Choice vs. Preference: The Effects of Choice and No Choice of Preferred and Non Preferred Spelling Tasks on the Academic Behavior of Students with Disabilities

The effects of choice and no choice of preferred and non preferred instructional activities on the academic behavior of 3 students with disabilities were investigated. Participant preferences for spelling tasks were assessed and an ABCDEF design was used to examine choice and preference within 6 experimental conditions: a) choice of preferred tasks, b) choice of non preferred tasks, c) no choice of preferred tasks, d) no choice of non preferred tasks, e) no choice of preferred tasks (yoked-control), and f) no choice of non preferred tasks (yoked-control). Results indicate that all 3 participants had higher levels of task engagement when working with preferred tasks, regardless of a choice or no choice format. The findings from this investigation contribute to the growing body of research that focuses on developing interventions that are responsive to individual student preferences.     

The assessment of components involved in illusion formation using a long-term decrement procedure

Available evidence seems to indicate that illusion decrement represents reorganization of cognitive components involved in visual-geometric illusions. Observers viewed one of the two forms of the Mueller-Lyer illusion, containing differential opportunities for peripheral structural interactions, for a 10-min test session on each of 5 successive days. The magnitude of the distortion decreased to a different asymptotic level in each of the two configurations with the form, with more opportunity for structural interactions showing the higher asymptote. Thus, this asymptote probably represents the structural or physiological contribution to the illusory distortion.     

The fading of stabilized images: Eye movements and information processing

Two experiments are reported which indicate that neural and photochemical satiation processes are inadequate to explain the fading of the stabilized retinal image. When eye movements are attempted over the stimulus, fading occurs more rapidly, indicating an information processing component in the disappearance of the image.     

Recall of common and distinctive features of verbal and pictorial stimuli

Subjects first rated similarity of verbal and of pictorial stimuli. The same pairs of stimuli were presented again, without one common component and one distinctive component. Subjects were asked to recall the missing components and identify them as common or distinctive. The results show that components encoded as common are recalled relatively better than components encoded as distinctive, and the difference in recall is significantly greater in verbal than in pictorial stimuli.     

Visual angle and the word superiority effect

Two experiments are reported in which a word superiority effect is obtained under conditions where a fixed set of alternatives are employed with positional certainty as to the critical letter, trial type (word or nonword) is mixed, and the subject is told to fixate the position of the critical letter. A third experiment employed the same methodology except for the fact that the stimuli subtended a larger retinal angle. No word superiority effect was observed in the third experiment. It is suggested that the visual angle of the stimulus display is a crucial factor in experiments on the word superiority effect.     

Should Global Conservation Initiatives Prioritize Phylogenetic Diversity?

Philosophia - Some recent conservation proposals – including the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) EDGE of Existence programme – have focused on the value of protecting species...     

The role of personal development groups in counsellor training: understanding factors contributing to self-awareness in the personal development group

Personal development groups (PD groups) are widely employed in counsellor training with the aim of developing the self-awareness of trainee counsellors, and the intention of this paper is to open a discussion forum of the use of these groups and understand their use more fully. A quantitative and qualitative approach was employed in this study, using focus groups with a cross section of 88 trainees of counselling, at different points in their training, to establish those factors that were felt to contribute to developing self-awareness in the group. A questionnaire was used to measure both trainees' perceptions of their own self-awareness and the extent to which the contributory factors were felt to be both present and helpful in their current PD group (this is referred to as the 'comfort fit'). Statistical findings, from the full cohort of 88 trainees, indicated that they were more comfortable in the PD group at the start of their training and less comfortable at the end, although there was no clear relationship between there being a better 'comfort fit' and increased self-awareness. These findings are discussed in relation to alternative methods of facilitating the self-awareness of trainees of counselling (such as mandatory personal therapy) alongside the associated complexities of undertaking research of this kind.