRQA is presented in order to study the attractor dynamics of dyadic coordination. The analysis consisted of distinguishing two recurrent states in the relationship between children and the task. In other words, the analysis is focused on how the dyadic interaction oscillates between two stable states that for their recurrent presence are considered to be attractors. The distributed dyadic interaction (DDI) state indicates that both children contribute equally to the solution of the task. The unequal dyadic interaction (UDI) state indicating that only one of the children contributes actively to the solution of the task. Results showed that the DDI was more frequent than the UDI but that the dynamics of these two attractor states were quite similar. The behaviors within these states increased in complexity over time, although they did so in DDI more strongly than UDI. The overall recurrence, which indicates the global level of coordination between the individuals in the dyad across all time points, was moderately correlated with the performance of the children.

A large body studies into individual differences in second language learning has shown that success in second language learning is strongly affected by a set of relevant learner characteristics ranging from the age of onset to motivation, aptitude, and personality. Most studies have concentrated on a limited number of learner characteristics and have argued for the relative importance of some of these factors. Clearly, some learners are more successful than others, and it is tempting to try to find the factor or combination of factors that can crack the code to success. However, isolating one or several global individual characteristics can only give a partial explanation of success in second language learning. The limitation of this approach is that it only reflects on rather general personality characteristics of learners at one point in time, while both language development and the factors affecting it are instances of complex dynamic processes that develop over time. Factors that have been labelled as “individual differences” as well as the development of proficiency are characterized by nonlinear relationships in the time domain, due to which the rate of success cannot be simply deduced from a combination of factors. Moreover, in complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) literature it has been argued that a generalization about the interaction of variables across individuals is not warranted when we acknowledge that language development is essentially an individual process (Molenaar, 2015). In this paper, the viability of these generalizations is investigated by exploring the L2 development over time for two identical twins in Taiwan who can be expected to be highly similar in all respects, from their environment to their level of English proficiency, to their exposure to English, and to their individual differences. In spite of the striking similarities between these learners, the development of their L2 English over time was very different. Developmental patterns for spoken and written language even showed opposite tendencies. These observations underline the individual nature of the process of second language development.

Intraindividual variability is a key component in explaining children's development and learning. Studying this type of variability on the micro‐timescale can help us understand real‐time constructive processes and the subsequent long‐term development. The aim of this article is to study the process of children's understanding of floating and sinking during one single‐task session. A total of 38 kindergartners were asked to explain the floating or sinking of 14 different objects. The results reveal that the majority of children showed a high degree of intraindividual variability. In general, most children had a decrease in variability of both content and complexity of explanations during one task session and stabilized in both complexity and content toward the end of the task. The analyses indicated that hypothesis testing was not related to changes in children's explanations. These results can be the starting point for further research about change on different, nested timescales.

In educational settings, continuous assessment of the child’s level of understanding is necessary to effectively utilize the principles of scaffolding and to create contexts that can advance the scientific reasoning of the child. In this article, we argue that a child’s performance is a dynamic notion that is created by all elements in an interaction, including the task. Therefore, we studied preschoolers’ levels of scientific reasoning varying different properties of the assessment context. Young children were interviewed about four scientific tasks using one out of four different protocols (varying in the degree of flexibility and adaptiveness) by an adult. In the first study, different task contents resulted in different performance levels. The second study indicated that the most structured protocol elicited the highest maximum level of reasoning in children and the highest percentage of correct predictions. The third study showed differences between the protocols in the adult’s verbal behavior. Adaptation in verbal behavior to different children by the adult did not result in higher scientific understanding by the children, whereas a higher degree of task structure did. Combined, the studies emphasize the importance of context, which has implications for assessment and teaching situations.

