Parameters in television captioning for deaf and hard-of-hearing adults: effects of caption rate versus text reduction on comprehension

Caption rate and text reduction are factors that appear to affect the comprehension of captions by people who are deaf or hard of hearing. These 2 factors are confounded in everyday captioning; rate (in words per minute) is slowed by text reduction. In this study, caption rate and text reduction were manipulated independently in 2 experiments to assess any differential effects and possible benefits for comprehension by deaf and hard-of-hearing adults. Volunteers for the study included adults with a range of reading levels, self-reported hearing status, and different communication and language preferences. Results indicate that caption rate (at 130, 180, 230 words per minute) and text reduction (at 84%, 92%, and 100% original text) have different effects for different adult users, depending on hearing status, age, and reading level. In particular, reading level emerges as a dominant factor: more proficient readers show better comprehension than poor readers and are better able to benefit from caption rate and, to some extent, text reduction modifications.     

Incentive learning and the motivational control of instrumental performance by thirst

The role of incentive learning in instrumental performance following a shift in the degree of water deprivation was analyzed in three experiments. In Experiments 1A and IB, rats trained to perform an instrumental action reinforced with either sucrose or maltodextrin solutions when in a high-deprivation state were subsequently shifted to a low-deprivation state and tested in extinction. This within-state shift in water deprivation reduced instrumental performance only when the animals had been exposed to the reinforcer in the low-deprivation state prior to instrumental training. In Experiment 2, a concurrent training procedure was used to assess whether the change in the value of the reinforcer brought about by preexposurewas mediated by the contingency between the instrumental action and the reinforcer. Preexposure to the reinforcer under the low-deprivation state produced a selective reduction of the performance of the action upon which it was contingent during training when testing was conducted in extinction following a shift from the high- to the low-deprivation state. These experiments provide evidence that animals have to learn about the incentive value of a reinforcer in a particular motivational state through exposure to the reinforcer in that state.     

Creating a distinctive business career outcome programme

This article describes how a small private business school, accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, reengineered its career services programme to become a premier programme in the United States. Drawing on theory of involvement, the research gives business schools a strategy to improve business career placement through capital support, student engagement, corporate engagement, alumni engagement, faculty engagement and continuous improvement initiatives. Further, two major outcome categories (i.e. supportive outcomes and end outcomes) are identified and various measures are discussed. Supportive outcomes indicate growth in the number of on-campus business recruiting career events, high internship evaluations by internship supervisors and significant increase in students’ satisfaction with career services. End outcomes provide strong evidence for placement rate success with a 98% career placement rate for the past four years, significant increase on mean starting salaries of graduates across the years following the implementation of the strategic changes, improved quality of positions attained by graduates, and professional success of alumni in their positions. The impact of strategic changes on school ranking, enrolment and donor support are also discussed. The research proposes a model of student career success and identifies various elements influencing the success of such programmes.     

Acculturation, substance use, and deviant behavior: examining separation and family conflict as mediators

This longitudinal study examined how separation and family conflict mediated the effects of two acculturation variables (English language use and generational status) on substance use (alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use) and deviant behavior outcomes in a Mexican American high school age sample. Structural equation modeling indicated that separation was a significant mediator of the relationship between acculturation and alcohol use, tobacco use, and deviant behavior. Family conflict mediated the effects of acculturation on marijuana use and deviant behavior. Model comparisons across gender groups suggested that generational status was an influential acculturation measure for females but not males. Additionally, English language use maintained a direct effect on marijuana use among females, whereas this relationship was mediated by separation for males.     

Flavor-evaluative conditioning is unaffected by contingency knowledge during training with color-flavor compounds

In two experiments, participants inspected and drank a series of drinks, half of which contained sugar and half unpalatable Tween20 (tween). Each sugar and tween drink had a particular flavor and color. Following this training, the flavors of the sugar drinks were assigned higher hedonic evaluations than were those of the tween drinks, even though the participants did not reliably report which flavors had been present in the sugar and tween drinks during training. Moreover, the evaluative conditioning of the flavors was unaffected by whether or not the colors alone had been pretrained to predict the presence of sugar or tween in the drinks. In accord with Baeyens, Eelen, van den Bergh, and Crombez (1990), we conclude that flavor-evaluative conditioning is not mediated by contingency learning.     

Enhancement of Anatomical Education Using Augmented Reality: An Empirical Study of Body Painting

Students in undergraduate premedical anatomy courses may experience suboptimal and superficial learning experiences due to large class sizes, passive lecture styles, and difficult-to-master concepts. This study introduces an innovative, hands-on activity for human musculoskeletal system education with the aim of improving students’ level of engagement and knowledge retention. In this study, a collaborative learning intervention using the REFLECT (augmented reality for learning clinical anatomy) system is presented. The system uses the augmented reality magic mirror paradigm to superimpose anatomical visualizations over the user’s body in a large display, creating the impression that she sees the relevant anatomic illustrations inside her own body. The efficacy of this proposed system was evaluated in a large-scale controlled study, using a team-based muscle painting activity among undergraduate premedical students (n = 288) at the Johns Hopkins University. The baseline knowledge and post-intervention knowledge of the students were measured before and after the painting activity according to their assigned groups in the study. The results from knowledge tests and additional collected data demonstrate that the proposed interactive system enhanced learning of the musculoskeletal system with improved knowledge retention (F_(10,133) = 3.14, P < 0.001), increased time on task (F_(1,275) = 5.70, P < 0.01), and a high level of engagement (F_(9,273) = 8.28, P < 0.0001). The proposed REFLECT system will be of benefit as a complementary anatomy learning tool for students.