Congruency as a nonspecific perceptual property contributing to newborns' face preference

Past research has shown that top-heaviness is a perceptual property that plays a crucial role in triggering newborns' preference toward faces. The present study examined the contribution of a second configural property, congruency , to newborns' face preference. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that when embedded in nonfacelike stimuli, congruency induces a preference of the same strength as that induced by facedness. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the attentional biases toward facedness and congruency produce a cumulative effect on newborns' visual preferences according to an additive model. These findings were extended by those of Experiment 5, showing that the additive model holds true when congruency is added to top-heaviness in nonfacelike stimuli displaying more elements in the upper portion.     

Educational Justice and Occupational Mobility: The Role of Civic Commitment and of Imagination

In Italy, the exploration of, and debate on, problems of educational rights and justice are not subsumed under the comprehensive rubric of “Urban Education”. They are rather studied from disciplinary realms and approaches such as social education or intercultural education that aim to understand and respond to issues of pressing social, political and educational concerns relative to migration, educational inclusion of immigrants’ and minorities’ children, recognition of cultural diversities as teaching and learning resources, among others. In this article the intercultural perspective is focused on the Italian occupational minority of the fairground and circus people, whose intensely mobile way of life impacts on their children’s school attendance and learning, and on the schools’ capacity to elaborate effective educational paths also able to valorize those people’s cultural diversity. Three relevant “bottom up” projects are here presented that mean to positively answer the mismatch between the mobility of the attractionist students and the schooling curricula, the annual teaching schedule and the attendance requirements.     

Effect of Cognitive Style on Topographical Learning Across Life Span: Insights From Normal Development

Notwithstanding its well-established role on high-demanding spatial navigation tasks during adulthood, the effect of field dependence–independence during the acquisition of spatial navigation skills is almost unknown. This study assessed for the first time the effect of field dependence–independence on topographical learning (TL) across the life span: 195 individuals, including 54 healthy young-adults (age-range = 20–30), 46 teenagers (age-range = 11–14), and 95 children (age-range = 6–9) participated in this study. Field dependence–independence interacted with age in predicting TL. Also during childhood higher field independence was associated with better performances but not later in the life, that is, during adolescence and adulthood. This result suggests that field dependence–independence may have a role in fostering the acquisition of TL.     

Supporting linguistically diverse students' science learning with dynamic visualizations through discourse-rich practices

Carefully scaffolded dynamic visualizations have potential to promote science learning for all students, including English language learners (ELLs) who are often underserved in mainstream science classrooms, but little is known about how to design effective scaffolding to support such diverse students' learning with dynamic visualizations. This study investigated how two forms of scaffolding embedded in dynamic visualizations, expert guidance and generating guidance, can foster ELLs' and non-ELLs' understanding of unobservable scientific phenomena. While interacting with dynamic visualizations, students in the expert guidance condition were provided with scientifically accurate explanations to interpret visual representations, whereas students in the generating guidance condition were prompted to generate their own explanations using visual representations. The results show the significant advantage of generating guidance over expert guidance for both ELLs and non-ELLs, although students in the generating guidance condition did not receive feedback on their generated artifacts. Analyses of video data and log data from 40 pairs revealed that each form of scaffolding affected the quantity and quality of linguistically diverse students' conversations. The results show that generating guidance enabled students, particularly ELLs, to engage in discourse-rich practices to evaluate various sources of evidence from the visualization and compare the evidence to their alternative ideas to develop a coherent understanding of the target concepts. This study shows the unique benefits of generating guidance as an effective strategy to support linguistically diverse students' science learning with dynamic visualizations.     

