The challenge of spin–orbit-tuned ground states in iridates: a key issues review

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cao, Gang; Schlottmann, Pedro

2018-04-01

Effects of spin–orbit interactions in condensed matter are an important and rapidly evolving topic. Strong competition between spin–orbit, on-site Coulomb and crystalline electric field interactions in iridates drives exotic quantum states that are unique to this group of materials. In particular, the ‘J eff  =  ½’ Mott state served as an early signal that the combined effect of strong spin–orbit and Coulomb interactions in iridates has unique, intriguing consequences. In this Key Issues Review, we survey some current experimental studies of iridates. In essence, these materials tend to defy conventional wisdom: absence of conventional correlations between magnetic and insulating states, avoidance of metallization at high pressures, ‘S-shaped’ I–V characteristic, emergence of an odd-parity hidden order, etc. It is particularly intriguing that there exist conspicuous discrepancies between current experimental results and theoretical proposals that address superconducting, topological and quantum spin liquid phases. This class of materials, in which the lattice degrees of freedom play a critical role seldom seen in other materials, evidently presents some profound intellectual challenges that call for more investigations both experimentally and theoretically. Physical properties unique to these materials may help unlock a world of possibilities for functional materials and devices. We emphasize that, given the rapidly developing nature of this field, this Key Issues Review is by no means an exhaustive report of the current state of experimental studies of iridates.

Chronic fluoxetine dissociates contextual from auditory fear memory.

PubMed

Sanders, Jeff; Mayford, Mark

2016-10-06

Fluoxetine is a medication used to treat Major Depressive Disorder and other psychiatric conditions. These experiments studied the effects of chronic fluoxetine treatment on the contextual versus auditory fear memory of mice. We found that chronic fluoxetine treatment of adult mice impaired their contextual fear memory, but spared auditory fear memory. Hippocampal perineuronal nets, which are involved in contextual fear memory plasticity, were unaltered by fluoxetine treatment. These data point to a selective inability to form contextual fear memory as a result of fluoxetine treatment, and they suggest that a blunting of hippocampal-mediated aversive memory may be a therapeutic action for this medication. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Human health effects of dichloromethane: key findings and scientific issues.

PubMed

Schlosser, Paul M; Bale, Ambuja S; Gibbons, Catherine F; Wilkins, Amina; Cooper, Glinda S

2015-02-01

The U.S. EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) completed an updated toxicological review of dichloromethane in November 2011. In this commentary we summarize key results and issues of this review, including exposure sources, identification of potential health effects, and updated physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling. We performed a comprehensive review of primary research studies and evaluation of PBPK models. Hepatotoxicity was observed in oral and inhalation exposure studies in several studies in animals; neurological effects were also identified as a potential area of concern. Dichloromethane was classified as likely to be carcinogenic in humans based primarily on evidence of carcinogenicity at two sites (liver and lung) in male and female B6C3F1 mice (inhalation exposure) and at one site (liver) in male B6C3F1 mice (drinking-water exposure). Recent epidemiologic studies of dichloromethane (seven studies of hematopoietic cancers published since 2000) provide additional data raising concerns about associations with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma. Although there are gaps in the database for dichloromethane genotoxicity (i.e., DNA adduct formation and gene mutations in target tissues in vivo), the positive DNA damage assays correlated with tissue and/or species availability of functional glutathione S-transferase (GST) metabolic activity, the key activation pathway for dichloromethane-induced cancer. Innovations in the IRIS assessment include estimation of cancer risk specifically for a presumed sensitive genotype (GST-theta-1+/+), and PBPK modeling accounting for human physiological distributions based on the expected distribution for all individuals 6 months to 80 years of age. The 2011 IRIS assessment of dichloromethane provides insights into the toxicity of a commonly used solvent.

EPA's Reanalysis of Key Issues Related to Dioxin Toxicity and ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

EPA is releasing for external peer review and public comment an important draft document reviewing the literature on the health effects of dioxin and related compounds (also referred to as 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin). At the request of Administrator Jackson, EPA is in the process of re-assessing the science on the effects of dioxin, a toxic chemical that is emitted by multiple sources, on the public’s health. This draft dioxin report is EPA’s response to key comments and recommendations made by the National Academy of Sciences on the Agency’s draft dioxin reassessment. This assessment has been in progress for many years and raises health issues of broad interest to scientists and policymakers across the federal family. The Agency’s draft report includes significant new analyses on potential cancer and non-cancer human health effects that may result from exposures to dioxins and includes an oral reference dose for what is considered to be the most toxic of the dioxin-like compounds. EPA’s Science

A Comparative Study of Paper-Based and Computer-Based Contextualization in Vocabulary Learning of EFL Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahmadian, Mousa; Amerian, Majid; Goodarzi, Ahmad

2015-01-01

Vocabulary acquisition is one of the largest and most important tasks in language classes. New technologies, such as computers, have helped a lot in this way. The importance of the issue led the researchers to do the present study which concerns the comparison of contextualized vocabulary learning on paper and through Computer Assisted Language…

Scaling and contextualizing climate-conflict nexus in historical agrarian China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Harry F.

