Pedagogy for teaching and learning cooperatively on the Web: a Web-based pharmacology course.

The Internet is becoming a preferred place to find information. Millions of people go online in the search of health and medical information. Likewise, the demand for Web-based courses grows. This article presents the development, utilization and evaluation of a web-based pharmacology course for nursing students. The course was developed based on 150 commonly used drugs. There were 110 year 1 nursing students took part in the course. After attending six hours face to face lecture of pharmacology over three weeks, students were invited to complete a questionnaire (pre-test) about learning pharmacology. The course materials were then uploaded to a WebCT for student's self-directed learning and attempts to pass two scheduled online quizzes. At the end of the semester, students were given the same questionnaire (post-test). There were a significant increase in the understanding compared with memorizing the subject content, the development of problem solving ability in learning pharmacology and becoming an independent learner (p ,0.05). Online quizzes yielded satisfactory results. In the focused group interview, students appreciated the time flexibility and convenience associated with web-based learning, also, they had made good suggestions in enhancing web-based learning. Web-based approach is promising for teaching and learning pharmacology for nurses and other health-care professionals.     

Motion fading and the motion aftereffect share a common process of neural adaptation

After prolonged viewing of a slowly drifting or rotating pattern under strict fixation, the pattern appears to slow down and then momentarily stop. Here, we show that this motion fading occurs not only for slowly moving stimuli, but also for stimuli moving at high speed; after prolonged viewing of high-speed stimuli, the stimuli appear to slow down but not to stop. We report psychophysical evidence that the same neural adaptation process likely gives rise to motion fading and to the motion aftereffect.     

Satellite babies in transnational families: A study of parents' decision to separate from their infants

This study examines a practice which is characteristic of an era of intensifying globalization: As part of a transnational lifestyle, an increasing number of immigrants to North America send infants thousands of miles back to their country of origin to be raised by members of their extended families—a culturally sanctioned tradition. After several years of separation, the children return to the biological parents to attend school in the adopted country, a custom which, according to Western mental health models, could have significant sequelae for attachment relationships and other facets of development. This practice is particularly prevalent among immigrants from the People's Republic of China, but a modified version of it can be found in other groups as well. The work described here is the first phase of a longitudinal project that explores the advantages and potential repercussions, for both infants and parents, of a transnational lifestyle. The current study reviews the decision‐making process of a group of Chinese Canadian immigrant parents who are considering a separation from their infants. Preliminary findings show that the expected concerns about disrupting attachment relationships are embedded in more salient considerations of economic need and cultural perspective. These exploratory data exemplify an emergent field of culture‐focused research and practice in infant mental health, and support the call for innovative models to situate infant developmental pathways in global and transcultural contexts.     

Belief about immutability of moral character and punitiveness toward criminal offenders

The present research examined the association between belief about immutability of moral character and punitiveness toward criminal offenders. Overall, participants who believed that moral character is immutable (entity theorists) were more punitive than those who believed that it is changeable (incremental theorists). More important, the present research identified two mediational paths: Entity theorists made more internal attribution of criminal behavior and held stronger expectation of offenders' recidivism, both of which in turn led to stronger punitiveness. Also, contrary to some researchers' speculation, entity theorists did not perceive less controllability in criminal behavior. Implications for implicit theory research and criminal justice research are discussed.     

The influence of intentional versus incidental retrieval practices on the role of recollection in test-enhanced learning

A testing effect occurs when taking a test leads to more durable memory for tested materials, relative to restudying them during the same period of time. In the current study, we examined whether incidental and intentional restudy/testing practice modes during a practice phase would modulate the contribution of recollection-based and familiarity-based retrieval in a final recognition test. Both practice strategy (restudy versus testing) and practice mode (incidental vs. intentional) were manipulated between participants (N = 160). The restudy and testing groups performed a semantic rating task and a word fragment completion task, respectively, in the incidental condition or in the intentional condition. Only those participants in the intentional condition were instructed to recall or restudy the targets. All participants went through two study–practice cycles that involved two different sets of targets. After the second cycle, participants performed a list-discrimination recognition test that could assess the contributions of recollection-based and familiarity-based retrieval on test-enhanced learning. The testing effect occurred in the intentional condition, but not in the incidental condition. Relative to intentional restudy, intentional testing boosted recollection, but not familiarity, demonstrating the role of recollection in test-enhanced learning.     

