Transfer of judgments of control to a target stimulus and to novel stimuli through derived relations

Three experiments examined the effect of response?Coutcome contingencies on human ratings of causal efficacy and demonstrated that such ratings transfer to novel situations through derived stimulus relations. Efficacy ratings generally followed the delta probability rule when positive response-outcome contingencies were employed (Experiment 1) and when some outcomes were not contingent on participants?? responses (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 employed a negative response?Coutcome contingency and manipulated performance expectancies in the task. All three groups overestimated their causal efficacy ratings. A learned helplessness effect was observed when the response?Coutcomes were uncontrollable and in the high-expectancy group when participants?? performance in the task was worse than they had expected. In all experiments, ratings transferred to a stimulus presented during the task and often generalized to novel stimuli through derived relations. These results corroborate the view that outcome probability is a determinant of causal efficacy ratings and that schedules can be employed as UCS in procedures that share characteristics of evaluative conditioning procedures.     

Historical Perspective and Current Status of the Physical Education Graduation Requirement at American 4-Year Colleges and Universities

This study gives an overview of the history of required physical education in America's 4-year colleges and universities and provides an update on the requirement status. After randomly identifying 354 institutions, we searched their respective websites to determine whether physical education was a requirement to earn a baccalaureate degree. The major finding was that the physical education requirement declined from an all-time high of 97% in the 1920s and 1930s to an all-time low of 39.55% in 2010. Given society's ongoing health challenges and the important role of physical activity in maintaining health, this seems counterintuitive. It is also inconsistent with the National Physical Activity Plan (2010).     

Using the Science Writing Heuristic to Improve Undergraduate Writing in Biology

Our objective was to investigate the impact of the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) on undergraduates’ ability to express logical conclusions and include appropriate evidence in formal writing assignments. Students in three laboratory sections were randomly allocated to the SWH treatment (n?=?51 students) with another three sections serving as a control (n?=?47 students). All sections received an identical formal writing assignment to report results of laboratory activities. Four blinded raters used a 6-point rating scheme to evaluate the quality of students’ writing performance. Raters’ independent scoring agreement was evaluated using Cronbach's α. Paper scores were compared using a t-test, then papers were combined into low-scoring (3.5 of 6 points) or high-scoring (>3.5 of 6 points) sets and SWH and control cohorts were compared using Pearson's chi-square test. Papers from the SWH cohort were significantly (P?=?0.02) more likely to receive a high score than those from the control cohort. Overall scores of SWH cohort papers tended to be higher (P?=?0.07) than those from the control cohort. Gains in student conceptual understanding elicited by the SWH approach improved student ability to express logical conclusions about their data and include appropriate evidence to support those conclusions in formal research reports. Extending the writing tasks of the SWH to formal writing assignments can improve the ability of undergraduates to argue effectively for their research findings.     

Credibility battles in the autism litigation

That vaccines do not cause autism is now a widely accepted proposition, though a few dissenters remain. An 8-year court process in the US federal vaccine injury compensation court ended in 2010 with rulings that autism was not an adverse reaction to vaccination. There were two sets of trials: one against the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and one against the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. The MMR story is more widely known because of publicity surrounding the main proponent of an MMR-autism link, British doctor Andrew Wakefield, but the story of thimerosal in court is largely untold. This study examines the credibility battles and boundary work in the two cases, illuminating the sustaining world of alternative science that supported the parents, lawyers, researchers, and expert witnesses against vaccines. After the loss in court, the families and their advocates transformed their scientific arguments into an indictment of procedural injustice in the vaccine court. I argue that the very efforts designed to produce legitimacy in this type of lopsided dispute will be counter-mobilized as evidence of injustice, helping us understand why settling a scientific controversy in court does not necessarily mean changing anyone's mind.     

Performance of conceptual framework elements for the retrieval of qualitative health literature: a case study

Objective:A growing volume of studies address methods for performing systematic reviews of qualitative studies. One such methodological aspect is the conceptual framework used to structure the review question and plan the search strategy for locating relevant studies. The purpose of this case study was to evaluate the retrieval potential of each element of conceptual frameworks in qualitative systematic reviews in the health sciences.Methods:The presence of elements from conceptual frameworks in publication titles, abstracts, and controlled vocabulary in CINAHL and PubMed was analyzed using a set of qualitative reviews and their included studies as a gold standard. Using a sample of 101 publications, we determined whether particular publications could be retrieved if a specific element from the conceptual framework was used in the search strategy.Results:We found that the relative recall of conceptual framework elements varied considerably, with higher recall for patient/population (99%) and research type (97%) and lower recall for intervention/phenomenon of interest (74%), outcome (79%), and context (61%).Conclusion:The use of patient/population and research type elements had high relative recall for qualitative studies. However, other elements should be used with great care due to lower relative recall.     

Bystander Behaviour Among Italian Students

This paper reports the Italian data on the bystanders' project. In the last decade, several studies have been conducted on the prevalence and nature of bullying among primary and secondary students as well as on individual and social risk factors, illustrating that bullying in the Italian context is a widespread phenomenon. No research has been conducted, so far, on the 'bystander' behaviours of those students who see other peers being bullied or bullying others in school either physically, verbally or through sexual coercion (i.e. touching girls). The study was conducted with 594 students (51.9% boys and 48.1% girls), aged 12–16 years old, with a mean age of 13.1 (SD=0.87). They were recruited from six different middle schools, two in each of three different sites in Italy: Northern Italy (Vercelli), Central Italy (Rome) and Southern Italy (Catania). Results showed that though the most likely reaction is supporting the victim by trying to discourage the bully, gender differences emerged, with girls more likely than boys to support the victim and boys more likely to encourage the bully or simply ignore. Differences resembling the same pattern emerged also with regard to own involvement as a bully or a victim. Findings are discussed by looking at possible applications for intervention.