2017-04-01

This study examines climate-conflict nexus in historical agrarian China in multi-scalar and contextualized approach, illustrating what and how socio-political factors could significantly mediate the climate-violent link in pre-industrial society. Previous empirical large-N studies show that violent conflict in historical agrarian society was triggered by climate-induced food scarcity. The relationship was valid in China, Europe, and various geographic regions in the Northern Hemisphere in pre-industrial era. Nevertheless, the observed relationship has only been verified at a macro level (long-term variability of the nexus is emphasized and data over large area are aggregated), and somewhat generalized in nature (only physical environmental factors are controlled). Three inter-related issues remain unresolved: First, the key explanatory variable of violent conflicts may change substantially at different spatio-temporal scales. It is necessary to check whether the climate-conflict nexus is valid at a micro level (about short-term variability of the nexus and data in finer spatial resolution), and explore how the nexus changes along various spatio-temporal dimensions. Second, as the climate-conflict nexus has only been demonstrated in a broad sense, it is necessary to check whether and how the nexus is mediated by local socio-political context. More non-climatic factors pertinent to the cause and distribution of conflicts (e.g., governance, adaptive mechanisms, etc.) should be considered. Third, the methodology applied in the previous studies assumes spatially-independent observations and linear relationship, which may simplify the climate-conflict link. Moreover, the solitary reliance on quantitative methods may neglect those non-quantifiable socio-political dynamics which mediates the climate-conflict nexus. I plan to address the above issues by using disaggregated spatial analysis and in-depth case studies, with close attention to local and temporal differences and

Hierarchical acquisition of visual specificity in spatial contextual cueing.

PubMed

Lie, Kin-Pou

2015-01-01

Spatial contextual cueing refers to visual search performance's being improved when invariant associations between target locations and distractor spatial configurations are learned incidentally. Using the instance theory of automatization and the reverse hierarchy theory of visual perceptual learning, this study explores the acquisition of visual specificity in spatial contextual cueing. Two experiments in which detailed visual features were irrelevant for distinguishing between spatial contexts found that spatial contextual cueing was visually generic in difficult trials when the trials were not preceded by easy trials (Experiment 1) but that spatial contextual cueing progressed to visual specificity when difficult trials were preceded by easy trials (Experiment 2). These findings support reverse hierarchy theory, which predicts that even when detailed visual features are irrelevant for distinguishing between spatial contexts, spatial contextual cueing can progress to visual specificity if the stimuli remain constant, the task is difficult, and difficult trials are preceded by easy trials. However, these findings are inconsistent with instance theory, which predicts that when detailed visual features are irrelevant for distinguishing between spatial contexts, spatial contextual cueing will not progress to visual specificity. This study concludes that the acquisition of visual specificity in spatial contextual cueing is more plausibly hierarchical, rather than instance-based.

Object based implicit contextual learning: a study of eye movements.

PubMed

van Asselen, Marieke; Sampaio, Joana; Pina, Ana; Castelo-Branco, Miguel

2011-02-01

Implicit contextual cueing refers to a top-down mechanism in which visual search is facilitated by learned contextual features. In the current study we aimed to investigate the mechanism underlying implicit contextual learning using object information as a contextual cue. Therefore, we measured eye movements during an object-based contextual cueing task. We demonstrated that visual search is facilitated by repeated object information and that this reduction in response times is associated with shorter fixation durations. This indicates that by memorizing associations between objects in our environment we can recognize objects faster, thereby facilitating visual search.

Social Salience Discriminates Learnability of Contextual Cues in an Artificial Language.

PubMed

Rácz, Péter; Hay, Jennifer B; Pierrehumbert, Janet B

2017-01-01

We investigate the learning of contextual meaning by adults in an artificial language. Contextual meaning here refers to the non-denotative contextual information that speakers attach to a linguistic construction. Through a series of short games, played online, we test how well adults can learn different contextual meanings for a word-formation pattern in an artificial language. We look at whether learning contextual meanings depends on the social salience of the context, whether our players interpret these contexts generally, and whether the learned meaning is generalized to new words. Our results show that adults are capable of learning contextual meaning if the context is socially salient, coherent, and interpretable. Once a contextual meaning is recognized, it is readily generalized to related forms and contexts.

