Human Development & Quantitative Methodology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2779
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Item The development of symbolic magnitude understanding in early childhood(2019) Scalise, Nicole Rose; Ramani, Geetha B; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The path towards mathematics success starts early, as initial numerical knowledge sets the foundation for children’s later mathematics learning. In particular, young children’s knowledge of numerical magnitudes, like knowing that seven is more than three, is theorized to play an important role in their mathematical development. In support of this perspective, there is consistent evidence that symbolic magnitude skills, or knowledge of how written numerals and number words can be ordered and compared, predict mathematical achievement in childhood and adulthood. Yet less is known about the antecedents and consequents of symbolic magnitude understanding in preschool. The goal of the present study was to understand whether symbolic magnitude knowledge in early childhood relates to later math achievement and identify foundational numerical and general cognitive skills that underlie the development of symbolic magnitude knowledge. One hundred and forty Head Start preschoolers aged 3 – 5 years old were assessed in the winter and spring of the school year to test a theory-driven conceptual model of symbolic magnitude development. Specifically, children’s knowledge of the cardinal value represented by numbers, such as knowing that the number word “four” can be represented with four objects, was hypothesized to predict their symbolic magnitude understanding, with children’s symbolic magnitude understanding in turn predicting their symbolic addition skills controlling for children’s executive functioning skills, age, and gender. There was significant evidence in favor of the proposed conceptual model, specifically that children’s cardinality skills predicted their concurrent and later symbolic magnitude understanding; children’s symbolic magnitude understanding predicted their later addition skills; and children’s executive functioning skills predicted each of their numerical skills uniquely. Findings suggest symbolic magnitude understanding fully mediates the relation between children’s cardinality and addition skills, and both domain-general executive functioning and domain-specific cardinality and magnitude skills assessed in the winter explain a similar amount of variability in children’s spring addition skills. These findings will be used to inform the design of comprehensive early numeracy interventions to help parents, teachers, and researchers best support the mathematical development of young children.Item READING IN PRINT AND DIGITALLY: PROFILING AND INTERVENING IN UNDERGRADUATES’ MULTIMODAL TEXT PROCESSING, COMPREHENSION, AND CALIBRATION(2019) Singer Trakhman, Lauren Melissa; Alexander, Patricia A; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As a consequence of today’s rapid-paced society and ever-changing technologies, students are frequently called upon to process texts in print and digitally. Further, multimodal texts are standard in textbooks and foundational to learning. Nonetheless, little is understood about the effects of reading multimodal texts in print or digitally. In Study I, the students read weather and soil passages in print and digitally. These readings were taken from an introductory geology textbook that incorporated various graphic displays. While reading, novel data-gathering measures and procedures were used to capture real-time behaviors. As students read in print, their behaviors were recorded by a GoPro@ camera and tracked by the movement of a pen. When reading digitally, students’ actions were recorded by Camtasia@ Screen Capture software and by the movement of the screen cursor used to indicate their position in the text. After reading, students answered comprehension questions that differ in specificity (i.e., main idea to key concepts) that cover content from three sources: text only; visual only; and, both text and visual. Finally, after reading in each medium, undergraduates rated their performance on the comprehension measure on a scale of 0-100 for each passage. The accuracy of these ratings formed the basis of the calibration score. The processing data were analyzed using Latent Class Analysis. In Study II, an intervention aimed at improving students’ comprehension and calibration when reading digitally were introduced to participants from Study I who returned to the lab about two weeks later. Next, the undergraduates repeated the procedure for digital reading outlined in Study I with a passage on volcanoes. In Study I, students performed better when reading in print and spent more time with the text but were better calibrated when reading digitally. Three clusters were identified for the print data, and three clusters were identified for the digital data. Cluster movement across mediums suggests that some participants treat digital texts differently than when reading in print. After the intervention in Study II, comprehension scores and duration increased but calibration accuracy scores worsened. The LCA revealed three clusters, each showing improvement in processing behaviors, comprehension, or reading duration.Item Modeling the Speed-Accuracy-Difficulty Interaction in Joint Modeling of Responses and Response Time(2018) Liao, Dandan; Jiao, Hong; Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)With the rapid development of information technology, computer-based tests have become more and more popular in large-scale assessments. Among all the auxiliary data collected during the test-taking process, response times (RTs) seem to be one of the most important and commonly utilized sources of information. A commonly adopted assumption in joint modeling of RTs and item responses is that item responses and RTs are conditionally independent given a person’s speed and ability, and a person has constant speed and ability throughout the test (e.g., Thissen, 1983; van der Linden, 2007). However, researchers have been investigating more complex scenarios where the conditional independence assumption between item responses and RTs is likely to be violated in various ways (e.g., De