The Development of Spatial Skills Through Interventions Involving Block Building Activities

This study investigated the use of block-building interventions to develop spatial-reasoning skills in kindergartners. Two intervention conditions and a control condition were included to determine, first, whether the block building activities themselves benefited children's spatial skills, and secondly, whether a story context further improved learning. Spatial measures included: spatial visualization, mental rotation, and block building. Results showed: for block building, interventions within a story context improved performance compared to the other two conditions. For spatial visualization, both types of block-building interventions improved performance compared to the control condition. Findings suggest: (1) storytelling provides an effective context for teaching spatial content, (2) teaching block building develops wider spatial skills, and (3) 3-dimensional mental rotation tasks show a male advantage in kindergartners.     

Data Karaoke: Sensory and Bodily Skills in Conference Presentations

At the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to sonification and the use of non-speech sound to represent information, presenters make use of a variety of bodily skills and representations that appeal to the senses of their audience. In many established disciplines, the conventions that guide the use of these skills and representations are taken for granted; but within ICAD, they are often explicitly negotiated. The practice of ‘data karaoke', in which researchers mimic the sound of a sonification with their own voice, is particularly instructive for understanding these negotiations, and the ICAD community more generally. Data karaoke fulfils five functions: embodiment, highlighting, illustration, authorisation and integration. To make sense of data karaoke, we have to understand the institutional and intellectual environment in which this peculiar practice has emerged; but conversely, an understanding of data karaoke can help us throw new light on epistemological debates about the hierarchy of the senses: data karaoke is a multisensory skill engaging the whole body of the sonification researcher, and thus calls into question the dominant epistemological discourse within the ICAD community, in which the different sensory modalities are framed as competitors. The ICAD case shows that studying conferences as sites where bodies interact, and presentations as performances involving the bodies and senses of scientists, helps us to understand not only the conference cultures, but also the ideals about scientific scholarship and academic authority held by scientific communities.     

Unpacking Backlash: Individual and Contextual Moderators of Bias against Female Professors

This research unpacks backlash against female professors by examining how individual characteristics and social context interact to predict student evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com. As predicted, students evaluated female professors in high-status departments more negatively than female professors in low-status departments, and this backlash effect was attenuated when the female professor was “hot.” Moreover, backlash was most pronounced for female professors who had been hired more recently and who were tough graders. A follow-up experiment replicated the main findings concerning status and attractiveness and suggested that perceived gender nonconformity may help to explain backlash against female professors.     

Increasing the number of contacts generated during contact tracing interviews

ABSTRACT

To stem the spread of infectious diseases (e.g., Ebola), epidemiologists conduct contact tracing interviews (CTIs) with infected individuals regarding their contacts who may also be infected. These contact tracing interviews, however, may be vulnerable to deadly errors of omission. A promising technique to maximise recall is the Cognitive Interview (CI), which is grounded in psychological theory. In the present study, participants imagined they were infected with meningococcal meningitis and reported their contacts over the previous three days during either a control interview or a CI. To model the cognitive impairment associated with being sick, half of the participants were interviewed while simultaneously completing a cognitive impairment task. The CI generated more contacts than the control interview. However, when the cognitive impairment task was completed, the CI and the control interview performed similarly. We recommend the CI be considered as an alternative to the control interview, particularly if the interviewee is not temporarily impaired due to distraction or illness.     

Stronger evidence for own-age effects in memory for older as compared to younger adults

Three studies examined whether younger and older adults better recall information associated with their own than information related to another age group. All studies compared young and older adults with respect to incidental memory for previously presented stimuli (Studies 1 and 2: everyday objects; Study 3: vacation advertisements) that had been randomly paired with an age-related cue (e.g., photo of a young or an old person; the word “young” or “old”). All three studies found the expected interaction of participants’ age and age-associated information. Studies 1 and 2 showed that the memory bias for information arbitrarily associated with one's own as compared to another age group was significant for older adults only. However, when age-relevance was introduced in a context of equal importance to younger and older adults (information about vacations paired either with pictures of young or older adults), the memory bias for one's own age group was clearly present for both younger and older adults (Study 3).     

The Use of Audio Guides to Collect Individualized Timing and Tracking Data in a Science Center Exhibition

ABSTRACT

Timing and tracking is a common method used to collect data about visitor behavior in exhibitions. Typically, it involves the unobtrusive observation of visitors. The purpose of this article is to present an alternative method for automated timing and tracking using an audio guide system. In the first part of the article, existing timing and tracking methods are reviewed to reveal their advantages and limitations. Against this background, the requirements of an alternative method for tracking large numbers of visitors in an interactive science center are discussed. Audio guides, which are commonly used in museum exhibitions, are used to track the movement of single visitors. In the second part of the article, the use of this method is illustrated in the context of a study on the orientation and choice behavior of visitor groups in an exhibition on biotechnology, molecular biology, and genetics. In conclusion, the benefits and limitations of our approach are discussed.     

Healthy and Maladaptive Dependency and Its Relationship to Pain Management and Perceptions in Physical Therapy Patients

This study examined the association among healthy and maladaptive aspects of interpersonal dependency and the management of pain in physical therapy outpatients. Ninety-eight patients were administered the Relationship Profile Test, West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory, and Pain Catastrophizing Scale. Results indicated that Destructive Overdependence was positively associated with an increased number of office visits, pain interference in one’s daily life, pain severity, affective distress, and receiving positive partner responses. Dysfunctional Detachment was associated with affective distress, pain interference in one’s daily life, and rumination about pain. Healthy Dependency was only associated with receiving distracting responses from others. Believing that a spouse/partner is supportive and caring about one’s pain partially mediated the relationship between overdependency and pain interfering in one’s life. These results support the clinical utility of assessing interpersonal dependency for its relationship to managing one’s pain and health care utilization.     

The Good and the Gross

Recent empirical studies have established that disgust plays a role in moral judgment. The normative significance of this discovery remains an object of philosophical contention, however; ‘disgust skeptics’ such as Martha Nussbaum have argued that disgust is a distorting influence on moral judgment and has no legitimate role to play in assessments of moral wrongness. I argue, pace Nussbaum, that disgust’s role in the moral domain parallels its role in the physical domain. Just as physical disgust tracks physical contamination and pollution, so moral disgust tracks social contamination. I begin by examining the arguments for skepticism about disgust and show that these arguments threaten to overgeneralize and lead to a widespread skepticism about the justifiability of our moral judgments. I then look at the positive arguments for according disgust a role in moral judgment, and suggest that disgust tracks invisible social contagions in much the same way as it tracks invisible physical contagions, thereby serving as a defense against the threat of socio-moral contamination.