Social Salience Discriminates Learnability of Contextual Cues in an Artificial Language

PubMed Central

Rácz, Péter; Hay, Jennifer B.; Pierrehumbert, Janet B.

2017-01-01

We investigate the learning of contextual meaning by adults in an artificial language. Contextual meaning here refers to the non-denotative contextual information that speakers attach to a linguistic construction. Through a series of short games, played online, we test how well adults can learn different contextual meanings for a word-formation pattern in an artificial language. We look at whether learning contextual meanings depends on the social salience of the context, whether our players interpret these contexts generally, and whether the learned meaning is generalized to new words. Our results show that adults are capable of learning contextual meaning if the context is socially salient, coherent, and interpretable. Once a contextual meaning is recognized, it is readily generalized to related forms and contexts. PMID:28194122

82 Key Statistics on Work and Family Issues. The National Report on Work & Family. Special Report #9.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., Washington, DC.

This report was prepared because of the growing national interest in the questions of work and family dynamics. It puts together 82 key statistics on work and family issues in four major areas: child care, parental leave, alternative work schedules, and elder care. In addition, a chapter of miscellaneous statistics covers areas such as the…

Personalized Contextual Instruction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Voltz, Deborah L.

2003-01-01

This article explains the combination of instructional practices called personalized contextual instruction (PCI) and illustrates its implementation by a general education teacher, a special education teacher, and a paraprofessional working together in a multiage primary inclusive classroom. The PCI approach incorporates individual learning…

Contextualizing symbol, symbolizing context

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maudy, Septiani Yugni; Suryadi, Didi; Mulyana, Endang

2017-08-01

When students learn algebra for the first time, inevitably they are experiencing transition from arithmetic to algebraic thinking. Once students could apprehend this essential mathematical knowledge, they are cultivating their ability in solving daily life problems by applying algebra. However, as we dig into this transitional stage, we identified possible students' learning obstacles to be dealt with seriously in order to forestall subsequent hindrance in studying more advance algebra. We come to realize this recurring problem as we undertook the processes of re-personalization and re-contextualization in which we scrutinize the very basic questions: 1) what is variable, linear equation with one variable and their relationship with the arithmetic-algebraic thinking? 2) Why student should learn such concepts? 3) How to teach those concepts to students? By positioning ourselves as a seventh grade student, we address the possibility of children to think arithmetically when confronted with the problems of linear equation with one variable. To help them thinking algebraically, Bruner's modes of representation developed contextually from concrete to abstract were delivered to enhance their interpretation toward the idea of variables. Hence, from the outset we designed the context for student to think symbolically initiated by exploring various symbols that could be contextualized in order to bridge student traversing the arithmetic-algebraic fruitfully.

Impact of community capacity on the health status of residents: understanding with the contextual multilevel model.

PubMed

Jung, Minsoo; Choi, Mankyu

2013-01-01

There has been little conceptual understanding as to how community capacity works, although it allows for an important, population-based health promotional strategy. In this study, the mechanism of community capacity was studied through literature reviews to suggest a comprehensive conceptual model. The research results found that the key to community capacity prevailed in how actively the capacities of individuals and their communities are able to interact with one another. Under active interactions, community-based organizations, which are a type of voluntary association, were created within the community, and cohesion among residents was enhanced. In addition, people were more willing to address community issues. During the process, many services were initiated to meet the people's health needs and strengthen their social and psychological ties. The characteristics of community capacity were named as the contextual multilevel effects. Because an increase in community capacity contributes to a boosted health status, encourages health behaviors, and eventually leads to the overall prosperity of the community, more public health-related attention is required.

CONTEXTUAL INTERFERENCE AND INTROVERSION/EXTRAVERSION IN MOTOR LEARNING.

PubMed

Meira, Cassio M; Fairbrother, Jeffrey T; Perez, Carlos R

2015-10-01

The Introversion/Extraversion dimension may interact with contextual interference, as random and blocked practice schedules imply distinct levels of variation. This study investigated the effect of different practice schedules in the acquisition of a motor skill in extraverts and introverts. Forty male undergraduate students (M = 24.3 yr., SD = 5.6) were classified as extraverts (n = 20) and introverts (n = 20) by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and allocated in one of two practice schedules with different levels of contextual interference: blocked (low contextual interference) and random (high contextual interference). Half of each group was assigned to a blocked practice schedule, and the other half was assigned to a random practice schedule. The design had two phases: acquisition and transfer (5 min. and 24 hr.). The participants learned variations of a sequential timing keypressing task. Each variation required the same sequence but different timing; three variations were used in acquisition, and one variation of intermediate length was used in transfer. Results for absolute error and overall timing error (root mean square error) indicated that the contextual interference effect was more pronounced for introverts. In addition, introverts who practiced according to the blocked schedule committed more errors during the 24-hr. transfer, suggesting that introverts did not appear to be challenged by a low contextual interference practice schedule.