Boeck, Chen, & Davison, 2017; Meng, Tao, & Chang, 2015; Ranger & Ortner, 2012b). Empirical evidence suggests that the direction of conditional dependence differs among items in a systematic way (Bolsinova, Tijmstra, & Molenaar, 2017). For difficult items, correct responses are associated with longer RTs; for easier items, however, correct responses are usually associated with shorter RTs (Bolsinova, De Boeck, & Tijmstra, 2017; Goldhammer, Naumann, & Greiff, 2015; Partchev & De Boeck, 2012). This phenomenon reflects a clear pattern that item difficulty affects the direction of conditional dependence between item responses and RTs. However, such an interaction has not been explicitly explored in jointly modeling of RT and response accuracy. In the present study, various approaches for joint modeling of RT and response accuracy are proposed to account for the conditional dependence between responses and RTs due to the interaction among speed, accuracy, and item difficulty. Three simulation studies are carried out to compare the proposed models with van der Linden’s (2007) hierarchical model that does not take into account the conditional dependence with respect to model fit and parameter recovery. The consequences of ignoring the conditional dependence between RT and item responses on parameter estimation is explored. Further, empirical data analyses are conducted to investigate the potential violations of the conditional independence assumption between item responses and RTs and obtain a more fundamental understanding of examinees’ test-taking behaviors.Item Prompting Rural Students' Use of Prior Knowledge and Experience to Support Comprehension of Unfamiliar Content(2018) Hattan, Courtney; Alexander, Patricia A; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Prior knowledge activation is foundational to students’ text comprehension. Yet, pedagogical techniques that teachers can use to prompt students’ knowledge activation are limited and empirical data on the relative effectiveness of those techniques is scant. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the effectiveness of traditional and novel knowledge activation techniques for supporting rural students’ comprehension of texts covering unfamiliar content. In this quasi-experimental study, 149 rural middle-school students were assigned to one of three conditions: knowledge mobilization (traditional), relational reasoning (new), or text annotation (control). Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling with text comprehension as the outcome variable and condition, relational reasoning ability, prior topic knowledge, gender, ethnicity, and grade level as predictor variables. The results demonstrated a statistically significant difference for overall comprehension between students in the relational reasoning condition and students in both the mobilization (β = 5.15, p < .00) and control conditions (β = 3.10, p < .00). There were no significant differences between students in the mobilization versus control conditions (β = -1.85, p = .07). Further, there were no comprehension differences for ethnic background or grade level. However, female students outperformed male students, and prior topic knowledge and relational reasoning ability were significant covariates in analysis. Qualitative analysis of follow-up conversations revealed the utility of the relational reasoning condition, especially for low-performing students. The results indicate that not all prior knowledge activation techniques are equally effective for all students engaged in the processing unfamiliar textual content. Additionally, the novel activation technique of relational reasoning proved highly effective for promoting students’ text comprehension.Item More useful, or not so bad? Evaluating the effects of interventions to reduce perceived cost and increase utility value with college physics students(2017) Rosenzweig, Emily Quinn; Wigfield, Allan; Ramani, Geetha; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the present study I developed and evaluated the effects of two interventions designed to target students’ motivation to learn in an introductory college physics course. One intervention was designed to improve students’ perceptions of utility value and the other was designed to reduce students’ perceptions of cost. Utility value and cost both are central constructs from Eccles and colleagues’ expectancy-value theory of motivation (Eccles-Parsons et al., 1983). Students (N = 148) were randomly assigned to receive the cost intervention, the utility value intervention, or one of two control conditions. Compared to a survey control condition, neither intervention impacted overall students’ motivation, measured at 3 time points over the semester, or their course outcomes. In moderation analyses, neither intervention impacted any students’ perceptions of utility value. However, both interventions impacted some students’ perceptions of cost, competence-related beliefs, and course outcomes positively while impacting these variables for other students negatively. The cost intervention benefitted consistently and in different ways students who had low baseline competence-related beliefs, low prior achievement, strong malleable beliefs about intelligence, or who were female. However, the intervention showed consistent undermining effects on motivation and/or achievement for students with strong fixed beliefs about intelligence. The utility value intervention benefitted consistently the course outcomes of students who had low baseline competence-related beliefs, low prior achievement, or who were female. The intervention showed less consistent undermining effects on motivation for students with strong fixed beliefs about intelligence, high baseline competence-related beliefs, or high prior achievement. Prior researchers have shown that utility value interventions improve course outcomes for some students who are at risk for underachievement. The present study extends prior work by showing that utility value interventions benefit similar students in college physics courses. It also demonstrates that a cost intervention is a viable way to impact at-risk students’ physics course outcomes. Future researchers should consider carefully moderating variables and how to mitigate potential undermining effects for