Videogames and spatial skills: An exploratory study

Fifty-eight undergraduate and graduate students participated in an exploratory study which examined the relationship between videogames, spatial cognitive skills, and eye-hand coordination. Scores on two videogames were compared with subjects’ scores on three standardized spatial skills tests and on one test of eye-hand coordination. The subjects were randomly assigned to either the experimental group (which was provided with five hours of videogame practice) or the control group (which was provided with no videogame practice). The scores on the two videogames were found to be correlated with different spatial test scores. Significant sex and age differences were also found on several of the measures. The males scored higher than the females on spatial orientation, visualization, and the baseline measures on one of the videogames, while the females scored higher than the males on the test of eye-hand coordination. The age of the subjects was found to be negatively correlated with scores on the videogames and spatial test scores. I would like to acknowledge the significant contributions of my advisers Ronald Slaby and Barbara Flagg of Harvard Graduate School of Education, America’s Game of Somerville, MA, for equipment donation, and John Kao of the Harvard Business School for donating the use of computer facilities.     

Individual strategies in a spatial task and how they relate to aptitudes

Thirty-two subjects were first submitted to a series of aptitude tests, then participated in a mental rotation task with advance information (Cooper, 1975), and finally gave retrospective reports about their solution strategy. The verbal reports showed that different subjects used different strategies to perform the rotation task, and also that some subjects shifted strategies, in that they successively adopted several ways of processing the same task. The coding of verbal reports led to distinguish five types of strategies (called rotation, partial rotation, verbal, projection, multiple). Five groups of subjects using preferentially one of these strategies were constituted. For each group hypotheses on performance were tested via analyses on reaction times and errors. These analyses confirmed that the five strategy groups produced different patterns of RT in conformity with verbal reports. Moreover the comparison of the mental aptitude profiles across the different strategy groups suggests that strategy choices are affected by steady and general characteristics of cognitive functioning.     

A study of exploratory behavior as an index of spatial knowledge in hamsters

This experiment investigated the role of exploration in the formation of maps of the environment. The effects of spatial rearrangement of four familiar objects in an open field on subsequent exploratory behavior were studied in hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus). During two exploratory sessions, four groups of subjects were exposed to objects in a particular spatial relation to each other and to a distal pattern. During a testing session, the control group was exposed to the same situation as during the first two sessions, and the three experimental groups were exposed to various object rearrangements. The hamsters in the experimental groups, but not those in the control group, renewed their exploration of the objects during the testing session, as measured by the number of contacts with the objects and the time spent investigating them. Further analyses of the nature of the reinvestigated objects (i.e., displaced or nondisplaced) support the hypothesis that, through exploration, a long-lasting representation of the environment is built up on the basis of the topological relations among the objects, the overall geometric structure provided by the arrangement of the objects, and the relations between the objects and extra-apparatus landmarks.     

Faculties of education and institutional strategies for knowledge mobilization: an exploratory study

The goal to enhance the impacts of academic research in the ‘real world’ resonates with progressive visions of the role of universities in society, and finds support among policy makers who have sought to enhance the ‘transfer’, ‘translation’, ‘uptake’, or ‘valorization’ of research knowledge in several areas of public services. This paper reports on an exploratory study of the strategies used by selected Canadian and international faculties of education to mobilize research knowledge. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with senior administrators of 13 faculties of education, the analysis reveals several themes. Academic leaders recognize knowledge mobilization as a desirable institutional mission, but they identify a number of barriers to greater efforts in this area. Although a number of strategies are employed, changes across multiple organizational dimensions to encourage and support knowledge mobilization were reported at only two institutions. These results are relevant to faculty administrators, scholars, and policy-makers interested in understanding the role of academic institutions in the mobilization of research knowledge to the broader education community.     

Investigating the contributions of background knowledge and reading comprehension strategies to L2 reading comprehension: an exploratory study

While a number of studies have investigated the influence of background knowledge and reading comprehension strategies on comprehension, no L2 research exists examining and comparing the unique contributions of these two variables examined together. Therefore, the purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the combined and individual contributions of background knowledge and reading comprehension strategies to reading comprehension. Data collected from 20 university-level English language learners were analyzed using regression analyses. The results indicated that background knowledge and reading comprehension strategies, operationalized as self-questioning, combined to account for a significant portion of variance in reading comprehension scores, with self-questioning being a stronger predictor of reading comprehension than background knowledge.     

Desirable places: spatial representations and educational strategies in the inner city

This article examines how the outcome of neoliberal educational reforms has affected urban schooling in the inner city of Stockholm – making it into a centralized nexus or a ‘hot-spot’ for students and schools. The aim is to analyse how geographical place and space have become major distinctive criteria in inner-city students’ educational strategies, as well as a comparative advantage for upper-secondary schools in the fierce in-between school competition. The data consist of interviews with close to 120 participants, official statistics and marketing from 55 inner-city upper-secondary schools. Our findings suggest that the growing commodification and upward socio-spatial homogenization of the inner city both affect the way schools use spatial representations in their marketing and also the strategies deployed by students in their school choice.     

我国体育文化空间传播效果的影响因素及提升策略

采用社会统计学相关分析软件,对影响我国体育文化空间传播效果的因素和发展策略进行了分析.提升体育文化自身竞争力,提高传播主体的可靠性和权威性,优化体育文化空间传播途径,促进传播受众的体育文化需求和文化消费,加强政府对体育文化空间传播的决策支持,是提高体育文化空间传播效果的主要策略.     

