Quantitative information presentation and gender: an interaction effect.

The authors investigated whether performance on mathematical test items would be influenced by an interaction between presentation format and gender. One hundred fourteen students in a management accounting course were randomly assigned either to a tabular format or to a graphics format. There were significant main effects for gender and presentation format; men outperformed women, and the subjects who received the tabular format outperformed the subjects who received the graphics format. A significant interaction supported the existence of a conditional relationship between performance on mathematical test items and presentation format. This relationship varied as a function of gender (symmetry permits the interchange of presentation format and gender). Simple effects for the interaction determined that the women who received the graphics presentation did not perform as well as their male counterparts, or as well as other women and men who received the tabular format. The results of this study indicate that presentation format is an important consideration in gender differences for mathematics performance.     

How can studies of information consumers be used to improve the educational communication system?

What do more than, two decades of studies of education information consumers tell us that might be helpful for developing an information system that would be more responsive to consumer needs and more compatible with their information search and use behavior? The essence of the answer is that information and communication behavior, in the aggregate, is extremely complex and multiply determined. However, research suggests that the information market can be segmented into submarkets, that there are several modal “information styles” for each submarket, and that perhaps the most promising strategies for improving systemwide effectiveness would, be to focus more attention on improving the performance of information brokers and intermediaries, and the performance of the print-prone gate keepers in the various types of organizations that use educational information.     

How Effectively Do We Predict Plans for College Attendance?

The extent to which college attendance could be predicted by taking into consideration a wide range of variables—ability, school achievement, and socio-economic, cultural, and personality factors—was examined. Multiple correlation coefficients in the vicinity of .6 were obtained both for the total population and for homogeneous sub-populations.     

Adult's Eyes Trigger Shifts of Visual Attention in Human Infants

Two experiments examined whether infants shift their visual attention in the direction toward which an adult's eyes turn. A computerized modification of previous joint-attention paradigms revealed that infants as young as 3 months attend in the same direction as the eyes of a digitized adult face. This attention shift was indicated by the latency and direction of their orienting to peripheral probes presented after the face was extinguished. A second experiment found a similar influence of direction of perceived gaze, but also that less peripheral orienting occurred if the central face remained visible during presentation of the probe. This may explain why attention shifts triggered by gaze perception have been difficult to observe in infants using previous naturalistic procedures. Our new method reveals both that direction of perceived gaze can be discriminated by young infants and that this perception triggers corresponding shifts of their own attention.     

The effect of instructional bias on listener ratings of specific disfluency types in children

This study evaluated the influence of instructional bias on severity ratings of children's disfluencies. Normal speaking children were trained to simulate specific types of disfluency and severity judgments were made by judges who had been exposed to instructional bias. The 75 judges who participated in the study were divided into three groups of 25 each and were given a bias “toward stuttering,” bias “toward fluency,” and a “neutral” bias toward neither perceptual set. Both univariate and multivariate analyses were employed for data analysis.Although predictable differences were found between the specific types of speech disfluency, no significant differences were found for the experimental bias conditions. These findings, based on molecular analyses, differ from previous results based on molar speech samples. Molecular approaches to understanding the nature of stuttering were found to be powerful modes of assessment, and it is suggested that the type of disfluency emitted by children may be more important than the instructional bias or perceptual set of the listener.     

Interview training with adolescents—A controlled group study incorporating generalization and social validation

Ten school-leavers were allocated either to an interview-training group (E) or a discussion control group (C) for three sessions. For E group a combination of modelling, coaching, roleplay, feedback and discussion was used to train both verbal and non-verbal interview skills. An attempt was made to programme generalization of treatment effect into training and subjective evaluations of interview skill were made by an experienced Personnel Officer to assess the social importance of the skills trained. After C group had completed three sessions to control for the non-specific effects of being in therapy, they received the same training as E group. Subjects were assessed using videotaped roleplayed interviews at the beginning and end of each training phase. After training E group showed significant improvements on both global and specific ratings of interview skill compared to C group; there was evidence of generalization and maintenance of treatment effect and the social importance of the skills trained was substantiated by the subjective evaluation data. C group then went on to replicate the changes in E group.     

Imitation in language development: If,when, and why

In order to explore the function of imitation for first language learning, imitative and spontaneous utterances were compared in the naturalistic speech of six children in the course of their development from single-word utterances (when mean length of utterance was essentially 1.0) to the emergence of grammar (when mean length of utterance approached 2.0). The relative extent of imitation, and lexical and grammatical variation in imitative and spontaneous speech were determined. There were inter-subject differences in the extent of imitation, but each child was consistent in the tendency to imitate or not to imitate across time. For those children who imitated, there were both lexical and grammatical differences in imitative and spontaneous speech, and a developmental shift from imitative to spontaneous use of particular words and semantic-syntactic relations between words. The results are discussed as evidence of an active processing of model utterances relative to the contexts in which they occur for information for language learning.     

Ethics, pandemics, and the duty to treat

Numerous grounds have been offered for the view that healthcare workers have a duty to treat, including expressed consent, implied consent, special training, reciprocity (also called the social contract view), and professional oaths and codes. Quite often, however, these grounds are simply asserted without being adequately defended or without the defenses being critically evaluated. This essay aims to help remedy that problem by providing a critical examination of the strengths and weaknesses of each of these five grounds for asserting that healthcare workers have a duty to treat, especially as that duty would arise in the context of an infectious disease pandemic. Ultimately, it argues that none of the defenses is currently sufficient to ground the kind of duty that would be needed in a pandemic. It concludes by sketching some practical recommendations in that regard.     

Women with diarrhoea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome show an increased pressure response to 35% carbon dioxide stress challenge

The responses to inhalation of 35% carbon dioxide (CO(2)) as a stressor were compared in female irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients and healthy controls to assess potential differences in cardiovascular, neuroendocrine and behavioural responses to stress. A total of 22 women (12 patients with ROME II defined diarrhoea-predominant IBS and 10 aged-matched controls) were challenged with a single vital capacity breath of 35% CO(2) (with 65% oxygen). Beat-to-beat blood pressure and heart rate were recorded prior to, during and after the inhalation. Serum cortisol concentration and behavioural ratings were measured pre- and post-inhalation. A typical pattern of responses to CO(2) was observed, characterised by a reduction in heart rate and increases in serum cortisol and anxiogenic symptoms; however, these responses did not differ between groups. Both groups also demonstrated an increase in systolic blood pressure; however, this response was significantly enhanced in IBS patients compared to healthy controls (P < 0.05). These findings demonstrate that females with diarrhoea-predominant IBS have an exaggerated pressor response to 35% CO(2) stress challenge, suggesting a more stress-responsive sympathetic nervous system.     

Changing Views of Serpent Handling: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Knowledge about serpent handling sects (SHS) even among social scientists and legislators has been largely influenced by biased media reports. Our own field research suggests that factual knowledge about SHS is effective in changing stereotypes about serpent handling and in altering views as to the rights of believers to handle serpents in church. In a quasi-experimental study, participants were pretested with respect to both prejudicial and reasoned evaluative views about SHS. Participants saw either a video of contemporary SHS in which handlers demonstrated and explained their faith, or a control tape in which contemporary SHS were shown but serpent handling was neither demonstrated nor defended. As predicted, viewing the serpent handling video was effective in reducing stereotyping of SHS and in changing attitudes regarding the sincerity of the believers and the right of SHS to practice their faith without legal constraints. Appropriate controls indicated that changes were not simply a function of a pretest by treatment interaction. The relevance of these data for altering laws against the practice of serpent handling is discussed.