1,720,983 research outputs found
Everyday Working Memory: The Ecological Validity of Three Working Memory Tests
No full textA research report submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts, In the Faculty of Humanities, School of Human and Community Development, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024Working memory plays a crucial role in adaptive functioning, yet the ability of traditional working memory tests to predict real-life challenges remains uncertain. Despite their everyday use in laboratory settings, there needs to be more research on the ecological validity of the n- back test, Symbol Span subtest, and Digit Span subtest in capturing everyday life problems related to working memory. This gap is especially noticeable in South Africa, where cultural and contextual factors may influence working memory performance and its impact on daily functioning. This study aimed to address this research gap by assessing the ecological validity of three working memory tests, the n-back test, the Symbol Span subtest, and the Digit Span subtest, in predicting everyday life problems related to working memory. Sixty-nine bilingual and multilingual young adults aged 18 to 25 completed a demographic questionnaire, the Working Memory Questionnaire (WMQ), and the three working memory tests. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation analyses, and ordinal logistic regression analyses. Significant correlations were found between various working memory tests and specific working memory questions, providing valuable insights into the relationships between these variables. These findings contribute to the understanding of working memory assessment and have implications for everyday functioning, particularly in educational settings, highlighting the relevance of working memory in cognitive processes.MM202
Predictors of COVID-related Risk and Resilience in South African Young Adults
No full textA research project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art in Psychology, in the Faculty of Humanities, School of Human and Community Development2, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023.The Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been a lengthy and stressful event for people worldwide, placing increased strain on vulnerable populations. This prompts interest in the field of risk and resilience research. There are several apparent gaps in resilience research such as in the context of a pandemic, and in adult and non-western populations. This research report aimed to identify socio-demographic variables that predict risk and resilience outcomes in young, emerging South African adults, following the COVID-19 pandemic. This study fell into a post-positivist paradigm and used a quantitative, non-experimental, correlational, ex-post facto design. Descriptive, correlational and regression analyses were conducted to identify possible socio-demographic predictors of risk and resilience outcomes in this given population. Overall, the sample population exhibited low-moderate levels of depression, and on average displayed high levels of resilience, overall and across individual, relational and contextual resilience Several significant correlations and predictors, although weak, were identified for the outcome variables of depression (risk) and resilience (at individual, relational and contextual levels) including age, gender and education, pandemic-related and perceived stress, loneliness, parental involvement and warmth, childhood and community experiences. Depression was significantly predicted by gender, perceived stress, loneliness, satisfaction with life and parental involvement, where being female, having stronger feelings of loneliness, and dissatisfaction with life predicted higher levels of depression. Furthermore, parental involvement significantly predicted all five outcomes, where high parental involvement predicted low depression and high resilience across all levels. Perceived stress significantly predicted all but one outcome, namely relational resilience. High levels of perceived stress predicted high levels of depression and poor overall, individual, and contextual resilience. All three levels of resilience were significantly predicted by both parents’ level of education and parental involvement, where levels of maternal education predicted better resilience across all domains, while paternal education had the opposite effect. Identifying such predictors can help to better the knowledge base around risk and resilience in the South African, context and in low- and middle-income contexts. Furthermore, this allows for the targeted implementation of tools and interventions to address these outcomes, such as promoting parental involvement, the implementation of targeted stress-management tools, and more female-focused depression interventions.MM202
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Psychological Assessment in South Africa
Full text linkThis book provides an overview of the research related to psychological assessment across South Africa. The thirty-six chapters provide a combination of psychometric theory and practical assessment applications in order to combine the currently disparate research that has been conducted locally in this field. Existing South African texts on psychological assessment are predominantly academic textbooks that explain psychometric theory and provide brief descriptions of a few testing instruments. Psychological Assessment in South Africa provides in-depth coverage of a range of areas within the broad field of psychological assessment, including research conducted with various psychological instruments. The chapters critically interrogate the current Eurocentric and Western cultural hegemonic practices that dominate the field of psychological assessment. The book therefore has the potential to function both as an academic text for graduate students, as well as a specialist resource for professionals, including psychologists, psychometrists, remedial teachers and human resource practitioners
Psychological Assessment in South Africa
Full text linkThis book provides an overview of the research related to psychological assessment across South Africa. The thirty-six chapters provide a combination of psychometric theory and practical assessment applications in order to combine the currently disparate research that has been conducted locally in this field. Existing South African texts on psychological assessment are predominantly academic textbooks that explain psychometric theory and provide brief descriptions of a few testing instruments. Psychological Assessment in South Africa provides in-depth coverage of a range of areas within the broad field of psychological assessment, including research conducted with various psychological instruments. The chapters critically interrogate the current Eurocentric and Western cultural hegemonic practices that dominate the field of psychological assessment. The book therefore has the potential to function both as an academic text for graduate students, as well as a specialist resource for professionals, including psychologists, psychometrists, remedial teachers and human resource practitioners
Executive Functioning in a HIV-positive Paediatric Sample
No full textA research report submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in Psychology (Cognitive Science), In the Faculty of Humanities, School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024High prevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) poses significant public health challenges in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, especially among children and adolescents. Despite advancements in reducing vertical mother-to-child transmission and increasing access to antiretroviral therapies, paediatric populations continue to face substantial neurocognitive challenges associated with HIV infection. This study aimed to establish a profile of executive functioning in a South African paediatric population using cognitive measures (the NEPSY-II) and a behavioural rating scale (the BRIEF) to elucidate the cognitive impact of HIV. Assessing executive functions in children presents challenges due to their multifaceted nature, with cognitive measures and behavioural rating scales offering differing insights. As such, a secondary aim of this paper was to examine the inter-correlations between these measures. The participant group was comprised of 40 children living with HIV in Johannesburg, South Africa, aged 10-16. Normative data for comparisons were obtained from the NEPSY-II and BRIEF manuals, as well as a sample of NEPSY-II raw scores for South African youth without a central nervous system disease (Truter et al., 2017). Significant differences were found between the HIV+ group and comparison samples. Specifically, HIV+ children showed poorer performance in working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility compared to their typically developing peers. These results provide insights into executive function challenges faced by HIV+ children and adolescents, emphasising the importance of early intervention and support.MM202
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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