Context reinstatement and memory for intrinsic versus extrinsic context: the role of item generation at encoding or retrieval.

PubMed

Nieznański, Marek

2014-10-01

According to many theoretical accounts, reinstating study context at the time of test creates optimal circumstances for item retrieval. The role of context reinstatement was tested in reference to context memory in several experiments. On the encoding phase, participants were presented with words printed in two different font colors (intrinsic context) or two different sides of the computer screen (extrinsic context). At test, the context was reinstated or changed and participants were asked to recognize words and recollect their study context. Moreover, a read-generate manipulation was introduced at encoding and retrieval, which was intended to influence the relative salience of item and context information. The results showed that context reinstatement had no effect on memory for extrinsic context but affected memory for intrinsic context when the item was generated at encoding and read at test. These results supported the hypothesis that context information is reconstructed at retrieval only when context was poorly encoded at study. © 2014 Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Generation and context memory.

PubMed

Mulligan, Neil W; Lozito, Jeffrey P; Rosner, Zachary A

2006-07-01

Generation enhances memory for occurrence but may not enhance other aspects of memory. The present study further delineates the negative generation effect in context memory reported in N. W. Mulligan (2004). First, the negative generation effect occurred for perceptual attributes of the target item (its color and font) but not for extratarget aspects of context (location and background color). Second, nonvisual generation tasks with either semantic or nonsemantic generation rules (antonym and rhyme generation, respectively) produced the same pattern of results. In contrast, a visual (or data-driven) generation task (letter transposition) did not disrupt context memory for color. Third, generating nonwords produced no effect on item memory but persisted in producing a negative effect on context memory for target attributes, implying that (a) the negative generation effect in context memory is not mediated by semantic encoding, and (b) the negative effect on context memory can be dissociated from the positive effect on item memory. The results are interpreted in terms of the processing account of generation. The original, perceptual-conceptual version of this account is too narrow, but a modified processing account, based on a more generic visual versus nonvisual processing distinction, accommodates the results. Copyright 2006 APA, all rights reserved.

A Retrieved Context Account of Spacing and Repetition Effects in Free Recall

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Siegel, Lynn L.; Kahana, Michael J.

2014-01-01

Repeating an item in a list benefits recall performance, and this benefit increases when the repetitions are spaced apart (Madigan, 1969; Melton, 1970). Retrieved context theory incorporates 2 mechanisms that account for these effects: contextual variability and study-phase retrieval. Specifically, if an item presented at position "i" is…

Local context effects during emotional item directed forgetting in younger and older adults.

PubMed

Gallant, Sara N; Dyson, Benjamin J; Yang, Lixia

2017-09-01

This paper explored the differential sensitivity young and older adults exhibit to the local context of items entering memory. We examined trial-to-trial performance during an item directed forgetting task for positive, negative, and neutral (or baseline) words each cued as either to-be-remembered (TBR) or to-be-forgotten (TBF). This allowed us to focus on how variations in emotional valence (independent of arousal) and instruction (TBR vs. TBF) of the previous item (trial n-1) impacted memory for the current item (trial n) during encoding. Different from research showing impairing effects of emotional arousal, both age groups showed a memorial boost for stimuli when preceded by items high in positive or negative valence relative to those preceded by neutral items. This advantage was particularly prominent for neutral trial n items that followed emotional items suggesting that, regardless of age, neutral memories may be strengthened by a local context that is high in valence. A trending age difference also emerged with older adults showing greater sensitivity when encoding instructions changed between trial n-1 and n. Results are discussed in light of age-related theories of cognitive and emotional processing, highlighting the need to consider the dynamic, moment-to-moment fluctuations of these systems.

Intentional Forgetting Is Easier after Two "Shots" than One

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sahakyan, Lili; Delaney, Peter F.; Waldum, Emily R.

2008-01-01

Three experiments evaluated whether the magnitude of the list-method directed forgetting effect is strength dependent. Throughout these studies, items were strengthened via operations thought to increase context strength (spaced presentations) or manipulations thought to increment the item strength without affecting the context strength…

Force, velocity, and work: The effects of different contexts on students' understanding of vector concepts using isomorphic problems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barniol, Pablo; Zavala, Genaro

2014-12-01

In this article we compare students' understanding of vector concepts in problems with no physical context, and with three mechanics contexts: force, velocity, and work. Based on our "Test of Understanding of Vectors," a multiple-choice test presented elsewhere, we designed two isomorphic shorter versions of 12 items each: a test with no physical context, and a test with mechanics contexts. For this study, we administered the items twice to students who were finishing an introductory mechanics course at a large private university in Mexico. The first time, we administered the two 12-item tests to 608 students. In the second, we only tested the items for which we had found differences in students' performances that were difficult to explain, and in this case, we asked them to show their reasoning in written form. In the first administration, we detected no significant difference between the medians obtained in the tests; however, we did identify significant differences in some of the items. For each item we analyze the type of difference found between the tests in the selection of the correct answer, the most common error on each of the tests, and the differences in the selection of incorrect answers. We also investigate the causes of the different context effects. Based on these analyses, we establish specific recommendations for the instruction of vector concepts in an introductory mechanics course. In the Supplemental Material we include both tests for other researchers studying vector learning, and for physics teachers who teach this material.

Assessment of Genetics Understanding. Under What Conditions Do Situational Features Have an Impact on Measures?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schmiemann, Philipp; Nehm, Ross H.; Tornabene, Robyn E.

2017-12-01

Understanding how situational features of assessment tasks impact reasoning is important for many educational pursuits, notably the selection of curricular examples to illustrate phenomena, the design of formative and summative assessment items, and determination of whether instruction has fostered the development of abstract schemas divorced from particular instances. The goal of our study was to employ an experimental research design to quantify the degree to which situational features impact inferences about participants' understanding of Mendelian genetics. Two participant samples from different educational levels and cultural backgrounds (high school, n = 480; university, n = 444; Germany and USA) were used to test for context effects. A multi-matrix test design was employed, and item packets differing in situational features (e.g., plant, animal, human, fictitious) were randomly distributed to participants in the two samples. Rasch analyses of participant scores from both samples produced good item fit, person reliability, and item reliability and indicated that the university sample displayed stronger performance on the items compared to the high school sample. We found, surprisingly, that in both samples, no significant differences in performance occurred among the animal, plant, and human item contexts, or between the fictitious and "real" item contexts. In the university sample, we were also able to test for differences in performance between genders, among ethnic groups, and by prior biology coursework. None of these factors had a meaningful impact upon performance or context effects. Thus some, but not all, types of genetics problem solving or item formats are impacted by situational features.

Effects of aging and divided attention on memory for items and their contexts.

PubMed

Craik, Fergus I M; Luo, Lin; Sakuta, Yuiko

2010-12-01

It is commonly found that memory for context declines disproportionately with aging, arguably due to a general age-related deficit in associative memory processes. One possible mechanism for such deficits is an age-related reduction in available processing resources. In two experiments we compared the effects of aging to the effects of division of attention in younger adults on memory for items and context. Using a technique proposed by Craik (1989), linear functions relating memory performance for items and their contexts were derived for a Young Full Attention group, a Young Divided Attention group, and an Older Adult group. Results suggested that the Old group showed an additional deficit in associative memory that was not mimicked by divided attention. It is speculated that both divided attention and aging are associated with a loss of available processing resources that may reflect inefficient frontal lobe functioning, whereas the additional age-related decrement in associative memory may reflect inefficient processing in medial-temporal regions. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

A Comparison between Element Salience versus Context as Item Difficulty Factors in Raven's Matrices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perez-Salas, Claudia P.; Streiner, David L.; Roberts, Maxwell J.

2012-01-01

The nature of contextual facilitation effects for items derived from Raven's Progressive Matrices was investigated in two experiments. For these, the original matrices were modified, creating either abstract versions with high element salience, or versions which comprised realistic entities set in familiar contexts. In order to replicate and…

Neural Differentiation of Incorrectly Predicted Memories.

PubMed

Kim, Ghootae; Norman, Kenneth A; Turk-Browne, Nicholas B

2017-02-22

When an item is predicted in a particular context but the prediction is violated, memory for that item is weakened (Kim et al., 2014). Here, we explore what happens when such previously mispredicted items are later reencountered. According to prior neural network simulations, this sequence of events-misprediction and subsequent restudy-should lead to differentiation of the item's neural representation from the previous context (on which the misprediction was based). Specifically, misprediction weakens connections in the representation to features shared with the previous context and restudy allows new features to be incorporated into the representation that are not shared with the previous context. This cycle of misprediction and restudy should have the net effect of moving the item's neural representation away from the neural representation of the previous context. We tested this hypothesis using human fMRI by tracking changes in item-specific BOLD activity patterns in the hippocampus, a key structure for representing memories and generating predictions. In left CA2/3/DG, we found greater neural differentiation for items that were repeatedly mispredicted and restudied compared with items from a control condition that was identical except without misprediction. We also measured prediction strength in a trial-by-trial fashion and found that greater misprediction for an item led to more differentiation, further supporting our hypothesis. Therefore, the consequences of prediction error go beyond memory weakening. If the mispredicted item is restudied, the brain adaptively differentiates its memory representation to improve the accuracy of subsequent predictions and to shield it from further weakening. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Competition between overlapping memories leads to weakening of nontarget memories over time, making it easier to access target memories. However, a nontarget memory in one context might become a target memory in another context. How do such memories get restrengthened without increasing competition again? Computational models suggest that the brain handles this by reducing neural connections to the previous context and adding connections to new features that were not part of the previous context. The result is neural differentiation away from the previous context. Here, we provide support for this theory, using fMRI to track neural representations of individual memories in the hippocampus and how they change based on learning. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/372022-10$15.00/0.

Dissociable effects of surprising rewards on learning and memory.

PubMed

Rouhani, Nina; Norman, Kenneth A; Niv, Yael

2018-03-19

Reward-prediction errors track the extent to which rewards deviate from expectations, and aid in learning. How do such errors in prediction interact with memory for the rewarding episode? Existing findings point to both cooperative and competitive interactions between learning and memory mechanisms. Here, we investigated whether learning about rewards in a high-risk context, with frequent, large prediction errors, would give rise to higher fidelity memory traces for rewarding events than learning in a low-risk context. Experiment 1 showed that recognition was better for items associated with larger absolute prediction errors during reward learning. Larger prediction errors also led to higher rates of learning about rewards. Interestingly we did not find a relationship between learning rate for reward and recognition-memory accuracy for items, suggesting that these two effects of prediction errors were caused by separate underlying mechanisms. In Experiment 2, we replicated these results with a longer task that posed stronger memory demands and allowed for more learning. We also showed improved source and sequence memory for items within the high-risk context. In Experiment 3, we controlled for the difficulty of reward learning in the risk environments, again replicating the previous results. Moreover, this control revealed that the high-risk context enhanced item-recognition memory beyond the effect of prediction errors. In summary, our results show that prediction errors boost both episodic item memory and incremental reward learning, but the two effects are likely mediated by distinct underlying systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Confirming Testlet Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DeMars, Christine E.

2012-01-01

A testlet is a cluster of items that share a common passage, scenario, or other context. These items might measure something in common beyond the trait measured by the test as a whole; if so, the model for the item responses should allow for this testlet trait. But modeling testlet effects that are negligible makes the model unnecessarily…

The special role of item-context associations in the direct-access region of working memory.

PubMed

Campoy, Guillermo

2017-09-01

The three-embedded-component model of working memory (WM) distinguishes three representational states corresponding to three WM regions: activated long-term memory, direct-access region (DAR), and focus of attention. Recent neuroimaging research has revealed that access to the DAR is associated with enhanced hippocampal activity. Because the hippocampus mediates the encoding and retrieval of item-context associations, it has been suggested that this hippocampal activation is a consequence of the fact that item-context associations are particularly strong and accessible in the DAR. This study provides behavioral evidence for this view using an item-recognition task to assess the effect of non-intentional encoding and maintenance of item-location associations across WM regions. Five pictures of human faces were sequentially presented in different screen locations followed by a recognition probe. Visual cues immediately preceding the probe indicated the location thereof. When probe stimuli appeared in the same location that they had been presented within the memory set, the presentation of the cue was expected to elicit the activation of the corresponding WM representation through the just-established item-location association, resulting in faster recognition. Results showed this same-location effect, but only for items that, according to their serial position within the memory set, were held in the DAR.

Aging, culture, and memory for socially meaningful item-context associations: an East-West cross-cultural comparison study.

PubMed

Yang, Lixia; Li, Juan; Spaniol, Julia; Hasher, Lynn; Wilkinson, Andrea J; Yu, Jing; Niu, Yanan

2013-01-01

Research suggests that people in Eastern interdependent cultures process information more holistically and attend more to contextual information than do people in Western independent cultures. The current study examined the effects of culture and age on memory for socially meaningful item-context associations in 71 Canadians of Western European descent (35 young and 36 older) and 72 native Chinese citizens (36 young and 36 older). All participants completed two blocks of context memory tasks. During encoding, participants rated pictures of familiar objects. In one block, objects were rated either for their meaningfulness in the independent living context or their typicality in daily life. In the other block, objects were rated for their meaningfulness in the context of fostering relationships with others or for their typicality in daily life. The encoding in each block was followed by a recognition test in which participants identified pictures and their associated contexts. The results showed that Chinese outperformed Canadians in context memory, though both culture groups showed similar age-related deficits in item and context memory. The results suggest that Chinese are at an advantage in memory for socially meaningful item-context associations, an advantage that continues from young adulthood into old age.

Aging, Culture, and Memory for Socially Meaningful Item-Context Associations: An East-West Cross-Cultural Comparison Study

PubMed Central

Yang, Lixia; Li, Juan; Spaniol, Julia; Hasher, Lynn; Wilkinson, Andrea J.; Yu, Jing; Niu, Yanan

2013-01-01

Research suggests that people in Eastern interdependent cultures process information more holistically and attend more to contextual information than do people in Western independent cultures. The current study examined the effects of culture and age on memory for socially meaningful item-context associations in 71 Canadians of Western European descent (35 young and 36 older) and 72 native Chinese citizens (36 young and 36 older). All participants completed two blocks of context memory tasks. During encoding, participants rated pictures of familiar objects. In one block, objects were rated either for their meaningfulness in the independent living context or their typicality in daily life. In the other block, objects were rated for their meaningfulness in the context of fostering relationships with others or for their typicality in daily life. The encoding in each block was followed by a recognition test in which participants identified pictures and their associated contexts. The results showed that Chinese outperformed Canadians in context memory, though both culture groups showed similar age-related deficits in item and context memory. The results suggest that Chinese are at an advantage in memory for socially meaningful item-context associations, an advantage that continues from young adulthood into old age. PMID:23593288

Medial Temporal Lobe Contributions to Cued Retrieval of Items and Contexts

PubMed Central

Hannula, Deborah E.; Libby, Laura A.; Yonelinas, Andrew P.; Ranganath, Charan

2013-01-01

Several models have proposed that different regions of the medial temporal lobes contribute to different aspects of episodic memory. For instance, according to one view, the perirhinal cortex represents specific items, parahippocampal cortex represents information regarding the context in which these items were encountered, and the hippocampus represents item-context bindings. Here, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test a specific prediction of this model – namely, that successful retrieval of items from context cues will elicit perirhinal recruitment and that successful retrieval of contexts from item cues will elicit parahippocampal cortex recruitment. Retrieval of the bound representation in either case was expected to elicit hippocampal engagement. To test these predictions, we had participants study several item-context pairs (i.e., pictures of objects and scenes, respectively), and then had them attempt to recall items from associated context cues and contexts from associated item cues during a scanned retrieval session. Results based on both univariate and multivariate analyses confirmed a role for hippocampus in content-general relational memory retrieval, and a role for parahippocampal cortex in successful retrieval of contexts from item cues. However, we also found that activity differences in perirhinal cortex were correlated with successful cued recall for both items and contexts. These findings provide partial support for the above predictions and are discussed with respect to several models of medial temporal lobe function. PMID:23466350

A Positive Generation Effect on Memory for Auditory Context

PubMed Central

Overman, Amy A.; Richard, Alison G.; Stephens, Joseph D. W.

2016-01-01

Self-generation of information during memory encoding has large positive effects on subsequent memory for items, but mixed effects on memory for contextual information associated with items. A processing account of generation effects on context memory (Mulligan, 2004; Mulligan, Lozito, & Rosner, 2006) proposes that these effects depend on whether the generation task causes any shift in processing of the type of context features for which memory is being tested. Mulligan and colleagues have used this account to predict various negative effects of generation on context memory, but the account also predicts positive generation effects under certain circumstances. The present experiment provided a critical test of the processing account by examining how generation affected memory for auditory rather than visual context. Based on the processing account, we predicted that generation of rhyme words should enhance processing of auditory information associated with the words (i.e., voice gender) whereas generation of antonym words should have no effect. These predictions were confirmed, providing support to the processing account. PMID:27696145

Executive Resources and Item-Context Binding: Exploring the Influence of Concurrent Inhibition, Updating, and Shifting Tasks on Context Memory

PubMed Central

Nieznański, Marek; Obidziński, Michał; Zyskowska, Emilia; Niedziałkowska, Daria

2015-01-01

Previous research has demonstrated that context memory performance decreases as a result of cognitive load. However, the role of specific executive resources availability has not been specified yet. In a dual-task experiment, participants performed three kinds of concurrent task engaging: inhibition, updating, or shifting operations. In comparison with a no-load single-task condition, a significant decrease in item and context memory was observed, regardless of the kind of executive task. When executive load conditions were compared with non-specific cognitive load conditions, a significant interference effect was observed in the case of the inhibition task. The inhibition process appears to be an aspect of executive control, which relies on the same resource as item-context binding does, especially when binding refers to associations retrieved from long-term memory. PMID:26435761

A grand memory for forgetting: Directed forgetting across contextual changes.

PubMed

Taylor, Tracy L; Hamm, Jeff P

2018-05-29

Using an item-method directed forgetting task, we presented homographic homophonic nouns embedded in sentences. At study, each sentence was followed by an instruction to remember or forget the embedded word. On a subsequent yes-no recognition test, each word was again embedded within a sentence. In Experiments 1, 2, and 4 we varied the embedding sentence at test so that it was identical to that at study, changed but retained the meaning of the studied word, or changed to alter the meaning of the studied word. Repeated context - whether the sentence and/or the word meaning - proved to be as useful a retrieval cue for TBF items as for TBR items. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that physical repetition was insufficient to produce context effects for either TBR or TBF items. And, in Experiment 4, we determined that participants were equally accurate in reporting context repetition/change following the correct recognition of TBR and TBF items. When considered in light of the existing literature, our results suggest that when context can be dissociated from the study item, it is encoded in "one shot" and not vulnerable to subsequent efforts to limit unwanted encoding. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Mixed-Format Test Score Equating: Effect of Item-Type Multidimensionality, Length and Composition of Common-Item Set, and Group Ability Difference

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Wei

2013-01-01

Mixed-format tests containing both multiple-choice (MC) items and constructed-response (CR) items are now widely used in many testing programs. Mixed-format tests often are considered to be superior to tests containing only MC items although the use of multiple item formats leads to measurement challenges in the context of equating conducted under…

Effects of bilateral eye movements on the retrieval of item, associative, and contextual information.

PubMed

Parker, Andrew; Relph, Sarah; Dagnall, Neil

2008-01-01

Two experiments are reported that investigate the effects of saccadic bilateral eye movements on the retrieval of item, associative, and contextual information. Experiment 1 compared the effects of bilateral versus vertical versus no eye movements on tests of item recognition, followed by remember-know responses and associative recognition. Supporting previous research, bilateral eye movements enhanced item recognition by increasing the hit rate and decreasing the false alarm rate. Analysis of remember-know responses indicated that eye movement effects were accompanied by increases in remember responses. The test of associative recognition found that bilateral eye movements increased correct responses to intact pairs and decreased false alarms to rearranged pairs. Experiment 2 assessed the effects of eye movements on the recall of intrinsic (color) and extrinsic (spatial location) context. Bilateral eye movements increased correct recall for both types of context. The results are discussed within the framework of dual-process models of memory and the possible neural underpinnings of these effects are considered.

Medial temporal lobe contributions to cued retrieval of items and contexts.

PubMed

Hannula, Deborah E; Libby, Laura A; Yonelinas, Andrew P; Ranganath, Charan

2013-10-01

Several models have proposed that different regions of the medial temporal lobes contribute to different aspects of episodic memory. For instance, according to one view, the perirhinal cortex represents specific items, parahippocampal cortex represents information regarding the context in which these items were encountered, and the hippocampus represents item-context bindings. Here, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test a specific prediction of this model-namely, that successful retrieval of items from context cues will elicit perirhinal recruitment and that successful retrieval of contexts from item cues will elicit parahippocampal cortex recruitment. Retrieval of the bound representation in either case was expected to elicit hippocampal engagement. To test these predictions, we had participants study several item-context pairs (i.e., pictures of objects and scenes, respectively), and then had them attempt to recall items from associated context cues and contexts from associated item cues during a scanned retrieval session. Results based on both univariate and multivariate analyses confirmed a role for hippocampus in content-general relational memory retrieval, and a role for parahippocampal cortex in successful retrieval of contexts from item cues. However, we also found that activity differences in perirhinal cortex were correlated with successful cued recall for both items and contexts. These findings provide partial support for the above predictions and are discussed with respect to several models of medial temporal lobe function. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sources of interference in item and associative recognition memory.

PubMed

Osth, Adam F; Dennis, Simon

2015-04-01

A powerful theoretical framework for exploring recognition memory is the global matching framework, in which a cue's memory strength reflects the similarity of the retrieval cues being matched against the contents of memory simultaneously. Contributions at retrieval can be categorized as matches and mismatches to the item and context cues, including the self match (match on item and context), item noise (match on context, mismatch on item), context noise (match on item, mismatch on context), and background noise (mismatch on item and context). We present a model that directly parameterizes the matches and mismatches to the item and context cues, which enables estimation of the magnitude of each interference contribution (item noise, context noise, and background noise). The model was fit within a hierarchical Bayesian framework to 10 recognition memory datasets that use manipulations of strength, list length, list strength, word frequency, study-test delay, and stimulus class in item and associative recognition. Estimates of the model parameters revealed at most a small contribution of item noise that varies by stimulus class, with virtually no item noise for single words and scenes. Despite the unpopularity of background noise in recognition memory models, background noise estimates dominated at retrieval across nearly all stimulus classes with the exception of high frequency words, which exhibited equivalent levels of context noise and background noise. These parameter estimates suggest that the majority of interference in recognition memory stems from experiences acquired before the learning episode. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Converging Evidence for Control of Color-Word Stroop Interference at the Item Level

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bugg, Julie M.; Hutchison, Keith A.

2013-01-01

Prior studies have shown that cognitive control is implemented at the list and context levels in the color-word Stroop task. At first blush, the finding that Stroop interference is reduced for mostly incongruent items as compared with mostly congruent items (i.e., the item-specific proportion congruence [ISPC] effect) appears to provide evidence…

Effect of study context on item recollection.

PubMed

Skinner, Erin I; Fernandes, Myra A

2010-07-01

We examined how visual context information provided during encoding, and unrelated to the target word, affected later recollection for words presented alone using a remember-know paradigm. Experiments 1A and 1B showed that participants had better overall memory-specifically, recollection-for words studied with pictures of intact faces than for words studied with pictures of scrambled or inverted faces. Experiment 2 replicated these results and showed that recollection was higher for words studied with pictures of faces than when no image accompanied the study word. In Experiment 3 participants showed equivalent memory for words studied with unique faces as for those studied with a repeatedly presented face. Results suggest that recollection benefits when visual context information high in meaningful content accompanies study words and that this benefit is not related to the uniqueness of the context. We suggest that participants use elaborative processes to integrate item and meaningful contexts into ensemble information, improving subsequent item recollection.

The effect of semantic context on prospective memory performance.

PubMed

Thomas, Brandon J; McBride, Dawn M

2016-01-01

The current study provides evidence for spontaneous processing in prospective memory (PM) or memory for intentions. Discrepancy-plus-search is the spontaneous processing of PM cues via disruptions in processing fluency of ongoing task items. We tested whether this mechanism can be demonstrated in an ongoing rating task with a dominant semantic context. Ongoing task items were manipulated such that the PM cues were members of a semantic category (i.e., Body Parts) that was congruent or discrepant with the dominant semantic category in the ongoing task. Results showed that participants correctly responded to more PM cues when there was a category discrepancy between the PM cues and ongoing task items. Moreover, participants' identification of PM cues was accompanied by faster ongoing task reaction times when PM cues were discrepant with ongoing task items than when they were congruent. These results suggest that a discrepancy-plus-search process supports PM retrieval in certain contexts, and that some discrepancy-plus-search mechanisms may result from the violation of processing expectations within a semantic context.

Some effects of noncontingent positive reinforcement on multiply controlled problem behavior and compliance in a demand context.

PubMed

Ingvarsson, Einar T; Kahng, Sungwoo; Hausman, Nicole L

2008-01-01

Functional analysis suggested that the problem behavior of an 8-year-old girl with autism was maintained by escape from demands and access to edible items. Noncontingent delivery of an edible item was sufficient to increase compliance and reduce the rate of problem behavior without the use of escape extinction in a demand context. Leaner and richer schedules of noncontingent reinforcement were equally effective, and there were minimal differences between noncontingent reinforcement and differential reinforcement of compliance.

Learning What to Learn: The Effects of Task Experience on Strategy Shifts in the Allocation of Study Time

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ariel, Robert

2013-01-01

Learners typically allocate more resources to learning items that are higher in value than they do to items lower in value. For instance, when items vary in point value for learning, participants allocate more study time to the higher point items than they do to the lower point items. The current experiments extend this research to a context where…

Context-dependent control of attention capture: Evidence from proportion congruent effects.

PubMed

Crump, Matthew J C; Milliken, Bruce; Leboe-McGowan, Jason; Leboe-McGowan, Launa; Gao, Xiaoqing

2018-06-01

There are several independent demonstrations that attentional phenomena can be controlled in a context-dependent manner by cues associated with differing attentional control demands. The present set of experiments provide converging evidence that attention-capture phenomena can be modulated in a context-dependent fashion. We determined whether methods from the proportion congruent literature (listwide and item- and context-specific proportion congruent designs) that are known to modulate distractor interference effects in Stroop and flanker tasks are capable of modulating attention capture by salient feature singletons. Across experiments we found evidence that attention capture can be modulated by listwide, item-specific, and context-specific manipulations of proportion congruent. We discuss challenges associated with interpreting results from proportion congruent studies but propose that our findings converge with existing work that has demonstrated context-dependent control of attention capture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The neurocognitive basis of borrowed context information.

PubMed

O'Neill, Meagan; Diana, Rachel A

2017-06-01

Falsely remembered items can be accompanied by episodic context retrieval. This finding is difficult to explain because there is no episode that binds the remembered item to the experimenter-controlled context features. The current study examines the neural correlates of false context retrieval when the context features can be traced to encoding episodes of semantically-similar items. Our neuroimaging results support a "dissociated source" mechanism for context borrowing in false memory. We found that parahippocampal cortex (PHc) activation, thought to indicate context retrieval, was greater during trials that involved context borrowing (an incorrect, but plausible source decision) than during baseline correct context retrieval. In contrast, hippocampal activation, thought to indicate retrieval of an episodic binding, was stronger during correct source retrieval than during context borrowing. Vivid context retrieval during false recollection experiences was also indicated by increased activation in visual perceptual regions for context borrowing as compared to other incorrect source judgments. The pattern of findings suggests that context borrowing can arise when unusually strong activation of a semantically-related item's contextual features drives relatively weak retrieval of the associated episodic binding with failure to confirm the item information within that binding. This dissociated source retrieval mechanism suggests that context-driven episodic retrieval does not necessarily lead to retrieval of specific item details. That is, source information can be retrieved in the absence of item memory. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language Context Effects on Interlingual Homograph Recognition: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials and Response Times in Semantic Priming.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

de Bruijn, Ellen R. A.; Dijkstra, Ton; Chwilla, Dorothee J.; Schriefers, Herbert J.

2001-01-01

Dutch-English bilinguals performed a generalized lexical decision task on triplets of items, responding with "yes" if all items wee correct Dutch and/or English words, and with "no" if one or ore of the items was not a word in wither language. Semantic priming effects were found in on-line response times. Event-related…

Context-Dependent Repetition Effects on Recognition Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Opitz, Bertram

2010-01-01

One widely acknowledged way to improve our memory performance is to repeatedly study the to be learned material. One aspect that has received little attention in past research regards the context sensitivity of this repetition effect, that is whether the item is repeated within the same or within different contexts. The predictions of a…

Rats Remember Items in Context Using Episodic Memory.

PubMed

Panoz-Brown, Danielle; Corbin, Hannah E; Dalecki, Stefan J; Gentry, Meredith; Brotheridge, Sydney; Sluka, Christina M; Wu, Jie-En; Crystal, Jonathon D

2016-10-24

Vivid episodic memories in people have been characterized as the replay of unique events in sequential order [1-3]. Animal models of episodic memory have successfully documented episodic memory of a single event (e.g., [4-8]). However, a fundamental feature of episodic memory in people is that it involves multiple events, and notably, episodic memory impairments in human diseases are not limited to a single event. Critically, it is not known whether animals remember many unique events using episodic memory. Here, we show that rats remember many unique events and the contexts in which the events occurred using episodic memory. We used an olfactory memory assessment in which new (but not old) odors were rewarded using 32 items. Rats were presented with 16 odors in one context and the same odors in a second context. To attain high accuracy, the rats needed to remember item in context because each odor was rewarded as a new item in each context. The demands on item-in-context memory were varied by assessing memory with 2, 3, 5, or 15 unpredictable transitions between contexts, and item-in-context memory survived a 45 min retention interval challenge. When the memory of item in context was put in conflict with non-episodic familiarity cues, rats relied on item in context using episodic memory. Our findings suggest that rats remember multiple unique events and the contexts in which these events occurred using episodic memory and support the view that rats may be used to model fundamental aspects of human cognition. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Object representations in visual working memory change according to the task context.

PubMed

Balaban, Halely; Luria, Roy

2016-08-01

This study investigated whether an item's representation in visual working memory (VWM) can be updated according to changes in the global task context. We used a modified change detection paradigm, in which the items moved before the retention interval. In all of the experiments, we presented identical color-color conjunction items that were arranged to provide a common fate Gestalt grouping cue during their movement. Task context was manipulated by adding a condition highlighting either the integrated interpretation of the conjunction items or their individuated interpretation. We monitored the contralateral delay activity (CDA) as an online marker of VWM. Experiment 1 employed only a minimal global context; the conjunction items were integrated during their movement, but then were partially individuated, at a late stage of the retention interval. The same conjunction items were perfectly integrated in an integration context (Experiment 2). An individuation context successfully produced strong individuation, already during the movement, overriding Gestalt grouping cues (Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, a short priming of the individuation context managed to individuate the conjunction items immediately after the Gestalt cue was no longer available. Thus, the representations of identical items changed according to the task context, suggesting that VWM interprets incoming input according to global factors which can override perceptual cues. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A buffer model of memory encoding and temporal correlations in retrieval.

PubMed

Lehman, Melissa; Malmberg, Kenneth J

2013-01-01

Atkinson and Shiffrin's (1968) dual-store model of memory includes structural aspects of memory along with control processes. The rehearsal buffer is a process by which items are kept in mind and long-term episodic traces are formed. The model has been both influential and controversial. Here, we describe a novel variant of Atkinson and Shiffrin's buffer model within the framework of the retrieving effectively from memory theory (REM; Shiffrin & Steyvers, 1997) that accounts for findings previously thought to be difficult for such models to explain. This model assumes a limited-capacity buffer where information is stored about items, along with information about associations between items and between items and the context in which they are studied. The strength of association between items and context is limited by the number of items simultaneously occupying the buffer (Lehman & Malmberg, 2009). The contents of the buffer are managed by complementary processes of rehearsal and compartmentalization (Lehman & Malmberg, 2011). New findings that directly test a priori predictions of the model are reported, including serial position effects and conditional and first recall probabilities in immediate and delayed free recall, in a continuous distractor paradigm, and in experiments using list-length manipulations of single-item and paired-item study lists.

Associative memory in aging: the effect of unitization on source memory.

PubMed

Bastin, Christine; Diana, Rachel A; Simon, Jessica; Collette, Fabienne; Yonelinas, Andrew P; Salmon, Eric

2013-03-01

In normal aging, memory for associations declines more than memory for individual items. Unitization is an encoding process defined by creation of a new single entity to represent a new arbitrary association. The current study tested the hypothesis that age-related differences in associative memory can be reduced by encoding instructions that promote unitization. In two experiments, groups of 20 young and 20 older participants learned new associations between a word and a background color under two conditions. In the item detail condition, they had to imagine that the item is the same color as the background-an instruction promoting unitization of the associations. In the context detail condition, which did not promote unitization, they had to imagine that the item interacted with another colored object. At test, they had to retrieve the color that was associated with each word (source memory). In both experiments, the results showed an age-related decrement in source memory performance in the context detail but not in the item detail condition. Moreover, Experiment 2 examined receiver operating characteristics in older participants and indicated that familiarity contributed more to source memory performance in the item detail than in the context detail condition. These findings suggest that unitization of new associations can overcome the associative memory deficit observed in aging, at least for item-color associations.

A Positive Generation Effect on Memory for Auditory Context.

PubMed

Overman, Amy A; Richard, Alison G; Stephens, Joseph D W

2017-06-01

Self-generation of information during memory encoding has large positive effects on subsequent memory for items, but mixed effects on memory for contextual information associated with items. A processing account of generation effects on context memory (Mulligan in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30(4), 838-855, 2004; Mulligan, Lozito, & Rosner in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(4), 836-846, 2006) proposes that these effects depend on whether the generation task causes any shift in processing of the type of context features for which memory is being tested. Mulligan and colleagues have used this account to predict various negative effects of generation on context memory, but the account also predicts positive generation effects under certain circumstances. The present experiment provided a critical test of the processing account by examining how generation affected memory for auditory rather than visual context. Based on the processing account, we predicted that generation of rhyme words should enhance processing of auditory information associated with the words (i.e., voice gender), whereas generation of antonym words should have no effect. These predictions were confirmed, providing support to the processing account.

Sensitivity of Equated Aggregate Scores to the Treatment of Misbehaving Common Items

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Michaelides, Michalis P.

2010-01-01

The delta-plot method (Angoff, 1972) is a graphical technique used in the context of test equating for identifying common items with aberrant changes in their item difficulties across administrations or alternate forms. This brief research report explores the effects on equated aggregate scores when delta-plot outliers are either retained in or…

When a Stone Tries to Climb up a Slope: The Interplay between Lexical and Perceptual Animacy in Referential Choices

PubMed Central

Vogels, Jorrig; Krahmer, Emiel; Maes, Alfons

2013-01-01

Several studies suggest that referential choices are influenced by animacy. On the one hand, animate referents are more likely to be mentioned as subjects than inanimate referents. On the other hand, animate referents are more frequently pronominalized than inanimate referents. These effects have been analyzed as effects of conceptual accessibility. In this paper, we raise the question whether these effects are driven only by lexical concepts, such that referents described by animate lexical items (e.g., “toddler”) are more accessible than referents described by inanimate lexical items (e.g., “shoe”), or can also be influenced by context-derived conceptualizations, such that referents that are perceived as animate in a particular context are more accessible than referents that are not. In two animation-retelling experiments, conducted in Dutch, we investigated the influence of lexical and perceptual animacy on the choice of referent and the choice of referring expression. If the effects of animacy are context-dependent, entities that are perceived as animate should yield more subject references and more pronouns than entities that are perceived as inanimate, irrespective of their lexical animacy. If the effects are tied to lexical concepts, entities described with animate lexical items should be mentioned as the subject and pronominalized more frequently than entities described with inanimate lexical items, irrespective of their perceptual animacy. The results show that while only lexical animacy appears to affect the choice of subject referent, perceptual animacy may overrule lexical animacy in the choice of referring expression. These findings suggest that referential choices can be influenced by conceptualizations based on the perceptual context. PMID:23554600

The medial temporal lobes distinguish between within-item and item-context relations during autobiographical memory retrieval.

PubMed

Sheldon, Signy; Levine, Brian

2015-12-01

During autobiographical memory retrieval, the medial temporal lobes (MTL) relate together multiple event elements, including object (within-item relations) and context (item-context relations) information, to create a cohesive memory. There is consistent support for a functional specialization within the MTL according to these relational processes, much of which comes from recognition memory experiments. In this study, we compared brain activation patterns associated with retrieving within-item relations (i.e., associating conceptual and sensory-perceptual object features) and item-context relations (i.e., spatial relations among objects) with respect to naturalistic autobiographical retrieval. We developed a novel paradigm that cued participants to retrieve information about past autobiographical events, non-episodic within-item relations, and non-episodic item-context relations with the perceptuomotor aspects of retrieval equated across these conditions. We used multivariate analysis techniques to extract common and distinct patterns of activity among these conditions within the MTL and across the whole brain, both in terms of spatial and temporal patterns of activity. The anterior MTL (perirhinal cortex and anterior hippocampus) was preferentially recruited for generating within-item relations later in retrieval whereas the posterior MTL (posterior parahippocampal cortex and posterior hippocampus) was preferentially recruited for generating item-context relations across the retrieval phase. These findings provide novel evidence for functional specialization within the MTL with respect to naturalistic memory retrieval. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A causal contiguity effect that persists across time scales.

PubMed

Kiliç, Asli; Criss, Amy H; Howard, Marc W

2013-01-01

The contiguity effect refers to the tendency to recall an item from nearby study positions of the just recalled item. Causal models of contiguity suggest that recalled items are used as probes, causing a change in the memory state for subsequent recall attempts. Noncausal models of the contiguity effect assume the memory state is unaffected by recall per se, relying instead on the correlation between the memory states at study and at test to drive contiguity. We examined the contiguity effect in a probed recall task in which the correlation between the study context and the test context was disrupted. After study of several lists of words, participants were given probe words in a random order and were instructed to recall a word from the same list as the probe. The results showed both short-term and long-term contiguity effects. Because study order and test order are uncorrelated, these contiguity effects require a causal contiguity mechanism that operates across time scales.

A Primer on the 2- and 3-Parameter Item Response Theory Models.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thornton, Artist

Item response theory (IRT) is a useful and effective tool for item response measurement if used in the proper context. This paper discusses the sets of assumptions under which responses can be modeled while exploring the framework of the IRT models relative to response testing. The one parameter model, or one parameter logistic model, is perhaps…

The Instructional Effects of Matching or Mismatching Lesson and Posttest Screen Color

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clariana, Roy B.

2004-01-01

This investigation considers the instructional effects of color as an over-arching context variable when learning from computer displays. The purpose of this investigation is to examine the posttest retrieval effects of color as a local, extra-item non-verbal lesson context variable for constructed-response versus multiple-choice posttest…

Generation and Context Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mulligan, Neil W.; Lozito, Jeffrey P.; Rosner, Zachary A.

2006-01-01

Generation enhances memory for occurrence but may not enhance other aspects of memory. The present study further delineates the negative generation effect in context memory reported in N. W. Mulligan (2004). First, the negative generation effect occurred for perceptual attributes of the target item (its color and font) but not for extratarget…

Influence of Context on Item Parameters in Forced-Choice Personality Assessments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Yin; Brown, Anna

2017-01-01

A fundamental assumption in computerized adaptive testing is that item parameters are invariant with respect to context--items surrounding the administered item. This assumption, however, may not hold in forced-choice (FC) assessments, where explicit comparisons are made between items included in the same block. We empirically examined the…

The two faces of selective memory retrieval: recall specificity of the detrimental but not the beneficial effect.

PubMed

Bäuml, Karl-Heinz T; Dobler, Ina M

2015-01-01

Depending on the degree to which the original study context is accessible, selective memory retrieval can be detrimental or beneficial for the recall of other memories (Bäuml & Samenieh, 2012). Prior work has shown that the detrimental effect of memory retrieval is typically recall specific and does not arise after restudy trials, whereas recall specificity of the beneficial effect has not been examined to date. Addressing the issue, we compared in 2 experiments the effects of retrieval and restudy on recall of other items, when access to the study context was (largely) maintained and when access to the study context was impaired (in Experiment 1 by using the listwise directed-forgetting task, in Experiment 2 by using a prolonged retention interval). In both experiments, selective retrieval but not restudy induced forgetting of other items when context access was maintained, which replicates prior work. In contrast, when context access was impaired, both selective retrieval and restudy induced beneficial effects on other memories. These findings suggest that the detrimental but not the beneficial effect of selective memory retrieval is recall specific. The results are consistent with a recent 2-factor account of selective memory retrieval that attributes the detrimental effect to inhibition or blocking but the beneficial effect to context reactivation processes. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

The Relationship between Item Context Characteristics and Student Performance: The Case of the 2006 and 2009 PISA Science Items

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ruiz-Primo, Maria Araceli; Li, Min

2015-01-01

Background: A long-standing premise in test design is that contextualizing test items makes them concrete, less demanding, and more conducive to determining whether students can apply or transfer their knowledge. Purpose: We assert that despite decades of study and experience, much remains to be learned about how to construct effective and fair…

Neural Overlap in Item Representations Across Episodes Impairs Context Memory.

PubMed

Kim, Ghootae; Norman, Kenneth A; Turk-Browne, Nicholas B

2018-06-12

We frequently encounter the same item in different contexts, and when that happens, memories of earlier encounters can get reactivated. We examined how existing memories are changed as a result of such reactivation. We hypothesized that when an item's initial and subsequent neural representations overlap, this allows the initial item to become associated with novel contextual information, interfering with later retrieval of the initial context. Specifically, we predicted a negative relationship between representational similarity across repeated experiences of an item and subsequent source memory for the initial context. We tested this hypothesis in an fMRI study, in which objects were presented multiple times during different tasks. We measured the similarity of the neural patterns in lateral occipital cortex that were elicited by the first and second presentations of objects, and related this neural overlap score to subsequent source memory. Consistent with our hypothesis, greater item-specific pattern similarity was linked to worse source memory for the initial task. In contrast, greater reactivation of the initial context was associated with better source memory. Our findings suggest that the influence of novel experiences on an existing context memory depends on how reliably a shared component (i.e., item) is represented across these episodes.

High Reward Makes Items Easier to Remember, but Harder to Bind to a New Temporal Context

PubMed Central

Madan, Christopher R.; Fujiwara, Esther; Gerson, Bridgette C.; Caplan, Jeremy B.

2012-01-01

Learning through reward is central to adaptive behavior. Indeed, items are remembered better if they are experienced while participants expect a reward, and people can deliberately prioritize memory for high- over low-valued items. Do memory advantages for high-valued items only emerge after deliberate prioritization in encoding? Or, do reward-based memory enhancements also apply to unrewarded memory tests and to implicit memory? First, we tested for a high-value memory advantage in unrewarded implicit- and explicit-tests (Experiment 1). Participants first learned high or low-reward values of 36 words, followed by unrewarded lexical decision and free-recall tests. High-value words were judged faster in lexical decision, and more often recalled in free recall. These two memory advantages for high-value words were negatively correlated suggesting at least two mechanisms by which reward value can influence later item-memorability. The ease with which the values were originally acquired explained the negative correlation: people who learned values earlier showed reward effects in implicit memory whereas people who learned values later showed reward effects in explicit memory. We then asked whether a high-value advantage would persist if trained items were linked to a new context (Experiments 2a and 2b). Following the same value training as in Experiment 1, participants learned lists composed of previously trained words mixed with new words, each followed by free recall. Thus, participants had to retrieve words only from the most recent list, irrespective of their values. High- and low-value words were recalled equally, but low-value words were recalled earlier than high-value words and high-value words were more often intruded (proactive interference). Thus, the high-value advantage holds for implicit- and explicit-memory, but comes with a side effect: High-value items are more difficult to relearn in a new context. Similar to emotional arousal, reward value can both enhance and impair memory. PMID:22969711

Oscillatory patterns in temporal lobe reveal context reinstatement during memory search.

PubMed

Manning, Jeremy R; Polyn, Sean M; Baltuch, Gordon H; Litt, Brian; Kahana, Michael J

2011-08-02

Psychological theories of memory posit that when people recall a past event, they not only recover the features of the event itself, but also recover information associated with other events that occurred nearby in time. The events surrounding a target event, and the thoughts they evoke, may be considered to represent a context for the target event, helping to distinguish that event from similar events experienced at different times. The ability to reinstate this contextual information during memory search has been considered a hallmark of episodic, or event-based, memory. We sought to determine whether context reinstatement may be observed in electrical signals recorded from the human brain during episodic recall. Analyzing electrocorticographic recordings taken as 69 neurosurgical patients studied and recalled lists of words, we uncovered a neural signature of context reinstatement. Upon recalling a studied item, we found that the recorded patterns of brain activity were not only similar to the patterns observed when the item was studied, but were also similar to the patterns observed during study of neighboring list items, with similarity decreasing reliably with positional distance. The degree to which individual patients displayed this neural signature of context reinstatement was correlated with their tendency to recall neighboring list items successively. These effects were particularly strong in temporal lobe recordings. Our findings show that recalling a past event evokes a neural signature of the temporal context in which the event occurred, thus pointing to a neural basis for episodic memory.

The Effects of Word Frequency and Context Variability in Cued Recall

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Criss, Amy H.; Aue, William R.; Smith, Larissa

2011-01-01

Normative word frequency and context variability affect memory in a range of episodic memory tasks and place constraints on theoretical development. In four experiments, we independently manipulated the word frequency and context variability of the targets (to-be-generated items) and cues in a cued recall paradigm. We found that high frequency…

Effects of prenatal substance exposure on infant temperament vary by context.

PubMed

Locke, Robin L; Lagasse, Linda L; Seifer, Ronald; Lester, Barry M; Shankaran, Seetha; Bada, Henrietta S; Bauer, Charles R

2016-05-01

This was a prospective longitudinal multisite study of the effects of prenatal cocaine and/or opiate exposure on temperament in 4-month-olds of the Maternal Lifestyle Study (N = 958: 366 cocaine exposed, 37 opiate exposed, 33 exposed to both drugs, 522 matched comparison). The study evaluated positivity and negativity during The Behavior Assessment of Infant Temperament (Garcia Coll et al., 1988). Parents rated temperament (Infant Behavior Questionnaire; Rothbart, 1981). Cocaine-exposed infants showed less positivity overall, mainly during activity and threshold items, more negativity during sociability items, and less negativity during irritability and threshold items. Latent profile analysis indicated individual temperament patterns were best described by three groups: low/moderate overall reactivity, high social negative reactivity, and high nonsocial negative reactivity. Infants with heavy cocaine exposure were more likely in high social negative reactivity profile, were less negative during threshold items, and required longer soothing intervention. Cocaine- and opiate-exposed infants scored lower on Infant Behavior Questionnaire smiling and laughter and duration of orienting scales. Opiate-exposed infants were rated as less respondent to soothing. By including a multitask measure of temperament we were able to show context-specific behavioral dysregulation in prenatally cocaine-exposed infants. The findings indicate flatter temperament may be specific to nonsocial contexts, whereas social interactions may be more distressing for cocaine-exposed infants.

Generation and Memory for Contextual Detail

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mulligan, Neil W.

2004-01-01

Generation enhances item memory but may not enhance other aspects of memory. In 12 experiments, the author investigated the effect of generation on context memory, motivated in part by the hypothesis that generation produces a trade-off in encoding item and contextual information. Participants generated some study words (e.g., hot-___) and read…

Contextual Cueing Effect in Spatial Layout Defined by Binocular Disparity

PubMed Central

Zhao, Guang; Zhuang, Qian; Ma, Jie; Tu, Shen; Liu, Qiang; Sun, Hong-jin

2017-01-01

Repeated visual context induces higher search efficiency, revealing a contextual cueing effect, which depends on the association between the target and its visual context. In this study, participants performed a visual search task where search items were presented with depth information defined by binocular disparity. When the 3-dimensional (3D) configurations were repeated over blocks, the contextual cueing effect was obtained (Experiment 1). When depth information was in chaos over repeated configurations, visual search was not facilitated and the contextual cueing effect largely crippled (Experiment 2). However, when we made the search items within a tiny random displacement in the 2-dimentional (2D) plane but maintained the depth information constant, the contextual cueing was preserved (Experiment 3). We concluded that the contextual cueing effect was robust in the context provided by 3D space with stereoscopic information, and more importantly, the visual system prioritized stereoscopic information in learning of spatial information when depth information was available. PMID:28912739

Contextual Cueing Effect in Spatial Layout Defined by Binocular Disparity.

PubMed

Zhao, Guang; Zhuang, Qian; Ma, Jie; Tu, Shen; Liu, Qiang; Sun, Hong-Jin

2017-01-01

Repeated visual context induces higher search efficiency, revealing a contextual cueing effect, which depends on the association between the target and its visual context. In this study, participants performed a visual search task where search items were presented with depth information defined by binocular disparity. When the 3-dimensional (3D) configurations were repeated over blocks, the contextual cueing effect was obtained (Experiment 1). When depth information was in chaos over repeated configurations, visual search was not facilitated and the contextual cueing effect largely crippled (Experiment 2). However, when we made the search items within a tiny random displacement in the 2-dimentional (2D) plane but maintained the depth information constant, the contextual cueing was preserved (Experiment 3). We concluded that the contextual cueing effect was robust in the context provided by 3D space with stereoscopic information, and more importantly, the visual system prioritized stereoscopic information in learning of spatial information when depth information was available.

The effect of object processing in content-dependent source memory

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Previous studies have suggested that the study condition of an item influences how the item is encoded. However, it is still unclear whether subsequent source memory effects are dependent upon stimulus content when the item and context are unitized. The present fMRI study investigated the effect of encoding activity sensitive to stimulus content in source memory via unitization. In the scanner, participants were instructed to integrate a study item, an object in either a word or a picture form, with perceptual context into a single image. Results Subsequent source memory effects independent of stimulus content were identified in the left lateral frontal and parietal regions, bilateral fusiform areas, and the left perirhinal cortex extending to the anterior hippocampus. Content-dependent subsequent source memory effects were found only with words in the left medial frontal lobe, the ventral visual stream, and bilateral parahippocampal regions. Further, neural activity for source memory with words extensively overlapped with the region where pictures were preferentially processed than words, including the left mid-occipital cortex and the right parahippocampal cortex. Conclusions These results indicate that words that were accurately remembered with correct contextual information were processed more like pictures mediated by integrated imagery operation, compared to words that were recognized with incorrect context. In contrast, such processing did not discriminate subsequent source memory with pictures. Taken together, these findings suggest that unitization supports source memory for both words and pictures and that the requirement of the study task interacts with the nature of stimulus content in unitized source encoding. PMID:23848969

Second Language Research Forum Colloquia 2009: Colloquium--Measuring the Effectiveness of Focus on Form

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loewen, Shawn

2011-01-01

Focus on form, i.e. brief attention to language items within a larger meaning-focused context (Long 1991; Ellis 2001), occurs in a variety of L2 instructional contexts. Meta-analyses of the effectiveness of focus on form have found overall positive effects; however, these meta-analyses have commented on the small number of studies available for…

Modeling the dynamics of recognition memory testing with an integrated model of retrieval and decision making.

PubMed

Osth, Adam F; Jansson, Anna; Dennis, Simon; Heathcote, Andrew

2018-08-01

A robust finding in recognition memory is that performance declines monotonically across test trials. Despite the prevalence of this decline, there is a lack of consensus on the mechanism responsible. Three hypotheses have been put forward: (1) interference is caused by learning of test items (2) the test items cause a shift in the context representation used to cue memory and (3) participants change their speed-accuracy thresholds through the course of testing. We implemented all three possibilities in a combined model of recognition memory and decision making, which inherits the memory retrieval elements of the Osth and Dennis (2015) model and uses the diffusion decision model (DDM: Ratcliff, 1978) to generate choice and response times. We applied the model to four datasets that represent three challenges, the findings that: (1) the number of test items plays a larger role in determining performance than the number of studied items, (2) performance decreases less for strong items than weak items in pure lists but not in mixed lists, and (3) lexical decision trials interspersed between recognition test trials do not increase the rate at which performance declines. Analysis of the model's parameter estimates suggests that item interference plays a weak role in explaining the effects of recognition testing, while context drift plays a very large role. These results are consistent with prior work showing a weak role for item noise in recognition memory and that retrieval is a strong cause of context change in episodic memory. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Item and source memory for emotional associates is mediated by different retrieval processes.

PubMed

Ventura-Bort, Carlos; Dolcos, Florin; Wendt, Julia; Wirkner, Janine; Hamm, Alfons O; Weymar, Mathias

2017-12-12

Recent event-related potential (ERP) data showed that neutral objects encoded in emotional background pictures were better remembered than objects encoded in neutral contexts, when recognition memory was tested one week later. In the present study, we investigated whether this long-term memory advantage for items is also associated with correct memory for contextual source details. Furthermore, we were interested in the possibly dissociable contribution of familiarity and recollection processes (using a Remember/Know procedure). The results revealed that item memory performance was mainly driven by the subjective experience of familiarity, irrespective of whether the objects were previously encoded in emotional or neutral contexts. Correct source memory for the associated background picture, however, was driven by recollection and enhanced when the content was emotional. In ERPs, correctly recognized old objects evoked frontal ERP Old/New effects (300-500ms), irrespective of context category. As in our previous study (Ventura-Bort et al., 2016b), retrieval for objects from emotional contexts was associated with larger parietal Old/New differences (600-800ms), indicating stronger involvement of recollection. Thus, the results suggest a stronger contribution of recollection-based retrieval to item and contextual background source memory for neutral information associated with an emotional event. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Influence of Purchasing Context and Reversibility of Choice on Consumer Responses Toward Personalized Products and Standardized Products.

PubMed

Choi, Jieun; Lee, Doo-Hee; Taylor, Charles R

2016-04-01

Existing research on personalization has found that consumers generally prefer personalized products over standardized ones. This study argued that consumer preference for personalized products is dependent on purchasing context and reversibility of choice. Results of an experiment conducted in this study found that consumers preferred personalized products when purchasing an item for personal use but preferred standardized products when purchasing an item as a gift. However, the effects of purchasing context were negated when consumers were given the assurance that personalized products could be returned (reversibility of choice); when presented with reversibility of choice, consumers preferred personalized products over standardized products regardless of purchasing context. Theoretical and managerial implications of these results were discussed. © The Author(s) 2016.

Compound cuing in free recall.

PubMed

Lohnas, Lynn J; Kahana, Michael J

2014-01-01

According to the retrieved context theory of episodic memory, the cue for recall of an item is a weighted sum of recently activated cognitive states, including previously recalled and studied items as well as their associations. We show that this theory predicts there should be compound cuing in free recall. Specifically, the temporal contiguity effect should be greater when the 2 most recently recalled items were studied in contiguous list positions. A meta-analysis of published free recall experiments demonstrates evidence for compound cuing in both conditional response probabilities and interresponse times. To help rule out a rehearsal-based account of these compound cuing effects, we conducted an experiment with immediate, delayed, and continual-distractor free recall conditions. Consistent with retrieved context theory but not with a rehearsal-based account, compound cuing was present in all conditions, and was not significantly influenced by the presence of interitem distractors.

Compound cueing in free recall

PubMed Central

Lohnas, Lynn J.; Kahana, Michael J.

2013-01-01

According to the retrieved context theory of episodic memory, the cue for recall of an item is a weighted sum of recently activated cognitive states, including previously recalled and studied items as well as their associations. We show that this theory predicts there should be compound cueing in free recall. Specifically, the temporal contiguity effect should be greater when the two most recently recalled items were studied in contiguous list positions. A meta-analysis of published free recall experiments demonstrates evidence for compound cueing in both conditional response probabilities and inter-response times. To help rule out a rehearsal-based account of these compound cueing effects, we conducted an experiment with immediate, delayed and continual-distractor free recall conditions. Consistent with retrieved context theory but not with a rehearsal-based account, compound cueing was present in all conditions, and was not significantly influenced by the presence of interitem distractors. PMID:23957364

The attentional boost effect and context memory.

PubMed

Mulligan, Neil W; Smith, S Adam; Spataro, Pietro

2016-04-01

Stimuli co-occurring with targets in a detection task are better remembered than stimuli co-occurring with distractors-the attentional boost effect (ABE). The ABE is of interest because it is an exception to the usual finding that divided attention during encoding impairs memory. The effect has been demonstrated in tests of item memory but it is unclear if context memory is likewise affected. Some accounts suggest enhanced perceptual encoding or associative binding, predicting an ABE on context memory, whereas other evidence suggests a more abstract, amodal basis of the effect. In Experiment 1, context memory was assessed in terms of an intramodal perceptual detail, the font and color of the study word. Experiment 2 examined context memory cross-modally, assessing memory for the modality (visual or auditory) of the study word. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed context memory with list discrimination, in which 2 study lists are presented and participants must later remember which list (if either) a test word came from. In all experiments, item (recognition) memory was also assessed and consistently displayed a robust ABE. In contrast, the attentional-boost manipulation did not enhance context memory, whether defined in terms of visual details, study modality, or list membership. There was some evidence that the mode of responding on the detection task (motoric response as opposed to covert counting of targets) may impact context memory but there was no evidence of an effect of target detection, per se. In sum, the ABE did not occur in context memory with verbal materials. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

How to say no: single- and dual-process theories of short-term recognition tested on negative probes.

PubMed

Oberauer, Klaus

2008-05-01

Three experiments with short-term recognition tasks are reported. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants decided whether a probe matched a list item specified by its spatial location. Items presented at study in a different location (intrusion probes) had to be rejected. Serial position curves of positive, new, and intrusion probes over the probed location's position were mostly parallel. Serial position curves of intrusion probes over their position of origin were again parallel to those of positive probes. Experiment 3 showed largely parallel serial position effects for positive probes and for intrusion probes plotted over positions in a relevant and an irrelevant list, respectively. The results support a dual-process theory in which recognition is based on familiarity and recollection, and recollection uses 2 retrieval routes, from context to item and from item to context.

More to it than meets the eye: how eye movements can elucidate the development of episodic memory.

PubMed

Pathman, Thanujeni; Ghetti, Simona

2016-07-01

The ability to recognise past events along with the contexts in which they occurred is a hallmark of episodic memory, a critical capacity. Eye movements have been shown to track veridical memory for the associations between events and their contexts (relational binding). Such eye-movement effects emerge several seconds before, or in the absence of, explicit response, and are linked to the integrity and function of the hippocampus. Drawing from research from infancy through late childhood, and by comparing to investigations from typical adults, patient populations, and animal models, it seems increasingly clear that eye movements reflect item-item, item-temporal, and item-spatial associations in developmental populations. We analyse this line of work, identify missing pieces in the literature and outline future avenues of research, in order to help elucidate the development of episodic memory.

Retrieval-induced forgetting in recall: competitor interference revisited.

PubMed

Verde, Michael F

2013-09-01

Participants studied category-exemplar pairs (FRUIT Cherry, FRUIT Grape) and then practiced some of the items (Cherry). In Experiment 1, practice that involved retrieving the item from memory suppressed recall of related items (Grape), a finding known as the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) effect. In Experiment 2, practice that involved studying the item without retrieval produced no RIF effect. Both retrieval and nonretrieval practice facilitated the subsequent recall of practiced items (Cherry). The dissociation between "strengthening" of practiced items and forgetting of related items is thought to be evidence that RIF is the result of inhibition during earlier retrieval attempts rather than interference from competing memories at retrieval. However, simulations of the SAM-REM model show that competitor interference can account for this dissociation. Experiments 3-6 supported the predictions of the model by demonstrating that nonretrieval practice can produce the RIF effect under conditions that emphasize context encoding or increase the number of competitors. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

No retrieval-induced forgetting using item-specific independent cues: evidence against a general inhibitory account.

PubMed

Camp, Gino; Pecher, Diane; Schmidt, Henk G

2007-09-01

Retrieval practice with particular items from memory can impair the recall of related items on a later memory test. This retrieval-induced forgetting effect has been ascribed to inhibitory processes (M. C. Anderson & B. A. Spellman, 1995). A critical finding that distinguishes inhibitory from interference explanations is that forgetting is found with independent (or extralist) cues. In 4 experiments, the authors tested whether the forgetting effect is cue-independent. Forgetting was investigated for both studied and unstudied semantically related items. Retrieval-induced forgetting was not found using item-specific independent cues for either studied or unstudied items. However, forgetting was found for both item types when studied categories were used as cues. These results are not in line with a general inhibitory account, because this account predicts retrieval-induced forgetting with independent cues. Interference and context-specific inhibition are discussed as possible explanations for the data. 2007 APA

The dual effect of context on memory of related and unrelated themes: discrimination at encoding and cue at retrieval.

PubMed

Levy-Gigi, Einat; Vakil, Eli

2012-01-01

The influence of contextual factors on encoding and retrieval in recognition memory was investigated using a retroactive interference paradigm. Participants were randomly assigned to four context conditions constructed by manipulating types of presentation modality (pictures vs words) for study, interference, and test stages, respectively (ABA, ABB, AAA, & AAB). In Experiment 1 we presented unrelated items in the study and interference stages, while in Experiment 2 each stage contained items from the same semantic category. The results demonstrate a dual role for context in memory processes-at encoding as well as at retrieval. In Experiment 1 there is a hierarchical order between the four context conditions, depending on both target-test and target-interference contextual similarity. Adding a categorical context in Experiment 2 helped to specify each list and therefore better distinguish between target and interferer information, and in some conditions compensated for their perceptual similarity.

