The Mirror of ERISED

The article I read for my January Exploring the Field entry was, "Children with Comorbid Speech Sound Disorder and Specific Language Impairment are at Increased Risk for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder," by Lauren M. McGrath, Christa Hutaff-Lee, Ashley Scott, Richard Boada, Lawrence D. Shriberg & Bruce F. Pennington.

The study was interested in the comorbidity of speech sound disorder (SSD) with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The purpose of their study was to fill what they considered a gap in the research of disorders comorbid with ADHD because previous studies did not use diagnostic criteria as precise as the current researchers employed and other comorbidity studies had focused mainly on links with reading disability (RD). They were also interested in the effect of specific language impairment (SLI) and two subgroups of SSD: persistent and normalized, on the symptomatology of ADHD.

108 SSD children and 41 controls ages 4 to 7 years were recruited and assessed for ADHD symptomatology by means of parent and teacher questionnaires and a DSM-IV ADHD rating scale. Children were also evaluated by the Sounds-in-Words subtest of the Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation.

The results supported their first hypothesis that participants with both SSD and a SLI would show more symptomatology for ADHD than the groups without SLI and the control group. More specifically, the group with both SSD and SLI showed higher rates of inattentiveness than the other groups. Parents and teachers reported a higher rate of impairment for this group than the other groups as well. The researchers also hypothesized that persistence (specifically normalized) of the SSD would interact with SLI to increase ADHD symptomatology. There was a significant interaction between persistence and SLI, but instead of the persistent-type SSD interacting with SLI to intensify ADHD symptomatology, the group with normalized-type SSD + SLI showed more intense inattentive ADHD symptomatology than the other groups.

The researchers explained an interest in contributing their findings to the pursuit of genetic etiology for ADHD and its comorbid disorders.

I chose this article because I am interested in everything concerning ADHD. I have looked into other facets of this disorder, but because of the nature of our Junior Seminar, I decided to see its relationship to language: a facet I have not specifically explored until now. This article especially peaked my interest because its participants were children of the age group I am most interested in studying with relation to ADHD.

My specific interest is in studying factors influencing the development of ADHD by children of pre-school to early elementary school age. All obstacles eliminated, I would really be interested in studying or conducting a study that would examine the effects of nutrition, physical exercise, and/or sleeping habits on the alleviation of ADHD symptoms in children of this age group.

Even though this article was not specific to my highest interest in ADHD, it was useful because it exposed me to another facet of the disorder that I had not yet explored. I would have liked to see the researchers use participants who had actually been diagnosed with ADHD by a professional, but the variables in the study were very interesting.

http://0-www.springerlink.com.allecat3.allegheny.edu/content/j171kj8j1247071j/fulltext.html

Here is a sample ADHD rating scale I found. I do not know if it is the exact scale used in the study, but it was interesting to see what the parents and teachers may have been rating.
http://www.fmpe.org/en/documents/appendix/Appendix%201%20-%20ADHD%20Rating%20Scale.pdf

Throughout this semester I plan to do a great deal of exploring the field. This can be very difficult since I really have no idea of which way I would like to go with my senior comprehensive study. I am ultimately interested in the school psychology and teaching fields; however, this does not help me to narrow anything down.

Later this spring I will be presenting a paper with some other Allegheny College students and one of our professors. The conference topic and research has started to spark my interest some and interestingly enough relates fairly well to the information covered in this junior seminar course. The conference is entitled Teachers, Teaching, and the Movies. I have found it interesting to look at how computer-mediated communications such as Second Life, Facebook and YouTube, along with many others can be used in teaching.

While looking through the Academic OneFile database I came across an article called Web 2.0: today’s technologies, tomorrow’s learning. This article by Groff and Haas was very down to earth and user friendly. The researchers have been looking at different case studies in which middle school and high school teachers are making their classrooms more technologically savvy. From the examples given there have been some trails to get passed; however, the results are great. With this generation of children being so into their video games and other technologies, it seems as though the best way to teach.

It is suggested that teachers join groups such as Ning, Facebook, Explore Science, and Club Penguin to learn more about these different games or simulations which can be used in the classroom to communicate skills and situations that are practically impossible to replicate live in a classroom. This gives students the ability to act through a computer using these virtual skills they obtain.

