Grouping Continuous Data in Discrete Intervals: Information Loss and Recovery

Information loss occurs when continuous data are grouped in discrete intervals. After calculating the squared correlation coefficients between continuous data and corresponding grouped data for four population distributions, the effects of population distribution, number of intervals, and interval width on information loss and recover), were examined.     

Why McNemar's Procedure Needs to be Included in the Business Statistics Curriculum

In business research situations it is often of interest to examine the differences in the responses in repeated measurements of the same subjects or from among matched or paired subjects. A simple and useful procedure for comparing differences between proportions in two related samples was devised by McNemar (1947) nearly 60 years ago. Although the technique has enjoyed widespread usage in both behavioral and medical research, it has unfortunately not received proper attention in marketing, advertising, consumer research, public relations, operations management, or organizational behavior endeavors—disciplines wherein it is particularly desirable to evaluate the significance of changes in attitudes, opinions, or beliefs regarding some campaign or strategy. Perhaps the major reason for this obscurity is simply a general lack of awareness as to its value and practical power. The McNemar test is generally not currently being taught to business statistics students. It is the purpose of this article to demonstrate the usefulness and applicability of the McNemar procedure to these aforementioned disciplines so that it may be more appropriately employed as an important confirmatory data analysis tool within the basic business statistics curriculum.     

Potentiation of taste by another taste during compound aversion learning

Two experiments with rat subjects examined whether a saccharin taste could potentiate the conditioning of an aversion to a salty taste when the two stimuli were presented together prior to lithium-induced illness. In Experiment 1, a 0.1% (w/v) saccharin solution potentiated conditioning of a very dilute (0.03%) NaCl solution, but had no demonstrable effect on two stronger NaCl solutions (0.6% and 1.2%). In Experiment 2, the 0.1% saccharin solution again potentiated the 0.03% NaCl target, but weaker and stronger saccharin concentrations (0.033% and 0.3%) did not. The ability of a taste to potentiate a secondtaste is not consistent with theories that assume that potentiation is unique to compounds composed of tastes and other, functionally different, nontaste cues. Potentiation may occur when the target stimulus is weakly conditionable on its own and when the particular combination of target and potentiator facilitates perceptual integration of the compound.     

Assessing the Practicum

The practicum appears in many different forms in professional education — as field placement, cooperative education, sandwich programs, internship and clinical placement. This review of current literature reveals many different conceptions of the kinds of learning outcomes that can be achieved through learning in the workplace and the contribution that the practicum can make to professional education. In consequence, assessment philosophies and methods are equally varied. Five distinct approaches to assessment of the practicum are identified and the strengths and weaknesses of each are evaluated. While assessment of the practicum in some programs has been very limited, in the best examples cited, integration of the practicum with the educational program has provided opportunities for students to bring together a range of knowledge and skills in a complex natural environment. Well‐designed assessment requirements can make a significant contribution to learning in the practicum by putting pressure on supervisors to structure the opportunities available and by requiring students to identify and reflect on what they have learned.     

The contribution of Aboriginal epistemologies to mathematics education in Australia: Exploring the silences

Epistemology is a conceptual template for how we think about the world, and the study of how we come to know the world around us. The world does not dictate unequivocally how to interpret it. This article will explore this position on the fluidity of epistemic constructs through two prominent philosophical perspectives, those being derived from the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michael Foucault, respectively. These insights will be used to more deeply unfold the current situation for Aboriginal students within dominant approaches to mathematics curriculum in Australia, and the subsequent approaches to the inclusion of Aboriginal knowledge and epistemologies. It is suggested that the epistemic constructs most valued and thus credited as conveyors of ‘truth’, and therefore positioned as powerful forms of knowledge within dominant curriculum and education policy, are those derived from Western, Eurocentric origins. This privileging of particular epistemological constructs over others is reinforced unconsciously through the articulation of educational goals deemed most appropriate, or ‘socially just’, for the Aboriginal student population. The place of Aboriginal knowledge within such constructs is therefore reflective of broader ideation around the role of education within society and its failure to challenge existing structures of power and injustice.     

Writing film: making inferences when viewing and reading

This article discusses the ways in which short films on video might be integrated into the English curriculum. I argue that shorts can be used to scaffold writing, and further than this, that students can learn a great deal about narrative form by shuttling between the two media of print and film. The article focuses on a ‘worked example’, being an account of an INSET session using a short film called Father and Daughter.     

Extending Previous cG×I Findings on 5‐HTTLPR's Moderation of Intervention Effects on Adolescent Substance Misuse Initiation

This study addresses replication in candidate gene × environment interaction (cG×E) research by investigating if the key findings from Brody, Beach, Philibert, Chen, and Murry (2009) can be detected using data (N = 1,809) from the PROSPER substance use preventive intervention delivery system. Parallel to Brody et al., this study tested the hypotheses that substance misuse initiation would increase faster from age 11 to age 14 and be higher at age 14 among: (a) 5‐HTTLPR short carrier adolescents versus long homozygotes, (b) control versus intervention adolescents, and (c) 5‐HTTLPR short carriers in the control condition versus all other participants. The hypotheses were generally supported and results were consistent with Brody et al.'s cG×I finding. Results are discussed in light of replication issues in cG×E research and implications for intervention.     

Effect of taste preexposure on taste and odor aversions

Thirsty Sprague-Dawley rats drank flavored water in a wind tunnel prior to lithium-induced toxicosis. Flavors were presented for 5 min; 30 min later a toxin, lithium chloride, was injected. After the rats had recovered, subsequent aversions to the taste and the odor were assessed separately. In Experiment 1, extensive preexposure to the taste component of the flavor attenuated neophobia to the flavor and the subsequent taste aversion. However, the subsequent odor aversion was unaffected. Experiment 2 partially replicated the results of Experiment 1 and showed that, in a situation in which only taste-potentiated odor aversions are usually found, nonpotentiated aversions were evident. Experiment 3 found that, in addition to attenuating taste aversions, taste preexposure enhances the capacity of rats to learn nonpotentiated odor aversions. The results are interpreted with a neural-based model of conditioned flavor aversions.