Screen Design for Children's Reading: Some Key Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walker, Sue; Reynolds, Linda

2000-01-01

Draws attention to design issues that are likely to affect the way that children interact with screen-based information texts. Presents information based on the findings of the Interactive Multimedia in Primary Schools (IMPS) project funded by the British Library. Summarizes the design-related aspects of the project, highlighting those issues that…

A Protocol for Evaluating Contextual Design Principles

PubMed Central

Stamps, Arthur

2014-01-01

This paper explains how scientific data can be incorporated into urban design decisions, such as evaluating contextual design principles. The recommended protocols are based on the Cochrane Reviews that have been widely used in medical research. The major concepts of a Cochrane Review are explained, as well as the underlying mathematics. The underlying math is meta-analysis. Data are reported for three applications and seven contextual design policies. It is suggested that use of the Cochrane protocols will be of great assistance to planners by providing scientific data that can be used to evaluate the efficacies of contextual design policies prior to implementing those policies. PMID:25431448

From Foreground to Background: How Task-Neutral Context Influences Contextual Cueing of Visual Search

PubMed Central

Zang, Xuelian; Geyer, Thomas; Assumpção, Leonardo; Müller, Hermann J.; Shi, Zhuanghua

2016-01-01

Selective attention determines the effectiveness of implicit contextual learning (e.g., Jiang and Leung, 2005). Visual foreground-background segmentation, on the other hand, is a key process in the guidance of attention (Wolfe, 2003). In the present study, we examined the impact of foreground-background segmentation on contextual cueing of visual search in three experiments. A visual search display, consisting of distractor ‘L’s and a target ‘T’, was overlaid on a task-neutral cuboid on the same depth plane (Experiment 1), on stereoscopically separated depth planes (Experiment 2), or spread over the entire display on the same depth plane (Experiment 3). Half of the search displays contained repeated target-distractor arrangements, whereas the other half was always newly generated. The task-neutral cuboid was constant during an initial training session, but was either rotated by 90° or entirely removed in the subsequent test sessions. We found that the gains resulting from repeated presentation of display arrangements during training (i.e., contextual-cueing effects) were diminished when the cuboid was changed or removed in Experiment 1, but remained intact in Experiments 2 and 3 when the cuboid was placed in a different depth plane, or when the items were randomly spread over the whole display but not on the edges of the cuboid. These findings suggest that foreground-background segmentation occurs prior to contextual learning, and only objects/arrangements that are grouped as foreground are learned over the course of repeated visual search. PMID:27375530

Scene-Based Contextual Cueing in Pigeons

PubMed Central

Wasserman, Edward A.; Teng, Yuejia; Brooks, Daniel I.

2014-01-01

Repeated pairings of a particular visual context with a specific location of a target stimulus facilitate target search in humans. We explored an animal model of such contextual cueing. Pigeons had to peck a target which could appear in one of four locations on color photographs of real-world scenes. On half of the trials, each of four scenes was consistently paired with one of four possible target locations; on the other half of the trials, each of four different scenes was randomly paired with the same four possible target locations. In Experiments 1 and 2, pigeons exhibited robust contextual cueing when the context preceded the target by 1 s to 8 s, with reaction times to the target being shorter on predictive-scene trials than on random-scene trials. Pigeons also responded more frequently during the delay on predictive-scene trials than on random-scene trials; indeed, during the delay on predictive-scene trials, pigeons predominately pecked toward the location of the upcoming target, suggesting that attentional guidance contributes to contextual cueing. In Experiment 3, involving left-right and top-bottom scene reversals, pigeons exhibited stronger control by global than by local scene cues. These results attest to the robustness and associative basis of contextual cueing in pigeons. PMID:25546098

Contextuality of Young People's Attitudes and Its Implications for Research on Religion: A Response to Julia Ipgrave

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schihalejev, Olga

2012-01-01

This is a response to Julia Ipgrave's contribution on the contextuality of young people's views on religion and religious diversity in this collection of essays on "Religion in Education". First I will highlight and reflect on methodological issues raised by Ipgrave's observations in the light of my own research. The first problem highlighted is…

Contextual Information and Verifying Inferences from Conversations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dubitsky, Tony

Research was conducted to investigate the effects of contextual information on the speed and accuracy with which two general classes of inferences were verified by readers. These types of inferences were based on information in conversations that were or were not topically ambiguous, depending upon the amount of available contextual information.…

Long-term adaptation to change in implicit contextual learning.

