The impact of electronic journals on interlibrary lending: A longitudinal study of statewide interlibrary loan article sharing in Illinois

Interlibrary loan (ILL) article sharing data from the 26 largest libraries in Illinois were collected in 1995/96, 1999/00, and most recently in 2002/03. The OCLC Management Statistics Service supplied the data with the permission of the participating libraries. Longitudinal data analysis focused on the changes that have taken place in article sharing over the past eight years within the state, offering insights into the impact of access to electronic journals. Results show a decline in the number of ILL article requests among the 26 largest libraries in Illinois: a near 26% drop in overall article requests took place between these libraries from 1999/00 to 2002/03, a much larger decline than was expected. The data provide answers to frequently posed questions concerning the impact of electronic journal packages on ILL article sharing and offer some insight concerning the future of ILL in the age of full-text online article availability.     

Temporal cuing of runs in series of reward events reduces interevent anticipation

In Experiment 1, a group of rats were runway trained on each of two reward series for 32 days. The two series consisted of three runs, the first two of which were, respectively, rewarded and nonrewarded; the third run was rewarded in one series but nonrewarded in the other. A 40-min interval separated the two series; the first and second runs within the series were separated by a 10-min interval, whereas the second and third runs were separated by a 30-sec interval. The reward (and nonreward) events and temporal cues of the two series are designated R-NR/R-NN. A second group was similarly trained, with the exception that the 10-min interval separated the second and third runs (RN-R/RN-N). Both groups developed appropriate differential running on the third run of the two series, and the RN-R/RN-N animals ran appropriately (slowly) on the second run of both series. Appropriate Run 2 performance appeared in one half of the R-NR/R-NN animals (depending upon order of series presentation); the remaining half ran faster on Run 2 of the R-NR series than on the same run of the R-NN series, an effect currently termed interevent anticipation. A cue shift phase in which all within-series intervals were 30 sec showed that the temporal intervals were controlling performance before the shift. Experiment 2 showed that interevent anticipation appears when all within-series intervals are either 10 min or 30 sec from the beginning of training, suggesting that the elimination of interevent anticipation in Experiment 1 was due to the differential cuing of runs by the temporal intervals rather than the particular interval duration. The overall findings suggest that the similarity of Run 2 and Run 3 performance termed interevent anticipation may be due to a failure to discriminate the ordinal position of runs within a series.     

Gender differences in jurors' perceptions of infanticide involving disabled and non-disabled infant victims

Objectives

The present study investigated the influence of juror gender and infant victim disability on jurors’ reactions to infanticide cases.

Methods

Participants (men and women undergraduates) read a summary of a mock trial involving alleged father-perpetrated infanticide. The infant was described as severely mentally disabled or as not disabled. Participants completed a series of case-related judgments (e.g., guilt; sentence; and empathy, sympathy, and similarity toward the defendant and victim).

Results

There were pervasive gender differences such that compared to men, women mock jurors rendered more guilty verdicts, perceived the father/defendant as having greater intent to kill his infant, and felt less similar to the defendant. Compared to men, women also believed the father was more responsible and the pneumonia was less responsible for the infant's death, had less sympathy and empathy for the defendant, endorsed more negative beliefs about the father, and were more likely to believe the infant was a unique person. Mediational analyses revealed that these statistically significant effects were explained, in part, by gender differences in attitudes toward the defendant. Further, whether the infant victim was portrayed as severely disabled (versus developmentally normal) had little effect on central case judgments such as verdict, but jurors who believed the infant was severely disabled gave significantly shorter sentences to the defendant, were less likely to perceive the defendant as mentally ill, and felt significantly less empathy for and similarity to the infant victim.

Conclusions

Although juror gender consistently predicted juror's judgments, there were fewer effects of disability status. Even so, bias against disabled infants manifested for several dependant variables.

Practical implications

This research can inform legal professionals about the potential for bias in juror decision-making, and in turn, help facilitate fairness and justice for the youngest and most vulnerable victims of child abuse.     

Does group composition affect learning by invention?

Schwartz and Martin (Cogn Instr 22:129?C184, 2004) as well as Kapur (Instr Sci, this issue, 2012) have found that students can be better prepared to learn about mathematical formulas when they try to invent them in small groups before receiving the canonical formula from a lesson. The purpose of the present research was to investigate how the effectiveness of invention activities may be mediated by composition of the small groups in terms of their mathematical skills. In two studies, small groups of undergraduates engaged in an ??inventing standard deviation?? task. Results suggested that groups may need at least one member with high math ability to take advantage of ??learning by invention??. Groups consisting of both high and low math ability members generated a broader range of solution attempts during the invention task, and this seemed to be related to better uptake of the standard deviation formula from a later lesson.