The impact of accountability on teachers’ assessments of student performance: a social cognitive analysis

Research on teachers’ judgments of student performance has demonstrated that educational assessments may be biased or may more correctly take the achievements of students into account depending on teachers’ motivations while making the judgment. Building on research on social judgment formation the present investigation examined whether the accountability of teachers has an influence on judgment formation. We predicted that unaccountable teachers would activate social categories and use them for the assessment, whereas accountable teachers’ attention would be directed to individual attributes of students. Using secondary school teachers as participants, three studies investigating teachers’ assessments, inferences and memory for students’ attributes supported these hypotheses. Thus, accountability appears to be a moderator of social information processing and judgment formation in the domain of educational assessments.     

Modeling recall memory for emotional objects in Alzheimer's disease

ABSTRACT

Objective: To examine whether emotional memory (EM) of objects with self-reference in Alzheimer's disease (AD) can be modeled with binomial logistic regression in a free recall and an object recognition test to predict EM enhancement.?Method: Twenty patients with AD and twenty healthy controls were studied. Six objects (three presented as gifts) were shown to each participant. Ten minutes later, a free recall and a recognition test were applied. The recognition test had target–objects mixed with six similar distracter objects. Participants were asked to name any object in the recall test and identify each object in the recognition test as known or unknown.?Results: The total of gift objects recalled in AD patients (41.6%) was larger than neutral objects (13.3%) and a significant EM recall effect for gifts was found (Wilcoxon: p < .003). EM was not found for recognition in AD patients due to a ceiling effect. Healthy older adults scored overall higher in recall and recognition but showed no EM enhancement due to a ceiling effect. A logistic regression showed that likelihood of emotional recall memory can be modeled as a function of MMSE score (p < .014) and object status (p < .0001) as gift or non-gift.?Conclusion: Recall memory was enhanced in AD patients for emotional objects indicating that EM in mild to moderate AD although impaired can be provoked with strong emotional load. The logistic regression model suggests that EM declines with the progression of AD rather than disrupts and may be a useful tool for evaluating magnitude of emotional load.     

Connecting Experience and Economy—Aspects of Disguised Positioning

The focus of this article is the use of experience made within the literature of the “new” economical discipline of experience economy. By combining a methodological individualism with a causal and dehumanising picture of the process of experience, this discipline conceives economic interactions as acts of autonomy. These acts, it is claimed, are part of economical instrumental reason restructuring itself by using experiences as tools in convincing consumers that they are free to pursue their respective paths of lives. Described through the use of positioning theory, however, this turns out to be a result of an effort of equipping consumers with a new economic norm of forced positioning disguised as deliberate self-positioning.     

Herrschen und Lieben als Grundmotive der philosophischen Weltanschauungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Approximate entropy and point correlation dimension of heart rate variability in healthy subjects

The contribution of nonlinear dynamics to heart rate variability in healthy humans was examined using surrogate data analysis. Several measures of heart rate variability were used and compared. Heart rates were recorded for three hours and original data sets of 8192 R-R intervals created. For each original data set (n=34), three surrogate data sets were made by shuffling the order of the R-R intervals while retaining their linear correlations. The difference in heart rate variability between the original and surrogate data sets reflects the amount of nonlinear structure in the original data set. Heart rate variability was analyzed by two different nonlinear methods, point correlation dimension and approximate entropy. Nonlinearity, though under 10 percent, could be detected with both types of heart rate variability measures. More importantly, not only were the correlations between these measures and the standard deviation of the R-R intervals weak, the correlation among the nonlinear measures themselves was also weak (generally less than 0.6). This suggests that in addition to standard linear measures of heart rate variability, the use of multiple nonlinear measures of heart rate variability might be useful in monitoring heart rate dynamics.