PubMed

Zellin, Martina; von Mühlenen, Adrian; Müller, Hermann J; Conci, Markus

2014-08-01

The visual world consists of spatial regularities that are acquired through experience in order to guide attentional orienting. For instance, in visual search, detection of a target is faster when a layout of nontarget items is encountered repeatedly, suggesting that learned contextual associations can guide attention (contextual cuing). However, scene layouts sometimes change, requiring observers to adapt previous memory representations. Here, we investigated the long-term dynamics of contextual adaptation after a permanent change of the target location. We observed fast and reliable learning of initial context-target associations after just three repetitions. However, adaptation of acquired contextual representations to relocated targets was slow and effortful, requiring 3 days of training with overall 80 repetitions. A final test 1 week later revealed equivalent effects of contextual cuing for both target locations, and these were comparable to the effects observed on day 1. That is, observers learned both initial target locations and relocated targets, given extensive training combined with extended periods of consolidation. Thus, while implicit contextual learning efficiently extracts statistical regularities of our environment at first, it is rather insensitive to change in the longer term, especially when subtle changes in context-target associations need to be acquired.

Information Issues and Contexts that Impair Team Based Communication Workflow: A Palliative Sedation Case Study.

PubMed

Cornett, Alex; Kuziemsky, Craig

2015-01-01

Implementing team based workflows can be complex because of the scope of providers involved and the extent of information exchange and communication that needs to occur. While a workflow may represent the ideal structure of communication that needs to occur, information issues and contextual factors may impact how the workflow is implemented in practice. Understanding these issues will help us better design systems to support team based workflows. In this paper we use a case study of palliative sedation therapy (PST) to model a PST workflow and then use it to identify purposes of communication, information issues and contextual factors that impact them. We then suggest how our findings could inform health information technology (HIT) design to support team based communication workflows.

Testing conditions in shock-based contextual fear conditioning influence both the behavioral responses and the activation of circuits potentially involved in contextual avoidance.

PubMed

Viellard, Juliette; Baldo, Marcus Vinicius C; Canteras, Newton Sabino

2016-12-15

Previous studies from our group have shown that risk assessment behaviors are the primary contextual fear responses to predatory and social threats, whereas freezing is the main contextual fear response to physically harmful events. To test contextual fear responses to a predator or aggressive conspecific threat, we developed a model that involves placing the animal in an apparatus where it can avoid the threat-associated environment. Conversely, in studies that use shock-based fear conditioning, the animals are usually confined inside the conditioning chamber during the contextual fear test. In the present study, we tested shock-based contextual fear responses using two different behavioral testing conditions: confining the animal in the conditioning chamber or placing the animal in an apparatus with free access to the conditioning compartment. Our results showed that during the contextual fear test, the animals confined to the shock chamber exhibited significantly more freezing. In contrast, the animals that could avoid the conditioning compartment displayed almost no freezing and exhibited risk assessment responses (i.e., crouch-sniff and stretch postures) and burying behavior. In addition, the animals that were able to avoid the shock chamber had increased Fos expression in the juxtadorsomedial lateral hypothalamic area, the dorsomedial part of the dorsal premammillary nucleus and the lateral and dorsomedial parts of the periaqueductal gray, which are elements of a septo/hippocampal-hypothalamic-brainstem circuit that is putatively involved in mediating contextual avoidance. Overall, the present findings show that testing conditions significantly influence both behavioral responses and the activation of circuits involved in contextual avoidance. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Validating Domains of Patient Contextual Factors Essential to Preventing Contextual Errors: A Qualitative Study Conducted at Chicago Area Veterans Health Administration Sites.

PubMed

Binns-Calvey, Amy E; Malhiot, Alex; Kostovich, Carol T; LaVela, Sherri L; Stroupe, Kevin; Gerber, Ben S; Burkhart, Lisa; Weiner, Saul J; Weaver, Frances M

2017-09-01

"Patient context" indicates patient circumstances and characteristics or states that are essential to address when planning patient care. Specific patient "contextual factors," if overlooked, result in an inappropriate plan of care, a medical error termed a "contextual error." The myriad contextual factors that constitute patient context have been grouped into broad domains to create a taxonomy of challenges to consider when planning care. This study sought to validate a previously identified list of contextual domains. This qualitative study used directed content analysis. In 2014, 19 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) providers (84% female) and 49 patients (86% male) from two VA medical centers and four outpatient clinics in the Chicago area participated in semistructured interviews and focus groups. Topics included patient-specific, community, and resource-related factors that affect patients' abilities to manage their care. Transcripts were analyzed with a previously identified list of contextual domains as a framework. Analysis of responses revealed that patients and providers identified the same 10 domains previously published, plus 3 additional ones. Based on comments made by patients and providers, the authors created a revised list of 12 domains from themes that emerged. Six pertain to patient circumstances such as access to care and financial situation, and 6 to patient characteristics/states including skills, abilities, and knowledge. Contextual factors in patients' lives may be essential to address for effective care planning. The rubric developed can serve as a "contextual differential" for clinicians to consider when addressing challenges patients face when planning their care.

