We explored the extent to which intensity and breadth of participation in an after‐school program (ASP) predicted academic achievement, as measured by changes in grades and attendance. The sample comprised 719 2nd‐grade through 8th‐grade Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas members during the 2009–2010 academic year. With respect to intensity, extent of club participation was positively related to increases in GPA from the first‐week to the last 6‐week grading period. This relationship was stronger for elementary students. In addition, intensity was negatively related to changes in school absences from the first week to the last 6 weeks for both grade levels. With respect to breadth, participation in greater numbers of programs was related to greater improvement in GPA, but only among elementary students, and only when program participation was substantial. Overall, the results suggest that participation in structured ASPs like Boys and Girls Clubs positively affects academic achievement.

ABSTRACT The actual and preferred classroom experiences of 11 teachers and their 254 secondary students were surveyed. Our survey focused on nine dimensions of effective teaching. In contrast to existing research, in which dimensions of teaching practice are experimenter-defined, our survey reflected the educator standards of a particular state (Texas). Our primary interest was the extent to which actual and preferred experiences would reflect the ideals embodied in these standards. There were three main findings. First, teacher preferences conformed more closely than student preferences to the standards. Second, the divergence between individual preferences and actual experiences was greater for teachers than for students. Third, student preferences and experiences were influenced by gender, SES, and grade. Additional findings include substantial teacher-student consistency in descriptions of the same classroom, and connections between actual experience in a class and anticipated grade. Overall, the results imply that as educational practice becomes increasingly standards-driven, teaching practice does not automatically match student preferences more closely. INTRODUCTION Over the past three decades, researchers have documented many ways that students are influenced by learning environments (Fraser, 1998; Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2000). Several lines of research have explored the fit between students and classrooms. For example, it has been found that students learn better and show more positive attitudes in classroom environments that match their personal preferences (Byrne, Hattie, & Fraser; 1986; Haertel, Walberg, & Haertel, 1981; Roeser, & Eccles, 1998). Other studies have shown that student attitudes and achievement benefit from classroom environments that reflect effective teaching practice (Aldridge, Fraser, & Taylor, 2000; Rutter, 1983). To an extent, these findings seem consistent with each other: Students prefer - and perform better in - classrooms where teachers demonstrate openness, caring, enthusiasm, clear instructional goals, and other characteristics commonly associated with effective teaching (Minor, Onwuegbuzie, Witcher, & James, 2002; Moos, 1979; Sanders & Jordan, 2000; Wentzel, 1997; Wubbels & Brekelmans, 1998). It seems, at first glance, that students and effective teachers have similar preferences for teaching practice. Educational practice is increasingly influenced by standards-based reforms. A distinction is commonly made between content standards, which describe what students should learn, and performance standards, which describe how mastery of the content standards should be demonstrated (McClaughlin & Shepard, 1995). Our focus in this study was on a third category, the educator standards which describe the skills, practices, and goals teachers should bring to the classroom, and which play a prominent role in teacher certification. Broadly, we looked at the extent of convergence between educator standards and both the ideals and the actual experiences of secondary students and their teachers. Our interest was not in subject-specific educator standards but rather in those that describe pedagogical principles of relevance in any class. If educator standards accurately reflected teacher preferences, and if the preferences of students and teachers were perfectly aligned, educational reform would be effective, because shifts in teaching practice toward the ideals embodied by the standards would result in classrooms that more closely match student preferences, and student attitudes and achievement would benefit. However, student preferences are not completely identical to principles of effective teaching, and both students and teachers exhibit considerable diversity of opinion about what effective teaching would be (Fraser, 1998; Levy, Wubbels, Brekelmans, & Morganfield, 1997; Moss & Schutz, 2001). There are divergences, in other words, between the ideal teacher imagined by students, the ideal teacher envisioned by practicing teachers, and the ideal teacher broadly depicted in state standards. …

2 experiments evaluated whether young children understand that kinship implies, but does not guarantee, physical resemblance among family members. In Experiment 1, preschoolers expected adopted babies to share physical properties, but not beliefs and preferences, with their biological parents rather than with their adoptive ones. However, preschoolers in Experiment 2 recognized that shared properties per se do not guarantee kinship: a baby who looks like and lives with a woman is not her biological baby if he or she initially grew inside someone else, whereas a baby may neither resemble nor live with its biological parents. Overall, the results suggest that children expect parents and offspring to share physical properties, but understand that shared properties do not necessarily entail kinship. In both experiments, the extent of this understanding increased with age. However, preschoolers' overall performance supports the claim that some children at this age have a naive theory of biology. The results further suggest that the critical development in an understanding of kinship is acquisition of factual knowledge rather than structural change.

This study examined the development of sensitivity to specific patterns of movement that reveal interpersonal events. Preschoolers and adults viewed an animated film created by Heider and Simmel (1944), and then answered a set of probe questions about traits, emotions, and relationships that characterized the geometric figures in the film. Five-year-olds and adults gained similiar impressions of the film, and their attributions were similar to those that have emerged in open-ended descriptions of the film produced by adults in other experiments. The responses of 4-year-olds diverged from this pattern, as did, to a greater extent, the responses of 3-year-olds. The results were interpreted as supporting the view that sensitivity to patterns of motion that reveal interpersonal events emerges gradually during the late preschool years.

