Do Teachers maintain their Expectation Bias for students? A longitudinal investigation

Whether teachers maintain their expectation bias for students over time is crucial for understanding self-fulfilling prophecy effects. However, the stability of teacher expectation bias has been largely ignored in the literature. We examined the stability of teacher expectation bias across a sample of teachers and the change trajectories of teacher expectation bias across high-, medium-, and low-expectation teacher groups across all teachers and in the curriculum areas of mathematics, Chinese, and English. Our analyses were based on two-year longitudinal data with four time points from 567 Chinese senior high school students and their 50 teachers. The results showed that across all teachers, teacher expectation bias at the individual student level was dynamic over time. That is, teachers seemed to adjust their initial expectation bias in the first few months but then maintained the adjusted expectation bias afterwards. However, when students moved from Grade 11 to Grade 12 (the last year of high school), teachers seemed to change their expectation bias again. The evidence from HLM analyses further supported these results. That is, all the high- and low-expectation teachers alleviated their initial expectation bias significantly in the first six months and then adhered to their adjusted expectation bias. However, when students moved to the last year of high school, some high- and low-expectation teachers’ expectation biases were volatile again. Nevertheless, most high- and low-expectation teachers (except for Chinese low-expectation teachers) tended to either over-estimate or under-estimate their students across two school years. Further, compared to Chinese and mathematics teachers, English teachers’ biases seemed to be even more stable. Our findings suggested that some teachers consistently over- or under-estimated their students over an extended time period and this could have implications for student outcomes.

     

Well-being through learning: a systematic review of learning interventions in the workplace and their impact on well-being

The view that learning is central to well-being is widely held and the workplace is an important setting in which learning takes place. Evaluations of the effectiveness of well-being interventions in work settings are commonplace, but to date, there has been no systematic review of the effectiveness of learning interventions with regard to their impact on well-being. The review synthesizes evidence from 41 intervention studies, and although no studies report a negative impact on well-being, 14 show no effect on well-being, with 27 studies having a positive impact. We classify the studies according to the primary purpose of the learning intervention: to develop personal resources for well-being through learning; to develop professional capabilities through learning; to develop leadership skills through learning; and to improve organizational effectiveness through organizational-level learning. Although there is an abundance of workplace learning interventions, few are evaluated from a well-being perspective despite the commonly held assumption that learning yields positive emotional and psychological outcomes. The evidence indicates an important gap in our evaluation of and design of workplace learning interventions and their impact on well-being, beyond those focusing on personal resources. This raises important theoretical and practical challenges concerning the relationship between learning and well-being in the context of professional capability enhancement, leadership capability and organizational learning.     

Salience network response to changes in emotional expressions of others is heightened during early adolescence: relevance for social functioning

Adolescence is a unique developmental period when the salience of social and emotional information becomes particularly pronounced. Although this increased sensitivity to social and emotional information has frequently been considered with respect to risk behaviors and psychopathology, evidence suggests that increased adolescent sensitivity to social and emotional cues may confer advantages. For example, greater sensitivity to shifts in the emotions of others is likely to promote flexible and adaptive social behavior. In this study, a sample of 54 children and adolescents (age 8–19 years) performed a delayed match‐to‐sample task for emotional faces while undergoing fMRI scanning. Recruitment of the anterior cingulate and anterior insula when the emotion of the probe face did not match the emotion held in memory followed a quadratic developmental pattern that peaked during early adolescence. These findings indicate meaningful developmental variation in the neural mechanisms underlying sensitivity to changes in the emotional expressions. Across all participants, greater activation of this network for changes in emotional expression was associated with less social anxiety and fewer social problems. These results suggest that the heightened salience of social and emotional information during adolescence may confer important advantages for social behavior, providing sensitivity to others’ emotions that facilitates flexible social responding.     

A temporally distinct role for group I and group II metabotropic glutamate receptors in object recognition memory

Recognition memory, involving the ability to discriminate between a novel and familiar object, depends on the integrity of the perirhinal cortex (PRH). Glutamate, the main excitatory neurotransmitter in the cortex, is essential for many types of memory processes. Of the subtypes of glutamate receptor, metabotropic receptors (mGluRs) have received less study than NMDA receptors; thus, the reported experiments examined the role of mGluRs in familiarity discrimination in the rat PRH. Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the effects of systemic administration of MPEP, a group I mGluR (specifically mGluR5) antagonist, and/or LY341495, a group II mGluR antagonist, on a spontaneous object novelty preference task. Simultaneous antagonism of both group I and II mGluRs impaired familiarity discrimination following a 24-h but not a 15-min delay, while antagonism of either mGluR subtype alone had no effect at either delay. The impairment was in acquisition, as in Experiment 3 coadministration of MPEP and LY341495 did not affect recognition memory performance when administered either after the sample phase or prior to test. The impairment in long-term recognition memory was mediated by mGluRs in the PRH, as localized intracortical antagonism of group I and II mGluRs also produced a deficit (Experiment 4). No evidence was found for an involvement of group III mGluRs in the acquisition of long-term familiarity discrimination (Experiment 5). These findings establish that glutamatergic neurotransmission in the PRH via group I and II mGluRs is crucial for the acquisition, but not for the consolidation or retrieval of long-term object recognition memory.     

