Leadership in large and very large primary schools

This paper examines leadership in large primary schools. The paper reports on interviews conducted with heads and deputies in 26 schools with 600+ pupils. The first part of the paper sets out what the heads and deputies said about leading such large schools. Then five themes which emerged from their testimonies are explored. The themes are: context; site management; organisational structures; the role of the deputy head; professional development. The interviews have been used to inform a second stage of the study, which is a large survey of 500 other large and very large schools. The quantitative data are still being analysed at the time of this paper going to press and the findings will be reported later.     

Retroactive inhibition in rat spatial memory

Two experiments were carried out in which rats first were given four forced choices on an eight-arm radial maze, then were given interpolated maze experiences, and finally were given a free choice retention test on the first maze. In Experiment 1, interpolated experiences consisted of forced choices made on one, two, or three other mazes, each placed in a different room. Retroactive inhibition (RI) was not found with one and two interpolated mazes but was found with three interpolated mazes. In Experiments 2a and 2b, an attempt was made to produce RI within a single context by using two mazes placed side by side or on top of one another and by using interpolated forced choices that were different, random, or the same with respect to forced choices onMaze 1. These conditions failed to yield any evidence of RI. In Experiment 2c, forced choices were followed by interpolated direct placements on the same maze on different, random, or the same maze arms, and retention tests revealed RI under these conditions. It was concluded that rats encode memories of specific places visited in space and that RI will arise only if (1) memory is greatly overloaded with interpolated information or (2) an interpolated visit is made to exactly that position in space to which an animal must travel in order to achieve a correct choice on the retention test.     

The sensory basis of spatial memory in the rat

Rats were given three stages of training on an eight-arm, elevated radial maze with food reward at the end of each arm. In Stage 1, rats were allowed to choose freely among the arms from the beginning of a trial. In Stage 2, three initial forced choices were followed by a series of free choices. In Stage 3, the central platform of the maze was rotated with the rat on it between the initial forced choices and the free choices. Following testing on these three stages, the animals were divided into four groups and deprived of selected senses. One group was made blind, a second anosmic, a third blind and anosmic, and a fourth was left normal. The same three stages of testing that had been conducted preoperatively then were run again post-operatively. Throughout these tests, the possible use of auditory cues was tested by presenting white noise on alternate trials. Finally, two further tests were carried out, the multiple rotations test and the removal-replacement test. The results indicated that visual cues, but not olfactory or auditory cues, played a critical role in the rat’s ability to avoid previously entered alleys. There was evidence also that rats used internal cues from kinesthetic and/or vestibular receptors when visual cues were absent.     

Precursors of mnemonic strategies in very young children's memory

In 4 studies with 18-24-month-old children, evidence was obtained of strategy-like behaviors in a memory-for-location task in which the child had to remember in what natural location a toy had been hidden. The children exhibited behaviors that resemble the mature strategies of rehearsal and monitoring, including talking about the toy or its hiding place and looking or pointing at it during the delay interval. In Experiments 1 and 2, these strategy-like behaviors were engaged in differentially as a function of familiarity, both of the setting in which the task was embedded and of the task itself. Significantly more target behaviors occurred in an unfamiliar than in a familiar setting, and more target behaviors occurred on the first than on the second day of observation. In Experiment 3, when the basic memory task was modified to remove the memory demands from the child, very few of the strategy-like behaviors occurred, indicating that they were indeed memory specific. In the fourth experiment, the rehearsal-like behaviors were shown to be related to subsequent retrieval. We interpret these results as evidence of an early natural propensity to keep alive what must be remembered, a rudimentary and imperfect version of what will later become more elaborate and planful mnemonic strategies.     

Distance distortions in memory for spatial locations

The present study examined developmental differences in the effect of route extensity on the memory for the locations of objects in a spatial array. Kindergarten and adult subjects were trained to remember the locations of 4 objects. During this training, objects were either connected by a combination of indirect, looped train tracks and direct train tracks (experimental subjects) or connected by entirely direct train-track routes (control subjects). Analyses of actual interobject distances, from subjects' reproductions of object locations on a response board (without train tracks), revealed that children, but not adults, distort distance in terms of the nature of travel observed between objects. Further testing revealed that differences in the amount of time taken for travel could not account for the results obtained with children.     