The effects of value on context-item associative memory in younger and older adults.

PubMed

Hennessee, Joseph P; Knowlton, Barbara J; Castel, Alan D

2018-02-01

Valuable items are often remembered better than items that are less valuable by both older and younger adults, but older adults typically show deficits in binding. Here, we examine whether value affects the quality of recognition memory and the binding of incidental details to valuable items. In Experiment 1, participants learned English words each associated with a point-value they earned for correct recognition with the goal of maximizing their score. In Experiment 2, value was manipulated by presenting items that were either congruent or incongruent with an imagined state of physiological need (e.g., hunger). In Experiment 1, point-value was associated with enhanced recollection in both age groups. Memory for the color associated with the word was in fact reduced for high-value recollected items compared with low-value recollected items, suggesting value selectively enhances binding of task-relevant details. In Experiment 2, memory for learned images was enhanced by value in both age groups. However, value differentially enhanced binding of an imagined context to the item in younger and older adults, with a strong trend for increased binding in younger adults only. These findings suggest that value enhances episodic encoding in both older and younger adults but that binding of associated details may be reduced for valuable items compared to less valuable items, particularly in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The Tenacious Nature of Memory Binding for Arousing Negative Items

PubMed Central

Novak, Deanna L.; Mather, Mara

2009-01-01

In two experiments, we investigated whether people are better or worse at updating memory for the location of emotional pictures than neutral pictures. We measured participants' memories for the locations of both arousing negative pictures and neutral pictures while manipulating practice (encountering the same event repeatedly) and interference (encountering the same picture in a different location). Memory for the context of emotional items was less likely to be corrected when erroneous and less likely to be correctly updated when the context changed. These results suggest that initial item-context binding is more tenacious for emotional items than for neutral items, even when such binding is incorrect. PMID:19744934

Electrophysiological Correlates of Emotional Source Memory in High-Trait-Anxiety Individuals

PubMed Central

Cui, Lixia; Shi, Guangyuan; He, Fan; Zhang, Qin; Oei, Tian P. S.; Guo, Chunyan

2016-01-01

The interaction between recognition memory and emotion has become a research hotspot in recent years. Dual process theory posits that familiarity and recollection are two separate processes contributing to recognition memory, but further experimental evidence is needed. The present study explored the emotional context effects on successful and unsuccessful source retrieval amongst 15 high-trait-anxiety college students by using event-related potentials (ERPs) measurement. During study, a happy, fearful, or neutral face picture first was displayed, then a Chinese word was superimposed centrally on the picture and subjects were asked to remember the word and the corresponding type of picture. During the test participants were instructed to press one of four buttons to indicate whether the displayed word was an old or new word. And then, for the old word, indicate whether it had been shown with a fearful, happy, or neutral face during the study. ERPs were generally more positive for remembered words than for new words and the ERP difference was termed as an old/new effect. It was found that, for successful source retrieval (it meant both the item and the source were remembered accurately) between 500 and 700 ms (corresponding to a late positive component, LPC), there were significant old/new effects in all contexts. However, for unsuccessful source retrieval (it meant the correct recognition of old items matched with incorrect source attribution), there were no significant old/new effects in happy and neutral contexts, though significant old/new effects were observed in the fearful context. Between 700 and 1200 ms (corresponding to a late slow wave, LSW), there were significant old/new effects for successful source retrieval in happy and neutral contexts. However, in the fearful context, the old/new effects were reversed, ERPs were more negative for successful source retrieval compared to correct rejections. Moreover, there were significant emotion effects for successful source retrieval at this time window. Further analysis showed ERPs of old items were more negative in fearful context than in neutral context. The results showed that early unsuccessful fearful source retrieval processes (related to familiarity) were enhanced, but late successful fearful source retrieval processes during source retrieval monitoring (related to recollection) were weakened. This provided preliminary evidence for the dual processing theory. PMID:27462288

Context factors in consultations of general practitioner trainees and their impact on communication assessment in the authentic setting.

PubMed

Essers, Geurt; van Dulmen, Sandra; van Es, Judy; van Weel, Chris; van der Vleuten, Cees; Kramer, Anneke

2013-12-01

Acquiring adequate communication skills is an essential part of general practice (GP) specialty training. In assessing trainee proficiency, the context in which trainees communicate is usually not taken into account. The present paper aims to explore what context factors can be found in regular GP trainee consultations and how these influence their communication performance. In a randomly selected sample of 44 videotaped, real-life GP trainee consultations, we searched for context factors previously identified in GP consultations and explored how trainee ratings change if context factors are taken into account. Trainee performance was rated twice using the MAAS-Global, first without and then with incorporating context factors. Item score differences were calculated using a paired samples t-test and effect sizes were computed. All previously identified context factors were again observed in GP trainee consultations. In communication assessment scores, we found a significant difference in 5 out of 13 MAAS-Global items, mostly in a positive direction. The effect size was moderate (0.57). GP trainee communication is influenced by contextual factors; they seem to adapt to context in a professional way. GP specialty training needs to focus on a context-specific application of communication skills. Communication raters need to be taught how to incorporate context factors into their assessments. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Force, Velocity, and Work: The Effects of Different Contexts on Students' Understanding of Vector Concepts Using Isomorphic Problems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barniol, Pablo; Zavala, Genaro

2014-01-01

In this article we compare students' understanding of vector concepts in problems with no physical context, and with three mechanics contexts: force, velocity, and work. Based on our "Test of Understanding of Vectors," a multiple-choice test presented elsewhere, we designed two isomorphic shorter versions of 12 items each: a test with no…

Context-dependent memory: colour versus odour.

PubMed

Pointer, S C; Bond, N W

1998-06-01

An olfactory stimulus and a visual stimulus were employed in a context-dependent memory study using a prose passage as the to-be-remembered item. Ninety-five university students (aged 17-35 years) learned the passage of prose in the presence of one of the stimuli and were then asked to recall the passage with the original context either reinstated or not reinstated. The results revealed a significant context-dependent memory effect for the olfactory cue but not for the visual cue. They demonstrate support for the effectiveness of odours as context cues and it is suggested that context-dependent memory processes may underlie the formation and retrieval of odour-evoked autobiographical memories.

Comparison of university students' understanding of graphs in different contexts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Planinic, Maja; Ivanjek, Lana; Susac, Ana; Milin-Sipus, Zeljka

2013-12-01

This study investigates university students’ understanding of graphs in three different domains: mathematics, physics (kinematics), and contexts other than physics. Eight sets of parallel mathematics, physics, and other context questions about graphs were developed. A test consisting of these eight sets of questions (24 questions in all) was administered to 385 first year students at University of Zagreb who were either prospective physics or mathematics teachers or prospective physicists or mathematicians. Rasch analysis of data was conducted and linear measures for item difficulties were obtained. Average difficulties of items in three domains (mathematics, physics, and other contexts) and over two concepts (graph slope, area under the graph) were computed and compared. Analysis suggests that the variation of average difficulty among the three domains is much smaller for the concept of graph slope than for the concept of area under the graph. Most of the slope items are very close in difficulty, suggesting that students who have developed sufficient understanding of graph slope in mathematics are generally able to transfer it almost equally successfully to other contexts. A large difference was found between the difficulty of the concept of area under the graph in physics and other contexts on one side and mathematics on the other side. Comparison of average difficulty of the three domains suggests that mathematics without context is the easiest domain for students. Adding either physics or other context to mathematical items generally seems to increase item difficulty. No significant difference was found between the average item difficulty in physics and contexts other than physics, suggesting that physics (kinematics) remains a difficult context for most students despite the received instruction on kinematics in high school.

Cortisol mediates the effects of stress on the contextual dependency of memories.

PubMed

van Ast, Vanessa A; Cornelisse, Sandra; Meeter, Martijn; Kindt, Merel

2014-03-01

Stress is known to exert considerable impact on learning and memory processes. Typically, human studies have investigated memory for single items (e.g., pictures, words), but it remains unresolved how exactly stress may alter the storage of memories into their original encoding context (i.e., memory contextualization). Since neurocircuitry underlying memory contextualization processes is sensitive to the well-known stress hormone cortisol, we here investigated whether cortisol mediates stress effects on memory contextualization. Forty healthy young men were randomly assigned to a psychosocial stress or control group. Ten minutes after stress manipulation offset, participants were instructed to learn and remember neutral and negative words, each of which was depicted against a unique background picture. Approximately 24h later, memory was tested by means of cued retrieval and recognition tasks. To assess memory contextualization half of the words were tested in intact item-contexts pairs, and half in rearranged item-context combinations. Recognition data showed that cortisol, but no other indices of stress such as heart rate or subjective stress, mediated the effects of stress on contextualization of neutral and negative memories. The mediation analysis further showed that stress resulted in increases in cortisol and that cortisol was positively related to memory contextualization, but unrelated to other measures of memory. Thus, there seems to be a specific role for cortisol in the integration of a central memory into its surrounding context. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of Related and Unrelated Context on Recall and Recognition by Adults with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bowler, Dermot M.; Gaigg, Sebastian B.; Gardiner, John M.

2008-01-01

Memory in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterised by greater difficulties with recall rather than recognition and with a diminished use of semantic or associative relatedness in the aid of recall. Two experiments are reported that test the effects of item-context relatedness on recall and recognition in adults with high-functioning ASD…

Putting Short-Term Memory into Context: Reply to Usher, Davelaar, Haarmann, and Goshen-Gottstein (2008)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kahana, Michael J.; Sederberg, Per B.; Howard, Marc W.

2008-01-01

The temporal context model posits that search through episodic memory is driven by associations between the multiattribute representations of items and context. Context, in turn, is a recency weighted sum of previous experiences or memories. Because recently processed items are most similar to the current representation of context, M. Usher, E. J.…

Concreteness and Item-to-List Context Associations in the Free Recall of Items Differing in Context Variability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marsh, Richard L.; Meeks, J. Thadeus; Hicks, Jason L.; Cook, Gabriel I.; Clark-Foos, Arlo

2006-01-01

Context variability can be defined as the number of preexperimental contexts in which a given concept appears. Following M. Steyvers and K. J. Malmberg's (2003) work, the authors have shown that concepts that are experienced in fewer preexperimental contexts generally are better remembered in episodic memory tasks than concepts that are …

Direct Estimation of Correlation as a Measure of Association Strength Using Multidimensional Item Response Models

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Wen-Chung

2004-01-01

The Pearson correlation is used to depict effect sizes in the context of item response theory. Amultidimensional Rasch model is used to directly estimate the correlation between latent traits. Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to investigate whether the population correlation could be accurately estimated and whether the bootstrap method…

Emotion’s Influence on Memory for Spatial and Temporal Context

PubMed Central

Schmidt, Katherine; Patnaik, Pooja; Kensinger, Elizabeth A.

2010-01-01

Individuals report remembering emotional items vividly. It is debated whether this report reflects enhanced memory accuracy or a bias to believe emotional memories are vivid. We hypothesized emotion would enhance memory accuracy, improving memory for contextual details. The hallmark of episodic memory is that items are remembered in a spatial and temporal context, so we examined whether an item’s valence (positive, negative) or arousal (high, low) would influence its ability to be remembered with those contextual details. Across two experiments, high-arousal items were remembered with spatial and temporal context more often than low-arousal items. Item valence did not influence memory for those details, although positive high-arousal items were recognized or recalled more often than negative items. These data suggest that emotion does not just bias participants to believe they have a vivid memory; rather, the arousal elicited by an event can benefit memory for some types of contextual details. PMID:21379376

Emotion's influence on memory for spatial and temporal context.

PubMed

Schmidt, Katherine; Patnaik, Pooja; Kensinger, Elizabeth A

2011-02-01

Individuals report remembering emotional items vividly. It is debated whether this report reflects enhanced memory accuracy or a bias to believe emotional memories are vivid. We hypothesized emotion would enhance memory accuracy, improving memory for contextual details. The hallmark of episodic memory is that items are remembered in a spatial and temporal context, so we examined whether an item's valence (positive, negative) or arousal (high, low) would influence its ability to be remembered with those contextual details. Across two experiments, high-arousal items were remembered with spatial and temporal context more often than low-arousal items. Item valence did not influence memory for those details, although positive high-arousal items were recognized or recalled more often than negative items. These data suggest that emotion does not just bias participants to believe they have a vivid memory; rather, the arousal elicited by an event can benefit memory for some types of contextual details. © 2010 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

Sentence Context and Word-Picture Cued-Recall Paired-Associate Learning Procedure Boosts Recall in Normal and Mild Alzheimer's Disease Patients.

PubMed

Iodice, Rosario; Meilán, Juan José García; Ramos, Juan Carro; Small, Jeff A

2018-01-01

The aim of this study was to employ the word-picture paradigm to examine the effectiveness of combined pictorial illustrations and sentences as strong contextual cues. The experiment details the performance of word recall in healthy older adults (HOA) and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). The researchers enhanced the words' recall with word-picture condition and when the pair was associated with a sentence contextualizing the two items. The sample was composed of 18 HOA and 18 people with mild AD. Participants memorized 15 pairs of words under word-word and word-picture conditions, with and without a sentence context. In the paired-associate test, the first item of the pair was read aloud by participants and used to elicit retrieval of the associated item. The findings suggest that both HOA and mild-AD pictures improved item recall compared to word condition such as sentences which further enabled item recall. Additionally, the HOA group performs better than the mild-AD group in all conditions. Word-picture and sentence context strengthen the encoding in the explicit memory task, both in HOA and mild AD. These results open a potential window to improve the memory for verbalized instructions and restore sequential abilities in everyday life, such as brushing one's teeth, fastening one's pants, or drying one's hands.

Sentence Context and Word-Picture Cued-Recall Paired-Associate Learning Procedure Boosts Recall in Normal and Mild Alzheimer's Disease Patients

PubMed Central

Meilán, Juan José García; Ramos, Juan Carro; Small, Jeff A.

2018-01-01

Introduction The aim of this study was to employ the word-picture paradigm to examine the effectiveness of combined pictorial illustrations and sentences as strong contextual cues. The experiment details the performance of word recall in healthy older adults (HOA) and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). The researchers enhanced the words' recall with word-picture condition and when the pair was associated with a sentence contextualizing the two items. Method The sample was composed of 18 HOA and 18 people with mild AD. Participants memorized 15 pairs of words under word-word and word-picture conditions, with and without a sentence context. In the paired-associate test, the first item of the pair was read aloud by participants and used to elicit retrieval of the associated item. Results The findings suggest that both HOA and mild-AD pictures improved item recall compared to word condition such as sentences which further enabled item recall. Additionally, the HOA group performs better than the mild-AD group in all conditions. Conclusions Word-picture and sentence context strengthen the encoding in the explicit memory task, both in HOA and mild AD. These results open a potential window to improve the memory for verbalized instructions and restore sequential abilities in everyday life, such as brushing one's teeth, fastening one's pants, or drying one's hands. PMID:29849813

Test item linguistic complexity and assessments for deaf students.

PubMed

Cawthon, Stephanie

2011-01-01

Linguistic complexity of test items is one test format element that has been studied in the context of struggling readers and their participation in paper-and-pencil tests. The present article presents findings from an exploratory study on the potential relationship between linguistic complexity and test performance for deaf readers. A total of 64 students completed 52 multiple-choice items, 32 in mathematics and 20 in reading. These items were coded for linguistic complexity components of vocabulary, syntax, and discourse. Mathematics items had higher linguistic complexity ratings than reading items, but there were no significant relationships between item linguistic complexity scores and student performance on the test items. The discussion addresses issues related to the subject area, student proficiency levels in the test content, factors to look for in determining a "linguistic complexity effect," and areas for further research in test item development and deaf students.

Adaptation to Cognitive Context and Item Information in the Medial Temporal Lobes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Diana, Rachel A.; Yonelinas, Andrew P.; Ranganath, Charan

2012-01-01

The medial temporal lobes (MTL) play an essential role in episodic memory, and accumulating evidence indicates that two MTL subregions--the perirhinal (PRc) and parahippocampal (PHc) cortices--might have different functions. According to the binding of item and context theory ( [16] and [21]), PRc is involved in processing item information, the…

Metacognition of the testing effect: Guiding learners to predict the benefits of retrieval

PubMed Central

Tullis, Jonathan G.; Finley, Jason R.; Benjamin, Aaron S.

2012-01-01

If the mnemonic benefits of testing are to be widely realized in real-world learning circumstances, people must appreciate the value of testing and choose to utilize testing during self-guided learning. Yet metacognitive judgments do not appear to reflect the enhancement provided by testing (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008). In this paper, we show that under judicious conditions learners can indeed reveal an understanding of the beneficial effects of testing as well as the interaction of that effect with delay (Experiment 1). In that experiment, subjects made judgments of learning (JOLs) for previously studied or previously tested items in either a cue-only or cue-target context, and either immediately or after a one-day delay. When subjects made judgments in a cue-only context, their JOLs accurately reflected the effects of testing, both immediately and at a delay. To evaluate the potential of exposure to such conditions for promoting generalized appreciation of testing effects, three further experiments elicited global predictions about re-studied and tested items across two study/test cycles (Experiments 2, 3, and 4). The results indicated that learners’ global naïve metacognitive beliefs increasingly reflect the beneficial effects of testing when learners experience these benefits with increasing external support. If queried under facilitative circumstances, learners appreciate the mnemonic enhancement that testing provides on both an item-by-item and global basis, but generalize that knowledge to future learning only with considerable guidance. PMID:23242770

Converging evidence for control of color-word Stroop interference at the item level.

PubMed

Bugg, Julie M; Hutchison, Keith A

2013-04-01

Prior studies have shown that cognitive control is implemented at the list and context levels in the color-word Stroop task. At first blush, the finding that Stroop interference is reduced for mostly incongruent items as compared with mostly congruent items (i.e., the item-specific proportion congruence [ISPC] effect) appears to provide evidence for yet a third level of control, which modulates word reading at the item level. However, evidence to date favors the view that ISPC effects reflect the rapid prediction of high-contingency responses and not item-specific control. In Experiment 1, we first show that an ISPC effect is obtained when the relevant dimension (i.e., color) signals proportion congruency, a problematic pattern for theories based on differential response contingencies. In Experiment 2, we replicate and extend this pattern by showing that item-specific control settings transfer to new stimuli, ruling out alternative frequency-based accounts. In Experiment 3, we revert to the traditional design in which the irrelevant dimension (i.e., word) signals proportion congruency. Evidence for item-specific control, including transfer of the ISPC effect to new stimuli, is apparent when 4-item sets are employed but not when 2-item sets are employed. We attribute this pattern to the absence of high-contingency responses on incongruent trials in the 4-item set. These novel findings provide converging evidence for reactive control of color-word Stroop interference at the item level, reveal theoretically important factors that modulate reliance on item-specific control versus contingency learning, and suggest an update to the item-specific control account (Bugg, Jacoby, & Chanani, 2011).

Contextual behavior and neural circuits

PubMed Central

Lee, Inah; Lee, Choong-Hee

2013-01-01

Animals including humans engage in goal-directed behavior flexibly in response to items and their background, which is called contextual behavior in this review. Although the concept of context has long been studied, there are differences among researchers in defining and experimenting with the concept. The current review aims to provide a categorical framework within which not only the neural mechanisms of contextual information processing but also the contextual behavior can be studied in more concrete ways. For this purpose, we categorize contextual behavior into three subcategories as follows by considering the types of interactions among context, item, and response: contextual response selection, contextual item selection, and contextual item–response selection. Contextual response selection refers to the animal emitting different types of responses to the same item depending on the context in the background. Contextual item selection occurs when there are multiple items that need to be chosen in a contextual manner. Finally, when multiple items and multiple contexts are involved, contextual item–response selection takes place whereby the animal either chooses an item or inhibits such a response depending on item–context paired association. The literature suggests that the rhinal cortical regions and the hippocampal formation play key roles in mnemonically categorizing and recognizing contextual representations and the associated items. In addition, it appears that the fronto-striatal cortical loops in connection with the contextual information-processing areas critically control the flexible deployment of adaptive action sets and motor responses for maximizing goals. We suggest that contextual information processing should be investigated in experimental settings where contextual stimuli and resulting behaviors are clearly defined and measurable, considering the dynamic top-down and bottom-up interactions among the neural systems for contextual behavior. PMID:23675321

Does the hippocampus mediate objective binding or subjective remembering?

PubMed

Slotnick, Scott D

2010-01-15

Human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) evidence suggests the hippocampus is associated with context memory to a greater degree than item memory (where only context memory requires item-in-context binding). A separate line of fMRI research suggests the hippocampus is associated with "remember" responses to a greater degree than "know" or familiarity based responses (where only remembering reflects the subjective experience of specific detail). Previous studies, however, have confounded context memory with remembering and item memory with knowing. The present fMRI study independently tested the binding hypothesis and remembering hypothesis of hippocampal function by evaluating activity within hippocampal regions-of-interest (ROIs). At encoding, participants were presented with colored and gray abstract shapes and instructed to remember each shape and whether it was colored or gray. At retrieval, old and new shapes were presented in gray and participants classified each shape as "old and previously colored", "old and previously gray", or "new", followed by a "remember" or "know" response. In 3 of 11 hippocampal ROIs, activity was significantly greater for context memory than item memory, the context memory-item memory by remember-know interaction was significant, and activity was significantly greater for context memory-knowing than item memory-remembering. This pattern of activity only supports the binding hypothesis. The analogous pattern of activity that would have supported the remembering hypothesis was never observed in the hippocampus. However, a targeted analysis revealed remembering specific activity in the left inferior parietal cortex. The present results suggest parietal cortex may be associated with subjective remembering while the hippocampus mediates binding.

Binding neutral information to emotional contexts: Brain dynamics of long-term recognition memory.

PubMed

Ventura-Bort, Carlos; Löw, Andreas; Wendt, Julia; Moltó, Javier; Poy, Rosario; Dolcos, Florin; Hamm, Alfons O; Weymar, Mathias

2016-04-01

There is abundant evidence in memory research that emotional stimuli are better remembered than neutral stimuli. However, effects of an emotionally charged context on memory for associated neutral elements is also important, particularly in trauma and stress-related disorders, where strong memories are often activated by neutral cues due to their emotional associations. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate long-term recognition memory (1-week delay) for neutral objects that had been paired with emotionally arousing or neutral scenes during encoding. Context effects were clearly evident in the ERPs: An early frontal ERP old/new difference (300-500 ms) was enhanced for objects encoded in unpleasant compared to pleasant and neutral contexts; and a late central-parietal old/new difference (400-700 ms) was observed for objects paired with both pleasant and unpleasant contexts but not for items paired with neutral backgrounds. Interestingly, objects encoded in emotional contexts (and novel objects) also prompted an enhanced frontal early (180-220 ms) positivity compared to objects paired with neutral scenes indicating early perceptual significance. The present data suggest that emotional--particularly unpleasant--backgrounds strengthen memory for items encountered within these contexts and engage automatic and explicit recognition processes. These results could help in understanding binding mechanisms involved in the activation of trauma-related memories by neutral cues.

Evaluation of a Lag Schedule of Reinforcement in a Group Contingency to Promote Varied Naming of Categories Items with Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wiskow, Katie M.; Donaldson, Jeanne M.

2016-01-01

We compared the effects of Lag 0 and Lag 1 schedules of reinforcement on children's responses naming category items in a group context and subsequent responses emitted during individual testing in which the schedule of reinforcement remained Lag 0. Specifically, we measured response variability and novel responses to categories for 3 children who…

The Effect of Background Knowledge and Reading Comprehension Test Items on Male and Female Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yazdanpanah, Khatereh

2007-01-01

The present article reports on a study investigating the interaction of a reading comprehension test with gender in a formal testing context and the performance of males and females on reading test items with regard to demands on strategy use. Participants were 187 (59 = female and 128 = male) international students ranging from 17 to 20 years of…

Average Revisited in Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Watson, Jane; Chick, Helen

2012-01-01

This paper analyses the responses of 247 middle school students to items requiring the concept of average in three different contexts: a city's weather reported in maximum daily temperature, the number of children in a family, and the price of houses. The mixed but overall disappointing performance on the six items in the three contexts indicates…

Encoding instructions and stimulus presentation in local environmental context-dependent memory studies.

PubMed

Markopoulos, G; Rutherford, A; Cairns, C; Green, J

2010-08-01

Murnane and Phelps (1993) recommend word pair presentations in local environmental context (EC) studies to prevent associations being formed between successively presented items and their ECs and a consequent reduction in the EC effect. Two experiments were conducted to assess the veracity of this assumption. In Experiment 1, participants memorised single words or word pairs, or categorised them as natural or man made. Their free recall protocols were examined to assess any associations established between successively presented items. Fewest associations were observed when the item-specific encoding task (i.e., natural or man made categorisation of word referents) was applied to single words. These findings were examined further in Experiment 2, where the influence of encoding instructions and stimulus presentation on local EC dependent recognition memory was examined. Consistent with recognition dual-process signal detection model predictions and findings (e.g., Macken, 2002; Parks & Yonelinas, 2008), recollection sensitivity, but not familiarity sensitivity, was found to be local EC dependent. However, local EC dependent recognition was observed only after item-specific encoding instructions, irrespective of stimulus presentation. These findings and the existing literature suggest that the use of single word presentations and item-specific encoding enhances local EC dependent recognition.

The slow forgetting of emotional episodic memories: An emotional binding account

PubMed Central

Yonelinas, Andrew P.; Ritchey, Maureen

2015-01-01

Emotional events are remembered better than neutral events, and this emotion advantage becomes particularly pronounced over time. The time dependent effects of emotion impact recollection rather than familiarity-based recognition, and they influence recollection of item-specific details rather than contextual details. Moreover, the amygdala, but not the hippocampus, is critical in producing these effects. Time-dependent effects of emotion have been attributed to an emotional consolidation process whereby the amygdala gradually facilitates the storage of emotional memories by other medial temporal lobe regions. However, here we propose that these effects can be better understood by an emotional binding account whereby the amygdala mediates the recollection of item-emotion bindings that are forgotten more slowly than item-context bindings supported by the hippocampus. PMID:25836045

Effects of spacing of item repetitions in continuous recognition memory: does item retrieval difficulty promote item retention in older adults?

PubMed

Kılıç, Aslı; Hoyer, William J; Howard, Marc W

2013-01-01

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Older adults exhibit an age-related deficit in item memory as a function of the length of the retention interval, but older adults and young adults usually show roughly equivalent benefits due to the spacing of item repetitions in continuous memory tasks. The current experiment investigates the seemingly paradoxical effects of retention interval and spacing in young and older adults using a continuous recognition memory procedure. Fifty young adults and 52 older adults gave memory confidence ratings to words that were presented once (P1), twice (P2), or three times (P3), and the effects of the lag length and retention interval were assessed at P2 and at P3, respectively. Response times at P2 were disproportionately longer for older adults than for younger adults as a function of the number of items occurring between P1 and P2, suggestive of age-related loss in item memory. Ratings of confidence in memory responses revealed that older adults remembered fewer items at P2 with a high degree of certainty. Confidence ratings given at P3 suggested that young and older adults derived equivalent benefits from the spacing between P1 and P2. Findings of this study support theoretical accounts that suggest that recursive reminding and/or item retrieval difficulty promote item retention in older adults.

Reliability and Validity of the Alberta Context Tool (ACT) with Professional Nurses: Findings from a Multi-Study Analysis

PubMed Central

Squires, Janet E.; Hayduk, Leslie; Hutchinson, Alison M.; Mallick, Ranjeeta; Norton, Peter G.; Cummings, Greta G.; Estabrooks, Carole A.

2015-01-01

Although organizational context is central to evidence-based practice, underdeveloped measurement hindersitsassessment. The Alberta Context Tool, comprised of 59 items that tap10 modifiable contextual concepts, was developed to address this gap. The purpose of this study to examine the reliability and validity of scores obtained when the Alberta Context Tool is completed by professional nurses across different healthcare settings. Five separate studies (N = 2361 nurses across different care settings) comprised the study sample. Reliability and validity were assessed. Cronbach’s alpha exceeded 0.70 for9/10 Alberta Context Tool concepts. Item-total correlations exceeded acceptable standards for 56/59items. Confirmatory Factor Analysescoordinated acceptably with the Alberta Context Tool’s proposed latent structure. The mean values for each Alberta Context Tool concept increased from low to high levels of research utilization(as hypothesized) further supporting its validity. This study provides robust evidence forreliability and validity of scores obtained with the Alberta Context Tool when administered to professional nurses. PMID:26098857

No Evidence for Improved Associative Memory Performance Following Process-Based Associative Memory Training in Older Adults

PubMed Central

Bellander, Martin; Eschen, Anne; Lövdén, Martin; Martin, Mike; Bäckman, Lars; Brehmer, Yvonne

2017-01-01

Studies attempting to improve episodic memory performance with strategy instructions and training have had limited success in older adults: their training gains are limited in comparison to those of younger adults and do not generalize to untrained tasks and contexts. This limited success has been partly attributed to age-related impairments in associative binding of information into coherent episodes. We therefore investigated potential training and transfer effects of process-based associative memory training (i.e., repeated practice). Thirty-nine older adults (Mage = 68.8) underwent 6 weeks of either adaptive associative memory training or item recognition training. Both groups improved performance in item memory, spatial memory (object-context binding) and reasoning. A disproportionate effect of associative memory training was only observed for item memory, whereas no training-related performance changes were observed for associative memory. Self-reported strategies showed no signs of spontaneous development of memory-enhancing associative memory strategies. Hence, the results do not support the hypothesis that process-based associative memory training leads to higher associative memory performance in older adults. PMID:28119597

No Evidence for Improved Associative Memory Performance Following Process-Based Associative Memory Training in Older Adults.

PubMed

Bellander, Martin; Eschen, Anne; Lövdén, Martin; Martin, Mike; Bäckman, Lars; Brehmer, Yvonne

2016-01-01

Studies attempting to improve episodic memory performance with strategy instructions and training have had limited success in older adults: their training gains are limited in comparison to those of younger adults and do not generalize to untrained tasks and contexts. This limited success has been partly attributed to age-related impairments in associative binding of information into coherent episodes. We therefore investigated potential training and transfer effects of process-based associative memory training (i.e., repeated practice). Thirty-nine older adults ( M age = 68.8) underwent 6 weeks of either adaptive associative memory training or item recognition training. Both groups improved performance in item memory, spatial memory (object-context binding) and reasoning. A disproportionate effect of associative memory training was only observed for item memory, whereas no training-related performance changes were observed for associative memory. Self-reported strategies showed no signs of spontaneous development of memory-enhancing associative memory strategies. Hence, the results do not support the hypothesis that process-based associative memory training leads to higher associative memory performance in older adults.

Using the Rasch Measurement Model in Psychometric Analysis of the Family Effectiveness Measure

PubMed Central

McCreary, Linda L.; Conrad, Karen M.; Conrad, Kendon J.; Scott, Christy K; Funk, Rodney R.; Dennis, Michael L.

2013-01-01

Background Valid assessment of family functioning can play a vital role in optimizing client outcomes. Because family functioning is influenced by family structure, socioeconomic context, and culture, existing measures of family functioning--primarily developed with nuclear, middle class European American families--may not be valid assessments of families in diverse populations. The Family Effectiveness Measure was developed to address this limitation. Objectives To test the Family Effectiveness Measure with data from a primarily low-income African American convenience sample, using the Rasch measurement model. Method A sample of 607 adult women completed the measure. Rasch analysis was used to assess unidimensionality, response category functioning, item fit, person reliability, differential item functioning by race and parental status, and item hierarchy. Criterion-related validity was tested using correlations with five other variables related to family functioning. Results The Family Effectiveness Measure measures two separate constructs: The effective family functioning construct was a psychometrically sound measure of the target construct that was more efficient due to the deletion of 22 items. The ineffective family functioning construct consisted of 16 of those deleted items but was not as strong psychometrically. Items in both constructs evidenced no differential item functioning by race. Criterion-related validity was supported for both. Discussion In contrast to the prevailing conceptualization that family functioning is a single construct, assessed by positively and negatively worded items, use of the Rasch analysis suggested the existence of two constructs. While the effective family functioning is a strong and efficient measure of family functioning, the ineffective family functioning will require additional item development and psychometric testing. PMID:23636342

Brain oscillations track the formation of episodic memories in the real world.

PubMed

Griffiths, Benjamin; Mazaheri, Ali; Debener, Stefan; Hanslmayr, Simon

2016-12-01

Despite the well-known influence of environmental context on episodic memory, little has been done to increase contextual richness within the lab. This leaves a blind spot lingering over the neuronal correlates of episodic memory formation in day-to-day life. To address this, we presented participants with a series of words to memorise along a pre-designated route across campus while a mobile EEG system acquired ongoing neural activity. Replicating lab-based subsequent memory effects (SMEs), we identified significant low to mid frequency power decreases (<30Hz), including beta power decreases over the left inferior frontal gyrus. When investigating the oscillatory correlates of temporal and spatial context binding, we found that items strongly bound to spatial context exhibited significantly greater theta power decreases than items strongly bound to temporal context. These findings expand upon lab-based studies by demonstrating the influence of real world contextual factors that underpin memory formation. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

How Justice Can Affect Jury Training Abstract Words Promotes Generalization to Concrete Words in Patients with Aphasia

PubMed Central

Sandberg, Chaleece; Kiran, Swathi

2014-01-01

Developing language treatments that not only improve trained items but also promote generalization to untrained items is a major focus in aphasia research. This study is a replication and extension of previous work that found that training abstract words in a particular context-category promotes generalization to concrete words but not vice versa (Kiran, Sandberg, & Abbott, 2009). Twelve persons with aphasia (5 female) with varying types and degrees of severity participated in a generative naming treatment based on the complexity account of treatment efficacy (CATE; Thompson, Shapiro, Kiran, & Sobecks, 2003). All participants were trained to generate abstract words in a particular context-category by analyzing the semantic features of the target words. Two other context-categories were used as controls. Ten of the twelve participants improved on the trained abstract words in the trained context-category. Eight of the ten participants who responded to treatment also generalized to concrete words in the same context-category. These results suggest that this treatment is both efficacious and efficient. We discuss possible mechanisms of training and generalization effects. PMID:24805853

Validating Kohler's Taxonomy of Transition Programming for adolescents with intellectual disability in the Chinese context.

PubMed

Xu, Tianxi; Dempsey, Ian; Foreman, Phil

2016-01-01

School-to-work transition programmes play a crucial role in the achievement of post-secondary outcomes for young adults with intellectual disability (ID). Although special education in China has progressed in the last two decades, systematically planned transition education and services are not usually available for Chinese school leavers. The present study aimed to validate Kohler's Taxonomy of Transition Programming (KTTP) in the Chinese context for adolescents with ID. Five Chinese transition experts reviewed KTTP items, 14 Chinese transition teachers and 14 parents of adolescents with ID who would transition from school in the next 12 months were interviewed, and 329 transition teachers were surveyed. Most items in KTTP were found to be important and relevant to the Chinese context. Based on KTTP, a modified transition framework appropriate to the Chinese context was generated. The Chinese transition framework may assist parents and professionals to better support adolescents with ID in China. Future validation checks of the framework will add confidence that the framework captures the essential components of effective transition practices appropriate in the Chinese context. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Beneficial effects of semantic memory support on older adults' episodic memory: Differential patterns of support of item and associative information.

PubMed

Mohanty, Praggyan Pam; Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe; Ratneshwar, Srinivasan

2016-02-01

The effects of two types of semantic memory support-meaningfulness of an item and relatedness between items-in mitigating age-related deficits in item and associative, memory are examined in a marketing context. In Experiment 1, participants studied less (vs. more) meaningful brand logo graphics (pictures) paired with meaningful brand names (words) and later were assessed by item (old/new) and associative (intact/recombined) memory recognition tests. Results showed that meaningfulness of items eliminated age deficits in item memory, while equivalently boosting associative memory for older and younger adults. Experiment 2, in which related and unrelated brand logo graphics and brand name pairs served as stimuli, revealed that relatedness between items eliminated age deficits in associative memory, while improving to the same degree item memory in older and younger adults. Experiment 2 also provided evidence for a probable boundary condition that could reconcile seemingly contradictory extant results. Overall, these experiments provided evidence that although the two types of semantic memory support can improve both item and associative memory in older and younger adults, older adults' memory deficits can be eliminated when the type of support provided is compatible with the type of information required to perform well on the test. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Students' approaches to learning in a clinical practicum: A psychometric evaluation based on item response theory.

PubMed

Zhao, Yue; Kuan, Hoi Kei; Chung, Joyce O K; Chan, Cecilia K Y; Li, William H C

2018-07-01

The investigation of learning approaches in the clinical workplace context has remained an under-researched area. Despite the validation of learning approach instruments and their applications in various clinical contexts, little is known about the extent to which an individual item, that reflects a specific learning strategy and motive, effectively contributes to characterizing students' learning approaches. This study aimed to measure nursing students' approaches to learning in a clinical practicum using the Approaches to Learning at Work Questionnaire (ALWQ). Survey research design was used in the study. A sample of year 3 nursing students (n = 208) who undertook a 6-week clinical practicum course participated in the study. Factor analyses were conducted, followed by an item response theory analysis, including model assumption evaluation (unidimensionality and local independence), item calibration and goodness-of-fit assessment. Two subscales, deep and surface, were derived. Findings suggested that: (a) items measuring the deep motive from intrinsic interest and deep strategies of relating new ideas to similar situations, and that of concept mapping served as the strongest discriminating indicators; (b) the surface strategy of memorizing facts and details without an overall picture exhibited the highest discriminating power among all surface items; and, (c) both subscales appeared to be informative in assessing a broad range of the corresponding latent trait. The 21-item ALWQ derived from this study presented an efficient, internally consistent and precise measure. Findings provided a useful psychometric evaluation of the ALWQ in the clinical practicum context, added evidence to the utility of the ALWQ for nursing education practice and research, and echoed the discussions from previous studies on the role of the contextual factors in influencing student choices of different learning strategies. They provided insights for clinical educators to measure nursing students' approaches to learning and facilitate their learning in the clinical practicum setting. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Language production in a shared task: Cumulative Semantic Interference from self- and other-produced context words.

PubMed

Hoedemaker, Renske S; Ernst, Jessica; Meyer, Antje S; Belke, Eva

2017-01-01

This study assessed the effects of semantic context in the form of self-produced and other-produced words on subsequent language production. Pairs of participants performed a joint picture naming task, taking turns while naming a continuous series of pictures. In the single-speaker version of this paradigm, naming latencies have been found to increase for successive presentations of exemplars from the same category, a phenomenon known as Cumulative Semantic Interference (CSI). As expected, the joint-naming task showed a within-speaker CSI effect, such that naming latencies increased as a function of the number of category exemplars named previously by the participant (self-produced items). Crucially, we also observed an across-speaker CSI effect, such that naming latencies slowed as a function of the number of category members named by the participant's task partner (other-produced items). The magnitude of the across-speaker CSI effect did not vary as a function of whether or not the listening participant could see the pictures their partner was naming. The observation of across-speaker CSI suggests that the effect originates at the conceptual level of the language system, as proposed by Belke's (2013) Conceptual Accumulation account. Whereas self-produced and other-produced words both resulted in a CSI effect on naming latencies, post-experiment free recall rates were higher for self-produced than other-produced items. Together, these results suggest that both speaking and listening result in implicit learning at the conceptual level of the language system but that these effects are independent of explicit learning as indicated by item recall. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Color Red Supports Avoidance Reactions to Unhealthy Food.

PubMed

Rohr, Michaela; Kamm, Friederike; Koenigstorfer, Joerg; Groeppel-Klein, Andrea; Wentura, Dirk

2015-01-01

Empirical evidence suggests that the color red acts like an implicit avoidance cue in food contexts. Thus specific colors seem to guide the implicit evaluation of food items. We built upon this research by investigating the implicit meaning of color (red vs. green) in an approach-avoidance task with healthy and unhealthy food items. Thus, we examined the joint evaluative effects of color and food: Participants had to categorize food items by approach-avoidance reactions, according to their healthfulness. Items were surrounded by task-irrelevant red or green circles. We found that the implicit meaning of the traffic light colors influenced participants' reactions to the food items. The color red (compared to green) facilitated automatic avoidance reactions to unhealthy foods. By contrast, approach behavior toward healthy food items was not moderated by color. Our findings suggest that traffic light colors can act as implicit cues that guide automatic behavioral reactions to food.

Examining ERP correlates of recognition memory: Evidence of accurate source recognition without recollection

PubMed Central

Addante, Richard, J.; Ranganath, Charan; Yonelinas, Andrew, P.

2012-01-01

Recollection is typically associated with high recognition confidence and accurate source memory. However, subjects sometimes make accurate source memory judgments even for items that are not confidently recognized, and it is not known whether these responses are based on recollection or some other memory process. In the current study, we measured event related potentials (ERPs) while subjects made item and source memory confidence judgments in order to determine whether recollection supported accurate source recognition responses for items that were not confidently recognized. In line with previous studies, we found that recognition memory was associated with two ERP effects: an early on-setting FN400 effect, and a later parietal old-new effect [Late Positive Component (LPC)], which have been associated with familiarity and recollection, respectively. The FN400 increased gradually with item recognition confidence, whereas the LPC was only observed for highly confident recognition responses. The LPC was also related to source accuracy, but only for items that had received a high confidence item recognition response; accurate source judgments to items that were less confidently recognized did not exhibit the typical ERP correlate of recollection or familiarity, but rather showed a late, broadly distributed negative ERP difference. The results indicate that accurate source judgments of episodic context can occur even when recollection fails. PMID:22548808

The beneficial effect of testing: an event-related potential study

PubMed Central

Bai, Cheng-Hua; Bridger, Emma K.; Zimmer, Hubert D.; Mecklinger, Axel

2015-01-01

The enhanced memory performance for items that are tested as compared to being restudied (the testing effect) is a frequently reported memory phenomenon. According to the episodic context account of the testing effect, this beneficial effect of testing is related to a process which reinstates the previously learnt episodic information. Few studies have explored the neural correlates of this effect at the time point when testing takes place, however. In this study, we utilized the ERP correlates of successful memory encoding to address this issue, hypothesizing that if the benefit of testing is due to retrieval-related processes at test then subsequent memory effects (SMEs) should resemble the ERP correlates of retrieval-based processing in their temporal and spatial characteristics. Participants were asked to learn Swahili-German word pairs before items were presented in either a testing or a restudy condition. Memory performance was assessed immediately and 1-day later with a cued recall task. Successfully recalling items at test increased the likelihood that items were remembered over time compared to items which were only restudied. An ERP subsequent memory contrast (later remembered vs. later forgotten tested items), which reflects the engagement of processes that ensure items are recallable the next day were topographically comparable with the ERP correlate of immediate recollection (immediately remembered vs. immediately forgotten tested items). This result shows that the processes which allow items to be more memorable over time share qualitatively similar neural correlates with the processes that relate to successful retrieval at test. This finding supports the notion that testing is more beneficial than restudying on memory performance over time because of its engagement of retrieval processes, such as the re-encoding of actively retrieved memory representations. PMID:26441577

Trial-by-trial adjustments in control triggered by incidentally encoded semantic cues.

PubMed

Blais, Chris; Harris, Michael B; Sinanian, Michael H; Bunge, Silvia A

2015-01-01

Cognitive control mechanisms provide the flexibility to rapidly adapt to contextual demands. These contexts can be defined by top-down goals-but also by bottom-up perceptual factors, such as the location at which a visual stimulus appears. There are now several experiments reporting contextual control effects. Such experiments establish that contexts defined by low-level perceptual cues such as the location of a visual stimulus can lead to context-specific control, suggesting a relatively early focus for cognitive control. The current set of experiments involved a word-word interference task designed to assess whether a high-level cue, the semantic category to which a word belongs, can also facilitate contextual control. Indeed, participants exhibit a larger Flanker effect to items pertaining to a semantic category in which 75% of stimuli are incongruent than in response to items pertaining to a category in which 25% of stimuli are incongruent. Thus, both low-level and high-level stimulus features can affect the bottom-up engagement of cognitive control. The implications for current models of cognitive control are discussed.

The two faces of selective memory retrieval: Earlier decline of the beneficial than the detrimental effect with older age.

PubMed

Aslan, Alp; Schlichting, Andreas; John, Thomas; Bäuml, Karl-Heinz T

2015-12-01

Recent work with young adults has shown that, depending on study context access, selective memory retrieval can both impair and improve recall of other memories (Bäuml & Samenieh, 2010). Here, we investigated the 2 opposing effects of selective retrieval in older age. In Experiment 1, we examined 64 younger (20-35 years) and 64 older participants (above 60 years), and manipulated study context access using list-method directed forgetting. Whereas both age groups showed a detrimental effect of selective retrieval on to-be-remembered items, only younger but not older adults showed a beneficial effect on to-be-forgotten items. In Experiment 2, we examined 112 participants from a relatively wide age range (40-85 years), and manipulated study context access by varying the retention interval between study and test. Overall, a detrimental effect of selective retrieval arose when the retention interval was relatively short, but a beneficial effect when the retention interval was prolonged. Critically, the size of the beneficial but not the detrimental effect of retrieval decreased with age and this age-related decline was mediated by individuals' working memory capacity, as measured by the complex operation span task. Together, the results suggest an age-related dissociation in retrieval dynamics, indicating an earlier decline of the beneficial than the detrimental effect of selective retrieval with older age. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Source memory errors in schizophrenia, hallucinations and negative symptoms: a synthesis of research findings.

PubMed

Brébion, G; Ohlsen, R I; Bressan, R A; David, A S

2012-12-01

Previous research has shown associations between source memory errors and hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia. We bring together here findings from a broad memory investigation to specify better the type of source memory failure that is associated with auditory and visual hallucinations. Forty-one patients with schizophrenia and 43 healthy participants underwent a memory task involving recall and recognition of lists of words, recognition of pictures, memory for temporal and spatial context of presentation of the stimuli, and remembering whether target items were presented as words or pictures. False recognition of words and pictures was associated with hallucination scores. The extra-list intrusions in free recall were associated with verbal hallucinations whereas the intra-list intrusions were associated with a global hallucination score. Errors in discriminating the temporal context of word presentation and the spatial context of picture presentation were associated with auditory hallucinations. The tendency to remember verbal labels of items as pictures of these items was associated with visual hallucinations. Several memory errors were also inversely associated with affective flattening and anhedonia. Verbal and visual hallucinations are associated with confusion between internal verbal thoughts or internal visual images and perception. In addition, auditory hallucinations are associated with failure to process or remember the context of presentation of the events. Certain negative symptoms have an opposite effect on memory errors.

Age differences in short-term memory binding are related to working memory performance across the lifespan.

PubMed

Fandakova, Yana; Sander, Myriam C; Werkle-Bergner, Markus; Shing, Yee Lee

2014-03-01

Memory performance increases during childhood and adolescence, and decreases in old age. Among younger adults, better ability to bind items to the context in which they were experienced is associated with higher working memory performance (Oberauer, 2005). Here, we examined the extent to which age differences in binding contribute to life span age differences in short-term memory (STM). Younger children (N = 85; 10 to 12 years), teenagers (N = 41; 13 to 15 years), younger adults (N = 84; 20 to 25 years), and older adults (N = 86; 70 to 75 years) worked on global and local short-term recognition tasks that are assumed to measure item and item-context memory, respectively. Structural equation models showed that item-context bindings are functioning less well in children and older adults compared with younger adults and teenagers. This result suggests protracted development of the ability to form and recollect detailed short-term memories, and decline of this ability in aging. Across all age groups, better item-context binding was associated with higher working memory performance, indicating that developmental differences in binding mechanisms are closely related to working memory development in childhood and old age. (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Teacher Effectiveness Research. Part II: Special Topics. Bibliographies in Education No. 78.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gilliss, Geraldine; Moll, Marita

This 723-item bibliography lists materials on teacher effectiveness research published from 1978 to early 1984. Reference to some earlier works of significance is also included. Teacher effectiveness research is here defined to include principally studies conducted in the presage-context-process-product tradition in an attempt to determine…

Exploratory Item Classification Via Spectral Graph Clustering

PubMed Central

Chen, Yunxiao; Li, Xiaoou; Liu, Jingchen; Xu, Gongjun; Ying, Zhiliang

2017-01-01

Large-scale assessments are supported by a large item pool. An important task in test development is to assign items into scales that measure different characteristics of individuals, and a popular approach is cluster analysis of items. Classical methods in cluster analysis, such as the hierarchical clustering, K-means method, and latent-class analysis, often induce a high computational overhead and have difficulty handling missing data, especially in the presence of high-dimensional responses. In this article, the authors propose a spectral clustering algorithm for exploratory item cluster analysis. The method is computationally efficient, effective for data with missing or incomplete responses, easy to implement, and often outperforms traditional clustering algorithms in the context of high dimensionality. The spectral clustering algorithm is based on graph theory, a branch of mathematics that studies the properties of graphs. The algorithm first constructs a graph of items, characterizing the similarity structure among items. It then extracts item clusters based on the graphical structure, grouping similar items together. The proposed method is evaluated through simulations and an application to the revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. PMID:29033476

The "Negative" Credit Card Effect: Credit Cards as Spending-Limiting Stimuli in New Zealand

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lie, Celia; Hunt, Maree; Peters, Heather L.; Veliu, Bahrie; Harper, David

2010-01-01

The "credit card effect" describes a finding where greater value is given to consumer items if credit card logos are present. One explanation for the effect is that credit cards elicit spending behavior through associative learning. If this is true, social, economic and historical contexts should alter this effect. In Experiment 1, Year…

Perception that "everything requires a lot of effort": transcultural SCL-25 item validation.

PubMed

Moreau, Nicolas; Hassan, Ghayda; Rousseau, Cécile; Chenguiti, Khalid

2009-09-01

This brief report illustrates how the migration context can affect specific item validity of mental health measures. The SCL-25 was administered to 432 recently settled immigrants (220 Haitian and 212 Arabs). We performed descriptive analyses, as well as Infit and Outfit statistics analyses using WINSTEPS Rasch Measurement Software based on Item Response Theory. The participants' comments about the item You feel everything requires a lot of effort in the SCL-25 were also qualitatively analyzed. Results revealed that the item You feel everything requires a lot of effort is an outlier and does not adjust in an expected and valid fashion with its cluster items, as it is over-endorsed by Haitian and Arab healthy participants. Our study thus shows that, in transcultural mental health research, the cultural and migratory contexts may interact and significantly influence the meaning of some symptom items and consequently, the validity of symptom scales.

The spacing effect in immediate and delayed free recall.

PubMed

Godbole, Namrata R; Delaney, Peter F; Verkoeijen, Peter P J L

2014-01-01

Spacing repetitions improves learning relative to massing repetitions (the spacing effect). While most studies have examined the spacing effect at short retention intervals, there are contradictory claims about its fate at a delay. Certain empirical findings suggest that the spacing effect persists at a delay. However, a recent theoretical account proposes that in free recall the spacing effect should disappear at a delay. The few studies that have examined the spacing effect at a delay are sub-optimally designed, preventing an unbiased conclusion. The current study used incidental learning and controlled recency and encoding strategy in order to examine the effect of delay on the recall of spaced items within a free recall paradigm. The results demonstrated that the spacing effect persists after a delay. The results point to an important dissociation between intentional forgetting and context-change designs (which produce more forgetting of spaced than massed items) and the passage of time (which produces similar forgetting of spaced and massed items).

Response-Order Effects in Survey Methods: A Randomized Controlled Crossover Study in the Context of Sport Injury Prevention.

PubMed

Chan, Derwin K; Ivarsson, Andreas; Stenling, Andreas; Yang, Sophie X; Chatzisarantis, Nikos L; Hagger, Martin S

2015-12-01

Consistency tendency is characterized by the propensity for participants responding to subsequent items in a survey consistent with their responses to previous items. This method effect might contaminate the results of sport psychology surveys using cross-sectional design. We present a randomized controlled crossover study examining the effect of consistency tendency on the motivational pathway (i.e., autonomy support → autonomous motivation → intention) of self-determination theory in the context of sport injury prevention. Athletes from Sweden (N = 341) responded to the survey printed in either low interitem distance (IID; consistency tendency likely) or high IID (consistency tendency suppressed) on two separate occasions, with a one-week interim period. Participants were randomly allocated into two groups, and they received the survey of different IID at each occasion. Bayesian structural equation modeling showed that low IID condition had stronger parameter estimates than high IID condition, but the differences were not statistically significant.

Does segmental overlap help or hurt? Evidence from blocked cyclic naming in spoken and written production.

PubMed

Breining, Bonnie; Nozari, Nazbanou; Rapp, Brenda

2016-04-01

Past research has demonstrated interference effects when words are named in the context of multiple items that share a meaning. This interference has been explained within various incremental learning accounts of word production, which propose that each attempt at mapping semantic features to lexical items induces slight but persistent changes that result in cumulative interference. We examined whether similar interference-generating mechanisms operate during the mapping of lexical items to segments by examining the production of words in the context of others that share segments. Previous research has shown that initial-segment overlap amongst a set of target words produces facilitation, not interference. However, this initial-segment facilitation is likely due to strategic preparation, an external factor that may mask underlying interference. In the present study, we applied a novel manipulation in which the segmental overlap across target items was distributed unpredictably across word positions, in order to reduce strategic response preparation. This manipulation led to interference in both spoken (Exp. 1) and written (Exp. 2) production. We suggest that these findings are consistent with a competitive learning mechanism that applies across stages and modalities of word production.

A Guide to Item Banking in Education. (Third Edition).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Naccarato, Richard W.

The current status of banks of test items existing across the United States was determined through a survey conducted between September and December 1987. Item "bank" in this context does not imply that the test items are available in computerized form, but simply that "deposited" test items can be withdrawn for use. Emphasis…

Statistical Approaches to the Study of Item Difficulty.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Olson, John F.; And Others

Traditionally, item difficulty has been defined in terms of the performance of examinees. For test development purposes, a more useful concept would be some kind of intrinsic item difficulty, defined in terms of the item's content, context, or characteristics and the task demands set by the item. In this investigation, the measurement literature…

Analysing task design and students' responses to context-based problems through different analytical frameworks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Broman, Karolina; Bernholt, Sascha; Parchmann, Ilka

2015-05-01

Background:Context-based learning approaches are used to enhance students' interest in, and knowledge about, science. According to different empirical studies, students' interest is improved by applying these more non-conventional approaches, while effects on learning outcomes are less coherent. Hence, further insights are needed into the structure of context-based problems in comparison to traditional problems, and into students' problem-solving strategies. Therefore, a suitable framework is necessary, both for the analysis of tasks and strategies. Purpose:The aim of this paper is to explore traditional and context-based tasks as well as students' responses to exemplary tasks to identify a suitable framework for future design and analyses of context-based problems. The paper discusses different established frameworks and applies the Higher-Order Cognitive Skills/Lower-Order Cognitive Skills (HOCS/LOCS) taxonomy and the Model of Hierarchical Complexity in Chemistry (MHC-C) to analyse traditional tasks and students' responses. Sample:Upper secondary students (n=236) at the Natural Science Programme, i.e. possible future scientists, are investigated to explore learning outcomes when they solve chemistry tasks, both more conventional as well as context-based chemistry problems. Design and methods:A typical chemistry examination test has been analysed, first the test items in themselves (n=36), and thereafter 236 students' responses to one representative context-based problem. Content analysis using HOCS/LOCS and MHC-C frameworks has been applied to analyse both quantitative and qualitative data, allowing us to describe different problem-solving strategies. Results:The empirical results show that both frameworks are suitable to identify students' strategies, mainly focusing on recall of memorized facts when solving chemistry test items. Almost all test items were also assessing lower order thinking. The combination of frameworks with the chemistry syllabus has been found successful to analyse both the test items as well as students' responses in a systematic way. The framework can therefore be applied in the design of new tasks, the analysis and assessment of students' responses, and as a tool for teachers to scaffold students in their problem-solving process. Conclusions:This paper gives implications for practice and for future research to both develop new context-based problems in a structured way, as well as providing analytical tools for investigating students' higher order thinking in their responses to these tasks.

False consensus in social context: differential projection and perceived social distance.

PubMed

Jones, Paul E

2004-09-01

The study implicates the notion of perceived social distance as an explanation of why ingroup false consensus exceeds outgroup false consensus. Whilst previous demonstrations are best understood from social identity perspectives, the findings reported here suggest that self-group as well as inter-group comparisons can underlie such effects. In particular, perceived social distance was shown to mediate the effect of social categorisation: ingroup false consensus was greater because more social distance was perceived with the outgroup. The findings also extended to non-student samples and generalised across both opinion and ability items. In addition, examining the effect of item type in conjunction with social categorisation seriously challenged the generality of the false consensus effect.

The Attentional Boost Effect and Context Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mulligan, Neil W.; Smith, S. Adam; Spataro, Pietro

2016-01-01

Stimuli co-occurring with targets in a detection task are better remembered than stimuli co-occurring with distractors--the attentional boost effect (ABE). The ABE is of interest because it is an exception to the usual finding that divided attention during encoding impairs memory. The effect has been demonstrated in tests of item memory but it is…

A study of Korean students' creativity in science using structural equation modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jo, Son Mi

Through the review of creativity research I have found that studies lack certain crucial parts: (a) a theoretical framework for the study of creativity in science, (b) studies considering the unique components related to scientific creativity, and (c) studies of the interactions among key components through simultaneous analyses. The primary purpose of this study is to explore the dynamic interactions among four components (scientific proficiency, intrinsic motivation, creative competence, context supporting creativity) related to scientific creativity under the framework of scientific creativity. A total of 295 Korean middle school students participated. Well-known and commonly used measurements were selected and developed. Two scientific achievement scores and one score measured by performance-based assessment were used to measure student scientific knowledge/inquiry skills. Six items selected from the study of Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell, and Schwartz (2002) were used to assess how well students understand the nature of science. Five items were selected from the subscale of the scientific attitude inventory version II (Moore & Foy, 1997) to assess student attitude toward science. The Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (Urban & Jellen, 1996) was used to measure creative competence. Eight items chosen from the 15 items of the Work Preference Inventory (1994) were applied to measure students' intrinsic motivation. To assess the level of context supporting creativity, eight items were adapted from measurement of the work environment (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, and Herron, 1996). To assess scientific creativity, one open-ended science problem was used and three raters rated the level of scientific creativity through the Consensual Assessment Technique (Amabile, 1996). The results show that scientific proficiency and creative competence correlates with scientific creativity. Intrinsic motivation and context components do not predict scientific creativity. The strength of relationships between scientific proficiency and scientific creativity (estimate parameter=0.43) and creative competence and scientific creativity (estimate parameter=0.17) are similar [chi2.05(1)=0.670, P>.05]. In specific analysis of structural model, I found that creative competence and scientific proficiency play a role of partial mediators among three components (general creativity, scientific proficiency, and scientific creativity). The moderate effects of intrinsic motivation and context component were investigated, but the moderation effects were not found.

Acquiring Taxonomic Relations in Lexical Memory: The Role of Superordinate Category Labels.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blewitt, Pamela; Krackow, Elisa

1992-01-01

On picture matching and word recall tasks, children performed better on slot-fillers, or items classed in a superordinate category (such as food) and in the same event context (such as eating breakfast), than on coordinates, or items classed in a superordinate category but in different event contexts. (BC)

Category-length and category-strength effects using images of scenes.

PubMed

Baumann, Oliver; Vromen, Joyce M G; Boddy, Adam C; Crawshaw, Eloise; Humphreys, Michael S

2018-06-21

Global matching models have provided an important theoretical framework for recognition memory. Key predictions of this class of models are that (1) increasing the number of occurrences in a study list of some items affects the performance on other items (list-strength effect) and that (2) adding new items results in a deterioration of performance on the other items (list-length effect). Experimental confirmation of these predictions has been difficult, and the results have been inconsistent. A review of the existing literature, however, suggests that robust length and strength effects do occur when sufficiently similar hard-to-label items are used. In an effort to investigate this further, we had participants study lists containing one or more members of visual scene categories (bathrooms, beaches, etc.). Experiments 1 and 2 replicated and extended previous findings showing that the study of additional category members decreased accuracy, providing confirmation of the category-length effect. Experiment 3 showed that repeating some category members decreased the accuracy of nonrepeated members, providing evidence for a category-strength effect. Experiment 4 eliminated a potential challenge to these results. Taken together, these findings provide robust support for global matching models of recognition memory. The overall list lengths, the category sizes, and the number of repetitions used demonstrated that scene categories are well-suited to testing the fundamental assumptions of global matching models. These include (A) interference from memories for similar items and contexts, (B) nondestructive interference, and (C) that conjunctive information is made available through a matching operation.

Integrating quantitative thinking into an introductory biology course improves students' mathematical reasoning in biological contexts.

