No abstract

The arithmetical competencies of more than 200 Chinese or American kindergarten, first-, second-, or third-grade children were assessed toward the beginning and toward the end of the U.S. school year. All children were administered a paper-and-pencil test of addition skills, a digit span measure, and an addition strategy assessment. The addition strategy assessment provided information on the types of strategies the children used to solve simple addition problems as well as information on the speed and accuracy of their strategy use. Information on the number of math instruction periods across times of measurement was also obtained for each of the first-, second-, and third-grade children. The pattern of arithmetical development across the academic year and across the Chinese and American children suggests that a mix of cultural and maturational factors influence the emergence of early arithmetical competencies and that the Chinese advantage in early mathematical development is related to a combination of language- and school-related factors.

Compensatory strategies may improve outcomes for patients with schizophrenia.

We examined whether specific neurocognitive deficits predicted specific domains of community outcome in 40 schizophrenic patients. Neuropsychological assessments were conducted before hospital discharge, and measures of functional outcome were obtained 1 to 3.5 years later. A priori hypotheses were generated based upon a recent review by Green (Green MF [1996] What are the functional consequences of neurocognitive deficits in schizophrenia? American Journal of Psychiatry, 153(3):321-330). As hypothesized, verbal memory predicted all measures of community outcome, vigilance predicted social outcomes, and executive functioning predicted work and activities of daily living (ADLs). However, in addition to the predicted relationships, many other associations were found between neuropsychological test scores and adaptive function. Furthermore, both cognitive and functional measures were intercorrelated. If deficits in adaptive functioning are neurocognitively multi-determined, utilizing compensatory strategies to bypass multiple areas of cognitive impairment may be more efficient than cognitive remediation in improving community outcomes.