Beyond city expansion:multi-scale environmental impacts of urban megaregion formation in China

Environmental degradation caused by rapid urbanization is a pressing global issue.However,little is known about how urban changes operate and affect environment...     

Not an outgroup, not yet an ingroup: Immigrants in the Stereotype Content Model

Stereotype research depicts the generic immigrant as incompetent and untrustworthy. The current research expands this image, specifying key information dimensions (e.g. nationality, socioeconomic status) about immigrants. To see how perceivers differentiate among particular immigrant groups, we extend a model of intergroup perception, the Stereotype Content Model (SCM; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 878–902), to immigrant subgroups. The SCM predicts that perception centers on competence and warmth, and relates to targets’ perceived status and competition within society. Specified by nationality, race, ethnicity, and class, images of immigrants differ by both competence and warmth, with most groups receiving ambivalent (low–high or high–low) stereotypes rather than the uniform low–low for the generic immigrant. As predicted, ambivalent stereotypes reflect target nationality combined with socioeconomic status, supporting the SCM's ambivalent stereotypes and social structural hypotheses, as well as better defining immigrant stereotypes and their contingencies.     

The impact of computer-mediated interaction on distance learning

Distance‐learning courses were classified with regard to their use of computer‐mediated interaction and the degree to which such interaction was integrated into the curriculum and the assessment regime. This produced four groups of courses varying according to their use of interaction and integration. The impact of interaction and integration was investigated in terms of their effects on students' performance, their perceptions of academic quality and their approaches to studying. In all three respects, variations within the groups of courses proved to be more important than variations between the groups. Interpretation of these results suggests that the adoption of interactive environments within computer‐mediated learning may not be enough in itself to lead to positive learning outcomes. We found no evidence for this assumption in terms of students' completion rates, pass rates, grades, perceptions of the quality of their courses or approaches to studying. Large variations in the measured indicators were found between courses, and these appeared to be largely independent of the effects of interaction and integration. Courses may differ markedly with regard to how they make use of computer‐mediated interaction and how this is integrated into the curriculum and the assessment regime. A case study approach is suggested as being more likely to identify the impact of specific designs based on computer‐mediated interaction and to bring together the diverse student responses arising from the use of such interaction in their studies.     

Dawn of science

Descartes discovered the link between algebra and geometry, which forms the cornerstone of applied geometry today.     

Examining the predictive validity of behavior screeners across measures and respondents

Through this study we compared different informants and different behavior screening tools that are available to screen for behavioral and emotional risk. We examined screening results from 100 students from a high school with a high achiever's magnet program in the Southeastern United States (school demographics: 71% female and 79% black, non-Hispanic). This school conducted behavior screening using both teacher-report via the Student Risk Screening Scale, Internalizing/Externalizing (SRSS-IE) and student report via the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Nonparametric correlation tests were conducted between the SRSS-IE and SDQ externalizing and internalizing scores. Generalized linear regression models were created based on the data (demographics, internalizing, and externalizing scores on both screening tools) to model the two count outcomes (office discipline referrals [ODRs] and absences). Diagnostic accuracy metrics were generated from the scores on both the SRSS-IE and SDQ with the outcome measures (ODRs and absences). Externalizing scores on both screening tools had statistically significant low correlations. The ODR model contained two predictors: externalizing score on the SRSS-IE and internalizing score on the SDQ, while the absence model contained grade and the externalizing score on the SDQ. The highest accuracy and agreement values were seen between students with elevated risks on both screening measures and ODRs. The results confirmed that teacher and student reporting, as well as different screening tools, will result in some different students being identified. The choice of informant and screening tools should be dependent on the needs and resources of the school.     

The effect of causal diagrams on text learning

We examined the effect of studying a causal diagram on comprehension of causal relationships from an expository science text. A causal diagram is a type of visual display that explicitly represents cause-effect relationships. In Experiment 1, readers between conditions did not differ with respect to memory for main ideas, but the readers who studied the causal diagram while reading the text understood better the five causal sequences in the text even when study time was controlled. Participants in Experiment 2 studied only the causal diagram or only the text. There were no differences in memory for main ideas or the causal sequences between these groups. Results indicate that causal diagrams are not merely redundant with text and that causal diagrams affect understanding of causal relationships in the absence of a text. These findings supported the causal explication hypothesis, which states that causal diagrams improve comprehension by explicitly representing the implicit causal structure of the text in a visual format.