PubMed

Hester, Susan; Buxner, Sanlyn; Elfring, Lisa; Nagy, Lisa

2014-01-01

Recent calls for improving undergraduate biology education have emphasized the importance of students learning to apply quantitative skills to biological problems. Motivated by students' apparent inability to transfer their existing quantitative skills to biological contexts, we designed and taught an introductory molecular and cell biology course in which we integrated application of prerequisite mathematical skills with biology content and reasoning throughout all aspects of the course. In this paper, we describe the principles of our course design and present illustrative examples of course materials integrating mathematics and biology. We also designed an outcome assessment made up of items testing students' understanding of biology concepts and their ability to apply mathematical skills in biological contexts and administered it as a pre/postcourse test to students in the experimental section and other sections of the same course. Precourse results confirmed students' inability to spontaneously transfer their prerequisite mathematics skills to biological problems. Pre/postcourse outcome assessment comparisons showed that, compared with students in other sections, students in the experimental section made greater gains on integrated math/biology items. They also made comparable gains on biology items, indicating that integrating quantitative skills into an introductory biology course does not have a deleterious effect on students' biology learning.

Integrating Quantitative Thinking into an Introductory Biology Course Improves Students’ Mathematical Reasoning in Biological Contexts

PubMed Central

Hester, Susan; Buxner, Sanlyn; Elfring, Lisa; Nagy, Lisa

2014-01-01

Recent calls for improving undergraduate biology education have emphasized the importance of students learning to apply quantitative skills to biological problems. Motivated by students’ apparent inability to transfer their existing quantitative skills to biological contexts, we designed and taught an introductory molecular and cell biology course in which we integrated application of prerequisite mathematical skills with biology content and reasoning throughout all aspects of the course. In this paper, we describe the principles of our course design and present illustrative examples of course materials integrating mathematics and biology. We also designed an outcome assessment made up of items testing students’ understanding of biology concepts and their ability to apply mathematical skills in biological contexts and administered it as a pre/postcourse test to students in the experimental section and other sections of the same course. Precourse results confirmed students’ inability to spontaneously transfer their prerequisite mathematics skills to biological problems. Pre/postcourse outcome assessment comparisons showed that, compared with students in other sections, students in the experimental section made greater gains on integrated math/biology items. They also made comparable gains on biology items, indicating that integrating quantitative skills into an introductory biology course does not have a deleterious effect on students’ biology learning. PMID:24591504

Effects of normal aging and Alzheimer's disease on emotional memory.

PubMed

Kensinger, Elizabeth A; Brierley, Barbara; Medford, Nick; Growdon, John H; Corkin, Suzanne

2002-06-01

Recall is typically better for emotional than for neutral stimuli. This enhancement is believed to rely on limbic regions. Memory is also better for neutral stimuli embedded in an emotional context. The neural substrate supporting this effect has not been thoroughly investigated but may include frontal lobe, as well as limbic circuits. Alzheimer's disease (AD) results in atrophy of limbic structures, whereas normal aging relatively spares limbic regions but affects prefrontal areas. The authors hypothesized that AD would reduce all enhancement effects, whereas aging would disproportionately affect enhancement based on emotional context. The results confirmed the authors' hypotheses: Young and older adults, but not AD patients, showed better memory for emotional versus neutral pictures and words. Older adults and AD patients showed no benefit from emotional context, whereas young adults remembered more items embedded in an emotional versus neutral context.

The Role of Content and Context in PISA Interest Scales: A study of the embedded interest items in the PISA 2006 science assessment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Drechsel, Barbara; Carstensen, Claus; Prenzel, Manfred

2011-01-01

This paper focuses interest in science as one of the attitudinal aspects of scientific literacy. Large-scale data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 are analysed in order to describe student interest more precisely. So far the analyses have provided a general indicator of interest, aggregated over all contexts and contents in the science test. With its innovative approach PISA embeds interest items within the cognitive test unit and its contents and contexts. The main difference from conventional interest measures is that in most questionnaires, a relatively small number of interest items cover broad fields of contents and contexts. The science units represent a number of systematically differentiated scientific contexts and contents. The units' stimulus texts allow for concrete descriptions of relevant content aspects, applications, and contexts. In the analyses, multidimensional item response models are applied in order to disentangle student interest. The results indicate that multidimensional models fit the data. A two-dimensional model separating interest into two different knowledge of science dimensions described in the PISA science framework is further analysed with respect to gender, performance differences, and country. The findings give a comprehensive description of students' interest in science. The paper deals with methodological problems and describes requirements of the test construction for further assessments. The results are discussed with regard to their significance for science education.

Applying a Mixed Methods Framework to Differential Item Function Analyses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hitchcock, John H.; Johanson, George A.

2015-01-01

Understanding the reason(s) for Differential Item Functioning (DIF) in the context of measurement is difficult. Although identifying potential DIF items is typically a statistical endeavor, understanding the reasons for DIF (and item repair or replacement) might require investigations that can be informed by qualitative work. Such work is…

Investigating Separate and Concurrent Approaches for Item Parameter Drift in 3PL Item Response Theory Equating

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arce-Ferrer, Alvaro J.; Bulut, Okan

2017-01-01

This study examines separate and concurrent approaches to combine the detection of item parameter drift (IPD) and the estimation of scale transformation coefficients in the context of the common item nonequivalent groups design with the three-parameter item response theory equating. The study uses real and synthetic data sets to compare the two…

Sex and Race Bias in the WAIS-R: A Content and Empirical Analysis.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wrobel, Thomas A.; Howells, Nancy R.

To examine the issue of item bias within the context of the revised Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-R), judgments as to perceived item bias were sought. Independent raters nominated 53 WAIS-R items as containing possible bias. White and non-white college students nominated items as racially or sexually biased. Whereas 10 items were judged…

Context Dependence of One-Question-per-Passage Measures of Reading Comprehension.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oaster, T. R. F.; And Others

This study hypothesized that items in the one-question-per-passage format would be less easily answered when administered without their associated contexts than conventional reading comprehension items. A total of 256 seventh and eighth grade students were administered both Forms 3A and 3B of the Sequential Tests of Educational Progress (STEP 11).…

An Introduction to Missing Data in the Context of Differential Item Functioning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Banks, Kathleen

2015-01-01

This article introduces practitioners and researchers to the topic of missing data in the context of differential item functioning (DIF), reviews the current literature on the issue, discusses implications of the review, and offers suggestions for future research. A total of nine studies were reviewed. All of these studies determined what effect…

Development and Validation of the Learning Progression-Based Assessment of Modern Genetics in a High School Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Todd, Amber; Romine, William L.; Cook Whitt, Katahdin

2017-01-01

We describe the development, validation, and use of the "Learning Progression-Based Assessment of Modern Genetics" (LPA-MG) in a high school biology context. Items were constructed based on a current learning progression framework for genetics (Shea & Duncan, 2013; Todd & Kenyon, 2015). The 34-item instrument, which was tied to…

Positional priming of pop-out is nested in visuospatial context.

PubMed

Gokce, Ahu; Müller, Hermann J; Geyer, Thomas

2013-11-26

The present study investigated facilitatory and inhibitory positional priming using a variant of Maljkovic and Nakayama's (1996) priming of pop-out task. Here, the singleton target and the distractors could be presented in different visuospatial contexts-but identical screen locations-across trials, permitting positional priming based on individual locations to be disentangled from priming based on interitem configural relations. The results revealed both significant facilitatory priming, i.e., faster reaction times (RTs) to target presented at previous target relative to previously empty locations, and inhibitory priming, i.e., slower RTs to target at previous distractor relative to previously empty locations. However, both effects were contingent on repetitions versus changes of stimulus arrangement: While facilitation of target locations was dependent on the repetition of the exact item configuration (e.g., T-type followed by T-type stimulus arrangement), the inhibitory effect was more "tolerant," being influenced by repetitions versus changes of the item's visuospatial category (T-type followed by Z-type pattern; cf. Garner & Clement, 1963). The results suggest that facilitatory and inhibitory priming are distinct phenomena (Finke et al., 2009) and that both effects are sensitive to subtle information about the arrangement of the display items (Geyer, Zehetleitner, & Müller, 2010). The results are discussed with respect to the stage(s) of visual pop-out search that are influenced by positional priming.

Design and validation of a questionnaire to assess organizational culture in French hospital wards.

PubMed

Saillour-Glénisson, F; Domecq, S; Kret, M; Sibe, M; Dumond, J P; Michel, P

2016-09-17

Although many organizational culture questionnaires have been developed, there is a lack of any validated multidimensional questionnaire assessing organizational culture at hospital ward level and adapted to health care context. Facing the lack of an appropriate tool, a multidisciplinary team designed and validated a dimensional organizational culture questionnaire for healthcare settings to be administered at ward level. A database of organizational culture items and themes was created after extensive literature review. Items were regrouped into dimensions and subdimensions (classification validated by experts). Pre-test and face validation was conducted with 15 health care professionals. In a stratified cluster random sample of hospitals, the psychometric validation was conducted in three phases on a sample of 859 healthcare professionals from 36 multidisciplinary medicine services: 1) the exploratory phase included a description of responses' saturation levels, factor and correlations analyses and an internal consistency analysis (Cronbach's alpha coefficient); 2) confirmatory phase used the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM); 3) reproducibility was studied by a test-retest. The overall response rate was 80 %; the completion average was 97 %. The metrological results were: a global Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.93, higher than 0.70 for 12 sub-dimensions; all Dillon-Goldstein's rho coefficients higher than 0.70; an excellent quality of external model with a Goodness of Fitness (GoF) criterion of 0.99. Seventy percent of the items had a reproducibility ranging from moderate (Intra-Class Coefficient between 50 and 70 % for 25 items) to good (ICC higher than 70 % for 33 items). COMEt (Contexte Organisationnel et Managérial en Etablissement de Santé) questionnaire is a validated multidimensional organizational culture questionnaire made of 6 dimensions, 21 sub-dimensions and 83 items. It is the first dimensional organizational culture questionnaire, specific to healthcare context, for a unit level assessment showing robust psychometric properties (validity and reliability). This tool is suited for research purposes, especially for assessing organizational context in research analysing the effectiveness of hospital quality improvement strategies. Our tool is also suited for an overall assessment of ward culture and could be a powerful trigger to improve management and clinical performance. Its psychometric properties in other health systems need to be tested.

A Comparison of Traditional Test Blueprinting and Item Development to Assessment Engineering in a Licensure Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Masters, James S.

2010-01-01

With the need for larger and larger banks of items to support adaptive testing and to meet security concerns, large-scale item generation is a requirement for many certification and licensure programs. As part of the mass production of items, it is critical that the difficulty and the discrimination of the items be known without the need for…

Assessing Computer Use and Perceived Course Effectiveness in Post-Secondary Education in an American/Canadian Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tamim, Rana M.; Lowerison, Gretchen; Schmid, Richard F.; Bernard, Robert M.; Abrami, Philip C.; Dehler, Christina

2008-01-01

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between computer technology's role and students' perceptions about course effectiveness. Students from two universities (one Canadian, n = 1465; one American, n = 831) completed a 71-item questionnaire addressing different aspects of their learning experience in a given course. Factor…

Featuring Old/New Recognition: The Two Faces of the Pseudoword Effect

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Joordens, Steve; Ozubko, Jason D.; Niewiadomski, Marty W.

2008-01-01

In his analysis of the pseudoword effect, [Greene, R.L. (2004). Recognition memory for pseudowords. "Journal of Memory and Language," 50, 259-267.] suggests nonwords can feel more familiar that words in a recognition context if the orthographic features of the nonword match well with the features of the items presented at study. One possible…

The Role of Memory Activation in Creating False Memories of Encoding Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arndt, Jason

2010-01-01

Using 3 experiments, I examined false memory for encoding context by presenting Deese-Roediger-McDermott themes (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) in usual-looking fonts and by testing related, but unstudied, lure items in a font that was shown during encoding. In 2 of the experiments, testing lure items in the font used to study their…

The influence of context boundaries on memory for the sequential order of events.

PubMed

DuBrow, Sarah; Davachi, Lila

2013-11-01

Episodic memory allows people to reexperience the past by recovering the sequences of events that characterize those prior experiences. Although experience is continuous, people are able to selectively retrieve and reexperience more discrete episodes from their past, raising the possibility that some elements become tightly related to each other in memory, whereas others do not. The current series of experiments was designed to ask how shifts in context during an experience influence how people remember the past. Specifically, we asked how context shifts influence the ability to remember the relative order of past events, a hallmark of episodic memory. We found that memory for the order of events was enhanced within, rather than across, context shifts, or boundaries (Experiment 1). Next, we showed that this relative enhancement in order memory was eliminated when across-item associative processing was disrupted (Experiment 2), suggesting that context shifts have a selective effect on sequential binding. Finally, we provide evidence that the act of making order memory judgments involves the reactivation of representations that bridged the tested items (Experiment 3). Together, these data suggest that boundaries may serve to parse continuous experience into sequences of contextually related events and that this organization facilitates remembering the temporal order of events that share the same context. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Conjunction Illusions and Conjunction Fallacies in Episodic Memory

PubMed Central

Brainerd, C. J.; Holliday, R. E.; Nakamura, K.; Reyna, V. F.

2014-01-01

Recent research on the overdistribution principle implies that episodic memory is infected by conjunction illusions. These are instances in which an item that was presented in a single context (e.g., List 1) is falsely remembered as having been presented in multiple contexts (e.g., List 1 and List 2). Robust conjunction illusions were detected in source-monitoring designs in which conjunctive probes (Was bagpipe presented on List 1 and List 2?) were added to the traditional nonconjunctive probes (Was bagpipe presented on List 1?). In Experiment 1, the levels of those illusions were comparable to what would be expected on the basis of results from prior overdistribution experiments. In Experiments 2 and 3, conjunction illusions were neither eliminated nor reduced by a manipulation that should have had such effects if the illusions are by-products of subjective differences in retrieved memory support. Also, conjunction illusions sometimes rose to the level of conjunction fallacies: In certain conditions, subjects thought that items were more likely to have occurred in all the presentation contexts than in any single context, which is impossible. Two general approaches to explaining overdistribution, representational accounts and retrieval accounts, are considered. PMID:24911136

Effects of Perceptual and Contextual Enrichment on Visual Confrontation Naming in Adult Aging

PubMed Central

Rogalski, Yvonne; Peelle, Jonathan E.; Reilly, Jamie

2013-01-01

Purpose The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of enriching line drawings with color/texture and environmental context as a facilitator of naming speed and accuracy in older adults. Method Twenty young and 23 older adults named high-frequency picture stimuli from the Boston Naming Test (Kaplan, Goodglass, & Weintraub, 2001) under three conditions: (a) black-and-white items, (b) colorized-texturized items, and (c) scene-primed colored items (e.g., “hammock” preceded 1,000 ms by a backyard scene). Results With respect to speeded naming latencies, mixed-model analyses of variance revealed that young adults did not benefit from colorization-texturization but did show scene-priming effects. In contrast, older adults failed to show facilitation effects from either colorized-texturized or scene-primed items. Moreover, older adults were consistently slower to initiate naming than were their younger counterparts across all conditions. Conclusions Perceptual and contextual enrichment of sparse line drawings does not appear to facilitate visual confrontation naming in older adults, whereas younger adults do tend to show benefits of scene priming. We interpret these findings as generally supportive of a processing speed account of age-related object picture-naming difficulty. PMID:21498581

Item Parameter Estimation for the MIRT Model: Bias and Precision of Confirmatory Factor Analysis-Based Models

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Finch, Holmes

2010-01-01

The accuracy of item parameter estimates in the multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) model context is one that has not been researched in great detail. This study examines the ability of two confirmatory factor analysis models specifically for dichotomous data to properly estimate item parameters using common formulae for converting factor…

Estimation of Item Response Theory Parameters in the Presence of Missing Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Finch, Holmes

2008-01-01

Missing data are a common problem in a variety of measurement settings, including responses to items on both cognitive and affective assessments. Researchers have shown that such missing data may create problems in the estimation of item difficulty parameters in the Item Response Theory (IRT) context, particularly if they are ignored. At the same…

Identifying Differential Item Functioning in Multi-Stage Computer Adaptive Testing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gierl, Mark J.; Lai, Hollis; Li, Johnson

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of CATSIB (Computer Adaptive Testing-Simultaneous Item Bias Test) for detecting differential item functioning (DIF) when items in the matching and studied subtest are administered adaptively in the context of a realistic multi-stage adaptive test (MST). MST was simulated using a 4-item…

A Time and Place for Everything: Developmental Differences in the Building Blocks of Episodic Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Joshua K.; Wendelken, Carter; Bunge, Silvia A.; Ghetti, Simona

2016-01-01

This research investigated whether episodic memory development can be explained by improvements in relational binding processes, involved in forming novel associations between events and the context in which they occurred. Memory for item-space, item-time, and item-item relations was assessed in an ethnically diverse sample of 151 children aged…

An Evaluation of "Intentional" Weighting of Extended-Response or Constructed-Response Items in Tests with Mixed Item Types.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ito, Kyoko; Sykes, Robert C.

This study investigated the practice of weighting a type of test item, such as constructed response, more than other types of items, such as selected response, to compute student scores for a mixed-item type of test. The study used data from statewide writing field tests in grades 3, 5, and 8 and considered two contexts, that in which a single…

Contextual cueing in 3D visual search depends on representations in planar-, not depth-defined space.

PubMed

Zang, Xuelian; Shi, Zhuanghua; Müller, Hermann J; Conci, Markus

2017-05-01

Learning of spatial inter-item associations can speed up visual search in everyday life, an effect referred to as contextual cueing (Chun & Jiang, 1998). Whereas previous studies investigated contextual cueing primarily using 2D layouts, the current study examined how 3D depth influences contextual learning in visual search. In two experiments, the search items were presented evenly distributed across front and back planes in an initial training session. In the subsequent test session, the search items were either swapped between the front and back planes (Experiment 1) or between the left and right halves (Experiment 2) of the displays. The results showed that repeated spatial contexts were learned efficiently under 3D viewing conditions, facilitating search in the training sessions, in both experiments. Importantly, contextual cueing remained robust and virtually unaffected following the swap of depth planes in Experiment 1, but it was substantially reduced (to nonsignificant levels) following the left-right side swap in Experiment 2. This result pattern indicates that spatial, but not depth, inter-item variations limit effective contextual guidance. Restated, contextual cueing (even under 3D viewing conditions) is primarily based on 2D inter-item associations, while depth-defined spatial regularities are probably not encoded during contextual learning. Hence, changing the depth relations does not impact the cueing effect.

Retest Effects in Matrix Test Performance: Differential Impact of Predictors at Different Hierarchy Levels in an Educational Setting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Freund, Philipp Alexander; Holling, Heinz

2011-01-01

If tests of cognitive ability are repeatedly taken, test scores rise. Such retest effects have been observed for a long time and for a variety of tasks. This study investigates retest effects on figural matrix items in an educational context. A short term effect is assumed for the direct retest administration in the same test session, and a long…

Opposing effects of negative emotion on amygdalar and hippocampal memory for items and associations

PubMed Central

Horner, Aidan J.; Hørlyck, Lone D.; Burgess, Neil

2016-01-01

Although negative emotion can strengthen memory of an event it can also result in memory disturbances, as in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We examined the effects of negative item content on amygdalar and hippocampal function in memory for the items themselves and for the associations between them. During fMRI, we examined encoding and retrieval of paired associates made up of all four combinations of neutral and negative images. At test, participants were cued with an image and, if recognised, had to retrieve the associated (target) image. The presence of negative images increased item memory but reduced associative memory. At encoding, subsequent item recognition correlated with amygdala activity, while subsequent associative memory correlated with hippocampal activity. Hippocampal activity was reduced by the presence of negative images, during encoding and correct associative retrieval. In contrast, amygdala activity increased for correctly retrieved negative images, even when cued by a neutral image. Our findings support a dual representation account, whereby negative emotion up-regulates the amygdala to strengthen item memory but down-regulates the hippocampus to weaken associative representations. These results have implications for the development and treatment of clinical disorders in which diminished associations between emotional stimuli and their context contribute to negative symptoms, as in PTSD. PMID:26969864

Time, Not Sleep, Unbinds Contexts from Item Memory

PubMed Central

Cox, Roy; Tijdens, Ron R.; Meeter, Martijn M.; Sweegers, Carly C. G.; Talamini, Lucia M.

2014-01-01

Contextual cues are known to benefit memory retrieval, but whether and how sleep affects this context effect remains unresolved. We manipulated contextual congruence during memory retrieval in human volunteers across 12 h and 24 h intervals beginning with either sleep or wakefulness. Our data suggest that whereas contextual cues lose their potency with time, sleep does not modulate this process. Furthermore, our results are consistent with the idea that sleep's beneficial effect on memory retention depends on the amount of waking time that has passed between encoding and sleep onset. The findings are discussed in the framework of competitive consolidation theory. PMID:24498441

A Stratified Study of Students' Understanding of Basic Optics Concepts in Different Contexts Using Two-Tier Multiple-Choice Items

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chu, Hye-Eun; Treagust, David F.; Chandrasegaran, A. L.

2009-01-01

A large scale study involving 1786 year 7-10 Korean students from three school districts in Seoul was undertaken to evaluate their understanding of basic optics concepts using a two-tier multiple-choice diagnostic instrument consisting of four pairs of items, each of which evaluated the same concept in two different contexts. The instrument, which…

Formulating the Rasch Differential Item Functioning Model under the Marginal Maximum Likelihood Estimation Context and Its Comparison with Mantel-Haenszel Procedure in Short Test and Small Sample Conditions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paek, Insu; Wilson, Mark

2011-01-01

This study elaborates the Rasch differential item functioning (DIF) model formulation under the marginal maximum likelihood estimation context. Also, the Rasch DIF model performance was examined and compared with the Mantel-Haenszel (MH) procedure in small sample and short test length conditions through simulations. The theoretically known…

The Role of Context in Young Learners' Processes for Responding to Self-Assessment Items

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Butler, Yuko Goto

2018-01-01

With use of self-assessment (SA) of young language learners on the rise, educators of young learners often want to know what SA captures and how best to use it in order to assist their students' learning. This study focuses on understanding how young learners' processes for responding to SA items differ by age and by context of implementation…

Effect of emotion on memory for words and their context.

PubMed

Riegel, Monika; Wierzba, Małgorzata; Grabowska, Anna; Jednoróg, Katarzyna; Marchewka, Artur

2016-06-01

Emotion influences various cognitive processes, such as memory. This beneficial or detrimental effect can be studied with verbal material, yet in this case a broad term of context has to be taken into account. The present work reviews recent literature and proposes that traditional differentiation between semantic and environmental context should be replaced with a novel conceptualization of hippocampus-dependent relational memory and item memory (related to the activations of cuneus and left amygdala). Additionally, instead of list-learning paradigms, words should be memorized in the context of sentences or stories for better control over their meaning. The recent evidence suggests that of particular importance for ecological validity in research paradigms is the presence of communicative and social context of verbal material related to such processes as theory of mind and brain activations in temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate cortex, and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex. We propose that studying memory of verbal material within context gives a better understanding of enhancing and impairing effects of emotion as well as of the underlying brain mechanisms. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Influence of Forward and Backward Associative Strength on False Memories for Encoding Context

PubMed Central

Arndt, Jason

2016-01-01

Two experiments examined the effects of Forward Associative Strength (FAS) and Backward Associative Strength (FAS) on false recollection of unstudied lure items. Themes were constructed such that four associates were strongly related to a lure item in terms of FAS or BAS and four associates were weakly related to a lure item in terms of FAS or BAS. Further, when FAS was manipulated, BAS was controlled across strong and weak associates, while FAS was controlled across strong and weak associates when BAS was manipulated. Strong associates were presented in one font while weak associates were presented in a second font. At test, lure items were disproportionately attributed to the source used to present lures’ strong associates compared to lures’ weak associates, both when BAS was manipulated and when FAS was manipulated. This outcome demonstrates that both BAS and FAS influence lure item false recollection, which favors global-matching models’ explanation of false recollection over the explanation offered by spreading-activation theories. PMID:25312499

Relational and item-specific influences on generate-recognize processes in recall.

PubMed

Guynn, Melissa J; McDaniel, Mark A; Strosser, Garrett L; Ramirez, Juan M; Castleberry, Erica H; Arnett, Kristen H

2014-02-01

The generate-recognize model and the relational-item-specific distinction are two approaches to explaining recall. In this study, we consider the two approaches in concert. Following Jacoby and Hollingshead (Journal of Memory and Language 29:433-454, 1990), we implemented a production task and a recognition task following production (1) to evaluate whether generation and recognition components were evident in cued recall and (2) to gauge the effects of relational and item-specific processing on these components. An encoding task designed to augment item-specific processing (anagram-transposition) produced a benefit on the recognition component (Experiments 1-3) but no significant benefit on the generation component (Experiments 1-3), in the context of a significant benefit to cued recall. By contrast, an encoding task designed to augment relational processing (category-sorting) did produce a benefit on the generation component (Experiment 3). These results converge on the idea that in recall, item-specific processing impacts a recognition component, whereas relational processing impacts a generation component.

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) use markers to monitor the movement of a hidden item.

PubMed

Beran, Michael J; Beran, Mary M; Menzel, Charles R

2005-10-01

Four chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) monitored the movement of hidden items in arrays of opaque cups. A chocolate candy was hidden in an array of four cups and temporarily presented paper markers indicated the location of the candy (which otherwise was not visible). These markers were either non-symbolic or symbolic (lexigram) stimuli that in other contexts acted as a label for the hidden candy, and the array was either rotated 180 degrees after the marker was removed or the array remained in the same location. For three of four chimpanzees, performance was better than chance in all conditions and there was no effect of the type of marker. These experiments indicate that chimpanzees can track the movement of a hidden item in an array of identical cups even when they never see the item itself, but only see a temporarily presented marker for the location of that item. However, there was no benefit to the use of symbolic as opposed to non-symbolic stimuli in this performance.

Single Event Effect (SEE) Test Planning 101

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

LaBel, Kenneth A.; Pellish, Jonathan; Berg, Melanie D.

2011-01-01

This is a course on SEE Test Plan development. It is an introductory discussion of the items that go into planning an SEE test that should complement the SEE test methodology used. Material will only cover heavy ion SEE testing and not proton, LASER, or other though many of the discussed items may be applicable. While standards and guidelines for how-to perform single event effects (SEE) testing have existed almost since the first cyclotron testing, guidance on the development of SEE test plans has not been as easy to find. In this section of the short course, we attempt to rectify this lack. We consider the approach outlined here as a "living" document: mission specific constraints and new technology related issues always need to be taken into account. We note that we will use the term "test planning" in the context of those items being included in a test plan.

Evaluation of a preliminary physical function item bank supported the expected advantages of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS).

PubMed

Rose, M; Bjorner, J B; Becker, J; Fries, J F; Ware, J E

2008-01-01

The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) was initiated to improve precision, reduce respondent burden, and enhance the comparability of health outcomes measures. We used item response theory (IRT) to construct and evaluate a preliminary item bank for physical function assuming four subdomains. Data from seven samples (N=17,726) using 136 items from nine questionnaires were evaluated. A generalized partial credit model was used to estimate item parameters, which were normed to a mean of 50 (SD=10) in the US population. Item bank properties were evaluated through Computerized Adaptive Test (CAT) simulations. IRT requirements were fulfilled by 70 items covering activities of daily living, lower extremity, and central body functions. The original item context partly affected parameter stability. Items on upper body function, and need for aid or devices did not fit the IRT model. In simulations, a 10-item CAT eliminated floor and decreased ceiling effects, achieving a small standard error (< 2.2) across scores from 20 to 50 (reliability >0.95 for a representative US sample). This precision was not achieved over a similar range by any comparable fixed length item sets. The methods of the PROMIS project are likely to substantially improve measures of physical function and to increase the efficiency of their administration using CAT.

Linguistic validation of the Alberta Context Tool and two measures of research use, for German residential long term care.

PubMed

Hoben, Matthias; Bär, Marion; Mahler, Cornelia; Berger, Sarah; Squires, Janet E; Estabrooks, Carole A; Kruse, Andreas; Behrens, Johann

2014-01-31

To study the association between organizational context and research utilization in German residential long term care (LTC), we translated three Canadian assessment instruments: the Alberta Context Tool (ACT), Estabrooks' Kinds of Research Utilization (RU) items and the Conceptual Research Utilization Scale. Target groups for the tools were health care aides (HCAs), registered nurses (RNs), allied health professionals (AHPs), clinical specialists and care managers. Through a cognitive debriefing process, we assessed response processes validity-an initial stage of validity, necessary before more advanced validity assessment. We included 39 participants (16 HCAs, 5 RNs, 7 AHPs, 5 specialists and 6 managers) from five residential LTC facilities. We created lists of questionnaire items containing problematic items plus items randomly selected from the pool of remaining items. After participants completed the questionnaires, we conducted individual semi-structured cognitive interviews using verbal probing. We asked participants to reflect on their answers for list items in detail. Participants' answers were compared to concept maps defining the instrument concepts in detail. If at least two participants gave answers not matching concept map definitions, items were revised and re-tested with new target group participants. Cognitive debriefings started with HCAs. Based on the first round, we modified 4 of 58 ACT items, 1 ACT item stem and all 8 items of the RU tools. All items were understood by participants after another two rounds. We included revised HCA ACT items in the questionnaires for the other provider groups. In the RU tools for the other provider groups, we used different wording than the HCA version, as was done in the original English instruments. Only one cognitive debriefing round was needed with each of the other provider groups. Cognitive debriefing is essential to detect and respond to problematic instrument items, particularly when translating instruments for heterogeneous, less well educated provider groups such as HCAs. Cognitive debriefing is an important step in research tool development and a vital component of establishing response process validity evidence. Publishing cognitive debriefing results helps researchers to determine potentially critical elements of the translated tools and assists with interpreting scores.

Linguistic validation of the Alberta Context Tool and two measures of research use, for German residential long term care

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background To study the association between organizational context and research utilization in German residential long term care (LTC), we translated three Canadian assessment instruments: the Alberta Context Tool (ACT), Estabrooks’ Kinds of Research Utilization (RU) items and the Conceptual Research Utilization Scale. Target groups for the tools were health care aides (HCAs), registered nurses (RNs), allied health professionals (AHPs), clinical specialists and care managers. Through a cognitive debriefing process, we assessed response processes validity–an initial stage of validity, necessary before more advanced validity assessment. Methods We included 39 participants (16 HCAs, 5 RNs, 7 AHPs, 5 specialists and 6 managers) from five residential LTC facilities. We created lists of questionnaire items containing problematic items plus items randomly selected from the pool of remaining items. After participants completed the questionnaires, we conducted individual semi-structured cognitive interviews using verbal probing. We asked participants to reflect on their answers for list items in detail. Participants’ answers were compared to concept maps defining the instrument concepts in detail. If at least two participants gave answers not matching concept map definitions, items were revised and re-tested with new target group participants. Results Cognitive debriefings started with HCAs. Based on the first round, we modified 4 of 58 ACT items, 1 ACT item stem and all 8 items of the RU tools. All items were understood by participants after another two rounds. We included revised HCA ACT items in the questionnaires for the other provider groups. In the RU tools for the other provider groups, we used different wording than the HCA version, as was done in the original English instruments. Only one cognitive debriefing round was needed with each of the other provider groups. Conclusion Cognitive debriefing is essential to detect and respond to problematic instrument items, particularly when translating instruments for heterogeneous, less well educated provider groups such as HCAs. Cognitive debriefing is an important step in research tool development and a vital component of establishing response process validity evidence. Publishing cognitive debriefing results helps researchers to determine potentially critical elements of the translated tools and assists with interpreting scores. PMID:24479645

Enhanced accessibility of ignored neutral and negative items in nonclinical dissociative individuals.

PubMed

Chiu, Chui-De

2018-01-01

While clinical studies showed paradoxical memory phenomena, including the intrusion and amnesia of stressful experiences that are features of dissociation, the results of laboratory studies on dissociative individuals' forgetting of experimental stimuli through cognitive control varied. Some studies demonstrated ineffective inhibition, and others found that dissociative individuals could remember fewer trauma words in a divided-attention context. Dissociative individuals may utilize superior cognitive disengagement to forget the representations. This hypothesis was tested in nonclinical individuals with high, medium, and low dissociation proneness. In the study phase, the participants learned several lists of experimental words and kept updating working memory by remembering the last four items on a list (target) and ignoring those non-target items. A recognition test was then conducted. The high dissociation group performed better on updating working memory. However, the accessibility of the representations of neutral and negative non-target items was elevated. Dissociative individuals disengaged attention effectively from items they intended to ignore, and the representations of the ignored items were more accessible when cues were available. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Context-dependent effects of background colour in free recall with spatially grouped words.

PubMed

Sakai, Tetsuya; Isarida, Toshiko K; Isarida, Takeo

2010-10-01

Three experiments investigated context-dependent effects of background colour in free recall with groups of items. Undergraduates (N=113) intentionally studied 24 words presented in blocks of 6 on a computer screen with two different background colours. The two background colours were changed screen-by-screen randomly (random condition) or alternately (alternation condition) during the study period. A 30-second filled retention interval was imposed before an oral free-recall test. A signal for free recall was presented throughout the test on one of the colour background screens presented at study. Recalled words were classified as same- or different-context words according to whether the background colours at study and test were the same or different. The random condition produced significant context-dependent effects, whereas the alternation condition showed no context-dependent effects, regardless of whether the words were presented once or twice. Furthermore, the words presented on the same screen were clustered in recall, whereas the words presented against the same background colour but on different screens were not clustered. The present results imply: (1) background colours can cue spatially massed words; (2) background colours act as temporally local context; and (3) predictability of the next background colour modulates the context-dependent effect.

The effects of variable-time delivery of food items and praise on problem behavior reinforced by escape.

PubMed

Lomas, Joanna E; Fisher, Wayne W; Kelley, Michael E

2010-01-01

Prior research indicates that reinforcement of an appropriate response (e.g., compliance) can produce concomitant reductions in problem behavior reinforced by escape when problem behavior continues to produce negative reinforcement (e.g., Lalli et al., 1999). These effects may be due to a preference for positive over negative reinforcement or to positive reinforcement acting as an abolishing operation, rendering demands less aversive and escape from demands less effective as negative reinforcement. In the current investigation, we delivered a preferred food item and praise on a variable-time 15-s schedule while providing escape for problem behavior on a fixed-ratio 1 schedule in a demand condition for 3 participants with problem behavior maintained by negative reinforcement. Results for all 3 participants showed that variable-time delivery of preferred edible items reduced problem behavior even though escape continued to be available for these responses. These findings are discussed in the context of motivating operations.

Validation of a new measure of availability and accommodation of health care that is valid for rural and urban contexts.

PubMed

Haggerty, Jeannie L; Levesque, Jean-Frédéric

2017-04-01

Patients are the most valid source for evaluating the accessibility of services, but a previous study observed differential psychometric performance of instruments in rural and urban respondents. To validate a measure of organizational accessibility free of differential rural-urban performance that predicts consequences of difficult access for patient-initiated care. Sequential qualitative-quantitative study. Qualitative findings used to adapt or develop evaluative and reporting items. Quantitative validation study. Primary data by telephone from 750 urban, rural and remote respondents in Quebec, Canada; follow-up mailed questionnaire to a subset of 316. Items were developed for barriers along the care trajectory. We used common factor and confirmatory factor analysis to identify constructs and compare models. We used item response theory analysis to test for differential rural-urban performance; examine individual item performance; adjust response options; and exclude redundant or non-discriminatory items. We used logistic regression to examine predictive validity of the subscale on access difficulty (outcome). Initial factor resolution suggested geographic and organizational dimensions, plus consequences of access difficulty. After second administration, organizational accommodation and geographic indicators were integrated into a 6-item subscale of Effective Availability and Accommodation, which demonstrates good variability and internal consistency (α = 0.84) and no differential functioning by geographic area. Each unit increase predicts decreased likelihood of consequences of access difficulties (unmet need and problem aggravation). The new subscale is a practical, valid and reliable measure for patients to evaluate first-contact health services accessibility, yielding valid comparisons between urban and rural contexts. © 2016 The Authors. Health Expectations published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Core Items for a Standardized Resource Use Measure: Expert Delphi Consensus Survey.

PubMed

Thorn, Joanna C; Brookes, Sara T; Ridyard, Colin; Riley, Ruth; Hughes, Dyfrig A; Wordsworth, Sarah; Noble, Sian M; Thornton, Gail; Hollingworth, William

2018-06-01

Resource use measurement by patient recall is characterized by inconsistent methods and a lack of validation. A validated standardized resource use measure could increase data quality, improve comparability between studies, and reduce research burden. To identify a minimum set of core resource use items that should be included in a standardized adult instrument for UK health economic evaluation from a provider perspective. Health economists with experience of UK-based economic evaluations were recruited to participate in an electronic Delphi survey. Respondents were asked to rate 60 resource use items (e.g., medication names) on a scale of 1 to 9 according to the importance of the item in a generic context. Items considered less important according to predefined consensus criteria were dropped and a second survey was developed. In the second round, respondents received the median score and their own score from round 1 for each item alongside summarized comments and were asked to rerate items. A final project team meeting was held to determine the recommended core set. Forty-five participants completed round 1. Twenty-six items were considered less important and were dropped, 34 items were retained for the second round, and no new items were added. Forty-two respondents (93.3%) completed round 2, and greater consensus was observed. After the final meeting, 10 core items were selected, with further items identified as suitable for "bolt-on" questionnaire modules. The consensus on 10 items considered important in a generic context suggests that a standardized instrument for core resource use items is feasible. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Measuring organisational readiness for patient engagement (MORE): an international online Delphi consensus study.

PubMed

Oostendorp, Linda J M; Durand, Marie-Anne; Lloyd, Amy; Elwyn, Glyn

2015-02-14

Widespread implementation of patient engagement by organisations and clinical teams is not a reality yet. The aim of this study is to develop a measure of organisational readiness for patient engagement designed to monitor and facilitate a healthcare organisation's willingness and ability to effectively implement patient engagement in healthcare. The development of the MORE (Measuring Organisational Readiness for patient Engagement) scale was guided by Weiner's theory of organisational readiness for change. Weiner postulates that an organisation's readiness is determined by both the willingness and ability to implement the change (i.e. in this context: patient engagement). A first version of the scale was developed based on a literature search and evaluation of pre-existing tools. We invited multi-disciplinary stakeholders to participate in a two-round online Delphi survey. Respondents were asked to rate the importance of each proposed item, and to comment on the proposed domains and items. Second round participants received feedback from the first round and were asked to re-rate the importance of the revised, new and unchanged items, and to provide comments. The first version of the scale contained 51 items divided into three domains: (1) Respondents' characteristics; (2) the organisation's willingness to implement patient engagement; and (3) the organisation's ability to implement patient engagement. 131 respondents from 16 countries (health care managers, policy makers, clinicians, patients and patient representatives, researchers, and other stakeholders) completed the first survey, and 72 of them also completed the second survey. During the Delphi process, 34 items were reworded, 8 new items were added, 5 items were removed, and 18 were combined. The scale's instructions were revised. The final version of MORE totalled 38 items; 5 on stakeholders, 13 on an organisation's willingness to implement, and 20 on an organisation's ability to implement patient engagement in healthcare. The Delphi technique was successfully used to refine the scale's instructions, domains and items, using input from a broad range of international stakeholders, hoping that MORE can be applied in a variety of healthcare contexts worldwide. Further assessment is needed to determine the psychometric properties of the scale.

Temporal-pattern similarity analysis reveals the beneficial and detrimental effects of context reinstatement on human memory.

PubMed

Staudigl, Tobias; Vollmar, Christian; Noachtar, Soheyl; Hanslmayr, Simon

2015-04-01

A powerful force in human memory is the context in which memories are encoded (Tulving and Thomson, 1973). Several studies suggest that the reinstatement of neural encoding patterns is beneficial for memory retrieval (Manning et al., 2011; Staresina et al., 2012; Jafarpour et al., 2014). However, reinstatement of the original encoding context is not always helpful, for instance, when retrieving a memory in a different contextual situation (Smith and Vela, 2001). It is an open question whether such context-dependent memory effects can be captured by the reinstatement of neural patterns. We investigated this question by applying temporal and spatial pattern similarity analysis in MEG and intracranial EEG in a context-match paradigm. Items (words) were tagged by individual dynamic context stimuli (movies). The results show that beta oscillatory phase in visual regions and the parahippocampal cortex tracks the incidental reinstatement of individual context trajectories on a single-trial level. Crucially, memory benefitted from reinstatement when the encoding and retrieval contexts matched but suffered from reinstatement when the contexts did not match. Copyright © 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/355373-12$15.00/0.

Parietal-Occipital Interactions Underlying Control- and Representation-Related Processes in Working Memory for Nonspatial Visual Features.

PubMed

Gosseries, Olivia; Yu, Qing; LaRocque, Joshua J; Starrett, Michael J; Rose, Nathan S; Cowan, Nelson; Postle, Bradley R

2018-05-02

Although the manipulation of load is popular in visual working memory research, many studies confound general attentional demands with context binding by drawing memoranda from the same stimulus category. In this fMRI study of human observers (both sexes), we created high- versus low-binding conditions, while holding load constant, by comparing trials requiring memory for the direction of motion of one random dot kinematogram (RDK; 1M trials) versus for three RDKs (3M), or versus one RDK and two color patches (1M2C). Memory precision was highest for 1M trials and comparable for 3M and 1M2C trials. And although delay-period activity in occipital cortex did not differ between the three conditions, returning to baseline for all three, multivariate pattern analysis decoding of a remembered RDK from occipital cortex was also highest for 1M trials and comparable for 3M and 1M2C trials. Delay-period activity in intraparietal sulcus (IPS), although elevated for all three conditions, displayed more sensitivity to demands on context binding than to load per se. The 1M-to-3M increase in IPS signal predicted the 1M-to-3M declines in both behavioral and neural estimates of working memory precision. These effects strengthened along a caudal-to-rostral gradient, from IPS0 to IPS5. Context binding-independent load sensitivity was observed when analyses were lateralized and extended into PFC, with trend-level effects evident in left IPS and strong effects in left lateral PFC. These findings illustrate how visual working memory capacity limitations arise from multiple factors that each recruit dissociable brain systems. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Visual working memory capacity predicts performance on a wide array of cognitive and real-world outcomes. At least two theoretically distinct factors are proposed to influence visual working memory capacity limitations: an amodal attentional resource that must be shared across remembered items; and the demands on context binding. We unconfounded these two factors by varying load with items drawn from the same stimulus category ("high demands on context binding") versus items drawn from different stimulus categories ("low demands on context binding"). The results provide evidence for the dissociability, and the neural bases, of these two theorized factors, and they specify that the functions of intraparietal sulcus may relate more strongly to the control of representations than to the general allocation of attention. Copyright © 2018 the authors 0270-6474/18/384357-10$15.00/0.

Negative Affect Impairs Associative Memory but Not Item Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bisby, James A.; Burgess, Neil

2014-01-01

The formation of associations between items and their context has been proposed to rely on mechanisms distinct from those supporting memory for a single item. Although emotional experiences can profoundly affect memory, our understanding of how it interacts with different aspects of memory remains unclear. We performed three experiments to examine…

Item Selection and Ability Estimation Procedures for a Mixed-Format Adaptive Test

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ho, Tsung-Han; Dodd, Barbara G.

2012-01-01

In this study we compared five item selection procedures using three ability estimation methods in the context of a mixed-format adaptive test based on the generalized partial credit model. The item selection procedures used were maximum posterior weighted information, maximum expected information, maximum posterior weighted Kullback-Leibler…

Bayesian Item Selection in Constrained Adaptive Testing Using Shadow Tests

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Veldkamp, Bernard P.

2010-01-01

Application of Bayesian item selection criteria in computerized adaptive testing might result in improvement of bias and MSE of the ability estimates. The question remains how to apply Bayesian item selection criteria in the context of constrained adaptive testing, where large numbers of specifications have to be taken into account in the item…

A HO-IRT Based Diagnostic Assessment System with Constructed Response Items

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Chih-Wei; Kuo, Bor-Chen; Liao, Chen-Huei

2011-01-01

The aim of the present study was to develop an on-line assessment system with constructed response items in the context of elementary mathematics curriculum. The system recorded the problem solving process of constructed response items and transfered the process to response codes for further analyses. An inference mechanism based on artificial…

The Impact of Missing Data on the Detection of Nonuniform Differential Item Functioning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Finch, W. Holmes

2011-01-01

Missing information is a ubiquitous aspect of data analysis, including responses to items on cognitive and affective instruments. Although the broader statistical literature describes missing data methods, relatively little work has focused on this issue in the context of differential item functioning (DIF) detection. Such prior research has…

Semiparametric Item Response Functions in the Context of Guessing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Falk, Carl F.; Cai, Li

2016-01-01

We present a logistic function of a monotonic polynomial with a lower asymptote, allowing additional flexibility beyond the three-parameter logistic model. We develop a maximum marginal likelihood-based approach to estimate the item parameters. The new item response model is demonstrated on math assessment data from a state, and a computationally…

Mental Schemas Hamper Memory Storage of Goal-Irrelevant Information

PubMed Central

Sweegers, C. C. G.; Coleman, G. A.; van Poppel, E. A. M.; Cox, R.; Talamini, L. M.

2015-01-01

Mental schemas exert top-down control on information processing, for instance by facilitating the storage of schema-related information. However, given capacity-limits and competition in neural network processing, schemas may additionally exert their effects by suppressing information with low momentary relevance. In particular, when existing schemas suffice to guide goal-directed behavior, this may actually reduce encoding of the redundant sensory input, in favor of gaining efficiency in task performance. The present experiment set out to test this schema-induced shallow encoding hypothesis. Our approach involved a memory task in which faces had to be coupled to homes. For half of the faces the responses could be guided by a pre-learned schema, for the other half of the faces such a schema was not available. Memory storage was compared between schema-congruent and schema-incongruent items. To characterize putative schema effects, memory was assessed both with regard to visual details and contextual aspects of each item. The depth of encoding was also assessed through an objective neural measure: the parietal old/new ERP effect. This ERP effect, observed between 500–800 ms post-stimulus onset, is thought to reflect the extent of recollection: the retrieval of a vivid memory, including various contextual details from the learning episode. We found that schema-congruency induced substantial impairments in item memory and even larger ones in context memory. Furthermore, the parietal old/new ERP effect indicated higher recollection for the schema-incongruent than the schema-congruent memories. The combined findings indicate that, when goals can be achieved using existing schemas, this can hinder the in-depth processing of novel input, impairing the formation of perceptually detailed and contextually rich memory traces. Taking into account both current and previous findings, we suggest that schemas can both positively and negatively bias the processing of sensory input. An important determinant in this matter is likely related to momentary goals, such that mental schemas facilitate memory processing of goal-relevant input, but suppress processing of goal-irrelevant information. Highlights – Schema-congruent information suffers from shallow encoding. – Schema congruency induces poor item and context memory. – The parietal old/new effect is less pronounced for schema-congruent items. – Schemas exert different influences on memory formation depending on current goals. PMID:26635582

ERP evidence for conflict in contingency learning.

PubMed

Whitehead, Peter S; Brewer, Gene A; Blais, Chris

2017-07-01

The proportion congruency effect refers to the observation that the magnitude of the Stroop effect increases as the proportion of congruent trials in a block increases. Contemporary work shows that proportion effects can be driven by both context and individual items, and are referred to as context-specific proportion congruency (CSPC) and item-specific proportion congruency (ISPC) effects, respectively. The conflict-modulated Hebbian learning account posits that these effects manifest from the same mechanism, while the parallel episodic processing model posits that the ISPC can occur by simple associative learning. Our prior work showed that the neural correlates of the CSPC is an N2 over frontocentral electrode sites approximately 300 ms after stimulus onset that predicts behavioral performance. There is strong consensus in the field that this N2 signal is associated with conflict detection in the medial frontal cortex. The experiment reported here assesses whether the same qualitative electrophysiological pattern of results holds for the ISPC. We find that the spatial topography of the N2 is similar but slightly delayed with a peak onset of approximately 300 ms after stimulus onset. We argue that this provides strong evidence that a single common mechanism-conflict-modulated Hebbian learning-drives both the ISPC and CSPC. © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

The Effect of Alzheimer's Disease and Aging on Conceptual Combination

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taler, Vanessa; Chertkow, Howard; Saumier, Daniel

2005-01-01

Alzheimer's disease (AD) subjects, healthy elderly, and young adults interpreted a series of novel noun-noun expressions composed of familiar object words. Subjects interpreted each item by selecting one of three possible definitions: a definition in which the referents of each noun were associated together in a particular context (e.g., rabbit…

Learning Vocabulary in a Foreign Language: A Computer Software Based Model Attempt

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yelbay Yilmaz, Yasemin

2015-01-01

This study aimed at devising a vocabulary learning software that would help learners learn and retain vocabulary items effectively. Foundation linguistics and learning theories have been adapted to the foreign language vocabulary learning context using a computer software named Parole that was designed exclusively for this study. Experimental…

The Robustness of IRT-Based Vertical Scaling Methods to Violation of Unidimensionality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yin, Liqun

2013-01-01

In recent years, many states have adopted Item Response Theory (IRT) based vertically scaled tests due to their compelling features in a growth-based accountability context. However, selection of a practical and effective calibration/scaling method and proper understanding of issues with possible multidimensionality in the test data is critical to…

A Time and Place for Everything: Developmental Differences in the Building Blocks of Episodic Memory

PubMed Central

Lee, Joshua K.; Wendelken, J. Carter; Bunge, Silvia A.; Ghetti, Simona

2015-01-01

This research investigated whether episodic memory development can be explained by improvements in relational binding processes, involved in forming novel associations between events and the context in which they occurred. Memory for item-space, item-time, and item-item relations was assessed in an ethnically diverse sample of 151 children aged 7 to 11 years and 28 young adults. Item-space memory reached adult performance by 9½ years, whereas item-time and item-item memory improved into adulthood. In path analysis, item-space, but not item-time best explained item-item memory. Across age groups, relational binding related to source memory and performance on standardized memory assessments. In conclusion, relational binding development depends on relation type, but relational binding overall supports episodic memory development. PMID:26493950

Selective attention and recognition: effects of congruency on episodic learning.

PubMed

Rosner, Tamara M; D'Angelo, Maria C; MacLellan, Ellen; Milliken, Bruce

2015-05-01

Recent research on cognitive control has focused on the learning consequences of high selective attention demands in selective attention tasks (e.g., Botvinick, Cognit Affect Behav Neurosci 7(4):356-366, 2007; Verguts and Notebaert, Psychol Rev 115(2):518-525, 2008). The current study extends these ideas by examining the influence of selective attention demands on remembering. In Experiment 1, participants read aloud the red word in a pair of red and green spatially interleaved words. Half of the items were congruent (the interleaved words had the same identity), and the other half were incongruent (the interleaved words had different identities). Following the naming phase, participants completed a surprise recognition memory test. In this test phase, recognition memory was better for incongruent than for congruent items. In Experiment 2, context was only partially reinstated at test, and again recognition memory was better for incongruent than for congruent items. In Experiment 3, all of the items contained two different words, but in one condition the words were presented close together and interleaved, while in the other condition the two words were spatially separated. Recognition memory was better for the interleaved than for the separated items. This result rules out an interpretation of the congruency effects on recognition in Experiments 1 and 2 that hinges on stronger relational encoding for items that have two different words. Together, the results support the view that selective attention demands for incongruent items lead to encoding that improves recognition.

Reliability and validity evidence of the Assessment of Language Use in Social Contexts for Adults (ALUSCA).

PubMed

Valente, Ana Rita S; Hall, Andreia; Alvelos, Helena; Leahy, Margaret; Jesus, Luis M T

2018-04-12

The appropriate use of language in context depends on the speaker's pragmatic language competencies. A coding system was used to develop a specific and adult-focused self-administered questionnaire to adults who stutter and adults who do not stutter, The Assessment of Language Use in Social Contexts for Adults, with three categories: precursors, basic exchanges, and extended literal/non-literal discourse. This paper presents the content validity, item analysis, reliability coefficients and evidences of construct validity of the instrument. Content validity analysis was based on a two-stage process: first, 11 pragmatic questionnaires were assessed to identify items that probe each pragmatic competency and to create the first version of the instrument; second, items were assessed qualitatively by an expert panel composed by adults who stutter and controls, and quantitatively and qualitatively by an expert panel composed by clinicians. A pilot study was conducted with five adults who stutter and five controls to analyse items and calculate reliability. Construct validity evidences were obtained using the hypothesized relationships method and factor analysis with 28 adults who stutter and 28 controls. Concerning content validity, the questionnaires assessed up to 13 pragmatic competencies. Qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed ambiguities in items construction. Disagreement between experts was solved through item modification. The pilot study showed that the instrument presented internal consistency and temporal stability. Significant differences between adults who stutter and controls and different response profiles revealed the instrument's underlying construct. The instrument is reliable and presented evidences of construct validity.

The Australian Racism, Acceptance, and Cultural-Ethnocentrism Scale (RACES): item response theory findings.

PubMed

Grigg, Kaine; Manderson, Lenore

2016-03-17

Racism and associated discrimination are pervasive and persistent challenges with multiple cumulative deleterious effects contributing to inequities in various health outcomes. Globally, research over the past decade has shown consistent associations between racism and negative health concerns. Such research confirms that race endures as one of the strongest predictors of poor health. Due to the lack of validated Australian measures of racist attitudes, RACES (Racism, Acceptance, and Cultural-Ethnocentrism Scale) was developed. Here, we examine RACES' psychometric properties, including the latent structure, utilising Item Response Theory (IRT). Unidimensional and Multidimensional Rating Scale Model (RSM) Rasch analyses were utilised with 296 Victorian primary school students and 182 adolescents and 220 adults from the Australian community. RACES was demonstrated to be a robust 24-item three-dimensional scale of Accepting Attitudes (12 items), Racist Attitudes (8 items), and Ethnocentric Attitudes (4 items). RSM Rasch analyses provide strong support for the instrument as a robust measure of racist attitudes in the Australian context, and for the overall factorial and construct validity of RACES across primary school children, adolescents, and adults. RACES provides a reliable and valid measure that can be utilised across the lifespan to evaluate attitudes towards all racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious groups. A core function of RACES is to assess the effectiveness of interventions to reduce community levels of racism and in turn inequities in health outcomes within Australia.

Delineating the effect of semantic congruency on episodic memory: the role of integration and relatedness.

PubMed

Bein, Oded; Livneh, Neta; Reggev, Niv; Gilead, Michael; Goshen-Gottstein, Yonatan; Maril, Anat

2015-01-01

A fundamental challenge in the study of learning and memory is to understand the role of existing knowledge in the encoding and retrieval of new episodic information. The importance of prior knowledge in memory is demonstrated in the congruency effect-the robust finding wherein participants display better memory for items that are compatible, rather than incompatible, with their pre-existing semantic knowledge. Despite its robustness, the mechanism underlying this effect is not well understood. In four studies, we provide evidence that demonstrates the privileged explanatory power of the elaboration-integration account over alternative hypotheses. Furthermore, we question the implicit assumption that the congruency effect pertains to the truthfulness/sensibility of a subject-predicate proposition, and show that congruency is a function of semantic relatedness between item and context words.

A new course and textbook on Physical Models of Living Systems, for science and engineering undergraduates

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nelson, Philip

2015-03-01

I'll describe an intermediate-level course on ``Physical Models of Living Systems.'' The only prerequisite is first-year university physics and calculus. The course is a response to rapidly growing interest among undergraduates in a broad range of science and engineering majors. Students acquire several research skills that are often not addressed in traditional courses: Basic modeling skills Probabilistic modeling skills Data analysis methods Computer programming using a general-purpose platform like MATLAB or Python Dynamical systems, particularly feedback control. These basic skills, which are relevant to nearly any field of science or engineering, are presented in the context of case studies from living systems, including: Virus dynamics Bacterial genetics and evolution of drug resistance Statistical inference Superresolution microscopy Synthetic biology Naturally evolved cellular circuits. Work supported by NSF Grants EF-0928048 and DMR-0832802.

Hybrid context aware recommender systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jain, Rajshree; Tyagi, Jaya; Singh, Sandeep Kumar; Alam, Taj

2017-10-01

Recommender systems and context awareness is currently a vital field of research. Most hybrid recommendation systems implement content based and collaborative filtering techniques whereas this work combines context and collaborative filtering. The paper presents a hybrid context aware recommender system for books and movies that gives recommendations based on the user context as well as user or item similarity. It also addresses the issue of dimensionality reduction using weighted pre filtering based on dynamically entered user context and preference of context. This unique step helps to reduce the size of dataset for collaborative filtering. Bias subtracted collaborative filtering is used so as to consider the relative rating of a particular user and not the absolute values. Cosine similarity is used as a metric to determine the similarity between users or items. The unknown ratings are calculated and evaluated using MSE (Mean Squared Error) in test and train datasets. The overall process of recommendation has helped to personalize recommendations and give more accurate results with reduced complexity in collaborative filtering.

Contextual control over selective attention: evidence from a two-target method.

PubMed

MacLellan, Ellen; Shore, David I; Milliken, Bruce

2015-07-01

Selective attention is generally studied with conflict tasks, using response time as the dependent measure. Here, we study the impact of selective attention to a first target, T1, presented simultaneously with a distractor, on the accuracy of subsequent encoding of a second target item, T2. This procedure produces an "attentional blink" (AB) effect much like that reported in other studies, and allowed us to study the influence of context on cognitive control with a novel method. In particular, we examined whether preparation to attend selectively to T1 had an impact on the selective encoding of T1 that would translate to report of T2. Preparation to attend selectively was manipulated by varying whether difficult selective attention T1 trials were presented in the context of other difficult selective attention T1 trials. The results revealed strong context effects of this nature, with smaller AB effects when difficult selective attention T1 trials were embedded in a context with many, rather than few, other difficult selective attention T1 trials. Further, the results suggest that both the trial-to-trial local context and the block-wide global context modulate performance in this task.

Cross-cultural validity of the ABILOCO questionnaire for individuals with stroke, based on Rasch analysis.

PubMed

Avelino, Patrick Roberto; Magalhães, Lívia Castro; Faria-Fortini, Iza; Basílio, Marluce Lopes; Menezes, Kênia Kiefer Parreiras; Teixeira-Salmela, Luci Fuscaldi

2018-06-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the cross-cultural validity of the Brazilian version of the ABILOCO questionnaire for stroke subjects. Cross-cultural adaptation of the original English version of the ABILOCO to the Brazilian-Portuguese language followed standardized procedures. The adapted version was administered to 136 stroke subjects and its measurement properties were assessed using Rash analysis. Cross-cultural validity was based on cultural invariance analyses. Goodness-of-fit analysis revealed one misfitting item. The principal component analysis of the residuals showed that the first dimension explained 45% of the variance in locomotion ability; however, the eigenvalue was 1.92. The ABILOCO-Brazil divided the sample into two levels of ability and the items into about seven levels of difficulty. The item-person map showed some ceiling effect. Cultural invariance analyses revealed that although there were differences in the item calibrations between the ABILOCO-original and ABILOCO-Brazil, they did not impact the measures of locomotion ability. The ABILOCO-Brazil demonstrated satisfactory measurement properties to be used within both clinical and research contexts in Brazil, as well cross-cultural validity to be used in international/multicentric studies. However, the presence of ceiling effect suggests that it may not be appropriate for the assessment of individuals with high levels of locomotion ability. Implications for rehabilitation Self-report measures of locomotion ability are clinically important, since they describe the abilities of the individuals within real life contexts. The ABILOCO questionnaire, specific for stroke survivors, demonstrated satisfactory measurement properties, but may not be most appropriate to assess individuals with high levels of locomotion ability The results of the cross-cultural validity showed that the ABILOCO-Original and the ABILOCO-Brazil calibrations may be used interchangeable.

Detecting Gender Bias Through Test Item Analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

González-Espada, Wilson J.

2009-03-01

Many physical science and physics instructors might not be trained in pedagogically appropriate test construction methods. This could lead to test items that do not measure what they are intended to measure. A subgroup of these items might show bias against some groups of students. This paper describes how the author became aware of potentially biased items against females in his examinations, which led to the exploration of fundamental issues related to item validity, gender bias, and differential item functioning, or DIF. A brief discussion of DIF in the context of university courses, as well as practical suggestions to detect possible gender-biased items, follows.

Semi-Parametric Item Response Functions in the Context of Guessing. CRESST Report 844

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Falk, Carl F.; Cai, Li

2015-01-01

We present a logistic function of a monotonic polynomial with a lower asymptote, allowing additional flexibility beyond the three-parameter logistic model. We develop a maximum marginal likelihood based approach to estimate the item parameters. The new item response model is demonstrated on math assessment data from a state, and a computationally…

Detecting a Gender-Related Differential Item Functioning Using Transformed Item Difficulty

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abedalaziz, Nabeel; Leng, Chin Hai; Alahmadi, Ahlam

2014-01-01

The purpose of the study was to examine gender differences in performance on multiple-choice mathematical ability test, administered within the context of high school graduation test that was designed to match eleventh grade curriculum. The transformed item difficulty (TID) was used to detect a gender related DIF. A random sample of 1400 eleventh…

International Semiotics: Item Difficulty and the Complexity of Science Item Illustrations in the PISA-2009 International Test Comparison

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Solano-Flores, Guillermo; Wang, Chao; Shade, Chelsey

2016-01-01

We examined multimodality (the representation of information in multiple semiotic modes) in the context of international test comparisons. Using Program of International Student Assessment (PISA)-2009 data, we examined the correlation of the difficulty of science items and the complexity of their illustrations. We observed statistically…

Assessment of Differential Item Functioning under Cognitive Diagnosis Models: The DINA Model Example

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Xiaomin; Wang, Wen-Chung

2015-01-01

The assessment of differential item functioning (DIF) is routinely conducted to ensure test fairness and validity. Although many DIF assessment methods have been developed in the context of classical test theory and item response theory, they are not applicable for cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs), as the underlying latent attributes of CDMs are…

An Approach to Scoring and Equating Tests with Binary Items: Piloting With Large-Scale Assessments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dimitrov, Dimiter M.

