Reminder treatments do not alleviate cue-to-consequence deficits

Using rats in a conditioned lick suppression preparation, six experiments were conducted in which the subjects were exposed to a single tone-LiCl pairing. Despite evidence from tone-shock conditioning that the tone was an adequate conditioned stimulus and evidence from taste-LiCl conditioning that the LiCl was an adequate unconditioned stimulus, no suppression to the tone was observed following the tone-LiCl pairing, a finding consistent with prior cue-to-consequence research. In each experiment, subjects receiving a tone-LiCl pairing were subsequently exposed to either the tone or LiCl outside the conditioning context in an attempt to reactivate a potentially latent tone-LiCl association. The parameters of these reminder treatments were chosen on the basis of their previously proven effectiveness in reversing such performance deficits as blocking, overshadowing, latent inhibition, and experimental amnesia. Although a variety of stimulus parameters were used in an effort to reverse the cue-to-consequence deficit, none of the experiments detected any tendency towards suppression by reminded subjects exposed to a tone-LiCl pairing. This uniform lack of reminder-induced recovery suggests that cue-to-consequence deficits reflect true acquisition failure rather than poor retrievability.     

Menus for toddlers in dau care: Part II

This is the second part of a fourpart series of articles that provide a total of four weeks' worth of menus for toddlers. In the first installment (Fall 1978) will be found the Basic Recipes for preparing Milk Plus, TVP, and Fruit Juice, as well as a general introduction to the format of these menus. Emily Herbert-Jackson managed the nutrition research project described here in her capacity as Research Associate in the Bureau of Child Research at the University of Kansas. She is now associated with Children's Behavioral Services, Reno, Nevada. Marion O'Brien is a writer for the Living Environments Group and has served as consultant to the toddler center in which the research was conducted. The authors wish especially to thank Kathy Erwin for her contribution to the development of these menus, as well as all the staff and children at the toddler center. The research described here was supported in large part by grant MC-R-200347 from the Office of Maternal and Child Health to the Bureau of Child Research and the Department of Human Development at the University of Kansas. The toddler day care program is fully deseribed in the bookThe Toddler Center: A Practical Guide to Day Care for One-and Two-Year-Olds, by Marion O'Brien, Jan Porterfield, Emily Herbert-Jackson, and Todd R. Risley (Baltimore: University Park Press, 1978).     

Network news construction of homelessness: 1980–1993

Through an extensive content analysis of 14 years of television nightly news stories, evidence is presented showing coverage of homelessness corresponded more to seasonal variations than actual changes in the plight of the homeless. In addition, news coverage appeared to reify boundaries between the acceptable and the unacceptable while masking socioeconomic factors central to homelessness during the 1980s and early 1990s. Finally, implications are drawn concerning the likely effects of news portrayal of homelessness as an individual problem requiring individual acts of kindness rather than a systemic problem demanding institutional and societal change.     

Calibration of context-specific survey items to assess youth physical activity behaviour

This study tests calibration models to re-scale context-specific physical activity (PA) items to accelerometer-derived PA. A total of 195 4th–12th grades children wore an Actigraph monitor and completed the Physical Activity Questionnaire (PAQ) one week later. The relative time spent in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA_%) obtained from the Actigraph at recess, PE, lunch, after-school, evening and weekend was matched with a respective item score obtained from the PAQ’s. Item scores from 145 participants were calibrated against objective MVPA_% using multiple linear regression with age, and sex as additional predictors. Predicted minutes of MVPA for school, out-of-school and total week were tested in the remaining sample (n = 50) using equivalence testing. The results showed that PAQ β-weights ranged from 0.06 (lunch) to 4.94 (PE) MVPA_% (P < 0.05) and models root mean square error ranged from 4.2% (evening) to 20.2% (recess). When applied to an independent sample, differences between PAQ and accelerometer MVPA at school and out-of-school ranged from ?15.6 to +3.8 min and the PAQ was within 10–15% of accelerometer measured activity. This study demonstrated that context-specific items can be calibrated to predict minutes of MVPA in groups of youth during in- and out-of-school periods.     

