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Comparison in the classroom: motivation for academic social comparison predicts academic performance
Get PDFReviews of social comparison processes in school contexts have concluded that individual differences in propensity to compare with others are likely to be important in the classroom, but that there is a paucity of evidence testing this key proposition. To address this gap, we developed and validated a new measure of propensity to engage in academic social comparison (Motivation for Academic Social Comparison Scale, MASCS) among 11 samples of UK school pupils and two samples of university students (N = 1,991). The instrument showed good psychometric properties across samples. We then assessed the relationship between MASCS and actual academic performance in public examinations in a subsample of Year 11 and Year 13 students (n = 1,427). The MASCS positively predicted subsequent academic performance. Specifically, greater propensity to engage in academic comparison led to better objective academic achievement. This research thus establishes a valuable new measure and has meaningful implications, both theoretically and for education strategies
Misinformation in the ‘gender wars’ in Britain: affective attachments in the use and misuse of evidence
No full textAttempts to reform the UK’s 2004 Gender Recognition Act have sparked intense public debates regarding trans inclusion in gender-segregated spaces (e.g. toilets, women’s refuges, hospitals, prisons, and sports). Discussions have become highly polarised, framed by mainstream media as a battle over ‘trans rights vs women’s rights’ and a struggle over the meaning and significance of ‘sex vs gender’. Contributing to these divisions is the widespread circulation of misinformation – including false claims, misleading narratives, and decontextualised statistics – by those who oppose trans rights. This chapter traces why and how these false narratives have taken hold and the wider social and political assumptions that underpin them. The chapter argues that the rampant circulation of misinformation not only rests on misplaced fears, but also from emotional investments in punitive safety politics and outrage economies. This combination of misinformation and emotional investments helps explain how divergent views shift from mere political disagreement into heightened states of ‘us/them’ polarisation and offers insights into what is potentially required to overcome such divisions
Word association and communality of thought
Get PDFThe word association task has been a standard form of assessment and research tool for over a century used for investigating how concepts are associated with each other and for how they are linked to words. In the 1950s, researchers at Loyola University, Chicago changed the instructions of the original free word association test in a fundamental way by asking participants to provide the word that they thought most other people would say. This novel task manipulation was intended to assess the ability to deliberately reflect on intrapersonal knowledge. It was grounded in the ideas of Henry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949) and David Rapaport (1911-1960) about the contribution of interpersonal relations to mental development and mental health. Sullivan’s concept of ‘communality of thought’ was used to interpret the mental process being measured. In the mid-20th century, the psychologist Vincent V. Herr, S.J. (1905–1971) led a research project exploring the relation between linguistic, cognitive, and emotional resources by testing people having various age, socio-cultural, educational, and personality characteristics. The aim was to assess peoples’ degree of empathy to “the unknown other”. This approach represented an interesting innovation in psychological assessment. It gained little traction in the field due to a variety of contextual circumstances. The development of this assessment and the theorizing around it is revisited here to consider its significance as a means of addressing research questions in psychology, psychiatry, and linguistics on issues of interest regarding a normative notion of shared social linguistic knowledge
A trick of the mind: how the brain invents your reality
No full textBook synopsis: How does your brain decide what it’s seeing, from the physical world to other people? For decades, scientists have tried to understand how our brains work, not realising that the answer lies much closer to home than it seems.
The latest research in neuroscience and psychology suggests that the brain is doing the same thing that the scientists are: using past experiences to build theories of how the world works, and using these models to predict and make sense of it. Through this process, your brain constructs the reality that you live in.