2016-01-01

This article describes an approach to test scoring, referred to as "delta scoring" (D-scoring), for tests with dichotomously scored items. The D-scoring uses information from item response theory (IRT) calibration to facilitate computations and interpretations in the context of large-scale assessments. The D-score is computed from the…

Science Literacy: How do High School Students Solve PISA Test Items?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wati, F.; Sinaga, P.; Priyandoko, D.

2017-09-01

The Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) does assess students’ science literacy in a real-life contexts and wide variety of situation. Therefore, the results do not provide adequate information for the teacher to excavate students’ science literacy because the range of materials taught at schools depends on the curriculum used. This study aims to investigate the way how junior high school students in Indonesia solve PISA test items. Data was collected by using PISA test items in greenhouse unit employed to 36 students of 9th grade. Students’ answer was analyzed qualitatively for each item based on competence tested in the problem. The way how students answer the problem exhibits their ability in particular competence which is influenced by a number of factors. Those are students’ unfamiliarity with test construction, low performance on reading, low in connecting available information and question, and limitation on expressing their ideas effectively and easy-read. As the effort, selected PISA test items can be used in accordance teaching topic taught to familiarize students with science literacy.

Lazy collaborative filtering for data sets with missing values.

PubMed

Ren, Yongli; Li, Gang; Zhang, Jun; Zhou, Wanlei

2013-12-01

As one of the biggest challenges in research on recommender systems, the data sparsity issue is mainly caused by the fact that users tend to rate a small proportion of items from the huge number of available items. This issue becomes even more problematic for the neighborhood-based collaborative filtering (CF) methods, as there are even lower numbers of ratings available in the neighborhood of the query item. In this paper, we aim to address the data sparsity issue in the context of neighborhood-based CF. For a given query (user, item), a set of key ratings is first identified by taking the historical information of both the user and the item into account. Then, an auto-adaptive imputation (AutAI) method is proposed to impute the missing values in the set of key ratings. We present a theoretical analysis to show that the proposed imputation method effectively improves the performance of the conventional neighborhood-based CF methods. The experimental results show that our new method of CF with AutAI outperforms six existing recommendation methods in terms of accuracy.

The role of aging in intra-item and item-context binding processes in visual working memory.

PubMed

Peterson, Dwight J; Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe

2016-11-01

Aging is accompanied by declines in both working memory and long-term episodic memory processes. Specifically, important age-related memory deficits are characterized by performance impairments exhibited by older relative to younger adults when binding distinct components into a single integrated representation, despite relatively intact memory for the individual components. While robust patterns of age-related binding deficits are prevalent in studies of long-term episodic memory, observations of such deficits in visual working memory (VWM) may depend on the specific type of binding process being examined. For instance, a number of studies indicate that processes involved in item-context binding of items to occupied spatial locations within visual working memory are impaired in older relative to younger adults. Other findings suggest that intra-item binding of visual surface features (e.g., color, shape), compared to memory for single features, within visual working memory, remains relatively intact. Here, we examined each of these binding processes in younger and older adults under both optimal conditions (i.e., no concurrent load) and concurrent load (e.g., articulatory suppression, backward counting). Experiment 1 revealed an age-related intra-item binding deficit for surface features under no concurrent load but not when articulatory suppression was required. In contrast, in Experiments 2 and 3, we observed an age-related item-context binding deficit regardless of the level of concurrent load. These findings reveal that the influence of concurrent load on distinct binding processes within VWM, potentially those supported by rehearsal, is an important factor mediating the presence or absence of age-related binding deficits within VWM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Multiple effects of sentential constraint on word processing

PubMed Central

Federmeier, Kara D.; Wlotko, Edward W.; De Ochoa-Dewald, Esmeralda; Kutas, Marta

2009-01-01

Behavioral and electrophysiological studies have uncovered different patterns of constraint effects on the processing of words in sentences. Whereas response time measures have indicated a reduced scope of facilitation from strongly constraining contexts, event-related brain potential (ERP) measures have instead revealed enhanced facilitation for semantically related endings in such sentences. Given this disparity, and the concomitant possibility of functionally separable stages of context effects, the current study jointly examined expectancy (cloze probability) and constraint effects on the ERP response to words. Expected and unexpected (but plausible) words completed strongly and weakly constraining sentences; unexpected items were matched for contextual fit across the two levels of constraint and were semantically unrelated to the most expected endings. N400 amplitudes were graded by expectancy but unaffected by constraint and seemed to index the benefit of contextual information. However, a later effect, in the form of increased frontal positivity from 500 to 900 ms post-stimulus-onset, indicated a possible cost associated with the processing of unexpected words in strongly constraining contexts. PMID:16901469

Calibration of context-specific survey items to assess youth physical activity behaviour.

PubMed

Saint-Maurice, Pedro F; Welk, Gregory J; Bartee, R Todd; Heelan, Kate

2017-05-01

This study tests calibration models to re-scale context-specific physical activity (PA) items to accelerometer-derived PA. A total of 195 4th-12th grades children wore an Actigraph monitor and completed the Physical Activity Questionnaire (PAQ) one week later. The relative time spent in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA % ) obtained from the Actigraph at recess, PE, lunch, after-school, evening and weekend was matched with a respective item score obtained from the PAQ's. Item scores from 145 participants were calibrated against objective MVPA % using multiple linear regression with age, and sex as additional predictors. Predicted minutes of MVPA for school, out-of-school and total week were tested in the remaining sample (n = 50) using equivalence testing. The results showed that PAQ β-weights ranged from 0.06 (lunch) to 4.94 (PE) MVPA % (P < 0.05) and models root mean square error ranged from 4.2% (evening) to 20.2% (recess). When applied to an independent sample, differences between PAQ and accelerometer MVPA at school and out-of-school ranged from -15.6 to +3.8 min and the PAQ was within 10-15% of accelerometer measured activity. This study demonstrated that context-specific items can be calibrated to predict minutes of MVPA in groups of youth during in- and out-of-school periods.

Memory retrieval as a self-propagating process.

PubMed

Bäuml, Karl-Heinz T; Schlichting, Andreas

2014-07-01

Retrieval of a subset of studied items and the presentation of those items as retrieval cues typically impair retrieval of the other items. Previous research on this self-limiting property of memory retrieval has relied heavily on short retention intervals and similar context between encoding and test. Here, we examined retrieval dynamics also after a prolonged retention interval with different spatial and social context between encoding and test, conditions that mimic people's remembering in many situations of daily life. For both unrelated word lists and more integrated prose material, we found retrieval and cuing to impair recall of other studied items after a short retention interval, but to improve recall in the prolonged retention interval condition. The results demonstrate that retrieval dynamics depend critically on situation, indicating that quite often in daily life, retrieval may be a self-propagating, rather than a self-limiting process. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Advancing the argument for validity of the Alberta Context Tool with healthcare aides in residential long-term care

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Organizational context has the potential to influence the use of new knowledge. However, despite advances in understanding the theoretical base of organizational context, its measurement has not been adequately addressed, limiting our ability to quantify and assess context in healthcare settings and thus, advance development of contextual interventions to improve patient care. We developed the Alberta Context Tool (the ACT) to address this concern. It consists of 58 items representing 10 modifiable contextual concepts. We reported the initial validation of the ACT in 2009. This paper presents the second stage of the psychometric validation of the ACT. Methods We used the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing to frame our validity assessment. Data from 645 English speaking healthcare aides from 25 urban residential long-term care facilities (nursing homes) in the three Canadian Prairie Provinces were used for this stage of validation. In this stage we focused on: (1) advanced aspects of internal structure (e.g., confirmatory factor analysis) and (2) relations with other variables validity evidence. To assess reliability and validity of scores obtained using the ACT we conducted: Cronbach's alpha, confirmatory factor analysis, analysis of variance, and tests of association. We also assessed the performance of the ACT when individual responses were aggregated to the care unit level, because the instrument was developed to obtain unit-level scores of context. Results Item-total correlations exceeded acceptable standards (> 0.3) for the majority of items (51 of 58). We ran three confirmatory factor models. Model 1 (all ACT items) displayed unacceptable fit overall and for five specific items (1 item on adequate space for resident care in the Organizational Slack-Space ACT concept and 4 items on use of electronic resources in the Structural and Electronic Resources ACT concept). This prompted specification of two additional models. Model 2 used the 7 scaled ACT concepts while Model 3 used the 3 count-based ACT concepts. Both models displayed substantially improved fit in comparison to Model 1. Cronbach's alpha for the 10 ACT concepts ranged from 0.37 to 0.92 with 2 concepts performing below the commonly accepted standard of 0.70. Bivariate associations between the ACT concepts and instrumental research utilization levels (which the ACT should predict) were statistically significant at the 5% level for 8 of the 10 ACT concepts. The majority (8/10) of the ACT concepts also showed a statistically significant trend of increasing mean scores when arrayed across the lowest to the highest levels of instrumental research use. Conclusions The validation process in this study demonstrated additional empirical support for construct validity of the ACT, when completed by healthcare aides in nursing homes. The overall pattern of the data was consistent with the structure hypothesized in the development of the ACT and supports the ACT as an appropriate measure for assessing organizational context in nursing homes. Caution should be applied in using the one space and four electronic resource items that displayed misfit in this study with healthcare aides until further assessments are made. PMID:21767378

Maternal Provision of Structure in a Deliberate Memory Task in Relation to Their Preschool Children’s Recall

PubMed Central

Larkina, Marina; Güler, O. Evren; Kleinknecht, Erica; Bauer, Patricia J.

2008-01-01

Strategic remembering emerges gradually during the preschool years. Socialization practices, specifically mother-child social interactions, might provide the foundation for developing of skills necessary for effective organization of information in memory. In the present study, 48 mothers and their 40-month-old children were engaged in the process of remembering (i.e., study and recall) categorically related picture stimuli in a laboratory context. Children’s recall was reliably predicted by the way mothers structured both the study and recall periods of the deliberate memory task. Specifically, maternal verbal and physical behaviors that focused on organization of items, such as sorting items into distinct groups or providing the name of a category, were most beneficial in supporting children’s memory. Moreover, some mothers employed a number of different mnemonic techniques that emphasized categorical connections among items, suggesting systematic approaches in the manner in which mothers help children learn effective ways of remembering. PMID:18439616

Dorsoventral and Proximodistal Hippocampal Processing Account for the Influences of Sleep and Context on Memory (Re)consolidation: A Connectionist Model

PubMed Central

Lines, Justin

2017-01-01

The context in which learning occurs is sufficient to reconsolidate stored memories and neuronal reactivation may be crucial to memory consolidation during sleep. The mechanisms of context-dependent and sleep-dependent memory (re)consolidation are unknown but involve the hippocampus. We simulated memory (re)consolidation using a connectionist model of the hippocampus that explicitly accounted for its dorsoventral organization and for CA1 proximodistal processing. Replicating human and rodent (re)consolidation studies yielded the following results. (1) Semantic overlap between memory items and extraneous learning was necessary to explain experimental data and depended crucially on the recurrent networks of dorsal but not ventral CA3. (2) Stimulus-free, sleep-induced internal reactivations of memory patterns produced heterogeneous recruitment of memory items and protected memories from subsequent interference. These simulations further suggested that the decrease in memory resilience when subjects were not allowed to sleep following learning was primarily due to extraneous learning. (3) Partial exposure to the learning context during simulated sleep (i.e., targeted memory reactivation) uniformly increased memory item reactivation and enhanced subsequent recall. Altogether, these results show that the dorsoventral and proximodistal organization of the hippocampus may be important components of the neural mechanisms for context-based and sleep-based memory (re)consolidations. PMID:28757864

The neural dynamics of task context in free recall.

PubMed

Polyn, Sean M; Kragel, James E; Morton, Neal W; McCluey, Joshua D; Cohen, Zachary D

2012-03-01

Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) is a powerful tool for relating theories of cognitive function to the neural dynamics observed while people engage in cognitive tasks. Here, we use the Context Maintenance and Retrieval model of free recall (CMR; Polyn et al., 2009a) to interpret variability in the strength of task-specific patterns of distributed neural activity as participants study and recall lists of words. The CMR model describes how temporal and source-related (here, encoding task) information combine in a contextual representation that is responsible for guiding memory search. Each studied word in the free-recall paradigm is associated with one of two encoding tasks (size and animacy) that have distinct neural representations during encoding. We find evidence for the context retrieval hypothesis central to the CMR model: Task-specific patterns of neural activity are reactivated during memory search, as the participant recalls an item previously associated with a particular task. Furthermore, we find that the fidelity of these task representations during study is related to task-shifting, the serial position of the studied item, and variability in the magnitude of the recency effect across participants. The CMR model suggests that these effects may be related to a central parameter of the model that controls the rate that an internal contextual representation integrates information from the surrounding environment. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Global Self-Esteem: Cognitive Interpretation in an Academic Setting.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yeung, Alexander Seeshing

Researchers have assumed that global self-esteem (often labeled as general self-concept), being a general aggregate of perceptions of the self, is content free. Recent research has, however, shown that responses to self-esteem survey items are influenced by the context in which the respondents are asked to make their responses--a chameleon effect.…

Discourse Factors Influencing Spatial Descriptions in English and German

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vorwerg, Constanze; Tenbrink, Thora

The ways in which objects are referred to by using spatial language depend on many factors, including the spatial configuration and the discourse context. We present the results of a web experiment in which speakers were asked to either describe where a specified item was located in a picture containing several items, or which item was specified. Furthermore, conditions differed as to whether the first six configurations were specifically simple or specifically complex. Results show that speakers' spatial descriptions are more detailed if the question is where rather than which, mirroring the fact that contrasting the target item from the others in which tasks may not always require an equally detailed spatial description as in where tasks. Furthermore, speakers are influenced by the complexity of initial configurations in intricate ways: on the one hand, individual speakers tend to self-align with respect to their earlier linguistic strategies; however, also a contrast effect could be identified with respect to the usage of combined projective terms.

Lexical frequency effects on articulation: a comparison of picture naming and reading aloud

PubMed Central

Mousikou, Petroula; Rastle, Kathleen

2015-01-01

The present study investigated whether lexical frequency, a variable that is known to affect the time taken to utter a verbal response, may also influence articulation. Pairs of words that differed in terms of their relative frequency, but were matched on their onset, vowel, and number of phonemes (e.g., map vs. mat, where the former is more frequent than the latter) were used in a picture naming and a reading aloud task. Low-frequency items yielded slower response latencies than high-frequency items in both tasks, with the frequency effect being significantly larger in picture naming compared to reading aloud. Also, initial-phoneme durations were longer for low-frequency items than for high-frequency items. The frequency effect on initial-phoneme durations was slightly more prominent in picture naming than in reading aloud, yet its size was very small, thus preventing us from concluding that lexical frequency exerts an influence on articulation. Additionally, initial-phoneme and whole-word durations were significantly longer in reading aloud compared to picture naming. We discuss our findings in the context of current theories of reading aloud and speech production, and the approaches they adopt in relation to the nature of information flow (staged vs. cascaded) between cognitive and articulatory levels of processing. PMID:26528223

Reliable and valid NEWS for Chinese seniors: measuring perceived neighborhood attributes related to walking.

PubMed

Cerin, Ester; Sit, Cindy Hp; Cheung, Man-Chin; Ho, Sai-Yin; Lee, Lok-Chun Janet; Chan, Wai-Man

2010-11-25

The effects of the built environment on walking in seniors have not been studied in an Asian context. To examine these effects, valid and reliable measures are needed. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a questionnaire of perceived neighborhood characteristics related to walking appropriate for Chinese seniors (Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale for Chinese Seniors, NEWS-CS). It was based on the Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale - Abbreviated (NEWS-A), a validated measure of perceived built environment developed in the USA for adults. A secondary study aim was to establish the generalizability of the NEWS-A to an Asian high-density urban context and a different age group. A multidisciplinary panel of experts adapted the original NEWS-A to reflect the built environment of Hong Kong and needs of seniors. The translated instrument was pre-tested on a sample of 50 Chinese-speaking senior residents (65+ years). The final version of the NEWS-CS was interviewer-administered to 484 seniors residing in four selected Hong Kong districts varying in walkability and socio-economic status. Ninety-two participants completed the questionnaire on two separate occasions, 2-3 weeks apart. Test-rest reliability indices were estimated for each item and subscale of the NEWS-CS. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to develop the measurement model of the NEWS-CS and cross-validate that of the NEWS-A. The final version of the NEWS-CS consisted of 14 subscales and four single items (76 items). Test-retest reliability was moderate to good (ICC > 50 or % agreement > 60) except for four items measuring distance to destinations. The originally-proposed measurement models of the NEWS-A and NEWS-CS required 2-3 theoretically-justifiable modifications to fit the data well. The NEWS-CS possesses sufficient levels of reliability and factorial validity to be used for measuring perceived neighborhood environment in Chinese seniors. Further work is needed to assess its construct validity and generalizability to other Asian locations. In general, the measurement model of the original NEWS-A was generalizable to this study context, supporting the feasibility of cross-country and age-group comparisons of the effect of the neighborhood environment on walking using the NEWS-A as a tool to measure the perceived built environment.

Emotional memory: No source memory without old-new recognition.

PubMed

Bell, Raoul; Mieth, Laura; Buchner, Axel

2017-02-01

Findings reported in the memory literature suggest that the emotional components of an encoding episode can be dissociated from nonemotional memory. In particular, it has been found that the previous association with threatening events can be retrieved in aversive conditioning even in the absence of item identification. In the present study, we test whether emotional source memory can be independent of item recognition. Participants saw pictures of snakes paired with threatening and nonthreatening context information (poisonousness or nonpoisonousness). In the source memory test, participants were required to remember whether a snake was associated with poisonousness or nonpoisonousness. A simple extension of a well-established multinomial source monitoring model was used to measure source memory for unrecognized items. By using this model, it was possible to assess directly whether participants were able to associate a previously seen snake with poisonousness or nonpoisonousness even if the snake itself was not recognized as having been presented during the experiment. In 3 experiments, emotional source memory was only found for recognized items. While source memory for recognized items differed between emotional and nonemotional information, source memory for unrecognized items was equally absent for emotional and nonemotional information. We conclude that emotional context information is bound to item representations and cannot be retrieved in the absence of item recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Sleep enhances a spatially mediated generalization of learned values

PubMed Central

Tolat, Anisha; Spiers, Hugo J.

2015-01-01

Sleep is thought to play an important role in memory consolidation. Here we tested whether sleep alters the subjective value associated with objects located in spatial clusters that were navigated to in a large-scale virtual town. We found that sleep enhances a generalization of the value of high-value objects to the value of locally clustered objects, resulting in an impaired memory for the value of high-valued objects. Our results are consistent with (a) spatial context helping to bind items together in long-term memory and serve as a basis for generalizing across memories and (b) sleep mediating memory effects on salient/reward-related items. PMID:26373834

Evaluating Statistical Targets for Assembling Parallel Mixed-Format Test Forms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Debeer, Dries; Ali, Usama S.; van Rijn, Peter W.

2017-01-01

Test assembly is the process of selecting items from an item pool to form one or more new test forms. Often new test forms are constructed to be parallel with an existing (or an ideal) test. Within the context of item response theory, the test information function (TIF) or the test characteristic curve (TCC) are commonly used as statistical…

PISA Test Items and School-Based Examinations in Greece: Exploring the Relationship between Global and Local Assessment Discourses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anagnostopoulou, Kyriaki; Hatzinikita, Vassilia; Christidou, Vasilia; Dimopoulos, Kostas

2013-01-01

The paper explores the relationship of the global and the local assessment discourses as expressed by Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test items and school-based examinations, respectively. To this end, the paper compares PISA test items related to living systems and the context of life, health, and environment, with Greek…

Source recognition by stimulus content in the MTL.

PubMed

Park, Heekyeong; Abellanoza, Cheryl; Schaeffer, James; Gandy, Kellen

2014-03-17

Source memory is considered to be the cornerstone of episodic memory that enables us to discriminate similar but different events. In the present fMRI study, we investigated whether neural correlates of source retrieval differed by stimulus content in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) when the item and context had been integrated as a perceptually unitized entity. Participants were presented with a list of items either in verbal or pictorial form overlaid on a colored square and instructed to integrate both the item and context into a single image. At test, participants judged the study status of test items and the color in which studied items were presented. Source recognition invariant of stimulus content elicited retrieval activity in both the left anterior hippocampus extending to the perirhinal cortex and the right posterior hippocampus. Word-selective source recognition was related to activity in the left perirhinal cortex, whereas picture-selective source recognition was identified in the left posterior hippocampus. Neural activity sensitive to novelty detection common to both words and pictures was found in the left anterior and right posterior hippocampus. Novelty detection selective to words was associated with the left perirhinal cortex, while activity sensitive to new pictures was identified in the bilateral hippocampus and adjacent MTL cortices, including the parahippocampal, entorhinal, and perirhinal cortices. These findings provide further support for the integral role of the hippocampus both in source recognition and in detection of new stimuli across stimulus content. Additionally, novelty effects in the MTL reveal the integral role of the MTL cortex as the interface for processing new information. Collectively, the present findings demonstrate the importance of the MTL for both previously experienced and novel events. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Medial Prefrontal Cortex: Adding Value to Imagined Scenarios

PubMed Central

Lin, Wen-Jing; Horner, Aidan J.; Bisby, James A.; Burgess, Neil

2016-01-01

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is consistently implicated in the network supporting autobiographical memory. Whereas more posterior regions in this network have been related to specific processes, such as the generation of visuospatial imagery or the association of items and contexts, the functional contribution of the mPFC remains unclear. However, the involvement of mPFC in estimation of value during decision-making suggests that it might play a similar role in memory. We investigated whether mPFC activity reflects the subjective value of elements in imagined scenarios. Participants in an MRI scanner imagined scenarios comprising a spatial context, a physiological state of need (e.g., thirst), and two items that could be congruent (e.g., drink) or incongruent (e.g., food) with the state of need. Memory for the scenarios was tested outside the scanner. Our manipulation of subjective value by imagined need was verified by increased subjective ratings of value for congruent items and improved subsequent memory for them. Consistent with our hypothesis, fMRI signal in mPFC reflected the modulation of an item’s subjective value by the imagined physiological state, suggesting the mPFC selectively tracked subjective value within our imagination paradigm. Further analyses showed uncorrected effects in non-mPFC regions, including increased activity in the insula when imagining states of need, the caudate nucleus when imagining congruent items, and the anterior hippocampus/amygdala when imagining subsequently remembered items. We therefore provide evidence that the mPFC plays a role in constructing the subjective value of the components of imagined scenarios and thus potentially in reconstructing the value of components of autobiographical recollection. PMID:26042501

Rehearsal dynamics in elementary school children.

PubMed

Lehmann, Martin; Hasselhorn, Marcus

2012-03-01

Several studies on free recall suggest that processes responsible for recall are analogous to processes responsible for rehearsal. In children, the relationship between cumulative rehearsal and recall performance has been proven to be critical; however, the locus of the effect of rehearsal is not yet fully understood. To unfold the mechanisms that come into play in an overt rehearsal free recall task, we assessed rehearsal and recall sequences in children between 8 and 10 years of age. These sequences give information about the context in which items are repeated and rearranged throughout the list and subsequently recalled. Rehearsal sequences consisted mainly of items from neighboring list positions in their original temporal order. The same characteristics were true for recall sequences. Qualitatively, order effects during study and recall did not differ over age groups. However, in older children who were using cumulative rehearsal more intensively, successive rehearsal and recall of items in their original order was more pronounced. Therefore, we suggest that a main feature of item rehearsal with regard to facilitating recall is the strengthening of interitem associations based on the temporal order within a list and that this characteristic develops with age. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Interactions between spontaneous instantiations to the basic level and post-event suggestions.

PubMed

Pansky, Ainat; Tenenboim, Einat

2011-11-01

Extensive research shows that post-event suggestions can distort the memory for a target event. In this study we examined the effect of such suggestions as they interact with the products of a spontaneous memory process: instantiation of abstract information to an intermediate level of abstractness, the basic level (Pansky & Koriat, 2004 ). Participants read a narrative containing items presented at the superordinate level (e.g., FRUIT), were exposed to suggestions that referred to these items at the basic level (e.g., APPLE), and were finally asked to recall the original items. We found that the tendency to instantiate spontaneously in the control (non-misleading) condition, particularly over time, increased following exposure to suggestions that were likely to coincide with those instantiations. Exposure to such suggestions, either immediately or following a 24-hour delay, reduced subsequent correct recall of the original items only if the suggested information coincided with the information one tends to instantiate spontaneously in a given context. Suggestibility, in this case, was particularly pronounced and phenomenologically compelling in terms of remember/know judgements. The findings are taken to imply that effects of post-event suggestions can be understood in terms of the constructive processes that set the stage for their occurrence.

Delineating the Effect of Semantic Congruency on Episodic Memory: The Role of Integration and Relatedness

PubMed Central

Bein, Oded; Livneh, Neta; Reggev, Niv; Gilead, Michael; Goshen-Gottstein, Yonatan; Maril, Anat

2015-01-01

A fundamental challenge in the study of learning and memory is to understand the role of existing knowledge in the encoding and retrieval of new episodic information. The importance of prior knowledge in memory is demonstrated in the congruency effect—the robust finding wherein participants display better memory for items that are compatible, rather than incompatible, with their pre-existing semantic knowledge. Despite its robustness, the mechanism underlying this effect is not well understood. In four studies, we provide evidence that demonstrates the privileged explanatory power of the elaboration-integration account over alternative hypotheses. Furthermore, we question the implicit assumption that the congruency effect pertains to the truthfulness/sensibility of a subject-predicate proposition, and show that congruency is a function of semantic relatedness between item and context words. PMID:25695759

Just-in-time adaptive disturbance estimation for run-to-run control of photolithography overlay

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Firth, Stacy K.; Campbell, W. J.; Edgar, Thomas F.

2002-07-01

One of the main challenges to implementations of traditional run-to-run control in the semiconductor industry is a high mix of products in a single factory. To address this challenge, Just-in-time Adaptive Disturbance Estimation (JADE) has been developed. JADE uses a recursive weighted least-squares parameters estimation technique to identify the contributions to variation that are dependent on product, as well as the tools on which the lot was processed. As applied to photolithography overlay, JADE assigns these sources of variation to contributions from the context items: tool, product, reference tool, and reference reticle. Simulations demonstrate that JADE effectively identifies disturbances in contributing context items when the variations are known to be additive. The superior performance of JADE over traditional EWMA is also shown in these simulations. The results of application of JADE to data from a high mix production facility show that JADE still performs better than EWMA, even with the challenges of a real manufacturing environment.

What counts? Visual and verbal cues interact to influence what is considered a countable thing.

PubMed

Chesney, Dana L; Gelman, Rochel

2015-07-01

Many famous paintings illustrate variations in what we here dub "referential depth." For example, paintings often include not only portrayals of uniquely referenced items, but also reflections of those items in mirrors or other polished surfaces. If a painting includes both a dancer and that dancer's reflection in a mirror, are there one or two dancers in the painting? Although there are two images of a dancer, both images reference the exact same dancer. Consequently, counting both may seem to violate the constraint against double counting (Gelman & Gallistel, 1978). This illustrates that determining which things "count" in a given context may not be straightforward. Here we used counting tasks paired with illustrations that manipulated referential depth to investigate the conceptual, perceptual, and language variables that may influence whether a "thing" is a "countable thing." Across four experiments, 316 participants counted items in displays that included both foreground items and items placed inside mirrors, picture frames, and windows. Referential depth and frame boundaries both influenced counting: For one thing, participants were more likely to count items contained by windows than by picture frames or mirrors. Moreover, items in mirrors were rarely counted unless they were interpreted as reflections of items "off screen." Also, the items contained inside windows were sometimes (~10% of trials) excluded from the counts, when counting them would require crossing frame boundaries. We concluded that conceptual and perceptual contexts both influence people's decisions about the physical boundaries of the to-be-counted set and which items within these boundaries are countable.

Variation by Gender in Abu Dhabi High School Students' Interests in Physics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Badri, Masood; Mazroui, Karima Al; Al Rashedi, Asma; Yang, Guang

2016-04-01

Abu Dhabi high school students' interest in physics in different contexts was investigated with a survey conducted in connection with the international project, The Relevance of Science Education (ROSE). The sample consisted of 2248 students in public and private schools. Means of most items that belong to the school physics context for both girls and boys were below the score of (3.0). The most interesting topics for both genders were connected with fantasy items. The least interesting items (particularly for girls) were connected with artifacts and technological processes. Girls assigned the highest scores for "why we dream" and "life and death." Boys assigned the highest scores for "inventions and discoveries" and "life outside of earth." The main message of the study is that new curricular approaches and textbooks can be developed through combining technological and human contexts. The implications for curriculum development, teacher professional development programs, and other education strategies in Abu Dhabi are discussed in light of the ROSE survey.

An evaluation of generalization of mands during functional communication training.

PubMed

Falcomata, Terry S; Wacker, David P; Ringdahl, Joel E; Vinquist, Kelly; Dutt, Anuradha

2013-01-01

The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the generalization of mands during functional communication training (FCT) and sign language training across functional contexts (i.e., positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement). A secondary purpose was to evaluate a training procedure based on stimulus control to teach manual signs. During the treatment evaluation, we implemented sign language training in 1 functional context (e.g., positive reinforcement by attention) while continuing the functional analysis conditions in 2 other contexts (e.g., positive reinforcement by tangible item; negative reinforcement by escape). During the generalization evaluation, we tested for the generalization of trained mands across functional contexts (i.e., positive reinforcement; negative reinforcement) by implementing extinction in the 2 nontarget contexts. The results suggested that the stimulus control training procedure effectively taught manual signs and treated destructive behavior. Specific patterns of generalization of trained mands and destructive behavior also were observed. © Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Repetition priming across distinct contexts: effects of lexical status, word frequency, and retrieval test.

PubMed

Coane, Jennifer H; Balota, David A

2010-12-01

Repetition priming, the facilitation observed when a target is preceded by an identity prime, is a robust phenomenon that occurs across a variety of conditions. Oliphant (1983), however, failed to observe repetition priming for targets embedded in the instructions to an experiment in a subsequent lexical decision task. In the present experiments, we examined the roles of priming context (list or instructions), target lexicality, and target frequency in both lexical decision and episodic recognition performance. Initial encoding context did not modulate priming in lexical decision or recognition memory for low-frequency targets or nonwords, whereas context strongly modulated episodic recognition for high-frequency targets. The results indicate that priming across contexts is sensitive to the distinctiveness of the trace and the reliance on episodic retrieval mechanisms. These results also shed light on the influence of event boundaries, such that priming occurs across different events for relatively distinct (low-frequency) items.

Patients' unvoiced agendas in general practice consultations: qualitative study

PubMed Central

Barry, Christine A; Bradley, Colin P; Britten, Nicky; Stevenson, Fiona A; Barber, Nick

2000-01-01

Objective To investigate patients' agendas before consultation and to assess which aspects of agendas are voiced in the consultation and the effects of unvoiced agendas on outcomes. Design Qualitative study. Setting 20 general practices in south east England and the West Midlands. Participants 35 patients consulting 20 general practitioners in appointment and emergency surgeries. Results Patients' agendas are complex and multifarious. Only four of 35 patients voiced all their agendas in consultation. Agenda items most commonly voiced were symptoms and requests for diagnoses and prescriptions. The most common unvoiced agenda items were: worries about possible diagnosis and what the future holds; patients' ideas about what is wrong; side effects; not wanting a prescription; and information relating to social context. Agenda items that were not raised in the consultation often led to specific problem outcomes (for example, major misunderstandings), unwanted prescriptions, non-use of prescriptions, and non-adherence to treatment. In all of the 14 consultations with problem outcomes at least one of the problems was related to an unvoiced agenda item. Conclusion Patients have many needs and when these are not voiced they can not be addressed. Some of the poor outcomes in the case studies were related to unvoiced agenda items. This suggests that when patients and their needs are more fully articulated in the consultation better health care may be effected. Steps should be taken in both daily clinical practice and research to encourage the voicing of patients' agendas. PMID:10797036

Developing an Iranian ELT Context-Specific Grit Instrument.

PubMed

Ebadi, Saman; Weisi, Hiwa; Khaksar, Zahra

2018-03-06

Grit as an interesting and significant topic in psychology has been associated with better study habits and higher grades through perseverance and passion for long term goals. The only available measurement instrument of grit (Duckworth et al. in J Personal Soc Psychol 92:1087-1101, 2007) is general both in terms of its subject matter and context. Thus, this study aims to develop and validate an English as a foreign language (EFL) grit instrument whose items are specific to EFL context to obtain a more detailed view of its components for Iranian EFL learners, and to tap on other grit related factors in the EFL context. A four component model of EFL grit was developed through reviewing the existing literature and exploring EFL experts' perspectives. This tentative theoretical model of EFL grit encompasses overarching construct of effort including the following main components: Trying hard to learn English (THLE) having interest in learning English (ILE) practicing a lot in order to learn English (PLE) and having goal for learning English (HGLE). The model was then cross checked against the results of the interviews, and evolved into a scenario-based, 5 point Likert-scale EFL grit instrument. It was later operationalized by an instrument consisting of 26 items, i.e. 6 items for each component plus 2 items for themes 1 and 3. The piloting and testing of the tentative model through exploratory and confirmatory data analyses on a sample of 306 EFL learners indicated the reliability of 0.833 and an acceptable validity. The findings called for a more meaningful interpretation of the concept of grit in relation to Iranian EFL context and offered new insights for higher education administrators considering student academic performance.

Color and context: an ERP study on intrinsic and extrinsic feature binding in episodic memory.

PubMed

Ecker, Ullrich K H; Zimmer, Hubert D; Groh-Bordin, Christian

2007-09-01

Episodic memory for intrinsic item and extrinsic context information is postulated to rely on two distinct types of representation: object and episodic tokens. These provide the basis for familiarity and recollection, respectively. Electrophysiological indices of these processes (ERP old-new effects) were used together with behavioral data to test these assumptions. We manipulated an intrinsic object feature (color; Experiment 1) and a contextual feature (background; Experiments 1 and 2). In an inclusion task (Experiment 1), the study-test manipulation of color affected object recognition performance and modulated ERP old-new effects associated with both familiarity and recollection. In contrast, a contextual manipulation had no effect, although both intrinsic and extrinsic information was available in a direct feature (source memory) test. When made task relevant (exclusion task; Experiment 2), however, context affected the ERP recollection effect, while still leaving the ERP familiarity effect uninfluenced. We conclude that intrinsic features bound in object tokens are involuntarily processed during object recognition, thus influencing familiarity, whereas context features bound in episodic tokens are voluntarily accessed, exclusively influencing recollection. Figures depicting all the electrodes analyzed are available in an online supplement at www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Automatic Generation of Rasch-Calibrated Items: Figural Matrices Test GEOM and Endless-Loops Test EC

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arendasy, Martin

2005-01-01

The future of test construction for certain psychological ability domains that can be analyzed well in a structured manner may lie--at the very least for reasons of test security--in the field of automatic item generation. In this context, a question that has not been explicitly addressed is whether it is possible to embed an item response theory…

Using EEG and stimulus context to probe the modelling of auditory-visual speech.

PubMed

Paris, Tim; Kim, Jeesun; Davis, Chris

2016-02-01

We investigated whether internal models of the relationship between lip movements and corresponding speech sounds [Auditory-Visual (AV) speech] could be updated via experience. AV associations were indexed by early and late event related potentials (ERPs) and by oscillatory power and phase locking. Different AV experience was produced via a context manipulation. Participants were presented with valid (the conventional pairing) and invalid AV speech items in either a 'reliable' context (80% AVvalid items) or an 'unreliable' context (80% AVinvalid items). The results showed that for the reliable context, there was N1 facilitation for AV compared to auditory only speech. This N1 facilitation was not affected by AV validity. Later ERPs showed a difference in amplitude between valid and invalid AV speech and there was significant enhancement of power for valid versus invalid AV speech. These response patterns did not change over the context manipulation, suggesting that the internal models of AV speech were not updated by experience. The results also showed that the facilitation of N1 responses did not vary as a function of the salience of visual speech (as previously reported); in post-hoc analyses, it appeared instead that N1 facilitation varied according to the relative time of the acoustic onset, suggesting for AV events N1 may be more sensitive to the relationship of AV timing than form. Crown Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Normalized value coding explains dynamic adaptation in the human valuation process.

PubMed

Khaw, Mel W; Glimcher, Paul W; Louie, Kenway

2017-11-28

The notion of subjective value is central to choice theories in ecology, economics, and psychology, serving as an integrated decision variable by which options are compared. Subjective value is often assumed to be an absolute quantity, determined in a static manner by the properties of an individual option. Recent neurobiological studies, however, have shown that neural value coding dynamically adapts to the statistics of the recent reward environment, introducing an intrinsic temporal context dependence into the neural representation of value. Whether valuation exhibits this kind of dynamic adaptation at the behavioral level is unknown. Here, we show that the valuation process in human subjects adapts to the history of previous values, with current valuations varying inversely with the average value of recently observed items. The dynamics of this adaptive valuation are captured by divisive normalization, linking these temporal context effects to spatial context effects in decision making as well as spatial and temporal context effects in perception. These findings suggest that adaptation is a universal feature of neural information processing and offer a unifying explanation for contextual phenomena in fields ranging from visual psychophysics to economic choice.

Effect of Processing and Subsequent Storage on Nutrition

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Perchonok, Michele; Lai, Oiki Sylvia

2008-01-01

The objective of this research is to determine the effects of thermal processing, freeze drying, irradiation, and storage time on the nutritional content of food, to evaluate the nutritional content of the food items currently used on the International Space Station and Shuttle, and to establish the need to institute countermeasures. (This study does not seek to address the effect of processing on nutrients in detail, but rather aims to place in context the overall nutritional status at the time of consumption).

Teaching New Words to Children with Poor Existing Vocabulary Knowledge: A Controlled Evaluation of the Definition and Context Methods

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nash, Hannah; Snowling, Margaret

2006-01-01

Background: Children who have poor vocabulary knowledge are at risk of wider language weaknesses and reading comprehension difficulties, which will impact upon their educational achievement. The central question addressed in this paper is how best to teach new vocabulary items to these children. Aims: To investigate the effects of two different…

Surveying for "artifacts": the susceptibility of the OCB-performance evaluation relationship to common rater, item, and measurement context effects.

PubMed

Podsakoff, Nathan P; Whiting, Steven W; Welsh, David T; Mai, Ke Michael

2013-09-01

Despite the increased attention paid to biases attributable to common method variance (CMV) over the past 50 years, researchers have only recently begun to systematically examine the effect of specific sources of CMV in previously published empirical studies. Our study contributes to this research by examining the extent to which common rater, item, and measurement context characteristics bias the relationships between organizational citizenship behaviors and performance evaluations using a mixed-effects analytic technique. Results from 173 correlations reported in 81 empirical studies (N = 31,146) indicate that even after controlling for study-level factors, common rater and anchor point number similarity substantially biased the focal correlations. Indeed, these sources of CMV (a) led to estimates that were between 60% and 96% larger when comparing measures obtained from a common rater, versus different raters; (b) led to 39% larger estimates when a common source rated the scales using the same number, versus a different number, of anchor points; and (c) when taken together with other study-level predictors, accounted for over half of the between-study variance in the focal correlations. We discuss the implications for researchers and practitioners and provide recommendations for future research. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved

Addressing the targeting range of the ABILHAND-56 in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: A mixed methods psychometric study.

PubMed

Cleanthous, Sophie; Strzok, Sara; Pompilus, Farrah; Cano, Stefan; Marquis, Patrick; Cohan, Stanley; Goldman, Myla D; Kresa-Reahl, Kiren; Petrillo, Jennifer; Castrillo-Viguera, Carmen; Cadavid, Diego; Chen, Shih-Yin

2018-01-01

ABILHAND, a manual ability patient-reported outcome instrument originally developed for stroke patients, has been used in multiple sclerosis clinical trials; however, psychometric analyses indicated the measure's limited measurement range and precision in higher-functioning multiple sclerosis patients. The purpose of this study was to identify candidate items to expand the measurement range of the ABILHAND-56, thus improving its ability to detect differences in manual ability in higher-functioning multiple sclerosis patients. A step-wise mixed methods design strategy was used, comprising two waves of patient interviews, a combination of qualitative (concept elicitation and cognitive debriefing) and quantitative (Rasch measurement theory) analytic techniques, and consultation interviews with three clinical neurologists specializing in multiple sclerosis. Original ABILHAND was well understood in this context of use. Eighty-two new manual ability concepts were identified. Draft supplementary items were generated and refined with patient and neurologist input. Rasch measurement theory psychometric analysis indicated supplementary items improved targeting to higher-functioning multiple sclerosis patients and measurement precision. The final pool of Early Multiple Sclerosis Manual Ability items comprises 20 items. The synthesis of qualitative and quantitative methods used in this study improves the ABILHAND content validity to more effectively identify manual ability changes in early multiple sclerosis and potentially help determine treatment effect in higher-functioning patients in clinical trials.

Electrophysiological evidence for flexible goal-directed cue processing during episodic retrieval.

PubMed

Herron, Jane E; Evans, Lisa H; Wilding, Edward L

2016-05-15

A widely held assumption is that memory retrieval is aided by cognitive control processes that are engaged flexibly in service of memory retrieval and memory decisions. While there is some empirical support for this view, a notable exception is the absence of evidence for the flexible use of retrieval control in functional neuroimaging experiments requiring frequent switches between tasks with different cognitive demands. This absence is troublesome in so far as frequent switches between tasks mimic some of the challenges that are typically placed on memory outside the laboratory. In this experiment we instructed participants to alternate frequently between three episodic memory tasks requiring item recognition or retrieval of one of two different kinds of contextual information encoded in a prior study phase (screen location or encoding task). Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by unstudied items in the two tasks requiring retrieval of study context were reliably different, demonstrating for the first time that ERPs index task-specific processing of retrieval cues when retrieval goals change frequently. The inclusion of the item recognition task was a novel and important addition in this study, because only the ERPs elicited by unstudied items in one of the two context conditions diverged from those in the item recognition condition. This outcome constrains functional interpretations of the differences that emerged between the two context conditions and emphasises the utility of this baseline in functional imaging studies of retrieval processing operations. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Electrophysiological evidence for flexible goal-directed cue processing during episodic retrieval

PubMed Central

Herron, Jane E.; Evans, Lisa H.; Wilding, Edward L.

2016-01-01

A widely held assumption is that memory retrieval is aided by cognitive control processes that are engaged flexibly in service of memory retrieval and memory decisions. While there is some empirical support for this view, a notable exception is the absence of evidence for the flexible use of retrieval control in functional neuroimaging experiments requiring frequent switches between tasks with different cognitive demands. This absence is troublesome in so far as frequent switches between tasks mimic some of the challenges that are typically placed on memory outside the laboratory. In this experiment we instructed participants to alternate frequently between three episodic memory tasks requiring item recognition or retrieval of one of two different kinds of contextual information encoded in a prior study phase (screen location or encoding task). Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by unstudied items in the two tasks requiring retrieval of study context were reliably different, demonstrating for the first time that ERPs index task-specific processing of retrieval cues when retrieval goals change frequently. The inclusion of the item recognition task was a novel and important addition in this study, because only the ERPs elicited by unstudied items in one of the two context conditions diverged from those in the item recognition condition. This outcome constrains functional interpretations of the differences that emerged between the two context conditions and emphasises the utility of this baseline in functional imaging studies of retrieval processing operations. PMID:26892854

Development of the Contextual Assessment of Social Skills (CASS): a role play measure of social skill for individuals with high-functioning autism.

PubMed

Ratto, Allison B; Turner-Brown, Lauren; Rupp, Betty M; Mesibov, Gary B; Penn, David L

2011-09-01

This study piloted a role play assessment of conversational skills for adolescents and young adults with high-functioning autism/Asperger syndrome (HFA/AS). Participants completed two semi-structured role plays, in which social context was manipulated by changing the confederate's level of interest in the conversation. Participants' social behavior was rated via a behavioral coding system, and performance was compared across contexts and groups. An interaction effect was found for several items, whereby control participants showed significant change across context, while participants with HFA/AS showed little or no change. Total change across contexts was significantly correlated with related social constructs and significantly predicted ASD. The findings are discussed in terms of the potential utility of the CASS in the evaluation of social skill.

Encoding context and false recognition memories.

PubMed

Bruce, Darryl; Phillips-Grant, Kimberly; Conrad, Nicole; Bona, Susan

2004-09-01

False recognition of an extralist word that is thematically related to all words of a study list may reflect internal activation of the theme word during encoding followed by impaired source monitoring at retrieval, that is, difficulty in determining whether the word had actually been experienced or merely thought of. To assist source monitoring, distinctive visual or verbal contexts were added to study words at input. Both types of context produced similar effects: False alarms to theme-word (critical) lures were reduced; remember judgements of critical lures called old were lower; and if contextual information had been added to lists, subjects indicated as much for list items and associated critical foils identified as old. The visual and verbal contexts used in the present studies were held to disrupt semantic categorisation of list words at input and to facilitate source monitoring at output.

Cross-cultural differences in item and background memory: examining the influence of emotional intensity and scene congruency.

PubMed

Mickley Steinmetz, Katherine R; Sturkie, Charlee M; Rochester, Nina M; Liu, Xiaodong; Gutchess, Angela H

2018-07-01

After viewing a scene, individuals differ in what they prioritise and remember. Culture may be one factor that influences scene memory, as Westerners have been shown to be more item-focused than Easterners (see Masuda, T., & Nisbett, R. E. (2001). Attending holistically versus analytically: Comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 922-934). However, cultures may differ in their sensitivity to scene incongruences and emotion processing, which may account for cross-cultural differences in scene memory. The current study uses hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to examine scene memory while controlling for scene congruency and the perceived emotional intensity of the images. American and East Asian participants encoded pictures that included a positive, negative, or neutral item placed on a neutral background. After a 20-min delay, participants were shown the item and background separately along with similar and new items and backgrounds to assess memory specificity. Results indicated that even when congruency and emotional intensity were controlled, there was evidence that Americans had better item memory than East Asians. Incongruent scenes were better remembered than congruent scenes. However, this effect did not differ by culture. This suggests that Americans' item focus may result in memory changes that are robust despite variations in scene congruency and perceived emotion.

Pedagogy of Science Teaching Tests: Formative assessments of science teaching orientations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cobern, William W.; Schuster, David; Adams, Betty; Skjold, Brandy Ann; Zeynep Muğaloğlu, Ebru; Bentz, Amy; Sparks, Kelly

2014-09-01

A critical aspect of teacher education is gaining pedagogical content knowledge of how to teach science for conceptual understanding. Given the time limitations of college methods courses, it is difficult to touch on more than a fraction of the science topics potentially taught across grades K-8, particularly in the context of relevant pedagogies. This research and development work centers on constructing a formative assessment resource to help expose pre-service teachers to a greater number of science topics within teaching episodes using various modes of instruction. To this end, 100 problem-based, science pedagogy assessment items were developed via expert group discussions and pilot testing. Each item contains a classroom vignette followed by response choices carefully crafted to include four basic pedagogies (didactic direct, active direct, guided inquiry, and open inquiry). The brief but numerous items allow a substantial increase in the number of science topics that pre-service students may consider. The intention is that students and teachers will be able to share and discuss particular responses to individual items, or else record their responses to collections of items and thereby create a snapshot profile of their teaching orientations. Subsets of items were piloted with students in pre-service science methods courses, and the quantitative results of student responses were spread sufficiently to suggest that the items can be effective for their intended purpose.

ERP Subsequent Memory Effects Differ between Inter-Item and Unitization Encoding Tasks.

PubMed

Kamp, Siri-Maria; Bader, Regine; Mecklinger, Axel

2017-01-01

The "subsequent memory paradigm" is an analysis tool to identify brain activity elicited during episodic encoding that is associated with successful subsequent retrieval. Two commonly observed event-related potential "subsequent memory effects" (SMEs) are the parietal SME in the P300 time window and the frontal slow wave SME, but to date a clear characterization of the circumstances under which each SME is observed is missing. To test the hypothesis that the parietal SME occurs when aspects of an experience are unitized into a single item representation, while inter-item associative encoding is reflected in the frontal slow wave effect, participants were assigned to one of two conditions that emphasized one of the encoding types under otherwise matched study phases of a recognition memory experiment. Word pairs were presented either in the context of a definition that allowed to combine the word pairs into a new concept (unitization or item encoding) or together with a sentence frame (inter-item encoding). Performance on the recognition test did not differ between the groups. The parietal SME was only found in the definition group, supporting the idea that this SME occurs when the components of an association are integrated in a unitized item representation. An early prefrontal negativity also exhibited an SME only in this group, suggesting that the formation of novel units occurs through interactions of multiple brain areas. The frontal slow wave SME was pronounced in both groups and may thus reflect processes generally involved in encoding of associations. Our results provide evidence for a partial dissociation of the eliciting conditions of the two types of SMEs and therefore provide a tool for future studies to characterize the different types of episodic encoding.

Defining Malaysian Knowledge Society: Results from the Delphi Technique

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hamid, Norsiah Abdul; Zaman, Halimah Badioze

This paper outlines the findings of research where the central idea is to define the term Knowledge Society (KS) in Malaysian context. The research focuses on three important dimensions, namely knowledge, ICT and human capital. This study adopts a modified Delphi technique to seek the important dimensions that can contribute to the development of Malaysian's KS. The Delphi technique involved ten experts in a five-round iterative and controlled feedback procedure to obtain consensus on the important dimensions and to verify the proposed definition of KS. The finding shows that all three dimensions proposed initially scored high and moderate consensus. Round One (R1) proposed an initial definition of KS and required comments and inputs from the panel. These inputs were then used to develop items for a R2 questionnaire. In R2, 56 out of 73 items scored high consensus and in R3, 63 out of 90 items scored high. R4 was conducted to re-rate the new items, in which 8 out of 17 items scored high. Other items scored moderate consensus and no item scored low or no consensus in all rounds. The final round (R5) was employed to verify the final definition of KS. Findings and discovery of this study are significant to the definition of KS and the development of a framework in the Malaysian context.

A Comparison of Three Polytomous Item Response Theory Models in the Context of Testlet Scoring.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cook, Karon F.; Dodd, Barbara G.; Fitzpatrick, Steven J.

1999-01-01

The partial-credit model, the generalized partial-credit model, and the graded-response model were compared in the context of testlet scoring using Scholastic Assessment Tests results (n=2,548) and a simulated data set. Results favor the partial-credit model in this context; considerations for model selection in other contexts are discussed. (SLD)

The influence of motivating operations on generalization probes of specific mands by children with autism.

PubMed

Fragale, Christina L; O'Reilly, Mark F; Aguilar, Jeannie; Pierce, Nigel; Lang, Russell; Sigafoos, Jeff; Lancioni, Giulio

2012-01-01

We investigated the influence of motivating operations on the generalization of newly taught mands across settings and communication partners for 3 children with autism. Two conditions were implemented prior to generalization probes. In the first condition, participants were given access to a preferred item until they rejected the item (i.e., abolishing operation). In the second condition, the item was not available to participants prior to generalization probes (i.e., establishing operation). The effects of these conditions on the generalization of newly taught mands were evaluated in a multielement design. Results indicated differentiated responding during generalization probes in which more manding with the target mand was observed following the presession no-access condition than in the presession access condition. These results support the consideration of motivating operations when assessing generalization of target mands to various untrained contexts.

Scale Refinement and Initial Evaluation of a Behavioral Health Function Measurement Tool for Work Disability Evaluation

PubMed Central

Marfeo, Elizabeth E.; Ni, Pengsheng; Bogusz, Kara; Meterko, Mark; McDonough, Christine M.; Chan, Leighton; Rasch, Elizabeth K.; Brandt, Diane E.; Jette, Alan M.

2014-01-01

Objectives To use item response theory (IRT) data simulations to construct and perform initial psychometric testing of a newly developed instrument, the Social Security Administration Behavioral Health Function (SSA-BH) instrument, that aims to assess behavioral health functioning relevant to the context of work. Design Cross-sectional survey followed by item response theory (IRT) calibration data simulations Setting Community Participants A sample of individuals applying for SSA disability benefits, claimants (N=1015), and a normative comparative sample of US adults (N=1000) Interventions None. Main Outcome Measure Social Security Administration Behavioral Health Function (SSA-BH) measurement instrument Results Item response theory analyses supported the unidimensionality of four SSA-BH scales: Mood and Emotions (35 items), Self-Efficacy (23 items), Social Interactions (6 items), and Behavioral Control (15 items). All SSA-BH scales demonstrated strong psychometric properties including reliability, accuracy, and breadth of coverage. High correlations of the simulated 5- or 10- item CATs with the full item bank indicated robust ability of the CAT approach to comprehensively characterize behavioral health function along four distinct dimensions. Conclusions Initial testing and evaluation of the SSA-BH instrument demonstrated good accuracy, reliability, and content coverage along all four scales. Behavioral function profiles of SSA claimants were generated and compared to age and sex matched norms along four scales: Mood and Emotions, Behavioral Control, Social Interactions, and Self-Efficacy. Utilizing the CAT based approach offers the ability to collect standardized, comprehensive functional information about claimants in an efficient way, which may prove useful in the context of the SSA’s work disability programs. PMID:23542404

Toward a Unified Theory of Context Dependence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hanna, Gerald S.; Oaster, Thomas R.

1978-01-01

Traces a major source of confusion in the literature on passage dependence and integrates the relevant concepts into a general theory of context dependence. Sample items and data illustrate practical applications of the theory. (AA)

A benefit of context reinstatement to recognition memory in aging: the role of familiarity processes.

PubMed

Ward, Emma V; Maylor, Elizabeth A; Poirier, Marie; Korko, Malgorzata; Ruud, Jens C M

2017-11-01

Reinstatement of encoding context facilitates memory for targets in young and older individuals (e.g., a word studied on a particular background scene is more likely to be remembered later if it is presented on the same rather than a different scene or no scene), yet older adults are typically inferior at recalling and recognizing target-context pairings. This study examined the mechanisms of the context effect in normal aging. Age differences in word recognition by context condition (original, switched, none, new), and the ability to explicitly remember target-context pairings were investigated using word-scene pairs (Experiment 1) and word-word pairs (Experiment 2). Both age groups benefited from context reinstatement in item recognition, although older adults were significantly worse than young adults at identifying original pairings and at discriminating between original and switched pairings. In Experiment 3, participants were given a three-alternative forced-choice recognition task that allowed older individuals to draw upon intact familiarity processes in selecting original pairings. Performance was age equivalent. Findings suggest that heightened familiarity associated with context reinstatement is useful for boosting recognition memory in aging.

Recommended core items to assess e-cigarette use in population-based surveys.

PubMed

Pearson, Jennifer L; Hitchman, Sara C; Brose, Leonie S; Bauld, Linda; Glasser, Allison M; Villanti, Andrea C; McNeill, Ann; Abrams, David B; Cohen, Joanna E

2018-05-01

A consistent approach using standardised items to assess e-cigarette use in both youth and adult populations will aid cross-survey and cross-national comparisons of the effect of e-cigarette (and tobacco) policies and improve our understanding of the population health impact of e-cigarette use. Focusing on adult behaviour, we propose a set of e-cigarette use items, discuss their utility and potential adaptation, and highlight e-cigarette constructs that researchers should avoid without further item development. Reliable and valid items will strengthen the emerging science and inform knowledge synthesis for policy-making. Building on informal discussions at a series of international meetings of 65 experts from 15 countries, the authors provide recommendations for assessing e-cigarette use behaviour, relative perceived harm, device type, presence of nicotine, flavours and reasons for use. We recommend items assessing eight core constructs: e-cigarette ever use, frequency of use and former daily use; relative perceived harm; device type; primary flavour preference; presence of nicotine; and primary reason for use. These items should be standardised or minimally adapted for the policy context and target population. Researchers should be prepared to update items as e-cigarette device characteristics change. A minimum set of e-cigarette items is proposed to encourage consensus around items to allow for cross-survey and cross-jurisdictional comparisons of e-cigarette use behaviour. These proposed items are a starting point. We recognise room for continued improvement, and welcome input from e-cigarette users and scientific colleagues. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

Prototypicality in Sentence Production

PubMed Central

Onishi, Kristine H.; Murphy, Gregory L.; Bock, Kathryn

2008-01-01

Three cued-recall experiments examined the effect of category typicality on the ordering of words in sentence production. Past research has found that typical items tend to be mentioned before atypical items in a phrase—a pattern usually associated with lexical variables (like word frequency), and yet typicality is a conceptual variable. Experiment 1 revealed that an appropriate conceptual framework was necessary to yield the typicality effect. Experiment 2 tested ad-hoc categories that do not have prior representations in long-term memory and yielded no typicality effect. Experiment 3 used carefully matched sentences in which two category members appeared in the same or in different phrases. Typicality affected word order only when the two words appeared in the same phrase. These results are consistent with an account in which typicality has its origin in conceptual structure, which leads to differences in lexical accessibility in appropriate contexts. PMID:17631877

Optimising self-regulated study: the benefits - and costs - of dropping flashcards.

PubMed

Kornell, Nate; Bjork, Robert A

2008-02-01

Self-regulation of study activities is a constant in the lives of students - who must decide what to study, when to study, how long to study, and by what method to study. We investigated self-regulation in the context of a common study method: flashcards. In four experiments we examined the basis and effectiveness of a metacognitive strategy adopted almost universally by students: setting aside (dropping) items they think they know. Dropping has a compelling logic - it creates additional opportunities to study undropped items - but it rests on two shaky foundations: students' metacognitive monitoring and the value they assign to further study. In fact, being allowed to drop flashcards had small but consistently negative effects on learning. The results suggest that the effectiveness of self-regulated study depends on both the accuracy of metacognitive monitoring and the learner's understanding, or lack thereof, of how people learn.

Retrieval induces forgetting, but only when nontested items compete for retrieval: Implication for interference, inhibition, and context reinstatement.

PubMed

Chan, Jason C K; Erdman, Matthew R; Davis, Sara D

2015-09-01

The mechanism responsible for retrieval-induced forgetting has been the subject of rigorous theoretical debate, with some researchers postulating that retrieval-induced forgetting can be explained by interference (J. G .W. Raaijmakers & E. Jakab, 2013) or context reinstatement (T. R. Jonker, P. Seli, & C. M. MacLeod, 2013), whereas others claim that retrieval-induced forgetting is better explained by inhibition (M. C. Anderson, 2003). A fundamental assumption of the inhibition account is that nonpracticed items are suppressed because they compete for retrieval during initial testing. In the current study, we manipulated competition in a novel interpolated testing paradigm by having subjects learn the nonpracticed items either before (high-competition condition) or after (low-competition condition) they practiced retrieval of the target items. We found retrieval-induced forgetting for the nonpracticed competitors only when they were studied before retrieval practice. This result provides support for a critical assumption of the inhibition account. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

The Psychometric Properties of Classroom Response System Data: A Case Study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kortemeyer, Gerd

2016-08-01

Classroom response systems (often referred to as "clickers") have slowly gained adoption over the recent decade; however, critics frequently doubt their pedagogical value starting with the validity of the gathered responses: There is concern that students simply "click" random answers. This case study looks at different measures of response reliability, starting from a global look at correlations between formative clicker responses and summative examination performance to how clicker questions are used in context. It was found that clicker performance is a moderate indicator of course performance as a whole, and that while the psychometric properties of clicker items are more erratic than those of examination data, they still have acceptable internal consistency and include items with high discrimination. It was also found that clicker responses and item properties do provide highly meaningful feedback within a lecture context, i.e., when their position and function within lecture sessions are taken into consideration. Within this framework, conceptual questions provide measurably more meaningful feedback than items that require calculations.

Predicting the decision to pursue mediation in civil disputes: a hierarchical classes analysis.

PubMed

Reich, Warren A; Kressel, Kenneth; Scanlon, Kathleen M; Weiner, Gary A

2007-11-01

Clients (N = 185) involved in civil court cases completed the CPR Institute's Mediation Screen, which is designed to assist in making a decision about pursuing mediation. The authors modeled data using hierarchical classes analysis (HICLAS), a clustering algorithm that places clients into 1 set of classes and CPRMS items into another set of classes. HICLAS then links the sets of classes so that any class of clients can be identified in terms of the classes of items they endorsed. HICLAS-derived item classes reflected 2 underlying themes: (a) suitability of the dispute for a problem-solving process and (b) potential benefits of mediation. All clients who perceived that mediation would be beneficial also believed that the context of their conflict was favorable to mediation; however, not all clients who saw a favorable context believed they would benefit from mediation. The majority of clients who agreed to pursue mediation endorsed items reflecting both contextual suitability and perceived benefits of mediation.