Four experiments evaluated whether children have a naive theory in which biological kinds, specifically foods, are distinguished by potential for decomposition. In the first two experiments, 4- through 6-year-olds judged that natural changes such as aging make biological natural kinds (BNK; e.g., apple) noxious, but do not have a comparable effect on nonbiological natural kinds (e.g., rock) or artifacts. In Experiment 3, few children were able to articulate specific biological mechanisms responsible for perceptible signs of noxiousness. But most children in Experiment 4 exhibited the more general understanding that the processes by which BNK become noxious are irreversible. In sum, young children seem to have a domain-specific theory of biological kinds, although they are unaware of the exact mechanisms operative in the domain. Children may thus develop a theory that picks out a domain of objects before the causal principles organizing this domain are fully understood.

The present study focused on how children acquire a naive theory of kinship. Young children appear to have theoretical beliefs about the biological meaning of kinship relations. It was argued here that these beliefs reflect inductive inferences from simple facts about prenatal growth (e.g, where babies grow). An informal model of the inferences linking facts to theory was proposed and tested. In Experiment 1, 4-7-year-olds who knew the basic facts of prenatal growth were most likely to also express the naive theory of kinship. Virtually none of the children who expressed the theory were unaware of the basic facts. In Experiment 2, teaching the facts to a sample of preschoolers led to some increase in their acceptance of the kinship theory. Overall, the results implicate a type of theory building that involves inferences from preexisting knowledge rather than structural change, use of analogy, or acquisition of new knowledge.

Although young children believe that contaminated substances contain imperceptible substrates, they may assume that the mere presence of a contaminant guarantes the presence of its substrates in a physically removed substance (associational contamination). In this study, the proximity of a contaminant (bug) to a beverage (juice) was systematically manipulated, and children were asked whether someone would get sick from drinking the beverage. Some preschoolers, and most 7- and 8-years-olds, recognized the need for physical contact between the bug and juice to make the juice noxious

Evaluated whether preschoolers with cancer are more or less likely than their healthy counterparts to consider illness a form of punishment for misdeeds (immanent justice). It was found that a sample of preschoolers with cancer (n = 17) rejected immanent justice as a general cause of illness, both in themselves and in others, just as frequently as healthy controls (n = 17). Both groups also rejected immanent justice in cases where misbehavior was prolonged. Children with cancer demonstrated a view of illness causality based on greater differentiation between themselves and other people, in that they were more likely than healthy controls to accept immanent justice as a cause of illness in themselves but not others, and vice versa. Finally, nearly all of the children with cancer who accepted immanent justice as a general cause of illness in themselves also attributed their cancer specifically to immanent justice.

Children 3, 4, and 5 years old provided free-response descriptions of one of four short video displays. These consisted of either the original Heider and Simmel (1944) animated film or one of three versions of the film that had been altered with a digital special-effects generator. In the altered versions, (a) dynamic aspects of the original film were disrupted but structural properties were left intact, (b) structural aspects of the film were disrupted but dynamic properties were preserved, or (c) both structural and dynamic properties of the film were disrupted. Analyses of children's descriptions indicated that their propensity to describe the original display in anthropomorphic terms, like adults', is based on the patterns of motion that characterize the film.

Three experiments investigated the interpretation of conceptual combinations such as peeled apples. These experiments focused on verification of combination properties. Some properties (e.g., "round" for peeled apples) were verifiable by virtue of the noun alone, whereas others (e.g., "white" for peeled apples) required the combination of adjective and noun and generation of a new property not associated with either. Surprisingly, combination properties were verified more easily than noun properties, even under conditions of extremely rapid presentation. This finding contradicts a simple compositional model of combination in which components are analyzed prior to interpretation of the overall combination meaning. The implications for models of conceptual combination are discussed.

Preschoolers' thinking about kinship was explored by means of a simple induction task. A target animal was described as possessing a property, and children were asked whether each of 2 other animals shares the property or not. When no information about kinship was given, children in Experiment 1 based their inductions of biological properties on physical similarity. However, when kinship relations were specified, children judged that dissimilar-looking kin share more biological properties than similar-looking but unrelated members of the same species. In Experiment 2, describing the similar animals as socially related did not change the basic pattern of inductions obtained in the first experiment. Moreover, subjects in Experiment 3 did not induce more acquired physical and psychological properties among families than among unrelated animals. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 illustrate one case where young children favor a nonperceptible relation (kinship) over a perceptible one (similarity) as a basis for judgment. The overall pattern of data suggest that young children distinguish to some extent between the biological and social domains.

Two experiments evaluated the frequently reported claim that young children consider illness a form of punishment for misdeeds, or immanent justice. Most preschoolers in these experiments rejected the possibility of immanent justice, preferring instead the idea that illness results from contact with contaminants such as germs. Of the children who appeared to believe in immanent justice (e.g., by assenting that eating a stolen apple can make someone sick), many had been making assumptions about material contamination (e.g., the original owner was sick and contaminated the apple). Overall, children were more likely than adults to consider mild forms of contamination harmful. The results of these experiments are consistent with recent demonstrations of sophistication in early reasoning about biological phenomena.

