Association of physical fitness,body composition,cardiometabolic markers and adherence to the Mediterranean diet with bone mineral density in perimenopausal women. The FLAMENCO project

This study aimed to analyse the association of different components of physical fitness, body composition, cardiometabolic markers and the Mediterranean diet with bone mineral density (BMD) in perimenopausal women, and to test which of these components are independently associated with BMD. The sample comprised 197 perimenopausal women (52.6 ± 4.5 years). Physical fitness was assessed with the “Senior Fitness Test” battery and the handgrip strength and Bruce tests. Fat and lean mass and BMD were measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. We analysed the markers of metabolic syndrome, C-reactive protein, and components of the Mediterranean diet. Handgrip muscle strength (β = 0.212, P = 0.005), body weight (β = 0.244, P = 0.001), BMI (β = 0.180, P = 0.011) and lean mass (β = 0.379, P < 0.001) were positively associated with BMD. No associations were observed between cardiometabolic markers or the Mediterranean diet with BMD (all P > 0.05). When all relevant indicators of BMD were simultaneously considered, lean mass was the only 1 showing an independent association with BMD (β = 0.392, P < 0.001), explaining 14% of the BMD variability. In conclusion, muscle strength might be a marker of BMD in perimenopausal women. However, lean mass was the only factor independently associated with BMD. Future research to determine whether increasing lean mass through specific exercise-based interventions contributes to increasing BMD is warranted.     

Acquisition of the same/different concept by an African Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus): Learning with respect to categories of color,shape, and material

An African Grey parrot, previously taught to use vocal English labels to discriminate more than 80 different objects and to respond to questions concerning categorical concepts of color and shape, was trained and tested on relational concepts ofsame anddifferent. The subject, Alex, replied with the correct English categorical label (“color,” “shape,” or “mah-mah” [matter]) when asked “What’s same?” or “What’s different?” about pairs of objects that varied with respect to any combination of attributes. His accuracy was 69.7%–76.6% for pairs of familiar objects not used in training and 82.3%–85% for pairs involving objects whose combinations of colors, shapes, and materials were unfamiliar. Additional trials demonstrated that his responses were based upon the question being posed as well as the attributes of the objects. These findings are discussed in terms of his comprehension of the categories of color, shape, and material and as evidence of his competence in an exceptional (non-species-specific) communication code.     

Learning English Spellings: strategies employed by primary school boys

Abstract The use of visual and auditory information in learning to spell is explored, together with the effect, if any, of semantic information. One hundred boys aged from seven to eleven were tested, using eight nonsense words with contrived meanings. It was expected that visual information would be helpful in spelling irregular words and that, with age, use of strategies would become more flexible, incorporating semantic (along with visual and phonological) information. Contrary to expectations, it was only with the 10‐ and 11‐year‐olds that visual information produced better results than auditory presentation alone but for them, in conjunction with oral responses, it did aid spelling. Such a finding is in keeping with Ehri's Amalgamation Theory (1980) which suggests that, in order to be able to manipulate printed words, the learner must draw on several strategies and accepts that no single strategy can be used to overcome all irregularities in written English.     

Learning Styles Compared Across Health Science Courses

The Honey and Mumford Learning Style questionnaire was applied to undergraduate students at the first and third year level courses in Nursing, Optometry and Podiatryin the Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Health Science, and to students in the post‐graduate courses in Nursing and Nutrition and Dietetics. With one exception, there were no significant differences between first and third year student results for any learning style or course. The mean scores from all courses fell within the normal range defined by Honey and Mumford, but some differences were identified in the preferred learning styles across the different disciplines.

The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to the use of different teaching techniques such as structured lectures, practical exercises, case discussions and role‐play, as the findings may be used to predict the type of instructional techniques which would be most effective. Recommendations are made on the most appropriate of these techniques for different health science courses.     

