Haptic search is more efficient when the stimulus can be interpreted as consisting of fewer items

In a typical haptic search task, separate items are presented to individual fingertips. The time to find a specific item generally increases with the number of items, but is it the number of items or the number of fingers that determines search time? To find out, we conducted haptic search experiments in which horizontal lines made of swell paper were presented to either two, four or six of the participants' fingertips. The task for the participant was to lift the finger under which they did not feel (part of) a line. In one of the conditions separate non-aligned lines were presented to the fingertips so that the number of items increased with the number of fingers used. In two other conditions the participants had to find an interruption in a single straight line under one of the fingertips. These conditions differed in the size of the gap. If only the number of items in the tactile display were important, search times would increase with the number of fingers in the first condition, but not depend on the number of fingers used in the other two conditions. In all conditions we found that the search time increased with the number of fingers used. However, this increase was smaller in the single line condition in which the gap was large enough for one finger to not make any contact with the line. Thus, the number of fingers involved determines the haptic search time, but search is more efficient when the stimulus can be interpreted as consisting of fewer items.     

A 1-year follow-up of an experimental study of a self-management arthritis programme with an added exercise component of clients with osteoarthritis of the knee

The aim was to assess the self-efficacy and health outcomes of an adopted Arthritis Self-Management Programme (ASMP) among osteoarthritic knee sufferers in Hong Kong at 1 year. An experimental study with 95 participants assigned randomly to the intervention (n=45) or control group (n=50). Seventy-seven (81.1%) participants joined at least one out of three follow-ups in the 12 month period. Participants in the intervention group received a 6-week ASMP with an added exercise component in two general clinics. Outcome measures included arthritis self-efficacy (ASE) and health outcomes including pain and fatigue rating, self-rated health, daily activities limitation and number of unplanned arthritis-related medical consultations. Mean change (12 months minus baseline) and the effect size of the outcome measures were calculated by Mann-Whitney U test and nQuery Advisor 4.0. At 12 months, there were significant reductions of current pain (p=0.0001), pain at night (p=0.001), pain during walking (p=0.01) and number of unplanned arthritis-related medical consultations (p=0.03) and a significant increase in ASE for pain (p=0.01) and other symptoms (p=0.02) and self-rated health (p=0.04) among the intervention group but not for the control group. However, there were similarities in outcome measures of pain while switching from a sitting to a standing position, fatigue rating and physical functional limitation (p=0.15; p=0.22 and p=0.91, respectively) for both groups. Our findings add to the evidence that the modified arthritis empowering programme improved perception of control of osteoarthritis and three health outcomes after 12 months of treatment.     

Assessing psycholinguistic orientation and decoding strategies for remedial and nonremedial readers

Remedial readers (8 to 9 year olds) were compared with nonremedial readers of the same age with younger children (6 to 7 year olds) in terms of their acceptance of a psycholinguistic approach vs. a decoding approach to reading, and in terms of the strategies they reported for word attack. Neither remedial nor nonremedial readers (except for a few older nonremedial readers) indicated willingness to skip words in a sentence, but remedial readers were less willing to skip over letters in a word, a psycholinguistic strategy that might allow them to find and use letter patterns to determine an unknown word. They also showed a heavy emphasis on phonic and a narrower range of potential strategies than did other children of the same age.     

Questioning as an instructional method: Does it affect learning from lectures?

What can be done to improve student engagement and learning in college lectures? One approach is to ask questions that students answer during the lecture. In two lab experiments, students received a 25‐slide PowerPoint lecture in educational psychology that included four inserted multiple‐choice questions (questioning group) or four corresponding statements (control group). Students in the questioning group used a personal response system (PRS), in which they responded to questions using a hand‐held remote control, saw a graph displaying the percentage of students voting for each answer, and heard the teacher provide an explanation for the correct answer. Students in the control group received the corresponding slide as a statement and heard the teacher provide an explanation. The questioning group outperformed the control group on a retention test in Experiment 1 (d = 1.23) and on a transfer test in Experiment 2 (d = 0.74), but not on other tests. The results are consistent with a generative theory of learning, and encourage the appropriate use of questioning as an instructional method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Language Outcome After Perinatal Stroke: Does Side Matter?

The goal of this study was to examine structured language skills in children with perinatal strokes. Participants were 28 school-age children with early focal brain lesions (17 with left hemisphere [LH] damage, 11 with right hemisphere [RH] damage), and 57 controls. A standardized test of language (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Revised) was administered. Receptive, Expressive, and Total Language scores, as well as subtest scores, were analyzed. Control participants scored within the normal range, whereas the LH and RH groups scored significantly more poorly than did controls. There were no differences between the LH and RH groups on any of the language scores, and all scores were below the 14th percentile. Within the lesion group as a whole, scores were not related to lesion laterality, site, or severity. Results also were not accounted for by socioeconomic status or IQ. However, children who experienced seizures demonstrated significantly poorer performance than did children who did not experience seizures. Damage to either the LH or RH early in development adversely affects later language abilities, particularly on tasks with structured and complex linguistic demands. Although lesion side has little effect, the presence or absence of seizures is a major contributor to language outcome.