In order to optimally study changes in the complexity of understanding, microgenetic measures are needed, and a coupling of these to longer-term measures. We focus on the interaction dynamics between a 4-year old boy and a researcher while they work on tasks about air pressure in three subsequent sessions. The complexity of the utterances of the researcher (questions) and the boy (answers) was measured using a skill theory-based scale. Over the course of the three sessions, an increase in the boy's number of right answers occurred, and the frequencies of the complexity levels shifted. With regard to the interaction dynamics, the boy initiated significantly more simultaneous in- and decreases in complexity level over time, whereas the researcher initiated less. At the same time, the boy showed an increase in his mean understanding level. Therefore, on the longer term, learning may be related to taking more responsibility for generating lines of thought. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Music education researchers have sought to clarify two fundamental issues. The first concerns ‘the extent to which musical progress is sequenced and orderly, and why some children’s progress appears to be effortless in contrast to others who struggle’ (McPherson, 2005, p. 5). The second concerns how successful learners are able to acquire the resilience needed to ‘bounce back’ despite stresses and distractions which impact on motivation and a desire to continue learning (West & Rostvall, 2003; Costa-Giomi, Flowers, & Sasaki, 2005). This article aims to contribute to research on these issues in the context of instrumental music lessons, by presenting a dynamic model linking skills acquisition (from the perspective of scaffolding theory) and self-determination theory. We argue that musical development is a transactional, dynamic process in which the scaffolding of the music student’s skills and self-determination are deeply intertwined. Within this conception, teacher-student interactions are conceptualized at the micro- and macro-level time scales, and are viewed as mutually connected. We conclude by discussing the ways in which this model can guide future research.

In this article, we provide a process description of scaffolding in music lessons based on the scaffolding model of Van Geert and Steenbeek (2005). Scaffolding is a form of socially mediated learning in which teacher and student constantly adapt their behavior to one another in order to reach a goal. To illustrate this process, data from video-observations of two teacher-student dyads in Suzuki string lessons were analyzed to see how well this data fits the Van Geert and Steenbeek model. Results show the dynamic connection between amount of instruction and instruction type on the one hand and performance level of the student on the other hand. Results also show that the process of socially mediated learning takes the form of an increasing overlap between student and teacher actions, i.e. an increase of the joint action over time.

This study investigates prosodic (noun length) and lexical-semantic (animacy) influences on determiner use in the spontaneous speech of three children acquiring French, Austrian German and Dutch. In support of typological and language-specific hypotheses from the Germanic–Romance contrast, an advantage of monosyllabic nouns and of inanimate nouns for taking a determiner or filler was found in French, but not in Austrian German or Dutch. The authors discuss the possible contributory role of these factors on determiner acquisition from a cross-linguistic perspective, also accounting for more specific differences between Austrian German and Dutch.

In previous studies we demonstrated that the speech of a language-acquiring child and that of her parent can be characterized as a transactional process of dynamic adaptation. We reported a striking attunement between child and parent in the global development of mean length of utterance and utterance length between the ages of 1.5 and 2.5 years. Here we present a reanalysis of these data, focusing on the utilization of different categories of utterance length. In particular we analyzed the temporal structure of the dialogue on the linguistic level using the technique of cross-recurrence quantification. This type of analysis enabled us to study the interaction between interlocutors at the microlevel, revealing the dynamics of child-parent conversation and how this changes over time. Results showed decreasing values for measures quantifying the vertical line structures as well as an increasing average length of the diagonal lines in the recurrence plot. This was interpreted as indicating an increasing flexibility in the patterns of parent-child dialogue over the period of 1 year.

When speaking to young children, adults adapt their language to that of the child. In this article, we suggest that this child-directed speech (CDS) is the result of a transactional process of dynamic adaptation between the child and the adult. The study compares developmental trajectories of three children to those of the CDS of their caregivers. Furthermore, a mathematical-conceptual model is built that captures the essential dynamics of adaptation in a series of coupled equations. This model is sensitive to changes in the language development of the child. The results show evidence for a dynamic form of adaptation, although there are also clear individual differences.

Cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA) is a powerful nonlinear time-series method to study coordination and cooperation between people. This chapter concentrates on two methodological issues related to CRQA on categorical data streams, which are commonly encountered in the behavioral sciences . Firstly, we introduce a more general definition of recurrence as ‘behavioral matching ’, which can be applied to several kinds of matches simultaneously, visualized by a color coding. We will refer to this as cross -matching, and to the resulting quantification procedure as Chromatic CRQA . Secondly, cross-recurrence plots of categorical data often prominently consists of rectangular structures. This calls for a differential analysis of vertical and horizontal lines, rather than of diagonal lines. We introduce a simple procedure for this, referred to as Anisotropic CRQA . Both procedures are demonstrated with empirical studies on children’s problem-solving behavior and by means of a model simulation. The authors hope that the ideas presented here increase the power and applicability of CRQA in the behavioral sciences, and that this chapter serves as a stepping stone for their mathematical and methodological development.