Design and validation of a novel learning tool, the "Anato-Rug," for teaching equine topographical anatomy

Recognition of anatomical landmarks in live animals (and humans) is key for clinical practice, but students often find it difficult to translate knowledge from dissection‐based anatomy onto the live animal and struggle to acquire this vital skill. The purpose of this study was to create and evaluate the use of an equine anatomy rug (“Anato‐Rug”) depicting topographical anatomy and key areas of lung, heart, and gastrointestinal auscultation, which could be used together with a live horse to aid learning of “live animal” anatomy. Over the course of 2 weeks, 38 third year veterinary students were randomly allocated into an experimental group, revising topographical anatomy from the “Anato‐Rug,” or a control group, learning topographical anatomy from a textbook. Immediately post activity, both groups underwent a test on live anatomy knowledge and were retested 1 week later. Both groups then completed a questionnaire to ascertain their perceptions of their learning experiences. Results showed that the experimental groups scored significantly higher than the control group at the first testing session, experienced more enjoyment during the activity and gained more confidence in identifying anatomical landmarks than the control group. There was not a significant difference in scores between groups at the second testing session. The findings indicate that the anatomy rug is an effective learning tool that aids understanding, confidence, and enjoyment in learning equine thorax and abdominal anatomy; however it was not better than traditional methods with regards to longer term memory recall. Anat SciEduc. © 2012 American Association of Anatomists.     

Learning to read: Evidence on the distinction between decoding and comprehension skills

The paper focuses on the importance of distinguishing between decoding and comprehension skills in reading. This distinction can also be applied to the study of precursors of reading and of the first phases of reading acquisition. The reconsideration of a 15-year research program shows evidence and implications of such a dissociation. In particular, the paper reviews psychometric research concerning reading performance in first and second grade, research on precursors of reading, the effects of early programs devoted to develop reading abilities. Decoding and comprehension reading components appear at least partially separated, related to different underlying cognitive abilities, differently sensitive to enrichment programs.     

Creation of an integrated environment to supply e-learning platforms with Office Automation features

Over the last years great efforts have been made within the University environment to implement e-learning technologies in the standard educational practice. These learning technologies distribute online educational multimedia contents through technological platforms. Even though specific e-learning tools for technical disciplines were already available on the Internet, in our opinion more general tools, typically involving calculations, plots or diagrams, through the use of spreadsheets or graphical applications, were still needed to provide a more flexible and multi-purpose integrated environment. Therefore, we developed an integrated system to supply e-learning platforms with almost the same functionalities offered by standalone Office Automation applications. Modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment (MOODLE) and OpenOffice.org were selected to deal with any problem originating from the software and to smooth over the users' learning curve. Furthermore, MOODLE is a modular platform and offers an extensive application programming interface for coding in a simple and effective manner. The implementation of the work required the employment of Java and Asynchronous JavaScript and Extensible Markup Language technologies and included the creation of a Java Applet to be embedded in the web pages of the new MOODLE modules. Students could thus be offered a single working environment for handling “traditional” material and performing practical activities. The students' feedback on this new integrated system was very positive and proved the effectiveness of our work.     

Children's attitudes towards ADHD,depression and learning disabilities

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression and general learning disabilities (LD) are common difficulties for British primary school children. It has been found that characteristics associated with these difficulties can result in negative attitudes and stigma from other children, causing problems with peer relationships. Furthermore, problematic peer relations can intensify the difficulties associated with these disorders. Packages such as ‘Tackling Stigma: A Practical Toolkit’ aim to combat stigma in schools. However, these packages have not been based on evidence regarding children's attitudes towards different disorders. This study aims to explore children's attitudes towards ADHD, depression and LD from a conative (measure of social distance) and cognitive (measure of positive or negative attributes ascribed to a person) perspective. Participants were 273 children (M= 9.2 years). Vignettes were used to describe a child with ADHD, depression, or LD or a ‘normal’ child. The Shared Activities Questionnaire was utilised to assess conative attitudes, and the Adjective Checklist was utilised to assess cognitive attitudes. Results showed that children generally displayed more negative attitudes to vignettes describing mental health difficulties (MHD) (ADHD and depression) than LD. Children had more negative attitudes towards the ADHD (externalising disorder) vignette than the depression vignette (internalising disorder). Younger children had more positive conative attitudes than older children. Those who had previous contact with children with ADHD, depression and LD had more positive attitudes. These findings can enhance current stigma reduction interventions through contributing a deeper understanding of children's attitudes towards the most common MHD and LD in childhood.