Filling in the Gaps: Listening Through Dialogue

Over the past 30 years, technology has been introduced into higher education shifting the ways in which learning and student engagement occurs. While the literature suggests that technology offers benefits for improving educational outcomes, few studies have examined how benefits are achieved. This case study presents how the students and instructor of a course on postmodern theory and family therapy developed a praxis-based approach using a digital platform to improve pedagogy. Specifically, using a reflective approach based on ethnomethodology, this paper presents how the members of this course achieved a transformative generative dialogue using an online, simultaneous multi-user document, file-sharing and editing platform. This paper stresses the importance of all members of a course participating in the use of an interactive technological platform to facilitate open dialogue and collaboration.     

Somalis as Samaritans: A Glimpse into Christian–Muslim Relations in Eastern Africa from the Perspective of Evangelical Kenyan Christians

Long considered – perhaps naïvely – a relative oasis of Christian–Muslim calm, Kenya is seeing increased tension and conflict, mainly exacerbated by al-Shabaab militants, Kenyan military and Christian mobs. Concomitantly, the media and popular sentiment often vilify Somalis. This goes back to government agitprop during the ‘Shifta War’ of the 1960s. Among evangelical Christians, however, attitudes towards Somalis can prove more ambivalent. Drawing on interviews conducted with both Kenyan evangelical Christians and Somali Muslims, this article seeks to examine the theological shift among Kenyan evangelicals wherein they have re-cast Somalis as Samaritans and in doing so have made their primary approach to this conflict one of evangelization, not open hostility. This shift is due to a confluence of factors including community context, economic pragmatism and religious motivations, and the focus on evangelism does not necessarily preclude peace-building. What this article aims to present is a glimpse into the outlook of Kenyan evangelicals towards Somalis, particular Somali Muslims, and discuss these attitudes in the nexus of factors mentioned above. The article will reveal how, by re-casting the Somali ‘villain’ as Samaritan, some Kenyan evangelicals maintain boundaries and foster new identities in Eastern Africa for the sake of a longed-for peace.     

Proportional reasoning,framing effects,and affirmative action: Is six of one really half a dozen of another in university admissions?

People often reason proportionally, perceiving fixed outcomes as larger or smaller depending upon the reference condition. Thus, for policies affecting individuals, presenting data as percentages rather than frequencies can alter perceived effects on high versus low base rate group members, even though identical numbers of individuals in each group are affected. Such numerical framing effects were explored through a case analysis of public debates over race-conscious selection policies and through experimental manipulations employing a race-conscious university admissions scenario. Undergraduates (N = 193) received data reporting the expected impact on black and white student enrollment resulting from a university shift to race-neutral admissions. Compared to those encountering percentages or proportions, participants receiving identical information expressed as frequencies revealed a predicted greater preference for race-neutral or “race blind” admissions. Structural equation analysis supported a model in which perceived impact and fairness mediated the relationship between format and endorsement of race-neutral admissions.     

Improvement of nonverbal behaviour in Japanese female perfume‐wearers

The present study addressed the issue of whether people who use perfume improve their “visual” interpersonal impression. This expectation comes from the possibility that those who wear perfume may modify their nonverbal behaviour through positive mood changes generated by the pleasant odour of perfume or through an increase of public self‐consciousness. Thirty‐one Japanese females were assigned to either a perfume or a no‐perfume group. A screening test held in advance confirmed that all the participants in the perfume group preferred the smell of the perfume used in this study. They participated in an interview and answered questions asked by a female confederate. In the middle of the interview, the interviewees in the perfume group put on the perfume. The improvement of their nonverbal behaviour in the latter half of the interview was evaluated by 18 neutral observers, who watched silent video clips of the interviews. The observers were not informed that some of the interviewees used perfume. The results of observer ratings showed that the interviewees in the perfume group showed significantly less nonsymbolic movement (touching their hair or nose, or shifting their posture such as rotating on a swivel chair) when wearing perfume. Analysis of the video clips showed that the interviewees in the perfume group decreased their nonsymbolic movement for about 6 s per minute after putting on the perfume. The female observers also rated the interviewees in the perfume group as more self‐confident. These findings suggest that wearing perfume inhibits behaviours that project negative impressions. Analysis of the subjective mood showed that the inhibition of an interviewee's nonsymbolic movement might have resulted from a wearer's positive mood change. Although several methodological issues limit the conclusions drawn from these results, the present study showed that wearing perfume has the potential to cause changes in nonverbal behaviour and to improve visual impressions.     

