Social Perception in Infancy: A Near Infrared Spectroscopy Study

The capacity to engage and communicate in a social world is one of the defining characteristics of the human species. While the network of regions that compose the social brain have been the subject of extensive research in adults, there are limited techniques available for monitoring young infants. This study used near infrared spectroscopy to investigate functional activation in the social brain network of 36 five-month-old infants. We measured the hemodynamic responses to visually presented stimuli in the temporal lobes. A significant increase in oxyhemoglobin was localized to 2 posterior temporal sites bilaterally, indicating that these areas are involved in the social brain network in young infants.     

Religious Education of the Preschool Child

The chief training in religion is what parents do and are rather than what they say in direct instruction.‐‐George Hodges.     

Telling transgression: a bridge between contract and carnival in making student services policy

This research paper seeks to re-frame student services policy-making by providing traditionally-aged university students with a speaking position in the formulation of the contractual arrangements that affect them and bind them into adulthood. My involvement as a student services educator, policy-maker, and researcher is the unifying thread throughout this inquiry. The ambiguous context of adulthood for first year students within the historical and interlocking categories of social contract and medieval carnival provides the theoretical framework. These categories provide the basis of my critical narrative inquiry into transgression: my autobiographical remembrances of the contract-carnival interplay of student drinking in a Canadian university; and my reconstruction of a dialogically-generated drinking story from my research site in a UK university. This critical narrative inquiry supports my conclusion and action plan for inclusive, dialogical policy-making that engenders the telling of transgression through stories of carnival. I further conclude that the student services educator must take leadership responsibility for initiating this policy-making intervention that bridges carnival and contract, and that provides occasions for first year students to narrativize adulthood.     

Project on the Effectiveness of Learning Strategies and Metacognitive Skills

Teachers should not only be concerned with the products of learning but also with the processes of learning as good teaching involves teaching pupils how to learn effectively. The importance of teaching pupils ‘to learn how to learn’ has gained momentum as recent research provides more and more evidence that substantial variance in learning outcomes can be attributed to learning approaches adopted by pupils (Marton, 1976; Marton and Sayo, 1978; Svenssin and Theman 1983; Marton and Saljo, 1984; Biggs, 1987; Chew 1988; Cheng, 1985).     

Influences of microelectronics on education and training programs and career guidance in Japan

It is the purpose of this article to introduce the influence of current micro-electronic (ME) technology revolution on employment and whole industrial structure as well as guidance and counseling program in Japan. The qualitative impact of ME in Japan has been rapidly changing the job-content and task processing of workers, and further is anticipated to transform the overall employment system and life style of workers. Because of these changes and anticipation, not only education for new skill development but provision of psychological and mental health programs are needed by both workers and managers. Concerning career guidance in schools it is concluded that career guidance workers must realize necessity of their retraining in their professional skills and knowledge, and need to shift the guidance model from matching to career model.     

Heuristics for planning university study at a distance

A model was developed at Murdoch University, Western Australia, to describe distance students’ perceptions of their aims and plans for studying a course. The model follows Polya's Heuristic and Newell & Simon's General Problem Solver of students’ plans and sub‐goals for achieving those plans.

Verbal reports of four students were described using the model, and showed that students’ goals were different from those of the course academic, and that student goals influenced how they planned and organized their study. Implications for the formalization of the model for understanding student behaviour are discussed, as is educational relevance for design of external courses.     

Extending the Cognitive Mediation Model: Examining Factors Associated With Perceived Familiarity and Factual Knowledge of Nanotechnology

This research—a pilot study on the cognitive mediation model (CMM) in Singapore—seeks to revisit and test the applicability of an extended CMM in the context of nanotechnology by examining perceived familiarity as a separate outcome variable in addition to factual knowledge. A cross-sectional survey was administered to a nationally representative sample of 719 adult Singaporeans. Results demonstrated partial support for the hypothesized CMM. First, elaboration was positively associated with both factual knowledge and perceived familiarity, whereas interpersonal discussions about science was associated only with familiarity. Results also showed differential relationships between attention to media platforms (traditional vs. new media) and reflective integration (composed of elaborative processing and interpersonal discussion); whereas attention to science reporting in newspapers and science television programs were associated with elaboration, media attention across all platforms were associated with interpersonal discussions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.