Contextual remapping in visual search after predictable target-location changes.

PubMed

Conci, Markus; Sun, Luning; Müller, Hermann J

2011-07-01

Invariant spatial context can facilitate visual search. For instance, detection of a target is faster if it is presented within a repeatedly encountered, as compared to a novel, layout of nontargets, demonstrating a role of contextual learning for attentional guidance ('contextual cueing'). Here, we investigated how context-based learning adapts to target location (and identity) changes. Three experiments were performed in which, in an initial learning phase, observers learned to associate a given context with a given target location. A subsequent test phase then introduced identity and/or location changes to the target. The results showed that contextual cueing could not compensate for target changes that were not 'predictable' (i.e. learnable). However, for predictable changes, contextual cueing remained effective even immediately after the change. These findings demonstrate that contextual cueing is adaptive to predictable target location changes. Under these conditions, learned contextual associations can be effectively 'remapped' to accommodate new task requirements.

Stimulus homogeneity enhances implicit learning: evidence from contextual cueing.

PubMed

Feldmann-Wüstefeld, Tobias; Schubö, Anna

2014-04-01

Visual search for a target object is faster if the target is embedded in a repeatedly presented invariant configuration of distractors ('contextual cueing'). It has also been shown that the homogeneity of a context affects the efficiency of visual search: targets receive prioritized processing when presented in a homogeneous context compared to a heterogeneous context, presumably due to grouping processes at early stages of visual processing. The present study investigated in three Experiments whether context homogeneity also affects contextual cueing. In Experiment 1, context homogeneity varied on three levels of the task-relevant dimension (orientation) and contextual cueing was most pronounced for context configurations with high orientation homogeneity. When context homogeneity varied on three levels of the task-irrelevant dimension (color) and orientation homogeneity was fixed, no modulation of contextual cueing was observed: high orientation homogeneity led to large contextual cueing effects (Experiment 2) and low orientation homogeneity led to low contextual cueing effects (Experiment 3), irrespective of color homogeneity. Enhanced contextual cueing for homogeneous context configurations suggest that grouping processes do not only affect visual search but also implicit learning. We conclude that memory representation of context configurations are more easily acquired when context configurations can be processed as larger, grouped perceptual units. However, this form of implicit perceptual learning is only improved by stimulus homogeneity when stimulus homogeneity facilitates grouping processes on a dimension that is currently relevant in the task. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

It's about the Gateway Courses: Defining and Contextualizing the Issue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koch, Andrew K.

2017-01-01

This introductory chapter defines the phrase gateway courses, describes why these courses are one of the most compelling issues in the contemporary student success movement, and details what is at stake if the issues associated with these courses are left unaddressed.

Contextual Factors for Establishing Nursing Regulation in Iran: A Qualitative Content Analysis

PubMed Central

Nejatian, Ahmad; Joulaei, Hassan

2018-01-01

ABSTRACT Background: Professional regulation is one of the strategies of the governments which protect the public’s right. Nursing practice is not an exception; hence, it is regulated to protect the public against nursing services’ adverse effects. Although modern nursing in Iran started from 100 years ago, documents show that there was no regulation mechanism for nursing in Iran till 2016. Hence, this study was conducted to illuminate the contextual factors affecting the nursing regulation process in Iran. Methods: To explore the contextual elements of late establishment of nursing registration as an important part of nursing regulation, we applied directed qualitative content analysis. For this purpose, all the historical events and related materials including articles published in scientific journals, gray literature, statements, news articles, and interviews in the period of 2006-2016 were reviewed and analyzed by expert panel and categorized in predetermined groups. Results: Pooled analysis data showed four contributing elements that affected the emerging nursing regulation in Iran. These elements include 1) cultural determinants, 2) structural determinants, 3) situational determinants, and 4) international or exogenous determinants. Conclusion: Nursing regulation is an important health policy issue in Iran which needs to be facilitated by contextual factors. These factors are complicated and country-specific. Political willingness should be accompanied by nursing association willingness to establish and improve nursing regulation. Other researches are recommended to explore actors and process and content of nursing regulation policy in Iran. PMID:29607341

Task-relevant information is prioritized in spatiotemporal contextual cueing.