Counterconditioning of memory in rats

Two experiments examined the counterconditioning of an aversively motivated response in rats. Presentation of a highly palatable sugar solution (maltose in Experiment 1; sucrose in Experiment 2) to thirsty rats was used as the counterconditioning treatment. In Experiment 1, the counterconditioning procedure was found to be effective in modifying both a newly acquired and a cue-reactivated fear memory. In Experiment 2, the counterconditioning effect was shown to occur when the fear memory was reactivated with a noncontingent exposure to the unconditioned stimulus rather than the conditioned stimulus. This outcome supports the interpretation of counterconditioning as a modification of some central representation of the original training memory, rather than the acquisition of a competing peripheral response. The methodological implications of the present approach to counterconditioning are considered.     

Random-like testing of very large scale integration circuit

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Participation for Free. Exploring (limits of) participatory government

Since the 1990s participation has become a buzzword in education as well as in development contexts. In those contexts, participation has more particularly been linked up with personal promises of self‐fulfilment, ownership and self‐determination as well as with democratic ideals such as justice, equivalence and freedom. In the paper, we focus on a dominant argument in the justification and also realisation of participation in those empirical contexts, namely the claim to freedom. In order to analyse this freedom, we explore a concrete case in which we show how participatory processes promote various possibilities for the subject to enact freedom. Via Foucault's perspective of governmentality we scrutinise this argument of freedom, indicating how the possibilities and opportunities for liberation and freedom are actually governing the subject in a very particular way, constituting a specific ‘participatory’ norm.     

Individual differences in spatial text processing: High spatial ability can compensate for spatial working memory interference

The present study investigates the relation between spatial ability and visuo-spatial and verbal working memory in spatial text processing. In two experiments, participants listened to a spatial text (Experiments 1 and 2) and a non-spatial text (Experiment 1), at the same time performing a spatial or a verbal concurrent task, or no secondary task. To understand how individuals who differ in spatial ability process spatial text during dual task performance, spatial individual differences were analyzed. The tasks administered were the Vandenberg and Kuse [Vandenberg, S. G., & Kuse, A. R. (1978). Mental rotation, a group test of three-dimensional spatial visualization. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 47, 599-604.] mental rotation test (MRT) and a reading comprehension task (RCT). Individuals with high (HMR) and low (LMR) mental rotation differed in MRT scores but had similar RCT performance. Results showed that the HMR group, in contrast with LMR counterparts, preserved good spatial text recall even when a spatial concurrent task was performed; however, Experiment 2 revealed a modification of spatial concurrent task performance in LMR as well in HMR group. Overall, results suggest that HMR individuals have more spatial resources than LMR individuals, allowing them to compensate for spatial working memory interference, but only to a limited extent, given that the processing of spatial information is still mediated by VSWM.     

探索高校实验室大型仪器设备管理新模式

高等学校大型仪器设备是从事教学、科研的重要条件和基本手段,是学校综合实力的体现。随着现代科学技术的迅猛发展,知识在经济发展中起到越来越重要的作用,使得高校大型仪器设备的管理显得尤为重要。结合工作实践,以及对目前高校实验室大型仪器设备管理及使用现状的分析,提出了加强高校大型仪器设备管理,提高大型仪器设备使用效率的若干措施。     

大变形空间曲梁有限元分析

为了进行空间曲梁大变形有限元分析,将直梁单元位移分量插值的思想改进为位移矢量插值用以建立曲梁单元的位移场,分别建立了适用于任意曲线形式的全拉格朗日和修正拉格朗日增量格式空间曲梁有限元列式.通过采用等参数曲线代替实际曲线的策略,使得修正拉格朗日增量格式曲梁单元可以应用于更广泛的场合.算例对比结果表明,曲梁单元的建立过程正确,曲梁单元的精度要明显高于直梁单元.一般情况下,仅用直梁单元数量1/5的曲梁单元就可以达到相同的计算精度.     

