Relative age effects in a cognitive task: A case study of youth chess

The relative age effect (RAE) has been demonstrated in many youth and professional sports. In this study, we hypothesized that there would also be a RAE among youth chess players who are typically involved in a complex cognitive task without significant physical requirements. While typical RAEs have been observed in adult chess players, in this paper we wanted to focus primarily on youth chess players. In addition, we also examined RAEs in both participation rates and performance levels in a national chess championship. Therefore, the RAE was examined in a complex cognitive task that has no significant physical requirements, more specifically among youth chess players. Data were analyzed (1) for all registered Belgian youth chess players over a 5-year period (2009–2013) and (2) for participants of the Belgian youth championship 2013. Results indicated an overall RAE among all Belgian youth chess players over the last 5 years. The likelihood of participation was significantly greater for players born in the first birth-date quartile (χ² = 10.21, p < .05; r = ?.77, p < .01; w = .07) and the likelihood of participation decreased when youth chess players were born in the last quartile of the year. These effects were most prominent in the under-8 and under-10 year olds. There also appeared to be a performance-related RAE. Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests (p < .05) showed that players born in the first months of the selection year were significantly more often in the top 10 players for each age level of the Belgian Youth Championship 2013.     

An exploration of family and individual profiles following father-daughter incest

This paper presents the results of a range of psychometric assessments which attempted to identify family and individual variables associated with father-daughter incest. Psychometric self-report measures were used to examine differences between families in which incest had been confirmed and a matched comparison group. Significant differences between the members of the incest and the comparison groups included behavioral and self-esteem problems in the daughters and differences in the familial environments of the two groups. Daughters who had been sexually abused reported lower levels of self-esteem about their intellectual and school status. Mothers in the incest group reported that their daughters had more conduct problems than the comparison mothers. The incest families were generally reported to be higher in conflict and organization and lower in cohesion, expressiveness, and active recreation. No differences between groups were found for levels of marital adjustment, self-esteem in mothers, or overall level of psychopathology in the perpetrators.     

Challenging traditional classroom practices: Swedish teachers’ interplay with Finnish curriculum materials

In the current paper, we present an analysis of a case study in which we have followed Swedish primary teachers who voluntarily began using translated Finnish curriculum materials, i.e. a textbook and teacher guide, in order to reform their mathematics teaching. The multifaceted data, consisting of questionnaires, interviews, protocols from collegial meetings and classroom observations, were gathered during the period 2010–2014. The analysis of the interplay within this cross-cultural setting reveals the special characteristics and the challenges existing in practice. Both the experienced and inexperienced teachers offloaded a great deal of their agency to the materials in order to become familiar with the ideas they mediated. Yet, the lack of a clear rationale behind the organization of the materials, as well as the suggested activities connected to taken-for-granted features of the Finnish teaching tradition, made fruitful interaction problematic. The changes teachers made in their classroom practice were tightly connected to the support offered in the materials, without which the teachers abandoned their new classroom patterns. Based on the results of this study, we suggest a number of general aspects that we regard as important to consider when implementing curriculum materials developed within another cultural-educational context.     

Intertextual content analysis: an approach for analysing text-related discussions with regard to movability in reading and how text content is handled

Reading and discussing texts as a means for learning subject content are regular features within educational contexts. This paper presents an approach for intertextual content analysis (ICA) of such text-related discussions revealing what the participants make of the text. Thus, in contrast to many other approaches for analysing conversation that focus essentially on the interaction per se, ICA takes the text as its starting point. Drawing on the concept of text movability and systemic-functional cohesion analyses, the approach combines a reader’s perspective and a text perspective to show the participants’ reception of the text, and also what and how text content is brought into the conversation and how it is handled. In the paper, ICA is described with regard to its theoretical underpinnings, usage and utility. It is suggested that the approach provides educational researchers with an analytical tool that allows detailed ICAs of text-related classroom discussion. Findings may ultimately lead to pedagogical implications with a bearing on classroom practice.     

Boys’ socialisation and agency in a Swedish special educational needs unit

The overall aim of this article is to analyse how a school’s special needs unit in Sweden deals with children’s agency and category work as they negotiate and categorise the problems that are encountered there. The data derive from an ethnographic study conducted in a Swedish special educational needs unit (SENU) attended by a group of five boys aged between 7 and 12. The results show that the teachers’ categorisations of the boys’ emotional and behaviour problems and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) could be interpreted as an attempt to guide the boys’ development so that they will change and improve. Conversely, from the boys’ perspectives, the daily activities in the SENU could themselves be problematic in that the boys are obliged to adopt several different strategies to control and strengthen their identity. These observations highlight the importance of detailed analyses of the boys’ communicative activities during their interactions with teachers and peers.     

虚拟全景中的交互设计与制作——“虚拟现实”系列之二

该文在学习虚拟全景的基础上介绍了如何掌握其交互设计的方法。主要包括文件的建立、背景图片的使用、节点的设立、节点间的链接等内容     

Archives,libraries, museums and the spell of ubiquitous knowledge

This paper describes the convergence of libraries, archives, and museums in Germany from traditional brick-and-mortar institutions to a digital memory institution on the Internet. An implementation of such a digital memory institution is BAM—the joint portal of archives, libraries, and museums in Germany. BAM has the potential to serve as a single point of access to existing, but separate offerings of the several branches of cultural heritage, e.g. union catalogs, and a great number of separate digitization projects offering their content on the German Web. BAM can make an important contribution to the efforts of both the German governments (federal and states) and the European Union, which are in the process of establishing portals to cultural content on the Internet. The article gives an outline of the current undertakings and illustrates how the striving for ubiquitous knowledge delivered by Internet portals relates to the scientific tradition of documentation in Europe.     

Mesocycles in conserving plastics

Analysis suggests that progress in conservation of plastics objects and artworks can be described by a series of overlapping mesocycles. Focus has been placed for periods of 5–10 years each on determining the degradation pathways in the 1990s, developing strategies to inhibit those pathways from the late 1990s and, since 2006 on actively stabilizing and treating the symptoms of degradation. The primary driving forces behind the direction and rate of progress within each of these three mesocycles have been different and specific. The controlling factor in understanding degradation pathways for heritage plastics has been the origin of the data describing lifetimes. By contrast, mesocycles in developing suitable storage and display microclimates for plastics have mirrored preventive conservation practices for natural polymeric materials. The rate of the third mesocycle, interventive conservation, has been driven by the need to balance the requirements for reversibility in conservation practices with the artist's intent and significance. Developments within each of the three mesocycles from the 1990s to date are discussed in this article. Environmental science and toxicology of waste plastics offer a novel source of information about real time degradation in terrestrial and marine microenvironments that seems likely to contribute to the conservation of similar materials in contemporary artworks.