People find their way through cluttered environments with ease and without injury. How do they do it? Two approaches to wayfinding are considered: Differential motion parallax (DMP) is a retinal motion invariant of near and far objects moving against fixation; the information in optical flow (IOF) is a radial pattern of vectors, relying on decomposition of retinal flow. Evidence is presented that DMP guides wayfinding during natural gait, accounting for errors as well as correct responses. Evidence against IOF is also presented, and a space-time aliasing artifact that can contaminate IOF displays is explored. Finally, DMP and IOF are separated, showing they can yield different results in different environments. Thus, it is concluded that (a) DMP and IOF are different, (b) DMP and not IOF is used for wayfinding, (c) moving observers do not usually decompose retinal flow, and (d) optical flow may be a mathematical fiction with no psychological reality.

Although Piaget characterized young children as precausal until about 7-8 years of age, recent work indicates that preschoolers do honor fundamental principles of causality. This literature has mainly focused on general principles invoked in reasoning about mechanical events. By contrast, the present study examined whether children differentiate between the causal mechanisms appropriate for different conceptual domains. The results of 3 preliminary investigations and 1 main experiment suggested that preschoolers prefer natural mechanisms for color inheritance in biological kinds, particularly when causal substrates resemble their consequences. By contrast, the same children recognized the importance of human intentions in producing the color of an artifact, and also judged that mechanical mechanisms serve to mediate between intentions and outcomes. The results are relevant to recent studies on the development of biological thought, and overall suggest that early causal reasoning reflects both domain-specific and domain-general principles.

Rozin, Markwith, and Ross (1990) have shown that people often feel reluctant to consume foods labeled as not poisonous. In one case, subjects saw an experimenter sweeten a drink with sugar, but rated the drink less desirable when the sugar bottle was labeled "not sodium cyanide" than when it was labeled "sugar." The authors attributed such results to a kind of irrational thinking in which indications of negativity are ignored. That is, although subjects were consciously aware of the negative modifier "not," they could not help being bothered by the labels. Two problems with this study should be noted. A point of minor concern is that the results are not entirely new: Wegner et al. (1981) have shown that a given political candidate is considered less admirable when described as not linked with the Mafia than when described in an innocuous way. A second problem is that although Rozin et al. claimed in several places that negative modifiers were "ignored," a more appropriate conclusion might be that the effect of the negatives was simply weakened. In Experiment 2, subjects were nearly twice as likely to choose a blank label over one that said "poison" as they were to choose a blank label over one that said "not poison." This suggests that the modifier "not" did affect subjects' preferences, and raises the possibility that some form of rational thinking was employed, contrary to Rozin et al.'s interpretation. I gathered further evidence for this possibility by asking 43 undergraduates to rate the desirability of a drink sweetened with sugar from cups labeled "sugar," "not poison," "definitely not sugar," "probably not poison," "not sugar," "probably not sugar," "poison," and "definitely not poison." (Subjects were told that the sugar in fact did not contain poison.) Several findings are germane. First, and consistent with Rozin et aI. 's data, the appearance of the word "poison" in a label caused a reliable decrease in preferences fOf a food known to be nonpoisonous. However, the extent of this decrease was influenced by the semantic content of the modifiers. For instance, the label "not poison" caused significantly less decrease in preference than the label "probably not

Four experiments were conducted to explore the correlation between syllable number and visual complexity in the acquisition of novel words. In the first experiment, adult English speakers invented nonsense words as names for random polygons differing in visual complexity. Visually simple polygons received names containing fewer syllables than visually complex polygons did. In addition, analyses of English word-object pairings indicated that a significant correlation between syllable number and visual complexity exists in the English lexicon. In Experiments 2 and 3, adult English speakers matched monosyllabic novel words more often than trisyllabic novel words with visually simple objects, whereas trisyllabic matches were more common for visually complex objects. Experiment 4 replicated these findings with children, indicating that the assumption of a correlation between word and visual complexity exists during the period of intense vocabulary growth. Although the actual correlation between syllable number and visual complexity is small, other posited constraints on word meaning are also limited in strength. However, an increasing number of small, language-specific word-meaning correlations are being uncovered. Given the documented ability of speakers to detect and use these subtle correlations, we argue that a more fruitful approach to word-meaning acquisition would forgo the search for a few broad, powerful word-meaning constraints, and we attempt to uncover individually weak, but perhaps jointly powerful word-meaning correspondences.

5 experiments investigated children's intuitions about genetic transmission of features. After parent animals possessing an abnormal feature were described, children were asked whether their baby would be born with that feature in abnormal or normal form. Features were either internal or external, inborn or acquired after birth, and had functional or nonfunctional consequences for the parents. Among preschoolers, features with functional consequences were considered inherited much more frequently than any other type, but only when the functional consequences were biological rather than social or psychological. Older children demonstrated more awareness of the inheritance of inborn traits. Overall, the results suggest young children have principled, specifically biological notions of inheritance.