PubMed

Higuchi, Yoko; Ueda, Yoshiyuki; Ogawa, Hirokazu; Saiki, Jun

2016-11-01

Implicit learning of visual contexts facilitates search performance-a phenomenon known as contextual cueing; however, little is known about contextual cueing under situations in which multidimensional regularities exist simultaneously. In everyday vision, different information, such as object identity and location, appears simultaneously and interacts with each other. We tested the hypothesis that, in contextual cueing, when multiple regularities are present, the regularities that are most relevant to our behavioral goals would be prioritized. Previous studies of contextual cueing have commonly used the visual search paradigm. However, this paradigm is not suitable for directing participants' attention to a particular regularity. Therefore, we developed a new paradigm, the "spatiotemporal contextual cueing paradigm," and manipulated task-relevant and task-irrelevant regularities. In four experiments, we demonstrated that task-relevant regularities were more responsible for search facilitation than task-irrelevant regularities. This finding suggests our visual behavior is focused on regularities that are relevant to our current goal.

Contextual cuing: the effects of stimulus variation, intentionality, and aging.

PubMed

Lyon, John; Scialfa, Charles; Cordazzo, Scheila; Bubric, Katherine

2014-06-01

Three experiments investigated the generalisation of contextual cuing and whether the effect is incidental or intentional in nature. Experiment 1 assessed contextual cuing across variations in display contrast, homogeneity, and spatial separation. Cuing effects were found with all display types and reaction-time disruption was manifested for repeated displays when consistent configurations had their target locations altered. Recognition memory for repeated displays was at chance levels. Experiment 2 showed that contextual cuing was insensitive to instructions to search for and remember repeated displays. Experiment 2A found that there were no age differences in contextual cuing or effects of intentional instructions, and no memory for repeated displays. Future research questions concern the generalisation of contextual cuing to a wider variety of display conditions and naturalistic tasks.

The problem of contextuality and the impossibility of experimental metaphysics thereof

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hermens, Ronnie

Recently a new impulse has been given to the experimental investigation of contextuality. In this paper we show that for a widely used definition of contextuality there can be no decisive experiment on the existence of contextuality. To this end, we give a clear presentation of the hidden variable models due to Meyer, Kent and Clifton (MKC), which would supposedly nullify the Kochen-Specker theorem. Although we disagree with this last statement, the models do play a significant role in the discussion on the meaning of contextuality. In fact, we introduce a specific MKC-model of which we show that it is non-contextual and completely in agreement with quantum mechanical predictions. We also investigate the possibility of other definitions of non-contextuality-with an emphasis on operational definitions-and argue that any useful definition relies on the specification of a theoretical framework. It is therefore concluded that no experimental test can yield any conclusions about contextuality on a metaphysical level.

Privacy-Preserving Predictive Modeling: Harmonization of Contextual Embeddings From Different Sources.

PubMed

Huang, Yingxiang; Lee, Junghye; Wang, Shuang; Sun, Jimeng; Liu, Hongfang; Jiang, Xiaoqian

2018-05-16

Data sharing has been a big challenge in biomedical informatics because of privacy concerns. Contextual embedding models have demonstrated a very strong representative capability to describe medical concepts (and their context), and they have shown promise as an alternative way to support deep-learning applications without the need to disclose original data. However, contextual embedding models acquired from individual hospitals cannot be directly combined because their embedding spaces are different, and naive pooling renders combined embeddings useless. The aim of this study was to present a novel approach to address these issues and to promote sharing representation without sharing data. Without sacrificing privacy, we also aimed to build a global model from representations learned from local private data and synchronize information from multiple sources. We propose a methodology that harmonizes different local contextual embeddings into a global model. We used Word2Vec to generate contextual embeddings from each source and Procrustes to fuse different vector models into one common space by using a list of corresponding pairs as anchor points. We performed prediction analysis with harmonized embeddings. We used sequential medical events extracted from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III database to evaluate the proposed methodology in predicting the next likely diagnosis of a new patient using either structured data or unstructured data. Under different experimental scenarios, we confirmed that the global model built from harmonized local models achieves a more accurate prediction than local models and global models built from naive pooling. Such aggregation of local models using our unique harmonization can serve as the proxy for a global model, combining information from a wide range of institutions and information sources. It allows information unique to a certain hospital to become available to other sites, increasing the fluidity of

Contextual and Non-Contextual Knowledge in Emergent Literacy Development: A Comparison between Children from Low Ses and Middle Ses Communities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Korat, O.

2005-01-01

This research had three aims: first, to examine the relationship between two components of emergent literacy: contextual (environmental print, print functions, identifying literacy activities) and non-contextual knowledge (e.g., letters' names, phonemic awareness, concept of print, etc.); second, to explore the relationship between children's…

Inhibition of projections from the basolateral amygdala to the entorhinal cortex disrupts the acquisition of contextual fear

PubMed Central

Sparta, Dennis R.; Smithuis, Jim; Stamatakis, Alice M.; Jennings, Joshua H.; Kantak, Pranish A.; Ung, Randall L.; Stuber, Garret D.

