Carolyn Saarni’s book is one of a very practical series of titles by Guilford Press examining emotional and social development. The author stated a number of goals for the book including: writing about emotional development in mid-childhood and adolescence, examining emotion as a part of culture, and establishing a pattern of studying emotion within the lives of children. The book was organized into three parts: research and theories of emotional competence; skill levels of emotional competence and the clinical application of emotional competence.

In the first part, Dr. Saarni defined emotional competence as the functional capacity wherein a human can reach their goals after an emotion-eliciting encounter. She defined emotion as a building block of self-efficacy. She described the use of emotions as a set of skills achieved which then lead to the development of emotional competence. Attainment of the skills of emotional competence is crucial to self-efficacy. Dr. Saarni outlined her theoretical position in relation to theories of emotion and social learning and cognitive development. Her approach to theory in each of these fields was integrative and focussed on self-development with a strong social-contructivist perspective. I enjoyed the culture and folk theories of emotional regulation in chapter three. Also, chapter three contained an interesting section on parent and peer influences on emotional regulation, very useful for child psychiatrists who work to discern abnormal emotional regulation and mood patterns in context.

The bulk of the book was devoted to the eight emotional competence skills:


Awareness of one’s own emotions,


Ability to discern and understand other’s emotions,


Ability to use the vocabulary of emotion and expression,


Capacity for empathic involvement,


Ability to differentiate subjective emotional experience from external emotion expression,


Adaptive coping with aversive emotions and distressing circumstances,


Awareness of emotional communication within relationships, and


Capacity for emotional self-efficacy.



Skills one through six are based on developmental research on emotions but the final two skills are based on her experience as a clinical developmental psychologist. Each chapter contained organizing subtitles and ended with culture, developmental stage and gender information. In keeping with her leanings to Lewis and Michaelson, her most basic skill, ‘awareness of one’s own emotions,’ is one that requires cognitive ability. She stipulated that, to accomplish the first skill, (Lewis’ argument) the child must know how the body feels to have an emotion. A child needs to be age four or five to demonstrate this skill reliably. Of all the skills, skill four, the capacity for empathic involvement appears to be an outlier. While the material she presented was interesting to read, the role of empathy as a skill of emotional competence wasn’t argued convincingly. On the other hand, skill 7 had a great deal of face validity. It suggested that there is a skill of emotional meta-communication.

A strength of the book is its comprehensive examination of the skills she proposed. She covered many practical issues in emotional competence. The book conveyed a strong sense of children in their world and thus it was easy and enjoyable to read. A limitation of the book related to Dr. Saarni’s description of the differences between the theoretical models and how she applied them. There is a distinct difference between the social constructivists and functionalists. If child psychiatrists or residents are not familiar with the difference, this book will confuse their understanding. The former see emotions as arising from the development of cognition and the latter see emotion as not developmentally dependent upon cognition, rather, an organizing principle in development in its own right. Despite this, the effort and breadth of the treatment of emotional competence as illustrated in this book makes it well worth the read.

The Development of Emotional Competence

der. However, the most serious problem with studies of schizophrenic language is absence of adequate design components. It is suggested in the chapter that well-controlled empirical research is possible with this population, indeed, is necessary in order to learn more about the nature and characteristics of schizophrenic language problems. In summary, the Handbook has both strengths and weaknesses. A weakness may have been that all topics relevant to applied psycholinguistics were not covered. Rosenberg explains in his preface that the book lacks chapters on linguistic maturity, language intervention, learning disabilities, language and environmental deprivation, language and mania, language and senile dementia, computer language and dialect and social differences in language. Reasons for the absence of these chapters vary. Primarily, several of the topics are not developed well enough to warrant a complete chapter. Additionally, only the most substantive topics were selected in order to keep the Handbook to a reasonable size and length. More discussion of intervention variables, strategies and programs would have enhanced the content of the book for this reviewer. However, it is recognized that the research base is not substantial enough in several areas to allow discussion and suggestions for remediation. A strength of the book is the critical, careful evaluation of methodological adequacy of studies. Such evaluations have value for all readers. For some, it provides criteria for determining the stability of conclusions reached by investigators. For others the careful evaluations serve a teaching purpose. Another valuable contribution of the book was the tendency of some authors to suggest research designs suitable for investigating the topics under discussion. The theme set by Rosenberg in the introduction regarding integration and theoretical views was evident throughout most of the chapters. Authors attempted to bring together research findings into a holistic composite, frequently within a theoretical framework. Thus, the Handbook definitely lives up to its promise to present comprehensive and critical reviews of the status of topics important to applied psycholinguistics. The chapters are extremely informative.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S014271640000463X