Neural correlates of economic value and valuation context: an event-related potential study.

PubMed

Tyson-Carr, John; Kokmotou, Katerina; Soto, Vicente; Cook, Stephanie; Fallon, Nicholas; Giesbrecht, Timo; Stancak, Andrej

2018-05-01

The value of environmental cues and internal states is continuously evaluated by the human brain, and it is this subjective value that largely guides decision making. The present study aimed to investigate the initial value attribution process, specifically the spatiotemporal activation patterns associated with values and valuation context, using electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants completed a stimulus rating task in which everyday household items marketed up to a price of £4 were evaluated with respect to their desirability or material properties. The subjective values of items were evaluated as willingness to pay (WTP) in a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak auction. On the basis of the individual's subjective WTP values, the stimuli were divided into high- and low-value items. Source dipole modeling was applied to estimate the cortical sources underlying ERP components modulated by subjective values (high vs. low WTP) and the evaluation condition (value-relevant vs. value-irrelevant judgments). Low-WTP items and value-relevant judgments both led to a more pronounced N2 visual evoked potential at right frontal scalp electrodes. Source activity in right anterior insula and left orbitofrontal cortex was larger for low vs. high WTP at ∼200 ms. At a similar latency, source activity in right anterior insula and right parahippocampal gyrus was larger for value-relevant vs. value-irrelevant judgments. A stronger response for low- than high-value items in anterior insula and orbitofrontal cortex appears to reflect aversion to low-valued item acquisition, which in an auction experiment would be perceived as a relative loss. This initial low-value bias occurs automatically irrespective of the valuation context. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We demonstrate the spatiotemporal characteristics of the brain valuation process using event-related potentials and willingness to pay as a measure of subjective value. The N2 component resolves values of objects with a bias toward low-value items. The value-related changes of the N2 component are part of an automatic valuation process.

Electrophysiological and behavioral measures of the influence of literal and figurative contextual constraints on proverb comprehension.

PubMed

Ferretti, Todd R; Schwint, Christopher A; Katz, Albert N

2007-04-01

Proverbs tend to have meanings that are true both literally and figuratively (i.e., Lightning really doesn't strike the same place twice). Consequently, discourse contexts that invite a literal reading of a proverb should provide more conceptual overlap with the proverb, resulting in more rapid processing, than will contexts biased towards a non-literal reading. Despite this, previous research has failed to find the predicted processing advantage in reading times for familiar proverbs when presented in a literally biasing context. We investigate this issue further by employing both ERP methodology and a self-paced reading task and, second, by creating an item set that controls for problems with items employed in earlier studies. Our results indicate that although people do not take longer to read proverbs in the literally and proverbially biasing contexts, people have less difficulty integrating the statements in literal than figurative contexts, as shown by the ERP data. These differences emerge at the third word of the proverbs.

Development, Awareness and Inductive Selectivity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hayes, Brett K.; Lim, Melissa

2013-01-01

Two studies examined whether adults and children could learn to make context-dependent inferences about novel stimuli and the role of awareness of context cues in such learning. Participants were trained to match probes to targets on the basis of shape or color with the relevant dimension shifting according to item context. A selective induction…

A comparison of the effects of temporary hippocampal lesions on single and dual context versions of the olfactory sequence memory task.

PubMed

Sill, Orriana C; Smith, David M

2012-08-01

In recent years, many animal models of memory have focused on one or more of the various components of episodic memory. For example, the odor sequence memory task requires subjects to remember individual items and events (the odors) and the temporal aspects of the experience (the sequence of odor presentation). The well-known spatial context coding function of the hippocampus, as exemplified by place cell firing, may reflect the "where" component of episodic memory. In the present study, we added a contextual component to the odor sequence memory task by training rats to choose the earlier odor in one context and the later odor in another context and we compared the effects of temporary hippocampal lesions on performance of the original single context task and the new dual context task. Temporary lesions significantly impaired the single context task, although performance remained significantly above chance levels. In contrast, performance dropped all the way to chance when temporary lesions were used in the dual context task. These results demonstrate that rats can learn a dual context version of the odor sequence learning task that requires the use of contextual information along with the requirement to remember the "what" and "when" components of the odor sequence. Moreover, the addition of the contextual component made the task fully dependent on the hippocampus.

Dissociating the contributions of slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep to emotional item and source memory.

PubMed

Groch, S; Zinke, K; Wilhelm, I; Born, J

2015-07-01

Sleep benefits the consolidation of emotional memories, and this influence is commonly attributed to the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep. However, the contributions of sleep stages to memory for an emotional episode may differ for the event per se (i.e., item memory), and the context in which it occurred (source memory). Here, we examined the effects of slow wave sleep (SWS) and REM sleep on the consolidation of emotionally negative and neutral item (picture recognition) and source memory (recall of picture-location and picture-frame color association) in humans. In Study 1, the participants (n=18) learned 48 negative and 48 neutral pictures which were presented at specific locations and preceded by colored frames that had to be associated with the picture. In a within-subject design, learning was either followed by a 3-h early-night SWS-rich or by a late-night REM sleep-rich retention interval, then retrieval was tested. Only after REM-rich sleep, and not after SWS-rich sleep, was there a significant emotional enhancement, i.e., a significantly superior retention of emotional over neutral pictures. On the other hand, after SWS-rich sleep the retention of picture-frame color associations was better than after REM-rich sleep. However, this benefit was observed only for neutral pictures; and it was completely absent for the emotional pictures. To examine whether this absent benefit reflected a suppressive effect of emotionality on associations of minor task relevance, in Study 2 we manipulated the relevance of the picture-frame color association by combining it with information about monetary reward, following otherwise comparable procedures. Here, rewarded picture-frame color associations were equally well retained over SWS-rich early sleep no matter if the frames were associated with emotional or neutral pictures. Results are consistent with the view that REM sleep favors the emotional enhancement of item memory whereas SWS appears to contribute primarily to the consolidation of context-color information associated with the item. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Development and psychometric testing of a scale assessing the sharing of medical information and interprofessional communication: the CSI scale

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Interprofessional collaboration is essential in creating a safer patient environment. It includes the need to develop communication and coordination between professionals, implying a better sharing of medical information. Several questionnaires exist in the literature, but none of them have been developed in the French context. The objective was to develop and test the psychometric properties of the communication and sharing information (CSI) scale which assesses specifically interprofessional communication, especially the sharing of medical information and the effectiveness of communication between members of the team. Methods The questionnaire construction process used a literature review and involved a panel of voluntary professionals. A list of 32 items explored the quality of shared information delivered to patients and the effectiveness of interprofessional communication. The study was conducted in 16 voluntary units in a University Hospital (France), which included medical, surgical, obstetrics, intensive care, pediatrics, oncology and rehabilitation care. The scale-development process comprised an exploratory principal component analysis, Cronbach’s α-coefficients and structural equation modeling (SEM). Results From these 16 units, a total of 503 health professionals took part in the study. Among them, 23.9% were physicians (n = 120), 43.9% nurses (n = 221) and 32.2% nurse assistants (n = 162). The validated questionnaire comprised 13 items and 3 dimensions relative to “the sharing of medical information” (5 items), “communication between physicians” (4 items) and “communication between nurses and nurse assistants” (4 items). The 3 dimensions accounted for 63.7% of the variance of the final questionnaire. Their respective Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were 0.80, 0.87 and 0.81. SEM confirmed the existence of the 3 latent dimensions but the best characteristics were obtained with a hierarchical model including the three latent factors and a global “communication between healthcare professionals” latent factor, bringing the 8 items linked to communication together. All the structural coefficients were highly significant (P < 0.001). Conclusions This self-perception CSI scale assessing several facets of interprofessional communication is the first one developed in the French context. The development study exhibited excellent psychometric properties. Further psychometric analysis is needed to establish test-retest reliability, sensibility to change and concurrent validity. PMID:24625318

Contextual Variability in Free Recall

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lohnas, Lynn J.; Polyn, Sean M.; Kahana, Michael J.

2011-01-01

According to contextual-variability theory, experiences encoded at different times tend to be associated with different contextual states. The gradual evolution of context implies that spaced items will be associated with more distinct contextual states, and thus have more unique retrieval cues, than items presented in proximity. Ross and Landauer…

Describing the Situational Contexts of Sweetened Product Consumption in a Middle Eastern Canadian Community: Application of a Mixed Method Design

PubMed Central

Moubarac, Jean-Claude; Cargo, Margaret; Receveur, Olivier; Daniel, Mark

2012-01-01

Little is known about the situational contexts in which individuals consume processed sources of dietary sugars. This study aimed to describe the situational contexts associated with the consumption of sweetened food and drink products in a Catholic Middle Eastern Canadian community. A two-stage exploratory sequential mixed-method design was employed with a rationale of triangulation. In stage 1 (n = 62), items and themes describing the situational contexts of sweetened food and drink product consumption were identified from semi-structured interviews and were used to develop the content for the Situational Context Instrument for Sweetened Product Consumption (SCISPC). Face validity, readability and cultural relevance of the instrument were assessed. In stage 2 (n = 192), a cross-sectional study was conducted and exploratory factor analysis was used to examine the structure of themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis as a means of furthering construct validation. The SCISPC reliability and predictive validity on the daily consumption of sweetened products were also assessed. In stage 1, six themes and 40-items describing the situational contexts of sweetened product consumption emerged from the qualitative analysis and were used to construct the first draft of the SCISPC. In stage 2, factor analysis enabled the clarification and/or expansion of the instrument's initial thematic structure. The revised SCISPC has seven factors and 31 items describing the situational contexts of sweetened product consumption. Initial validation of the instrument indicated it has excellent internal consistency and adequate test-retest reliability. Two factors of the SCISPC had predictive validity for the daily consumption of total sugar from sweetened products (Snacking and Energy demands) while the other factors (Socialization, Indulgence, Constraints, Visual Stimuli and Emotional needs) were rather associated to occasional consumption of these products. PMID:23028597

Iranian Effective Clinical Nurse Instructor evaluation tool: Development and psychometric testing

PubMed Central

Shahsavari, Hooman; Yekta, Zohreh Parsa; Zare, Zahra; Sigaroodi, Abdolhossain Emami

2014-01-01

Background: Clinical education is the heart of the nursing education program. Effective nursing clinical instructors are needed for graduating the future qualified nurses. There is a well-developed body of knowledge about the effectiveness of clinical teaching and the instructors. However, translating this knowledge into a context-based evaluation tool for measuring the effectiveness of Iranian clinical nursing instructors remains a deficiency. The purpose of this study is to describe the development and psychometric testing process of an instrument to evaluate the characteristics of Iranian effective clinical nurse instructor. Materials and Methods: Following a precise review of Iranian literatures and expert consultation, 83 statements about the characteristics that make clinical nurse instructors effective were extracted. In the next phase, the psychometric properties of the instrument were established by looking at the content validity, face validity, and internal consistency. Content validity of the instrument was assessed based on the comments of an expert panel including 10 nursing faculty members. During this phase, 30 items of the instrument were omitted or merged. Face validity of the instrument was assured based on the advices of 10 nursing students and 10 nursing faculty members. Finally, in the pilot test, the data of 168 filled questionnaires were gathered and analyzed by an exploratory factor analysis to reduce the items and identify the factor structure of the instrument. Results: Through subsequent analyses, of the 83 items, 31 items were merged or omitted. At last, 52 retained items were divided into four subscales including student-centric behaviors, clinical performances, planning ability, and personality traits. The Cronbach's alpha level of the inventory was 0.96, with the value for each domain ranging from 0.87 to 0.94. Conclusions: Iranian Effective Clinical Nurse Instructor evaluation tool has acceptable psychometric properties and can be used in evaluating the effectiveness of clinical nursing instructors. PMID:24834081

Impaired memory for material related to a problem solved prior to encoding: suppression at learning or interference at recall?

PubMed

Kowalczyk, Marek

2017-07-01

Earlier research by the author revealed that material encoded incidentally in a speeded affective classification task and related to the demands of a divergent problem tends to be recalled worse in participants who solved the problem prior to encoding than in participants in the control, no-problem condition. The aim of the present experiment was to replicate this effect with a new, size-comparison orienting task, and to test for possible mechanisms of impaired recall. Participants either solved a problem before the orienting task or not, and classified each item in this task either once or three times. There was a reliable effect of impaired recall of problem-related items in the repetition condition, but not in the no-repetition condition. Solving the problem did not influence repetition priming for these items. These results support an account that attributes the impaired recall to inhibitory processes at learning and speak against a proactive interference explanation. However, they can be also accommodated by an account that refers to inefficient context cues and competitor interference at retrieval.

Child-rearing in the context of childhood cancer: perspectives of parents and professionals.

PubMed

Long, Kristin A; Keeley, Lauren; Reiter-Purtill, Jennifer; Vannatta, Kathryn; Gerhardt, Cynthia A; Noll, Robert B

2014-02-01

Elevated distress has been well documented among parents of children with cancer. Family systems theories suggest that cancer-related stressors and parental distress have the potential to affect child-rearing practices, but this topic has received limited empirical attention. The present work examined self-reported child-rearing practices among mothers and fathers of children with cancer and matched comparisons. Medical and psychosocial professionals with expertise in pediatric oncology selected items from the Child-Rearing Practices Report (CRPR) likely to differentiate parents of children with cancer from matched comparison parents. Then, responses on these targeted items were compared between parents of children with cancer (94 mothers, 67 fathers) and matched comparisons (98 mothers, 75 fathers). Effect sizes of between-group differences were compared for mothers versus fathers. Pediatric oncology healthcare providers predicted that 14 items would differentiate child-rearing practices of parents of children with cancer from parents of typically developing children. Differences emerged on six of the 14 CRPR items. Parents of children with cancer reported higher levels of spoiling and concern about their child's health and development than comparison parents. Items assessing overprotection and emotional responsiveness did not distinguish the two groups of parents. The effect size for the group difference between mothers in the cancer versus comparison groups was significantly greater than that for fathers on one item related to worry about the child's health. Parents of children with cancer report differences in some, but not all, domains of child-rearing, as predicted by healthcare professionals. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Many Faces of Part-List Cuing—Evidence for the Interplay Between Detrimental and Beneficial Mechanisms

PubMed Central

Lehmer, Eva-Maria; Bäuml, Karl-Heinz T.

2018-01-01

If participants study a list of items and, at test, receive a random selection of the studied items as retrieval cues, then such cuing often impairs recall of the remaining items. This effect, referred to as part-list cuing impairment, is a well-established finding in memory research that, over the years, has been attributed to quite different cognitive mechanisms. Here, we provide a review of more recent developments in research on part-list cuing. These developments (i) suggest a new view on part-list cuing impairment and a critical role of encoding for the effect, (ii) identify conditions in which part-list cuing impairment can turn into part-list cuing facilitation, and (iii) relate research on part-list cuing to a phenomenon from social memory, known as collaborative inhibition. The recent developments also include a new multi-mechanisms account, which attributes the effects of cuing to the interplay between detrimental mechanisms—like blocking, inhibition, or strategy disruption—and beneficial mechanisms—like context reactivation. The account provides a useful theoretical framework to describe both older and newer findings. It may guide future work on part-list cuing and may also motivate new research on collaborative inhibition. PMID:29867667

Sleep-dependent facilitation of episodic memory details.

PubMed

van der Helm, Els; Gujar, Ninad; Nishida, Masaki; Walker, Matthew P

2011-01-01

While a role for sleep in declarative memory processing is established, the qualitative nature of this consolidation benefit, and the physiological mechanisms mediating it, remain debated. Here, we investigate the impact of sleep physiology on characteristics of episodic memory using an item- (memory elements) and context- (contextual details associated with those elements) learning paradigm; the latter being especially dependent on the hippocampus. Following back-to-back encoding of two word lists, each associated with a different context, participants were assigned to either a Nap-group, who obtained a 120-min nap, or a No Nap-group. Six hours post-encoding, participants performed a recognition test involving item-memory and context-memory judgments. In contrast to item-memory, which demonstrated no between-group differences, a significant benefit in context-memory developed in the Nap-group, the extent of which correlated both with the amount of stage-2 NREM sleep and frontal fast sleep-spindles. Furthermore, a difference was observed on the basis of word-list order, with the sleep benefit and associated physiological correlations being selective for the second word-list, learned last (most proximal to sleep). These findings suggest that sleep may preferentially benefit contextual (hippocampal-dependent) aspects of memory, supported by sleep-spindle oscillations, and that the temporal order of initial learning differentially determines subsequent offline consolidation.

The Cultural Context of Career Assessment.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blustein, David L.; Ellis, Michael V.

2000-01-01

Building on social constructivism, culturally affirming career assessment should take a unificationist perspective, which does not assume the validity of tests across cultural contexts. Generalizability and item response theory are better suited than classical test theory to the unificationist perspective. (SK)

Numbers and functional lateralization: A visual half-field and dichotic listening study in proficient bilinguals.

PubMed

Klichowski, Michal; Króliczak, Gregory

2017-06-01

Potential links between language and numbers and the laterality of symbolic number representations in the brain are still debated. Furthermore, reports on bilingual individuals indicate that the language-number interrelationships might be quite complex. Therefore, we carried out a visual half-field (VHF) and dichotic listening (DL) study with action words and different forms of symbolic numbers used as stimuli to test the laterality of word and number processing in single-, dual-language and mixed -task and language- contexts. Experiment 1 (VHF) showed a significant right visual field/left hemispheric advantage in response accuracy for action word, as compared to any form of symbolic number processing. Experiment 2 (DL) revealed a substantially reversed effect - a significant right ear/left hemisphere advantage for arithmetic operations as compared to action word processing, and in response times in single- and dual-language contexts for number vs. action words. All these effects were language independent. Notably, for within-task response accuracy compared across modalities significant differences were found in all studied contexts. Thus, our results go counter to findings showing that action-relevant concepts and words, as well as number words are represented/processed primarily in the left hemisphere. Instead, we found that in the auditory context, following substantial engagement of working memory (here: by arithmetic operations), there is a subsequent functional reorganization of processing single stimuli, whether verbs or numbers. This reorganization - their weakened laterality - at least for response accuracy is not exclusive to processing of numbers, but the number of items to be processed. For response times, except for unpredictable tasks in mixed contexts, the "number problem" is more apparent. These outcomes are highly relevant to difficulties that simultaneous translators encounter when dealing with lengthy auditory material in which single items such as number words (and possibly other types of key words) need to be emphasized. Our results may also shed a new light on the "mathematical savant problem". Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Reliability of Test Scores in Nonparametric Item Response Theory.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sijtsma, Klaas; Molenaar, Ivo W.

1987-01-01

Three methods for estimating reliability are studied within the context of nonparametric item response theory. Two were proposed originally by Mokken and a third is developed in this paper. Using a Monte Carlo strategy, these three estimation methods are compared with four "classical" lower bounds to reliability. (Author/JAZ)

Compound Cuing in Free Recall

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lohnas, Lynn J.; Kahana, Michael J.

2014-01-01

According to the retrieved context theory of episodic memory, the cue for recall of an item is a weighted sum of recently activated cognitive states, including previously recalled and studied items as well as their associations. We show that this theory predicts there should be compound cuing in free recall. Specifically, the temporal contiguity…

Nonspatial Sequence Coding in CA1 Neurons

PubMed Central

Allen, Timothy A.; Salz, Daniel M.; McKenzie, Sam

2016-01-01

The hippocampus is critical to the memory for sequences of events, a defining feature of episodic memory. However, the fundamental neuronal mechanisms underlying this capacity remain elusive. While considerable research indicates hippocampal neurons can represent sequences of locations, direct evidence of coding for the memory of sequential relationships among nonspatial events remains lacking. To address this important issue, we recorded neural activity in CA1 as rats performed a hippocampus-dependent sequence-memory task. Briefly, the task involves the presentation of repeated sequences of odors at a single port and requires rats to identify each item as “in sequence” or “out of sequence”. We report that, while the animals' location and behavior remained constant, hippocampal activity differed depending on the temporal context of items—in this case, whether they were presented in or out of sequence. Some neurons showed this effect across items or sequence positions (general sequence cells), while others exhibited selectivity for specific conjunctions of item and sequence position information (conjunctive sequence cells) or for specific probe types (probe-specific sequence cells). We also found that the temporal context of individual trials could be accurately decoded from the activity of neuronal ensembles, that sequence coding at the single-cell and ensemble level was linked to sequence memory performance, and that slow-gamma oscillations (20–40 Hz) were more strongly modulated by temporal context and performance than theta oscillations (4–12 Hz). These findings provide compelling evidence that sequence coding extends beyond the domain of spatial trajectories and is thus a fundamental function of the hippocampus. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The ability to remember the order of life events depends on the hippocampus, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here we addressed this issue by recording neural activity in hippocampal region CA1 while rats performed a nonspatial sequence memory task. We found that hippocampal neurons code for the temporal context of items (whether odors were presented in the correct or incorrect sequential position) and that this activity is linked with memory performance. The discovery of this novel form of temporal coding in hippocampal neurons advances our fundamental understanding of the neurobiology of episodic memory and will serve as a foundation for our cross-species, multitechnique approach aimed at elucidating the neural mechanisms underlying memory impairments in aging and dementia. PMID:26843637

Development of a clinician-administered National Institutes of Health-Brief Fatigue Inventory: A measure of fatigue in the context of depressive disorders.

PubMed

Saligan, Leorey N; Luckenbaugh, David A; Slonena, Elizabeth E; Machado-Vieira, Rodrigo; Zarate, Carlos A

2015-09-01

Fatigue is a complex, multidimensional condition. Although it is often associated with depression, it is not known whether it has a distinct network from depression or whether it can be clinically evaluated, separately. This study describes preliminary findings in the development of a brief, clinician-administered instrument to measure fatigue in the context of depressive disorders using items from existing clinician-administered depression and mania scales. Based on items from prior fatigue measurements, items were selected from the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS), Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), Young Mania Rating Scale, and Structured Interview Guide for HDRS with Atypical Depression. The final items composed the NIH-Brief Fatigue Inventory (NIH-BFI). Responses from 89 depressed adults collected pre- and post-antidepressant therapy (ADT) determined the reliability and consistency of the NIH-BFI using Cronbach's alpha and principal components analysis (PCA). Correlations of the NIH-BFI and fatigue items from other scales before and after ADT explored validity. The 7-item NIH-BFI had Cronbach alphas ranging from 0.81 to 0.88 and PCA indicating a single dimension. The NIH-BFI score was strongly correlated (r = 0.73, p < 0.001) with fatigue items from Beck Depression Index, with MADRS without fatigue items (r = 0.77, p < 0.001), and HDRS without fatigue items (pre: r = 0.69, p < 0.001). Preliminary findings show support for internal consistency reliability and validity of the NIH-BFI, a clinician-administered measure of fatigue. Further testing in other clinical populations is recommended to obtain additional information on reliability and validity. The NIH-BFI provides a method for clinician-rated fatigue that may be a separate from depression. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Measuring subjective response to aircraft noise: the effects of survey context.

PubMed

Kroesen, Maarten; Molin, Eric J E; van Wee, Bert

2013-01-01

In applied research, noise annoyance is often used as indicator of subjective reaction to aircraft noise in residential areas. The present study aims to show that the meaning which respondents attach to the concept of aircraft noise annoyance is partly a function of survey context. To this purpose a survey is conducted among residents living near Schiphol Airport, the largest airport in the Netherlands. In line with the formulated hypotheses it is shown that different sets of preceding questionnaire items influence the response distribution of aircraft noise annoyance as well as the correlational patterns between aircraft noise annoyance and other relevant scales.

Effect of Processing and Subsequent Storage on Nutrition

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Perchonok, Michele H.

2009-01-01

This viewgraph presentation includes the following objectives: 1) To determine the effects of thermal processing, freeze drying, irradiation, and storage time on the nutritional content of food; 2) To evaluate the nutritional content of the food items currently used on the International Space Station and Shuttle; and 3) To determine if there is a need to institute countermeasures. (This study does not seek to address the effect of processing on nutrients in detail, but rather aims to place in context the overall nutritional status at the time of consumption).

Context cue focality influences strategic prospective memory monitoring.

PubMed

Hunter Ball, B; Bugg, Julie M

2018-02-12

Monitoring the environment for the occurrence of prospective memory (PM) targets is a resource-demanding process that produces cost (e.g., slower responding) to ongoing activities. However, research suggests that individuals are able to monitor strategically by using contextual cues to reduce monitoring in contexts in which PM targets are not expected to occur. In the current study, we investigated the processes supporting context identification (i.e., determining whether or not the context is appropriate for monitoring) by testing the context cue focality hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that the ability to monitor strategically depends on whether the ongoing task orients attention to the contextual cues that are available to guide monitoring. In Experiment 1, participants performed an ongoing lexical decision task and were told that PM targets (TOR syllable) would only occur in word trials (focal context cue condition) or in items starting with consonants (nonfocal context cue condition). In Experiment 2, participants performed an ongoing first letter judgment (consonant/vowel) task and were told that PM targets would only occur in items starting with consonants (focal context cue condition) or in word trials (nonfocal context cue condition). Consistent with the context cue focality hypothesis, strategic monitoring was only observed during focal context cue conditions in which the type of ongoing task processing automatically oriented attention to the relevant features of the contextual cue. These findings suggest that strategic monitoring is dependent on limited-capacity processing resources and may be relatively limited when the attentional demands of context identification are sufficiently high.

Evaluating Instrument Quality in Science Education: Rasch-based analyses of a Nature of Science test

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Neumann, Irene; Neumann, Knut; Nehm, Ross

2011-07-01

Given the central importance of the Nature of Science (NOS) and Scientific Inquiry (SI) in national and international science standards and science learning, empirical support for the theoretical delineation of these constructs is of considerable significance. Furthermore, tests of the effects of varying magnitudes of NOS knowledge on domain-specific science understanding and belief require the application of instruments validated in accordance with AERA, APA, and NCME assessment standards. Our study explores three interrelated aspects of a recently developed NOS instrument: (1) validity and reliability; (2) instrument dimensionality; and (3) item scales, properties, and qualities within the context of Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory (Rasch modeling). A construct analysis revealed that the instrument did not match published operationalizations of NOS concepts. Rasch analysis of the original instrument-as well as a reduced item set-indicated that a two-dimensional Rasch model fit significantly better than a one-dimensional model in both cases. Thus, our study revealed that NOS and SI are supported as two separate dimensions, corroborating theoretical distinctions in the literature. To identify items with unacceptable fit values, item quality analyses were used. A Wright Map revealed that few items sufficiently distinguished high performers in the sample and excessive numbers of items were present at the low end of the performance scale. Overall, our study outlines an approach for how Rasch modeling may be used to evaluate and improve Likert-type instruments in science education.

Improving Assessment of Work Related Mental Health Function Using the Work Disability Functional Assessment Battery (WD-FAB).

PubMed

Marfeo, Elizabeth E; Ni, Pengsheng; McDonough, Christine; Peterik, Kara; Marino, Molly; Meterko, Mark; Rasch, Elizabeth K; Chan, Leighton; Brandt, Diane; Jette, Alan M

2018-03-01

Purpose To improve the mental health component of the Work Disability Functional Assessment Battery (WD-FAB), developed for the US Social Security Administration's (SSA) disability determination process. Specifically our goal was to expand the WD-FAB scales of mood & emotions, resilience, social interactions, and behavioral control to improve the depth and breadth of the current scales and expand the content coverage to include aspects of cognition & communication function. Methods Data were collected from a random, stratified sample of 1695 claimants applying for the SSA work disability benefits, and a general population sample of 2025 working age adults. 169 new items were developed to replenish the WD-FAB scales and analyzed using factor analysis and item response theory (IRT) analysis to construct unidimensional scales. We conducted computer adaptive test (CAT) simulations to examine the psychometric properties of the WD-FAB. Results Analyses supported the inclusion of four mental health subdomains: Cognition & Communication (68 items), Self-Regulation (34 items), Resilience & Sociability (29 items) and Mood & Emotions (34 items). All scales yielded acceptable psychometric properties. Conclusions IRT methods were effective in expanding the WD-FAB to assess mental health function. The WD-FAB has the potential to enhance work disability assessment both within the context of the SSA disability programs as well as other clinical and vocational rehabilitation settings.

Discounting input from older adults: the role of age salience on partner age effects in the social contagion of memory.

PubMed

Meade, Michelle L; McNabb, Jaimie C; Lindeman, Meghan I H; Smith, Jessi L

2017-05-01

Three experiments examined the impact of partner age on the magnitude of socially suggested false memories. Young participants recalled household scenes in collaboration with an implied young or older adult partner who intentionally recalled false items. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with only the age of their partner (low age-salience context); in Experiment 2, participants were presented with the age of their partner along with a photograph and biographical information about their partner (high age-salience context); in Experiment 3, age salience was varied within the same experiment. Across experiments, participants in both the low age-salience and high age-salience contexts incorporated their partners' misleading suggestions into their own subsequent recall and recognition reports, thus demonstrating social contagion with implied partners. Importantly, the effect of partner age differed across conditions. Participants in the high age-salience context were less likely to incorporate misleading suggestions from older adult partners than from young adult partners, but participants in the low age-salience context were equally likely to incorporate suggestions from young and older adult partners. Participants discount the memory of older adult partners only when age is highly salient.

Cross-cultural adaptation and measurement properties testing of the Iconographical Falls Efficacy Scale (Icon-FES).

PubMed

Franco, Marcia Rodrigues; Pinto, Rafael Zambelli; Delbaere, Kim; Eto, Bianca Yumie; Faria, Maíra Sgobbi; Aoyagi, Giovana Ayumi; Steffens, Daniel; Pastre, Carlos Marcelo

2018-02-14

The Iconographical Falls Efficacy Scale (Icon-FES) is an innovative tool to assess concern of falling that uses pictures as visual cues to provide more complete environmental contexts. Advantages of Icon-FES over previous scales include the addition of more demanding balance-related activities, ability to assess concern about falling in highly functioning older people, and its normal distribution. To perform a cross-cultural adaptation and to assess the measurement properties of the 30-item and 10-item Icon-FES in a community-dwelling Brazilian older population. The cross-cultural adaptation followed the recommendations of international guidelines. We evaluated the measurement properties (i.e. internal consistency, test-retest reproducibility, standard error of the measurement, minimal detectable change, construct validity, ceiling/floor effect, data distribution and discriminative validity), in 100 community-dwelling people aged ≥60 years. The 30-item and 10-item Icon-FES-Brazil showed good internal consistency (alpha and omega >0.70) and excellent intra-rater reproducibility (ICC 2,1 =0.96 and 0.93, respectively). According to the standard error of the measurement and minimal detectable change, the magnitude of change needed to exceed the measurement error and variability were 7.2 and 3.4 points for the 30-item and 10-item Icon-FES, respectively. We observed an excellent correlation between both versions of the Icon-FES and Falls Efficacy Scale - International (rho=0.83, p<0.001 [30-item version]; 0.76, p<0.001 [10-item version]). Icon-FES versions showed normal distribution, no floor/ceiling effects and were able to discriminate between groups relating to fall risk factors. Icon-FES-Brazil is a semantically and linguistically appropriate tool with acceptable measurement properties to evaluate concern about falling among the community-dwelling older population. Copyright © 2018 Associação Brasileira de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Fisioterapia. Publicado por Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.

Post-learning hippocampal dynamics promote preferential retention of rewarding events

PubMed Central

Gruber, Matthias J.; Ritchey, Maureen; Wang, Shao-Fang; Doss, Manoj K.; Ranganath, Charan

2016-01-01

Reward motivation is known to modulate memory encoding, and this effect depends on interactions between the substantia nigra/ ventral tegmental area complex (SN/VTA) and the hippocampus. It is unknown, however, whether these interactions influence offline neural activity in the human brain that is thought to promote memory consolidation. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test the effect of reward motivation on post-learning neural dynamics and subsequent memory for objects that were learned in high- or low-reward motivation contexts. We found that post-learning increases in resting-state functional connectivity between the SN/VTA and hippocampus predicted preferential retention of objects that were learned in high-reward contexts. In addition, multivariate pattern classification revealed that hippocampal representations of high-reward contexts were preferentially reactivated during post-learning rest, and the number of hippocampal reactivations was predictive of preferential retention of items learned in high-reward contexts. These findings indicate that reward motivation alters offline post-learning dynamics between the SN/VTA and hippocampus, providing novel evidence for a potential mechanism by which reward could influence memory consolidation. PMID:26875624

Measurement of self-evaluative motives: a shopping scenario.

PubMed

Wajda, Theresa A; Kolbe, Richard; Hu, Michael Y; Cui, Annie Peng

2008-08-01

To develop measures of consumers' self-evaluative motives of Self-verification, Self-enhancement, and Self-improvement within the context of a mall shopping environment, an initial set of 49 items was generated by conducting three focus-group sessions. These items were subsequently converted into shopping-dependent motive statements. 250 undergraduate college students responded on a 7-point scale to each statement as these related to the acquisition of recent personal shopping goods. An exploratory factor analysis yielded five factors, accounting for 57.7% of the variance, three of which corresponded to the Self-verification motive (five items), Self-enhancement motive (three items), and Self-improvement motive (six items). These 14 items, along with 9 reconstructed items, yielded 23 items retained and subjected to additional testing. In a final round of data collection, 169 college students provided data for exploratory factor analysis. 11 items were used in confirmatory factor analysis. Analysis indicated that the 11-item scale adequately captured measures of the three self-evaluative motives. However, further data reduction produced a 9-item scale with marked improvement in statistical fit over the 11-item scale.

Item response theory in personality assessment: a demonstration using the MMPI-2 depression scale.

PubMed

Childs, R A; Dahlstrom, W G; Kemp, S M; Panter, A T

2000-03-01

Item response theory (IRT) analyses have, over the past 3 decades, added much to our understanding of the relationships among and characteristics of test items, as revealed in examinees response patterns. Assessment instruments used outside the educational context have only infrequently been analyzed using IRT, however. This study demonstrates the relevance of IRT to personality data through analyses of Scale 2 (the Depression Scale) on the revised Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2). A rich set of hypotheses regarding the items on this scale, including contrasts among the Harris-Lingoes and Wiener-Harmon subscales and differences in the items measurement characteristics for men and women, are investigated through the IRT analyses.

"When I saw walking I just kind of took it as wheeling": interpretations of mobility-related items in generic, preference-based health state instruments in the context of spinal cord injury.

PubMed

Michel, Yvonne Anne; Engel, Lidia; Rand-Hendriksen, Kim; Augestad, Liv Ariane; Whitehurst, David Gt

2016-11-28

In health economic analyses, health states are typically valued using instruments with few items per dimension. Due to the generic (and often reductionist) nature of such instruments, certain groups of respondents may experience challenges in describing their health state. This study is concerned with generic, preference-based health state instruments that provide information for decisions about the allocation of resources in health care. Unlike physical measurement instruments, preference-based health state instruments provide health state values that are dependent on how respondents interpret the items. This study investigates how individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) interpret mobility-related items contained within six preference-based health state instruments. Secondary analysis of focus group transcripts originally collected in Vancouver, Canada, explored individuals' perceptions and interpretations of mobility-related items contained within the 15D, Assessment of Quality of Life 8-dimension (AQoL-8D), EQ-5D-5L, Health Utilities Index (HUI), Quality of Well-Being Scale Self-Administered (QWB-SA), and the 36-item Short Form health survey version 2 (SF-36v2). Ritchie and Spencer's 'Framework Approach' was used to perform thematic analysis that focused on participants' comments concerning the mobility-related items only. Fifteen individuals participated in three focus groups (five per focus group). Four themes emerged: wording of mobility (e.g., 'getting around' vs 'walking'), reference to aids and appliances, lack of suitable response options, and reframing of items (e.g., replacing 'walking' with 'wheeling'). These themes reflected item features that respondents perceived as relevant in enabling them to describe their mobility, and response strategies that respondents could use when faced with inaccessible items. Investigating perceptions to mobility-related items within the context of SCI highlights substantial variation in item interpretation across six preference-based health state instruments. Studying respondents' interpretations of items can help to understand discrepancies in the health state descriptions and values obtained from different instruments. This line of research warrants closer attention in the health economics and quality of life literature.

Exploring the Effects of Rater Linking Designs and Rater Fit on Achievement Estimates within the Context of Music Performance Assessments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wind, Stefanie A.; Engelhard, George, Jr.; Wesolowski, Brian

2016-01-01

When good model-data fit is observed, the Many-Facet Rasch (MFR) model acts as a linking and equating model that can be used to estimate student achievement, item difficulties, and rater severity on the same linear continuum. Given sufficient connectivity among the facets, the MFR model provides estimates of student achievement that are equated to…

A calibration service for biomedical instrumentation maintenance laboratories.

PubMed

Barnes, A; Evans, A L; Job, H M; Laing, R; Smith, D C

1999-01-01

An in-house calibration laboratory for the Biomedical Instrumentation Maintenance Services of the hospitals in the West of Scotland was established in 1993. This paper describes the development of this calibration service in the context of an overall quality system and also estimates its costs. Not only does the in-house service have many advantages but it is shown to be cost effective for workloads exceeding 260 items per annum.

Noradrenergic neuromodulation of human attention for emotional and neutral stimuli.

PubMed

De Martino, Benedetto; Strange, Bryan A; Dolan, Raymond J

2008-03-01

Norepinephrine (NE) has a regulatory role in human attention. To examine its role in emotional modulation of attention, we used an attentional blink (AB) paradigm, in the context of psychopharmacological manipulation, where targets were either emotional or neutral items. We report behavioural evidence that beta-adrenergic blockade with propranolol impairs attention independent of target valence. Furthermore, this effect is centrally mediated as administration of the peripheral beta-adrenergic antagonist nadolol did not impair attention. By contrast, increasing NE tone, using the selective NE reuptake inhibitor reboxetine, improves detection of emotional stimuli. In line with theoretical and animal models, these findings provide human behavioural evidence that the adrenergic system has a modulatory influence on selective attention that in some instances depends on item valence.

Development and Validation of a Principal Implementation Practices Measure: The Principal Implementation Questionnaire

PubMed Central

Nettles, Stephen M.; Petscher, Yaacov

2015-01-01

Measurement of principal implementation behaviors has proved difficult to researchers in educational leadership due to a lack of consensus on the operational definitions of leadership constructs. The Principal Implementation Questionnaire (PIQ) was developed and validated with the intention of providing clarity in the assessment of principal leadership behaviors in the implementation of effective reading programs. Constructs were operationally defined within the context of the population of interest, with subsequent item writing centered around the constructs. A resulting calibration sample of principals from Florida Reading First schools was used to test the hypothesized measurement model to determine how well the items were described by the proposed factors. Results from LISREL analyses revealed a well-fitted model, based on numerous fit indices. PMID:26366043

Item parameters dissociate between expectation formats: a regression analysis of time-frequency decomposed EEG data

PubMed Central

Monsalve, Irene F.; Pérez, Alejandro; Molinaro, Nicola

2014-01-01

During language comprehension, semantic contextual information is used to generate expectations about upcoming items. This has been commonly studied through the N400 event-related potential (ERP), as a measure of facilitated lexical retrieval. However, the associative relationships in multi-word expressions (MWE) may enable the generation of a categorical expectation, leading to lexical retrieval before target word onset. Processing of the target word would thus reflect a target-identification mechanism, possibly indexed by a P3 ERP component. However, given their time overlap (200–500 ms post-stimulus onset), differentiating between N400/P3 ERP responses (averaged over multiple linguistically variable trials) is problematic. In the present study, we analyzed EEG data from a previous experiment, which compared ERP responses to highly expected words that were placed either in a MWE or a regular non-fixed compositional context, and to low predictability controls. We focused on oscillatory dynamics and regression analyses, in order to dissociate between the two contexts by modeling the electrophysiological response as a function of item-level parameters. A significant interaction between word position and condition was found in the regression model for power in a theta range (~7–9 Hz), providing evidence for the presence of qualitative differences between conditions. Power levels within this band were lower for MWE than compositional contexts when the target word appeared later on in the sentence, confirming that in the former lexical retrieval would have taken place before word onset. On the other hand, gamma-power (~50–70 Hz) was also modulated by predictability of the item in all conditions, which is interpreted as an index of a similar “matching” sub-step for both types of contexts, binding an expected representation and the external input. PMID:25161630

The Development of a Visual-Perceptual Chemistry Specific (VPCS) Assessment Tool

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oliver-Hoyo, Maria; Sloan, Caroline

2014-01-01

The development of the Visual-Perceptual Chemistry Specific (VPCS) assessment tool is based on items that align to eight visual-perceptual skills considered as needed by chemistry students. This tool includes a comprehensive range of visual operations and presents items within a chemistry context without requiring content knowledge to solve…

Control of Interference during Working Memory Updating

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Szmalec, Arnaud; Verbruggen, Frederick; Vandierendonck, Andre; Kemps, Eva

2011-01-01

The current study examined the nature of the processes underlying working memory updating. In 4 experiments using the n-back paradigm, the authors demonstrate that continuous updating of items in working memory prevents strong binding of those items to their contexts in working memory, and hence leads to an increased susceptibility to proactive…

Lexical and Syntactic Representations in the Brain: An fMRI Investigation with Multi-Voxel Pattern Analyses

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fedorenko, Evelina; Nieto-Castanon, Alfonso; Kanwisher, Nancy

2012-01-01

Work in theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics suggests that human linguistic knowledge forms a continuum between individual lexical items and abstract syntactic representations, with most linguistic representations falling between the two extremes and taking the form of lexical items stored together with the syntactic/semantic contexts in…

Diagnostic Opportunities Using Rasch Measurement in the Context of a Misconceptions-Based Physical Science Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wind, Stefanie A.; Gale, Jessica D.

2015-01-01

Multiple-choice (MC) items that are constructed such that distractors target known misconceptions for a particular domain provide useful diagnostic information about student misconceptions (Herrmann-Abell & DeBoer, 2011, 2014; Sadler, 1998). Item response theory models can be used to examine misconceptions distractor-driven multiple-choice…

The Role of Aging in Intra-Item and Item-Context Binding Processes in Visual Working Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peterson, Dwight J.; Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe

2016-01-01

Aging is accompanied by declines in both working memory and long-term episodic memory processes. Specifically, important age-related memory deficits are characterized by performance impairments exhibited by older relative to younger adults when binding distinct components into a single integrated representation, despite relatively intact memory…

Separability of Item and Person Parameters in Response Time Models.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Breukelen, Gerard J. P.

1997-01-01

Discusses two forms of separability of item and person parameters in the context of response time models. The first is "separate sufficiency," and the second is "ranking independence." For each form a theorem stating sufficient conditions is proved. The two forms are shown to include several cases of models from psychometric…

Source memory in the absence of successful cued recall.

PubMed

Cook, Gabriel I; Marsh, Richard L; Hicks, Jason L

2006-07-01

Five experiments were conducted to address the question of whether source information could be accessed in the absence of being able to recall an item. The authors used a paired-associate learning paradigm in which cue-target word pairs were studied, and target recall was requested in the presence of the cue. When target recall failed, participants were asked to make a source judgment of whether a man or woman spoke the unrecalled item. In 3 of the 5 experiments, source accuracy was at or very close to chance. By contrast, if cue-target pairs were studied multiple times or participants knew in advance of learning that a predictive judgment would be required, then predictive source accuracy was well above chance. These data are suggestive that context information may not play a very large role in metacognitive judgments such as feeling-of-knowing ratings or putting one into a tip-of-the-tongue state without strong and specific encoding procedures. These same results also highlight the important role that item memory plays in retrieving information about the context in which an item was experienced. Copyright 2006 APA, all rights reserved.

Relative Age Effects Across and Within Female Sport Contexts: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

PubMed

Smith, Kristy L; Weir, Patricia L; Till, Kevin; Romann, Michael; Cobley, Stephen

2018-06-01

Subtle differences in chronological age within sport (bi-) annual-age groupings can contribute to immediate participation and long-term attainment discrepancies; known as the relative age effect. Voluminous studies have examined relative age effects in male sport; however, their prevalence and context-specific magnitude in female sport remain undetermined. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence and magnitude of relative age effects in female sport via examination of published data spanning 1984-2016. Registered with PROSPERO (No. 42016053497) and using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis systematic search guidelines, 57 studies were identified, containing 308 independent samples across 25 sports. Distribution data were synthesised using odds ratio meta-analyses, applying an invariance random-effects model. Follow-up subgroup category analyses examined whether relative age effect magnitudes were moderated by age group, competition level, sport type, sport context and study quality. When comparing the relatively oldest (quartile 1) vs. youngest (quartile 4) individuals across all female sport contexts, the overall pooled estimate identified a significant but small relative age effect (odds ratio = 1.25; 95% confidence interval 1.21-1.30; p = 0.01; odds ratio adjusted = 1.21). Subgroup analyses revealed the relative age effect magnitude was higher in pre-adolescent (≤ 11 years) and adolescent (12-14 years) age groups and at higher competition levels. Relative age effect magnitudes were higher in team-based and individual sport contexts associated with high physiological demands. The findings highlight relative age effects are prevalent across the female sport contexts examined. Relative age effect magnitude is moderated by interactions between developmental stages, competition level and sport context demands. Modifications to sport policy, organisational and athlete development system structure, as well as practitioner intervention are recommended to prevent relative age effect-related participation and longer term attainment inequalities.

Effects of parceling on model selection: Parcel-allocation variability in model ranking.

PubMed

Sterba, Sonya K; Rights, Jason D

2017-03-01

Research interest often lies in comparing structural model specifications implying different relationships among latent factors. In this context parceling is commonly accepted, assuming the item-level measurement structure is well known and, conservatively, assuming items are unidimensional in the population. Under these assumptions, researchers compare competing structural models, each specified using the same parcel-level measurement model. However, little is known about consequences of parceling for model selection in this context-including whether and when model ranking could vary across alternative item-to-parcel allocations within-sample. This article first provides a theoretical framework that predicts the occurrence of parcel-allocation variability (PAV) in model selection index values and its consequences for PAV in ranking of competing structural models. These predictions are then investigated via simulation. We show that conditions known to manifest PAV in absolute fit of a single model may or may not manifest PAV in model ranking. Thus, one cannot assume that low PAV in absolute fit implies a lack of PAV in ranking, and vice versa. PAV in ranking is shown to occur under a variety of conditions, including large samples. To provide an empirically supported strategy for selecting a model when PAV in ranking exists, we draw on relationships between structural model rankings in parcel- versus item-solutions. This strategy employs the across-allocation modal ranking. We developed software tools for implementing this strategy in practice, and illustrate them with an example. Even if a researcher has substantive reason to prefer one particular allocation, investigating PAV in ranking within-sample still provides an informative sensitivity analysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

The Relation between Test Formats and Kindergarteners' Expressions of Vocabulary Knowledge

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Christ, Tanya; Chiu, Ming Ming; Currie, Ashelin; Cipielewski, James

2014-01-01

This study tested how 53 kindergarteners' expressions of depth of vocabulary knowledge and use in novel contexts were related to in-context and out-of-context test formats for 16 target words. Applying multilevel, multi-categorical Logit to all 1,696 test item responses, the authors found that kindergarteners were more likely to express deep…

Semantic enrichment of medical forms - semi-automated coding of ODM-elements via web services.

PubMed

Breil, Bernhard; Watermann, Andreas; Haas, Peter; Dziuballe, Philipp; Dugas, Martin

2012-01-01

Semantic interoperability is an unsolved problem which occurs while working with medical forms from different information systems or institutions. Standards like ODM or CDA assure structural homogenization but in order to compare elements from different data models it is necessary to use semantic concepts and codes on an item level of those structures. We developed and implemented a web-based tool which enables a domain expert to perform semi-automated coding of ODM-files. For each item it is possible to inquire web services which result in unique concept codes without leaving the context of the document. Although it was not feasible to perform a totally automated coding we have implemented a dialog based method to perform an efficient coding of all data elements in the context of the whole document. The proportion of codable items was comparable to results from previous studies.

The effects of variable-time versus contingent reinforcement delivery on problem behavior maintained by escape.

PubMed

Lomas Mevers, Joanna E; Fisher, Wayne W; Kelley, Michael E; Fredrick, Laura D

2014-01-01

Results of previous research indicate that the delivery of positive reinforcement (e.g., food) for an appropriate, alternative target response (e.g., compliance) or delivery of food on a time-based schedule can decrease problem behavior reinforced by escape, even when problem behavior continues to produce negative reinforcement (e.g., Lalli et al., ; Lomas, Fisher, & Kelley, ). In this study, we compared the levels of both compliance and problem behavior when food and praise were delivered either contingent on compliance or on a time-based schedule. Results for 3 of the 4 participants showed that contingent delivery of preferred edible items and praise was more effective in both reducing problem behavior and increasing compliance compared to variable-time delivery of these same items. These findings are discussed in the context of motivating operations and competition between positive and negative reinforcement. © Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Mere exposure effect: A consequence of direct and indirect fluency-preference links.

PubMed

Willems, Sylvie; Van der Linden, Martial

2006-06-01

In three experiments, picture quality between test items was manipulated to examine whether subjects' expectations about the fluency normally associated with these different stimuli might influence the effects of fluency on preference or familiarity-based recognition responses. The results showed that fluency due to pre-exposure influenced responses less when objects were presented with high picture quality, suggesting that attributions of fluency to preference and familiarity are adjusted according to expectations about the different test pictures. However, this expectations influence depended on subjects' awareness of these different quality levels. Indeed, imperceptible differences seemed not to induce expectations about the test item fluency. In this context, fluency due to both picture quality and pre-exposure influenced direct responses. Conversely, obvious, and noticed, differences in test picture quality did no affect responses, suggesting that expectations moderated attributions of fluency only when fluency normally associated with these different stimuli was perceptible but difficult to assess.

Performance on large-scale science tests: Item attributes that may impact achievement scores

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gordon, Janet Victoria

Significant differences in achievement among ethnic groups persist on the eighth-grade science Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL). The WASL measures academic performance in science using both scenario and stand-alone question types. Previous research suggests that presenting target items connected to an authentic context, like scenario question types, can increase science achievement scores especially in underrepresented groups and thus help to close the achievement gap. The purpose of this study was to identify significant differences in performance between gender and ethnic subgroups by question type on the 2005 eighth-grade science WASL. MANOVA and ANOVA were used to examine relationships between gender and ethnic subgroups as independent variables with achievement scores on scenario and stand-alone question types as dependent variables. MANOVA revealed no significant effects for gender, suggesting that the 2005 eighth-grade science WASL was gender neutral. However, there were significant effects for ethnicity. ANOVA revealed significant effects for ethnicity and ethnicity by gender interaction in both question types. Effect sizes were negligible for the ethnicity by gender interaction. Large effect sizes between ethnicities on scenario question types became moderate to small effect sizes on stand-alone question types. This indicates the score advantage the higher performing subgroups had over the lower performing subgroups was not as large on stand-alone question types compared to scenario question types. A further comparison examined performance on multiple-choice items only within both question types. Similar achievement patterns between ethnicities emerged; however, achievement patterns between genders changed in boys' favor. Scenario question types appeared to register differences between ethnic groups to a greater degree than stand-alone question types. These differences may be attributable to individual differences in cognition, characteristics of test items themselves and/or opportunities to learn. Suggestions for future research are made.

ERP Subsequent Memory Effects Differ between Inter-Item and Unitization Encoding Tasks

PubMed Central

Kamp, Siri-Maria; Bader, Regine; Mecklinger, Axel

2017-01-01

The “subsequent memory paradigm” is an analysis tool to identify brain activity elicited during episodic encoding that is associated with successful subsequent retrieval. Two commonly observed event-related potential “subsequent memory effects” (SMEs) are the parietal SME in the P300 time window and the frontal slow wave SME, but to date a clear characterization of the circumstances under which each SME is observed is missing. To test the hypothesis that the parietal SME occurs when aspects of an experience are unitized into a single item representation, while inter-item associative encoding is reflected in the frontal slow wave effect, participants were assigned to one of two conditions that emphasized one of the encoding types under otherwise matched study phases of a recognition memory experiment. Word pairs were presented either in the context of a definition that allowed to combine the word pairs into a new concept (unitization or item encoding) or together with a sentence frame (inter-item encoding). Performance on the recognition test did not differ between the groups. The parietal SME was only found in the definition group, supporting the idea that this SME occurs when the components of an association are integrated in a unitized item representation. An early prefrontal negativity also exhibited an SME only in this group, suggesting that the formation of novel units occurs through interactions of multiple brain areas. The frontal slow wave SME was pronounced in both groups and may thus reflect processes generally involved in encoding of associations. Our results provide evidence for a partial dissociation of the eliciting conditions of the two types of SMEs and therefore provide a tool for future studies to characterize the different types of episodic encoding. PMID:28194105

Cultural adaptation and linguistic validation of the Family Decision Making Self Efficacy Scale (FDMSES).

PubMed

Limardi, S; Rocco, G; Stievano, A; Vellone, E; Valle, A; Torino, F; Alvaro, R

2014-01-01

Nurses, following their ethical mandate, collaborate with other health and social professionals or people involved in caring activities. Caregivers in this context are becoming more and more significant for the family or the cared person, who for their stable presence and emotional proximity play a pivotal caring role. To maximize the contribution of caregivers, objective tools that emphasize their skill sets are necessary. The cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Family Decision Making Self-Efficacy Scale is part of a larger project aimed at understanding the resilience of caregivers in the field of palliative care. Self-efficacy is one of the aspects of personality most closely associated with resilience. Self-efficacy is shown in a specific context, therefore, its study and evaluation of its level, require capabilities that enable individuals perceive themselves as effective in a particular circumstance. The Family Decision Making Self- Efficacy Scale assesses the behavior of caregivers of patients at the end of their life. The Family Decision Making Self-Efficacy Scale was translated (forward and back translation) and was adapted to the Italian clinical cultural setting by a research team that included experts in palliative care, native translators with experience in nursing and experts in nursing. A consensus on the wording of each item in relation to semantic, idiomatic, experiential and conceptual equivalence was sought. The clarity of the wording and the pertinence of the items of the scenario with the conscious patient and with the unconscious patient were evaluated by a group of caregivers who tested the instrument. The Italian version of the instrument included 12 items for the scenario with the conscious patient and 12 for the scenario with the unconscious patient. The working group expressed consensus on the pretesting version of the instrument. The pre-testing version of the scale was tested on 60 caregivers, 47 taking care of conscious patients and 13 taking care of unconscious patients. In both cases the content of the items was judged relevant and understandable. The results for the cross-cultural validation were satisfactory and allowed the application of the instrument in the Italian context.

Measuring pain in the context of homelessness

PubMed Central

Matter, Rebecca; Kline, Susan; Cook, Karon F.; Amtmann, Dagmar

2009-01-01

Purpose The primary objective of this study was to inform the development of measures of pain impact appropriate for all respondents, including homeless individuals, so that they can be used in clinical research and practice. The secondary objective was to increase understanding about the unique experience of homeless people with pain. Methods Seventeen homeless individuals with chronic health conditions (often associated with pain) participated in cognitive interviews to test the functioning of 56 pain measurement items and provided information about their experience living with and accessing treatment for pain. Results The most common problems identified with items were that they lacked clarity or were irrelevant in the context of homelessness. Items that were unclear, irrelevant and/or had other identified problems made it difficult for participants to respond. Participants also described multiple ways in which their pain was exacerbated by conditions of homelessness and identified barriers to accessing appropriate treatment. Conclusions Results suggested that the majority of items were problematic for the homeless and require substantial modifications to make the pain impact bank relevant to this population. Additional recommendations include involving homeless in future item bank development, conducting research on the topic of pain and homelessness, and using cognitive interviewing in other types of health disparities research. PMID:19582592

Category-Specific Neural Oscillations Predict Recall Organization During Memory Search

PubMed Central

Morton, Neal W.; Kahana, Michael J.; Rosenberg, Emily A.; Baltuch, Gordon H.; Litt, Brian; Sharan, Ashwini D.; Sperling, Michael R.; Polyn, Sean M.

2013-01-01

Retrieved-context models of human memory propose that as material is studied, retrieval cues are constructed that allow one to target particular aspects of past experience. We examined the neural predictions of these models by using electrocorticographic/depth recordings and scalp electroencephalography (EEG) to characterize category-specific oscillatory activity, while participants studied and recalled items from distinct, neurally discriminable categories. During study, these category-specific patterns predict whether a studied item will be recalled. In the scalp EEG experiment, category-specific activity during study also predicts whether a given item will be recalled adjacent to other same-category items, consistent with the proposal that a category-specific retrieval cue is used to guide memory search. Retrieved-context models suggest that integrative neural circuitry is involved in the construction and maintenance of the retrieval cue. Consistent with this hypothesis, we observe category-specific patterns that rise in strength as multiple same-category items are studied sequentially, and find that individual differences in this category-specific neural integration during study predict the degree to which a participant will use category information to organize memory search. Finally, we track the deployment of this retrieval cue during memory search: Category-specific patterns are stronger when participants organize their responses according to the category of the studied material. PMID:22875859

Testing effects of free recall on organization in whole/part and part/whole transfer.

PubMed

Bacso, Sarah A; Marmurek, Harvey H C

2016-11-01

Testing of to-be-learned material facilitates subsequent learning of new material. We investigated this forward effect of testing in two experiments using the whole/part and part/whole transfer paradigms with categorized word lists. Learning was assessed for recall of individual words, higher order categories, and category clustering. In each experiment participants learned two lists in which the number of tests on the first list was varied. The first list contained either twice as many items as the second list (whole/part paradigm) or half as many items as the second list (part/whole paradigm). In the experimental condition, the part list contained half the items of the whole list. In the control condition, the two lists were unique. In the whole/part paradigm, learning of the part list was poorer in the experimental than in the control condition. Although testing during whole list learning facilitated learning of the part list, it did not moderate the negative transfer effect. In the part/whole paradigm, learning of the whole list was better in the experimental than in the control condition, and this positive transfer effect was strengthened by repeated testing of the part list. The findings are discussed in the context of discrimination and encoding explanations of the forward effect of testing. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Visual Memory in Methamphetamine Dependent Individuals: Deficient Strategic Control of Encoding and Retrieval

PubMed Central

Morgan, Erin E.; Woods, Steven Paul; Poquette, Amelia J.; Vigil, Ofilio; Heaton, Robert K.; Grant, Igor

2012-01-01

Objective Chronic use of methamphetamine (MA) has moderate effects on neurocognitive functions associated with frontal systems, including the executive aspects of verbal episodic memory. Extending this literature, the current study examined the effects of MA on visual episodic memory with the hypothesis that a profile of deficient strategic encoding and retrieval processes would be revealed for visuospatial information (i.e., simple geometric designs), including possible differential effects on source versus item recall. Method The sample comprised 114 MA-dependent (MA+) and 110 demographically-matched MA-nondependent comparison participants (MA−) who completed the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test – Revised (BVMT-R), which was scored for standard learning and memory indices, as well as novel item (i.e., figure) and source (i.e., location) memory indices. Results Results revealed a profile of impaired immediate and delayed free recall (p < .05) in the context of preserved learning slope, retention, and recognition discriminability in the MA+ group. The MA+ group also performed more poorly than MA− participants on Item visual memory (p < .05) but not Source visual memory (p > .05), and no group by task-type interaction was observed (p > .05). Item visual memory demonstrated significant associations with executive dysfunction, deficits in working memory, and shorter length of abstinence from MA use (p < 0.05). Conclusions These visual memory findings are commensurate with studies reporting deficient strategic verbal encoding and retrieval in MA users that are posited to reflect the vulnerability of frontostriatal circuits to the neurotoxic effects of MA. Potential clinical implications of these visual memory deficits are discussed. PMID:22311530

Model Fit and Item Factor Analysis: Overfactoring, Underfactoring, and a Program to Guide Interpretation.

PubMed

Clark, D Angus; Bowles, Ryan P

2018-04-23

In exploratory item factor analysis (IFA), researchers may use model fit statistics and commonly invoked fit thresholds to help determine the dimensionality of an assessment. However, these indices and thresholds may mislead as they were developed in a confirmatory framework for models with continuous, not categorical, indicators. The present study used Monte Carlo simulation methods to investigate the ability of popular model fit statistics (chi-square, root mean square error of approximation, the comparative fit index, and the Tucker-Lewis index) and their standard cutoff values to detect the optimal number of latent dimensions underlying sets of dichotomous items. Models were fit to data generated from three-factor population structures that varied in factor loading magnitude, factor intercorrelation magnitude, number of indicators, and whether cross loadings or minor factors were included. The effectiveness of the thresholds varied across fit statistics, and was conditional on many features of the underlying model. Together, results suggest that conventional fit thresholds offer questionable utility in the context of IFA.

Memory for conversation and the development of common ground.

