On the Concept of Energy: Eclecticism and Rationality

In the theory of heat of the first half of the nineteenth century, heat was a substance. Mayer and Joule contradicted this thesis but developed different concepts of heat. Heat was a force for Mayer and a motion for Joule. Both Mayer and Joule determined the mechanical equivalent of heat. This result was, however, justified in accordance with those concepts of heat. Mayer’s characterisation of force reappears in the very common textbook definition ‘energy cannot be created or destroyed but only transformed’ and his theory led to a phenomenological approach to energy. Joule and Thomson’s concept of heat led to a mechanistic approach to energy and to the common definition ‘energy is the capacity of doing work’. One and the same term ‘energy’ subsumed these two approaches. The problematic concept of energy, energy as a substance, appears then as a result of an eclectic development of the concept. Another approach, which appeared in the 1860s, is directly based on the mechanical equivalent of heat and can be characterized by the use of ‘principle of equivalence’ instead of ‘principle of energy conservation’. Unlike the others, this approach, which has been lost, poses no problems with the concept of energy. The problems with the energy concept as to the kind of phenomena dealt with in the present paper can, however, be overcome, as we shall see, in distinguishing between that which comes from experiments and that which is an interpretation of the experimental results within a conceptual framework.     

The achievement flow motive as an element of the autotelic personality: predicting educational attainment in three cultures

Human behavior is directed by an implicit and an explicit motivational system. The intrinsic form of the implicit achievement motive has been demonstrated to predict the experience of flow. Thus, this achievement flow motive can be considered an integral component of the autotelic personality, posited in Flow Theory as dispositional difference in the propensity to experience flow. As implicit motivation predicts long-term behavioral trends and flow predicts quality of performance, the achievement flow motive should be predictive of a long-term goal pursuit such as educational attainment. This hypothesis is tested cross-culturally to shed some light on the universality of flow: Participants from Cameroon, Costa Rica, and Germany were asked about the level of education they attained. To assess their achievement flow motive, the Operant Motive Test was employed. After measurement equivalence was established, analyses revealed that, across all three cultures, the achievement flow motive explained variance in educational attainment independent of achievement values as measured by a scale of the Schwartz Value Survey. Consequently, as would be expected of an element of the autotelic personality, the achievement flow motive predicts long-term academic success.     

Does rhetorical competence moderate the effect of rhetorical devices on the comprehension of expository texts beyond general comprehension skills?

Many studies have demonstrated the facilitating role of rhetorical devices in text comprehension, but there are also studies where rhetorical devices have not shown such effect. The present study sets out to explore whether readers’ knowledge of rhetorical devices (that is, rhetorical competence) moderates their effectiveness beyond general comprehension skills and, consequently, whether rhetorical competence may be considered a component skill of reading comprehension. 192 sixth- to seventh-grade students were assessed on rhetorical competence and were required to read a difficult marked text with specific rhetorical devices (a refutation, an objective, and four organizational signals) or the same text without them. After reading, students produced a summary in order to obtain three dependent variables: main ideas (as a measure of participants’ ability to select relevant information from the text), causal links between them (as an indicator of participants’ ability to grasp the logical structure of the text and to organize its ideas), and the combination of main ideas plus causal links (as an indicator of participants’ global comprehension of the text). Analyses controlling for general comprehension skills and other important variables (working memory, prior knowledge, decoding) demonstrated that: (a) readers of the marked text scored higher in terms of all dependent variables, and (b) rhetorical competence level moderated the effect of rhetorical devices on the composite measure (main ideas plus causal links) and on the organization of the summary by means of causal links.     

Educational expansion,economic growth and antisocial behaviour: evidence from England

This paper investigates the impact of the increase in post‐compulsory schooling and economic growth on conviction rates for antisocial behaviour in England. I hypothesise that both educational and employment opportunities should lead to greater reductions in antisocial behaviour when they are combined than when they exist in isolation. I test this hypothesis empirically using three unique sources of area‐level data over time in England. Results show that expansion of post‐compulsory education is important for reductions in antisocial behaviour regardless of the additional impact of economic growth. Additionally, economic growth itself is found not to be associated with reductions in antisocial behaviour. Two possible explanations for these results are the diploma disease and the negative consequences of inequality.     