Pedometer-assessed physical activity in young adolescents

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the physical activity (PA) patterns of children. Forty-four 7th-grade students (19 boys, 25 girls) recorded pedometer data for 2 consecutive weeks. Separate 2 x 3 repeated measures analyses of variance were used to examine differences in total steps/day between boys and girls and between after-school activity participants and nonparticipants. The relative contribution of physical education (PE) and after-school activity (ASA) to weekday steps/day was evaluated as a proportion, for example (steps taken in PE class/total daily steps taken on a PE class day) * 100. The total sample mean was 11,392 steps/day, SD = 4112; for boys, M = 12,490 steps/day, SD=3910, versus girls, M = 10,557 steps/day, SD=4142; F=(1, 42) 4.365, p = .043. The sample population averaged 2046 steps, SD=945, during PE class; boys=2379 steps, SD=1115, versus girls=1782, SD=703; t (42) = 2.15, p = .038, d = .65, which represented 18% of the total steps/day on PE days. In comparison, the participants accumulated an average of 5366 steps, SD=2590; ASA for boys=5897 steps/day, SD=2738, versus girls=4963 steps/day, SD=2450; t (42) = 1.190, p = .241, d = .36), representing 46% of the steps/day on all weekdays and 47% of the total on PE days. Expressed as a rate, the sample population took 45.5 steps/min (SD=21) during PE class and 13.1 steps/min (SD = 4.7) in ASA on all weekdays. The relative stability of day-to-day behavior in youth is a preliminary finding but noteworthy. Although the absolute contribution ofPE class to daily PA was less than ASA (i.e., 18 vs. 47%, respectively), the importance of the condensed contribution in class was evident when these two activities were expressed as rates (i.e., steps/min). These data indicate that youth involved in ASA accumulated a greater number of steps on all days, weekend days, and health education days when compared to youth not involved in ASA.     

Developing Standards for Emerging Forms of Assessment: The NISO Altmetrics Initiative

New types of calculation methodologies, called altmetrics, which is short for alternative metrics, are increasingly being used to measure and analyze the scholarly communication networks of researchers, librarians, publishers, and funding organizations. By applying altmetrics to emergent online forums like Twitter, Academia.edu, Mendeley, and ResearchGate, studies have shown that early measures of social attention to a work or body of work can be correlated with later usage and citation statistics to predict the diffusion and impact of research output. However, standards for altmetrics are needed to build confidence and trust among the information community.     

Elements of a successful capstone course considering the needs of stakeholders

One of the principal objectives of engineering education is to prepare graduates for the practice of engineering in industry. Industry involvement in the educational process can be very helpful in devising programs to meet this objective. Yet, engineering education has a number of other stakeholders including students, faculty, academic administrators, and others. Identifying and meeting the needs and wants of these various stakeholders is essential in developing educational programs and learning activities that are effective and sustainable. Stakeholders in engineering education are identified, including their wants and needs. Alternative approaches to developing a Capstone course, with input from these stakeholders, are proposed and evaluated in light of stakeholder needs and wants. A case study for developing a two-semester senior design capstone course at Brigham Young University is presented. In this example more than 300 industry sponsored, design and build, projects have been completed by cross-functional student teams over more than ten years. Feedback from alumni on the success of this course in meeting desired educational objectives is also presented.     

A Reinvented Union: A Concern for Teaching, Not Just Teachers

The current school reform movement, with its emphasis on teacher professionalism, teacher empowerment, and shared decision making, has challenged teachers unions to develop more collegial relations with school boards. Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, has called for the union to reinvent itself and to assume responsibility for improving school quality and the quality of the teaching force. This article discusses the development of teachers unions in the 1960s as adversaries of school boards. From the beginning the unions adopted an industrial model of labor relations, one tailored for factories and assembly lines rather than school environments. Today, there are signs that teachers unions are accepting Bob Chases vision of a more professional union, one in which union leaders and school leaders can become public allies in the struggle to improve schools.