Sequential detection of learning in cognitive diagnosis

In order to look more closely at the many particular skills examinees utilize to answer items, cognitive diagnosis models have received much attention, and perhaps are preferable to item response models that ordinarily involve just one or a few broadly defined skills, when the objective is to hasten learning. If these fine‐grained skills can be identified, a sharpened focus on learning and remediation can be achieved. The focus here is on how to detect when learning has taken place for a particular attribute and efficiently guide a student through a sequence of items to ultimately attain mastery of all attributes while administering as few items as possible. This can be seen as a problem in sequential change‐point detection for which there is a long history and a well‐developed literature. Though some ad hoc rules for determining learning may be used, such as stopping after M consecutive items have been successfully answered, more efficient methods that are optimal under various conditions are available. The CUSUM, Shiryaev–Roberts and Shiryaev procedures can dramatically reduce the time required to detect learning while maintaining rigorous Type I error control, and they are studied in this context through simulation. Future directions for modelling and detection of learning are discussed.     

Time after History: Derrida’s Two Readings of Heidegger

ABSTRACT

The essay situates and dissects Derrida’s two catalytic interventions into Heidegger’s thought on time and history—the seminar Heidegger: The Question of Being & History (1964-5) and the essay Ousia and Grammē (1968). The first aim is to explicate the relation of history to time in Heidegger’s seemingly untroubled passage from a textured and striated temporality into historicity, understood as structured, inscribed, and in a privileged sense, human time. Sustaining the difference of the inseparably intertwined notions of time and history is paramount for Heidegger, yet the place and function accorded to history will mark for Derrida, nothing less than the ultimate impasse of the project of Being and Time. Accordingly, the second aim of the essay is to present and question the productive elision of time and history that Derrida effects through narrative. On the one hand, this elision offers the ground of a forceful critique of the project of Being and Time. On the other hand, this pivotal gesture of deconstruction will always be compelled to seek, through a proliferation of names, those a-temporal and a-historical vanishing points for time and history that undercut the mutual conditioning of the two that it has laboured to effect.     

Emotional and behavioural problems in children dealing with maternal breast cancer: a literature review

ABSTRACT

A significant number of breast cancer survivors are living with their minor children. In this review we investigated the impact of maternal breast cancer on children. A literature search conducted through PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library and CINAHL yielded 26 relevant studies, which documented a variety of effects. Evidence has been presented that dealing with maternal breast cancer can cause uncertainty, anxiety and depression in children, but may also lead to enhanced social and academic performance. The risk of problems in these children is reported to be associated with both low parental affective responsiveness and excessive parental involvement. Internalising child problems were shown to be linked with maternal depression and family dysfunction, and externalising problems with family dysfunction and communication problems. Some of these problems may be modified by interventions for supporting these families, which should be designed to include both parents and children, and also the healthcare personnel.