some students when implementing future expectancy-value-theory-based interventions in college physics courses.Item READY FOR KINDERGARTEN: A TRAINING PROGRAM DESIGNED TO ENCOURAGE PARENT-CHILD CONVERSATION DURING THE PRESCHOOL YEARS(2016) Leech, Kathryn A.; Ramani, Geetha; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Many children in the United States begin kindergarten unprepared to converse in the academic language surrounding instruction, putting them at greater risk for later language and reading difficulties. Importantly, correlational research has shown there are certain experiences prior to kindergarten that foster the oral language skills needed to understand and produce academic language. The focus of this dissertation was on increasing one of these experiences: parent-child conversations about abstract and non-present concepts, known as decontextualized language (DL). Decontextualized language involves talking about non-present concepts such as events that happened in the past or future, or abstract discussions such as providing explanations or defining unknown words. As caregivers’ decontextualized language input to children aged three to five is consistently correlated with kindergarten oral language skills and later reading achievement, it is surprising no experimental research has been done to establish this relation causally. The study described in this dissertation filled this literature gap by designing, implementing, and evaluating a decontextualized language training program for parents of 4-year-old children (N=30). After obtaining an initial measure of decontextualized language, parents were randomly assigned to a control condition or training condition, the latter of which educated parents about decontextualized language and why it is important. All parents then audio-recorded four mealtime conversations over the next month, which were transcribed and reliably coded for decontextualized language. Results indicated that trained parents boosted their DL from roughly 17 percent of their total utterances at baseline to approximately 50 percent by the mid-point of the study, and remained at these boosted levels throughout the duration of the study. Children’s DL was also boosted by similar margins, but no improvement in children’s oral language skills was observed, measured prior to, and one month following training. Further, exploratory analyses pointed to parents’ initial use of DL and their theories of the malleability of intelligence (i.e., growth mindsets) as moderators of training gains. Altogether, these findings are a first step in establishing DL as a viable strategy for giving children the oral language skills needed to begin kindergarten ready to succeed in the classroom.Item Connecting the dots: Examining the role of parental beliefs and preschoolers’ affect and engagement in predicting parent-child number exploration during a meaningful math experience(2016) Zippert, Erica Leigh; Ramani, Geetha B; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study examined the frequency and quality of how 3- to 4-year-old children and their parents explore the relations between symbolic and non-symbolic quantities in the context of a playful math experience, as well as the role of both parent and child factors in this exploration. Preschool children’s numerical knowledge was assessed while parents completed a survey about the number-related experiences they share with their children at home, and their math-related beliefs. Parent-child dyads were then videotaped playing a modified version of the card game War. Results suggest that parents and children explored quantity explicitly on only half of the cards and card pairs played, and dyads of young children and those with lower number knowledge tended to be most explicit in their quantity exploration. Dyads with older children, on the other hand, often completed their turns without discussing the numbers at all, likely because they were knowledgeable enough about numbers that they could move through the game with ease. However, when dyads did explore the quantities explicitly, they focused on identifying numbers symbolically, used non-symbolic card information interchangeably with symbolic information to make the quantity comparison judgments, and in some instances, emphasized the connection between the symbolic and non-symbolic number representations on the cards. Parents reported that math experiences such as card game play and quantity comparison occurred relatively infrequently at home compared to activities geared towards more foundational practice of number, such as counting out loud and naming numbers. However, parental beliefs were important in predicting both the frequency of at-home math engagement as well as the quality of these experiences. In particular, parents’ specific beliefs about their children’s abilities and interests were associated with the frequency of home math activities, while parents’ math-related ability beliefs and values along with children’s engagement in the card game were associated with the quality of dyads’ number exploration during the card game. Taken together, these findings suggest that card games can be an engaging context for parent-preschooler exploration of numbers in multiple representations, and suggests that parents’ beliefs and children’s level of engagement are important predictors of this exploration.Item STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHER INSTRUMENTAL SUPPORT AS A PREDICTOR OF MOTIVATION IN READING AND MATH AND ACHIEVEMENT FROM SECOND THROUGH TWELFTH GRADE(2016) Mason-Singh, Amanda Marie; Wigfield, Allan; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this study, relations among students’ perceptions of instrumental help/support from their teachers and their reading and math ability beliefs, subjective task values, and academic grades, were explored from elementary through high school. These relations were examined in an overall sample of 1,062 students from the Childhood and Beyond (CAB) study dataset, a cohort-sequential study that followed students from elementary to high school and beyond. Multi-group structural equation model (SEM) analyses were used to explore these relations in adjacent grade pairs (e.g., second grade to third grade) in elementary school and from middle school through