Exploring Animal-Assisted Programs with Children in School and Therapeutic Contexts

Animal-Assisted programs with children are becoming increasingly popular in school and therapeutic settings. This article provides an overview of the benefits accrued by children as well as the concerns with programs which involve animals, and therapy dogs in particular, in these environments. Research over the past 30 years indicates that therapy dogs may offer physiological, emotional, social, and physical support for children. The distinguishing features of Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) are characterized by the supplemental inclusion of a trained therapy dog in reaching an intervention goal in therapeutic environments, and as a supplement to an educational objective in school contexts. The general assumptions underlying AAT with children are that although therapy dogs are interactive, children seem to perceive them as non-judgemental participants who are outside of the complications and expectations of human relationships. This unique interaction may offer children a valuable form of social and emotional support in educational and therapeutic settings.     

The challenge of continuation: Schools’ continuation of the Respect program

The Respect program is a whole school approach to prevent and reduce problem behavior. The purpose of this study was to investigate which conditions in schools helped them to continue the program successfully after the end of the 1-year implementation period. The study also looked at the actual continuation after the program end. Especially, we looked at which strategies and structures promoted change beyond the implementation phase. The project groups at four Norwegian schools implementing the program were interviewed at the end of the implementation period and again 2? years later. The main findings suggest that involvement in the Respect program enables schools to implement change. However, it is challenging for the schools to continue the work afterwards. The one school that successfully continued the work after the program was characterized by strong and supportive leadership, leadership at many levels, they made plans and saw them through, renewed activities and new members of staff were introduced to and included in the work according to the program principles. These elements were more or less lacking at the other three schools, at least after the active program period. A main finding is that a 1-year program period is not long enough for most schools to implement and continue an extensive whole school program like Respect.     

Integration of spatial relationships and temporal relationships in humans

Three experiments tested human participants on a two-dimensional, computer, landmark-based search task to assess the integration of independently acquired spatial and temporal relationships. Experiment 1 showed that A-B spatial training followed by B-outcome spatial training resulted in spatial integration in such a way that A was effectively associated with the outcome. Experiment 2 showed that A-B spatial and temporal training followed by B-outcome spatial and temporal training resulted in integration that created both spatial and temporal relationships between A and the outcome. Experiment 3 refuted an alternative explanation, one that is based on decision-making speed, to the temporal-integration strategy that was suggested by Experiment 2. These results replicate in humans the observations regarding spatial integration made by Sawa, Leising, and Blaisdell (2005) using a spatial-search task with pigeons, and they extend those observations to temporal integration.     

The role of personal epistemology in the self-regulation of internet-based learning

The predictability of Internet-specific epistemic beliefs for self-regulated learning within Internet technologies was examined in a sample of 84 physics undergraduates. Dimensions of Internet-specific epistemic beliefs were found to explain unique variance in Internet-based search, help-seeking, and self-regulatory strategies, respectively. Specifically, students who emphasized that course-related knowledge located on the Internet consisted of specific facts and details perceived Internet-search and evaluation of search results to be less problematic and reported on more help-seeking and use of self-regulatory strategies during Internet-based learning. Moreover, students believing that Internet-based knowledge claims need to be checked against other sources, reason, and prior knowledge were reportedly more likely to use self-regulatory strategies when using the Internet during coursework. The results are discussed in light of what characterizes the Internet as a knowledge source.     

Voices of home and school on democracy and human rights education at the primary level: a case study

The purpose of this research was to investigate the perceptions of home and school concerning ideally implemented primary democracy and human rights education. In this qualitative study, data were collected from six voluntary classroom teachers and 16 parents in a selected school through interviews. The results of the interview yielded five major themes: physical and environmental issues, instructional process, teacher characteristics, assessment practices, and communication patterns for teaching democracy and human rights ideally. Most of the participants also indicated the lack of partnership between home and school. The results showed that there are gaps between the existing and desired conditions of democracy and human rights education in schools.     

Spontaneous alternation behavior in Paramecium

Spontaneous alternating behavior (SAB), the tendency of an organism to successively turn left and right in a maze, is a standard metric of short-term memory in developmental and pyschopharmacological studies. Although SAB is perhaps the most phylogenetically widespread behavior in motile lifeforms, conflicting data on SAB exist for several sets of closely related taxa. For example, previous studies provide contradictory evidence concerning the existence of spontaneous alternation behavior in the protozoanParamecium. However, these studies tested different species, using very different experimental designs. Using a single, factorial design for both previously tested species,P. multimicronucleatum andP. caudatum, we found that, in fact, the two species do not differ in their alternation behavior; specifically, they alternate in mazes with short tracks, but not in mazes with long tracks. These results are in accord with alternation studies on other taxa, and they fully resolve the apparent contradictions in the earlier studies onParamecium. They also indicate that caution should be used in interpreting variable results across species tested with different experimental designs and suggest that, in at least some taxa, SAB may not be strictly dependent on the use of short-term memory.     

通过话轮交替模式分析《茶花女》中的人物性格

本文运用会话分析中的话轮交替模式来分析Alexandre Dumas fils的剧本《茶花女》第九章的一段对话,展示戏剧中人物性格。本文中具体分析话轮交替机制主要包括的三个方面,即话轮分配、话轮分布和话轮序列。     

Filtering methods for content-based retrieval on indexed symbolic music databases

We introduce fast filtering methods for content-based music retrieval problems, where the music is modeled as sets of points in the Euclidean plane, formed by the (on-set time, pitch) pairs. The filters exploit a precomputed index for the database, and run in time dependent on the query length and intermediate output sizes of the filters, being almost independent of the database size. With a quadratic size index, the filters are provably lossless for general point sets of this kind. In the context of music, the search space can be narrowed down, which enables the use of a linear sized index for effective and efficient lossless filtering. For the checking phase, which dominates the overall running time, we exploit previously designed algorithms suitable for local checking. In our experiments on a music database, our best filter-based methods performed several orders of a magnitude faster than the previously designed solutions.