Inhibitory mechanism of the matching heuristic in syllogistic reasoning

A number of heuristic-based hypotheses have been proposed to explain how people solve syllogisms with automatic processes. In particular, the matching heuristic employs the congruency of the quantifiers in a syllogism — by matching the quantifier of the conclusion with those of the two premises. When the heuristic leads to an invalid conclusion, successful solving of these conflict problems requires the inhibition of automatic heuristic processing. Accordingly, if the automatic processing were based on processing the set of quantifiers, no semantic contents would be inhibited. The mental model theory, however, suggests that people reason using mental models, which always involves semantic processing. Therefore, whatever inhibition occurs in the processing implies the inhibition of the semantic contents.     

Alloying effects on sulphur embrittlement of the γ-γ′ interface of nickel-based single-crystal superalloys

Fully first-principles calculations have been performed to investigate the alloying effect on the sulphur embrittlement of the n - n ' interface of nickel-based single-crystal superalloys. The shear and cohesive strengths of the inter-face are calculated in terms of Mayer bond orders (BOs), and the ratio R BO of shear strength over cohesive strength is analysed as a function of alloying element substitution. The interface characteristics are also studied using the electron charge-density distribution. It is found that the interplay between shear and cohesive strengths has a significant influence on the interfacial embrittlement. Using the phenomenological theory of fracture as well as the calculated ratio R BO, we propose a new mechanism responsible for relieving sulphur embrittlement of the n - n ' interface through alloying substitution.     

Semantic size does not matter: "bigger" words are not recognized faster

Sereno, O'Donnell, and Sereno (2009) reported that words are recognized faster in a lexical decision task when their referents are physically large than when they are small, suggesting that "semantic size" might be an important variable that should be considered in visual word recognition research and modelling. We sought to replicate their size effect, but failed to find a significant latency advantage in lexical decision for "big" words (cf. "small" words), even though we used the same word stimuli as Sereno et al. and had almost three times as many subjects. We also examined existing data from visual word recognition megastudies (e.g., English Lexicon Project) and found that semantic size is not a significant predictor of lexical decision performance after controlling for the standard lexical variables. In summary, the null results from our lab experiment--despite a much larger subject sample size than Sereno et al.--converged with our analysis of megastudy lexical decision performance, leading us to conclude that semantic size does not matter for word recognition. Discussion focuses on why semantic size (unlike some other semantic variables) is unlikely to play a role in lexical decision.     

Attention and the subjective expansion of time

During brief, dangerous events, such as car accidents and robberies, many people report that events seem to pass in slow motion, as if time had slowed down. We have measured a similar, although less dramatic, effect in response to unexpected, nonthreatening events. We attribute the subjective expansion of time to the engagement of attention and its influence on the amount of perceptual information processed. We term the effect time's subjective expansion (TSE) and examine here the objective temporal dynamics of these distortions. When a series of stimuli are shown in succession, the low-probability oddball stimulus in the series tends to last subjectively longer than the high-probability stimulus even when they last the same objective duration. In particular, (1) there is a latency of at least 120 msec between stimulus onset and the onset of TSE, which may be preceded by subjective temporal contraction; (2) there is a peak in TSE at which subjective time is particularly distorted at a latency of 225 msec after stimulus onset; and (3) the temporal dynamics of TSE are approximately the same in the visual and the auditory domains. Two control experiments (in which the methods of magnitude estimation and stimulus reproduction were used) replicated the temporal dynamics of TSE revealed by the method of constant stimuli, although the initial peak was not apparent with these methods. In addition, a third, control experiment (in which the method of single stimuli was used) showed that TSE in the visual domain can occur because of semantic novelty, rather than image novelty per se. Overall, the results support the view that attentional orienting underlies distortions in perceived duration.