Current status of newborn screening: decision-making about the conditions to include in screening programs

Newborn screening is considered a highly successful public health program that has resulted in the reduction of mortality, mental retardation, and other serious disabilities in thousands of children since the introduction of screening for phenylketonuria (PKU) in the 1960s. Programs are based in state public health departments such that each state independently reaches decisions as to which conditions should be mandated for inclusion in programs, leading to considerable variability among the states as to what is being screened. New technologies and knowledge of the genetics of many conditions have greatly expanded the number of conditions with potential for inclusion in newborn screening.     

Understanding the effects of moving visual stimuli on unilateral neglect following stroke

Moving visual stimuli have been shown to reduce unilateral neglect (ULN), however, the mechanisms underlying these effects remain poorly understood. This study compared lateralised and non-lateralised moving visual stimuli to investigate whether the spatial characteristics or general alerting properties of moving visual stimuli are responsible for reducing neglect. Post-stroke left neglect patients as well as healthy and patient control subjects were tested on a computerised line bisection task under six visual stimulus conditions. The key finding was that, relative to the no stimulus condition, leftward moving and left-sided moving visual stimuli shifted neglect patients' bisection errors leftward while the non-lateralised random moving visual stimuli did not reduce neglect patients' rightward bisection errors. The results provide evidence that spatial characteristics rather than general alerting properties of moving visual stimuli reduce rightward bisection errors in ULN. Moreover, the pattern of findings strongly supports the notion that moving visual stimuli reduce neglect by capturing attention and drawing it to a spatial location rather than by activating the attentional system via superior collicular neurons.     

Is it impossible to inhibit isoluminant items, or does it simply take longer? Evidence from preview search

Visual search can be facilitated when participants receive a preview of half the distractors (the preview benefit in search; Watson & Humphreys, 1997). Donk and Theeuwes (2001) have argued that preview-based benefits are abolished if the display items are isoluminant to a background. This is consistent with the preview benefit being due to onset capture by the new stimuli. In contrast, the present experiments challenge this suggestion and show that preview benefits can occur under isoluminant conditions, providing that they are given enough time to occur. In Experiment 1, we showed that a preview benefit can occur even with isoluminant stimuli, provided that the old items are previewed for a sufficient time. In Experiment 2, we tested and rejected the idea that this advantage is due to low-level sensory fatigue for the preview stimuli. These findings indicate that the preview effect is not caused solely by onset capture.     

The relationship of neuronal activity within the sensori-motor region of the subthalamic nucleus to speech

Microelectrode recordings of human sensori-motor subthalamic neuronal activity during spoken sentence and syllable-repetition tasks provided an opportunity to evaluate the relationship between changes in neuronal activities and specific aspects of these vocal behaviors. Observed patterns of neuronal activity included a build up of activity in anticipation of the start of the utterance, a marked reduction in activity associated with the start of the utterance, and a burst of activity during the course of the sentence between the noun phrase and the verb phrase. Overall, changes of neuronal activity were more robust for the sentence repetition task. These data suggest that the basal ganglia play a role in generating meaningful speech utterances, which may parallel its role in complex sequential limb movements. It is possible that the basal ganglia play a role in generating the syntactical structure of language.     

Comparative analysis of integrative self-knowledge, mindfulness, and private self-consciousness in predicting responses to stress in Iran

Previous research has established that awareness of self-experience is a stress resistance resource. The present study conducted an analysis of measures that record different aspects of self-awareness (private self-consciousness, mindfulness, and integrative self-knowledge) to explain this stress-resistance effect in a sample of Iranian university students (N = 186). These students responded to Mindfulness Attention Awareness, Private Self-Consciousness, Integrative Self-Knowledge, and Perceived Stress Scales just before the stress of a 20-day final examination period, and they then responded to Symptom Checklist and Vitality measures at four-day intervals during the final examinations. Prior to final examinations, the three self-awareness variables correlated positively with each other and negatively with perceived stress. Regression analyses of the data obtained during final examinations identified mindfulness to be a better operationalization of this stress-resistance resource than private self-consciousness. Specifically, mindfulness but not private self-consciousness was a positive predictor of vitality and a negative predictor of symptoms. Hierarchical regression analyses also demonstrated that mindfulness and integrative self-knowledge both explained resistance to physical symptoms, while integrative self-knowledge functioned as a protective factor toward one's vitality. These data confirm the positive impact that self-awareness has during stress and highlight the importance of considering both mindfulness and integrative self-knowledge in understanding stress-resistance processes.