An exploratory approach to advanced mathematics

There is little current use of more exploratory approaches to the teaching and learning of advanced mathematics. This article describes a simple exploratory teaching model, and reports the findings of a small-scale action-research project to implement and evaluate it. There are discussions of student perceptions and attitudes, and of student attainment. The principal findings are that there was no underachievement under the exploratory approach, and that student preferences for routinised mathematical activity and directed teaching style were strongly associated.     

医学院校非英语专业大学生英语写作策略探究

医学院校非英语专业学生英语写作一直是英语学习的一个难题。目前大学英语写作教学的现状也让人很不满意。针对这一现状,文章分析了英语写作中存在的问题及产生的原因,探讨了提高大学生英语写作水平的策略。     

Test-taking strategies for a high-stakes writing test: An exploratory study of 12 Chinese EFL learners

This paper reports on a qualitative research study into the test-taking strategies employed in completing two picture prompt writing tasks—Situational Writing and Interpretational Writing in the Beijing Matriculation English Test. Think-aloud and retrospective interview protocols were collected from twelve Chinese students representing two key and two ordinary senior high schools in both urban and suburban areas of Beijing. The researcher also conducted in-depth interviews with the students’ English teachers to explore issues raised by their students. The research findings suggest that driven by the high stakes involved in the test, students have developed a full set of test-taking strategies through coaching and exhibited skillful manipulation of these strategies. Moreover, with its original intention badly distorted, Interpretational Writing has become a “risky” task. Students are unwilling to freely express their own ideas. Instead they try to guess test developers’ intent. Therefore, Interpretational Writing might fail to achieve one of its goals: measuring creative thinking. The researcher also points out that more efforts should go into identifying the sources of certain test-taking strategies and clearing any possible misunderstandings between test developers and teachers.     

高中生物探究性实验方式的指导

《普通高中生物新课程标准》提出了"倡导探究学习"的理念,把"探究性学习"作为自然科学课程设计和实施中的重要指导思想和教学策略.探究式教学强调学生自主探究.实施探究性实验教学有利于调动学生学习积极性,发展学生思维,培养学生能力.教师要善于进行实验探究方式的指导,充分发挥学生学习的主动性,挖掘学生内在的潜力.     

Student teachers' learning about child sexual abuse strategies for primary school: an exploratory study of surface and deep learning

This paper explores student teachers' understandings of child sexual abuse and strategies to deal with it that are appropriate for the primary school classroom. Evidence of surface and deep learning were obtained from a content analysis of student teachers' responses to an essay‐type exam question, using Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. The results show that participants were most likely to be rated as having achieved at intermediate levels, and less likely to be at either the lowest or highest levels. The data suggest that greater provision should be made for addressing child sexual abuse during the training of such professionals to enhance their deeper thinking about child sexual abuse and strategies to deal with it. Since pre‐service teacher education plays a significant role in enhancing the quality of future teachers, it is important that they are helped to achieve the highest levels associated with understanding universals, principles, generalizations and abstractions. The implications of these results for teaching in primary schools strongly suggest the importance of comprehensive, enhanced, longer, and on‐going programmes on child sexual abuse across pre‐service education.     

Stimulus change and complexity in exploratory behavior

It has recently been proposed (Fowler, 1967, 1971) that the incentive value of novelty can be defined in terms of stimulus change. An experiment is reported which examines the relationship between changes in complexity and the consequent exploratory behavior. Following extended exposure to a midcomplexity stimulus, rats were allowed to choose between a stimulus change and the now familiar midcomplexity stimulus. For some Ss the change was to a stimulus of higher complexity, and for others the change was to a lower complexity stimulus. The results suggest that physical stimulus changes to a stimulus of greater complexity is a more effective novel stimulus than physical stimulus changes to lesser complexity, although both changes may function as incentives.     

Fostering spatial abilities of middle school students through augmented reality: Spatial strategies

Education and Information Technologies - In school mathematics, representations of solid figures and three-dimensional geometric objects generally rely on two-dimensional projective representation...     

First- and second-order configural sensitivity for greeble stimuli in baboons

Previous studies on nonhuman primates have shown inconsistencies in their processing of first- and secondorder relational properties of facial stimuli. Using greeble stimuli sharing configural properties with faces, this study assessed configural processing in baboons. Five baboons were trained to recognize a positive stimulus among pairs of greebles in a two-alternative forced choice task. They were then tested with new stimulus pairs involving either a first-order version, with modifications in global qualitative spatial relations, or a second-order version, with modifications of finer spatial relations. Performance remained above chance in all test conditions, including when only second-order cues were available, but it was higher for first-order trials. It is proposed that an extensive training with greebles led to the processing of second-order relational properties. These results demonstrate that configural sensitivity is not restricted to faces in baboons and suggest that a common mechanism may support configural processing for face and nonface stimuli.     

Environmental control, social context, and individual differences in behavioral and cortisol responses to novelty in infant rhesus monkeys

The effects of appetitive controllability on behavioral and cortisol reactivity to novelty in 12 infant rhesus monkeys were studied. Surrogate-peer-reared infants had homecage access to food treats contingently via lever pressing ("master") or noncontingently ("yoked") for 12 weeks from postnatal month 2. Masters lever-pressed more, but did not differ in baseline cortisol. At month 5, infants were exposed to a novel environment in social groups and individually. Masters were significantly more active and exhibited significantly lower cortisol reactivity to the novel environment, but only in the individual context. Also, individual differences in operant behavior were positively correlated with behavioral activity and negatively correlated with cortisol reactivity to the novel environment. The results reveal context-specific benefits of contingent stimulation in infancy.