Perception-action coupling in complex game play: Exploring the quiet eye in contested basketball jump shots

The duration of the final fixation before movement initiation – a gaze strategy labelled quiet eye – has been found to explain differences in motor expertise and performance in precision tasks. To date, research only addressed this phenomenon in situations without adversarial constraints. In the present study, we compared the quiet-eye behaviour of intermediately-skilled and highly-skilled basketball players in defended vs. undefended game situations. We predicted differences in quiet-eye duration as a function of skill and performance particularly resulting from late quiet-eye offsets. Results indicated performance-enhancing effects of long quiet-eye durations in the defended but not in the undefended game situation. Furthermore, in line with our prediction, later quiet-eye offsets were associated with superior performance elucidating the phenomenon’s relevance in online-demanding motor tasks. Further, earlier quiet-eye onsets were linked to successful performance supporting earlier suggestions that it is not only the duration but also the timing that matters. These findings not only extend the positive effects of the quiet eye in motor performance to dynamic game-play situations but also support the role of the quiet eye in response to programming and information processing respectively.     

A Rawlsian algorithm for autonomous vehicles

Autonomous vehicles must be programmed with procedures for dealing with trolley-style dilemmas where actions result in harm to either pedestrians or passengers. This paper outlines a Rawlsian algorithm as an alternative to the Utilitarian solution. The algorithm will gather the vehicle’s estimation of probability of survival for each person in each action, then calculate which action a self-interested person would agree to if he or she were in an original bargaining position of fairness. I will employ Rawls’ assumption that the Maximin procedure is what self-interested agents would use from an original position, and then show how the Maximin procedure can be operationalized to produce unique outputs over probabilities of survival.     

为何有超级病菌？

这是一场发生在人类与疾病之间的较量.如今的对手比以往任何时候都要顽强,人类还能取得胜利吗?     

The Communicative Work of Biology-Journal Captions: Lessons for Technical and Professional Communication

The authors examined a corpus of figure captions from technical and professional communication (TPC)-journal articles to test their sense that TPC captions do not fulfill their communicative potential as well as, they sensed, journals in science often do. The authors performed a content analysis on captions from biology-journal articles and iteratively tested a coding scheme of caption content. The resulting scheme can help in analyzing caption content, developing captions, and imparting a variety of TPC-related skills to students.     

The Training and Professional Development of School Leaders in Europe

The article reviews the activities that have been taking place in Europe in the field of senior staff training, particularly headteacher training, based on a study undertaken by the author in 1980 in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and France. It goes on to consider some of the underlying problems and some major areas of study that require further examination, i.e. it is difficult to define the job to be undertaken by the trainer; to analyse the nature of the organisation and school system in which he works; to identify ‘leadership'; to provide relevant training and to then evaluate that training and its real impact on the school and on the quality, effectiveness and relevance of education offered to pupils and students.

Finally it describes some of the possibilities for fruitful cooperation and collaboration over the next few years through the efforts of a wide variety of international organisations.

Cet article fait un tour d'horizon des actions qui ont été entreprises en Europe dans le domaine de la formation des directeurs d'établissement et des maîtres chargés d'une responsabilité particulière dans l'enseignement. Il s'appuie sur une étude entreprise par l'auteur au Danemark, en France, en Norvège et dans les Pays‐Bas en 1980.

L'article étudie ensuite certains problèmes fondamentaux et quelques grands sujets d'étude qui demandent une analyse plus poussée: par exemple la difficulté à définir le travail que doit entreprendre le formateur, pour analyser la nature de l'organisation du système scolaire dans lequel il travaille, la difficulté à identifier les fonctions de ‘leadership’, à etablir une formation appropriée, puis à évaluer cette formation et son impact réel sur l'école et sur la qualité, enfin l'efficacité et l'appropriation de l'enseignement qui est offert aux élèves et étudiants.

Finalement, l'auteur expose quelques possibilités de collaboration fructueuse pour les prochaines années grâce aux efforts de différentes organisations internationales.     

Students’ Attitudes Toward Chemistry Lessons: The Interaction Effect between Grade Level and Gender

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the interaction effect between grade level and gender with respect to students' attitudes toward chemistry lessons taught in secondary schools. The sample consisted of 954 chemistry students in grades Secondary 4–7 (approximately 16–19 years of age) in Hong Kong. Students' attitudes were surveyed using an attitude toward chemistry lessons scale (ATCLS), and subscale scores were produced on four dimensions: liking for chemistry theory lessons; liking for chemistry laboratory work; evaluative beliefs about school chemistry; and behavioral tendencies to learn chemistry. When the ATCLS data were subjected to two-way MANOVA, the interaction effect between grade level and gender on students' attitudes toward chemistry lessons was statistically significant. The interaction effect was attributable to scores on the theory lessons subscale and laboratory work subscale. Male students in Secondary 4 and 5 liked chemistry theory lessons more than their female counterparts. However, male students' liking for chemistry laboratory work declined when they progressed from Secondary 4 to Secondary 7; no such a significant decline in attitude toward chemistry laboratory work was found in females. Overall, both males and females were just marginally positive about chemistry lessons during the years of secondary schooling. Implications of these findings for curriculum design are discussed.