Understanding reading: A psycholinguistic analysis of reading and learning to read. Third edition. Frank Smith. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982. Pp. xii + 263.

This paper provides an overview of the features of caregiver input that facilitate language learning across early childhood. We discuss three dimensions of input quality: interactive, linguistic, and conceptual. All three types of input features have been shown to predict children's language learning, though perhaps through somewhat different mechanisms. We argue that input best designed to promote language learning is interactionally supportive, linguistically adapted, and conceptually challenging for the child's age/level. Furthermore, input features interact across dimensions to promote learning. Some but not all qualities of input vary based on parent socioeconomic status, language, or culture, and contexts such as book-reading or pretend play generate uniquely facilitative input features. The review confirms that we know a great deal about the role of input quality in promoting children's development, but that there is much more to learn. Future research should examine input features across the boundaries of the dimensions distinguished here.

/pdf/analyzing-input-quality-along-three-dimensions-interactive-15e0tafsjg.pdf

Analyzing input quality along three dimensions: interactive, linguistic, and conceptual.

L’évaluation des compétences en histoire

Au Senegal, la case de sante (CdS), fruit d’un processus socio-historique et de l’evolution de la politique sanitaire, constitue la base de la pyramide sanitaire ou elle est integree. Paradoxalement, les communautes arrivent difficilement a se l’approprier. Elle doit sa survie a l’accompagnement des ONG. La comprehension de l’appropriation communautaire fait defaut et a motive cette recherche, d’ou son originalite. La recherche est basee sur l’hypothese selon laquelle les dynamiques de participation communautaire influencent l’appropriation de la CdS.Au moyen d’une etude qualitative, empirique et exploratoire utilisant une strategie d’etude de cas multiples, 3 cas ont ete selectionnes dans la region de Thies. Nous avons collecte quatre types de donnees qualitatives : entretiens approfondis, focus groups, entretiens semi-structures et observation directe. Une perspective relationnelle operationnalisee par un cadre conceptuel large empruntant des concepts de la theorie Bourdieusienne et une approche socio-historique Eliasienne balisent la recherche.Les donnees ont ete analysees au moyen de la theorisation ancree utilisant un codage par niveaux d’abstraction progressive, duquel ont emerge les categories ayant servi a l’elaboration d’un cadre logique.Les resultats de l’etude indiquent que les mecanismes du processus d’appropriation s’expriment par la capacite des communautes a gerer les evenements critiques et par l’insertion de la CdS dans le tissu social.La pouvoir d’agir de la communaute, le sens communautaire de ses membres et leur capacite a mobiliser les pratiques sociales de participation constituent les moteurs de l’appropriation qui est entretenue par des interrelations entre les capitaux culturel, social et symbolique. Ce dernier s’exprime au niveau communautaire, en entrant en jeu dans la construction de l’appropriation comme processus et non finalite, en renforcant l’identite et en renouvelant l’espace de confiance et de reciprocite, essentiel pour l’action collective. La construction discursive de l’identite communautaire, de la reconnaissance et de l’espace de confiance de reciprocite apparait comme une originalite.Les discussions portent sur des aspects methodologiques et sur l’operationnalite du concept d’appropriation. Entres autres, l’appropriation apparait comme processus de reconnaissance et non comme finalite.Cette etude ouvre des pistes de recherches dans le cadre d’un elargissement de l’aire de recherche et en tenant compte des facteurs supra-communautaires. Elle recommande un changement de regard des agents de developpement qui devraient considerer les communautes comme des unites de participation, des systemes regorgeant de potentialites et de solutions necessitant d’etre stimules et mobilises ; et non comme des nids de problemes a resoudre, avec des solutions importees.

https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02470764/document

L’appropriation communautaire des cases de santé selon la perspective des populations.