Students are so familiar with these technologies, or in most cases they are, that it makes learning even more fun for them. This is one way in which teachers can shape their teaching habits to encompass the hobbies of their students. Two teachers mentioned with success stories from these types of programs are Hal Scheintaub and Ross Fitzgerald. These teachers are able to bring situations to life for their students through the use of computer-mediated technologies in their classrooms.

This whole idea of making classrooms even more "virtualized" is so new to these times. It is very interesting to think that skills and knowledge can be obtained by doing something virtually. It is that idea that has become increasingly interesting to me. These ideas are something I hope to look into further, even though I am just beginning to try to narrow down what it really is that I would be interested in researching for my senior comprehensive study.

I'll be straightforward, honest, and blunt. No less than two days ago I had no idea what I wanted to do for my senior comp project. This fact was not due to any lack of thinking or planning on my part. On the contrary, I stressed about it probably more than most people did because it seemed like almost everyone else had a very clear idea regarding the subject and nature of their comp, and I was still in the "I have no [insert whatever you like here] idea" stage.

Needless to say, I was not looking forward to the end of my Junior year, my meetings with my advisor(s), or even this blog entry, because all of them required me to have a considerably more developed plan than what I was boasting at the time. Then, this morning I had a revelation. It happened where many of my revelations often do. It came to me in the shower.

I want to go into Elementary Education, and so language skills are very important to me. Several of the readings and discussions from our Junior Seminar class that involved the various effects of different media of communication (face-to-face, letter, e-mail, "txting") have intrigued me, and I realized this morning that none of them have mentioned the sequence effects of one on another. I forget the exact terminology for the effect (it's been a full year since I've taken a class in Psychological Statistics...order effects?), but I'm willing to bet that examining the grammar that people use in writing formal essays before and after writing informal e-mails (and vice versa) would produce interesting and worthwhile results. As it stands right now, my comp project will probably involve setting up a situation that can measure those effects.

As for research in the topic area, I figured that I would need some knowledge of what is considered more or less standard as far as the grammar and language mechanics used in electronic communication. Despite the fact that it is almost 17 years old, and e-mail and how use it have both changed a lot over those years, the study I found provides a very interesting view at how people view e-mail, how it is used, and, most interestingly, precisely what language mechanics are viewed as appropriate and inappropriate for e-mail. The study is entitled The Influence of Electronic Transmission on Written Communication, and was conducted by Joel P. Bowman of Western Michigan University.

The study was conducted in a business setting, and questionnaires were distributed to a group of participants, some of whom were business professionals, some of whom were academians, and all of whom were well-versed in the art of sending and receiving e-mails. The participants were asked to respond to questions on a survey that asked them about what is appropriate, effective, and desirable in e-mails. They were also asked to rewrite questions that they found inadequate, and these rewrites were adopted for the two subsequent surveys. When all of the responses were analyzed, it was found that, out of more than 80 items on each of the three surveys, not a single one was ever agreed or disagreed with by a signficant portion of the participants. In other words, the study failed to find a single concensus on the "rules" of grammar appropriate for e-mails.

This study concluded that the rules of what sorts of linguistic mechanisms are appropriate are still quite ambiguous, or at least they were in 1992 when the study was conducted. This implies that other forms of linguistic behavior, such as formal essay writing, that do have reasonably fixed and agreed-upon grammatical and mechanical rules, may affect the loosely-policed composition of an e-mail, especially if the e-mail is written in close temporal proximity to the writing of the formal essay.

I’m not going to lie about it; Baron’s Always On began to worry me about a possible lack of excitement when I began reading Chapter Six: Having Your Say. While I was a bit confused and struggling to find interest at first, as usual I quickly began making connections.

It is difficult to find connections with types of computer-mediated communications that I am not exactly familiar with. Throughout this chapter I began to learn a great deal about the history of some of the CMCs that I am not as comfortable with yet. The connection that struck me as most interesting was definitely the idea that talk radio has in a way transformed into blogging.

Last Saturday night, I went to the first concert that Grounds For Change (the on-campus student-run coffee shop, for anyone reading this who isn't paying - or getting paid by - Allegheny tuition dollars) hosted this semester. The first guy to go up sat on a piano bench and plucked out a few very mellow, deceivingly simplistic songs of self-exploration and reflection on his electric guitar. Everyone sat in a series of semi-circles around him on the floor, clapped appreciatively after each song, and laughed light-heartedly whenever he would make a witty observation or improvise a bit of wordplay between songs. He was fun.

