Connecting goals and actions during reading: the role of illustrations

The ability to integrate information that is separated within a text, such as connecting a character’s action to a goal stated earlier in the text, is a critical factor in narrative comprehension. In the present study, we analyze the ability of 9- and 11-year olds to integrate such information. In addition, we examined the effect of illustrations on integration process by using on-line comprehension measures. Participants read narratives that conveyed a character’s goal early in the text, and an action was described later on that was either consistent or inconsistent with the goal. Narratives were presented either with an illustration that mirrored the situation described in the goal, or without an illustration. The results show that 11-year-olds spent more time on the inconsistent actions than on the consistent actions; in addition, 9-year-olds detected the inconsistency when illustrations were provided. An additional finding was that working memory moderated children’s ability to connect actions and goals. These results suggest that children as young as 9 years form connections between characters’ actions and their goals during text processing, although they need an illustration to keep the goal information activated to detect the inconsistency. Illustrations’ effectiveness was interpreted in terms of extra processing of the characters’ goal.     

Medical Library Association Diversity and Inclusion Task Force Report

The Medical Library Association (MLA) appointed a Diversity and Inclusion Task Force (DITF) in 2017. Sandra G. Franklin, AHIP, FMLA, chaired the task force and guided initiatives. From 2017 to 2020, the task force completed a review of MLA defining documents—including the mission, vision, values, and code of ethics—resulting in language updates to these documents. As MLA transitioned through the communities process, the DITF contributed to the transition. Other recommended essential changes to MLA profiles to promote awareness included updating pronouns to promote gender inclusivity and suggestions for the Annual Meeting Innovation Task Force. DITF members actively brought diversity and inclusion programming and engagement to MLA members at annual meetings. The task force held a fish bowl conversation, an open forum, and a Diversity Dialogues roundtable discussion; provided interactive discussion boards; and designed an MLA diversity button. Beyond MLA annual meetings, the task force hosted two critical librarianship meetings and a Twitter chat to engage MLA members with diversity and inclusion topics. Task force members promoted diversity and inclusion beyond their task force appointments with presentations at chapter meetings and other non-DITF MLA annual meeting programming. A notable task force accomplishment included completing a survey of MLA members to gather baseline demographic characteristics, including never before collected data about disability, socioeconomics, and caregiver status. This report provides an overview of DITF activities from 2017 to 2020.     

Validating students' library experience survey using rasch model

Few studies have investigated the psychometric property of new instruments developed locally to assess students' library experience, such as their behavior, perception and attitude toward library use. Validating a survey instrument is critical because using untested assessment instruments is more likely to lead to a lack of credibility in the results, as well as a lack of accuracy in the study's purpose (Sullivan, 2011). This study used data from a locally developed student library experience survey distributed in Spring 2018 at a large public research university library to examine undergraduate and graduate students' behaviors, attitudes and perceptions of library use. To test the validity of the survey as to whether six subdomains of the library experience survey contributed to a single construct, library experience, the study used Rasch model framework. This study contributes to the field as a first example using the Rasch model for library assessment purposes. Suggestions for best practices are discussed.     

FreeForAll: Free Articles to Those in Need

FreeForAll is an international collaboration of libraries whose mission is to provide underserved nations with health science journal articles for free and to foster lending between nations through the creation of a database of international libraries’ (non–North American) holdings.     

Mapping Ethical Arguments in Journalism: An Exploratory Study

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the potential of a cognitive mapping variant called argument mapping for representing the process of ethical reasoning in journalism. The assumption is that some ethical reasoning journalists do on the job may be observable in the ethical argumentation that takes place among peers in newsroom discussions about ethically problematic situations. After some background on cognitive mapping and the novel aspects of its application in this study, an extended example is presented to illustrate the usefulness and limitations of the argument mapping technique in this context.     

Operational space consensus of multiple heterogeneous robots without velocity measurements

This paper proposes a control algorithm for networks of multiple heterogeneous robot manipulators, which solves the leader–follower and the leaderless consensus problems in the operational space. In the leader–follower scenario, the controller ensures that all the robots in the network asymptotically reach a given leader pose (position and orientation), provided that, at least, one follower robot has access to the leader pose. Without a leader pose, in the leaderless problem, the robots asymptotically reach a pose of consensus. The controller is a simple distributed proportional plus damping injection (P+d) scheme which does not require velocity measurements. A singularity-free representation, unit quaternions, is used to describe the orientation of each manipulator. The paper presents some simulations, with a network of six 6-Degrees-of-Freedom (DoF) manipulators, and experiments, with a network of three 6-DoF manipulators, to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.     

An encounter with ‘sayings’ of curriculum: Levinas and the formalisation of infants’ learning

Increased global attention to early childhood education and care in the past two decades has intensified attention on the education of infants and assessment of their learning in education policy. This interest is particularly evident in the focus upon infants in the early childhood curriculum frameworks developed in recent years in many countries. To date, there has been little examination of implications of this policy/curriculum emphasis in relation to its possible implications for how infants are understood. In this article, using Levinas’ notion of ethical encounter, we present a critical reading of curriculum for infants. Drawing on his ideas of the ‘Other’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘unknowability’ we argue that the rapidly growing corpus of knowledge about infants and their inclusion in education policy and curricula texts, has the potential to narrowly define educators’ responsibilities and prescribe pedagogies in ways that may have unintended consequences. Using the Australian National Quality Framework (NQF) and its associated Early Years Learning Framework as examples, this article highlights the tensions inherent in a system that aims to provide equity, consistency and certainty, premised on a particular ‘knowing’ of the infant. We draw on Levinas’ ideas about ‘said’ and ‘saying’ to propose ways of working with policy and curricula texts that recognise that they can offer only partial understandings of the possibilities for infants’ learning.