Neighborhood storytelling networks,Internet connectedness,and civic participation after the Great East Japan Earthquake

This study examines how the neighborhood storytelling network, which is conceptualized in communication infrastructure theory and includes interpersonal, organizational and community media connectedness, and an individual's Internet connectedness affected participation in civic activities in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which occurred on 11 March 2011. Responses from 544 randomly selected people residing in Tokyo reveal that connectedness to a neighborhood storytelling network and one's Internet connectedness have positive effects on participation in civic activities in response to the earthquake. However, the two independent factors (neighborhood storytelling and Internet connectedness) do not exhibit a significant relationship with each other. The result suggests the existence of two different conduits for civic engagement in disaster situations – neighborhood storytelling networks and Internet connectedness – mainly distinguished by age.     

A test of com therapy in Japan

This study was conducted in Japan to test the ability of COM therapy (Motley, 1995) to reduce public speaking apprehension in a culture that seems particularly performance oriented. In general, participants delivered pretest speeches, responded to a battery of self‐report measures, were exposed to the appropriate treatment or not as called for by the experimental design. Respondents then delivered a posttest speech and completed the self‐report measures. Although systematic desensitization reduced apprehension as expected, COM therapy was not found to reduce public speaking apprehension in this study. The implications of this finding and others are discussed at the end of this report.     

Development of the Biology Card Sorting Task to Measure Conceptual Expertise in Biology

There are widespread aspirations to focus undergraduate biology education on teaching students to think conceptually like biologists; however, there is a dearth of assessment tools designed to measure progress from novice to expert biological conceptual thinking. We present the development of a novel assessment tool, the Biology Card Sorting Task, designed to probe how individuals organize their conceptual knowledge of biology. While modeled on tasks from cognitive psychology, this task is unique in its design to test two hypothesized conceptual frameworks for the organization of biological knowledge: 1) a surface feature organization focused on organism type and 2) a deep feature organization focused on fundamental biological concepts. In this initial investigation of the Biology Card Sorting Task, each of six analytical measures showed statistically significant differences when used to compare the card sorting results of putative biological experts (biology faculty) and novices (non–biology major undergraduates). Consistently, biology faculty appeared to sort based on hypothesized deep features, while non–biology majors appeared to sort based on either surface features or nonhypothesized organizational frameworks. Results suggest that this novel task is robust in distinguishing populations of biology experts and biology novices and may be an adaptable tool for tracking emerging biology conceptual expertise.