It became clear, however, after the second guy played a few songs, that there was a reason that the first guy went first. The second guy was a real crowd-pleaser. He asked all of the audience to stand in a very close circle surrounding him, so that no one was farther than 3 or so feet away from him. He stood in the circle and played the life out of his guitar, and made the audience sing along to the repetitive songs. After each song, he would bestow some truly touching philosophies on life to the forty or so enchanted college students standing around him. At one point, he started to explain how grateful he was that we call came out to see the show. "What a beautiful thing it is," he said, "that all of us are here tonight, right now. So many shows, you go and see a bunch of pretentious losers up on stage trying to act like they're cooler than everyone else there, and everyone buys into it and then leaves as soon as the show is over so that they can go home and blog about it."

Wikipedia has always been mysterious to me. But I've used it a couple of times. My professors here and teachers in high school always told me that I could start looking at a topic by searching Wikipedia but to never cite it as a source.

The quote Baron cites in Always On by Robert McHenry really struck me. Considering the accuracy of Wikipedia entries he states, "some unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy" (Baron, 2008).

But when? And how will we know that Wikipedia has reached this point? Who will decide that everything is finally up to par? "Wikipedians" will. If they ever stop playing their game.

Wikipedia is filling the ultimate role of soap box in this technological age. I considered creating an account as I was browsing the site for information to write this blog. But then I wondered what in the world I considered myself enough of an expert on to think that I was worthy of telling people about it. I wondered if "Wikipedians" have this thought process or if it really is a glorified blogging site. Baron writes of professors that are addicted to writing and editing Wikipedia and I'm glad those people are out there.

But the largest question is why people write and edit for Wikipedia. It may be very prestigious to think that you have established the ultimate truth about a certain subject, but a minute later someone else can simply erase your thoughts and replace them with their own. It seems like a great game. Who is going to be the one to write or make the final edit to the topic of say, "Blogs" when McHenry's day of reckoning has come and all the Wikipedians editing that topic say "that's it"?

It occurred to me that this might have something to do with Erikson's theory of generativity and that we all might want to leave our little mark on the knowledge that gets passed down to the next generation. Or it may be that we all just need to put our two cents in as they always say. Regardless, Wikipedia has provided a means of free (objective) speech using technology and seems to be striving to be the ultimate democratic compendium of knowledge.

My English teacher that I had for all of my Senior and Junior years, as well as for half of my Sophomore year, was notorious for disliking poetry. He always said that he appreciated it and understood the importance of poetry to the English language and culture. He just didn't enjoy reading it, analyzing it, discussing it, or teaching it. So, for two and a half years we read the classics. Most of them were either novels about coming of age or maturity, like Catcher in the Rye or A Separate Peace, or dystopia novels, like 1984, Animal Farm, Anthem, or Brave New World. Standard high school stuff. When the time came, though, when I and my classmates would be graduating in about a month, I finally voiced my complaint that we never studied any poetry, from any era. He grumbled about it for a week or so, but then finally admitted that it was an important thing to cover before heading off to college. He handed out quite an extensive list of famous and influential English and American poets and said that we had to hand in a page-long biography of each of them along with any one of their poems we chose. Two in particular stand out: "The Tyger" by William Blake and "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks. I was reminded of the latter while reading Chapter 2 of David Crystal's book, txting: the gr8 db8.

I really had fun reading the first two chapters of David Crystal's txtng, :) so my blog is about several topics discussed.

I found a really funny YouTube video that suggested to me the innate value of a fast form of communication. I will not ruin the result of the competition between text messaging and Morse Code, but I found it interesting to think that both forms of communication were valued for their speed, which seems to be a large reason for abbreviations, lack of punctuation and capitalization, etc., in texting. These are the elements that some people think are negatively affecting our language. Yet valuing speed of communication saved some passengers of the Titanic.

It is also interesting to consider that I have never heard of anyone suggesting that morse code was a negative influence on our communication, yet it was not even letters, but dots and dashes. I understand that Morse code was not used by such a multitude of people, but isn't text abbreviations, lack of punctuation, etc., just a form of code? We can interpret that "u" stands for "you." Regardless, it added to the positive light that Crystal seems to be shedding on text messaging.

Wntd 2 c f cld wrt w/t vwls. Hrd!

