Investigating Links from Teacher Knowledge,to Classroom Practice,to Student Learning in the Instructional System of the Middle-School Mathematics Classroom

Using data collected in 125 seventh-grade and 56 eighth-grade Texas classrooms in the context of the “Scaling Up SimCalc” research project in 2005–07, we examined relationships between teachers’ mathematics knowledge, teachers’ classroom decision making, and student achievement outcomes on topics of rate, proportionality, and linear function—three important and cognitively demanding prealgebra topics. We found that teachers’ mathematical knowledge was correlated with student achievement in only one study out of three. We also found a lack of correlations between teachers’ mathematical knowledge and critical aspects of instructional decision making. Curriculum and other learning resources (e.g., technology, student–student interactions) are clearly important factors for student learning in addition to, and in interaction with, teachers’ mathematical knowledge. Our results suggest that mathematics knowledge for teaching may have a nonlinear relationship with student learning, that those effects may be heavily mediated by other instructional factors, and that short-term content knowledge gains in teacher workshops may not persist in classroom instruction. We discuss a need in the field for richer models of how “mathematical knowledge for teaching” works in the context of complete instructional systems.     

Posttraumatic Stress,Depression, and Insomnia Among U.S. Air Force Pararescuemen

Few studies have examined rates of mental health problems among special duty military personnel, who often have frequent deployments and high exposure to operational stressors and trauma. The current study examined the severity and rates of positive screening for posttraumatic stress, depression, and insomnia among 194 U.S. Air Force pararescuemen (PJs) in the active duty (AD) and National Guard/Reserve (NG/R) components. Overall estimated rates were 11.6% for probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 1.6% for probable depression, and 16.1% for clinical insomnia. PJs in the NG/R reported significantly more severe posttraumatic stress symptoms (F(1, 162) = 10.031, p = .002, partial η² = .058) and were approximately twice as likely to screen positive for probable PTSD (8.5% vs. 19.1%; χ²[1] = 3.679, p = .055). No differences in the rate or severity of depression or insomnia symptoms were found. Rates of positive screens are comparable to or lower than previously published rates among military personnel.     

Sick? Or slow? On the origins of intelligence as a psychological object

This paper examines the first moments of the emergence of “psychometrics” as a discipline, using a history of the Binet–Simon test (precursor to the Stanford–Binet) to engage the question of how intelligence became a “psychological object.” To begin to answer this, we used a previously-unexamined set of French texts to highlight the negotiations and collaborations that led Alfred Binet (1857–1911) to identify “mental testing” as a research area worth pursuing. This included a long-standing rivalry with Désiré-Magloire Bourneville (1840–1909), who argued for decades that psychiatrists ought to be the professional arbiters of which children would be removed from the standard curriculum and referred to special education classes in asylums. In contrast, Binet sought to keep children in schools and conceived of a way for psychologists to do this. Supported by the Société libre de l'étude psychologique de l'enfant [Free society for the psychological study of the child], and by a number of collaborators and friends, he thus undertook to create a “metric” scale of intelligence—and the associated testing apparatus—to legitimize the role of psychologists in a to-that-point psychiatric domain: identifying and treating “the abnormal”. The result was a change in the earlier law requiring all healthy French children to attend school, between the ages of 6 and 13, to recognize instead that otherwise normal children sometimes need special help: they are “slow” (arriéré), but not “sick.” This conceptualization of intelligence was then carried forward, through the test's influence on Lewis Terman (1877–1956) and Lightner Witmer (1867–1956), to shape virtually all subsequent thinking about intelligence testing and its role in society.     

Factors Leading to Sales Force Automation Use: A Longitudinal Analysis

Motivating the sales force to adopt and use sales force automation (SFA) technology remains an issue. If salespeople are not committed to the selling organization's technology strategies, customer alliances are hindered.

Survey data were collected from a national sales force before and after the introduction of an SFA application. The results of this study indicate that salesperson attitudes (Perceived Usefulness, Attitude Toward the New System, and Compatibility) have an impact on intention to use new SFA systems prior to implementation. However, Personal Innovativeness, Attitude Toward the New System, and Facilitating Conditions have more of an effect on infusion of new SFA systems.     

Simultaneous attentional guidance by working-memory and selection history reveals two distinct sources of attention

Recent theories of attention have proposed that selection history is a separate, dissociable source of information that influences attention. The current study sought to investigate the simultaneous involvement of selection history and working-memory on attention during visual search. Experiments 1 and 2 used target feature probability to manipulate selection history and found significant effects of both working-memory and selection history, although working-memory dominated selection history when they cued different locations. Experiment 3 eliminated the contribution of voluntary refreshing of working-memory and replicated the main effects, although selection history became dominant. Using the same methodology, but with reduced probability cue validity, both effects were present in Experiment 4 and did not significantly differ in their contribution to attention. Effects of selection history and working-memory never interacted. These results suggest that selection history and working-memory are separate influences on attention and have little impact on each other. Theoretical implications for models of attention are discussed.     

The Effect of Interactivity on Learning Physical Actions in Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) offers new possibilities for learning, specifically for training individuals to perform physical movements such as physical therapy and exercise. The current article examines two aspects of VR that uniquely contribute to media interactivity: the ability to capture and review physical behavior and the ability to see one's avatar rendered in real time from third person points of view. In two studies, we utilized a state-of-the-art, image-based tele-immersive system, capable of tracking and rendering many degrees of freedom of human motion in real time. In Experiment 1, participants learned better in VR than in a video learning condition according to self-report measures, and the cause of the advantage was seeing one's avatar stereoscopically in the third person. In Experiment 2, we added a virtual mirror in the learning environment to further leverage the ability to see oneself from novel angles in real time. Participants learned better in VR than in video according to objective performance measures. Implications for learning via interactive digital media are discussed.     

Virtually True: Children's Acquisition of False Memories in Virtual Reality

Previous work on human memory has shown that prompting participants with false events and self-relevant information via different types of media such as narratives, edited 2-dimensional images, and mental imagery creates false memories. This study tested a new form of media for studying false memory formation: Immersive Virtual Environment Technology (IVET). Using this tool, we examined how memory was affected by viewing dynamic simulations of avatars performing novel actions. In the study, 55 preschool and elementary children were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 memory prompt conditions (idle, mental imagery, IVET simulation of another child, or IVET simulation of self). Each child was questioned 3 different times: once before the memory prompt, once immediately after the memory prompt, and once approximately 5 days after the memory prompt. Results showed that preschool children were equally likely to develop false memories regardless of memory prompt condition. But, for elementary children, the mental imagery and IVET self conditions caused significantly more false memories than the idle condition. Implications regarding the use of digital media in courtroom settings, clinical therapy settings, entertainment, and other applications are discussed.