PubMed

McKinley, Geoffrey L; Brown-Schmidt, Sarah; Benjamin, Aaron S

2017-11-01

Efficient conversation is guided by the mutual knowledge, or common ground, that interlocutors form as a conversation progresses. Characterized from the perspective of commonly used measures of memory, efficient conversation should be closely associated with item memory-what was said-and context memory-who said what to whom. However, few studies have explicitly probed memory to evaluate what type of information is maintained following a communicative exchange. The current study examined how item and context memory relate to the development of common ground over the course of a conversation, and how these forms of memory vary as a function of one's role in a conversation as speaker or listener. The process of developing common ground was positively related to both item and context memory. In addition, content that was spoken was remembered better than content that was heard. Our findings illustrate how memory assessments can complement language measures by revealing the impact that basic conversational processes have on memory for what has been discussed. By taking this approach, we show that not only does the process of forming common ground facilitate communication in the present, but it also promotes an enduring record of that event, facilitating conversation into the future.

Context Dependent Effect of Landscape on the Occurrence of an Apex Predator across Different Climate Regions.

PubMed

Fujita, Go; Azuma, Atsuki; Nonaka, Jun; Sakai, Yoshiaki; Sakai, Hatsumi; Iseki, Fumitaka; Itaya, Hiroo; Fukasawa, Keita; Miyashita, Tadashi

2016-01-01

In studies of habitat suitability at landscape scales, transferability of species-landscape associations among sites are likely to be critical because it is often impractical to collect datasets across various regions. However, limiting factors, such as prey availability, are not likely to be constant across scales because of the differences in species pools. This is particularly true for top predators that are often the target for conservation concern. Here we focus on gray-faced buzzards, apex predators of farmland-dominated landscapes in East Asia. We investigated context dependency of "buzzard-landscape relationship", using nest location datasets from five sites, each differing in landscape composition. Based on the similarities of prey items and landscape compositions across the sites, we determined several alternative ways of grouping the sites, and then examined whether buzzard-landscape relationship change among groups, which was conducted separately for each way of grouping. As a result, the model of study-sites grouping based on similarities in prey items showed the smallest ΔAICc. Because the terms of interaction between group IDs and areas of broad-leaved forests and grasslands were selected, buzzard-landscape relationship showed a context dependency, i.e., these two landscape elements strengthen the relationship in southern region. The difference in prey fauna, which is associated with the difference in climate, might generate regional differences in the buzzard-landscape associations.

One (rating) from many (observations): Factors affecting the individual assessment of voice behavior in groups.

PubMed

Podsakoff, Nathan P; Maynes, Timothy D; Whiting, Steven W; Podsakoff, Philip M

2015-07-01

This article reports an investigation into how individuals form perceptions of overall voice behavior in group contexts. More specifically, the authors examine the effect of the proportion of group members exhibiting voice behavior in the group, the frequency of voice events in the group, and the measurement item referent (group vs. individual) on an individual's ratings of group voice behavior. In addition, the authors examine the effect that measurement item referent has on the magnitude of the relationship observed between an individual's ratings of group voice behavior and perceptions of group performance. Consistent with hypotheses, the results from 1 field study (N = 220) and 1 laboratory experiment (N = 366) indicate that: (a) When group referents were used, raters relied on the frequency of voice events (and not the proportion of group members exhibiting voice) to inform their ratings of voice behavior, whereas the opposite was true when individual-referent items were used, and (b) the magnitude of the relationship between observers' ratings of group voice behavior and their perceptions of group performance was higher when raters used group-referent, as opposed to an individual-referent, items. The authors discuss the implications of their findings for scholars interested in studying behavioral phenomena occurring in teams, groups, and work units in organizational behavior research. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Determining Cloze Item Difficulty from Item and Passage Characteristics across Different Learner Backgrounds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Trace, Jonathan; Brown, James Dean; Janssen, Gerriet; Kozhevnikova, Liudmila

2017-01-01

Cloze tests have been the subject of numerous studies regarding their function and use in both first language and second language contexts (e.g., Jonz & Oller, 1994; Watanabe & Koyama, 2008). From a validity standpoint, one area of investigation has been the extent to which cloze tests measure reading ability beyond the sentence level.…

Memory for Specific Visual Details can be Enhanced by Negative Arousing Content

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kensinger, Elizabeth A.; Garoff-Eaton, Rachel J.; Schacter, Daniel L.

2006-01-01

Individuals often claim that they vividly remember information with negative emotional content. At least two types of information could lead to this sense of enhanced vividness: Information about the emotional item itself (e.g., the exact visual details of a snake) and information about the context in which the emotional item was encountered…

Item Response Theory in the context of Improving Student Reasoning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Goddard, Chase; Davis, Jeremy; Pyper, Brian

2011-10-01

We are interested to see if Item Response Theory can help to better inform the development of reasoning ability in introductory physics. A first pass through our latest batch of data from the Heat and Temperature Conceptual Evaluation, the Lawson Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning, and the Epistemological Beliefs About Physics Survey may help in this effort.

Test Item Linguistic Complexity and Assessments for Deaf Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cawthon, Stephanie

2011-01-01

Linguistic complexity of test items is one test format element that has been studied in the context of struggling readers and their participation in paper-and-pencil tests. The present article presents findings from an exploratory study on the potential relationship between linguistic complexity and test performance for deaf readers. A total of 64…

Human Resources Research Office Bibliography of Publications as of 30 June 1968.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

George Washington Univ., Alexandria, VA. Human Resources Research Office.

A bibliography has been compiled to provide as complete information as is feasible about research publications and by-products from the Human Resources Research Office (HumRRO). It includes abstracts for many items; key word out of context indexing; author indexes; and AD numbers, indicating items available to qualified users through the Defense…

Modeling of Word Translation: Activation Flow from Concepts to Lexical Items

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roelofs, Ardi; Dijkstra, Ton; Gerakaki, Svetlana

2013-01-01

Whereas most theoretical and computational models assume a continuous flow of activation from concepts to lexical items in spoken word production, one prominent model assumes that the mapping of concepts onto words happens in a discrete fashion (Bloem & La Heij, 2003). Semantic facilitation of context pictures on word translation has been taken to…

Normal Theory Two-Stage ML Estimator When Data Are Missing at the Item Level

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Savalei, Victoria; Rhemtulla, Mijke

2017-01-01

In many modeling contexts, the variables in the model are linear composites of the raw items measured for each participant; for instance, regression and path analysis models rely on scale scores, and structural equation models often use parcels as indicators of latent constructs. Currently, no analytic estimation method exists to appropriately…

Lord's Wald Test for Detecting Dif in Multidimensional Irt Models: A Comparison of Two Estimation Approaches

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Soo; Suh, Youngsuk

2018-01-01

Lord's Wald test for differential item functioning (DIF) has not been studied extensively in the context of the multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) framework. In this article, Lord's Wald test was implemented using two estimation approaches, marginal maximum likelihood estimation and Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation, to detect…

Divided attention enhances explicit but not implicit conceptual memory: an item-specific account of the attentional boost effect.

PubMed

Spataro, Pietro; Mulligan, Neil W; Bechi Gabrielli, Giulia; Rossi-Arnaud, Clelia

2017-02-01

The Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) refers to the counterintuitive finding that words encoded with to-be-responded targets in a divided-attention condition are remembered better than words encoded with distractors. Previous studies suggested that the ABE-related enhancement of verbal memory depends upon the activation of abstract lexical representations. In the present study, we extend this hypothesis by embedding it in the context of a broader perspective, which proposes that divided attention in the ABE paradigm affects item-specific, but not relational, processing. To this purpose, we examined the ABE in the matched tasks of category-cued recall (CCRT: explicit memory) and category exemplar generation (CEGT: implicit memory). In addition, study time was varied (500, 1500 or 4000 ms), to further determine whether the attentional boost manipulation could influence late-phase elaborative processing. In agreement with the predictions of the item-specific account, the results showed that exemplars encoded with targets were recalled better than exemplars encoded with distractors in the CCRT, but not in the CEGT. Moreover, performance in the CCRT increased with study time, whereas the size of the ABE-related enhancement tended to decrease, further confirming that this effect hinges upon early phase encoding processes.

Syntactic Priming.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nicol, Janet L.

1996-01-01

Reviews the syntactic priming task, a paradigm involving the presentation of a phrasal or clausal context, followed by the presentation of a target item for lexical decision or naming. Notes that response times are faster for targets syntactically congruent with the preceding context than for incongruent targets. Outlines how to administer this…

Temporal Context Memory in High-Functioning Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gras-Vincendon, Agnes; Mottron, Laurent; Salame, Pierre; Bursztejn, Claude; Danion, Jean-Marie

2007-01-01

Episodic memory, i.e. memory for specific episodes situated in space and time, seems impaired in individuals with autism. According to weak central coherence theory, individuals with autism have general difficulty connecting contextual and item information which then impairs their capacity to memorize information in context. This study…

The development of a quality appraisal tool for studies of diagnostic reliability (QAREL).

PubMed

Lucas, Nicholas P; Macaskill, Petra; Irwig, Les; Bogduk, Nikolai

2010-08-01

In systematic reviews of the reliability of diagnostic tests, no quality assessment tool has been used consistently. The aim of this study was to develop a specific quality appraisal tool for studies of diagnostic reliability. Key principles for the quality of studies of diagnostic reliability were identified with reference to epidemiologic principles, existing quality appraisal checklists, and the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) and Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (QUADAS) resources. Specific items that encompassed each of the principles were developed. Experts in diagnostic research provided feedback on the items that were to form the appraisal tool. This process was iterative and continued until consensus among experts was reached. The Quality Appraisal of Reliability Studies (QAREL) checklist includes 11 items that explore seven principles. Items cover the spectrum of subjects, spectrum of examiners, examiner blinding, order effects of examination, suitability of the time interval among repeated measurements, appropriate test application and interpretation, and appropriate statistical analysis. QAREL has been developed as a specific quality appraisal tool for studies of diagnostic reliability. The reliability of this tool in different contexts needs to be evaluated. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Language and number: a bilingual training study.

PubMed

Spelke, E S; Tsivkin, S

2001-01-01

Three experiments investigated the role of a specific language in human representations of number. Russian-English bilingual college students were taught new numerical operations (Experiment 1), new arithmetic equations (Experiments 1 and 2), or new geographical or historical facts involving numerical or non-numerical information (Experiment 3). After learning a set of items in each of their two languages, subjects were tested for knowledge of those items, and new items, in both languages. In all the studies, subjects retrieved information about exact numbers more effectively in the language of training, and they solved trained problems more effectively than untrained problems. In contrast, subjects retrieved information about approximate numbers and non-numerical facts with equal efficiency in their two languages, and their training on approximate number facts generalized to new facts of the same type. These findings suggest that a specific, natural language contributes to the representation of large, exact numbers but not to the approximate number representations that humans share with other mammals. Language appears to play a role in learning about exact numbers in a variety of contexts, a finding with implications for practice in bilingual education. The findings prompt more general speculations about the role of language in the development of specifically human cognitive abilities.

Validating Translation Test Items via the Many-Facet Rasch Model.

PubMed

Tseng, Wen-Ta; Su, Tzi-Ying; Nix, John-Michael L

2018-01-01

This study applied the many-facet Rasch model to assess learners' translation ability in an English as a foreign language context. Few attempts have been made in extant research to detect and calibrate rater severity in the domain of translation testing. To fill the research gap, this study documented the process of validating a test of Chinese-to-English sentence translation and modeled raters' scoring propensity defined by harshness or leniency, expert/novice effects on severity, and concomitant effects on item difficulty. Two hundred twenty-five, third-year senior high school Taiwanese students and six educators from tertiary and secondary educational institutions served as participants. The students' mean age was 17.80 years ( SD = 1.20, range 17-19). The exam consisted of 10 translation items adapted from two entrance exam tests. The results showed that this subjectively scored performance assessment exhibited robust unidimensionality, thus reliably measuring translation ability free from unmodeled disturbances. Furthermore, discrepancies in ratings between novice and expert raters were also identified and modeled by the many-facet Rasch model. The implications for applying the many-facet Rasch model in translation tests at the tertiary level were discussed.

Adaptation of a difficult-to-manage asthma programme for implementation in the Dutch context: a modified e-Delphi.

PubMed

Honkoop, Persijn J; Pinnock, Hilary; Kievits-Smeets, Regien M M; Sterk, Peter J; Dekhuijzen, P N Richard; In 't Veen, Johannes C C M

2017-02-09

Patients with difficult-to-manage asthma represent a heterogeneous subgroup of asthma patients who require extensive assessment and tailored management. The International Primary Care Respiratory Group approach emphasises the importance of differentiating patients with asthma that is difficult to manage from those with severe disease. Local adaptation of this approach, however, is required to ensure an appropriate strategy for implementation in the Dutch context. We used a modified three-round e-Delphi approach to assess the opinion of all relevant stakeholders (general practitioners, pulmonologists, practice nurses, pulmonary nurses and people with asthma). In the first round, the participants were asked to provide potentially relevant items for a difficult-to-manage asthma programme, which resulted in 67 items. In the second round, we asked participants to rate the relevance of specific items on a seven-point Likert scale, and 46 items were selected as relevant. In the third round, the selected items were categorised and items were ranked within the categories according to relevance. Finally, we created the alphabet acronym for the categories 'the A-I of difficult-to-manage asthma' to resonate with an established Dutch 'A-E acronym for determining asthma control'. This should facilitate implementation of this programme within the existing structure of educational material on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in primary care, with potential for improving management of difficult-to-manage asthma. Other countries could use a similar approach to create a locally adapted version of such a programme.

Limits on the generalizability of context-driven control.

PubMed

Hutcheon, Thomas G; Spieler, Daniel H

2017-07-01

Context-driven control refers to the fast and flexible weighting of stimulus dimensions that may be applied at the onset of a stimulus. Evidence for context-driven control comes from interference tasks in which participants encounter a high proportion of incongruent trials at one location and a high proportion of congruent trials at another location. Since the size of the congruency effect varies as a function of location, this suggests that stimulus dimensions are weighted differently based on the context in which they appear. However, manipulations of condition proportion are often confounded by variations in the frequency with which particular stimuli are encountered. To date, there is limited evidence for the context-driven control in the absence of stimulus frequency confounds. In the current paper, we attempt to replicate and extend one such finding [Crump, M. J. C., & Milliken, B. (2009). The flexibility of context-specific control: Evidence for context-driven generalization of item-specific control settings. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 1523-1532]. Across three experiments we fail to find evidence for context-driven control in the absence of stimulus frequency confounds. Based on these results, we argue that consistency in the informativeness of the irrelevant dimension may be required for context-driven control to emerge.

A Comparison of the Effects of Temporary Hippocampal Lesions on Single and Dual Context Versions of the Olfactory Sequence Memory Task

PubMed Central

Sill, Orriana C.; Smith, David M.

2012-01-01

In recent years, many animal models of memory have focused on one or more of the various components of episodic memory. For example, the odor sequence memory task requires subjects to remember individual items and events (the odors) and the temporal aspects of the experience (the sequence of odor presentation). The well-known spatial context coding function of the hippocampus, as exemplified by place cell firing, may reflect the ‘where’ component of episodic memory. In the present study, we added a contextual component to the odor sequence memory task by training rats to choose the earlier odor in one context and the later odor in another context and we compared the effects of temporary hippocampal lesions on performance of the original single context task and the new dual context task. Temporary lesions significantly impaired the single context task, although performance remained significantly above chance levels. In contrast, performance dropped all the way to chance when temporary lesions were used in the dual context task. These results demonstrate that rats can learn a dual context version of the odor sequence learning task which requires the use of contextual information along with the requirement to remember the ‘what’ and ‘when’ components of the odor sequence. Moreover, the additional requirement of context-dependent expression of the ‘what-when’ memory made the task fully dependent on the hippocampus. Moreover, the addition of the contextual component made the task fully dependent on the hippocampus. PMID:22687149

The relationships between age, associative memory performance and the neural correlates of successful associative memory encoding

PubMed Central

de Chastelaine, Marianne; Mattson, Julia T.; Wang, Tracy H.; Donley, Brian E.; Rugg, Michael D.

2016-01-01

Using fMRI, subsequent memory effects (greater activity for later remembered than later forgotten study items) predictive of associative encoding were compared across samples of young, middle-aged and older adults (total n = 136). During scanning, participants studied visually presented word pairs. In a later test phase, they discriminated between studied pairs, ‘rearranged’ pairs (items studied on different trials) and new pairs. Subsequent memory effects were identified by contrasting activity elicited by study pairs that went on to be correctly judged intact or incorrectly judged rearranged. Effects in the hippocampus were age-invariant and positively correlated across participants with associative memory performance. Subsequent memory effects in the right IFG were greater in the older than the young group. In older participants only, both left and, in contrast to prior reports, right IFG subsequent memory effects correlated positively with memory performance. We suggest that the IFG is especially vulnerable to age-related decline in functional integrity, and that the relationship between encoding-related activity in right IFG and memory performance depends on the experimental context. PMID:27143433

Exogenous attention influences visual short-term memory in infants.

PubMed

Ross-Sheehy, Shannon; Oakes, Lisa M; Luck, Steven J

2011-05-01

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that developing visual attentional mechanisms influence infants' Visual Short-Term Memory (VSTM) in the context of multiple items. Five- and 10-month-old infants (N = 76) received a change detection task in which arrays of three differently colored squares appeared and disappeared. On each trial one square changed color and one square was cued; sometimes the cued item was the changing item, and sometimes the changing item was not the cued item. Ten-month-old infants exhibited enhanced memory for the cued item when the cue was a spatial pre-cue (Experiment 1) and 5-month-old infants exhibited enhanced memory for the cued item when the cue was relative motion (Experiment 2). These results demonstrate for the first time that infants younger than 6 months can encode information in VSTM about individual items in multiple-object arrays, and that attention-directing cues influence both perceptual and VSTM encoding of stimuli in infants as in adults.

Assessing the invariance of a culturally competent multi-lingual unmet needs survey for immigrant and Australian-born cancer patients: a Rasch analysis.

PubMed

McGrane, J A; Butow, P N; Sze, M; Eisenbruch, M; Goldstein, D; King, M T

2014-12-01

The purpose of this study was to assess the invariance of a culturally competent multi-lingual unmet needs survey. A cross-sectional study was conducted among immigrants of Arabic-, Chinese- and Greek-speaking backgrounds, and Anglo-Australian-born controls, recruited through Cancer Registries (n = 591) and oncology clinics (n = 900). The survey included four subscales, with newly developed items addressing unmet need in culturally competent health information and patient support (CCHIPS), and items adapted from existing questionnaires addressing physical and daily living (PDL), sexuality (SEX) and survivorship (SURV) unmet need. The survey was translated into Arabic, Chinese and Greek. Rasch analysis was carried out on the four domains. Whilst many items were mistargeted to less prevalent areas of unmet need, causing substantial floor effects in person estimates, reliability indices were acceptable. The CCHIPS domain showed differential item functioning (DIF) for cultural background and language, and the PDL domain showed DIF for treatment phase and gender. The results for SEX and SURV domains were limited by floor effects and missing responses. All domains showed adequate fit to the model after DIF was resolved and a small number of items were deleted. The study highlights the intricacies in designing a culturally competent survey that can be applied to culturally and linguistically diverse groups across different treatment contexts. Overall, the results demonstrate that this survey is somewhat invariant with respect to these factors. Future refinements are suggested to enhance the survey's cultural competence and general validity.

Age-related deficits in selective attention during encoding increase demands on episodic reconstruction during context retrieval: An ERP study.

PubMed

James, Taylor; Strunk, Jonathan; Arndt, Jason; Duarte, Audrey

2016-06-01

Previous event-related potential (ERP) and neuroimaging evidence suggests that directing attention toward single item-context associations compared to intra-item features at encoding improves context memory performance and reduces demands on strategic retrieval operations in young and older adults. In everyday situations, however, there are multiple event features competing for our attention. It is not currently known how selectively attending to one contextual feature while attempting to ignore another influences context memory performance and the processes that support successful retrieval in the young and old. We investigated this issue in the current ERP study. Young and older participants studied pictures of objects in the presence of two contextual features: a color and a scene, and their attention was directed to the object's relationship with one of those contexts. Participants made context memory decisions for both attended and unattended contexts and rated their confidence in those decisions. Behavioral results showed that while both groups were generally successful in applying selective attention during context encoding, older adults were less confident in their context memory decisions for attended features and showed greater dependence in context memory accuracy for attended and unattended contextual features (i.e., hyper-binding). ERP results were largely consistent between age groups but older adults showed a more pronounced late posterior negativity (LPN) implicated in episodic reconstruction processes. We conclude that age-related suppression deficits during encoding result in reduced selectivity in context memory, thereby increasing subsequent demands on episodic reconstruction processes when sought after details are not readily retrieved. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Measuring ability to assess claims about treatment effects: the development of the 'Claim Evaluation Tools'.

PubMed

Austvoll-Dahlgren, Astrid; Semakula, Daniel; Nsangi, Allen; Oxman, Andrew David; Chalmers, Iain; Rosenbaum, Sarah; Guttersrud, Øystein

2017-05-17

To describe the development of the Claim Evaluation Tools, a set of flexible items to measure people's ability to assess claims about treatment effects. Methodologists and members of the community (including children) in Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Norway, the UK and Australia. In the iterative development of the items, we used purposeful sampling of people with training in research methodology, such as teachers of evidence-based medicine, as well as patients and members of the public from low-income and high-income countries. Development consisted of 4 processes: (1) determining the scope of the Claim Evaluation Tools and development of items; (2) expert item review and feedback (n=63); (3) cognitive interviews with children and adult end-users (n=109); and (4) piloting and administrative tests (n=956). The Claim Evaluation Tools database currently includes a battery of multiple-choice items. Each item begins with a scenario which is intended to be relevant across contexts, and which can be used for children (from age 10  and above), adult members of the public and health professionals. People with expertise in research methods judged the items to have face validity, and end-users judged them relevant and acceptable in their settings. In response to feedback from methodologists and end-users, we simplified some text, explained terms where needed, and redesigned formats and instructions. The Claim Evaluation Tools database is a flexible resource from which researchers, teachers and others can design measurement instruments to meet their own requirements. These evaluation tools are being managed and made freely available for non-commercial use (on request) through Testing Treatments interactive (testingtreatments.org). PACTR201606001679337 and PACTR201606001676150; Pre-results. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

DRD4 long allele carriers show heightened attention to high-priority items relative to low-priority items.

PubMed

Gorlick, Marissa A; Worthy, Darrell A; Knopik, Valerie S; McGeary, John E; Beevers, Christopher G; Maddox, W Todd

2015-03-01

Humans with seven or more repeats in exon III of the DRD4 gene (long DRD4 carriers) sometimes demonstrate impaired attention, as seen in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and at other times demonstrate heightened attention, as seen in addictive behavior. Although the clinical effects of DRD4 are the focus of much work, this gene may not necessarily serve as a "risk" gene for attentional deficits, but as a plasticity gene where attention is heightened for priority items in the environment and impaired for minor items. Here we examine the role of DRD4 in two tasks that benefit from selective attention to high-priority information. We examine a category learning task where performance is supported by focusing on features and updating verbal rules. Here, selective attention to the most salient features is associated with good performance. In addition, we examine the Operation Span (OSPAN) task, a working memory capacity task that relies on selective attention to update and maintain items in memory while also performing a secondary task. Long DRD4 carriers show superior performance relative to short DRD4 homozygotes (six or less tandem repeats) in both the category learning and OSPAN tasks. These results suggest that DRD4 may serve as a "plasticity" gene where individuals with the long allele show heightened selective attention to high-priority items in the environment, which can be beneficial in the appropriate context.

DRD4 Long Allele Carriers Show Heightened Attention to High-Priority Items Relative to Low-Priority Items

PubMed Central

Gorlick, Marissa A.; Worthy, Darrell A.; Knopik, Valerie S.; McGeary, John E.; Beevers, Christopher G.; Maddox, W. Todd

2014-01-01

Humans with 7 or more repeats in exon III of the DRD4 gene (long DRD4 carriers) sometimes demonstrate impaired attention, as seen in ADHD, and at other times demonstrate heightened attention, as seen in addictive behavior. Though the clinical effects of DRD4 are the focus of much work, this gene may not necessarily serve as a ‘risk’ gene for attentional deficits, but as a plasticity gene where attention is heightened for priority items in the environment and impaired for minor items. Here we examine the role of DRD4 in two tasks that benefit from selective attention to high-priority information. We examine a category learning task where performance is supported by focusing on features and updating verbal rules. Here selective attention to the most salient features is associated with good performance. In addition, we examine the Operation Span Task (OSPAN), a working memory capacity task that relies on selective attention to update and maintain items in memory while also performing a secondary task. Long DRD4 carriers show superior performance relative to short DRD4 homozygotes (six or less tandem repeats) in both the category learning and OSPAN tasks. These results suggest that DRD4 may serve as a ‘plasticity’ gene where individuals with the long allele show heightened selective attention to high-priority items in the environment, which can be beneficial in the appropriate context. PMID:25244120

Absence of hardly pursued updating in a running memory task.

PubMed

Elosúa, M Rosa; Ruiz, R Marcos

2008-07-01

In a running memory span task, the participants are presented with a list of items (e.g. numbers or words) of an unknown length, because this length varies from trial to trial. In one variation of the procedure the participants must report a certain fixed number of items (e.g. four) from the end of the list. According to Morris and Jones (British Journal of Psychology, 81, 111-121, 1990), the recalled items must be updated in memory as the presentation of the list progresses. Ruiz, Elosúa and Lechuga (The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 5, 887-905, 2005) noted that an active strategy implies an inhibition in memory of the final discarded items, and did not find results which supported this hypothesis. The aim of this study is to check whether or not participants adopt an active processing strategy in extreme conditions. Experiment 1 uses catch trials, which induce the participants not to discard the first items of the lists, and also short lists (of 4, 7, 8, 9 and 10 items); these could be considered optimal conditions for updating. However, it should also be pointed out that with an upper limit of 10 items per list, participants could try to memorise the whole list in most of the trials. One way to discourage this strategy is including lists well over span (e.g. 14-26 items). The purpose of Experiment 2 was to analyse the 10-item lists in two conditions: within a context of much longer lists (well over span) in most of the trials and within a context of shorter lists (data of Experiment 1). Results in both experiments, from the analysis of location errors, indicate that even in these conditions the participants do not seem to carry out the supposed active updating of the memory set.

Effectiveness of Social Behaviors for Autonomous Wheelchair Robot to Support Elderly People in Japan

PubMed Central

Shiomi, Masahiro; Iio, Takamasa; Kamei, Koji; Sharma, Chandraprakash; Hagita, Norihiro

2015-01-01

We developed a wheelchair robot to support the movement of elderly people and specifically implemented two functions to enhance their intention to use it: speaking behavior to convey place/location related information and speed adjustment based on individual preferences. Our study examines how the evaluations of our wheelchair robot differ when compared with human caregivers and a conventional autonomous wheelchair without the two proposed functions in a moving support context. 28 senior citizens participated in the experiment to evaluate three different conditions. Our measurements consisted of questionnaire items and the coding of free-style interview results. Our experimental results revealed that elderly people evaluated our wheelchair robot higher than the wheelchair without the two functions and the human caregivers for some items. PMID:25993038

A practical measure of workplace resilience: developing the resilience at work scale.

PubMed

Winwood, Peter C; Colon, Rochelle; McEwen, Kath

2013-10-01

To develop an effective measure of resilience at work for use in individual work-related performance and emotional distress contexts. Two separate cross-sectional studies investigated: (1) exploratory factor analysis of 45 items putatively underpinning workplace resilience among 397 participants and (2) confirmatory factor analysis of resilience measure derived from Study 1 demonstrating a credible model of interaction, with performance outcome variables among 194 participants. A 20-item scale explaining 67% of variance, measuring seven aspects of workplace resilience, which are teachable and capable of conscious development, was achieved. A credible model of relationships with work engagement, sleep, stress recovery, and physical health was demonstrated in the expected directions. The new scale shows considerable promise as a reliable instrument for use in the area of employee support and development.

Latent class analysis of diagnostic science assessment data using Bayesian networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Steedle, Jeffrey Thomas

2008-10-01

Diagnostic science assessments seek to draw inferences about student understanding by eliciting evidence about the mental models that underlie students' reasoning about physical systems. Measurement techniques for analyzing data from such assessments embody one of two contrasting assessment programs: learning progressions and facet-based assessments. Learning progressions assume that students have coherent theories that they apply systematically across different problem contexts. In contrast, the facet approach makes no such assumption, so students should not be expected to reason systematically across different problem contexts. A systematic comparison of these two approaches is of great practical value to assessment programs such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress as they seek to incorporate small clusters of related items in their tests for the purpose of measuring depth of understanding. This dissertation describes an investigation comparing learning progression and facet models. Data comprised student responses to small clusters of multiple-choice diagnostic science items focusing on narrow aspects of understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Latent class analysis was employed using Bayesian networks in order to model the relationship between students' science understanding and item responses. Separate models reflecting the assumptions of the learning progression and facet approaches were fit to the data. The technical qualities of inferences about student understanding resulting from the two models were compared in order to determine if either modeling approach was more appropriate. Specifically, models were compared on model-data fit, diagnostic reliability, diagnostic certainty, and predictive accuracy. In addition, the effects of test length were evaluated for both models in order to inform the number of items required to obtain adequately reliable latent class diagnoses. Lastly, changes in student understanding over time were studied with a longitudinal model in order to provide educators and curriculum developers with a sense of how students advance in understanding over the course of instruction. Results indicated that expected student response patterns rarely reflected the assumptions of the learning progression approach. That is, students tended not to systematically apply a coherent set of ideas across different problem contexts. Even those students expected to express scientifically-accurate understanding had substantial probabilities of reporting certain problematic ideas. The learning progression models failed to make as many substantively-meaningful distinctions among students as the facet models. In statistical comparisons, model-data fit was better for the facet model, but the models were quite comparable on all other statistical criteria. Studying the effects of test length revealed that approximately 8 items are needed to obtain adequate diagnostic certainty, but more items are needed to obtain adequate diagnostic reliability. The longitudinal analysis demonstrated that students either advance in their understanding (i.e., switch to the more advanced latent class) over a short period of instruction or stay at the same level. There was no significant relationship between the probability of changing latent classes and time between testing occasions. In all, this study is valuable because it provides evidence informing decisions about modeling and reporting on student understanding, it assesses the quality of measurement available from short clusters of diagnostic multiple-choice items, and it provides educators with knowledge of the paths that student may take as they advance from novice to expert understanding over the course of instruction.

The Development and Validation of the Indian Family Violence and Control Scale

PubMed Central

Kalokhe, Ameeta S.; Stephenson, Rob; Kelley, Mary E.; Dunkle, Kristin L.; Paranjape, Anuradha; Solas, Vikram; Karve, Latika; del Rio, Carlos; Sahay, Seema

2016-01-01

The high prevalence of domestic violence (DV) among married women in India and associated negative health repercussions highlight the need for effective prevention strategies and tools to measure the efficacy of such interventions. Literature supporting differing manifestations of DV by culture underscores the need for a culturally-tailored scale to more effectively measure DV in the Indian context. We therefore aimed to develop and validate such a tool, the Indian Family Violence and Control Scale (IFVCS), through a mixed-methods study. The psychometric development of IFVCS is herein discussed. After field pre-testing and expert review, a 63-item questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 630 married women from May-July 2013 in Pune, India. The item response theory approach for binary data to explore the IFVCS structure suggested that IFVCS is reliable, with the majority of items having high (>0.5) and significant factor loadings. Concurrent validity, assessed by comparing responses to IFVCS with the validated, abridged Conflict Tactics Scale-2, was high (r = 0.899, p<0.001) as was the construct validity, demonstrated by its significant association with several established DV correlates. Therefore, initial assessment of the IFVCS psychometric properties suggests that it is an effective tool for measuring DV among married women in India and speaks to its capacity for enhancing understanding of DV epidemiology and for evaluating the effectiveness of future DV interventions. PMID:26824611

The Development and Validation of the Indian Family Violence and Control Scale.

PubMed

Kalokhe, Ameeta S; Stephenson, Rob; Kelley, Mary E; Dunkle, Kristin L; Paranjape, Anuradha; Solas, Vikram; Karve, Latika; del Rio, Carlos; Sahay, Seema

2016-01-01

The high prevalence of domestic violence (DV) among married women in India and associated negative health repercussions highlight the need for effective prevention strategies and tools to measure the efficacy of such interventions. Literature supporting differing manifestations of DV by culture underscores the need for a culturally-tailored scale to more effectively measure DV in the Indian context. We therefore aimed to develop and validate such a tool, the Indian Family Violence and Control Scale (IFVCS), through a mixed-methods study. The psychometric development of IFVCS is herein discussed. After field pre-testing and expert review, a 63-item questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 630 married women from May-July 2013 in Pune, India. The item response theory approach for binary data to explore the IFVCS structure suggested that IFVCS is reliable, with the majority of items having high (>0.5) and significant factor loadings. Concurrent validity, assessed by comparing responses to IFVCS with the validated, abridged Conflict Tactics Scale-2, was high (r = 0.899, p<0.001) as was the construct validity, demonstrated by its significant association with several established DV correlates. Therefore, initial assessment of the IFVCS psychometric properties suggests that it is an effective tool for measuring DV among married women in India and speaks to its capacity for enhancing understanding of DV epidemiology and for evaluating the effectiveness of future DV interventions.

Electrophysiological distinctions between recognition memory with and without awareness

PubMed Central

Ko, Philip C.; Duda, Bryant; Hussey, Erin P.; Ally, Brandon A.

2013-01-01

The influence of implicit memory representations on explicit recognition may help to explain cases of accurate recognition decisions made with high uncertainty. During a recognition task, implicit memory may enhance the fluency of a test item, biasing decision processes to endorse it as “old”. This model may help explain recognition-without-identification, a remarkable phenomenon in which participants make highly accurate recognition decisions despite the inability to identify the test item. The current study investigated whether recognition-without-identification for pictures elicits a similar pattern of neural activity as other types of accurate recognition decisions made with uncertainty. Further, this study also examined whether recognition-without-identification for pictures could be attained by the use of perceptual and conceptual information from memory. To accomplish this, participants studied pictures and then performed a recognition task under difficult viewing conditions while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Behavioral results showed that recognition was highly accurate even when test items could not be identified, demonstrating recognition-without identification. The behavioral performance also indicated that recognition-without-identification was mediated by both perceptual and conceptual information, independently of one another. The ERP results showed dramatically different memory related activity during the early 300 to 500 ms epoch for identified items that were studied compared to unidentified items that were studied. Similar to previous work highlighting accurate recognition without retrieval awareness, test items that were not identified, but correctly endorsed as “old,” elicited a negative posterior old/new effect (i.e., N300). In contrast, test items that were identified and correctly endorsed as “old,” elicited the classic positive frontal old/new effect (i.e., FN400). Importantly, both of these effects were elicited under conditions when participants used perceptual information to make recognition decisions. Conceptual information elicited very different ERPs than perceptual information, showing that the informational wealth of pictures can evoke multiple routes to recognition even without awareness of memory retrieval. These results are discussed within the context of current theories regarding the N300 and the FN400. PMID:23287567

A predictive framework for evaluating models of semantic organization in free recall

PubMed Central

Morton, Neal W; Polyn, Sean M.

2016-01-01

Research in free recall has demonstrated that semantic associations reliably influence the organization of search through episodic memory. However, the specific structure of these associations and the mechanisms by which they influence memory search remain unclear. We introduce a likelihood-based model-comparison technique, which embeds a model of semantic structure within the context maintenance and retrieval (CMR) model of human memory search. Within this framework, model variants are evaluated in terms of their ability to predict the specific sequence in which items are recalled. We compare three models of semantic structure, latent semantic analysis (LSA), global vectors (GloVe), and word association spaces (WAS), and find that models using WAS have the greatest predictive power. Furthermore, we find evidence that semantic and temporal organization is driven by distinct item and context cues, rather than a single context cue. This finding provides important constraint for theories of memory search. PMID:28331243

Two (or three) is one too many: testing the flexibility of contextual cueing with multiple target locations.

PubMed

Zellin, Martina; Conci, Markus; von Mühlenen, Adrian; Müller, Hermann J

2011-10-01

Visual search for a target object is facilitated when the object is repeatedly presented within an invariant context of surrounding items ("contextual cueing"; Chun & Jiang, Cognitive Psychology, 36, 28-71, 1998). The present study investigated whether such invariant contexts can cue more than one target location. In a series of three experiments, we showed that contextual cueing is significantly reduced when invariant contexts are paired with two rather than one possible target location, whereas no contextual cueing occurs with three distinct target locations. Closer data inspection revealed that one "dominant" target always exhibited substantially more contextual cueing than did the other, "minor" target(s), which caused negative contextual-cueing effects. However, minor targets could benefit from the invariant context when they were spatially close to the dominant target. In sum, our experiments suggest that contextual cueing can guide visual attention to a spatially limited region of the display, only enhancing the detection of targets presented inside that region.

Parent-Reported Health Consequences and Relationship to Expenditures in Children with ADHD.

PubMed

deJong, Neal A; Williams, Christianna S; Thomas, Kathleen C

2016-04-01

(1) To describe parents' report of special needs for children with ADHD on the Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN) Screener; and (2) to assess the association between responses to Screener items and annual mental health and total health expenditures per child. In pooled 2002-2011 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data, we identify children ages 4-17 years with ADHD. We use OLS and two-part regressions to model the relationship between CSHCN Screener items and mental health and total health expenditures. Based on these models we estimate adjusted, average total health expenditures for children with ADHD-both with and without a co-morbid mental health condition-and different combinations of endorsed Screener items. This research was conducted in accordance with prevailing ethical principles. There were 3883 observations on 2591 children with ADHD. Without a co-morbid mental health condition, average total expenditures per year from adjusted, model-based estimates were $865 for those meeting no Screener items, $2664 for those meeting only the medication item, $3595 for those meeting the medication and counseling items, and $4203 for those meeting the medication, counseling, and use of more health services items. Children with a co-morbid mental health condition had greater total health expenditures for each combination of Screener items. The associations between Screener items and mental health expenditures were similar, but with a slightly lower marginal effect of the medication item (p < 0.001 for all comparisons). Parents' responses on the CSHCN Screener are associated with meaningful variation in expenditures for children with ADHD. Though cross-sectional, this study suggests that the CSHCN Screener can be a useful categorization scheme for children with ADHD. It may be an efficient, standardized tool at the point of care for identifying children who need more resources and for targeting intensive interventions in the context of population health management.

Reweighting Data in the Spirit of Tukey: Using Bayesian Posterior Probabilities as Rasch Residuals for Studying Misfit

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dardick, William R.; Mislevy, Robert J.

2016-01-01

A new variant of the iterative "data = fit + residual" data-analytical approach described by Mosteller and Tukey is proposed and implemented in the context of item response theory psychometric models. Posterior probabilities from a Bayesian mixture model of a Rasch item response theory model and an unscalable latent class are expressed…

Criteria of Career Success among Chinese Employees: Developing a Multidimensional Scale with Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhou, Wenxia; Sun, Jianmin; Guan, Yanjun; Li, Yuhui; Pan, Jingzhou

2013-01-01

The current research aimed to develop a multidimensional measure on the criteria of career success in a Chinese context. Items on the criteria of career success were obtained using a qualitative approach among 30 Chinese employees; exploratory factor analysis was conducted to select items and determine the factor structure among a new sample of…

Control of interference during working memory updating.

PubMed

Szmalec, Arnaud; Verbruggen, Frederick; Vandierendonck, André; Kemps, Eva

2011-02-01

The current study examined the nature of the processes underlying working memory updating. In 4 experiments using the n-back paradigm, the authors demonstrate that continuous updating of items in working memory prevents strong binding of those items to their contexts in working memory, and hence leads to an increased susceptibility to proactive interference. Results of Experiments 1 and 2 show that this interference reflects a competition between a process that reveals the degree of familiarity of an item and a context-sensitive recollection process that depends on the strength of bindings in working memory. Experiment 3 further clarifies the origins of interference during updating by demonstrating that even items that are semantically related to the updated working memory contents but that have not been maintained in working memory before cause proactive interference. Finally, the results of Experiment 4 indicate that the occurrence of interference leads to top-down behavioral adjustments that prioritize recollection over familiarity assessment. The implications of these findings for the construct validity of the n-back task, for the control processes involved in working memory updating, and for the concept of executive control more generally are discussed. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

Scale refinement and initial evaluation of a behavioral health function measurement tool for work disability evaluation.

PubMed

Marfeo, Elizabeth E; Ni, Pengsheng; Haley, Stephen M; Bogusz, Kara; Meterko, Mark; McDonough, Christine M; Chan, Leighton; Rasch, Elizabeth K; Brandt, Diane E; Jette, Alan M

2013-09-01

To use item response theory (IRT) data simulations to construct and perform initial psychometric testing of a newly developed instrument, the Social Security Administration Behavioral Health Function (SSA-BH) instrument, that aims to assess behavioral health functioning relevant to the context of work. Cross-sectional survey followed by IRT calibration data simulations. Community. Sample of individuals applying for Social Security Administration disability benefits: claimants (n=1015) and a normative comparative sample of U.S. adults (n=1000). None. SSA-BH measurement instrument. IRT analyses supported the unidimensionality of 4 SSA-BH scales: mood and emotions (35 items), self-efficacy (23 items), social interactions (6 items), and behavioral control (15 items). All SSA-BH scales demonstrated strong psychometric properties including reliability, accuracy, and breadth of coverage. High correlations of the simulated 5- or 10-item computer adaptive tests with the full item bank indicated robust ability of the computer adaptive testing approach to comprehensively characterize behavioral health function along 4 distinct dimensions. Initial testing and evaluation of the SSA-BH instrument demonstrated good accuracy, reliability, and content coverage along all 4 scales. Behavioral function profiles of Social Security Administration claimants were generated and compared with age- and sex-matched norms along 4 scales: mood and emotions, behavioral control, social interactions, and self-efficacy. Using the computer adaptive test-based approach offers the ability to collect standardized, comprehensive functional information about claimants in an efficient way, which may prove useful in the context of the Social Security Administration's work disability programs. Copyright © 2013 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mixed methods evaluation of a quality improvement and audit tool for nurse-to-nurse bedside clinical handover in ward settings.

PubMed

Redley, Bernice; Waugh, Rachael

2018-04-01

Nurse bedside handover quality is influenced by complex interactions related to the content, processes used and the work environment. Audit tools are seldom tested in 'real' settings. Examine the reliability, validity and usability of a quality improvement tool for audit of nurse bedside handover. Naturalistic, descriptive, mixed-methods. Six inpatient wards at a single large not-for-profit private health service in Victoria, Australia. Five nurse experts and 104 nurses involved in 199 change-of-shift bedside handovers. A focus group with experts and pilot test were used to examine content and face validity, and usability of the handover audit tool. The tool was examined for inter-rater reliability and usability using observation audits of handovers across six wards. Data were collected in 2013-2014. Two independent observers for 72 audits demonstrated acceptable inter-observer agreement for 27 (77%) items. Reliability was weak for items examining the handover environment. Seventeen items were not observed reflecting gaps in practices. Across 199 observation audits, gaps in nurse bedside handover practice most often related to process and environment, rather than content items. Usability was impacted by high observer burden, familiarity and non-specific illustrative behaviours. The reliability and validity of most items to audit handover content was acceptable. Gaps in practices for process and environment items were identified. Context specific exemplars and reducing the items used at each handover audit can enhance usability. Further research is needed to develop context specific exemplars and undertake additional reliability testing using a wide range of handover settings. CONTRIBUTION OF THE PAPER. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

We will make you like our research: The development of a susceptibility-to-persuasion scale.

PubMed

Modic, David; Anderson, Ross; Palomäki, Jussi

2018-01-01

Psychological and other persuasive mechanisms across diverse contexts are well researched, with many studies of the effectiveness of specific persuasive techniques on distinct types of human behaviour. In the present paper, our specific interest lies in the development of a generalized modular psychometric tool to measure individuals' susceptibility to persuasion. The scale is constructed using items from previously developed and validated particulate scales established in the domains of social psychology and behavioural economics. In the first study we establish the Susceptibility to Persuasion-II (StP-II) scale, containing 54 items, 10 subscales and further 6 sub-sub scales. In Study 2 we establish the scale's construct validity and reconfirm its reliability. We present a valid and reliable modular psychometric tool that measures general susceptibility to persuasive techniques. Since its inception, we have successfully implemented the StP-II scale to measure susceptibility to persuasion of IT security officers, the role of psychology of persuasion in cybercrime victims and general persuadability levels of Facebook users; these manuscripts are in preparation. We argue that the StP-II scale shows promise in measuring individual differences in susceptibility to persuasion, and is applicable across diverse contexts such as Internet security and cybercrime.

Cross-cultural adaptation of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist 5 (PCL-5) and Life Events Checklist 5 (LEC-5) for the Brazilian context.

PubMed

Lima, Eduardo de Paula; Vasconcelos, Alina Gomide; Berger, William; Kristensen, Christian Haag; Nascimento, Elizabeth do; Figueira, Ivan; Mendlowicz, Mauro Vitor

2016-01-01

To describe the process of cross-cultural adaptation of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist 5 (PCL-5) and the Life Events Checklist 5 (LEC-5) for the Brazilian sociolinguistic context. The adaptation process sought to establish conceptual, semantic, and operational equivalence between the original items of the questionnaire and their translated versions, following standardized protocols. Initially, two researchers translated the original version of the scale into Brazilian Portuguese. Next, a native English speaker performed the back-translation. Quantitative and qualitative criteria were used to evaluate the intelligibility of items. Five specialists compared the original and translated versions and assessed the degree of equivalence between them in terms of semantic, idiomatic, cultural and conceptual aspects. The degree of agreement between the specialists was measured using the content validity coefficient (CVC). Finally, 28 volunteers from the target population were interviewed in order to assess their level of comprehension of the items. CVCs for items from both scales were satisfactory for all criteria. The mean comprehension scores were above the cutoff point established. Overall, the results showed that the adapted versions' items had adequate rates of equivalence in terms of concepts and semantics. The translation and adaptation processes were successful for both scales, resulting in versions that are not only equivalent to the originals, but are also intelligible for the population at large.

The emotion regulation questionnaire in women with cancer: A psychometric evaluation and an item response theory analysis.

PubMed

Brandão, Tânia; Schulz, Marc S; Gross, James J; Matos, Paula Mena

2017-10-01

Emotion regulation is thought to play an important role in adaptation to cancer. However, the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ), a widely used instrument to assess emotion regulation, has not yet been validated in this context. This study addresses this gap by examining the psychometric properties of the ERQ in a sample of Portuguese women with cancer. The ERQ was administered to 204 women with cancer (mean age = 48.89 years, SD = 7.55). Confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory analysis were used to examine psychometric properties of the ERQ. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the 2-factor solution proposed by the original authors (expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal). This solution was invariant across age and type of cancer. Item response theory analyses showed that all items were moderately to highly discriminant and that items are better suited for identifying moderate levels of expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal. Support was found for the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the ERQ. The pattern of relationships with emotional control, alexithymia, emotional self-efficacy, attachment, and quality of life provided evidence of the convergent and concurrent validity for both dimensions of the ERQ. Overall, the ERQ is a psychometrically sound approach for assessing emotion regulation strategies in the oncological context. Clinical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Psychometric properties concerning four instruments measuring job satisfaction, strain, and stress of conscience in a residential care context.

PubMed

Orrung Wallin, Anneli; Edberg, Anna-Karin; Beck, Ingela; Jakobsson, Ulf

2013-01-01

There are many instruments assessing the wellbeing of staff, but far from all have been psychometrically investigated. When evaluating supportive interventions directed toward nurse assistants in residential care, valid and reliable instruments are needed in order to detect possible changes. The aim of the study was to investigate validity in terms of data quality, construct validity, convergent and divergent validity and reliability in terms of the internal consistency and stability of the Job Satisfaction Questionnaire, the Psychosocial Aspects of Job Satisfaction, the Strain in Dementia Care Scale (SDCS), and the Stress of Conscience Questionnaire (SCQ) in a residential care context. The psychometric properties of the instruments were investigated in terms of data quality, construct validity, convergent and divergent validity and reliability, including test-retest reliability, in a residential care context with a sample consisting of nurse assistants (n=114). The four instruments responded with different psychometric-related problems such as internal missing data, floor and ceiling effects, problems with construct validity and low test-retest reliability, especially when assessed on the item level. These problems were however reduced or disappeared completely when assessed for total and factor scores. From a psychometric perspective, the SDCS seemed to stand out as the best instrument. However, it should be modified in order to reduce floor effects on item level and thereby gain sensitivity. The Job Satisfaction Questionnaire seemed to have problems both with the construct validity and test-retest reliability. The final choice of instrument must, however, be made dependent on what one intends to measure. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Top-down contextual knowledge guides visual attention in infancy.

PubMed

Tummeltshammer, Kristen; Amso, Dima

2017-10-26

The visual context in which an object or face resides can provide useful top-down information for guiding attention orienting, object recognition, and visual search. Although infants have demonstrated sensitivity to covariation in spatial arrays, it is presently unclear whether they can use rapidly acquired contextual knowledge to guide attention during visual search. In this eye-tracking experiment, 6- and 10-month-old infants searched for a target face hidden among colorful distracter shapes. Targets appeared in Old or New visual contexts, depending on whether the visual search arrays (defined by the spatial configuration, shape and color of component items in the search display) were repeated or newly generated throughout the experiment. Targets in Old contexts appeared in the same location within the same configuration, such that context covaried with target location. Both 6- and 10-month-olds successfully distinguished between Old and New contexts, exhibiting faster search times, fewer looks at distracters, and more anticipation of targets when contexts repeated. This initial demonstration of contextual cueing effects in infants indicates that they can use top-down information to facilitate orienting during memory-guided visual search. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Categorizing words using 'frequent frames': what cross-linguistic analyses reveal about distributional acquisition strategies.

PubMed

Chemla, Emmanuel; Mintz, Toben H; Bernal, Savita; Christophe, Anne

2009-04-01

Mintz (2003) described a distributional environment called a frame, defined as the co-occurrence of two context words with one intervening target word. Analyses of English child-directed speech showed that words that fell within any frequently occurring frame consistently belonged to the same grammatical category (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, etc.). In this paper, we first generalize this result to French, a language in which the function word system allows patterns that are potentially detrimental to a frame-based analysis procedure. Second, we show that the discontinuity of the chosen environments (i.e. the fact that target words are framed by the context words) is crucial for the mechanism to be efficient. This property might be relevant for any computational approach to grammatical categorization. Finally, we investigate a recursive application of the procedure and observe that the categorization is paradoxically worse when context elements are categories rather than actual lexical items. Item-specificity is thus also a core computational principle for this type of algorithm. Our analysis, along with results from behavioural studies (Gómez, 2002; Gómez and Maye, 2005; Mintz, 2006), provides strong support for frames as a basis for the acquisition of grammatical categories by infants. Discontinuity and item-specificity appear to be crucial features.

Preschoolers’ Novel Noun Extensions: Shape in Spite of Knowing Better

PubMed Central

Saalbach, Henrik; Schalk, Lennart

2011-01-01

We examined the puzzling research findings that when extending novel nouns, preschoolers rely on shape similarity (rather than categorical relations) while in other task contexts (e.g., property induction) they rely on categorical relations. Taking into account research on children’s word learning, categorization, and inductive inference we assume that preschoolers have both a shape-based and a category-based word extension strategy available and can switch between these two depending on which information is easily available. To this end, we tested preschoolers on two versions of a novel-noun label extension task. First, we paralleled the standard extension task commonly used by previous research. In this case, as expected, preschoolers predominantly selected same-shape items. Second, we supported preschoolers’ retrieval of item-related information from memory by asking them simple questions about each item prior to the label extension task. Here, they switched to a category-based strategy, thus, predominantly selecting same-category items. Finally, we revealed that this shape-to-category shift is specific to the word learning context as we did not find it in a non-lexical classification task. These findings support our assumption that preschoolers’ decision about word extension change in accordance with the availability of information (from task context or by memory retrieval). We conclude by suggesting that preschoolers’ noun extensions can be conceptualized within the framework of heuristic decision-making. This provides an ecologically plausible processing account with respect to which information is selected and how this information is integrated to act as a guideline for decision-making when novel words have to be generalized. PMID:22073036

French translation and validation of the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) in a Canadian undergraduate healthcare student context.

PubMed

Cloutier, Jacinthe; Lafrance, Josée; Michallet, Bernard; Marcoux, Lyson; Cloutier, France

2015-03-01

The Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative recommends that future professionals be prepared for collaborative practice. To do so, it is necessary for them to learn about the principles of interprofessional collaboration. Therefore, to ascertain if students are predisposed, their attitude toward interprofessional learning must be assessed. In the French Canadian context such a measuring tool has not been published yet. The purpose of this study is to translate in French an adapted version of the RIPLS questionnaire and to validate it for use with undergraduate students from seven various health and social care programmes in a Canadian university. According to Vallerand's methodology, a method for translating measuring instruments: (i) the forward-backward translation indicated that six items of the experimental French version of the RIPLS needed to be more specific; (ii) the experimental French version of the RIPLS seemed clear according to the pre-test assessing items clarity; (iii) evaluation of the content validity indicated that the experimental French version of the RIPLS presents good content validity and (iv) a very good internal consistency was obtained (α = 0.90; n = 141). Results indicate that the psychometric properties of the RIPLS in French are comparable to the English version, although a different factorial structure was found. The relevance of three of the 19 items on the RIPLS scale is questionable, resulting in a revised 16-item scale. Future research aimed at validating the translated French version of the RIPLS could also be conducted in another francophone cultural context.

Two Are Not Better than One: Combining Unitization and Relational Encoding Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tu, Hsiao-Wei; Diana, Rachel A.

2016-01-01

In recognition memory, "recollection" is defined as retrieval of the context associated with an event, whereas "familiarity" is defined as retrieval based on item strength alone. Recent studies have shown that conventional recollection-based tasks, in which context details are manipulated for source memory assessment at test,…

A Survey of EFL Instructors' Mediative Knowledge across Contexts of Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rezaee-Manesh, Najafquli; Tahriri, Abdorreza

2014-01-01

The current mixed-method study probed EFL instructors' mediative knowledge across four different contexts of teaching including language institutes, universities, and senior and junior high schools in Iran. To this end, 181 EFL instructors, 80 males and 101 females, completed mediative closed-questionnaire which composed of twelve items to measure…

Consistency of nature of science views across scientific and socio-scientific contexts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Khishfe, Rola

2017-03-01

The purpose of the investigation was to investigate the consistency of NOS views among high school students across different scientific and socio-scientific contexts. A total of 261 high school students from eight different schools in Lebanon participated in the investigation. The schools were selected based on different geographical areas in Lebanon and the principals' consent to participate in the study. The investigation used a qualitative design to compare the responses of students across different contexts/topics. All the participants completed a five-item open-ended questionnaire, which includes five topics addressing scientific and socio-scientific contexts. The items of the questionnaire addressed the empirical, tentative, and subjective aspects of NOS. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to answer the research questions. Results showed that participants' views of the emphasised NOS aspects were mostly inconsistent. Plus, there was variance in participants' views of NOS between scientific and socio-scientific issues. Discussion of the results related to differential developmental progression, contextual factors, social constructivist perspective, different domains of knowledge, and students' individual differences.

Adaptation of a difficult-to-manage asthma programme for implementation in the Dutch context: a modified e-Delphi

PubMed Central

Honkoop, Persijn J; Pinnock, Hilary; Kievits-Smeets, Regien M M; Sterk, Peter J; Dekhuijzen, P N Richard; in ’t Veen, Johannes C C M

2017-01-01

Patients with difficult-to-manage asthma represent a heterogeneous subgroup of asthma patients who require extensive assessment and tailored management. The International Primary Care Respiratory Group approach emphasises the importance of differentiating patients with asthma that is difficult to manage from those with severe disease. Local adaptation of this approach, however, is required to ensure an appropriate strategy for implementation in the Dutch context. We used a modified three-round e-Delphi approach to assess the opinion of all relevant stakeholders (general practitioners, pulmonologists, practice nurses, pulmonary nurses and people with asthma). In the first round, the participants were asked to provide potentially relevant items for a difficult-to-manage asthma programme, which resulted in 67 items. In the second round, we asked participants to rate the relevance of specific items on a seven-point Likert scale, and 46 items were selected as relevant. In the third round, the selected items were categorised and items were ranked within the categories according to relevance. Finally, we created the alphabet acronym for the categories ‘the A–I of difficult-to-manage asthma’ to resonate with an established Dutch ‘A–E acronym for determining asthma control’. This should facilitate implementation of this programme within the existing structure of educational material on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in primary care, with potential for improving management of difficult-to-manage asthma. Other countries could use a similar approach to create a locally adapted version of such a programme. PMID:28184039

Attitude of dental hygienists, general practitioners and periodontists towards preventive oral care: an exploratory study.

PubMed

Thevissen, Eric; De Bruyn, Hugo; Colman, Roos; Koole, Sebastiaan

2017-08-01

Promoting oral hygiene and stimulating patient's responsibility for his/her personal health remain challenging objectives. The presence of dental hygienists has led to delegation of preventive tasks. However, in some countries, such as Belgium, this profession is not yet legalized. The aim of this exploratory study was to compare the attitude towards oral-hygiene instructions and patient motivational actions by dental hygienists and by general practitioners/periodontists in a context without dental hygienists. A questionnaire on demographics (six items), oral-hygiene instructions (eight items) and patient motivational actions (six items) was distributed to 241 Dutch dental hygienists, 692 general practitioners and 32 periodontists in Flanders/Belgium. Statistical analysis included Fisher's exact-test, Pearson's chi-square test and multiple (multinomial) logistic regression analysis to observe the influence of profession, age, workload, practice area and chair-assistance. Significant variance was found between general practitioners and dental hygienists (in 13 of 14 items), between general practitioners and periodontists (in nine of 14 items) and between dental hygienists and periodontists (in five of 14 items). In addition to qualification, chair-assistance was also identified as affecting the attitude towards preventive oral care. The present study identified divergence in the application of, and experienced barriers and opinions about, oral-hygiene instructions and patient motivational actions between dental hygienists and general practitioners/periodontists in a context without dental hygienists. In response to the barriers reported it is suggested that preventive oriented care may benefit from the deployment of dental hygienists to increase access to qualified preventive oral care. © 2017 FDI World Dental Federation.

The Differences among Three-, Four-, and Five-Option-Item Formats in the Context of a High-Stakes English-Language Listening Test

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, HyeSun; Winke, Paula

2013-01-01

We adapted three practice College Scholastic Ability Tests (CSAT) of English listening, each with five-option items, to create four- and three-option versions by asking 73 Korean speakers or learners of English to eliminate the least plausible options in two rounds. Two hundred and sixty-four Korean high school English-language learners formed…

NAEP Validity Studies: Improving the Information Value of Performance Items in Large Scale Assessments. Working Paper No. 2003-08

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pearson, P. David; Garavaglia, Diane R.

2003-01-01

The purpose of this essay is to explore both what is known and what needs to be learned about the information value of performance items "when they are used in large scale assessments." Within the context of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), there is substantial motivation for answering these questions. Over the…

Human Information Processing Guidelines for Decision-Aiding Displays.

DTIC Science & Technology

1981-12-01

recall when they are used together. Also, context plays an important part in verifying the truth or falsity of sentences . For example, "A robin... interferes with the processing and storing of * additional items (Loftus, 1979). However, rehearsal, by recycling the number of items in STM, allows...remembered better than the middle letters in the series. It was hypothesized that encoding the name of the

Differential Item Functioning Assessment in Cognitive Diagnostic Modeling: Application of the Wald Test to Investigate DIF in the DINA Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hou, Likun; de la Torre, Jimmy; Nandakumar, Ratna

2014-01-01

Analyzing examinees' responses using cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) has the advantage of providing diagnostic information. To ensure the validity of the results from these models, differential item functioning (DIF) in CDMs needs to be investigated. In this article, the Wald test is proposed to examine DIF in the context of CDMs. This study…

Conservativeness in Rejection of the Null Hypothesis when Using the Continuity Correction in the MH Chi-Square Test in DIF Applications

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paek, Insu

2010-01-01

Conservative bias in rejection of a null hypothesis from using the continuity correction in the Mantel-Haenszel (MH) procedure was examined through simulation in a differential item functioning (DIF) investigation context in which statistical testing uses a prespecified level [alpha] for the decision on an item with respect to DIF. The standard MH…

Age-Related Changes in the Control of Episodic Retrieval: An ERP Study of Recognition Memory in Children and Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Czernochowski, Daniela; Mecklinger, Axel; Johansson, Mikael

2009-01-01

We examined developmental aspects of the ability to monitor the temporal context of an item's previous occurrence while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. In a continuous recognition task, children between 10 and 12 years and young adults watched a stream of pictures repeated with a lag of 10-15 intervening items and indicated…

Translation and adaption of the interRAI suite to local requirements in Belgian hospitals

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background The interRAI Suite contains comprehensive geriatric assessment tools designed for various healthcare settings. Although each instrument is developed for a particular population, together they form an integrated health evaluation system. The interRAI Acute Care Minimum Data Set (interRAI AC) is tailored for hospitalized older persons. Our aim in this study was to translate and adapt the interRAI AC to the Belgian hospital context, where it can be used together with the interRAI Home Care (HC) and the interRAI Long Term Care Facility (LTCF). Methods A systematic, comprehensive, and rigorous 10-step approach was used to adapt the interRAI AC to local requirements. After linguistic translation by an official translator, five researchers assessed the translation for appropriate hospital jargon. Three researchers double-checked for translation accuracy and proposed additional items. A provisional version was converted into the three official languages of Belgium—Flemish, French, and German. Next, a multidisciplinary panel of nine experts judged item relevance to the Belgian care context and advised which country-specific items should be added. After these suggestions were incorporated into the interRAI AC, hospital staff from nine Flemish hospitals field-tested the tool in their practice. After evaluating field-test results, we compared the interRAI AC with Belgian versions of the interRAI HC and interRAI LTCF. Next, the Flemish, French, and German versions of the Belgian interRAI portfolio were harmonized. Finally, we submitted the Belgian interRAI AC to the interRAI organization for ratification. Results Eighteen administrative items of the interRAI AC were adapted to the Belgian healthcare context (e.g., usual residence, formal community services prior to admission). Fourteen items assessing the ‘informal caregiver’, and 17 items, including country-specific items, were added (e.g., advanced directive for euthanasia). Conclusions The interRAI AC was adapted to local requirements using a meticulous and recursive 10-step approach. As use of the interRAI Suite continues to grow worldwide and as it continues to expand to other care settings and populations, this procedure can guide future translations. This procedure might also be used by others facing similar challenges of complex translation and adaptation situations, where multidimensional instruments are used across multiple care settings in multiple languages. PMID:22958520

Stopping at the sight of food - How gender and obesity impact on response inhibition.