In this book Daniel Yon takes the research one step further, uncovering how your brain colours your perception of the world, the judgements you make about other people and the beliefs you form about yourself. With transformative applications for how we engage with other communities and approach mental illness, A Trick of The Mind will revolutionise the way you think
Unsung Heroes Who Are Lifeblood of NHS
Get PDFDozens of people are involved in the healthcare of people living with chronic kidney disease (CKD), each one playing a vital part. From doctors, nurses and laboratory staff to friends and loved ones, we couldn’t make it without them. But what about those who work tirelessly and voluntarily on our behalf, who rarely make the headlines? Meet the unsung hero ‘blood runners’ – a dedicated group of men and women transporting blood and other precious items, often under tight time pressures. With comment from Martin Paul Eve
Expressiveness within Sequence Datalog
Get PDFMotivated by old and new applications, we investigate Datalog as a language for sequence databases. We reconsider classical features of Datalog programs, such as negation, recursion, intermediate predicates, and relations of higher arities. We also consider new features that are useful for sequences, notably, equations between path expressions, and ``packing''. Our goal is to clarify the relative expressiveness of all these different features, in the context of sequences. Towards our goal, we establish a number of redundancy and primitivity results, showing that certain features can, or cannot, be expressed in terms of other features. These results paint a complete picture of the expressiveness relationships among all possible Sequence Datalog fragments that can be formed using the six features that we consider
World models and digital twins: urban simulation and generative AI
No full textThis commentary responds to Gillian Rose’s essay ‘Visualising human life in volumetric cities: City digital twins and other disasters’. It highlights Rose’s recognition that City Digital Twins are always discursive projections as much as they are actual working simulations, constituted in part by a surrounding ecology of other texts and images that work to transform tech hype into tech reality. The commentary expands on the ‘twin’-nature of all digital images - how their status as both human and machine-readable objects allows them to function as simulations mediating between the realms of the computational and the sensory. The commentary concludes by exploring recent developments in moving image Generative AI. It questions the ‘world modelling’ and ‘world simulation’ claims of these technologies
Putting negotiation on a ‘principal-ed’ footing: a corpus-informed discourse analysis of person deixis in diplomatic debates
Get PDFThis article investigates identity politics in diplomatic negotiations at the United Nations. Drawing on theories of ‘footing’, ‘positioning’ and ‘stance’ and applying corpus-informed discourse analysis, it examines how and why diplomats animate and laminate different selves and identifications within debates about multilingualism between 1995-2022. The paper focuses on the strategic enactment of politically recognisable identities indexed via first-person pronouns. Findings reveal that those holding the same stance (e.g., voting in favour, against, or abstaining in the 1995 Multilingualism Resolution) show clear patterns of deictic anchorage in their adoption of certain positions over others. Speakers adopt footings strategically and systematically via iterative and accretive processes of pronoun and verb selection to balance competing needs and perspectives relating to their own positionality (as members of the UN, representatives of their member states, or members within alliances) and in relation to domestic and international affairs. “We” is enacted in different ways by diplomats for the rhetorical purposes of “synthetic deixis” (when speaking as a principal of the UN as an organizational body), and/or to delineate their views from those of other member states (when speaking as a principal of their political alliance or nation). The “lamination” of multiple identifications and the use of “wandering we” reveals the speaker as multiply embedded within, and speaking on behalf of, different communities and political affiliations on a variety of issues. Shifts in footing permit diplomats to navigate sensitive issues, orient to self and collective/shared interests and minimise differences, whilst also demonstrate authority and legitimacy
Provenance and correlation of Permian successions from the Falkland/Malvinas Islands with West Gondwana: implications for a Natal Embayment palaeo-location
Get PDFDetrital zircon U-Pb and Lu-Hf data from the youngest (upper Permian) sedimentary succession of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands is used to constrain depositional age, provenance and palaeogeography, and test the Natal Embayment model for the Falkland/Malvinas Islands microplate. The upper Permian was a period of extensive magmatism and sediment recycling along the accretionary margin of West Gondwana. Deposition into retroarc foreland basins was widespread across South Africa, Antarctica, South America and the Falklands Islands, forming thick successions of fluvial, deltaic and shallow-marine units. Our analysis links the upper Permian (c. 260 Ma) Bay of Harbours Formation of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands with deltaic/fluvial volcaniclastic units from the Karoo Basin of South Africa, Theron Mountains of East Antarctica and sandstone of the Ellsworth Mountains and southern Antarctic Peninsula. These units all have a shared provenance from the Antarctic sector of the West Gondwana margin. Although the detrital zircon age profiles of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands sedimentary units overlap with those from the accretionary and volcanic complexes of Patagonia, Lu-Hf isotope compositions are clearly distinct indicating that there was no direct link between the upper Permian successions of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands (eHf -3 to +3) to the volcano sedimentary successions of southern South America (eHf <-5)
Reassessment of the possible size, form, weight, cruising speed, and growth parameters of the extinct megatooth shark, Otodus megalodon (Lamniformes: Otodontidae), and new evolutionary insights into its gigantism, life history strategies, ecology, and extinction
No full textOtodus megalodon (Lamniformes: Otodontidae) is an iconic Neogene shark, but the lack of well-preserved skeletons has hampered our understanding of various aspects of its biology. Here, we reassess some of its biological properties using a new approach, based on known vertebral specimens of O. megalodon and 165 species of extinct and extant neoselachian sharks across ten orders. Using the median neurocranial and caudal fin proportions relative to the trunk proportion among non-mitsukurinid/ non-alopiid lamniforms, we show that O. megalodon could have had a slender body and possibly reached about 24.3 m in length. Allometric considerations indicate that a stout body plan like the extant white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) for O. megalodon could have incurred excessive hydrodynamic costs, further supporting the interpretation that O. megalodon likely had a slenderer body than C. carcharias. A 24.3-m-long O. megalodon may have weighed around 94 t, with an estimated cruising speed of 2.1–3.5 km h-1. A reanalysis of vertebral growth bands suggests a size at birth of 3.6-3.9 m for O. megalodon, supporting the previous interpretations of its ovoviviparity and embryos’ intrauterine oophagous behavior, but less likely the need for nursery areas. Additional inferred growth patterns corroborated by the known fossil record support the hypothesis that the emergence of C. carcharias during the Early Pliocene is at least partly responsible for the demise of O. megalodon due to competition for resources. These interpretations are working hypotheses expected to serve as reasonable reference points for future studies on the biology of O. megalodon
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