The role of incentive learning in instrumental outcome revaluation by sensory-specific satiety

Hungry rats were trained to perform two instrumental actions, one for salt- and the other for lemonflavored polycose solution. When they were sated on one of these two outcomes by prefeeding immediately prior to a choice extinction test, the action trained with the prefed solution was performed less than the other action. The subsequent experiments examined the role of incentive learning in this specific satiety-induced outcome revaluation effect. The second experiment demonstrated that the experience of consuming a flavored polycose solution to satiety enabled the state induced by polycose consumption to control the devaluation of the flavored outcome. By contrast, the third study found that, although devaluing the prefed outcome, specific-satiety treatments could induce a relative inflation in the incentive value of other food outcomes. The final two studies demonstrated an increased outcome-devaluation effect in instrumental performance when these devaluation and revaluation effects were combined. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that specific satiety treatments produce changes in outcome value that depend upon incentive learning.     

数学教育的社会文化研究:中国面临的挑战与机遇

浙江师范大学主办的"数学教育的社会-文化研究"国际专题会议上报告与交流论文的主要论点有:数学学习始于"模仿"并以"创造"为目的;中国教育环境有两个基本成分:传统的"考试文化"中评价的重要性,父母对孩子成绩的期望以及他们对数学成就的信念和态度等.培养创造力和创造性思维在数学学习中是必要的,在生活的各个领域也是如此.     

Educating the Young Mathematician: A Historical Perspective Through the Nineteenth Century

Educational programs for young children emerged reasonably early in the history of the United States of America. Its theoretical foundation was based on the thoughts and principles of various early European scholars who differed from one another in their educational theories and how they viewed experiences that would impact on young children’s education, including their mathematics experiences. The movements of Children’s Arithmetic, Mental Arithmetic, the infant school, and the Froebel kindergarten all influenced mathematics in early childhood education. This article reviews the history of mathematics education in relation to the history of early childhood education through the nineteenth century. It also discusses how research in mathematics education attempted to gain its own identity. Throughout history, researchers have identified issues in mathematics education and addressed them, defining the field, and generating a cadre of mathematics researchers.     

The Effective Teacher’s Characteristics as Perceived by Students

Tertiary Education and Management - Students (N = 1,883) from 10 European countries answered a web questionnaire pertaining to three dimensions of what they expect and what they experience from...     

ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tools Retrospective version (ICAST-R): Delphi study and field testing in seven countries

ObjectivesTo gain consensus among an ethnically and linguistically diverse group of international child protection experts on the structure and content of a new survey tool for retrospective measurement of child abuse, and to determine the performance of the instrument through an international field trial with young adults.MethodsThe questionnaire was developed through focus group discussions with international experts, and then subjected to a Delphi study in two waves to determine the perceived importance and translatability of items. The resultant questionnaire was translated into six languages and field tested in seven countries with convenient samples of young adults aged 18–26 years (N = 842).ResultsChild maltreatment experts from 28 countries provided input to questionnaire development. Satisfactory agreement on draft item inclusion and exclusion and the translatability of items was gained. The tool includes 15 primary questions about potentially abusive physical, sexual and emotional events, with follow-up questions about perpetrator characteristics, frequency of acts and periods in childhood when the recalled abuse occurred. The field test revealed lifetime prevalence per item usually exceeded 10% (11/15 items; range 2.1–49.5%). Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) was moderate to high for each of three item sub-sets (between .61 and .82) and the rates of missing data were low (less than 1.5% for 14 of 15 items). The great majority of respondents nominated either peer and/or adult perpetrators (between 82.3% and 98.2% depending upon the item), and among these, child/adolescent peers and non-family adults (including teachers for emotional and physical acts) were nominated often.ConclusionsThe ICAST-R is based on consensus from international experts, translates clearly and has satisfactory properties for adoption as a survey tool to estimate prevalence and describe perpetrators and other contextual aspects of child abuse.Practice implicationsThis tool can be utilized in a broad range of cultures and languages and may contribute to improved research practice. Although the core items are limited to just 15 acts of maltreatment, if these behaviorally specific questions are adopted as key indicators and incorporated into comprehensive local, national or regional surveys, eventually there should be greater comparability in survey estimates.     

The development and piloting of the ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool—Parent version (ICAST-P)

ObjectiveChild maltreatment is a problem that has longer recognition in the northern hemisphere and in high-income countries. Recent work has highlighted the nearly universal nature of the problem in other countries but demonstrated the lack of comparability of studies because of the variations in definitions and measures used. The International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect has developed instrumentation that may be used with cross-cultural and cross-national benchmarking by local investigators.Design and samplingThe instrument design began with a team of expert in Brisbane in 2004. A large bank of questions were subjected to two rounds of Delphi review to develop the fielded version of the instrument. Convenience samples included approximately 120 parent respondents with children under the age of 18 in each of six countries (697 total).ResultsThis paper presents an instrument that measures parental behaviors directed at children and reports data from pilot work in 6 countries and 7 languages. Patterns of response revealed few missing values and distributions of responses that generally were similar in the six countries. Subscales performed well in terms of internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha in very good range (0.77–0.88) with the exception of the neglect and sex abuse subscales. Results varied by child age and gender in expected directions but with large variations among the samples. About 15% of children were shaken, 24% hit on the buttocks with an object, and 37% were spanked. Reports of choking and smothering were made by 2% of parents.ConclusionThese pilot data demonstrate that the instrument is well tolerated and captures variations in, and potentially harmful forms of child discipline.Practice implicationsThe ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool – Parent Version (ICAST-P) has been developed as a survey instrument to be administered to parents for the assessment of child maltreatment in a multi-national and multi-cultural context. It was developed with broad input from international experts and subjected to Dephi review, translation, and pilot testing in six countries. The results of the Delphi study and pilot testing are presented. This study demonstrates that a single instrument can be used in a broad range of cultures and languages with low rates of missing data and moderate to high internal consistency.