Epistemological correctness in English 101

He is the author of a comprehensive analysis of undergraduate curricula in Michigan's state university system, prepared for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Midland, Michigan, to which he serves as an advisor on higher education issues. Please address correspondence toAcademic Questions     

Evaluation of the dust and methanol extracts of Garcinia kolae for the control of Callosobruchus maculatus （F.） and Sitophilus zeamais （Mots）

Insecticidal effects of different doses of the dust and methanol extracts of Garcinia kolae on Callosobruchus maculatus and Sitophilus zeamais were tested. The dust had no significant effect on the two insects, none of them died even at 3 d after treatment. The methanol extracts, however, had rapid lethal effects on both C. maculatus and S. zeamais. The mortality of C. maculatus by the lowest concentration of methanol extracts ranged from 95%-100% whereas in S. zeamais, the mortality ranged from 87.5%-100% and 70%-100% in concentrations of 1 g extract＋3 ml methanol and 1 g extract＋5 ml methanol, respectively, from 24 to 48 h. The least concentration of 1 g extract＋l 5 ml methanol had no significant lethal effect on Sitophilus zeamais.     

Effects of intertrial interval and exteroceptive feedback duration on discriminative avoidance acquisition in the gerbil

A series of studies of shuttlebox-avoidance learning in the gerbil evaluated the efficacy of an exteroceptive feedback stimulus (FS). Experiment 1 assessed the relative effectiveness of a FS at 30- and 90-sec intertriai intervals (ITIs), and found that the FS and warning signal termination contingencies were additive sources of avoidance reinforcement; i.e., they produced “supernormal acquisition” at the short ITI, but not at the 90-sec ITI. The effectiveness of a FS at the 30-sec ITI was further explored in Experiments 2 and 3, in which FS duration was varied in delayed and trace avoidance conditioning, respectively. In both studies, a FS facilitated acquisition but FS duration was not a critical determinant of performance. These results were interpreted in terms of an expectancy account of the informational value of a FS, and the problem of experimentally distinguishing between cognitive and inhibition-of-fear accounts of avoidance learning was discussed.     

The Use of the Microgenetic Method with Children with Disabilities: Discovering Competence

In this paper, we advocate the use of the microgenetic method, a methodology that combines dense sampling of observations across time and extensive trial-by-trial analysis, to examine strategy change in children with disabilities. This methodology has revealed new information about normally achieving children's cognition, such as large individual variability in strategy use among children of the same age and more gradual patterns of strategy change than previously assumed. In this paper, we review data from three different microgenetic studies in the domains of memory, arithmetic, and reading with children with or at risk for mental retardation and normally achieving children. Our review indicates that there are similar sequences of strategy change, similar rates of strategy change, and similar frequency of strategy discovery and use in children with and without mental retardation (compared to mental age peers). Implications are discussed for the use of this methodology to design instructional techniques for children with disabilities.