Peak shift but not range effects in recognition of faces

University students were trained to discriminate between two gray-scale images of faces that varied along a continuum from a unique face to an average face created by morphing. Following training, participants were tested without feedback for their ability to recognize the positive face (S+) within a range of faces along the continuum. In Experiments 1 and 4, the range of stimuli presented during testing was manipulated. In Experiment 2, participants viewed different ranges of faces during an adaptation period that followed training and preceded testing. In all experiments, generalization functions revealed peak shifts or area shifts (fewer “yes” responses to novel faces on the negative side of the S+), but no systematic effects of the test or adaptation range. Peak shift was found both for upright and inverted faces and occurred even if the orientation of the face was reversed between training and test. Using similar methods, either an area shift or range effect (but not both together) was demonstrated for line tilt stimuli (Experiment 3), and the appearance of these effects depended on instructions. It appears that peak shift and area shift are robust across many different kinds of stimuli, but range effects may not readily occur with complex multidimensional stimuli.     

Event-based plausibility immediately influences on-line language comprehension

In some theories of sentence comprehension, linguistically relevant lexical knowledge, such as selectional restrictions, is privileged in terms of the time-course of its access and influence. We examined whether event knowledge computed by combining multiple concepts can rapidly influence language understanding even in the absence of selectional restriction violations. Specifically, we investigated whether instruments can combine with actions to influence comprehension of ensuing patients of (as in Rayner, Warren, Juhuasz, & Liversedge, 2004; Warren & McConnell, 2007). Instrument-verb-patient triplets were created in a norming study designed to tap directly into event knowledge. In self-paced reading (Experiment 1), participants were faster to read patient nouns, such as hair, when they were typical of the instrument-action pair (Donna used the shampoo to wash vs. the hose to wash). Experiment 2 showed that these results were not due to direct instrument-patient relations. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 using eyetracking, with effects of event typicality observed in first fixation and gaze durations on the patient noun. This research demonstrates that conceptual event-based expectations are computed and used rapidly and dynamically during on-line language comprehension. We discuss relationships among plausibility and predictability, as well as their implications. We conclude that selectional restrictions may be best considered as event-based conceptual knowledge rather than lexical-grammatical knowledge.     

Natural-scene perception requires attention

Is visual attention required for visual consciousness? In the past decade, many researchers have claimed that awareness can arise in the absence of attention. This claim is largely based on the notion that natural scene (or "gist") perception occurs without attention. This article presents evidence against this idea. We show that when observers perform a variety of demanding, sustained-attention tasks, inattentional blindness occurs for natural scenes. In addition, scene perception is impaired under dual-task conditions, but only when the primary task is sufficiently demanding. This finding suggests that previous studies that have been interpreted as demonstrating scene perception without attention failed to fully engage attention and that natural-scene perception does indeed require attention. Thus, natural-scene perception is not a preattentive process and cannot be used to support the idea of awareness without attention.     

Low environmental calcium blocks long-term memory formation in a freshwater pulmonate snail

The freshwater snail Lymnaea stagnalis (L.) is considered a calciphile and exhibits reduced growth and survival in environments containing less than 20 mg/l environmental calcium. Although it has no apparent effect on survival at 20 mg/l, reducing environmental calcium increases metabolic demand, and as such we consider that this level of calcium acts as a stressor on the snail. We exposed snails to acute periods of low environmental calcium and tested their ability to form intermediate-term memory (ITM) and long-term memory (LTM) following one trial operant conditioning (1TT) to reduce aerial respiratory activity in hypoxic conditions. We also assessed whether there were changes in the electrophysiological properties of a single neuron, right pedal dorsal 1 (RPeD1), which has been demonstrated to be necessary for LTM formation. Following training in high (80 mg/l) environmental calcium, L. stagnalis formed ITM and LTM lasting 24 h and demonstrated a significant reduction in all activity measured from RPeD1; however when snails were exposed to low (20 mg/l) environmental calcium they were able to form ITM but not LTM. Although no behavioral LTM was formed, a partial reduction in RPeD1 activtiy measured 24 h after training was observed, indicating a residual effect of training. The strong effect that environmental calcium concentration had on physiology and behavior in response to training to reduce aerial respiration in L. stagnalis suggests that it is an element of gastropod husbandry that needs to be carefully considered when studying other traits. This study also indicates that L. stagnalis found naturally in low calcium environments may be less able to adapt to novel stressors than populations found in harder waters.     

Sample size planning for longitudinal models: accuracy in parameter estimation for polynomial change parameters

Longitudinal studies are necessary to examine individual change over time, with group status often being an important variable in explaining some individual differences in change. Although sample size planning for longitudinal studies has focused on statistical power, recent calls for effect sizes and their corresponding confidence intervals underscore the importance of obtaining sufficiently accurate estimates of group differences in change. We derived expressions that allow researchers to plan sample size to achieve the desired confidence interval width for group differences in change for orthogonal polynomial change parameters. The approaches developed provide the expected confidence interval width to be sufficiently narrow, with an extension that allows some specified degree of assurance (e.g., 99%) that the confidence interval will be sufficiently narrow. We make computer routines freely available, so that the methods developed can be used by researchers immediately.