From resource to document: scaffolding content and organising student learning in teachers’ documentation work on the teaching of series

We examine teachers’ use of resources as they prepare to teach the topic of numerical series of real numbers, in order to identify how their personal relationship with mathematical content—and its teaching—interacts with their use of a commonly used textbook. We describe this interplay between textbook and personal relationship, a term coined in the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic (ATD, Chevallard, 2003), in terms of documentation work (resources, aims, rules of action, operational invariants), a key construct from the documentational approach (DA, Gueudet & Trouche, in Educational Studies in Mathematics, 71, 199–218, 2009). We do so in the case of five post-secondary teachers who use the same textbook as a main resource for teaching the topic. Documentational analysis of interviews with the teachers led to the identification of their aims and rules of action (the what and how of their resource use as they organise their teaching of the topic) as well as the operational invariants (the why for this organisation of their teaching). We describe the teachers’ documentation work in two sets of aims/rules of action: scaffolding mathematical content (series as a stepping stone to learning about Taylor polynomials and Maclaurin series), and organising student learning about series through drill exercises, visualisation, examples, and applications. Our bridging (networking) of theoretical constructs originating in one theoretical framework (personal relationship, ATD) with the constructs of a different, yet compatible, framework (documentation work, DA) aims to enrich the latter (teachers’ documentation work) with the individual agency (teachers’ personal relationships with the topic) provided by the former.     

Congruency as a nonspecific perceptual property contributing to newborns' face preference

Past research has shown that top-heaviness is a perceptual property that plays a crucial role in triggering newborns' preference toward faces. The present study examined the contribution of a second configural property, congruency , to newborns' face preference. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that when embedded in nonfacelike stimuli, congruency induces a preference of the same strength as that induced by facedness. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the attentional biases toward facedness and congruency produce a cumulative effect on newborns' visual preferences according to an additive model. These findings were extended by those of Experiment 5, showing that the additive model holds true when congruency is added to top-heaviness in nonfacelike stimuli displaying more elements in the upper portion.     

Learning Multi‐unit Number Concepts and Understanding Decimal Place Value

Research indicates that many errors in secondary school mathematics can be attributed to lack of understanding of decimal place value. Recently it has been suggested that this arises from an underlying weakness in integer place value concepts and perception of multidigit numbers in unitary terms rather than base ten, multi‐unit structures. Development of place value and multidigit number concepts was examined in individual interviews with 262 primary school pupils, aged between 7 and 12 years, using subjects’ concrete representations of written numerals and associated verbal explanations. Almost all the children had some understanding of integer place value; most older children had multi‐unit concepts of three‐ or four‐digit numbers; but two‐digit numbers, especially values of 20 or less, were frequently perceived in terms of units by all age groups. This was particularly common for the value ten where 55% of subjects displayed unitary concepts. Implications for understanding and teaching decimal place value are discussed.     

梦想家

在一堵墙的顶部，她印上了这样一句话：世界总是为梦想者让路。[编者按]     

Working memory resources in children: stability and relation to subsequent academic skills

This study aimed to investigate the extent to which WM measured in kindergarten predicts WM measured in second grade (stability of individual WM progress) and the extent to which WM measured at kindergarten predicts academic performance at second grade (N?=?94). The results showed that WM skills significantly increase during the time span from Finnish kindergarten to second grade. Verbal (VWM) and visuospatial WM (VSWM) resources seem to develop quite independently, whereas individual progress showed some stability. WM resources measured just before the start of formal school predicted later academic performance and VWM acted as more powerful predictor than VSWM resources. The results have two important educational implications: first, an individual or group-based intervention designed to enhance children’s WM skills would be most important even before the start of school, and second, poor WM skills should be addressed when planning the learning environment beginning in kindergarten.     

Hauntings of a Korean American woman researcher in the field

In this autoethnography, I inquire into naming the histories and dynamics behind some of the embodied and affective experiences I have had as a Korean American woman of color while studying up/down, across/within, in White-dominant professional spaces such as K-12 schools. This ‘in-between’ status is part of the nature of being Korean American. In this inquiry, I draw on vignettes from my experiences in the field as an ethnographic researcher. These experiences form the heart of the paper in the form of epigraphs and narratives from experiences in multiple studies to capture the reverberations of fleeting moments – hauntings – that have accumulated over time. In doing so, I am joining existing conversations about Korean American women and about researcher reflexivity and positionality, bringing them together across time and space.