PubMed

Mühlberg, Christoph; Mathar, David; Villringer, Arno; Horstmann, Annette; Neumann, Jane

2016-12-01

Recent research indicates that reduced inhibitory control is associated with higher body mass index (BMI), higher food craving and increased food intake. However, experimental evidence for the relationship between response inhibition and weight status is inconsistent and to date has been investigated predominantly in women. In the current study, 56 participants (26 obese, 30 lean; 27 female, 29 male) performed a Food Picture Rating Task followed by a Stop Signal Task where pictures of palatable high or low caloric food or non-food items were presented prior to the Go signal. We further assessed participants' self-reported eating behavior and trait impulsivity as potential factors influencing response inhibition, in particular within the food context. Independent of BMI, women showed significantly higher liking for low caloric food items than men. This was accompanied by shorter Stop Signal Reaction Times (SSRT) after high compared to low caloric food pictures for women, and shorter SSRT in women compared to men for high caloric food. No influence of gender on SSRT was observable outside of the food context. While SSRTs did not differ between obese and lean participants across the three picture categories, we found a moderating effect of trait impulsivity on the relationship between BMI and SSRT, specifically in the high caloric food context. Higher BMI was predictive of longer SSRT only for participants with low to normal trait impulsivity, pointing at a complex interplay between response inhibition, general impulsivity and weight status. Our results support the notion that individuals with obesity do not suffer from diminished response inhibition capacity per se. Rather, the ability to withhold a response depends on context and social norms, and strongly interacts with factors like gender and trait impulsivity. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Psychometrics of Shared Decision Making and Communication as Patient Centered Measures for Two Language Groups

PubMed Central

Alvarez, Kiara; Wang, Ye; Alegria, Margarita; Ault-Brutus, Andrea; Ramanayake, Natasha; Yeh, Yi-Hui; Jeffries, Julia R.; Shrout, Patrick E.

2017-01-01

Shared decision-making (SDM) and effective patient-provider communication are key and interrelated elements of patient-centered care that impact health and behavioral health outcomes. Measurement of SDM and communication from the patient’s perspective is necessary in order to ensure that health care systems and individual providers are responsive to patient views. However, there is a void of research addressing the psychometric properties of these measures with diverse patients, including non-English speakers, and in the context of behavioral health encounters. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of two patient-centered outcome measures, the Shared Decision Making Questionnaire-9 (SDM-Q) and the Kim Alliance Scale-Communication Subscale (KAS-CM), in a sample of 239 English and Spanish-speaking behavioral health patients. One dominant factor was found for each scale and this structure was used to examine whether there was measurement invariance across the two language groups. One SDM-Q item was inconsistent with the configural invariance comparison and was removed. The remaining SDM-Q items exhibited strong invariance, meaning that item loadings and item means were similar across the two groups. The KAS-CM items had limited variability, with most respondents indicating high communication levels, and the invariance analysis was done on binary versions of the items. These had metric invariance (loadings the same over groups) but several items violated the strong invariance test. In both groups, the SDM-Q had high internal consistency, whereas the KAS-CM was only adequate. These findings help interpret results for individual patients, taking into account cultural and linguistic differences in how patients perceive SDM and patient-provider communication. PMID:27537002

Psychometrics of shared decision making and communication as patient centered measures for two language groups.

PubMed

Alvarez, Kiara; Wang, Ye; Alegria, Margarita; Ault-Brutus, Andrea; Ramanayake, Natasha; Yeh, Yi-Hui; Jeffries, Julia R; Shrout, Patrick E

2016-09-01

Shared decision making (SDM) and effective patient-provider communication are key and interrelated elements of patient-centered care that impact health and behavioral health outcomes. Measurement of SDM and communication from the patient's perspective is necessary in order to ensure that health care systems and individual providers are responsive to patient views. However, there is a void of research addressing the psychometric properties of these measures with diverse patients, including non-English speakers, and in the context of behavioral health encounters. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of 2 patient-centered outcome measures, the Shared Decision-Making Questionnaire-9 (SDM-Q) and the Kim Alliance Scale-Communication subscale (KAS-CM), in a sample of 239 English and Spanish-speaking behavioral health patients. One dominant factor was found for each scale and this structure was used to examine whether there was measurement invariance across the 2 language groups. One SDM-Q item was inconsistent with the configural invariance comparison and was removed. The remaining SDM-Q items exhibited strong invariance, meaning that item loadings and item means were similar across the 2 groups. The KAS-CM items had limited variability, with most respondents indicating high communication levels, and the invariance analysis was done on binary versions of the items. These had metric invariance (loadings the same over groups) but several items violated the strong invariance test. In both groups, the SDM-Q had high internal consistency, whereas the KAS-CM was only adequate. These findings help interpret results for individual patients, taking into account cultural and linguistic differences in how patients perceive SDM and patient-provider communication. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Communication about chronic critical illness.

PubMed

Nelson, Judith E; Mercado, Alice F; Camhi, Sharon L; Tandon, Nidhi; Wallenstein, Sylvan; August, Gary I; Morrison, R Sean

2007-12-10

Despite poor outcomes, life-sustaining treatments including mechanical ventilation are continued for a large and growing population of patients with chronic critical illness. This may be owing in part to a lack of understanding resulting from inadequate communication between clinicians and patients and families. Our objective was to investigate the informational needs of patients with chronic critical illness and their families and the extent to which these needs are met. In this prospective observational study conducted at 5 adult intensive care units in a large, university-affiliated hospital in New York, New York, 100 patients with chronic critical illness (within 3-7 days of elective tracheotomy for prolonged mechanical ventilation) or surrogates for incapacitated patients were surveyed using an 18-item questionnaire addressing communication about chronic critical illness. Main outcome measures included ratings of importance and reports of whether information was received about questionnaire items. Among 125 consecutive, eligible patients, 100 (80%) were enrolled; questionnaire respondents included 2 patients and 98 surrogates. For all items, more than 78% of respondents rated the information as important for decision making (>98% for 16 of 18 items). Respondents reported receiving no information for a mean (SD) of 9.0 (3.3) of 18 items, with 95% of respondents reporting not receiving information for approximately one-quarter of the items. Of the subjects rating the item as important, 77 of 96 (80%) and 69 of 74 (93%) reported receiving no information about expected functional status at hospital discharge and prognosis for 1-year survival, respectively. Many patients and their families may lack important information for decision making about continuation of treatment in the chronic phase of critical illness. Strategies for effective communication in this clinical context should be investigated and implemented.

Communication About Chronic Critical Illness

PubMed Central

Nelson, Judith E.; Mercado, Alice F.; Camhi, Sharon L.; Tandon, Nidhi; Wallenstein, Sylvan; August, Gary I.; Morrison, R. Sean

2008-01-01

Background Despite poor outcomes, life-sustaining treatments including mechanical ventilation are continued for a large and growing population of patients with chronic critical illness. This may be owing in part to a lack of understanding resulting from inadequate communication between clinicians and patients and families. Our objective was to investigate the informational needs of patients with chronic critical illness and their families and the extent to which these needs are met. Methods In this prospective observational study conducted at 5 adult intensive care units in a large, university-affiliated hospital in New York, New York, 100 patients with chronic critical illness (within 3–7 days of elective tracheotomy for prolonged mechanical ventilation) or surrogates for incapacitated patients were surveyed using an 18-item questionnaire addressing communication about chronic critical illness. Main outcome measures included ratings of importance and reports of whether information was received about questionnaire items. Results Among 125 consecutive, eligible patients, 100 (80%) were enrolled; questionnaire respondents included 2 patients and 98 surrogates. For all items, more than 78% of respondents rated the information as important for decision making (>98% for 16 of 18 items). Respondents reported receiving no information for a mean (SD) of 9.0 (3.3) of 18 items, with 95% of respondents reporting not receiving information for approximately one-quarter of the items. Of the subjects rating the item as important, 77 of 96 (80%) and 69 of 74 (93%) reported receiving no information about expected functional status at hospital discharge and prognosis for 1-year survival, respectively. Conclusions Many patients and their families may lack important information for decision making about continuation of treatment in the chronic phase of critical illness. Strategies for effective communication in this clinical context should be investigated and implemented. PMID:18071175

Eliciting and characterizing students' mental models within the context of engineering design

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dankenbring, Chelsey

Recently, science education reform documents have called for the incorporation of engineering principles and practices into the K-12 science standards and curriculum. One way this has been done is through the use of engineering design tasks as a way for students to apply their scientific understandings to real-world problems. However, minimal studies have documented students' conceptions within the context of engineering design. Thus, the first chapter of this thesis outlines the steps taken to develop a draw-and-explain item that elicited students' mental models regarding the cause of the four seasons after finishing an engineering design task. Students' mental models regarding the reason for the seasons are also described. The second chapter characterizes students' conceptions regarding sun-Earth relationships, specifically the amount of daylight hours throughout the year, for students who completed either an engineering design task or more traditional learning activities. Results from these studies indicate that draw-and-explain items are an effective way of obtaining students' mental models and that students harbor a variety of alternate conceptions on astronomy related concepts within various learning contexts. Implications from this study include the need for further research regarding how engineering design is used in the classroom and how engineering design facilitates science learning. Also, professional development that allows in-service teachers to gain experience teaching engineering design is needed, as are teacher preparation programs that expose pre-service teachers to engineering design.

Information disclosure in clinical informed consent: “reasonable” patient’s perception of norm in high-context communication culture

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background The current doctrine of informed consent for clinical care has been developed in cultures characterized by low-context communication and monitoring-style coping. There are scarce empirical data on patients’ norm perception of information disclosure in other cultures. Methods We surveyed 470 adults who were planning to undergo or had recently undergone a written informed consent-requiring procedure in a tertiary healthcare hospital in Saudi Arabia. Perceptions of norm and current practice were explored using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly agree with disclosure) and 30 information items in 7 domains: practitioners’ details, benefits, risks, complications’ management, available alternatives, procedure’s description, and post-procedure’s issues. Results Respondents’ mean (SD) age was 38.4 (12.5); 50.2% were males, 57.2% had ≥ college education, and 37.9% had undergone a procedure. According to norm perception, strongly agree/agree responses ranged from 98.0% (major benefits) to 50.5% (assistant/trainee’s name). Overall, items related to benefits and post-procedure’s issues were ranked better (more agreeable) than items related to risks and available alternatives. Ranking scores were better in post-procedure respondents for 4 (13.3%) items (p < 0.001 to 0.001) and in males for 8 (26.7%) items (p = 0.008 to <0.001). Older age was associated with better ranking scores for 3 (10.0%) items and worse for one (p < 0.001 to 0.006). According to current practice perception, strongly agree/agree responses ranged from 93.3% (disclosure of procedure’s name) to 13.9% (lead practitioner’s training place), ranking scores were worse for all items compared to norm perception (p < 0.001), and post-procedure status, younger age, and lower educational level were associated with better ranking scores for 15 (50.0%), 12 (40.0%), and 4 (13.3%) items, respectively (p < 0.001 to 0.009). Conclusions 1) even in an overall high-context communication culture, extensive and more information than is currently disclosed is perceived as norm, 2) the focus of the desired information is closer to benefits and post-procedure’s issues than risks and available alternatives, 3) male, post-procedure, and older patients are in favor of more information disclosure, 4) male, older, and more educated patients may be particularly dissatisfied with current information disclosure. The focus and extent of information disclosure for clinical informed consent may need to be adjusted if a “reasonable” patient’s standard is to be met. PMID:24406055

Information disclosure in clinical informed consent: "reasonable" patient's perception of norm in high-context communication culture.

PubMed

Hammami, Muhammad M; Al-Jawarneh, Yussuf; Hammami, Muhammad B; Al Qadire, Mohammad

2014-01-10

The current doctrine of informed consent for clinical care has been developed in cultures characterized by low-context communication and monitoring-style coping. There are scarce empirical data on patients' norm perception of information disclosure in other cultures. We surveyed 470 adults who were planning to undergo or had recently undergone a written informed consent-requiring procedure in a tertiary healthcare hospital in Saudi Arabia. Perceptions of norm and current practice were explored using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly agree with disclosure) and 30 information items in 7 domains: practitioners' details, benefits, risks, complications' management, available alternatives, procedure's description, and post-procedure's issues. Respondents' mean (SD) age was 38.4 (12.5); 50.2% were males, 57.2% had ≥ college education, and 37.9% had undergone a procedure. According to norm perception, strongly agree/agree responses ranged from 98.0% (major benefits) to 50.5% (assistant/trainee's name). Overall, items related to benefits and post-procedure's issues were ranked better (more agreeable) than items related to risks and available alternatives. Ranking scores were better in post-procedure respondents for 4 (13.3%) items (p < 0.001 to 0.001) and in males for 8 (26.7%) items (p = 0.008 to <0.001). Older age was associated with better ranking scores for 3 (10.0%) items and worse for one (p < 0.001 to 0.006). According to current practice perception, strongly agree/agree responses ranged from 93.3% (disclosure of procedure's name) to 13.9% (lead practitioner's training place), ranking scores were worse for all items compared to norm perception (p < 0.001), and post-procedure status, younger age, and lower educational level were associated with better ranking scores for 15 (50.0%), 12 (40.0%), and 4 (13.3%) items, respectively (p < 0.001 to 0.009). 1) even in an overall high-context communication culture, extensive and more information than is currently disclosed is perceived as norm, 2) the focus of the desired information is closer to benefits and post-procedure's issues than risks and available alternatives, 3) male, post-procedure, and older patients are in favor of more information disclosure, 4) male, older, and more educated patients may be particularly dissatisfied with current information disclosure. The focus and extent of information disclosure for clinical informed consent may need to be adjusted if a "reasonable" patient's standard is to be met.

Differential age-related effects on conjunctive and relational visual short-term memory binding.

PubMed

Bastin, Christine

2017-12-28

An age-related associative deficit has been described in visual short-term binding memory tasks. However, separate studies have suggested that ageing disrupts relational binding (to associate distinct items or item and context) more than conjunctive binding (to integrate features within an object). The current study directly compared relational and conjunctive binding with a short-term memory task for object-colour associations in 30 young and 30 older adults. Participants studied a number of object-colour associations corresponding to their individual object span level in a relational task in which objects were associated to colour patches and a conjunctive task where colour was integrated into the object. Memory for individual items and for associations was tested with a recognition memory test. Evidence for an age-related associative deficit was observed in the relational binding task, but not in the conjunctive binding task. This differential impact of ageing on relational and conjunctive short-term binding is discussed by reference to two underlying age-related cognitive difficulties: diminished hippocampally dependent binding and attentional resources.

Competitive retrieval is not a prerequisite for forgetting in the retrieval practice paradigm.

PubMed

Camp, Gino; Dalm, Sander

2016-09-01

Retrieving information from memory can lead to forgetting of other, related information. The inhibition account of this retrieval-induced forgetting effect predicts that this form of forgetting occurs when competition arises between the practiced information and the related information, leading to inhibition of the related information. In the standard retrieval practice paradigm, a retrieval practice task is used in which participants retrieve the items based on a category-plus-stem cue (e.g., FRUIT-or___). In the current experiment, participants instead generated the target based on a cue in which the first 2 letters of the target were transposed (e.g., FRUIT-roange). This noncompetitive task also induced forgetting of unpracticed items from practiced categories. This finding is inconsistent with the inhibition account, which asserts that the forgetting effect depends on competitive retrieval. We argue that interference-based accounts of forgetting and the context-based account of retrieval-induced forgetting can account for this result. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects of Sleep on Word Pair Memory in Children - Separating Item and Source Memory Aspects.

PubMed

Wang, Jing-Yi; Weber, Frederik D; Zinke, Katharina; Noack, Hannes; Born, Jan

2017-01-01

Word paired-associate learning is a well-established task to demonstrate sleep-dependent memory consolidation in adults as well as children. Sleep has also been proposed to benefit episodic features of memory, i.e., a memory for an event (item) bound into the spatiotemporal context it has been experienced in (source). We aimed to explore if sleep enhances word pair memory in children by strengthening the episodic features of the memory, in particular. Sixty-one children (8-12 years) studied two lists of word pairs with 1 h in between. Retrieval testing comprised cued recall of the target word of each word pair (item memory) and recalling in which list the word pair had appeared in (source memory). Retrieval was tested either after 1 h (short retention interval) or after 11 h, with this long retention interval covering either nocturnal sleep or daytime wakefulness. Compared with the wake interval, sleep enhanced separate recall of both word pairs and the lists per se , while recall of the combination of the word pair and the list it had appeared in remained unaffected by sleep. An additional comparison with adult controls ( n = 37) suggested that item-source bound memory (combined recall of word pair and list) is generally diminished in children. Our results argue against the view that the sleep-induced enhancement in paired-associate learning in children is a consequence of sleep specifically enhancing the episodic features of the memory representation. On the contrary, sleep in children might strengthen item and source representations in isolation, while leaving the episodic memory representations (item-source binding) unaffected.

Action Recognition Using Nonnegative Action Component Representation and Sparse Basis Selection.

PubMed

Wang, Haoran; Yuan, Chunfeng; Hu, Weiming; Ling, Haibin; Yang, Wankou; Sun, Changyin

2014-02-01

In this paper, we propose using high-level action units to represent human actions in videos and, based on such units, a novel sparse model is developed for human action recognition. There are three interconnected components in our approach. First, we propose a new context-aware spatial-temporal descriptor, named locally weighted word context, to improve the discriminability of the traditionally used local spatial-temporal descriptors. Second, from the statistics of the context-aware descriptors, we learn action units using the graph regularized nonnegative matrix factorization, which leads to a part-based representation and encodes the geometrical information. These units effectively bridge the semantic gap in action recognition. Third, we propose a sparse model based on a joint l2,1-norm to preserve the representative items and suppress noise in the action units. Intuitively, when learning the dictionary for action representation, the sparse model captures the fact that actions from the same class share similar units. The proposed approach is evaluated on several publicly available data sets. The experimental results and analysis clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Source-constrained retrieval influences the encoding of new information.

PubMed

Danckert, Stacey L; MacLeod, Colin M; Fernandes, Myra A

2011-11-01

Jacoby, Shimizu, Daniels, and Rhodes (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 852-857, 2005) showed that new words presented as foils among a list of old words that had been deeply encoded were themselves subsequently better recognized than new words presented as foils among a list of old words that had been shallowly encoded. In Experiment 1, by substituting a deep-versus-shallow imagery manipulation for the levels-of-processing manipulation, we demonstrated that the effect is robust and that it generalizes, also occurring with a different type of encoding. In Experiment 2, we provided more direct evidence for context-related encoding during tests of deeply encoded words, showing enhanced priming for foils presented among deeply encoded targets when participants made the same deep-encoding judgments on those items as had been made on the targets during study. In Experiment 3, we established that the findings from Experiment 2 are restricted to this specific deep judgment task and are not a general consequence of these foils being associated with deeply encoded items. These findings provide support for the source-constrained retrieval hypothesis of Jacoby, Shimizu, Daniels, and Rhodes: New information can be influenced by how surrounding items are encoded and retrieved, as long as the surrounding items recruit a coherent mode of processing.

Predicting sugar-sweetened behaviours with theory of planned behaviour constructs: Outcome and process results from the SIPsmartER behavioural intervention.

PubMed

Zoellner, Jamie M; Porter, Kathleen J; Chen, Yvonnes; Hedrick, Valisa E; You, Wen; Hickman, Maja; Estabrooks, Paul A

2017-05-01

Guided by the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and health literacy concepts, SIPsmartER is a six-month multicomponent intervention effective at improving SSB behaviours. Using SIPsmartER data, this study explores prediction of SSB behavioural intention (BI) and behaviour from TPB constructs using: (1) cross-sectional and prospective models and (2) 11 single-item assessments from interactive voice response (IVR) technology. Quasi-experimental design, including pre- and post-outcome data and repeated-measures process data of 155 intervention participants. Validated multi-item TPB measures, single-item TPB measures, and self-reported SSB behaviours. Hypothesised relationships were investigated using correlation and multiple regression models. TPB constructs explained 32% of the variance cross sectionally and 20% prospectively in BI; and explained 13-20% of variance cross sectionally and 6% prospectively. Single-item scale models were significant, yet explained less variance. All IVR models predicting BI (average 21%, range 6-38%) and behaviour (average 30%, range 6-55%) were significant. Findings are interpreted in the context of other cross-sectional, prospective and experimental TPB health and dietary studies. Findings advance experimental application of the TPB, including understanding constructs at outcome and process time points and applying theory in all intervention development, implementation and evaluation phases.

Evaluation of efficacy in a liver pretransplantation orientation group.

PubMed

Guimaro, M Simon; Lacerda, S Silva; Bacoccina, T D; Karam, C Hegedus; de Sá, J Roberto; Ferraz-Neto, B H; Andreoli, P Bruno de Araújo

2007-10-01

The medical context recognizes the efficiency of working with groups of patients. Group interventions can intensify the understanding, ability, and notion of recognizing the patient's own condition, increasing the responsibility for him- or herself. This survey sought to evaluate the efficacy of an interdisciplinary orientation group for hepatic transplantation preoperatively. The opinions of all patients on a waiting list for liver transplantation and their accompanying persons were evaluated from August to December 2005 through a questionnaire with 17 relevant items concerning the transplantation process. The group efficacy was evaluated according to the percentage of correct answers from the subjects before and after attending the group. The results showed a 59% increase in correct answers for the evaluated items after group attendance. The items which showed significant improvement were: what should I do after being called for transplantation; average time of admission to hospital and ICU; use of immunosuppressive drugs; clinical conditions for transplantation; frequency of appointments with the surgeon within the first month; physical activities; diet; blood transfusion; and forgetting medication. A ceiling effect was observed upon reevaluation of the previous conditions for transplantation item. The percentage of health improvement after attending the group demonstrated an impact of the interdisciplinary orientation intervention on the instruction of patients and their accompanying persons, thus representing an important step in their training process.

Normal Theory Two-Stage ML Estimator When Data Are Missing at the Item Level

PubMed Central

Savalei, Victoria; Rhemtulla, Mijke

2017-01-01

In many modeling contexts, the variables in the model are linear composites of the raw items measured for each participant; for instance, regression and path analysis models rely on scale scores, and structural equation models often use parcels as indicators of latent constructs. Currently, no analytic estimation method exists to appropriately handle missing data at the item level. Item-level multiple imputation (MI), however, can handle such missing data straightforwardly. In this article, we develop an analytic approach for dealing with item-level missing data—that is, one that obtains a unique set of parameter estimates directly from the incomplete data set and does not require imputations. The proposed approach is a variant of the two-stage maximum likelihood (TSML) methodology, and it is the analytic equivalent of item-level MI. We compare the new TSML approach to three existing alternatives for handling item-level missing data: scale-level full information maximum likelihood, available-case maximum likelihood, and item-level MI. We find that the TSML approach is the best analytic approach, and its performance is similar to item-level MI. We recommend its implementation in popular software and its further study. PMID:29276371

Normal Theory Two-Stage ML Estimator When Data Are Missing at the Item Level.

PubMed

Savalei, Victoria; Rhemtulla, Mijke

2017-08-01

In many modeling contexts, the variables in the model are linear composites of the raw items measured for each participant; for instance, regression and path analysis models rely on scale scores, and structural equation models often use parcels as indicators of latent constructs. Currently, no analytic estimation method exists to appropriately handle missing data at the item level. Item-level multiple imputation (MI), however, can handle such missing data straightforwardly. In this article, we develop an analytic approach for dealing with item-level missing data-that is, one that obtains a unique set of parameter estimates directly from the incomplete data set and does not require imputations. The proposed approach is a variant of the two-stage maximum likelihood (TSML) methodology, and it is the analytic equivalent of item-level MI. We compare the new TSML approach to three existing alternatives for handling item-level missing data: scale-level full information maximum likelihood, available-case maximum likelihood, and item-level MI. We find that the TSML approach is the best analytic approach, and its performance is similar to item-level MI. We recommend its implementation in popular software and its further study.

Examining the causes of memory strength variability: Recollection, attention failure, or encoding variability?

PubMed Central

Koen, Joshua D.; Aly, Mariam; Wang, Wei-Chun; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

2013-01-01

A prominent finding in recognition memory is that studied items are associated with more variability in memory strength than new items. Here, we test three competing theories for why this occurs - the encoding variability, attention failure, and recollection accounts. Distinguishing amongst these theories is critical because each provides a fundamentally different account of the processes underlying recognition memory. The encoding variability and attention failure accounts propose that old item variance will be unaffected by retrieval manipulations because the processes producing this effect are ascribed to encoding. The recollection account predicts that both encoding and retrieval manipulations that preferentially affect recollection will affect memory variability. These contrasting predictions were tested by examining the effect of response speeding (Experiment 1), dividing attention at retrieval (Experiment 2), context reinstatement (Experiment 3), and increased test delay (Experiment 4) on recognition performance. The results of all four experiments confirmed the predictions of the recollection account, and were inconsistent with the encoding variability account. The evidence supporting the attention failure account was mixed, with two of the four experiments confirming the account and two disconfirming the account. These results indicate that encoding variability and attention failure are insufficient accounts of memory variance, and provide support for the recollection account. Several alternative theoretical accounts of the results are also considered. PMID:23834057

Using SAS PROC MCMC for Item Response Theory Models

PubMed Central

Samonte, Kelli

2014-01-01

Interest in using Bayesian methods for estimating item response theory models has grown at a remarkable rate in recent years. This attentiveness to Bayesian estimation has also inspired a growth in available software such as WinBUGS, R packages, BMIRT, MPLUS, and SAS PROC MCMC. This article intends to provide an accessible overview of Bayesian methods in the context of item response theory to serve as a useful guide for practitioners in estimating and interpreting item response theory (IRT) models. Included is a description of the estimation procedure used by SAS PROC MCMC. Syntax is provided for estimation of both dichotomous and polytomous IRT models, as well as a discussion on how to extend the syntax to accommodate more complex IRT models. PMID:29795834

The Role of Context in Producing Item Interactions and False Memories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tehan, Gerald; Humphreys, Michael S.; Tolan, Georgina Anne; Pitcher, Cameron

2004-01-01

Cued recall with an extralist cue poses a challenge for contemporary memory theory in that there is a need to explain how episodic and semantic information are combined. A parallel activation and intersection approach proposes one such means by assuming that an experimental cue will elicit its preexisting semantic network and a context cue will…

Variation by Gender in Abu Dhabi High School Students' Interests in Physics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Badri, Masood; Mazroui, Karima Al; Al Rashedi, Asma; Yang, Guang

2016-01-01

Abu Dhabi high school students' interest in physics in different contexts was investigated with a survey conducted in connection with the international project, The Relevance of Science Education (ROSE). The sample consisted of 2248 students in public and private schools. Means of most items that belong to the school physics context for both girls…

Social Context of Smoking Hookah among College Students: Scale Development and Validation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sharma, Eva; Beck, Kenneth H.; Clark, Pamela I.

2013-01-01

Objective: To develop an instrument that measures the social context of hookah use among college students. Participants: A pool of 50 potential items, based on 44 in-depth interviews with regular college hookah smokers, was administered to a sample of 274 hookah users between October and December 2011. Methods: Participants were approached in…

Conjunction Illusions and Conjunction Fallacies in Episodic Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brainerd, C. J.; Holliday, Robyn E.; Nakamura, Koyuki; Reyna, Valerie F.

2014-01-01

Recent research on the overdistribution principle implies that episodic memory is infected by conjunction illusions. These are instances in which an item that was presented in a single context (e.g., List 1) is falsely remembered as having been presented in multiple contexts (e.g., List 1 and List 2). Robust conjunction illusions were detected in…

Assessing Psychological Need Satisfaction in Exercise Contexts: Issues of Score Invariance, Item Modification, and Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gunnell, Katie E.; Wilson, Philip M.; Zumbo, Bruno D.; Mack, Diane E.; Crocker, Peter R. E.

2012-01-01

The researchers examined if scores from the original Psychological Need Satisfaction in Exercise Scale (Wilson, Rogers, Rodgers, & Wild, 2006) were invariant from a modified version specific to physical activity and then examined measurement invariance of scores across groups on the modified scale. Three groups were examined: (a) Students/staff…

Learners' Beliefs about Corrective Feedback in the Language Classroom: Perspectives from Two International Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kartchava, Eva

2016-01-01

This study compared the beliefs college-level students hold about corrective feedback in different learning contexts: English as a second language (Canada, n = 197) and English as a foreign language (Russia, n = 224). The participants completed a 40-item questionnaire that dealt with various aspects of feedback found in the literature. While the…

Context-dependent switching between proactive and reactive working memory control mechanisms in the right inferior frontal gyrus.

PubMed

Marklund, Petter; Persson, Jonas

2012-11-15

A critical feature of higher cognitive functioning is the capacity to flexibly tailor information processing and behaviors to current situational demands. Recent neurocognitive models have been postulated to account for the dynamic nature of human executive processing by invoking two dissociable cognitive control modes, proactive and reactive control. These may involve partially overlapping, but temporally distinct neural implementation in the prefrontal cortex. Prior brain imaging studies exploring proactive control have mainly used tasks requiring only information about single-items to be retained over unfilled delays. Whether proactive control can also be utilized to facilitate performance in more complex working memory tasks, in which concurrent processing of intervening items and updating is mandatory during contextual cue maintenance remains an open question. To examine this issue and to elucidate the extent to which overlapping neural substrates underlie proactive and reactive control we used fMRI and a modified verbal 3-back paradigm with embedded cues predictive of high-interference trials. This task requires context information to be retained over multiple intervening trials. We found that performance improved with item-specific cues predicting forthcoming lures despite increased working memory load. Temporal dynamics of activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus suggest flexible switching between proactive and reactive control in a context-dependent fashion, with greater sustained responses elicited in the 3-back task involving context maintenance of cue information and greater transient responses elicited in the 3-back task absent of cues. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Exploring the effects of ownership and choice on self-memory biases.

PubMed

Cunningham, Sheila J; Brady-Van den Bos, Mirjam; Turk, David J

2011-07-01

Objects encoded in the context of temporary ownership by self enjoy a memorial advantage over objects owned by other people. This memory effect has been linked to self-referential encoding processes. The current inquiry explored the extent to which the effects of ownership are influenced by the degree of personal choice involved in assigning ownership. In three experiments pairs of participants chose objects to keep for ownership by self, and rejected objects that were given to the other participant to own. Recognition memory for the objects was then assessed. Experiment 1 showed that participants recognised more items encoded as "self-owned" than "other-owned", but only when they had been chosen by self. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern when participants' sense of choice was illusory. A source memory test in Experiment 3 showed that self-chosen items were most likely to be correctly attributed to ownership by self. These findings are discussed with reference to the link between owned objects and the self, and the routes through which self-referential operations can impact on cognition.

Long-Term Impact of Valid Case Criterion on Capturing Population-Level Growth under Item Response Theory Equating. Research Report. ETS RR-17-17

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Deng, Weiling; Monfils, Lora

2017-01-01

Using simulated data, this study examined the impact of different levels of stringency of the valid case inclusion criterion on item response theory (IRT)-based true score equating over 5 years in the context of K-12 assessment when growth in student achievement is expected. Findings indicate that the use of the most stringent inclusion criterion…

Culture as an Environmental Context for Careers.

DTIC Science & Technology

1983-09-01

legitimacy of certain motives underlying careers , success criteria, the clarity of the career concept itself, and the importance attached to career vs...importance in determining career success . These data revealed that some items were Judged as "most important" by virtually all managers who answered the survey...all managers agreed that the following items were "unimportant" in determining career success : opinions of colleagues, number of assessors, national

Children's patterns of reasoning about reading and addition concepts.

PubMed

Farrington-Flint, Lee; Canobi, Katherine H; Wood, Clare; Faulkner, Dorothy

2010-06-01

Children's reasoning was examined within two educational contexts (word reading and addition) so as to understand the factors that contribute to relational reasoning in the two domains. Sixty-seven 5- to 7-year-olds were given a series of related words to read or single-digit addition items to solve (interspersed with unrelated items). The frequency, accuracy, and response times of children's self-reports on the conceptually related items provided a measure of relational reasoning, while performance on the unrelated addition and reading items provided a measure of procedural skill. The results indicated that the children's ability to use conceptual relations to solve both reading and addition problems enhanced speed and accuracy levels, increased with age, and was related to procedural skill. However, regression analyses revealed that domain-specific competencies can best explain the use of conceptual relations in both reading and addition. Moreover, a cluster analysis revealed that children differ according to the academic domain in which they first apply conceptual relations and these differences are related to individual variation in their procedural skills within these particular domains. These results highlight the developmental significance of relational reasoning in the context of reading and addition and underscore the importance of concept-procedure links in explaining children's literacy and arithmetical development.

Measuring attributes of health literate health care organizations from the patients' perspective: Development and validation of a questionnaire to assess health literacy-sensitive communication (HL-COM).

PubMed

Ernstmann, Nicole; Halbach, Sarah; Kowalski, Christoph; Pfaff, Holger; Ansmann, Lena

2017-04-01

Studies addressing the organizational contexts of care that may help increase the patients' ability to cope with a disease and to navigate through the health care system are still rare. Especially instruments allowing the assessment of such organizational efforts from the patients' perspective are missing. The aim of our study was to develop a survey instrument assessing organizational health literacy (HL) from the patients' perspective, i. e., health care organizations' responsiveness to patients' individual needs. A pool of 30 items was developed by a group of experts based on a literature review. The items were developed, tested and prioritized according to their importance in 11 semi-structured interviews and cognitive think-aloud interviews with cancer patients. The resulting 16 items were rated in a standardized postal survey involving a total of N=453 colon and breast cancer patients treated in cancer centers in Germany. An exploratory factor analysis, a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were conducted. Item properties were analyzed. 83.2 % of the patients were diagnosed with breast cancer, 16.8 % had a diagnosis of colon cancer. The patients' mean age was 61 (26-88), 89.4 % were female. The most common comorbidities were hypertension (34.0 %) and cardiovascular disease (11.0 %). The final prediction model included nine items measuring the degree of health literacy-sensitivity of communication. The model showed an acceptable model fit. The nine items showed corrected item-total correlations between .622 and .762 and item difficulties between 0.77 and 0.87. Cronbach's α was .912. In a comprehensive development process, the original item pool comprising several aspects of organizational HL was reduced to a one-dimensional scale. The instrument measures an important aspect of organizational HL; i.e., the degree of health literacy-sensitivity of communication (HL-COM). HL-COM was found to impact patient enablement, mediated through the support by physicians. Future research will have to test these associations in the context of other diseases or institutions. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier GmbH.

Interaction between attentional systems and episodic memory encoding: the impact of conflict on binding of information.

PubMed

Sperduti, Marco; Armougum, Allan; Makowski, Dominique; Blondé, Philippe; Piolino, Pascale

2017-12-01

Episodic memory (EM) is defined as a long-term memory system that stores information that can be retrieved along with details of the context of the original events (binding). Several studies have shown that manipulation of attention during encoding can impact subsequent memory performance. An influential model of attention distinguishes between three partially independent attentional networks: the alerting, the orienting and the executive or conflict resolution component. To date, the impact of the engagement of these sub-systems during encoding on item and relational context binding has not been investigated. Here, we developed a new task combining the Attentional Network Test and an incidental episodic memory encoding task to study this issue. We reported that when the alerting network was not solicited, resolving conflict hindered item encoding. Moreover, resolving conflict, independently of the cueing condition, had a negative impact on context binding. These novel findings could have a potential impact in the understanding EM formation, and memory disorders in different populations, including healthy elderly people.

Informed choice: understanding knowledge in the context of screening uptake.

PubMed

Michie, Susan; Dormandy, Elizabeth; Marteau, Theresa M

2003-07-01

This study evaluates a scale measuring knowledge about a screening test and investigates the association between knowledge, uptake and attitudes towards screening. One thousand four hundred ninety-nine pregnant women completed the knowledge scale of the multidimensional measure of informed choice (MMIC). Three hundred forty-five of these women and 152 professionals providing antenatal care also rated the importance of the knowledge items. Item characteristic curves show that, with one exception, the knowledge items reflect a spread of difficulty and are able to discriminate between people. All items were seen as essential or helpful by both women and health professionals, with two items seen as particularly important and one as unimportant. There were some differences between health professionals, women with low risk results and women with high risk results. Knowledge was not associated with uptake, attitude, or the extent to which uptake was consistent with women's attitudes towards undergoing the test.

Mining Hesitation Information by Vague Association Rules

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lu, An; Ng, Wilfred

In many online shopping applications, such as Amazon and eBay, traditional Association Rule (AR) mining has limitations as it only deals with the items that are sold but ignores the items that are almost sold (for example, those items that are put into the basket but not checked out). We say that those almost sold items carry hesitation information, since customers are hesitating to buy them. The hesitation information of items is valuable knowledge for the design of good selling strategies. However, there is no conceptual model that is able to capture different statuses of hesitation information. Herein, we apply and extend vague set theory in the context of AR mining. We define the concepts of attractiveness and hesitation of an item, which represent the overall information of a customer's intent on an item. Based on the two concepts, we propose the notion of Vague Association Rules (VARs). We devise an efficient algorithm to mine the VARs. Our experiments show that our algorithm is efficient and the VARs capture more specific and richer information than do the traditional ARs.

From single-use to multi-use: Study of consumers' behavior toward consumption of reusable containers.

PubMed

Ertz, Myriam; Huang, Rong; Jo, Myung-Soo; Karakas, Fahri; Sarigöllü, Emine

2017-05-15

This study advances the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to identify the mechanism that underlies the consumption of reusable containers. A questionnaire including context, motivation, subjective norms, attitudes, perceived behavioral control, intentions and behavior items was developed and pre-tested on 180 students in a Canadian and a Chinese university respectively. Subsequently, the questionnaire was implemented in the form of an online survey and 1221 effective responses were collected from Western (n = 549) and Asian (n = 672) consumers. The findings revealed that the context and motivation variables are important antecedents to several TPB constructs. Context strongly impacts perceived behavioral control and motivations as well as attitudes. Motivation is clearly distinct from intentions and has a significant influence on both attitudes and intentions. In addition to the standard variables of perceived behavioral control, subjective norms and attitudes, motivation does have a significant impact on intentions. Furthermore, there are cultural differences in the way context impacts intentions and behavior in that Asians (Westerners) are influenced by context to increase reusable containers consumption through motivation (attitudes). Attitude is a significantly stronger predictor of intentions for Westerners than Asians. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In Support of a Distinction between Voluntary and Stimulus-Driven Control: A Review of the Literature on Proportion Congruent Effects.

PubMed

Bugg, Julie M; Crump, Matthew J C

2012-01-01

Cognitive control is by now a large umbrella term referring collectively to multiple processes that plan and coordinate actions to meet task goals. A common feature of paradigms that engage cognitive control is the task requirement to select relevant information despite a habitual tendency (or bias) to select goal-irrelevant information. At least since the 1970s, researchers have employed proportion congruent (PC) manipulations to experimentally establish selection biases and evaluate the mechanisms used to control attention. PC manipulations vary the frequency with which irrelevant information conflicts (i.e., is incongruent) with relevant information. The purpose of this review is to summarize the growing body of literature on PC effects across selective attention paradigms, beginning first with Stroop, and then describing parallel effects in flanker and task-switching paradigms. The review chronologically tracks the expansion of the PC manipulation from its initial implementation at the list-wide level, to more recent implementations at the item-specific and context-specific levels. An important theoretical aim is demonstrating that PC effects at different levels (e.g., list-wide vs. item or context-specific) support a distinction between voluntary forms of cognitive control, which operate based on anticipatory information, and relatively automatic or reflexive forms of cognitive control, which are rapidly triggered by the processing of particular stimuli or stimulus features. A further aim is to highlight those PC manipulations that allow researchers to dissociate stimulus-driven control from other stimulus-driven processes (e.g., S-R responding; episodic retrieval). We conclude by discussing the utility of PC manipulations for exploring the distinction between voluntary control and stimulus-driven control in other relevant paradigms.

In Support of a Distinction between Voluntary and Stimulus-Driven Control: A Review of the Literature on Proportion Congruent Effects

PubMed Central

Bugg, Julie M.; Crump, Matthew J. C.

2012-01-01

Cognitive control is by now a large umbrella term referring collectively to multiple processes that plan and coordinate actions to meet task goals. A common feature of paradigms that engage cognitive control is the task requirement to select relevant information despite a habitual tendency (or bias) to select goal-irrelevant information. At least since the 1970s, researchers have employed proportion congruent (PC) manipulations to experimentally establish selection biases and evaluate the mechanisms used to control attention. PC manipulations vary the frequency with which irrelevant information conflicts (i.e., is incongruent) with relevant information. The purpose of this review is to summarize the growing body of literature on PC effects across selective attention paradigms, beginning first with Stroop, and then describing parallel effects in flanker and task-switching paradigms. The review chronologically tracks the expansion of the PC manipulation from its initial implementation at the list-wide level, to more recent implementations at the item-specific and context-specific levels. An important theoretical aim is demonstrating that PC effects at different levels (e.g., list-wide vs. item or context-specific) support a distinction between voluntary forms of cognitive control, which operate based on anticipatory information, and relatively automatic or reflexive forms of cognitive control, which are rapidly triggered by the processing of particular stimuli or stimulus features. A further aim is to highlight those PC manipulations that allow researchers to dissociate stimulus-driven control from other stimulus-driven processes (e.g., S-R responding; episodic retrieval). We conclude by discussing the utility of PC manipulations for exploring the distinction between voluntary control and stimulus-driven control in other relevant paradigms. PMID:23060836

Reliability and Factor Analysis of a Blackboard Course Management System Success: A Scale Development and Validation in an Educational Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tella, Adeyinka

2011-01-01

The suitability of 52 items for measuring Blackboard course management system success was investigated with the aim of validating the Blackboard CMS success scale in an educational context. Through a survey, the Blackboard course management system (BCMS) success scale was administered to 503 students at the University of Botswana. Data collected…

Vets and Videos: Student Learning from Context-Based Assessment in a Pre-Clinical Science Course

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Seddon, Jennifer

2008-01-01

To increase the perceived relevance of pre-clinical science courses to undergraduates, a context-based assessment item was introduced to a genetics course that occurs early within a five-year veterinary science programme. The aim was to make a direct link between genetic concepts and the future clinical profession of the students. In the…

Assessment for Learning in International Contexts: Exploring Shared and Divergent Dimensions in Teacher Values and Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Warwick, Paul; Shaw, Stuart; Johnson, Martin

2015-01-01

The Assessment for Learning in International Contexts (ALIC) project sought to extend knowledge around teachers' understandings of Assessment for Learning (AfL). Using a modified version of a survey item devised by James and Pedder for use with teachers in England, evidence was gathered about the assessment practices that were highly valued by…

Retrieval Induces Forgetting, but Only When Nontested Items Compete for Retrieval: Implication for Interference, Inhibition, and Context Reinstatement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chan, Jason C. K.; Erdman, Matthew R.; Davis, Sara D.

2015-01-01

The mechanism responsible for retrieval-induced forgetting has been the subject of rigorous theoretical debate, with some researchers postulating that retrieval-induced forgetting can be explained by interference (J. G .W. Raaijmakers & E. Jakab, 2013) or context reinstatement (T. R. Jonker, P. Seli, & C. M. MacLeod, 2013), whereas others…

Competition strength influences individual preferences in an auction game

PubMed Central

Toelch, Ulf; Jubera-Garcia, Esperanza; Kurth-Nelson, Zeb; Dolan, Raymond J.

2014-01-01

Competitive interactions between individuals are ubiquitous in human societies. Auctions represent an institutionalized context for these interactions, a context where individuals frequently make non-optimal decisions. In particular, competition in auctions can lead to overbidding, resulting in the so-called winner’s curse, often explained by invoking emotional arousal. In this study, we investigated an alternative possibility, namely that competitors’ bids are construed as a source of information about the good’s common value thereby influencing an individuals’ private value estimate. We tested this hypothesis by asking participants to bid in a repeated all-pay auction game for five different real items. Crucially, participants had to rank the auction items for their preference before and after the experiment. We observed a clear relation between auction dynamics and preference change. We found that low competition reduced preference while high competition increased preference. Our findings support a view that competitors’ bids in auction games are perceived as valid social signal for the common value of an item. We suggest that this influence of social information constitutes a major cause for the frequently observed deviations from optimality in auctions. PMID:25168161

Contextual cueing of pop-out visual search: when context guides the deployment of attention.

PubMed

Geyer, Thomas; Zehetleitner, Michael; Müller, Hermann J

2010-05-01

Visual context information can guide attention in demanding (i.e., inefficient) search tasks. When participants are repeatedly presented with identically arranged ('repeated') displays, reaction times are faster relative to newly composed ('non-repeated') displays. The present article examines whether this 'contextual cueing' effect operates also in simple (i.e., efficient) search tasks and if so, whether there it influences target, rather than response, selection. The results were that singleton-feature targets were detected faster when the search items were presented in repeated, rather than non-repeated, arrangements. Importantly, repeated, relative to novel, displays also led to an increase in signal detection accuracy. Thus, contextual cueing can expedite the selection of pop-out targets, most likely by enhancing feature contrast signals at the overall-salience computation stage.

The effect of ageing on recollection: the role of the binding updating process.

PubMed

Boujut, Arnaud; Clarys, David

2016-10-01

The aim of this study was to highlight the underlying process responsible for the age-related deficit in recollection. Through two experiments using the Remember-Know-Guess procedure (Gardiner, J. M., & Richardson-Klavehn, A. [2000]. Remembering and knowing. In The Oxford handbook of memory (pp. 229-244). New York, NY: Oxford University Press) in recognition, we manipulated the opportunity to update bindings between target items and their encoding context, in young and older adults. In the first experiment we impaired the binding updating process during the encoding of items, while in the second we supported this process. The results indicated that the "Remember" responses in the younger group were specifically reduced by the impairment of the binding updating process (Exp. 1), suggesting that this ability is useful for them to encode a specific episode. Conversely, only the "Remember" responses in the older group were improved in accuracy by supporting the binding updating process (Exp. 2), suggesting that their weakness in this ability is the source of their failure to improve the accuracy of their memories. The overall results support the hypothesis that the age-related decline in episodic memory is partly due to a greater vulnerability to interference on bindings, impairing the ability to update content-context bindings as and when events occur.

We will make you like our research: The development of a susceptibility-to-persuasion scale

PubMed Central

Modic, David; Anderson, Ross

2018-01-01

Psychological and other persuasive mechanisms across diverse contexts are well researched, with many studies of the effectiveness of specific persuasive techniques on distinct types of human behaviour. In the present paper, our specific interest lies in the development of a generalized modular psychometric tool to measure individuals’ susceptibility to persuasion. The scale is constructed using items from previously developed and validated particulate scales established in the domains of social psychology and behavioural economics. In the first study we establish the Susceptibility to Persuasion–II (StP-II) scale, containing 54 items, 10 subscales and further 6 sub-sub scales. In Study 2 we establish the scale’s construct validity and reconfirm its reliability. We present a valid and reliable modular psychometric tool that measures general susceptibility to persuasive techniques. Since its inception, we have successfully implemented the StP-II scale to measure susceptibility to persuasion of IT security officers, the role of psychology of persuasion in cybercrime victims and general persuadability levels of Facebook users; these manuscripts are in preparation. We argue that the StP-II scale shows promise in measuring individual differences in susceptibility to persuasion, and is applicable across diverse contexts such as Internet security and cybercrime. PMID:29543845

The impact of item order on ratings of cancer risk perception.

PubMed

Taylor, Kathryn L; Shelby, Rebecca A; Schwartz, Marc D; Ackerman, Josh; LaSalle, V Holland; Gelmann, Edward P; McGuire, Colleen

2002-07-01

Although perceived risk is central to most theories of health behavior, there is little consensus on its measurement with regard to item wording, response set, or the number of items to include. In a methodological assessment of perceived risk, we assessed the impact of changing the order of three commonly used perceived risk items: quantitative personal risk, quantitative population risk, and comparative risk. Participants were 432 men and women enrolled in an ancillary study of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial. Three groups of consecutively enrolled participants responded to the three items in one of three question orders. Results indicated that item order was related to the perceived risk ratings of both ovarian (P < 0.05) and colorectal (P < 0.05) cancers. Perceptions of risk were significantly lower when the comparative rating was made first. The findings suggest that compelling participants to consider their own risk relative to the risk of others results in lower ratings of perceived risk. Although the use of multiple items may provide more information than when only a single method is used, different conclusions may be reached depending on the context in which an item is assessed.

Context sensitive regulation of pain and emotion: Development and initial validation of a scale for context insensitive avoidance.

PubMed

Flink, Ida K; Klein-Strandberg, Ester; Linton, Steven J

2017-10-01

Context insensitivity has been put forward as a potential mechanism explaining the high co-occurrence of pain and emotional distress. In the pain literature, the concept has only been introduced at a theoretical level and an assessment tool for exploring its impact is lacking. In an interpersonal setting, a core aspect of context sensitivity and insensitivity concerns when to disclose and when to avoid expressing pain and related distress. Both context insensitive disclosure and context insensitive avoidance may hamper interpersonal support and fuel the problem. This exploratory study describes an attempt to develop a self-report instrument to assess tendencies to disclose vs. avoid expressions of pain and related distress, as well as self-perceived adjustment of disclosure vs. avoidance to the context. A pool of items was systematically developed to assess different aspects of context insensitivity, including disclosure vs. avoidance of expression. 105 participants with persistent pain were recruited at pain rehabilitation clinics (80% of the sample) and in a university setting (20% of the sample). The participants responded to the pool of items as well as to a number of validated self-report instruments covering pain, pain-related disability, pain catastrophizing, emotion regulation tendencies, self-compassion and pain acceptance. The analyses explored the factorial structure of the initial instrument, as well as the criterion and construct validity. The analyses confirmed a stable underlying structure of the initial scale, with four distinct factors explaining 64.4% of the total variance. However, the criterion and construct validity could only be confirmed for one of the factors, which contained items reflecting context insensitive avoidance of expression. Consequently, only this factor, demonstrating very good internal consistency, was kept in the final version of the instrument which was named context insensitive avoidance (CIA). We found support for the final version of our instrument, capturing one prominent aspect of context insensitivity. Avoidance of expression was related to higher ratings of pain, disability, catastrophizing and suppression as well as to lower levels of self-compassion. We encourage further studies to explore the impact of context insensitive avoidance for regulating pain and associated negative emotions. Yet, more research is needed that goes beyond self-report and includes other aspects of context. It is urgent to develop systematic ways for assessing context insensitivity, as it will enhance our understanding of regulatory strategies as potential transdiagnostic mechanisms in pain and emotion. This tool for assessing contextually insensitive avoidance of expression could potentially be used both clinically and in future research to advance our understanding of comorbid problems with pain and emotional distress. Further research is needed to develop methods for assessing other aspects of context insensitivity to fully understand its impact in patients suffering from pain. Copyright © 2017 Scandinavian Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Evaluating the Wald Test for Item-Level Comparison of Saturated and Reduced Models in Cognitive Diagnosis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

de la Torre, Jimmy; Lee, Young-Sun

2013-01-01

This article used the Wald test to evaluate the item-level fit of a saturated cognitive diagnosis model (CDM) relative to the fits of the reduced models it subsumes. A simulation study was carried out to examine the Type I error and power of the Wald test in the context of the G-DINA model. Results show that when the sample size is small and a…

Measuring implementation intentions in the context of the theory of planned behavior.

PubMed

Rise, Jostein; Thompson, Marianne; Verplanken, Bas

2003-04-01

The usefulness of measuring implementation intentions in the context of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) was explored among 112 Norwegian college students. They responded to a questionnaire measuring past behavior, perceived behavioral control, behavioral intentions, implementation intentions, and actual performance of regular exercising and recycling of drinking cartons. Implementation intentions were measured using five items relating to recycling and four items relating to exercise, which showed satisfactory internal consistencies. Consistent with the main prediction, the presence of implementation intentions was related to performing the two behaviors, although behavioral intentions were the strongest determinant for both behaviors. The results suggest that the TPB may benefit from inclusion of the concept of implementation intentions to provide a more complete understanding of the psychological process in which motivation is translated into action.

Comparability of item quality indices from sparse data matrices with random and non-random missing data patterns.

PubMed

Wolfe, Edward W; McGill, Michael T

2011-01-01

This article summarizes a simulation study of the performance of five item quality indicators (the weighted and unweighted versions of the mean square and standardized mean square fit indices and the point-measure correlation) under conditions of relatively high and low amounts of missing data under both random and conditional patterns of missing data for testing contexts such as those encountered in operational administrations of a computerized adaptive certification or licensure examination. The results suggest that weighted fit indices, particularly the standardized mean square index, and the point-measure correlation provide the most consistent information between random and conditional missing data patterns and that these indices perform more comparably for items near the passing score than for items with extreme difficulty values.

Development and Preliminary Validation of the Drinking Expectancy Sexual Vulnerabilities Questionnaire (DESV-Q): A Purpose-Specific Instrument for Rape-Perception Research.

PubMed

Starfelt, Louise Charlotte; Young, Ross McD; White, Katherine M; Palk, Gavan

2016-01-01

Alcohol expectancies likely play a role in people's perceptions of alcohol-involved sexual violence. However, no appropriate measure exists to examine this link comprehensively. The aim of this research was to develop an alcohol expectancy measure which captures young adults' beliefs about alcohol's role in sexual aggression and victimization. Two cross-sectional samples of young Australian adults (18-25 years) were recruited for scale development (Phase 1) and scale validation (Phase 2). In Phase 1, participants (N = 201; 38.3% males) completed an online survey with an initial pool of alcohol expectancy items stated in terms of three targets (self, men, women) to identify the scale's factor structure and most effective items. A revised alcohol expectancy scale was then administered online to 322 young adults (39.6% males) in Phase 2. To assess the predictive, convergent, and discriminant validity of the scale, participants also completed established measures of personality, social desirability, alcohol use, general and context-specific alcohol expectancies, and impulsiveness. Principal axis factoring (Phase 1) and confirmatory factor analysis (Phase 2) resulted in a target-equivalent five-factor structure for the final 66-item Drinking Expectancy Sexual Vulnerabilities Questionnaire (DESV-Q). The factors were labeled (1) Sexual Coercion, (2) Sexual Vulnerability, (3) Confidence, (4) Self-Centeredness, and (5) Negative Cognitive and Behavioral Changes. The measure demonstrated effective items, high internal consistency, and satisfactory predictive, convergent, and discriminant validity. The DESV-Q is a purpose-specific instrument that could be used in future research to elucidate people's attributions for alcohol-involved sexual aggression and victimization.

Assessing Community Coalition Capacity and its Association with Underage Drinking Prevention Effectiveness in the Context of the SPF SIG.

PubMed

Flewelling, Robert L; Hanley, Sean M

2016-10-01

Community coalitions are a prominent organizational structure through which community-based substance abuse prevention efforts are implemented. There is little empirical evidence, however, regarding the association between coalition attributes and success in achieving community-level reductions in substance abuse behaviors. In this study, we assessed the relationship between coalition capacity, based on coalition coordinator responses to 16 survey items, and reductions in underage drinking prevalence rates. The coalitions were funded through the federally sponsored Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grant (SPF SIG). We first examined whether coalition capacity increased over the life of the projects. Mean capacity scores increased for all 16 capacity items examined (N = 318 coalitions), the majority of which were statistically significant. Analysis of the associations between capacity and reductions in underage drinking was limited to coalitions that targeted underage drinking and provided usable outcome measures based on student survey data for either past 30-day alcohol use (N = 129) or binge drinking (N = 100). Bivariate associations between the capacity items and prevalence reductions for each outcome were consistently positive, although many were not statistically significant. Composite measures of correlated items were then created to represent six different capacity constructs, and included in multivariate models to predict reductions in the targeted outcomes. Constructs that significantly predicted reductions in one or both outcome measures included internal organization and structure, community connections and outreach, and funding from multiple sources. The findings provide support for the expectation that high functioning community coalitions can be effective agents for producing desirable community-level changes in targeted substance abuse behaviors.

Acute psychoactive effects of intravenous ketamine during treatment of mood disorders: Analysis of the Clinician Administered Dissociative State Scale.

PubMed

van Schalkwyk, Gerrit I; Wilkinson, Samuel T; Davidson, Larry; Silverman, Wendy K; Sanacora, Gerard

2018-02-01

Ketamine has rapid-acting antidepressant effects. Frequently, ketamine administration also causes acute psychoactive effects - in trials, these effects are commonly measured using the Clinician Administered Dissociative State Scale (CADSS). However, the CADSS was not designed for this specific purpose, having been validated in other clinical contexts, and anecdotally does not appear to fully capture ketamine's acute psychoactive effects. Data were obtained from 110 individuals with mood disorders (predominantly major depressive disorder) who underwent intravenous ketamine infusion. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed on the CADSS, along with assessment of internal consistency. Qualitative methods were used to conduct in-depth interviews with a subset of these participants to identify key features of the acute ketamine experience, including aspects that may not be captured by the CADSS. The mean total score of the CADSS was low at 7.7 (SD 9.2). Analysis of internal consistency showed a Cronbach's alpha of 0.74. Five CADSS items had low correlations with the total score. EFA lead to a one-factor solution containing 16 items. Five of the six highest loading items involved perceptual disturbances, either of time or sensation. Qualitative analyses of 10 patient narratives revealed two phenomena not captured on the CADSS: disinhibition and a sense of peace. This study was by limited by the absence of other ratings of the participants' experience. Findings suggest that the CADSS partially captures the acute effects of ketamine administration. Further research may seek to validate a revised version of the CADSS that more accurately measures these effects. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Item Response Theory Modeling of the Philadelphia Naming Test.

PubMed

Fergadiotis, Gerasimos; Kellough, Stacey; Hula, William D

2015-06-01

In this study, we investigated the fit of the Philadelphia Naming Test (PNT; Roach, Schwartz, Martin, Grewal, & Brecher, 1996) to an item-response-theory measurement model, estimated the precision of the resulting scores and item parameters, and provided a theoretical rationale for the interpretation of PNT overall scores by relating explanatory variables to item difficulty. This article describes the statistical model underlying the computer adaptive PNT presented in a companion article (Hula, Kellough, & Fergadiotis, 2015). Using archival data, we evaluated the fit of the PNT to 1- and 2-parameter logistic models and examined the precision of the resulting parameter estimates. We regressed the item difficulty estimates on three predictor variables: word length, age of acquisition, and contextual diversity. The 2-parameter logistic model demonstrated marginally better fit, but the fit of the 1-parameter logistic model was adequate. Precision was excellent for both person ability and item difficulty estimates. Word length, age of acquisition, and contextual diversity all independently contributed to variance in item difficulty. Item-response-theory methods can be productively used to analyze and quantify anomia severity in aphasia. Regression of item difficulty on lexical variables supported the validity of the PNT and interpretation of anomia severity scores in the context of current word-finding models.

Influence of the wording of evaluation items on outcome-based evaluation results for large-group teaching in anatomy, biochemistry and legal medicine.

PubMed

Anders, Sven; Pyka, Katharina; Mueller, Tjark; von Streinbuechel, Nicole; Raupach, Tobias

2016-11-01

Student learning outcome is an important dimension of teaching quality in undergraduate medical education. Measuring an increase in knowledge during teaching requires repetitive objective testing which is usually not feasible. As an alternative, student learning outcome can be calculated from student self-ratings. Comparative self-assessment (CSA) gain reflects the performance difference before and after teaching, adjusted for initial knowledge. It has been shown to be a valid proxy measure of actual learning outcome derived from objective tests. However, student self-ratings are prone to a number of confounding factors. In the context of outcome-based evaluation, the wording of self-rating items is crucial to the validity of evaluation results. This randomized trial assessed whether including qualifiers in these statements impacts on student ratings and CSA gain. First-year medical students self-rated their initial (then-test) and final (post-test) knowledge for lectures in anatomy, biochemistry and legal medicine, respectively, and 659 questionnaires were retrieved. Six-point scales were used for self-ratings with 1 being the most positive option. Qualifier use did not affect then-test ratings but was associated with slightly less favorable post-test ratings. Consecutively, mean CSA gain was smaller for items containing qualifiers than for items lacking qualifiers (50.6±15.0% vs. 56.3±14.6%, p=0.079). The effect was more pronounced (Cohen's d=0.82) for items related to anatomy. In order to increase fairness of outcome-based evaluation and increase the comparability of CSA gain data across subjects, medical educators should agree on a consistent approach (qualifiers for all items or no qualifiers at all) when drafting self-rating statements for outcome-based evaluation. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Does the school performance variable used in the International Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) Study reflect students' school grades?

