Numerical estimation in adults with and without developmental dyscalculia

It has been hypothesized that developmental dyscalculia (DD) is either due to a defect of the approximate number system (ANS) or to an impaired access between that system and symbolic numbers. Several studies have tested these two hypotheses in children with DD but none has dealt with adults who had experienced DD as children.This study aimed to compare these two hypotheses in an adult population in order to investigate which deficits still persist at that age. To that aim, numerical estimation tasks were given to adults who had or had not experienced DD as a child. Three of the estimation tasks required a mapping between the ANS and symbolic numbers: participants had to estimate the number of same or different-sized dots presented by producing the corresponding Arabic number or, conversely, to produce the number of dots corresponding to a presented Arabic number. A fourth task did not require any processing of symbolic numbers; participants had to produce a collection of dots of the same numerosity as another one previously presented.Consistently, in all the four numerical tasks and irrespective of whether the tasks used symbolic numbers or not, the estimates of DD participants were less accurate than those of the control participants. These results indicate that adults who had experienced DD as children continue to demonstrate a less precise magnitude representation.     

Effects of early Leader–Member Exchange perceptions on academic outcomes

This study tested a series of hypotheses linking college support and quality of student?Cinstructor relations with outcomes including student efficacy, social connectedness with peers, expectancies and academic performance. Early quality of exchanges with the instructor using Leader?CMember Exchange theory was found to be a key indicator of academic outcomes. In addition, perceived organisational support was linked to ratings of instructor?Cstudent quality of exchanges, and the quality of exchanges between instructors and students served as an antecedent to social integration and academic self-concept. Academic self-concept was found to correlate with early perceptions of academic performance which, in turn, predicted students?? actual academic performance. Implications of this research include support for individualised rather than universal communication and interactions between instructors and students, development of relationships at the dyadic rather than group levels, and leadership as a means to develop student performance in a classroom setting.     

A repeated-measures examination of organizational stressors,perceived psychological and physical health,and perceived performance in semi-elite athletes

ABSTRACT

Organizational stressors can undermine the psychological well-being and performance of athletes. Less is known, however, about how these relationships unfold over time and whether organizational stressors can impact upon perceived physical health. The current study, therefore, used a repeated-measures design to examine relationships between organizational stressors with components of perceived psychological (anxiety and depression) and physical (illness symptoms and missed training days via illness) ill-health, and perceived performance at the within-person level. Twenty-three semi-elite female rowers completed monthly measures of study variables for six-months. Multilevel models indicated that selection-related stressors positively predicted symptoms of perceived psychological and physical ill-health, and negatively predicted perceived performance. Conversely, coaching stressors negatively predicted symptoms of perceived psychological ill-health. Logistics and operations stressors positively predicted perceived performance, whereas goals and development stressors negatively predicted perceived performance. These findings demonstrate for the first time that, with a repeated-measures design, organizational stressors can predict components of perceived physical and psychological ill-health, and perceived performance at the within-person level in athletes. From a practical perspective, practitioners should incorporate these findings when diagnosing the need for, developing, and optimally implementing primary and secondary stress management interventions.     

A future for the liberal arts,if…

Editor's Note: The following is the text of a letter written by Jacques Barzun in January of 1994 to a journalist in Texas.     

“Doing things differently” and “striking while the iron was hot”: The entrepreneurial successes of the media magnate George Newnes, 1881–1910

George Newnes became one of the most influential popular publishers of the age of New Journalism, and was probably Britian’s first media magnate. He published a vast number and variety of journals in the period from 1881 until his death in 1910, editing some of these, but leaving an impression upon all of them. Newnes’s periodicals included Tit-Bits (1881), Strand Magazine (1891), The Million (1892), Westminster Gazette (1893), Country Life (1897), The Ladies Field (1898), Wide World Magazine (1898), The Captain (1899), and C.B. Fry’s Magazine (1904). Newnes was an innovator, and a publishing entrepreneur. This paper will focus on the entrepreneurial aspects of Newnes’s publishing ventures and the novel technological and promotional techniques pioneered by him. The analysis will focus upon such techniques as promotional schenesm advertising, production and illustration, the employment and promotion of popular authors, editors and illustrators, publicity, market segmentation, and financing. The concluding section consists of an investigation into some of the rhetoric that has been applied to Newnes’s publishing career, and the way in which, as publishing entrepreneur and media magnate, Newnes’s successes have been cast within a continuing debate over popular literature, New Journalism and the commercialization of the popular press in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Kate Jackson is currently completing a Ph.D. in History on “George Newnes, New Journalism and the Reading Publics, 1881–1910.”     

Combining Multiple Strategies for Effective Monolingual and Cross-Language Retrieval

This paper describes and evaluates different retrieval strategies that are useful for search operations on document collections written in various European languages, namely French, Italian, Spanish and German. We also suggest and evaluate different query translation schemes based on freely available translation resources. In order to cross language barriers, we propose a combined query translation approach that has resulted in interesting retrieval effectiveness. Finally, we suggest a collection merging strategy based on logistic regression that tends to perform better than other merging approaches.