This is how i would actually text:
I wanted 2 c if i could write w/out vowels-it was hard!

i think it would have taken me longer to think about how to write w/out vowels than to just type them on my non-qwerty phone keypad

This is a text msg i got today:
"if you havent scheduled a time to see the place yet i think if youre free earlier you should see the place so you have a better idea before room draw"
This is another:
"Ill call u after asg"

These messages were both from female friends, but as Crystal explains in Chapter 2, the messages (even without vowels) are intelligible. I would say that these texts are fairly representative of the texts I receive on a regular basis. There are several interesting characteristics of these messages.

David Crystal’s txtng the gr8 db8, could possibly become one of my favorite books. I am one of the people that contributed to the 205 text messages sent out Christmas Day of 2006. In the first two chapters alone I have really begun enjoying the stance Crystal holds for texting. In comparison to the previous book I read by Naomi Baron, called Always On, I find myself relating much more to Crystal’s statements. I enjoy texting and I honestly do not feel as though it is hindering my linguistic abilities. I also enjoy the newness of texting and how much of a mystery it still remains.

Personally, I have not really determined a distinct method of texting, some days I will use a lot of short hand and abbreviations filled with emoticons; however, other days I will simply use complete sentences as though I were writing a research paper. A big question that has crept into my mind while reading Crystal’s book is: do people have a distinct texting style? Are most people pretty consistent with how they formulate their text messages or is it something that changes from message to message?

I came across The Influence of Phonetic Abbreviations on the Evaluation of Student Performance, written by G. W. Lewandowski, Jr. and S. Harrington in 2006 by typing gramma* and impression formation into the fields in an academic search engine. These tags, along with the ideas of the effects of written communication on face-to-face communication/impression, seem to be the main themes of my research question as it currently stands. It was one of the very few entries that came up, so I was a bit discouraged, but decided to read the abstract over and give it a fair chance. It ended up being extremely informative, interesting, and helpful, and I can't believe that I didn't come across it until recently, even though I've been using generally similar search terms for the majority of my research for a while.

Two words that scare me quite a bit these days have been “senior comp”. I have never really been able to pin point where my great interest in research lies. Through the past few weeks of my Junior Seminar I have in a way been pushed to look at and read many different journal entries that are interesting to me. The use of computer-mediated communications and the idea of education have really seemed to connect for me in this Junior Seminar. I began thinking about other teaching methods used by professors and teachers and I began to notice that, other courses I have taken that have started using such teaching tactics. This gave me the idea to research a little further. Through this search I landed on a journal entry called Student Perceptions of Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communications in Face-to-Face Courses written by Yun-Jo An and Theodore Frick from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

An and Frick performed a survey-based research experiment in search of answers to four research questions. The question first dealt with students’ comfort with computer-mediated communications (CMC) asking, “When compared to face-to-face discussion, do residential students feel comfortable in CMC? What are the factors that might affect perceived comfort with CMC in face-to-face courses?” The second research question explored specific types of tasks and the use of CMC which asked, “When working on different types of tasks (ambiguous, unequivocal, complex, simple, decision-making, and idea generating tasks), do students prefer face-to-face discussion of CMC? Why?” These questions were very interesting to me and just made me eager to find out their results. The final two research questions were, “What CMC factors do residential students perceive as satisfactory or as frustrating? What do residential students perceive as being needed for learning best from computer-mediated discussion?” These questions were very intriguing to me and since the research question for my project is still under construction and needs a lot of shaping these were able to give me good ideas of topics to research.

A consideration I took into account when reading about this research was the ability to perform a similar study here at Allegheny College. These questions gave me the confidence to know that something similar to this could be performed and researched at Allegheny College. This is a major consideration I would need to keep in mind if I wanted to perform a similar research topic here. The researchers used a simple survey which would be a great way to gather information about the topic.

The results showed that most students at the time would rather have face-to-face discussions opposed to computer-mediated communications discussions. While the researchers found these results they still found a good number of students who preferred these new teaching and discussion methods. They also gave further encouragement to future research. One topic of further interest that An and Frick suggested was the use of synchronous media in learning situations as apposed to their research of asynchronous media. I found this picture that really illustrates the new uses of computer-mediated communications:

This reserach can be found by clicking the earlier link or through this citation:

An, Y., & Frick, T. (2006). Student perceptions of asynchronous computer-mediated communication in face-to-face courses. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), 485-499. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00023.x