PubMed

Felder-Puig, Rosemarie; Griebler, Robert; Samdal, Oddrun; King, Matthew A; Freeman, John; Duer, Wolfgang

2012-09-01

Given the pressure that educators and policy makers are under to achieve academic standards for students, understanding the relationship of academic success to various aspects of health is important. The international Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) questionnaire, being used in 41 countries with different school and grading systems, has contained an item assessing perceived school performance (PSP) since 1986. Whereas the test-retest reliability of this item has been reported previously, we determined its convergent and discriminant validity. This cross-sectional study used anonymous self-report data from Austrian (N = 266), Norwegian (N = 240), and Canadian (N = 9,717) samples. Students were between 10 and 17 years old. PSP responses were compared to the self-reported average school grades in 6 subjects (Austria) or 8 subjects (Norway), respectively, or to a general, 5-category-based appraisal of most recent school grades (Canada). Correlations between PSP and self-reported average school grade scores were between 0.51 and 0.65, representing large effect sizes. Differences between the median school grades in the 4 categories of the PSP item were statistically significant in all 3 samples. The PSP item showed predominantly small associations with some randomly selected HBSC items or scales designed to measure different concepts. The PSP item seems to be a valid and useful question that can distinguish groups of respondents that get good grades at school from those that do not. The meaning of PSP may be context-specific and may have different connotations across student populations from different countries with different school systems. © 2012, American School Health Association.

Modulation of Oscillatory Power and Connectivity in the Human Posterior Cingulate Cortex Supports the Encoding and Retrieval of Episodic Memories.

PubMed

Lega, Bradley; Germi, James; Rugg, Michael

2017-08-01

Existing data from noninvasive studies have led researchers to posit that the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) supports mnemonic processes: It exhibits degeneration in memory disorders, and fMRI investigations have demonstrated memory-related activation principally during the retrieval of memory items. Despite these data, the role of the PCC in episodic memory has received only limited treatment using the spatial and temporal precision of intracranial EEG, with previous analyses focused on item retrieval. Using data gathered from 21 human participants who underwent stereo-EEG for seizure localization, we characterized oscillatory patterns in the PCC during the encoding and retrieval of episodic memories. We identified a subsequent memory effect during item encoding characterized by increased gamma band oscillatory power and a low-frequency power desynchronization. Fourteen participants had stereotactic electrodes located simultaneously in the hippocampus and PCC, and with these unique data, we describe connectivity changes between these structures that predict successful item encoding and that precede item retrieval. Oscillatory power during retrieval matched the pattern we observed during encoding, with low-frequency (below 15 Hz) desynchronization and a gamma band (especially high gamma, 70-180 Hz) power increase. Encoding is characterized by synchrony between the hippocampus and PCC, centered at 3 Hz, consistent with other observations of properties of this oscillation akin to those for rodent theta activity. We discuss our findings in light of existing theories of episodic memory processing, including the information via desynchronization hypothesis and retrieved context theory, and examine how our data fit with existing theories for the functional role of the PCC. These include a postulated role for the PCC in modulating internally directed attention and for representing or integrating contextual information for memory items.

To Assess Prerequisites Before an Implementation Strategy in an Orthopaedic Department in Sweden.

PubMed

Bahtsevani, Christel; Idvall, Ewa

2016-01-01

Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARiHS) asserts that the success of knowledge implementation relates to multiple factors in a complex and dynamic way, and therefore the effects of implementation strategies vary by method and context. An instrument based on the PARiHS framework was developed to help assess critical factors influencing implementation strategies so that strategies can be tailored to promote implementation.The purpose of this study was to use the Evaluation Before Implementation Questionnaire (EBIQ), to describe staff perceptions in one orthopaedic department, and to investigate differences between wards.Staff members in four different wards at one orthopaedic department at a university hospital in Sweden were invited to complete a questionnaire related to planning for the implementation of a clinical practice guideline. The 23 items in the EBIQ were expected to capture staff perceptions about the evidence, context, and facilitation factors that influence the implementation process. Descriptive statistics and differences between wards were analyzed. Although the overall response rate was low (n = 49), two of the four wards accounted for most of the completed questionnaires (n = 25 and n = 12, respectively), enabling a comparison of these wards. We found significant differences between respondents' perceptions at the two wards in six items regarding context and facilitation in terms of receptiveness to change, forms of leadership, and evaluation and presence of feedback and facilitators.The EBIQ instrument requires further testing, but there appears to be initial support for pre-implementation use of the EBIQ as a means to enhance planning for implementation.

Experimentally Manipulating Items Informs on the (Limited) Construct and Criterion Validity of the Humor Styles Questionnaire

PubMed Central

Ruch, Willibald; Heintz, Sonja

2017-01-01

How strongly does humor (i.e., the construct-relevant content) in the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al., 2003) determine the responses to this measure (i.e., construct validity)? Also, how much does humor influence the relationships of the four HSQ scales, namely affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating, with personality traits and subjective well-being (i.e., criterion validity)? The present paper answers these two questions by experimentally manipulating the 32 items of the HSQ to only (or mostly) contain humor (i.e., construct-relevant content) or to substitute the humor content with non-humorous alternatives (i.e., only assessing construct-irrelevant context). Study 1 (N = 187) showed that the HSQ affiliative scale was mainly determined by humor, self-enhancing and aggressive were determined by both humor and non-humorous context, and self-defeating was primarily determined by the context. This suggests that humor is not the primary source of the variance in three of the HQS scales, thereby limiting their construct validity. Study 2 (N = 261) showed that the relationships of the HSQ scales to the Big Five personality traits and subjective well-being (positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction) were consistently reduced (personality) or vanished (subjective well-being) when the non-humorous contexts in the HSQ items were controlled for. For the HSQ self-defeating scale, the pattern of relationships to personality was also altered, supporting an positive rather than a negative view of the humor in this humor style. The present findings thus call for a reevaluation of the role that humor plays in the HSQ (construct validity) and in the relationships to personality and well-being (criterion validity). PMID:28473794

Increasing contextual demand modulates anterior and lateral prefrontal brain regions associated with proactive interference.

PubMed

Wolf, Robert Christian; Walter, Henrik; Vasic, Nenad

2010-01-01

Using a parametric version of a modified item-recognition paradigm with three different load levels and by means of event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, this study tested the hypothesis that cerebral activation associated with intratrial proactive interference (PI) during working memory retrieval is influenced by increased context processing. We found activation of left BA 45 during interference trials across all levels of cognitive processing, and left lateralized activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC, BA 9/46) and the frontopolar cortex (FPC, BA 10) with increasing contextual load. Compared with high susceptibility to PI, low susceptibility was associated with activation of the left DLPFC. These results suggest that an intratrial PI effect can be modulated by increasing context processing of a transiently relevant stimulus set. Moreover, PI resolution associated with increasing context load involves multiple prefrontal regions including the ventro- and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as well as frontopolar brain areas. Furthermore, low susceptibility to PI might be influenced by increased executive control exerted by the DLPFC.

Assessment accommodations on tests of academic achievement for students who are deaf or hard of hearing: a qualitative meta-analysis of the research literature.

PubMed

Cawthon, Stephanie; Leppo, Rachel

2013-01-01

The authors conducted a qualitative meta-analysis of the research on assessment accommodations for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. There were 16 identified studies that analyzed the impact of factors related to student performance on academic assessments across different educational settings, content areas, and types of assessment accommodations. The meta-analysis found that the results of analyses of group effects of accommodated versus unaccommodated test formats are often not significant, test-level factors exist that can affect how students perceive the assessments, and differences exist in how test items function across different conditions. Student-level factors, including educational context and academic proficiency, influence accommodations' role in assessment processes. The results of this analysis highlight the complexity of and intersections between student-level factors, test-level factors, and larger policy contexts. Findings are discussed within the context of larger changes in academic assessment, including computer-based administration and high-stakes testing.

[Validation of a questionnaire to evaluate patient safety in clinical laboratories].

PubMed

Giménez Marín, Ángeles; Rivas-Ruiz, Francisco

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to prepare, pilot and validate a questionnaire to evaluate patient safety in the specific context of clinical laboratories. A specific questionnaire on patient safety in the laboratory, with 62 items grouped into six areas, was developed, taking into consideration the diverse human and laboratory contextual factors which may contribute to producing errors. A pilot study of 30 interviews was carried out, including validity and reliability analyses using principal components factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha. Subsequently, 240 questionnaires were sent to 21 hospitals, followed by a test-retest of 41 questionnaires with the definitive version. The sample analyzed was composed of 225 questionnaires (an overall response rate of 80%). Of the 62 items initially assessed, 17 were eliminated due to non-compliance with the criteria established before the principal components factor analysis was performed. For the 45 remaining items, 12 components were identified, with an cumulative variance of 69.5%. In seven of the 10 components with two or more items, Cronbach's alpha was higher than 0.7. The questionnaire items assessed in the test-retest were found to be stable. We present the first questionnaire with sufficiently proven validity and reliability for evaluating patient safety in the specific context of clinical laboratories. This questionnaire provides a useful instrument to perform a subsequent macrostudy of hospital clinical laboratories in Spain. The questionnaire can also be used to monitor and promote commitment to patient safety within the search for continuous quality improvement. Copyright © 2011 SESPAS. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.

Conceptualizing age-friendly community characteristics in a sample of urban elders: an exploratory factor analysis.

PubMed

Smith, Richard J; Lehning, Amanda J; Dunkle, Ruth E

2013-01-01

Accurate conceptualization and measurement of age-friendly community characteristics would help to reduce barriers to documenting the effects on elders of interventions to create such communities. This article contributes to the measurement of age-friendly communities through an exploratory factor analysis of items reflecting an existing US Environmental Protection Agency policy framework. From a sample of urban elders (n = 1,376), we identified 6 factors associated with demographic and health characteristics: access to business and leisure, social interaction, access to health care, neighborhood problems, social support, and community engagement. Future research should explore the effects of these factors across contexts and populations.

Evaluation of English as a Foreign Language Program--Using CIPP (Context, Input, Process and Product) Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ulum, Ömer Gökhan

2016-01-01

The aim of this study is to evaluate a state high school EFL Program through CIPP (context, input, process and product) model. The participants of the study include 504 students. The source of data has been obtained through a 46-itemed questionnaire and an interview for the students. In the study, the data has been analysed using statistical…

Swedish Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (SAAQ): a psychometric evaluation.

PubMed

Lundgren, Tobias; Parling, Thomas

2017-06-01

Psychological inflexibility and experiential avoidance are equivalent (with somewhat different connotations) concepts and refer to an unwillingness to remain in contact with particular private events. This concept is most often measured by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ-II) and is strongly related to psychopathology and behavioral effectiveness. In this study, the preliminary psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the AAQ-II (Swedish Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-SAAQ) are presented. The study is done in two steps. In the first step, the 10-item version of the AAQ-II is investigated through principal component analysis (n = 147). Secondly, due to problems with the component structure, the instrument is reduced to a six-item version and its validity and internal consistency are investigated (n = 154). The six-item version shows good concurrent and convergent validity as well as satisfying internal consistency (α = .85). Furthermore, the Swedish six-item version of the AAQ-II showed one strong component. Test-retest reliability was satisfactory (r = .80; n = 228). In future research, predictive and external validity would be important to investigate in order to further ensure that the SAAQ is a useful measure for clinical research. In conclusion, the SAAQ has satisfactory psychometric properties, but more data need to be gathered to further explore the possibilities for the instruments in Swedish contexts.

Predicting sugar-sweetened behaviours with theory of planned behaviour constructs: Outcome and process results from the SIPsmartER behavioural intervention

PubMed Central

Zoellner, Jamie M.; Porter, Kathleen J.; Chen, Yvonnes; Hedrick, Valisa E.; You, Wen; Hickman, Maja; Estabrooks, Paul A.

2017-01-01

Objective Guided by the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and health literacy concepts, SIPsmartER is a six-month multicomponent intervention effective at improving SSB behaviours. Using SIPsmartER data, this study explores prediction of SSB behavioural intention (BI) and behaviour from TPB constructs using: (1) cross-sectional and prospective models and (2) 11 single-item assessments from interactive voice response (IVR) technology. Design Quasi-experimental design, including pre- and post-outcome data and repeated-measures process data of 155 intervention participants. Main Outcome Measures Validated multi-item TPB measures, single-item TPB measures, and self-reported SSB behaviours. Hypothesised relationships were investigated using correlation and multiple regression models. Results TPB constructs explained 32% of the variance cross sectionally and 20% prospectively in BI; and explained 13–20% of variance cross sectionally and 6% prospectively. Single-item scale models were significant, yet explained less variance. All IVR models predicting BI (average 21%, range 6–38%) and behaviour (average 30%, range 6–55%) were significant. Conclusion Findings are interpreted in the context of other cross-sectional, prospective and experimental TPB health and dietary studies. Findings advance experimental application of the TPB, including understanding constructs at outcome and process time points and applying theory in all intervention development, implementation and evaluation phases. PMID:28165771

Modeling Composite Assessment Data Using Item Response Theory

PubMed Central

Ueckert, Sebastian

2018-01-01

Composite assessments aim to combine different aspects of a disease in a single score and are utilized in a variety of therapeutic areas. The data arising from these evaluations are inherently discrete with distinct statistical properties. This tutorial presents the framework of the item response theory (IRT) for the analysis of this data type in a pharmacometric context. The article considers both conceptual (terms and assumptions) and practical questions (modeling software, data requirements, and model building). PMID:29493119

Findings from a novel approach to publication guideline revision: user road testing of a draft version of SQUIRE 2.0

PubMed Central

Davies, Louise; Donnelly, Kyla Z; Goodman, Daisy J; Ogrinc, Greg

2016-01-01

Background The Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE) Guideline was published in 2008 (SQUIRE 1.0) and was the first publication guideline specifically designed to advance the science of healthcare improvement. Advances in the discipline of improvement prompted us to revise it. We adopted a novel approach to the revision by asking end-users to ‘road test’ a draft version of SQUIRE 2.0. The aim was to determine whether they understood and implemented the guidelines as intended by the developers. Methods Forty-four participants were assigned a manuscript section (ie, introduction, methods, results, discussion) and asked to use the draft Guidelines to guide their writing process. They indicated the text that corresponded to each SQUIRE item used and submitted it along with a confidential survey. The survey examined usability of the Guidelines using Likert-scaled questions and participants’ interpretation of key concepts in SQUIRE using open-ended questions. On the submitted text, we evaluated concordance between participants’ item usage/interpretation and the developers’ intended application. For the survey, the Likert-scaled responses were summarised using descriptive statistics and the open-ended questions were analysed by content analysis. Results Consistent with the SQUIRE Guidelines’ recommendation that not every item be included, less than one-third (n=14) of participants applied every item in their section in full. Of the 85 instances when an item was partially used or was omitted, only 7 (8.2%) of these instances were due to participants not understanding the item. Usage of Guideline items was highest for items most similar to standard scientific reporting (ie, ‘Specific aim of the improvement’ (introduction), ‘Description of the improvement’ (methods) and ‘Implications for further studies’ (discussion)) and lowest (<20% of the time) for those unique to healthcare improvement (ie, ‘Assessment methods for context factors that contributed to success or failure’ and ‘Costs and strategic trade-offs’). Items unique to healthcare improvement, specifically ‘Evolution of the improvement’, ‘Context elements that influenced the improvement’, ‘The logic on which the improvement was based’, ‘Process and outcome measures’, demonstrated poor concordance between participants’ interpretation and developers’ intended application. Conclusions User testing of a draft version of SQUIRE 2.0 revealed which items have poor concordance between developer intent and author usage, which will inform final editing of the Guideline and development of supporting supplementary materials. It also identified the items that require special attention when teaching about scholarly writing in healthcare improvement. PMID:26263916

Examining the causes of memory strength variability: recollection, attention failure, or encoding variability?

PubMed

Koen, Joshua D; Aly, Mariam; Wang, Wei-Chun; Yonelinas, Andrew P

2013-11-01

A prominent finding in recognition memory is that studied items are associated with more variability in memory strength than new items. Here, we test 3 competing theories for why this occurs-the encoding variability, attention failure, and recollection accounts. Distinguishing among these theories is critical because each provides a fundamentally different account of the processes underlying recognition memory. The encoding variability and attention failure accounts propose that old item variance will be unaffected by retrieval manipulations because the processes producing this effect are ascribed to encoding. The recollection account predicts that both encoding and retrieval manipulations that preferentially affect recollection will affect memory variability. These contrasting predictions were tested by examining the effect of response speeding (Experiment 1), dividing attention at retrieval (Experiment 2), context reinstatement (Experiment 3), and increased test delay (Experiment 4) on recognition performance. The results of all 4 experiments confirm the predictions of the recollection account and are inconsistent with the encoding variability account. The evidence supporting the attention failure account is mixed, with 2 of the 4 experiments confirming the account and 2 disconfirming the account. These results indicate that encoding variability and attention failure are insufficient accounts of memory variance and provide support for the recollection account. Several alternative theoretical accounts of the results are also considered. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Development of a self-assessment teamwork tool for use by medical and nursing students.

PubMed

Gordon, Christopher J; Jorm, Christine; Shulruf, Boaz; Weller, Jennifer; Currie, Jane; Lim, Renee; Osomanski, Adam

2016-08-24

Teamwork training is an essential component of health professional student education. A valid and reliable teamwork self-assessment tool could assist students to identify desirable teamwork behaviours with the potential to promote learning about effective teamwork. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a self-assessment teamwork tool for health professional students for use in the context of emergency response to a mass casualty. The authors modified a previously published teamwork instrument designed for experienced critical care teams for use with medical and nursing students involved in mass casualty simulations. The 17-item questionnaire was administered to students immediately following the simulations. These scores were used to explore the psychometric properties of the tool, using Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. 202 (128 medical and 74 nursing) students completed the self-assessment teamwork tool for students. Exploratory factor analysis revealed 2 factors (5 items - Teamwork coordination and communication; 4 items - Information sharing and support) and these were justified with confirmatory factor analysis. Internal consistency was 0.823 for Teamwork coordination and communication, and 0.812 for Information sharing and support. These data provide evidence to support the validity and reliability of the self-assessment teamwork tool for students This self-assessment tool could be of value to health professional students following team training activities to help them identify the attributes of effective teamwork.

Assessing child and adolescent pragmatic language competencies: toward evidence-based assessments.

PubMed

Russell, Robert L; Grizzle, Kenneth L

2008-06-01

Using language appropriately and effectively in social contexts requires pragmatic language competencies (PLCs). Increasingly, deficits in PLCs are linked to child and adolescent disorders, including autism spectrum, externalizing, and internalizing disorders. As the role of PLCs expands in diagnosis and treatment of developmental psychopathology, psychologists and educators will need to appraise and select clinical and research PLC instruments for use in assessments and/or studies. To assist in this appraisal, 24 PLC instruments, containing 1,082 items, are assessed by addressing four questions: (1) Can PLC domains targeted by assessment items be reliably identified?, (2) What are the core PLC domains that emerge across the 24 instruments?, (3) Do PLC questionnaires and tests assess similar PLC domains?, and (4) Do the instruments achieve content, structural, diagnostic, and ecological validity? Results indicate that test and questionnaire items can be reliably categorized into PLC domains, that PLC domains featured in questionnaires and tests significantly differ, and that PLC instruments need empirical confirmation of their dimensional structure, content validity across all developmental age bands, and ecological validity. Progress in building a better evidence base for PLC assessments should be a priority in future research.

A Drastic Change in Background Luminance or Motion Degrades the Preview Benefit.

PubMed

Osugi, Takayuki; Murakami, Ikuya

2017-01-01

When some distractors (old items) precede some others (new items) in an inefficient visual search task, the search is restricted to new items, and yields a phenomenon termed the preview benefit. It has recently been demonstrated that, in this preview search task, the onset of repetitive changes in the background disrupts the preview benefit, whereas a single transient change in the background does not. In the present study, we explored this effect with dynamic background changes occurring in the context of realistic scenes, to examine the robustness and usefulness of visual marking. We examined whether preview benefit in a preview search task survived through task-irrelevant changes in the scene, namely a luminance change and the initiation of coherent motion, both occurring in the background. Luminance change of the background disrupted preview benefit if it was synchronized with the onset of the search display. Furthermore, although the presence of coherent background motion per se did not affect preview benefit, its synchronized initiation with the onset of the search display did disrupt preview benefit if the motion speed was sufficiently high. These results suggest that visual marking can be destroyed by a transient event in the scene if that event is sufficiently drastic.

Initial retrieval shields against retrieval-induced forgetting.

PubMed

Racsmány, Mihály; Keresztes, Attila

2015-01-01

Testing, as a form of retrieval, can enhance learning but it can also induce forgetting of related memories, a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). In four experiments we explored whether selective retrieval and selective restudy of target memories induce forgetting of related memories with or without initial retrieval of the entire learning set. In Experiment 1, subjects studied category-exemplar associations, some of which were then either restudied or retrieved. RIF occurred on a delayed final test only when memories were retrieved and not when they were restudied. In Experiment 2, following the study phase of category-exemplar associations, subjects attempted to recall all category-exemplar associations, then they selectively retrieved or restudied some of the exemplars. We found that, despite the huge impact on practiced items, selective retrieval/restudy caused no decrease in final recall of related items. In Experiment 3, we replicated the main result of Experiment 2 by manipulating initial retrieval as a within-subject variable. In Experiment 4 we replicated the main results of the previous experiments with non-practiced (Nrp) baseline items. These findings suggest that initial retrieval of the learning set shields against the forgetting effect of later selective retrieval. Together, our results support the context shift theory of RIF.

Autobiographical memory functions in young Japanese men and women.

PubMed

Maki, Yoichi; Kawasaki, Yayoi; Demiray, Burcu; Janssen, Steve M J

2015-01-01

The present study examined whether the three major functions of autobiographical memory observed in Western societies (i.e., directing-behaviour, social-bonding and self-continuity) also exist in an East Asian society. Two self-report measures were used to assess the autobiographical memory functions of Japanese men and women. Japanese young adults (N = 451, ages 17-28 years) first completed the original Thinking About Life Experiences (TALE) Questionnaire. They subsequently received three TALE items that represented memory functions and attempted to recall a specific instance of memory recall for each item. Confirmatory factor analyses on the TALE showed that the three functions were replicated in the current sample. However, Japanese participants reported lower levels of all three functions than American participants in a previous study. We also explored whether there was an effect of gender in this Japanese sample. Women reported higher levels of the self-continuity and social-bonding functions than men. Finally, participants recalled more specific instances of memory recall for the TALE items that had received higher ratings on the TALE, suggesting that the findings on the first measure were supported by the second measure. Results are discussed in relation to the functional approach to autobiographical memory in a cross-cultural context.

The Blood Donor Anxiety Scale: a six-item state anxiety measure based on the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.

PubMed

Chell, Kathleen; Waller, Daniel; Masser, Barbara

2016-06-01

Research demonstrates that anxiety elevates the risk of blood donors experiencing adverse events, which in turn deters the performance of repeat blood donations. Identifying donors suffering from heightened state anxiety is important to assess the impact of evidence-based interventions. This study analyzed the appropriateness of a shortened version of the state subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) in a blood donation context. STAI-State questionnaire data were collected from two separate samples of Australian blood donors (n = 919 and n = 824 after cleaning). Responses to demographic, donation history, and adverse reaction questions were also obtained. Identification of items and analysis was performed systematically to assess and compare internal reliability and content, construct, convergent, and criterion validity of three potential short-form state anxiety scales. Of the three short-form scales tested, STAI-State six-item scale demonstrated the best metric properties with the least number of items across both sample groups. Cronbach's alpha was acceptable (α = 0.844 and α = 0.820), correlated positively with the original measure (r = 0.927 and r = 0.931) and criterion-related variables, and maintained the two-dimension factorial structure of the original measure. The six-item short version of the STAI-State subscale presented the most reliable and valid scale for use with blood donors. A validated donor anxiety tool provides a standardized assessment and record of donor anxiety to gauge the effectiveness of ongoing efforts to enhance the donation experience. © 2016 AABB.

Cross-Culture Validation of the HIV/AIDS Stress Scale: The Development of a Revised Chinese Version.

PubMed

Niu, Lu; Qiu, Yangyang; Luo, Dan; Chen, Xi; Wang, Min; Pakenham, Kenneth I; Zhang, Xixing; Huang, Zhulin; Xiao, Shuiyuan

2016-01-01

Being HIV-infected is a stressful experience for many individuals. To assess HIV-related stress in the Chinese context, a measure with satisfied psychometric properties is yet underdeveloped. This study aimed to examine the psychometric characteristics of a simplified Chinese version of the HIV/AIDS Stress Scale (SS-HIV) among people living with HIV/AIDS in central China. A total of 667 people living with HIV (92% were male) were recruited from March 1st 2014 to August 31th 2015 by consecutive sampling. A standard questionnaire package containing the Chinese HIV/AIDS Stress Scale (CSS-HIV), the Chinese Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and the Chinese Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) were administered to all participants, and 38 of the participants were selected randomly to be re-tested in four weeks after the initial testing. Our data supported that a revised 17-item CSS-HIV had adequate psychometric properties. It consisted of 3 factors: emotional stress (6 items), social stress (6 items) and instrumental stress (5 items). The overall Cronbach's α was 0.906, and the test-retest reliability coefficient was 0.832. The revised CSS-HIV was significantly correlated with the number of HIV-related symptoms, as well as scores on the PHQ-9 and GAD-7, indicating acceptable concurrent validity. The 17-item Chinese version of the SS-HIV has potential research and clinical utility in identifying important stressors among the Chinese HIV-infected population and in understanding the effects of stress on adjustment to HIV.

Temporal-contextual processing in working memory: evidence from delayed cued recall and delayed free recall tests.

PubMed

Loaiza, Vanessa M; McCabe, David P

2012-02-01

Three experiments are reported that addressed the nature of processing in working memory by investigating patterns of delayed cued recall and free recall of items initially studied during complex and simple span tasks. In Experiment 1, items initially studied during a complex span task (i.e., operation span) were more likely to be recalled after a delay in response to temporal-contextual cues, relative to items from subspan and supraspan list lengths in a simple span task (i.e., word span). In Experiment 2, items initially studied during operation span were more likely to be recalled from neighboring serial positions during delayed free recall than were items studied during word span trials. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the number of attentional refreshing opportunities strongly predicts episodic memory performance, regardless of whether the information is presented in a spaced or massed format in a modified operation span task. The results indicate that the content-context bindings created during complex span trials reflect attentional refreshing opportunities that are used to maintain items in working memory.

Priming effects under correct change detection and change blindness.

PubMed

Caudek, Corrado; Domini, Fulvio

2013-03-01

In three experiments, we investigated the priming effects induced by an image change on a successive animate/inanimate decision task. We studied both perceptual (Experiments 1 and 2) and conceptual (Experiment 3) priming effects, under correct change detection and change blindness (CB). Under correct change detection, we found larger positive priming effects on congruent trials for probes representing animate entities than for probes representing artifactual objects. Under CB, we found performance impairment relative to a "no-change" baseline condition. This inhibition effect induced by CB was modulated by the semantic congruency between the changed item and the probe in the case of probe images, but not for probe words. We discuss our results in the context of the literature on the negative priming effect. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mechanisms supporting superior source memory for familiar items: A multi-voxel pattern analysis study

PubMed Central

Poppenk, Jordan; Norman, Kenneth A.

2012-01-01

Recent cognitive research has revealed better source memory performance for familiar relative to novel stimuli. Here we consider two possible explanations for this finding. The source memory advantage for familiar stimuli could arise because stimulus novelty induces attention to stimulus features at the expense of contextual processing, resulting in diminished overall levels of contextual processing at study for novel (vs. familiar) stimuli. Another possibility is that stimulus information retrieved from long-term memory (LTM) provides scaffolding that facilitates the formation of item-context associations. If contextual features are indeed more effectively bound to familiar (vs. novel) items, the relationship between contextual processing at study and subsequent source memory should be stronger for familiar items. We tested these possibilities by applying multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to a recently collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) dataset, with the goal of measuring contextual processing at study and relating it to subsequent source memory performance. Participants were scanned with fMRI while viewing novel proverbs, repeated proverbs (previously novel proverbs that were shown in a pre-study phase), and previously known proverbs in the context of one of two experimental tasks. After scanning was complete, we evaluated participants’ source memory for the task associated with each proverb. Drawing upon fMRI data from the study phase, we trained a classifier to detect on-task processing (i.e., how strongly was the correct task set activated). On-task processing was greater for previously known than novel proverbs and similar for repeated and novel proverbs. However, both within- and across participants, the relationship between on-task processing and subsequent source memory was stronger for repeated than novel proverbs and similar for previously known and novel proverbs. Finally, focusing on the repeated condition, we found that higher levels of hippocampal activity during the pre-study phase, which we used as an index of episodic encoding, led to a stronger relationship between on-task processing at study and subsequent memory. Together, these findings suggest different mechanisms may be primarily responsible for superior source memory for repeated and previously known stimuli. Specifically, they suggest that prior stimulus knowledge enhances memory by boosting the overall level of contextual processing, whereas stimulus repetition enhances the probability that contextual features will be successfully bound to item features. Several possible theoretical explanations for this pattern are discussed. PMID:22820636

Group differences in anterior hippocampal volume and in the retrieval of spatial and temporal context memory in healthy young versus older adults.

PubMed

Rajah, M Natasha; Kromas, Michelle; Han, Jung Eun; Pruessner, Jens C

2010-12-01

The ability to retrieve temporal and spatial context information from memory declines with healthy aging. The hippocampus (HC) has been shown to be associated with successful encoding and retrieval of spatio-temporal context, versus item recognition information (Davachi, Mitchell, & Wagner, 2003; Nadel, Samsonovich, Ryan, & Moscovitch, 2000; Ross & Slotnick, 2008). Aging has been linked to volume reduction in the HC (Bouchard, Malykhin, Martin, Hanstock, Emery, Fisher, & Camicioli, 2008; Malykhin, Bouchard, Camicioli, & Coupland, 2008; Raz et al., 2005). As such, age-associated reductions in anterior HC volume may contribute to the context memory deficits observed in older adults. In the current MRI study we investigated whether item recognition, spatial context and temporal context memory performance would be predicted by regional volumes in HC head (HH), body (HB) and tail (HT) volumes, using within group multiple regression analyses in a sample of 19 healthy young (mean age 24.3) and 20 older adults (mean age 67.7). We further examined between age-group differences in the volumes of the same HC sub-regions. Multiple regression analyses revealed that in younger adults both spatial and temporal context retrieval performance was predicted by anterior HC volume. Older age was associated with significant volume reductions in HH and HB, but not HT; and with reduced ability to retrieve spatial and temporal contextual details from episodic memory. However, HC volumes did not predict context retrieval performance in older adults. We conclude that individual differences in anterior, not posterior, HC volumes predict context memory performance in young adults. With age there may be a posterior-to-anterior shift from using HC-related processes, due to HC volume loss, to employing the prefrontal cortex to aid in the performance of cognitively demanding context memory tasks. However, due to concomitant changes in the prefrontal system with age, there are limits to compensation in the aging brain. Crown Copyright © 2010. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Genetic programming over context-free languages with linear constraints for the knapsack problem: first results.

PubMed

Bruhn, Peter; Geyer-Schulz, Andreas

2002-01-01

In this paper, we introduce genetic programming over context-free languages with linear constraints for combinatorial optimization, apply this method to several variants of the multidimensional knapsack problem, and discuss its performance relative to Michalewicz's genetic algorithm with penalty functions. With respect to Michalewicz's approach, we demonstrate that genetic programming over context-free languages with linear constraints improves convergence. A final result is that genetic programming over context-free languages with linear constraints is ideally suited to modeling complementarities between items in a knapsack problem: The more complementarities in the problem, the stronger the performance in comparison to its competitors.

Encoding and retrieval processes involved in the access of source information in the absence of item memory.

PubMed

Ball, B Hunter; DeWitt, Michael R; Knight, Justin B; Hicks, Jason L

2014-09-01

The current study sought to examine the relative contributions of encoding and retrieval processes in accessing contextual information in the absence of item memory using an extralist cuing procedure in which the retrieval cues used to query memory for contextual information were related to the target item but never actually studied. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants studied 1 category member (e.g., onion) from a variety of different categories and at test were presented with an unstudied category label (e.g., vegetable) to probe memory for item and source information. In Experiments 3 and 4, 1 member of unidirectional (e.g., credit or card) or bidirectional (e.g., salt or pepper) associates was studied, whereas the other unstudied member served as a test probe. When recall failed, source information was accessible only when items were processed deeply during encoding (Experiments 1 and 2) and when there was strong forward associative strength between the retrieval cue and target (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings suggest that a retrieval probe diagnostic of semantically related item information reinstantiates information bound in memory during encoding that results in reactivation of associated contextual information, contingent upon sufficient learning of the item itself and the association between the item and its context information.

Automatic Generation of Mashups for Personalized Commerce in Digital TV by Semantic Reasoning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Blanco-Fernández, Yolanda; López-Nores, Martín; Pazos-Arias, José J.; Martín-Vicente, Manuela I.

The evolution of information technologies is consolidating recommender systems as essential tools in e-commerce. To date, these systems have focused on discovering the items that best match the preferences, interests and needs of individual users, to end up listing those items by decreasing relevance in some menus. In this paper, we propose extending the current scope of recommender systems to better support trading activities, by automatically generating interactive applications that provide the users with personalized commercial functionalities related to the selected items. We explore this idea in the context of Digital TV advertising, with a system that brings together semantic reasoning techniques and new architectural solutions for web services and mashups.

Measuring pregnancy planning: An assessment of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy among urban, south Indian women

PubMed Central

Rocca, Corinne H.; Krishnan, Suneeta; Barrett, Geraldine; Wilson, Mark

2010-01-01

We evaluated the psychometric properties of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy among Indian women using classical methods and Item Response Modeling. The scale exhibited good internal consistency and internal structure, with overall scores correlating well with each item’s response categories. Items performed similarly for pregnant and non-pregnant women, and scores decreased with increasing parity, providing evidence for validity. Analyses also detected limitations, including infrequent selection of middle response categories and some evidence of differential item functioning by parity. We conclude that the LMUP represents an improvement over existing measures but recommend steps for enhancing scale performance for this cultural context. PMID:21170147

Cross-cultural adaptation of instruments assessing breastfeeding determinants: a multi-step approach

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Cross-cultural adaptation is a necessary process to effectively use existing instruments in other cultural and language settings. The process of cross-culturally adapting, including translation, of existing instruments is considered a critical set to establishing a meaningful instrument for use in another setting. Using a multi-step approach is considered best practice in achieving cultural and semantic equivalence of the adapted version. We aimed to ensure the content validity of our instruments in the cultural context of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Methods The Iowa Infant Feeding Attitudes Scale, Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form and additional items comprise our consolidated instrument, which was cross-culturally adapted utilizing a multi-step approach during August 2012. Cross-cultural adaptation was achieved through steps to maintain content validity and attain semantic equivalence in the target version. Specifically, Lynn’s recommendation to apply an item-level content validity index score was followed. The revised instrument was translated and back-translated. To ensure semantic equivalence, Brislin’s back-translation approach was utilized followed by the committee review to address any discrepancies that emerged from translation. Results Our consolidated instrument was adapted to be culturally relevant and translated to yield more reliable and valid results for use in our larger research study to measure infant feeding determinants effectively in our target cultural context. Conclusions Undertaking rigorous steps to effectively ensure cross-cultural adaptation increases our confidence that the conclusions we make based on our self-report instrument(s) will be stronger. In this way, our aim to achieve strong cross-cultural adaptation of our consolidated instruments was achieved while also providing a clear framework for other researchers choosing to utilize existing instruments for work in other cultural, geographic and population settings. PMID:25285151

Development and Validation of the Adolescent Psychological Need Support in Exercise Questionnaire.

PubMed

Emm-Collison, Lydia G; Standage, Martyn; Gillison, Fiona B

2016-10-01

Grounded within self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Deci, in press), three studies were conducted to develop and psychometrically test a measure of adolescents' perceptions of psychological need support for exercise (viz., for autonomy, competence, and relatedness): the Adolescent Psychological Need Support in Exercise Questionnaire (APNSEQ). In Study 1, 34 items were developed in collaboration with an expert panel. Through categorical confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory, responses from 433 adolescents were used to identify the best fitting and performing items in Study 2. Here, a three-factor nine-item measure showed good fit to the data. In Study 3, responses from an independent sample of 373 adolescents provided further evidence for the nine-item solution as well as for internal consistency, criterion validity, and invariance across gender and social agent (friends, family, and physical education teacher). The APNSEQ was supported as a measure of adolescents' perceptions of psychological need support within the context of exercise.

Validation of the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ) Among Mainland Chinese Students in Hong Kong.

PubMed

Pan, Jia-Yan; Ye, Shengquan; Ng, Petrus

2016-01-01

The present study validated the combined version of the 8-item Automatic Thought Questionnaire (ATQ) and 10 positive items from the ATQ-revised among Chinese university students. A total of 412 Mainland Chinese university students were recruited in Hong Kong by an online survey. A 14-item Chinese ATQ was derived via item analysis. Satisfactory internal consistency reliability and good split-half reliability were obtained. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis revealed a 3-correlated-factor solution for the Chinese ATQ: negative thought, positive thought (emotional), and positive thought (cognitive). The negative ATQ subscale score was positively correlated with negative affect, and negatively correlated with positive affect and life satisfaction. The two positive ATQ subscale scores were negatively correlated with negative affect, and positively correlated with positive affect and life satisfaction. The 14-item ATQ is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring automatic thoughts in the Chinese context of Hong Kong. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Unpacking personalized feedback: an exploratory study of the impact of its components and the reactions it elicits among problem drinking men who have sex with men.

PubMed

Kuerbis, Alexis Noel; Schaumberg, Katherine; Davis, Christine M; Hail, Lisa; Morgenstern, Jon

2014-03-01

Personalized feedback (PF) has demonstrated effectiveness in reducing drinking. Few studies have examined its effectiveness with adult problem drinkers or its potential mediators or moderators, including developing discrepancy. This study aimed to identify potential mediators and moderators of PF provided to adult problem drinking men who have sex with men (PDMSM). An exploratory analysis of PF provided to PDMSM in the context of modified behavioral self-control therapy (N = 90). The association of individual items of PF, severity of PF, and independently rated, in-session participant reactions to PF with drinking outcomes (mean drinks per drinking day, MDDD) were examined using correlations and logistic and linear regression. Significant pre-post differences in MDDD emerged. Other drug risk, family risk, and having an abnormal liver enzyme test result were significantly associated with proxies for developed discrepancy in expected directions; however, no PF item or reaction to PF predicted drinking outcomes. Severity of PF was not associated with participant reactions or drinking outcome. PF may be an effective intervention for PDMSM. Further research is needed to identify potential mediators and moderators of PF among adults.

The Instructional Quality Inventory. 2. User’s Manual

DTIC Science & Technology

1979-08-01

final task is too difficult for a beginner to perform. In this situation, early practice items are simplified, and are therefore not identical with...Representing the statement with pictures, symbols, flowcharts , etc. c. Explaining how the statement relates to something the student already knows...Pictures, symbols, flowcharts , tables, erc., can be used. Again, a job-relevant context must be provided for a statement. This context should inolude a

An Emic, Mixed Methods Approach to Defining and Measuring Positive Parenting Among Low-Income, Black Families

PubMed Central

McWayne, Christine; Mattis, Jacqueline S.; Wright, Linnie E. Green; Limlingan, Maria Cristina; Harris, Elise

2017-01-01

Research Findings This within-group exploratory sequential mixed methods investigation sought to identify how ethnically diverse, urban-residing, low-income Black families conceptualize positive parenting. During the item development phase 119 primary caregivers from Head Start programs participated in focus groups and interviews. These qualitative data were content analyzed using a three-stage iterative process that resulted in the development of a final set of 72 items for a paper-and-pencil measure. In the measure validation phase of the study initial construct validity of the 72-item measure was assessed with an independent sample of 665 respondents. Common factor analyses revealed five dimensions of positive parenting on the Black Parenting Strengths in Context (BPSC) scale that related in expected ways with other parent self-report measures. Practice and Policy BPSC dimensions provide initial support for a more nuanced operationalization of positive parenting than currently exists in any single scale for use with this group, and hold promise for better honoring the culture- and context-specific parenting goals and practices that low-income, Black parents subjectively view as important for producing healthy developmental outcomes for their children. PMID:29333053

Human Episodic Memory Retrieval Is Accompanied by a Neural Contiguity Effect.

PubMed

Folkerts, Sarah; Rutishauser, Ueli; Howard, Marc W

2018-04-25

Cognitive psychologists have long hypothesized that experiences are encoded in a temporal context that changes gradually over time. When an episodic memory is retrieved, the state of context is recovered-a jump back in time. We recorded from single units in the medial temporal lobe of epilepsy patients performing an item recognition task. The population vector changed gradually over minutes during presentation of the list. When a probe from the list was remembered with high confidence, the population vector reinstated the temporal context of the original presentation of that probe during study, a neural contiguity effect that provides a possible mechanism for behavioral contiguity effects. This pattern was only observed for well remembered probes; old probes that were not well remembered showed an anti-contiguity effect. These results constitute the first direct evidence that recovery of an episodic memory in humans is associated with retrieval of a gradually changing state of temporal context, a neural "jump back in time" that parallels the act of remembering. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Episodic memory is the ability to relive a specific experience from one's life. For decades, researchers have hypothesized that, unlike other forms of memory that can be described as simple associations between stimuli, episodic memory depends on the recovery of a neural representation of spatiotemporal context. During study of a sequence of stimuli, the brain state of epilepsy patients changed slowly over at least a minute. When the participant remembered a particular event from the list, this gradually changing state was recovered. This provides direct confirmation of the prediction from computational models of episodic memory. The resolution of this point means that the study of episodic memory can focus on the mechanisms by which this representation of spatiotemporal context is maintained and sometimes recovered. Copyright © 2018 the authors 0270-6474/18/384200-12$15.00/0.

Online drug databases: a new method to assess and compare inclusion of clinically relevant information.

PubMed

Silva, Cristina; Fresco, Paula; Monteiro, Joaquim; Rama, Ana Cristina Ribeiro

2013-08-01

Evidence-Based Practice requires health care decisions to be based on the best available evidence. The model "Information Mastery" proposes that clinicians should use sources of information that have previously evaluated relevance and validity, provided at the point of care. Drug databases (DB) allow easy and fast access to information and have the benefit of more frequent content updates. Relevant information, in the context of drug therapy, is that which supports safe and effective use of medicines. Accordingly, the European Guideline on the Summary of Product Characteristics (EG-SmPC) was used as a standard to evaluate the inclusion of relevant information contents in DB. To develop and test a method to evaluate relevancy of DB contents, by assessing the inclusion of information items deemed relevant for effective and safe drug use. Hierarchical organisation and selection of the principles defined in the EGSmPC; definition of criteria to assess inclusion of selected information items; creation of a categorisation and quantification system that allows score calculation; calculation of relative differences (RD) of scores for comparison with an "ideal" database, defined as the one that achieves the best quantification possible for each of the information items; pilot test on a sample of 9 drug databases, using 10 drugs frequently associated in literature with morbidity-mortality and also being widely consumed in Portugal. Main outcome measure Calculate individual and global scores for clinically relevant information items of drug monographs in databases, using the categorisation and quantification system created. A--Method development: selection of sections, subsections, relevant information items and corresponding requisites; system to categorise and quantify their inclusion; score and RD calculation procedure. B--Pilot test: calculated scores for the 9 databases; globally, all databases evaluated significantly differed from the "ideal" database; some DB performed better but performance was inconsistent at subsections level, within the same DB. The method developed allows quantification of the inclusion of relevant information items in DB and comparison with an "ideal database". It is necessary to consult diverse DB in order to find all the relevant information needed to support clinical drug use.

Development and psychometric testing of a barriers to HIV testing scale among individuals with HIV infection in Sweden; The Barriers to HIV testing scale-Karolinska version.

PubMed

Wiklander, Maria; Brännström, Johanna; Svedhem, Veronica; Eriksson, Lars E

2015-11-19

Barriers to HIV testing experienced by individuals at risk for HIV can result in treatment delay and further transmission of the disease. Instruments to systematically measure barriers are scarce, but could contribute to improved strategies for HIV testing. Aims of this study were to develop and test a barriers to HIV testing scale in a Swedish context. An 18-item scale was developed, based on an existing scale with addition of six new items related to fear of the disease or negative consequences of being diagnosed as HIV-infected. Items were phrased as statements about potential barriers with a three-point response format representing not important, somewhat important, and very important. The scale was evaluated regarding missing values, floor and ceiling effects, exploratory factor analysis, and internal consistencies. The questionnaire was completed by 292 adults recently diagnosed with HIV infection, of whom 7 were excluded (≥9 items missing) and 285 were included (≥12 items completed) in the analyses. The participants were 18-70 years old (mean 40.5, SD 11.5), 39 % were females and 77 % born outside Sweden. Routes of transmission were heterosexual transmission 63 %, male to male sex 20 %, intravenous drug use 5 %, blood product/transfusion 2 %, and unknown 9 %. All scale items had <3 % missing values. The data was feasible for factor analysis (KMO = 0.92) and a four-factor solution was chosen, based on level of explained common variance (58.64 %) and interpretability of factor structure. The factors were interpreted as; personal consequences, structural barriers, social and economic security, and confidentiality. Ratings on the minimum level (suggested barrier not important) were common, resulting in substantial floor effects on the scales. The scales were internally consistent (Cronbach's α 0.78-0.91). This study gives preliminary evidence of the scale being feasible, reliable and valid to identify different types of barriers to HIV testing.

The relationship between awareness of intellectual disability, causal and intervention beliefs and social distance in Kuwait and the UK.

PubMed

Scior, Katrina; Hamid, Aseel; Mahfoudhi, Abdessatar; Abdalla, Fauzia

2013-11-01

Evidence on lay beliefs and stigma associated with intellectual disability in an Arab context is almost non-existent. This study examined awareness of intellectual disability, causal and intervention beliefs and social distance in Kuwait. These were compared to a UK sample to examine differences in lay conceptions across cultures. 537 university students in Kuwait and 571 students in the UK completed a web-based survey asking them to respond to a diagnostically unlabelled vignette of a man presenting with symptoms of mild intellectual disability. They rated their agreement with 22 causal items as possible causes for the difficulties depicted in the vignette, the perceived helpfulness of 22 interventions, and four social distance items using a 7-point Likert scale. Only 8% of Kuwait students, yet 33% of UK students identified possible intellectual disability in the vignette. Medium to large differences between the two samples were observed on seven of the causal items, and 10 of the intervention items. Against predictions, social distance did not differ. Causal beliefs mediated the relationship between recognition of intellectual disability and social distance, but their mediating role differed by sample. The findings are discussed in relation to cultural practices and values, and in relation to attribution theory. In view of the apparent positive effect of awareness of the symptoms of intellectual disability on social distance, both directly and through the mediating effects of causal beliefs, promoting increased awareness of intellectual disability and inclusive practices should be a priority, particularly in countries such as Kuwait where it appears to be low. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A hierarchy of distress and invariant item ordering in the General Health Questionnaire-12.

PubMed

Doyle, F; Watson, R; Morgan, K; McBride, O

2012-06-01

Invariant item ordering (IIO) is defined as the extent to which items have the same ordering (in terms of item difficulty/severity - i.e. demonstrating whether items are difficult [rare] or less difficult [common]) for each respondent who completes a scale. IIO is therefore crucial for establishing a scale hierarchy that is replicable across samples, but no research has demonstrated IIO in scales of psychological distress. We aimed to determine if a hierarchy of distress with IIO exists in a large general population sample who completed a scale measuring distress. Data from 4107 participants who completed the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) from the Northern Ireland Health and Social Wellbeing Survey 2005-6 were analysed. Mokken scaling was used to determine the dimensionality and hierarchy of the GHQ-12, and items were investigated for IIO. All items of the GHQ-12 formed a single, strong unidimensional scale (H=0.58). IIO was found for six of the 12 items (H-trans=0.55), and these symptoms reflected the following hierarchy: anhedonia, concentration, participation, coping, decision-making and worthlessness. The cross-sectional analysis needs replication. The GHQ-12 showed a hierarchy of distress, but IIO is only demonstrated for six of the items, and the scale could therefore be shortened. Adopting brief, hierarchical scales with IIO may be beneficial in both clinical and research contexts. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Individualism and collectivism: what differences between Portuguese and Romanian adolescents?

PubMed

Ciochină, Laura; Faria, Luísa

2009-11-01

This article presents the results of a series of preliminary comparisons, between the Portuguese and Romanian cultural contexts, on the individualism-collectivism (IND/COL) cultural dimension. The IND/COL was evaluated with the Individualism-Collectivism Questionnaire - ICQ -, constructed in New Zealand by Shulruf, Hattie and Dixon (2003, Anonymous Questionnaire of Self-Attitudes - AQSA), and adapted to the Portuguese and Romanian contexts by Ciochină and Faria (2007), using studies of confirmatory factor analysis. The ICQ composed by 26 items, 15 evaluating the IND scale--with three subscales (Uniqueness, Competition and Responsibility)--, and 11 evaluating the COL scale--with two subscales (Harmony and Advice)--, was administered to 395 subjects, 200 Portuguese and 195 Romanian, 10th and 12th graders. On the whole, in the Portuguese and Romanian samples, the multivariate and univariate statistical analyses evidenced the existence of two independent variables--gender and cultural context--, with significant effects, main and of interaction, on the scales and subscales of the ICQ. The results were discussed taking into consideration the specificities of the educational systems in the two cultural contexts, which are inevitably shaped by socio-cultural factors characteristic of the two countries considered in the present study--Portugal and Romania.

Drawing to Remember: External Support of Older Adults’ Eyewitness Performance

PubMed Central

Dando, Coral J.

2013-01-01

Although healthy aging is accompanied by a general decline in memory functioning, environmental support at retrieval can improve older adults’ (+65 years) episodic remembering. Despite those over the age of 65years representing a growing proportion of the population, few environmental retrieval support methods have been empirically evaluated for use with older witnesses and victims of crime. Here, the efficacy of a novel retrieval technique, the Sketch Mental Reinstatement of Context, is compared with a standard Mental Reinstatement of Context and a no support control (Control). Fifty-one participants witnessed an unexpected live event, and 48 hours later were interviewed using one of three aforementioned techniques. In line with predictions emanating from cognitive theories of aging and the environmental support hypothesis, participants in the Sketch Mental Reinstatement of Context condition recalled significantly more correct information and fewer inaccurate items. The Sketch Mental Reinstatement of Context technique appears to scaffold memory retrieval in an age-appropriate manner during a post-event interview, possibly by encouraging more effortful retrieval and reducing dual-task load. As such, this procedure offers an effective alternative to current approaches, adding to the toolbox of techniques available to forensic and other interviewers. PMID:23922863

Validation of a scale for assessing attitudes towards outcomes of genetic cancer testing among primary care providers and breast specialists

PubMed Central

N’Diaye, Khadim; Evans, D. Gareth; Harris, Hilary; Tibben, Aad; van Asperen, Christi; Schmidtke, Joerg; Nippert, Irmgard; Mancini, Julien; Julian-Reynier, Claire

2017-01-01

Objective To develop a generic scale for assessing attitudes towards genetic testing and to psychometrically assess these attitudes in the context of BRCA1/2 among a sample of French general practitioners, breast specialists and gyneco-obstetricians. Study design and setting Nested within the questionnaire developed for the European InCRisC (International Cancer Risk Communication Study) project were 14 items assessing expected benefits (8 items) and drawbacks (6 items) of the process of breast/ovarian genetic cancer testing (BRCA1/2). Another item assessed agreement with the statement that, overall, the expected health benefits of BRCA1/2 testing exceeded its drawbacks, thereby justifying its prescription. The questionnaire was mailed to a sample of 1,852 French doctors. Of these, 182 breast specialists, 275 general practitioners and 294 gyneco-obstetricians completed and returned the questionnaire to the research team. Principal Component Analysis, Cronbach’s α coefficient, and Pearson’s correlation coefficients were used in the statistical analyses of collected data. Results Three dimensions emerged from the respondents’ responses, and were classified under the headings: “Anxiety, Conflict and Discrimination”, “Risk Information”, and “Prevention and Surveillance”. Cronbach’s α coefficient for the 3 dimensions was 0.79, 0.76 and 0.62, respectively, and each dimension exhibited strong correlation with the overall indicator of agreement (criterion validity). Conclusions The validation process of the 15 items regarding BRCA1/2 testing revealed satisfactory psychometric properties for the creation of a new scale entitled the Attitudes Towards Genetic Testing for BRCA1/2 (ATGT-BRCA1/2) Scale. Further testing is required to confirm the validity of this tool which could be used generically in other genetic contexts. PMID:28570656

The Impact of 3-Option Responses to Multiple-Choice Questions on Guessing Strategies and Cut Score Determinations

PubMed Central

ROYAL, KENNETH D.; STOCKDALE, MYRAH R.

2017-01-01

Introduction: Research has asserted MCQ items using three response options (one correct answer with two distractors) is comparable to, and possibly preferable over, traditional MCQ item formats consisting of four response options (e.g., one correct answer with three distractors), or five response options (e.g., one correct answer with four distractors). Some medical educators have also adopted the practice of using 3-option responses on MCQ exams as a response to the difficulty experienced in generating additional plausible distractors. To date, however, little work has explored how 3-option responses might impact validity threats stemming from random guessing strategies, and what impact 3-option responses might have on cut-score determinations, particularly in the context of medical education classroom assessments. The purpose of this work is to further explore these critically important considerations that largely have gone ignored in the medical education literature to this point. Methods: A cumulative binomial distribution formula was used to calculate the probability that an examinee will answer at random a given number of items correctly on any exam (of any length). By way of a demonstration, a variety of scenarios were presented to illustrate how examination length and the number of response options impact examinees’ chances of passing a given examination, and how subsequent cut-score decisions may be impacted by these factors. Results: As a general rule, classroom assessments containing fewer items should utilize traditional 4-option or 5-option responses, whereas assessments of greater length are afforded greater flexibility in potentially utilizing 3-option responses. Conclusions: More research on items with 3-option responses is needed to better understand what value, if any, 3-option responses truly add to classroom assessments, and in what contexts potential benefits might be discernible. PMID:28367465

Is the content of the Chinese Quality of Life Instrument (ChQOL) really valid in the context of traditional Chinese medicine in Hong Kong?

PubMed

Wong, Wendy; Lam, Cindy L K; Leung, K F; Zhao, L

2009-01-01

Content validity is crucial in quality of life instrument development but there is very little literature on this in Chinese culture. The Chinese Quality of Life Instrument (ChQOL) was developed in Mainland China to capture the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) concepts specific to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The aim of this study was to evaluate the content validity of ChQOL in a Chinese population whose spoken dialect and health-care system are different from those of Mainland China to find out whether the instrument is generalizable. 8 TCM practitioners and 10 patients rated the clarity, relevance and appropriateness of each of the 50 items of the ChQOL (HK version), and completed qualitative cognitive debriefing interviews. The content of ChQOL was rated valid by TCM practitioners with CVIs on clarity, relevance and appropriateness ranging from 80 to 100%. 49 out of 50 items were well understood by patients, but 12 items had CVI on relevance and 5 items had CVI on appropriateness lower than 70% among patients. After reviewing the patients and TCM practitioners' opinions, revisions were made for three items (2, 8 and 29) to form the ChQOL (HK version)-2008. In general, the ChQOL was found to be too long which called for shorter version. The content of ChQOL was shown to be really valid in the context of Chinese Medicine for Cantonese speaking Chinese. There was some discrepancy between the judgments of TCM practitioners and patients indicating the importance of evaluation by both experts and lay persons.

The Impact of 3-Option Responses to Multiple-Choice Questions on Guessing Strategies and Cut Score Determinations.

PubMed

Royal, Kenneth D; Stockdale, Myrah R

2017-04-01

Research has asserted MCQ items using three response options (one correct answer with two distractors) is comparable to, and possibly preferable over, traditional MCQ item formats consisting of four response options (e.g., one correct answer with three distractors), or five response options (e.g., one correct answer with four distractors). Some medical educators have also adopted the practice of using 3-option responses on MCQ exams as a response to the difficulty experienced in generating additional plausible distractors. To date, however, little work has explored how 3-option responses might impact validity threats stemming from random guessing strategies, and what impact 3-option responses might have on cut-score determinations, particularly in the context of medical education classroom assessments. The purpose of this work is to further explore these critically important considerations that largely have gone ignored in the medical education literature to this point. A cumulative binomial distribution formula was used to calculate the probability that an examinee will answer at random a given number of items correctly on any exam (of any length). By way of a demonstration, a variety of scenarios were presented to illustrate how examination length and the number of response options impact examinees' chances of passing a given examination, and how subsequent cut-score decisions may be impacted by these factors. As a general rule, classroom assessments containing fewer items should utilize traditional 4-option or 5-option responses, whereas assessments of greater length are afforded greater flexibility in potentially utilizing 3-option responses. More research on items with 3-option responses is needed to better understand what value, if any, 3-option responses truly add to classroom assessments, and in what contexts potential benefits might be discernible.

Implementing the Health Promoting University approach in culturally different contexts: a systematic review.

PubMed

Suárez-Reyes, Mónica; Van den Broucke, Stephan

2016-03-01

Universities represent a valuable opportunity to promote health and well-being. Based on the setting approach, the Health Promoting Universities concept has been developed in different countries and contexts. However, the implementation process remains poorly documented. This systematic review aims to describe how universities have implemented the Health Promoting University concept in different cultural contexts. Pubmed, Medline, Lilacs and Scielo were searched for articles on Health Promoting Universities, published between 1995 and 2015. Studies detailing the implementation of a Health Promoting University approach were included. Selected articles were content analysed paying attention to: (a) the definition of a Health Promoting University; (b) priority areas of action; (c) items of work; (d) coordination of the project; (e) evaluation; and (f) adaptation to the cultural context. Twelve studies were identified for in-depth analysis. Of those, three were theoretical papers, and nine were intervention studies. The programmes described in the selected studies are mostly based on the guidelines of the Edmonton Charter. They incorporated the main areas of action and items of works proposed by the Health Promoting University framework. The implementation of healthy policies and incorporation of health promotion in the curriculum are remaining challenges. Strategies to facilitate adaptation to context include: stakeholder participation in planning and implementation, adaptation of educational material and analysis of needs. The review suggests that most of the universities work towards similar goals, relying on the Health Promoting University framework, yet that the way in which initiatives are implemented depends on the context. © The Author(s) 2015.

The concept of research utilization as understood by Swedish nurses: demarcations of instrumental, conceptual, and persuasive research utilization.

PubMed

Strandberg, Elisabeth; Catrine Eldh, Ann; Forsman, Henrietta; Rudman, Ann; Gustavsson, Petter; Wallin, Lars

2014-02-01

The literature implies research utilization (RU) to be a multifaceted and complex phenomenon, difficult to trace in clinical practice. A deeper understanding of the concept of RU in a nursing context is needed, in particular, for the development of instruments for measuring nurses' RU, which could facilitate the evaluation of interventions to support the implementation of evidence-based practice. In this paper, we explored nurses' demarcation of instrumental RU (IRU), conceptual RU (CRU), and persuasive RU (PRU) using an item pool proposed to measure IRU, CRU, and PRU. The item pool (12 items) was presented to two samples: one of practicing registered nurses (n = 890) in Sweden 4 years after graduating and one of recognized content experts (n = 7). Correlation analyses and content validity index (CVI) calculations were used together with qualitative content analysis, in a mixed methods design. According to the item and factor analyses, CRU and PRU could not be distinguished, whereas IRU could. Analyses also revealed problems in linking the CRU items to the external criteria. The CVIs, however, showed excellent or good results for the IRU, CRU, and PRU items as well as at the scale level. The qualitative data indicated that IRU was the least problematic for the experts to categorize, whereas CRU and PRU were harder to demarcate. Our findings illustrate a difficulty in explicitly demarcating between CRU and PRU in clinical nursing. We suggest this overlap is related to conceptual incoherence, indicating a need for further studies. The findings constitute new knowledge about the RU concepts in a clinical nursing context, and highlight differences in how the concepts can be understood by RNs in clinical practice and experts within the field. We suggest that the findings are useful for defining RU in nursing and further development of measures of RU. © 2013 Sigma Theta Tau International.