Relationships between information seeking and context: A qualitative study of Internet searching and the goals of personal development

Little research has explored how exactly information processes relate to their context. Context is defined as all those things which are not an inherent part of information phenomena, but which nevertheless bear some relation to these. This article addresses the issue by discussing empirical findings from a study on Internet searching and personal development. The purpose of the article is to construct a general typology for researching the links between information seeking and its context. Grounded analysis of the whole corpus revealed 11 different relationships between Internet searching and the goals of personal development. Because these seem to be quite generalizable to information seeking in other contexts (e.g., parenting or location), too, they were then abstracted into four generic relationships: detachment, unity, direction, and interaction. The classifications are offered as tools for understanding information seeking more contextually and for conducting further research in this area.     

Phonological Working Memory of Children in Two German Special Schools

In two studies, 10‐year‐olds from 2 German special schools as well as typically developing children of the same chronological age (CA controls) or the same mental age (MA controls) were compared on several aspects of working memory functions (i.e., size and input quality of the phonological store, speed and automatic activation of the subvocal rehearsal process). Results reveal that the children from the special schools reached the MA control but not the CA control children's level of non‐word repetition and also showed a statistically significant phonological similarity effect on memory span. These results were interpreted as evidence for a developmental lag in the functioning of the phonological store in these children. With regard to the subvocal rehearsal process, the results were mixed. While the children in the special schools outperformed the MA controls in speech rate, it was found that, in contrast to both control groups, they did not show any word‐length effect on memory span. This finding might be interpreted as evidence for a structural deficit impeding the automatic activation of the subvocal rehearsal process.     

Do parents' own school memories contribute to their satisfaction with their child's school?

In the present study a group of parents with a child in preschool were asked to give evaluative recollections of their own primary school and then to indicate the level of their satisfaction with the functioning of their child's school repeatedly in the course of the child's compulsory education. Across the follow‐up, the parents with positive recollections showed more satisfaction than those with negative recollections did. Over the years, the level of satisfaction decreased in all other groups but the fathers with positive recollections. Parents' recollections may be seen as an experience‐based component of their attitudes towards education.     

Preverbal infants anticipate that food will be brought to the mouth: an eye tracking study of manual feeding and flying spoons

This study relies on eye tracking technology to investigate how humans perceive others' feeding actions. Results demonstrate that 6-month-olds (n = 54) anticipate that food is brought to the mouth when observing an adult feeding herself with a spoon. Still, they fail to anticipate self-propelled (SP) spoons that move toward the mouth and manual combing actions directed toward the head. Ten-month-olds (n = 54) and adults (n = 32) anticipate SP spoons; however, only adults anticipate combing actions. These results suggest that goal anticipation during observation of feeding actions develops earlier and is less dependent on directly perceived actions than goal anticipation during observation of other manual actions. These results are discussed in relation to experience and a possible phylogenetic influence on perception and understanding of feeding.     

Word length and word frequency affect eye movements in dyslexic children reading in a regular (German) orthography

We combined independently the word length and word frequency to examine if the difficulty of reading material affects eye movements in readers of German, which has high orthographic regularity, comparing the outcome with previous findings available in other languages. Sixteen carefully selected German-speaking dyslexic children (mean age, 9.5 years) and 16 age-matched controls read aloud four lists, each comprising ten unrelated words. The lists varied orthogonally in word length and word frequency: high-frequency, short; high-frequency, long; low-frequency, short; low-frequency, long. Eye movements were measured using a scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO). In dyslexic children, fixation durations and the number of saccades increased both with word length and word frequency. The percentage of regressions was only increased for low-frequency words. Most of these effects were qualitatively similar in the two groups, but stronger in dyslexic children, pointing to a deficient higher-level word processing, especially phonological deficit. The results indicate that reading eye movements in German children are modulated by the degree of difficulty, and orthographic regularity of the language can determine the nature of modulation. The findings suggest that, similar to Italian but unlike English readers, German children prefer indirect sub-lexical strategy of grapheme-phoneme conversion.     

Was verbinden Museumsbesucher mit Lernen im Museum und in der Schule?

The present study was conducted in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main and the Landesmuseum Schloß Gottorf in Schleswig. 160 museum visitors were asked about their conceptions of learning in school and learning in a museum. These conceptions generate a persons’ individual concept of learning. It is formed by the influence of the subjectively different experiences each person makes in varying learning situations. Since every learning environment offers different opportunities and possibilities for learning, it can be assumed that there are location-specific concepts of learning. The results of this study show that concepts of learning in school can be differentiated from concepts in a museum; albeit reactive and constructive concepts of learning were found for schools as well as for museums. In addition it was found that different people’s concepts of learning depend on their places of learning.     

Metacognitive learning: the effect of item-specific experience and age on metamemory calibration and planning

Metacognition is a person’s ability to think about their own thinking, to think about their own cognitive ability and knowledge and then to take the appropriate regulatory steps when a problem is detected. Although considerable research has examined the level of such ability in various contexts, there has been relatively little study on whether metacognition can be improved with experience. The present research examined this question for both general (lifetime experience) and item-specific (repetition) experience. Metamemory calibration (correlations between memory predictions and performance) and planning (correlations between memory predictions and study decisions) were examined in both young and older adults. The results indicated that both calibration and planning efficiency increased only with item-specific experience, and even though calibration benefited from experience equally for young and older adults, only younger adults showed better improvement in planning with experience.