Stimulus modality and short-term memory in rats

Two experimental paradigms are presented aimed at determining the retention of auditory and visual information over brief delay intervals. First, a conditional delayed matching-to-sample procedure was used in which rats were required to symbolically match the modality of the sample stimulus with one of two comparison stimuli. In the second experiment, subjects were trained and tested using a Konorski-type procedure. Despite the conceptual and procedural differences between the two procedures, subjects in both experiments showed steeper forgetting functions for visual events than for auditory events, while performance levels at 0-sec delay intervals were equivalent for both stimuli. These results, when taken together with related research conducted with pigeons, suggest that content of memory may have important influences on the short-term retention abilities of animal subjects.     

Text memory: Recalling Twice,using different perspectives

Three hundred College students read a 760 word text under one of two instructed perspectives. After full recall, an additional recall (squeeze) was requested under either the same (unchanged) or the alternative perspective. The first recall confirmed earlier results: a strong bias towards perspective related ideas. The second recall yielded substantial additional material. It was expecially effective in recalling alternative perspective related ideas and this most markedly so if the instructions were to recall using the alternative perspective. These results confirm and complement the results of Anderson & Pichert (1978) in so far as it is both the chance of a second recall as well as the change in perspective that raises the amount of recalled material.     

Spatial memory and the performance of rats and pigeons in the radial-arm maze

The resource-distribution hypothesis states that the ability of an animal to remember the spatial location of past events is related to the typical distribution of food resources for the species. It appears to predict that Norway rats would perform better than domestic pigeons in tasks requiring spatial event memory. Pigeons, tested in an eight-arm radial maze, exhibited no more than half of the memory capacity observed in rats in the same apparatus and may not have used spatial memory at all. The results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis.     

Time limits in testing: An analysis of eye movements and visual attention in spatial problem solving

Individuals with an aptitude for interpreting spatial information (high mental rotation ability: HMRA) typically master anatomy with more ease, and more quickly, than those with low mental rotation ability (LMRA). This article explores how visual attention differs with time limits on spatial reasoning tests. Participants were assorted to two groups based on their mental rotation ability scores and their eye movements were collected during these tests. Analysis of salience during testing revealed similarities between MRA groups in untimed conditions but significant differences between the groups in the timed one. Question‐by‐question analyses demonstrate that HMRA individuals were more consistent across the two timing conditions (κ = 0.25), than the LMRA (κ = 0.013). It is clear that the groups respond to time limits differently and their apprehension of images during spatial problem solving differs significantly. Without time restrictions, salience analysis suggests LMRA individuals attended to similar aspects of the images as HMRA and their test scores rose concomitantly. Under timed conditions however, LMRA diverge from HMRA attention patterns, adopting inflexible approaches to visual search and attaining lower test scores. With this in mind, anatomical educators may wish to revisit some evaluations and teaching approaches in their own practice. Although examinations need to evaluate understanding of anatomical relationships, the addition of time limits may induce an unforeseen interaction of spatial reasoning and anatomical knowledge. Anat Sci Educ 10: 528–537. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

Spatial memory in rats: Resistance to retroactive interference

Treatments that interfere with animals’ short-term retention (e.g., in delayed matching-to-sample) were studied using a spatial memory task. Rats performed in an eight-arm radial maze in which choosing each arm without repetition was the optimal behavior. Performances were interrupted between fourth and fifth choices for a delay of 15 sec to 2 min. A variety of events occurring during the delay interval did not disrupt memories for prior choices (as assessed by the accuracy of postdelay choices). The ineffective treatments included variations in visual and auditory environments, removal from the maze, food consumed during the delay, a distinctive odor added to the maze, or combinations of these manipulations. Additionally, performance on another spatial task (a four-arm maze) during the delay between Choices 4 and 5 did not interfere with performance in the eight-arm maze. These findings suggest that rats’ memories for spatial locations are immune to retroactive interference, at least within the range of conditions reported, and that the rat can successfully segregate memories for spatial locations established in different contexts.     

Comparing spatial memory in two species of tit: Recalling a single positive location

The performance of a food-storing species, the marsh tit(Parus palustris), was compared with that of a nonstorer, the blue tit(P. caeruleus), in a spatial memory task in which birds had to return to a site where they had previously been allowed to eat part of a piece of peanut. No differences were found between species’ overall performance, but increasing retention interval from 1 min to 24 h brought about a decrease in performance. The results are discussed in relationship to the hypothesis that food-storing birds have a specialized spatial memory capacity.