De Genève à Belo Horizonte,une histoire croisée: circulation,réception et réinterprétation d’un modèle européen des classes spéciales au Brésil des années 1930

L’organisation des classes homogènes selon le niveau de développement mental des élèves et celle des classes spéciales pour les enfants en retard scolaire eut lieu dans les écoles élémentaires de Belo Horizonte, au Brésil, pendant les années de 1930, dans le cadre d’une réforme du système d’éducation, à laquelle participèrent des spécialistes étrangers, et en spécial la psychologue russe Helena Antipoff (1892–1974). Le projet des classes spéciales alors établies et leurs transformations dans le contexte brésilien sont étudiés à partir de données documentaires publiées entre 1930 et 1940. Née en Russie, Antipoff a fait des études supérieures en France (1910–1911), comme stagiaire dans le laboratoire Binet-Simon, et à Genève (1912–1914), à l’Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, où elle exerça ultérieurement les fonctions d’assistante d’Édouard Claparède (1926–1929). Notre hypothèse est que les classes spéciales créées à Belo Horizonte le furent sur le modèle genevois, et constituèrent un important exemple de circulation et diffusion de connaissances au niveau international, ainsi que de construction de repères dans le domaine de l’éducation spéciale au Brésil. Ainsi, la division des classes par niveau intellectuel mesuré par des tests d’intelligence, l’idée de “l’école sur mesure” proposée par Claparède, le dialogue avec les méthodes suggérées par Alice Descouedres démontrent les relations avec le modèle genevois. En même temps, l’interprétation des résultats des tests comme manifestation d’une forme d’ “intelligence civilisée” et les adaptations des exercices d’orthopédie mentale pour développer cette intelligence demandée par l’école montrent les transformations du modèle dans le contexte brésilien.     

Practice task design in team sports: Representativeness enhanced by increasing opportunities for action

Abstract This study investigated effects of manipulating the number of action possibilities in a futsal passing task to understand the representativeness of practice tasks designs. Eight male senior futsal players performed a passing task in which uncertainty on passing direction for the player in possession of the ball was increased in four conditions and compared with passing data from a competitive match. Performance during a passing task and competitive futsal performance was compared using ball speed and passing accuracy data. Ball speed data were analysed by approximate entropy (ApEn) to capture their regularity in each of the four conditions and during competitive performance. Significantly high levels of regularity were observed in predetermined passes in comparison with emergent passes (i.e., passes with high number of possibilities for action). Similar results for ball speed regularity were observed between practice tasks with a high number of possibilities for action (i.e., emergent passes) and competitive performance. Similar results were observed for passing accuracy in practice tasks with a high number of possibilities for action compared to competitive performance. Increases in the number of action possibilities during practice improved action fidelity of tasks in relation to competitive performance.     

Why Does Infant Stepping Disappear and Can It Be Stimulated by Optic Flow?

Two independent experiments (n = 22 and n = 22) showed that 2‐month‐old infants displayed significantly more stepping movements when supported upright in the air than when supported with their feet contacting a surface. Air‐ and surface‐stepping kinematics were quite similar (Experiment 2). In addition, when data were collapsed across both experiments, more air steps and more donkey kicks were seen when infants were exposed to optic flows that specified backward compared to forward translation. The findings challenge the currently accepted heavy legs explanation for the disappearance of stepping at 2 months of age and raise new questions about the visual control of stepping.     

Invoking “collective memory”: mapping the emergence of a concept in archival science

The concept of “collective” or “social” memory has assumed increasing prominence in the discourse of archivists over the past few decades. Archives are frequently characterized as crucial institutions of social memory, and many professional activities are considered forms of memory preservation. We present a systematic examination of the relationships between archives and collective memory as articulated in the English-language archival literature. We first identify the major themes regarding collective memory and categorize archival writings into four major threads. We then analyze citations extracted from 165 articles about collective memory published between 1980 and 2010 in four leading English-language archival studies journals. We identify the most influential scholars and publications and trace the evolution of the collective memory concept in that literature. By comparing the archival literature on collective memory to that indexed in Thomson’s Web of Science and in Google Scholar, we identify specific disciplines, authors, and works that archivists working on collective memory may find useful. We find that in general the archival literature on collective memory is fairly insular and self-referential and call on archivists to actively engage other disciplines when carrying out collective memory research.