1,720,997 research outputs found
Real-time tracking of motor response activation and response competition in a Stroop task in young children: a lateralized readiness potential study
No full textThe ability to select an appropriate motor response by resolving competition among alternative responses plays a major role in cognitive performance. fMRI studies suggest that the development of this skill is related to the maturation of the frontal cortex that underlies the improvement of motor inhibition abilities. However, fMRI cannot characterize the temporal properties of motor response competition and motor activation in general. We studied the development of the time course of resolving motor response competition. To this end, we used the lateralized readiness potential (LRP), an ERP measure, for tracking correct and incorrect motor cortex activation in children in real time. Fourteen children and 14 adults took part in an animal-size Stroop task where they selected between two animals, presented simultaneously on the computer screen, which was larger in real life. In the incongruent condition, the LRP detected stronger and longer lasting incorrect response activation in children than in adults. LRP results could explain behavioral congruency effects, the generally longer RT in children than in adults and the larger congruency effect in children than in adults. In contrast, the peak latency of ERP waves, usually associated with stimulus processing speed, could explain neither of the above effects. We conclude that the development of resolving motor response competition, relying on motor inhibition skills, is a crucial factor in child development. Our study demonstrates that the LRP is an excellent tool for studying motor activation in children
The development of inhibitory control: an averaged and single-trial Lateralized Readiness Potential study
No full textInhibitory control (IC) is an important contributor to educational performance, and undergoes rapid development in childhood. Age-related changes in IC were assessed using an in-depth analysis of reaction time, the Lateralized Readiness Potential (LRP), and other event-related potential (ERP) measures to control for speed of processing. Five-year-olds, 8-year-olds and adults completed an adapted Stroop task. Both reaction time and ERP results suggest that IC does develop in this age range, over and above changes in speed of processing. The LRP identified two processes that contribute to IC. These processes develop at different rates — an early process, involving how the conflict is initially responded to is mature by age 5, while a later process, involving how the conflict is overcome is still developing after 8 years of age. We propose that these early and late processes reflect interference suppression and response inhibition, respectively. Further, a single-trial analysis of the LRP in the incongruent condition provides evidence that the LRP is consistent across trials and functionally similar in each age group. These results corroborate previous findings regarding the development of IC, and present a new and useful tool for assessing IC across development
Teachers co-constructing pedagogical practices to support children's exploratory talk and self-regulation: the Children Articulating Thinking (ChAT) project
No full textBackground. The quality of primary children's classroom talk, and the development of their self-regulatory abilities, have both been shown to significantly benefit from informed pedagogical approaches. However, two consistent findings of intervention studies in these areas is that interventions conducted by researchers are often more effective than those conducted by the children's teachers, and that teachers often do not incorporate the beneficial innovations in their ongoing practice. This would appear to be the consequence of approaches to classroom research which neither fully engage teachers' commitment, nor sufficiently inform them about the underlying rationale and purposes of the innovations.
Aim. An aim of the Children Articulating Thinking (ChAT) project was to work with teachers as co-researchers, to fully inform them of the research background of the proposed innovation, and to involve them extensively in the design of intervention activities. Through these procedures, it was hoped that they would both carry out the intervention at a high level of competence and incorporate the innovative pedagogies involved into their ongoing practice.
Sample. The project was carried out with Six Year 1 classes (children aged 5–6), who were involved as 'intervention' classrooms with 7–9 target children in each class (n = 51). Three comparison classrooms were also studied with 7–8 children in each class (n = 23).
Method. An extensive number of teacher meetings were held with the intervention teachers, during which they were informed of the research rationale for the study, and involved in devising detailed intervention activities. These activities were designed to introduce the children to the 'Ground Rules for Talk' and to give them practice in using these procedures to help them work co-operatively in groups of three to solve a range of science and arts-based problems. Procedures were also discussed and practiced with the teachers that would support 'metacognitive talk' with their classes in relation to the intervention activities These procedures were designed to support the children in discussing the benefits of using the 'Ground Rules for Talk' for group problem-solving and their own learning.
Results and Conclusions. The teachers were further involved in extensive individual and group reflections concerning the effectiveness of the various intervention activities, the outcomes for the children, and for their own professional development. The evidence emerging from these records and discussions strongly suggests that the teachers were enabled to carry out the intervention in creative and highly effective ways, that they became fully involved in the pedagogical innovations and enthusiastically incorporated these new approaches into their ongoing practice. By involving them in a style of research collaboration which used dialogic approaches, and supported their own self-regulation, their ability to successfully adopt the same approaches with their classes of young children was powerfully enhanced
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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