The latent four-zone structure in classroom seating space

The purpose of this study was to extract a latent space structure of classrooms from students seating preferences, and to determine whether classroom division on the basis of latent space structure is useful in predicting actual seating behaviors. The actual seating positions of 151 female junior college students were observed in classrooms once a week for one semester; then students were asked to estimate their seating preference among 49 seating positions in an imaginary classroom. Students did have different preferences for seating positions. A factor analysis suggested that classroom seating space should be divided into four zones: rear, front, center, and sides. A multiple discriminant analysis suggested that the seating positions that students actually took reflected a four-zone structure. Classroom division based on the four-zone structure proved useful in understanding students' seating behaviors.     

The word superiority effect in a case ofHiragana letter strings

This paper is concerned with the effect of syllabification in the superior perceptibility of tachistoscopically presented JapaneseHiragana letter strings. TheHiragana letter is a phonetic symbol having an invariant one-syllable pronunciation. Controlling retention and guessing factors, an experiment replicated the original Reicher (1969) findings of a word superiority effect. Thus, the results suggest that letter unitization which depends upon syllable-like structures (the vocalic center groups; Spoehr & Smith, 1973) is not a prerequisite, but that orthographic regularity and meaningfulness may be important determinants of the word superiority effect.     

Relation between polysomnographic measures during nocturnal sleep and a quotient of behavioral development in infants with developmental disabilities

Polysomnographic features during nocturnal sleep were investigated in 27 infants with developmental disabilities. With the use of a multiple regression analysis, 78% of the variance of a Development Quotient (DQ) measured by a questionnaire on behavioral development for infants was explained by sleep measures. Of 14 sleep measures employed in the study, (1) cumulative awakening time during a nocturnal sleep time, (2) duration of REM stage, and (3) percentage of REM to total sleep time were important in association with the DQ. The findings are consistent with the sleep-cognition hypothesis proposed by Espie, et al.