Contains fulltext : 77163.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) During the introduction of solid food (usually indicated as the weaning period), infant and caregiver have to adjust their feeding interactions to a completely changed feeding context. In this paper, we argue that these adjustments can be seen as a complex process in which many factors are involved. As a result of these complex interactions, eating behavior can be highly variable between infants and from feed to feed. The aim of this study is to describe these patterns of variability across this critical transition in feeding. The study is based on naturalistic observations of 20 infant-caregiver dyads (15 repeated observations of each dyad), from the first attempt to spoon-feed till 12 weeks after the introduction of solid food. The results show that there is considerable short-term variability in eating behavior (food intake, meal duration, feeding efficiency, and food refusal), especially immediately after the introduction of solid food. The largest intra-individual variability was found in the earliest feeding sessions, which is consistent with the proposition that systems that undergo rapid development are most sensitive to context variables and thus most variable.

Across different domains, from sports to science, some individuals accomplish excellent levels of performance. For over 150 years, researchers have debated the roles of specific nature and nurture components to develop excellence. In this article, we argue that the key to excellence does not reside in specific underlying components, but rather in the ongoing interactions among the components. We propose that excellence emerges out of dynamic networks consisting of idiosyncratic mixtures of interacting components such as genetic endowment, motivation, practice, and coaching. Using computer simulations we demonstrate that the dynamic network model accurately predicts typical properties of excellence reported in the literature, such as the idiosyncratic developmental trajectories leading to excellence and the highly skewed distributions of productivity present in virtually any achievement domain. Based on this novel theoretical perspective on excellent human performance, this article concludes by suggesting policy implications and directions for future research.

This study aims at gaining insight into the academic language use of teachers and their pupils in science education in Kindergarten. Using videotaped classroom observations of a video feedback coaching intervention study (Author Citation, 2012), teachers’ (intervention n = 5, controls n = 5) and pupils’ speech was transcribed and coded for turn-taking, lexical diversity, lexical sophistication and utterance length.

In language acquisition, inter-transcriber agreement over linguistic categories assigned to recorded utterances is conceived as a measure of observer reliability. We argue that disagreement is not merely a reflection of observer errors or noisy data, but can be a reflection of the genuine ambiguity of early speech. Disagreement arises from the fact that the child is still building linguistic categories, and therefore, from the fact that the language is truly ambiguous. This ambiguity can be quantified by applying concepts from fuzzy logic, which we demonstrate in a case study. After presenting an index of agreement and a Monte-Carlo procedure for calculating the probability of chance agreement, we introduce an index of ambiguity, based on the fuzzy logic notion of degreeof-membership.

Effects of physical exercise during educational tasks on learning are not obvious. This study examines the effectsof movement on learning fraction skills at a physically active Playful Learning Environment (PLE). Employing amixed-method approach, we investigated whether differences in motivational and verbal helping behaviour processes(underlying learning mechanisms) impacted learning gains. Results from 32 4th and 5th graders (n = 16with the PLE, n = 16 in an equal sedentary computer task) approached significance, indicating that the PLE groupshowed higher learning gains compared to the SE group. Motivation was initially significantly higher for the PLEgroup. However, results indicated decreasing differences between the PLE and the sedentary group. There wereno clear differences in the quality of verbal helping behaviour between the groups. Furthermore, subsequent utterancesof verbal helping behaviour of two dyads selected in a case-study showed that their helping behaviourwas sub-optimal for learningEffects of physical exercise during educational tasks on learning are not obvious. This study examines the effectsof movement on learning fraction skills at a physically active Playful Learning Environment (PLE). Employing amixed-method approach, we investigated whether differences in motivational and verbal helping behaviour processes(underlying learning mechanisms) impacted learning gains. Results from 32 4th and 5th graders (n = 16with the PLE, n = 16 in an equal sedentary computer task) approached significance, indicating that the PLE groupshowed higher learning gains compared to the SE group. Motivation was initially significantly higher for the PLEgroup. However, results indicated decreasing differences between the PLE and the sedentary group. There wereno clear differences in the quality of verbal helping behaviour between the groups. Furthermore, subsequent utterancesof verbal helping behaviour of two dyads selected in a case-study showed that their helping behaviourwas sub-optimal for learning