Motor control and sequencing of boys with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) during computer game play

The motor control of 49 unmedicated boys clinically diagnosed with ADHD, case‐matched with 49 non‐ADHD boys, was assessed while playing Crash Bandicoot I, a Sony^TM Playstation platform computer video game. In Crash Bandicoot participants control the movements of a small‐animated figure through a hazardous jungle environment. Operationally defined measures of motor control were designated by (1) the stage of the game completed (ie, the number of obstacles successfully passed) before losing the figure's ‘life’, (2) the level of complexity that the stage represented and (3) the time taken to get to that point during the video game play. These measures were assessed under contrasting conditions of low or high working memory and distracter loads. Four tasks were administered (totalling 12 trials), incorporating both with and without distracter conditions. For those trials with the distracter, a segment of the television show The Simpsons was simultaneously played on a television screen adjacent to the computer game monitor. A 5‐way MANOVA revealed that ADHD boys took less time to complete their trials under the direct condition (ie, no working memory load) on Crash Bandicoot, compared to their matched non‐ADHD peers. When the task required additional working memory, however, the ADHD boys took significantly longer. Cumulative frequency plots of game performance revealed that in terms of the number of obstacles completed, the control participants successfully navigated more obstacles on the low working memory load task than the ADHD participants, but that the performance of the two groups was less distinguishable on the high working memory load task. The findings have implications for assessment and management of children with ADHD.     

Including pupils with special educational needs in secondary school physical education: a sociological analysis of teachers' views

This paper explores physical education (PE) teachers' views of the inclusion of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in PE from a figurational sociological perspective. Starting from the premise that teachers' views cannot be adequately explained by studying the concept of inclusion or the teacher in isolation, it is argued that we can only begin to make sense of such views by locating teachers within the figurations of which they are a part and by exploring two particularly salient features of those figurations: namely, teachers' habituses and contexts. In doing so, the paper focuses upon the training teachers receive, the constraints imposed upon them by their colleagues and pupils, and, most importantly, the suitability of the National Curriculum for meeting the needs of pupils with SEN. The paper concludes by highlighting some of the unintended consequences of the inclusion of pupils with SEN in PE.     

Students using posters as a means of communication and assessment

Poster sessions are widely used as a medium for the communication of results by professionals at conferences and by students to their peers. The authors have introduced poster sessions into undergraduate mathematical modelling courses. This has given our students an interesting and challenging task and it has caused us to devise a scheme for the assessment of posters.This paper surveys the use of poster sessions with undergraduates, outlines the rationale for using posters with mathematics students, describes our experiences and proposes criteria to use in the assessment of student posters.     

Adolescents at risk for violence

Interpersonal violence among youth is a growing problem in many communities and schools across the nation. The causes of violence are multiple and complex. This paper examines the extent and nature of interpersonal violence among youth as well as the individual and societal factors which contribute to youth violence. Adolescents are disproportionately represented as both victims and perpetrators of fatal and nonfatal assaultive violence. Homicide rates among young men in the United States are vastly greater than those of other Western industrialized nations. Persons age 12–24 years face the highest risk of nonfatal violent victimization of any segment of our society. Arrest rates for homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault peak among adolescents and young adults. Further, arrest rates for murder and other violent crimes have increased substantially among this age group since the mid-1980s. Effective prevention programs will require combinations of interventions aimed at multiple factors and delivered through many channels.     

Multiple audience rating form strategies for student evaluation of college teaching

Michael Scriven has suggested that student rating forms, for the purpose of evaluating college teaching, be designed for multiple audiences (instructor, administrator, student), and with a single global item for summative functions (determination of merit, retention, or promotion). This study reviewed approaches to rating form construction, e.g., factor analytic strategies of Marsh, and recommended the multiple audience design of Scriven. An empirical test of the representativeness of the single global item was reported from an analysis of 1,378 forms collected in a university department of education. The global item correlated most satisfactorily with other items, a computed total of items, items that represented underlying factors, and various triplets of items selected to represent all possible combinations of items. It was concluded that a multiple audience rating form showed distinct advantages in design and that the single global item most fairly and highly represented the overall teaching performance, as judged by students, for decisions about retention, promotion, and merit made by administrators.     

Imagining the Antiracist State: Representations of racism in Canadian history textbooks

This paper examines how knowledge about racism has been represented in high school Canadian history textbooks authorized by the Province of Ontario during the 1960s and after the year 2000. I argue that even though historical racisms have increasingly made their way into Canadian history textbooks as valid and important topics of study, the idea of racism continues to be understood largely within a prejudice/discrimination framework that reduces racism to irrational and individualized problems of thought, behaviour, and assumption. Moreover, through multiple techniques of containment, racism is imagined to exist within temporal and spatial locations, events, or incidents that are represented as either foreign to Canada or aberrations within Canada. The combined effect is to depict the space of Canada as one largely antithetical to racism.     

The challenges of delivering public good in Arab universities: faculty perspectives

The contribution of Arab universities to the public good is being greatly compromised by the political and economic instability of the Arab Spring. To understand the role Arabian universities are playing in the public sphere and their ability to contribute to the public good, we interviewed 74 professors from 14 countries. Analysis of the faculty interviews yielded four major challenges: motivation and rewards for conducting research, security and safety issues, lack of a research infrastructure, and the challenges of international recognition. Our findings suggest universities should focus on the two most critical issues over which they have some control: securing safety for the faculty and creating an effective research infrastructure.     

Determinants of range effects in face recognition

The effects of test stimulus range on generalization gradients in humans were assessed for discriminations between faces that varied in brightness, faces that varied in orientation in the picture plane, and morphed faces. In Experiment 1, significant range effects, predicted by adaptation level theory, occurred when faces varied along the brightness or orientation dimension, but not for morphed faces. Changing the difficulty of discrimination of both training and test stimuli for Experiment 2 produced range effects in morphed faces. Experiment 3 explored training and testing stimulus factors as determinants of range effects in morphed faces. The results suggest that sufficiently biased testing ranges create shifts in response distributions (generalization gradients), and this may be amplified by using relatively difficult discriminations between training stimuli.