弗兰克·德雷恩

Frank Delany had lived on his own ever since his wife had died. He was the oldest of four siblings1, and all four were still alive when Frank was eighty-eight years old.     

What are Middle School Students Talking About During Clicker Questions? Characterizing Small-Group Conversations Mediated by Classroom Response Systems

There is a growing interest in using classroom response systems or clickers in science classrooms at both the university and K-12 levels. Typically, when instructors use this technology, students are asked to answer and discuss clicker questions with their peers. The existing literature on using clickers at the K-12 level has largely focused on the efficacy of clicker implementation, with few studies investigating collaboration and discourse among students. To expand on this work, we investigated the question: Does clicker use promote productive peer discussion among middle school science students? Specifically, we collected data from middle school students in a physical science course. Students were asked to answer a clicker question individually, discuss the question with their peers, answer the same question again, and then subsequently answer a new matched-pair question individually. We audio recorded the peer conversations to characterize the nature of the student discourse. To analyze these conversations, we used a grounded analysis approach and drew on literature about collaborative knowledge co-construction. The analysis of the conversations revealed that middle school students talked about science content and collaboratively discussed ideas. Furthermore, the majority of conversations, both ones that positively and negatively impacted student performance, contained evidence of collaborative knowledge co-construction.     

Additional Influences on Response Certitude and Feedback Requests

This study was designed to build on the previous work of R. W. Kulhavy and associates by investigating additional influences on the relationship between feedback and response certitude during the learning process. The results of the study showed that in addition to response certitude and correctness (as predicted by Kulhavy & Stock, 1989), other factors, including the goal subjects were attempting to attain and their commitment to that goal, also influenced the frequency in which they requested feedback. In addition, requesting feedback as a strategy to learn the material and the subjects′ confidence in reaching their goal influenced performance on the test over the information in a learning task.     

Treatment outcome for a maltreated population: benefits, procedural decisions, and challenges

OBJECTIVE: To review the benefits, challenges, and procedural decisions to consider when implementing and managing a treatment outcome program for a maltreated population. METHOD: We reviewed the reasons to implement a treatment outcome program, decisions regarding procedures, and challenges likely to be encountered based on literature in the field and the authors' 6 years of experience in developing and maintaining an outcome program at a center specializing in the treatment of maltreated children. RESULTS: The development of an outcome programs requires careful measurement selection, early and ongoing staff-involvement, support from higher management, a well-developed data base and client tracking system, a coordinator and support staff, clinical utility, planning for fiscal impact, and flexibility to contend with challenges. CONCLUSIONS: Based on our experience, the plethora of clinically rich and administratively useful information derived from an outcome program far outweighs the challenges and costs of establishing and maintaining an outcome program.     

Behavior patterns in pigeons during autoshaping with an incremental conditioned stimulus

Pigeons were trained on a variant of the autoshaping procedure in which a keylight stimulus of increasing brightness was used to signal the passing of a 30-sec interfood interval (IFI). Key-pecking developed in all subjects within the first session (65 trials). Within trials, pecking began midway through the IFI, increased throughout the remainder, and decreased just before food delivery. Other behavioral stereotypies were also recorded: Low light levels were associated with a retreat to the rear of the test chamber, and medium light levels (during the midportion of the IFI) were associated with high rates of pacing toward and away from the food source. Probe trials revealed that pecking, pacing, and retreat were all under strong stimulus control; that is, when the light was held constant at its lowest or highest brightness, or when the brightness ramp was presented in reverse order, the behavior pattern almost invariably remained tied to stimulus brightness. Results are discussed in terms of associative and nonassociative sources of the form and sequential characteristics of the behavior.     

Gas chromatographic method for the determination of hexaconazole residues in black tea

A highly reliable, quantitative and sensitive analytical method for determining the residues of the fungicide, hexaconazole in black tea is described. The proposed method is based on liquid-liquid extraction followed by gas chromatographic determination, using nitrogen phosphorus detector (GC-NPD) for the identification and quantitation of hexaconazole. The most was cleaned up by adsorption column chromatography using activated florisil. Performance of the method was assessed by evaluating quality parameters such as recovery value, repeatability, reproducibility, linearity and limits of detection and quantitation. When the method was assessed for repeatability, the percentage of recovery ranged between 86% and 96% while the relative standard deviation was between 0.30% and 2.35%. In studies on reproducibility the recovery ranged from 81% to 85% and relative standard deviation from 1.68% to 5.13%, implying that the method was reliable. A field trial was conducted to verify the application of this method with real samples. Results prove that the validated method was suitable for extracting hexaconazole residues.