The Temporal and Dynamic Nature of Self-Regulatory Processes During Independent and Externally Assisted Hypermedia Learning

This study examined the temporal and dynamic nature of students’ self-regulatory processes while learning about the circulatory system with hypermedia. A total of 74 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions: independent learning or externally assisted learning. Participants in the independent learning condition used a hypermedia environment to learn about the circulatory system on their own, while participants in the externally assisted condition used the same hypermedia environment, but were given prompts and feedback from a human tutor during the session to facilitate their self-regulatory behavior. Previously published pretest–posttest shifts toward more mature understanding of the circulatory system indicate that the externally assisted condition leads to greater learning. The present article uses think-aloud data during learning to explore process issues in light of models of self-regulated learning and conditions of engagement that may affect those processes. Results indicate that access to a human tutor influences the deployment of regulatory processes, intervals of use, and temporal dependencies. For example, there is significantly more planning during the final time interval of the learning session in the externally assisted condition; students in both conditions deploy more learning strategies in the first and second time intervals, compared to the last two time intervals. Additionally, in the externally assisted condition participants were more likely to shift from planning to monitoring and less likely to shift from learning strategies to planning. We discuss theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues pertaining to these results, as well as implications for future research and the design of adaptive hypermedia systems.     

At the borders of medical reasoning: aetiological and ontological challenges of medically unexplained symptoms

Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) remain recalcitrant to the medical profession, proving less suitable for homogenic treatment with respect to their aetiology, taxonomy and diagnosis. While the majority of existing medical research methods are designed for large scale population data and sufficiently homogenous groups, MUS are characterised by their heterogenic and complex nature. As a result, MUS seem to resist medical scrutiny in a way that other conditions do not. This paper approaches the problem of MUS from a philosophical point of view. The aim is to first consider the epistemological problem of MUS in a wider ontological and phenomenological context, particularly in relation to causation. Second, the paper links current medical practice to certain ontological assumptions. Finally, the outlines of an alternative ontology of causation are offered which place characteristic features of MUS, such as genuine complexity, context-sensitivity, holism and medical uniqueness at the centre of any causal set-up, and not only for MUS. This alternative ontology provides a framework in which to better understand complex medical conditions in relation to both their nature and their associated research activity.     

Some Considerations for Enhancing Psychological Assessment

The field of psychological assessment appears to be bogged down in recent decades on refining existing measures and techniques to the detriment of real change. This article attempts to highlight some of the changes that need to take place in psychological assessment in the next few decades if real progress is to be achieved: (a) developing guidelines for psychological tests and measures; (b) establishing explicit criteria for training; (c) establishing guidelines for competencies; (d) recognizing the impact of marketing; (e) embracing electronic technology; and (f) implementing computer adaptive testing.     

Baboons, like humans, solve analogy by categorical abstraction of relations

Reasoning by analogy is one of the most complex and highly adaptive cognitive processes in abstract thinking. For humans, analogical reasoning entails the judgment and conceptual mapping of relations-between-relations and is facilitated by language (Gentner in Cogn Sci 7:155–170, 1983; Premack in Thought without language, Oxford University Press, New York, 1986). Recent evidence, however, shows that monkeys like “language-trained” apes exhibit similar capacity to match relations-between-relations (Fagot and Thompson in Psychol Sci 22:1304–1309, 2011; Flemming et al. in J Exp Psychol: Anim Behav Process 37:353–360, 2011; Truppa et al. in Plos One 6(8):e23809, 2011). Whether this behavior is driven by the abstraction of categorical relations or alternatively by direct perception of variability (entropy) is crucial to the debate as to whether nonhuman animals are capable of analogical reasoning. In the current study, we presented baboons (Papio papio) and humans (Homo sapiens) with a computerized same/different relational-matching task that in principle could be solved by either strategy. Both baboons and humans produced markedly similar patterns of responding. Both species responded different when the perceptual variability of a stimulus array fell exactly between or even closer to that of a same display. Overall, these results demonstrate that categorical abstraction trumped perceptual properties and, like humans, Old World monkeys can solve the analogical matching task by judging the categorical abstract equivalence of same/different relations-between-relations.     

Oral Interaction in Cooperative Learning Groups: Speaking,Listening, and the Nature of Statements Made by High-, Medium-, and Low-Achieving Students

Oral interaction within cooperative learning groups was observed for high-, medium-, and low-achieving students. Initially, cooperative and individualistic learning situations were compared on achievement and attitudes. Forty-eight 4th- grade American students were assigned to learning situations on a stratified random basis controlling for ability and sex. They participated in the study for 55 min a day for 15 instructional days. Two observation schemes were used. The results for the cooperative situation were factor analyzed to determine the basic dimensions of oral interaction within cooperative learning groups. Five orthogonal factors were identified: Exchanging Task-Related Information, Elaborating on the Information, Encouraging Each Other to Learn, Disagreeing With Each Other's Conclusions, and Making Nontask Comments and Sharing Personal Feelings. The oral participation of students from different achievement levels was differentially related to achievement. Vocalizing was found to be more strongly related to achievement than was listening to other group members vocalize. Medium and low achievers especially benefited from cooperative learning experiences.     

Memory bias for negative emotional words in recognition memory is driven by effects of category membership

Recognition memory studies often find that emotional items are more likely than neutral items to be labelled as studied. Previous work suggests this bias is driven by increased memory strength/familiarity for emotional items. We explored strength and bias interpretations of this effect with the conjecture that emotional stimuli might seem more familiar because they share features with studied items from the same category. Categorical effects were manipulated in a recognition task by presenting lists with a small, medium or large proportion of emotional words. The liberal memory bias for emotional words was only observed when a medium or large proportion of categorised words were presented in the lists. Similar, though weaker, effects were observed with categorised words that were not emotional (animal names). These results suggest that liberal memory bias for emotional items may be largely driven by effects of category membership.     

Perceptions of causes of performance-related injuries by music health experts and injured violinists

Skilled violin and viola players, all of whom had a current performance-related musculoskeletal injury, were asked to report their perceptions of contributing risk factors, consistent with a participatory ergonomics approach. The 26 players, age 18 to 60 years, had been playing for a minimum of 10 years and averaged three hours of practice per day. In addition, 7 music health experts, all with more than 10 years of clinical experience in treating musicians, were asked to report on the risk factors for musicians' performance-related injuries. A high correlation between the perceptions of these two groups was found, with the same top five factors in terms of severity indicated by both groups. Factors rated as high risk were primarily intrinsic and related to the manner in which respondents practiced, to playing posture, and to flaws in skill technique.     

Comparing categorization models

Four experiments are presented that competitively test rule- and exemplar-based models of human categorization behavior. Participants classified stimuli that varied on a unidimensional axis into 2 categories. The stimuli did not consistently belong to a category; instead, they were probabilistically assigned. By manipulating these assignment probabilities, it was possible to produce stimuli for which exemplar- and rule-based explanations made qualitatively different predictions. F. G. Ashby and J. T. Townsend's (1986) rule-based general recognition theory provided a better account of the data than R. M. Nosofsky's (1986) exemplar-based generalized context model in conditions in which the to-be-classified stimuli were relatively confusable. However, generalized context model provided a better account when the stimuli were relatively few and distinct. These findings are consistent with multiple process accounts of categorization and demonstrate that stimulus confusion is a determining factor as 10 which process mediates categorization.