Implicit media frames: automated analysis of public debate on artificial sweeteners

The framing of issues in the mass media plays a crucial role in the public understanding of science and technology. This article contributes to research concerned with the analysis of media frames over time by making an analytical distinction between implicit and explicit media frames, and by introducing an automated method for the analysis of implicit frames. In particular, we apply a semantic maps method to a case study on the newspaper debate about artificial sweeteners, published in the New York Times between 1980 and 2006. Our results show that the analysis of semantic changes enables us to filter out the dynamics of implicit frames, and to detect emerging metaphors in public debates. Theoretically, we discuss the relation between implicit frames in public debates and the codification of meaning and information in scientific discourses, and suggest further avenues for research interested in the automated analysis of frame changes and trends in public debates.     

Infants of Depressed Mothers Exhibit Atypical Frontal Electrical Brain Activity during Interactions with Mother and with a Familiar, Nondepressed Adult

Previous studies have shown that infants of depressed mothers exhibit atypical frontal brain electrical activity when they are interacting with their mothers. Whereas typically developing infants exhibit greater left versus right frontal brain activity, infants of depressed mothers have been found to exhibit reduced relative left frontal activity. The left frontal brain region has been associated with the expression of positive emotions. In the present study, the question of whether the atypical pattern of brain activity found in infants of depressed mothers generalizes to situations not involving mother was addressed. Brain electrical activity was recorded from 13- to 15-month-old infants of depressed (N = 59) versus nondepressed (N = 40) mothers during a baseline condition, and during several social conditions that included a playful social interaction with a familiar experiments. Infants of depressed mothers exhibited reduced left relative to right frontal activity during the baseline condition, and during interactions with their mothers and with the familiar experimenter. The present results suggest that the atypical pattern of electrical brain activity found in infants of depressed mothers generalizes to a variety of situations, including positive interactions with nondepressed adults.     

Learning to Draw and Drawing to Learn

Young children enter formal schooling with a repertoire of modes of representation with which they try to make sense of the world – drawing, modelling, role play, storying, emergent literacy and numeracy. In drawing they use mark making for kinesthetic pleasure and later learn to repeat patterns and shapes intentionally. From these repeated marks they begin to explore the potential of drawings to represent what they know. A parallel set of drawing strategies with an explicit communicative function develop through social relationships at home or in pre-school/care settings. Children observe and mimic modes of representation and absorb the semiotics modelled by adults or older children in the community/culture[s] in which they are reared. On entering formal school, the messages children receive from the culture of classrooms is that the modes of representation that are valued are the formal symbolic modes of literacy and numeracy whereas teachers perceive drawing as useful for occupational or recreational purposes. Ironically, as children are cultured into ‘academic’ achievements, they lose out on opportunities to engage in alternative modes of representation/symbolic systems, which may offer opportunities for cognitive challenge at higher levels. Thus, whilst pushing children to perform ‘academically’ in the early stages of schooling, we underestimate them ‘intellectually’. At elementary school level children’s mark-making is shaped into a ‘catch-all’, narrative/representational style of drawing across all subjects. Children often elect to explore their own personal, culturally specific ways of drawing outside school as ‘home art’. In school their capabilities in using alternative modes of representation as tools for learning wither away.     

Classroom studies into cognitive style in mathematics for pupils with dyslexia in special education in the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK

The project reported here was designed to explore the cognitive style used by pupils with dyslexia when answering a range of mathematical questions. The research involved 132 pupils aged between 9 and 13 years, including 66 pupils in mainstream and 66 pupils in specialist schools, in three countries in Europe.
Detailed studies of the methods used by pupils attempting the given questions on a test of cognitive style suggested that they fell into two main categories. These pupils were observed when completing the test and their responses were categorised accordingly. The resulting numerical data were then analysed for differences between pupils within each country and between their non-dyslexic counterparts.
The results showed significant differences in the balance of cognitive styles employed by pupils with dyslexia as opposed to their non-dyslexic counterparts. Also there were interesting differences occurring between the pupils with dyslexia within the three countries on initial testing. Further differences were established after a six-month intervention period, suggesting that the characteristics of different curriculum models do have an impact upon pupils' flexibility as learners.