Persistence of social investigatory behavior in the male rat: Evidence for long-term memory of initial copulatory experience

The duration of active social investigation by sexually mature male rats, following exposure to a novel conspecific, was investigated to assess the influence of former social experience. In Experiments 1 and 2, pretest social isolation of older males with extensive heterosexual experience and of younger males with limited heterosexual experience failed to affect their subsequent persistence in social investigation. Older and sexually experienced rats, however, engaged in significantly less investigatory behavior than did younger, sexually inexperienced males. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 demonstrated that this difference was associated with prior copulatory experience. A single copulatory series with either an intact female or a hormone-primed castrate female effected a significant and sustained decrease in social investigatory behavior. The results are interpreted as demonstrating a form of long-term memory for associations formed during initial copulatory experience.     

Pre-service Physics Teachers and Conceptual Difficulties on Temperature and Heat

In this article the ‘lesson preparation method’ was used to investigate pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge, in particular their knowledge of pupils’ conceptual difficulties on temperature and heat. A relation is found between the conceptual difficulties pre-service teachers expect their pupils to have and the conceptual difficulties they themselves have or have had. The discussion considers what pedagogical content knowledge teacher educators should include in the initial or inservice teacher education curriculum.     

Convergent validity of bibliometric Google Scholar data in the field of chemistry—Citation counts for papers that were accepted by Angewandte Chemie International Edition or rejected but published elsewhere,using Google Scholar,Science Citation Index,Scopus, and Chemical Abstracts

Examining a comprehensive set of papers (n = 1837) that were accepted for publication by the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition (one of the prime chemistry journals in the world) or rejected by the journal but then published elsewhere, this study tested the extent to which the use of the freely available database Google Scholar (GS) can be expected to yield valid citation counts in the field of chemistry. Analyses of citations for the set of papers returned by three fee-based databases – Science Citation Index, Scopus, and Chemical Abstracts – were compared to the analysis of citations found using GS data. Whereas the analyses using citations returned by the three fee-based databases show very similar results, the results of the analysis using GS citation data differed greatly from the findings using citations from the fee-based databases. Our study therefore supports, on the one hand, the convergent validity of citation analyses based on data from the fee-based databases and, on the other hand, the lack of convergent validity of the citation analysis based on the GS data.     

Territorial behavior of laboratory rats under conditions of peripheral anosmia

Two experiments investigated the influence of peripheral anosmia with zinc sulfate solution on aggressive and nonaggressive behaviors of rats in the colony intrusion paradigm. Experiment I was a replication of a previous observation that anosmic intruders arenot attacked by resident males. No significant differences were found in aggressive response to normal or anosmic intruders. Experiment II tested colony residents under normal and anosmic conditions for aggressive and nonaggressive response to intruders. The results were in agreement with previous reports that anosmia abolishes differential responding between males and females as well as all aggressive acts normally directed against unfamiliar males.     

Visual and social determinants of shock-elicited aggressive responding in rats

Light and dark reared, social and isolate housed, male Long-Evans hooded rats were tested in bright and dim light for aggressive response to footshock. Test lighting and socialization main effects were significant, with greater fighting in dim light than in bright light and greater fighting by isolates than by socially housed animals. Test lighting interacted with prior visual experience and socialization interacted with past and present illumination variables. The results suggest an inhibitory effect of test illumination dependent upon prior social and visual experience.     

Ideology and Morality in Host Language Learning: American Protestants in the Former Yugoslavia

ABSTRACT

American Protestants serving overseas must learn their host communities’ “heart” language from the twin moral imperative to minimize their burden on host partners and to embody their faith through their language practice. Language learning thus has moral consequences; not merely proficiency attainment, but faithfulness and calling are at stake. The author, a Protestant himself, conducted an ethnography of Americans serving in a Protestant organization at field sites in Bosnia and Slovenia. Two ideologies emerged from this study and were analyzed as a polycentric system exerting moral authority. These were (a) a dogmatic ideology of using the “right” language, the “national” or “heart language” corresponding to a people group, and (b) a pragmatic ideology of using “whatever” linguistic resources available to convey their gospel. These ideologies overlapped and shifted over time, with consequences for fieldworkers’ longevity, the linguistic ecology of host communities, and Christian understandings of language learning.     

PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS�� INITIAL CONCEPTIONS ABOUT PUPILS�� DIFFICULTIES IN SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS: A POTENTIAL RESOURCE IN TEACHER EDUCATION

A crucial issue for prospective teachers (PTs) in their education is to develop pedagogical content knowledge (PCK; i.e. how to make a topic comprehensible to pupils). However, research has shown that PTs may have tacit ideas about teaching that act as filters preventing consideration of unfamiliar and discrepant ideas. These ideas must be elicited and taken into consideration in order to be modified. Therefore, PTs’ explicit conceptions may constitute a valuable resource in teacher education. The aim of this study was to investigate PTs’ ideas about pupils’ difficulties, at a topic-specific level, upon beginning the teacher education programme. The “Lesson Preparation Method” was used in four case studies to elicit the conceptions of 32 PTs regarding pupils’ difficulties in four specific science and mathematics topics: plant growth, gases, equations and heat and temperature. In all four topic groups (n = 5 – 11), there was a variety of initial conceptions about pupils’ difficulties, which were categorised into two to five topic-specific categories. Although, initially, PTs may not have expressed any notions about pupils’ difficulties, conceptions were elicited by using the Lesson Preparation Method. Furthermore, we found that the initial ideas corresponded with earlier research on pupils’ difficulties, which could provide a potential resource when creating a scaffolding context in teacher education programmes where PCK development is stimulated.     

Comparability of the Social Skills Improvement System to the Social Skills Rating System: A Norwegian Study

The Social Skills Improvement System-Rating Scales (SSIS-RS) is a multi-informant instrument assessing social skills and problem behavior in children and adolescents. It is a revised version of the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS). A Norwegian translation of the SSRS has been validated, but this has not yet been done for the Norwegian translation of the SSIS-RS. This study compared the Norwegian versions of the SSRS and the SSIS-RS administered to samples of children (aged 8–12 and 13–16?years) and their parents and teachers (n = 599). The results indicated moderate to strong relations between the common subscales across all forms of the two instruments and acceptable to excellent internal consistency across all common subscales. We conclude that the SSIS-RS is a good instrument for measuring social skills and problem behavior among children and adolescents in Norway.     

Attraction to mobile and immobile conspecifics

Male and female laboratory rats invariably investigate a novel conspecific placed in their home cages. In Experiment 1, mature male rats were exposed in their home cages to active and inactive juvenile males. Inactive juveniles were pretreated with haloperidol to induce behavioral stasis in a normally upright, quadrupedal stance. In repeated daily observations, males exposed to active juveniles displayed significantly longer intervals of investigation than did males exposed to inactive juveniles. In Experiment 2, mature males and females were repeatedly exposed to active and inactive castrate females. Males investigated significantly longer than did females, active female castrates were investigated significantly longer than were inactive female castrates, and sex of subject interacted significantly with activity-nonactivity of the social stimulus animal. In Experiment 3, mature males and females were repeatedly exposed to active and inactive castrate males. Males investigated significantly longer than did females, active male castrates were investigated significantly longer than were inactive male castrates, and sex of subject interacted significantly with activity-nonactivity of the social stimulus animal. The results demonstrate that sexual dimorphism in persistence of social investigation may be interpreted as a sex difference in response to normal movement cues of a stimulus complex characterizing a conspecific.