Previous studies have suggested that children’s emotion comprehension begins todevelop in the early stages of childhood and has been linked to prosocial behaviours, displays of empathy, and better interpersonal relationships, to name a few. However, children’s levels of emotion comprehension do not develop at the same rhythm, due to both environmental and biological factors. There are a few interventions that can help children in their development of emotion understanding, but these interventions are not readily accessible (e.g., due to cost, availability, duration). For example, the School Matters in Lifeskills Education Program (SMILE) is a theoretically based program aimed at improving children’s emotion comprehension. Unfortunately, since, for instance, it requires rigorous training to be administered, it is not accessible to all. To address some of the issues with previous programs, the current study examined the use of shared book reading and the effectiveness of picture books created on current theories and models of children’s emotion comprehension. Eighteen preschoolers were divided into an experimental and a control group. Over the course of multiple exposures to the experimental treatment, results revealed a significant gain for the experimental group compared to the control group. These results are promising by showing that a simple shared book reading approach can contribute to the development of emotion comprehension without requiring special training or expertise.

/pdf/contributing-to-children-s-early-comprehension-of-emotions-a-o4k3lxft9h.pdf

Contributing to Children's Early Comprehension of Emotions: A Picture Book Approach

Partenaire(s) de l'Action concertée Ministère de l'Éducation et de l'Enseignement supérieur (MEES) Fonds de recherche du Québec Société et culture (FRQSC) Établissement gestionnaire de la subvention Université TÉLUQ Cochercheurs Isabelle Carignan, Université TÉLUQ Clermont Gauthier, Université Laval Steve Bissonnette, Université TÉLUQ Quels sont les modèles de formation continue les plus efficaces pour l’enseignement de la lecture et de l’écriture chez les élèves du préscolaire, du primaire et du secondaire? Une synthèse des connaissances

Quels sont les modèles de formation continue les plus efficaces pour l’enseignement de la lecture et de l’écriture chez les élèves du préscolaire, du primaire et du secondaire? Une synthèse des connaissances

Recension des écrits scientifiques sur la littératie familiale et communautaire

/pdf/la-recherche-action-et-la-recherche-developpement-au-service-5b09gzvl1s.pdf

La recherche-action et la recherche-développement au service de la littératie

Résumé Le développement de la compétence scripturale est primordial en formation initiale des maitres dans le contexte franco-ontarien. En effet, le niveau de littératie des futurs enseignants en milieu de langue minoritaire demeure une priorité, car ils seront souvent les seuls modèles langagiers pour les futurs élèves qui grandissent dans un milieu anglodominant, surtout si l’on ne parle pas français à la maison. L’objectif ici est de mieux comprendre ce problème en identifiant les erreurs commises par ces étudiants provenant d’un milieu francophone minoritaire à partir de textes écrits en contexte de formation. Les résultats démontrent que ces erreurs sont souvent liées à l’orthographe grammaticale et au lexique.

Isabelle Carignan

Papers

Contributing to Children's Early Comprehension of Emotions: A Picture Book Approach

Quels sont les modèles de formation continue les plus efficaces pour l’enseignement de la lecture et de l’écriture chez les élèves du préscolaire, du primaire et du secondaire? Une synthèse des connaissances

Recension des écrits scientifiques sur la littératie familiale et communautaire

La recherche-action et la recherche-développement au service de la littératie

Étude descriptive des erreurs répertoriées dans trois productions écrites d’étudiants franco-ontariens en formation initiale