PART V: PSYCHOLOGY

Vividness and controllability of relaxing and energizing imagery by efficient and less efficient imagers.     

Continuity,stability, and change in daily emotional experience across adolescence

This longitudinal study examined change in adolescents' daily range of emotional states between early and late adolescence. A sample of 220 youth provided reports on their daily emotions at random times during two 1-week periods. At Time 1 they were in the fifth through eighth grades; 4 years later, at Time 2, they were in the ninth through twelfth grades. Results showed that average emotional states became less positive across early adolescence, but that this downward change in average emotions ceased in grade 10. The results also showed greatest relative instability between youth in the early adolescent years--correlations over time were lower--with stability increasing in late adolescence. Lastly, the study found that adolescents' average emotions had relatively stable relations to life stress and psychological adjustment between early and late adolescence. As a whole, the findings suggest that late adolescence is associated with a slowing of the emotional changes of early adolescence.     

Revisiting the scaling of citations for research assessment

Over the past decade, national research evaluation exercises, traditionally conducted using the peer review method, have begun opening to bibliometric indicators. The citations received by a publication are assumed as proxy for its quality, but they require standardization prior to use in comparative evaluation of organizations or individual scientists: the citation data must be standardized, due to the varying citation behavior across research fields. The objective of this paper is to compare the effectiveness of the different methods of normalizing citations, in order to provide useful indications to research assessment practitioners. Simulating a typical national research assessment exercise, he analysis is conducted for all subject categories in the hard sciences and is based on the Thomson Reuters Science Citation Index-Expanded^®. Comparisons show that the citations average is the most effective scaling parameter, when the average is based only on the publications actually cited.     

What boxing-related stimuli reveal about response behaviour

When two athletes meet inside the ropes of the boxing ring to fight, their cognitive systems have to respond as quickly as possible to a manifold of stimuli to assure victory. In the present work, we studied the pre-attentive mechanisms, which form the basis of an athlete’s ability in reacting to an opponent’s punches. Expert boxers, beginner boxers and people with no experience of boxing performed a Simon-like task where they judged the colour of the boxing gloves worn by athletes in attack postures by pressing two lateralised keys. Although participants were not instructed to pay attention to the direction of the punches, beginner boxers’ responses resembled a defence-related pattern, expert boxers’ resembled counterattacks, whereas non-athletes’ responses were not influenced by the unrelated task information. Results are discussed in the light of an expertise-related action simulation account.     

Metacognitive and motivational predictors of surface approach to studying and academic examination performance

The objective of this study was to verify the structure of a model of how surface approach to studying is influenced by the trait variables of motivation and metacognition and the state variables of avoidance coping and evaluation anxiety. We extended the model to include: (1) the investigation of the relative contribution of the five metacognition sub-traits; and (2) the prediction of academic examination performance while controlling for past academic examination performance. A sample of 101 university students completed prior to undertaking academic examinations of the following self-report instruments: Work Preference Inventory, Metacognitions Questionnaire 30, Revised COPE Inventory, Evaluation Anxiety Scale and Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students. Results supported the original structure of the metacognitive-motivational model of surface approach to studying in addition to showing that it predicts academic examination performance controlling for past academic examination performance. The present study confirmed some previous findings, identified new predictive relationships and offered a comprehensive model of surface approach to studying and academic examination performance controlling for past academic examination performance.     

Immersive VR for Organic Chemistry: Impacts on Performance and Grades for First-Generation and Continuing-Generation University Students

Innovative Higher Education - Rapid advances in the quality and accessibility of immersive virtual reality (IVR) have brought about intense interest in applications of the technology within higher...     

E–Learning in Hong Kong: comparing learning outcomes in online multimedia and lecture versions of an introductory computing course

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of Web–based, highly interactive, and multimedia–rich e–learning materials by comparing students' learning outcomes in the lecture and online versions of an introductory computing course. The course versions differed only in that face–to–face lectures were replaced with e–learning modules in the online course; the other course elements (laboratory sessions, use of computer–mediated communications, examinations) were the same. The e–learning trial took place at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where the first author taught the lecture course to 105 students, and the online course to 180 and 129 students in the following semesters. The lecture and online students achieved comparable factual learning outcomes and the online students outperformed the lecture students in applied–conceptual learning. Findings suggest that the use of carefully designed interactive e–learning modules fosters higher–order learning outcomes.     

Technological paradigms and technological trajectories: A suggested interpretation of the determinants and directions of technical change

The procedures and the nature of “technologies” are suggested to be broadly similar to those which characterize “science”. In particular, there appear to be “technological paradigms” (or research programmes) performing a similar role to “scientific paradigms” (or research programmes). The model tries to account for both continuous changes and discontinuities in technological innovation. Continuous changes are often related to progress along a technological trajectory defined by a technological paradigm, while discontinuities are associated with the emergence of a new paradigm. One-directional explanations of the innovative process, and in particular those assuming “the market” as the prime mover, are inadequate to explain the emergence of new technological paradigms. The origin of the latter stems from the interplay between scientific advances, economic factors, institutional variables, and unsolved difficulties on established technological paths. The model tries to establish a sufficiently general framework which accounts for all these factors and to define the process of selection of new technological paradigms among a greater set of notionally possible ones.The history of a technology is contextual to the history of the industrial structures associated with that technology. The emergence of a new paradigm is often related to new “schumpeterian” companies, while its establishment often shows also a process of oligopolistic stabilization.