high school separately for males and females. In addition, multi-group latent growth curve (LGC) analyses were used to explore the associations among change in the variables of interest from middle school through high school separately for males and females. The results showed that students’ perceptions of instrumental help from teachers significantly positively predicted: (a) students’ math ability beliefs and reading and math task values in elementary school within the same grade for both girls and boys, and (b) students’ reading and math ability beliefs, reading and math task values, and GPA in middle and high school within the same grade for both girls and boys. Overall, students’ perceptions of instrumental help from teachers more consistently predicted ability beliefs and task values in the academic domain of math than in the academic domain of reading. Although there were some statistically significant differences in the models for girls and boys, the direction and strength of the relations in the models were generally similar for both girls and boys. The implications for these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.Item Friendships of High-Achieving African American Adolescents: Relation to Ethnic Identity and Achievement Values(2016) Morrison, Danette A.; Wentzel, Kathryn R.; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The academic achievement of African American adolescents is a national concern for educators and researchers especially since current reports depict the underachievement of African American students as continuing to lag behind their European American peers. Determining what factors within the school environment that contributes to the achievement gap and how it can be reduced remains an important issue in alleviating disparities seen in educational achievement and attainment. This study examined the relation between characteristics of the close friendships of high-achieving African American adolescents and students’ identity development and motivation in school. Data were collected from 217 high-achieving African American students within 10th to 12th grade from 5 public and private high schools. Each student self-reported on their ethnicity, gender, parents’ education level, grade, FARMs, GPA, perceived teacher support (emotional, academic, and instrumental support), their perception of their ethnic identity, and their perception of their achievement values. Through the use of nomination procedures, students also identified their close friends and responded to questions concerning how supportive (emotional, academic, and instrumental support) they each were. Results from multiple regression analyses showed that the provision of instrumental support from close friends related to the exploration process of the high-achieving students’ ethnic identity. In addition, there was a strong relation between the ethnic identity of close friends and that of the individual. Furthermore, although friend support was not a significant predictor of achievement values, demographic (mother’s education level, grade, and FARMS) and control (teacher support) variables predicted students’ importance and utility of school respectively. These findings add to the literature on age and socioeconomic status as they relate to student’s motivation to achieve. Overall, this study provides some evidence highlighting ways in which close friendships might relate to the self-development of high-achieving African American adolescents. This study provides a starting point for additional ways in which to explore how peer processes relate to the academic behaviors of high-achieving African American adolescents.Item Relations among Topic Knowledge, Individual Interest, and Relational Reasoning, and Critical Thinking in Maternity Nursing(2016) Fountain, Lily; Alexander, Patricia A.; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Critical thinking in learners is a goal of educators and professional organizations in nursing as well as other professions. However, few studies in nursing have examined the role of the important individual difference factors topic knowledge, individual interest, and general relational reasoning strategies in predicting critical thinking. In addition, most previous studies have used domain-general, standardized measures, with inconsistent results. Moreover, few studies have investigated critical thinking across multiple levels of experience. The major purpose of this study was to examine the degree to which topic knowledge, individual interest, and relational reasoning predict critical thinking in maternity nurses. For this study, 182 maternity nurses were recruited from national nursing listservs explicitly chosen to capture multiple levels of experience from prelicensure to very experienced nurses. The three independent measures included a domain-specific Topic Knowledge Assessment (TKA), consisting of 24 short-answer questions, a Professed and Engaged Interest Measure (PEIM), with 20 questions indicating level of interest and engagement in maternity nursing topics and activities, and the Test of Relational Reasoning (TORR), a graphical selected response measure with 32 items organized in scales corresponding to four forms of relational reasoning: analogy, anomaly, antithesis, and antinomy. The dependent measure was the Critical Thinking Task in Maternity Nursing (CT2MN), composed of a clinical case study providing cues with follow-up questions relating to nursing care. These questions align with the cognitive processes identified in a commonly-used definition of critical thinking in nursing. Reliable coding schemes for the measures were developed for this study. Key findings included a significant correlation between topic knowledge and individual interest. Further, the three individual difference factors explained a significant proportion of the variance in critical thinking with a large effect size. While topic knowledge was the strongest predictor of critical thinking performance, individual interest had a moderate significant effect, and relational reasoning had a small but significant effect. The findings suggest that these individual difference factors should be included in future studies of critical thinking in nursing. Implications for nursing education, research, and practice are discussed.