Life-science concept development among beginning kindergarten children from three different community settings

Two basic questions were investigated. (1) Do beginning kindergarten children from three different community settings (inner-urban, outer-urban, and rural-farm) vary significantly in performance on a Life-Science Concept Acquisition Test (L-SCAT)? (2) What independent variables are the most useful predictors of performance on the L-SCAT? The L-SCAT was developed by the investigator. It was administered to seventeen subjects from each of the three community settings (N = 51). Among the results were the following: (1) there were significant differences (p < .05) among the scores made by the subjects; (2) a major source of significance was between outer-urban and inner-urban subjects' mean scores; (3) when all physical, mental, and sociocultural variables were used as predictors, a subject's I.Q. and his chronological age were the most useful predictors of L-SCAT performance; and (4) when sociocultural variables alone were used as predictors, the number of years education of a subject's mother was the most useful predictor of L-SCAT performance.     

The Hypocrisy of Amateurism

Sport and recreational activity is a vital part of today's society, and athletic training researchers are playing an important role in gaining a better understanding of how to promote safe and healthy participation for athletes of all ages. This article aims to illustrate the importance of research to prevent and effectively treat sport and recreational injuries. Increased physical activity among Americans is helping to combat chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes, but injuries related to increased activity are on the rise. We must be responsible in our approach to promoting physical activity and participation in sport, while minimizing risk of injury. Athletic training researchers and colleagues from other disciplines within kinesiology, allied health sciences, and medicine must work collaboratively to identify predispositions to athletic injuries and illnesses. They must further conduct prospective studies that will help clinicians better manage these injuries and prevent their recurrence. This article highlights the progress that athletic training researchers have made to bridge the gap between research and clinical practice.     

Space and the Social Worth of Public Libraries

In spite of the growth of digital information and the resultant questioning by some of the value of public libraries, library usage data indicate there were 497,600,000 more visits to public libraries in 2013 than in 1993. Why do people still visit public libraries in the digital age? While many factors drive people to visit public libraries, one thing that public libraries offer that cannot be duplicated online is physical space. Over the decades, library space has been the glue holding the library universe together even as the specific activities that take inside libraries have evolved. While public libraries do an excellent job of promoting their important role in providing access to information, educational resources, technology, and a host of valuable services, they must also promote the value of public library space itself. This requires more than trotting out numbers; it requires telling compelling stories of how public library space is used and reminding the public that the kind of spaces public libraries provide are, in fact, a vanishing resource. The post-911 tightening of security in public buildings of all sorts—coupled with the increasing privatization of what were once public spaces—has left public libraries as perhaps the last remaining indoor public spaces where an individual can remain from opening until closing without needing any reason to be there and without having to spend any money. Public libraries should promote the uniqueness of their spaces in much the same way that National Parks promote the unique spaces they preserve and make available to the public.     

Failure to block control by a relevant stimulus

Pigeons were trained to depress a treadle in the presence of a discriminative stimulus, either a tone or illumination of red houselights, in order to obtain access to grain or avoid electric shock. In avoidance training, the auditory discriminative stimulus yielded faster acquisition than did the visual one. In appetitive training, the visual discriminative stimulus yielded faster acquisition than the auditory one. Experiments 2 and 3 used these stimuli in Kamin’s (1969) blocking design. In Experiment 2, when the pigeons were trained to depress a treadle in the presence of tone to obtain grain and then red light was added as the redundant stimulus, the light acquired stimulus control over treadlepressing; blocking was not observed. In Experiment 3, when the pigeons were trained to depress a treadle in the presence of red light to avoid electric shock and then tone was added as the redundant stimulus, the tone acquired stimulus control over treadle-pressing. Again, blocking was not observed. The implications of these results for several models of stimulus control are discussed.