Talking to Visitors about Conservation: Exploring Message Communication through Docent–Visitor Interactions at Zoos

ABSTRACT

Education personnel, both paid staff and volunteers, are often used at zoos and other museums as a channel to disseminate educational messages. This exploratory study examined the use of zoo docents to communicate key conservation messages from the zoo to visitors. The study was conducted in 2 phases using an emergent design with mixed methods. The findings suggest that visitors perceive docents to be an important source for conservation messages even though observed message communication through docent–visitor interactions was very limited. Docents view themselves as “facilitators for learning”, but their limited awareness of the institution's messages inhibits their ability to communicate these messages to visitors. Other factors that influence incidence of message communication are duration of the interaction, nature of the exhibit/region, and group composition. In this study, signage was found to be an effective channel for building cognitive awareness of messages among visitors.     

Business owner-managers' descriptions of entrepreneurship: A content analysis

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is one of the most researched topics in business research. Findings have been mixed regarding the traits of entrepreneurs, and interest has grown in examining the behavioral aspects and business operations elements necessary for effective entrepreneurship, branching out from the focus on personality traits that has dominated the literature. We explored the area of entrepreneurship with the goal of developing a useful framework for viewing this domain. Content analysis was used to build the framework from business owner-managers' observations of entrepreneurial effectiveness. The construct categories and the overall dimensions and their relationships to entrepreneurship are reported. The result is the beginning of a process to describe an entrepreneurship system. Suggestions for future research and the continuation of entrepreneurship model development are offered.     

The cognitive and neural basis of option generation and subsequent choice

Decision-making research has thoroughly investigated how people choose from a set of externally provided options. However, in ill-structured real-world environments, possible options for action are not defined by the situation but have to be generated by the agent. Here, we apply behavioral analysis (Study 1) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (Study 2) to investigate option generation and subsequent choice. For this purpose, we employ a new experimental task that requires participants to generate options for simple real-world scenarios and to subsequently decide among the generated options. Correlational analysis with a cognitive test battery suggests that retrieval of options from long-term memory is a relevant process during option generation. The results of the fMRI study demonstrate that option generation in simple real-world scenarios recruits the anterior prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, we show that choice behavior and its neural correlates differ between self-generated and externally provided options. Specifically, choice between self-generated options is associated with stronger recruitment of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. This impact of option generation on subsequent choice underlines the need for an expanded model of decision making to accommodate choice between self-generated options.     

On the Quantitative Doctrine of the Mean

Aristotle's doctrine of the mean is expressed in quantitative terms, but this has been hard for some people to take literally, its more elaborate versions sometimes being described as “extremely silly.” Roughly two books of the Nicomachean Ethics are permeated with talk of character traits which are either deficient or excessive, however, and the aim of this paper is to examine how the doctrine might meet the objections of its critics.     

Stereotypical Attitudes Toward Gender-Based Grade-Level Assignment of Japanese Elementary School Teachers

In Japanese elementary schools, principals and vice-principals determine the assignment of teachers to lower, upper, or middle grades. In this study, we examined principals' and vice-principals' attitudes toward gender in grade placement of teachers. The results showed that an overwhelming majority of principals and vice-principals held the stereotypical attitude that women are best suited to teach lower grades and men are best suited to teach upper grades. Moreover, we assumed that this attitude was related to perceptual distortions or stereotyping by principals and vice-principals regarding women's teaching preferences and women teachers' leadership ability.     

Eucharistic sacrifice and patristic tradition in the theology of Martin Bucer 1534–1546

Abstract

As scholars continue to examine the variety and complexity of religious life in early modern England, we recognize that figures such as George Herbert resist our efforts to place them in convenient categories. However, we can account for this resistance by comparing Herbert's poetry to the Lutheran theologian Johann Gerhard's popular devotions of the same period. An intertextual study of Herbert's poems and Gerhard's devotional classic reveals their shared emphasis on baptism as an essential defining element of the Christian's life within the communion of saints. This emphasis synthesizes the tradition and sacramental piety of the old faith with the emphasis on the efficacy of the biblical word that marks the new faith of the Reformation and, at the same time, provides an irenic foundation for their interaction with the Church in early modern England.     

Predictors of Quantitative and Qualitative Halstead Finger-Tapping Scores in Low Socioeconomic Status School-Age Children

Two hundred and thirteen low socioeconomic school-age children in grades 1 through 8 were administered the Halstead Finger Oscillation (or Tapping) Test (HFTT). All children were age appropriate for their grade in school and were not requiring special education services. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that a composite age/grade classification score, gender, and estimated level of intelligence accounted for approximately 40% of the variability in dominant and nondominant hand scores for these children (multiple R?=?.627, R ²?=?+.393 for the dominant and multiple R?=?+.607, R ²?=?+.368 for the nondominant hand). Only the age/grade level of the child (R ²?=?.168) predicted the ability to inhibit adjacent finger movements when performing the HFTT task. Regional normative data for low socioeconomic school-age children are presented. Neurodevelopmental changes in the cortical and subcortical systems underlying finger movement may account for some of the variability observed in children when performing the HFTT.     

Parenting From the Outside‐in: Reflections on Parent Training During a Potential Paradigm Shift

This article proposes that a paradigm shift that has implications for practitioners of parenting interventions is emerging. This shift represents a challenge to the dominant model of parent training. The Triple P Parenting Program is discussed as an example of parent training programme to highlight the relevant issues for practitioners, including common practitioner objections encountered in dissemination as identified, in part, by Mazzucchelli and Sanders. It is argued that apart from these objections, there are more essential concerns in relation to the adoption of parent training programmes by practitioners. Rather, the article argues that parent training is “mind‐blind” and that approaches emerging from the field of interpersonal neurobiology represent developmentally sophisticated alternatives for intervention. The Circle of Security programme is discussed as one example of this emerging paradigm shift that integrates attachment, social neuroscience, and psychodynamic theory. Contrasts are highlighted between the models, and considerations for future issues in parent intervention conclude the article.