2014-01-01

The development of excessive fear and/or stress responses to environmental cues such as contexts associated with a traumatic event is a hallmark of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The basolateral amygdala (BLA) has been implicated as a key structure mediating contextual fear conditioning. In addition, the hippocampus has an integral role in the encoding and processing of contexts associated with strong, salient stimuli such as fear. Given that both the BLA and hippocampus play an important role in the regulation of contextual fear conditioning, examining the functional connectivity between these two structures may elucidate a role for this pathway in the development of PTSD. Here, we used optogenetic strategies to demonstrate that the BLA sends a strong glutamatergic projection to the hippocampal formation through the entorhinal cortex (EC). Next, we photoinhibited glutamatergic fibers from the BLA terminating in the EC during the acquisition or expression of contextual fear conditioning. In mice that received optical inhibition of the BLA-to-EC pathway during the acquisition session, we observed a significant decrease in freezing behavior in a context re-exposure session. In contrast, we observed no differences in freezing behavior in mice that were only photoinhibited during the context re-exposure session. These data demonstrate an important role for the BLA-to-EC glutamatergic pathway in the acquisition of contextual fear conditioning. PMID:24834031

Key Transition Issues for Youth with Disabilities and Chronic Health Conditions. Healthy & Ready To Work (HRTW) Policy Brief.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schulzinger, Rhoda

This paper explains recent changes in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program that affect adolescents with disabilities or chronic health problems. Changes include the SSI work incentives available to them, how they can maintain access to quality health care and benefits during their transition years, and key issues in transition planning.…

Understanding contextual influences of community reintegration among injured servicemembers.

PubMed

Hawkins, Brent L; McGuire, Francis A; Linder, Sandra M; Britt, Thomas W

2015-01-01

As part of a larger mixed-methods research project investigating the influence of contextual factors on community reintegration (CR), this qualitative study sought to understand the subjective experiences of injured servicemembers and their perception of how contextual factors influenced their CR. More specifically, this article addresses how the influences of contextual factors differ between injured servicemembers with different levels of CR. Using a phenomenological framework, semistructured interviews were conducted with nine injured, community-dwelling servicemembers with low, moderate, and high levels of CR (three per category). Participants provided in-depth descriptions of the contextual barriers and facilitators of CR. Thematic analysis indicated the importance of social support and personal factors (e.g., self-efficacy, personal motivation) as the primary means for being reintegrated into their homes and communities. Other themes indicated factors that had an indirect but important influence on CR, including adapted sports, recreation, and other social programs; rehabilitation programs and therapists; school, work, and volunteering; and organizations and policies in developing social supports and personal factors. Comparisons between servicemembers indicated participants with low CR described many more contextual barriers and far fewer contextual facilitators to reintegration than those with high CR. Those with moderate CR were unique in that they described many facilitators and barriers to reintegration.

Object-based implicit learning in visual search: perceptual segmentation constrains contextual cueing.

PubMed

Conci, Markus; Müller, Hermann J; von Mühlenen, Adrian

2013-07-09

In visual search, detection of a target is faster when it is presented within a spatial layout of repeatedly encountered nontarget items, indicating that contextual invariances can guide selective attention (contextual cueing; Chun & Jiang, 1998). However, perceptual regularities may interfere with contextual learning; for instance, no contextual facilitation occurs when four nontargets form a square-shaped grouping, even though the square location predicts the target location (Conci & von Mühlenen, 2009). Here, we further investigated potential causes for this interference-effect: We show that contextual cueing can reliably occur for targets located within the region of a segmented object, but not for targets presented outside of the object's boundaries. Four experiments demonstrate an object-based facilitation in contextual cueing, with a modulation of context-based learning by relatively subtle grouping cues including closure, symmetry, and spatial regularity. Moreover, the lack of contextual cueing for targets located outside the segmented region was due to an absence of (latent) learning of contextual layouts, rather than due to an attentional bias towards the grouped region. Taken together, these results indicate that perceptual segmentation provides a basic structure within which contextual scene regularities are acquired. This in turn argues that contextual learning is constrained by object-based selection.

Analyzing cross-college course enrollments via contextual graph mining

PubMed Central

Liu, Xiaozhong; Chen, Yan

2017-01-01

The ability to predict what courses a student may enroll in the coming semester plays a pivotal role in the allocation of learning resources, which is a hot topic in the domain of educational data mining. In this study, we propose an innovative approach to characterize students’ cross-college course enrollments by leveraging a novel contextual graph. Specifically, different kinds of variables, such as students, courses, colleges and diplomas, as well as various types of variable relations, are utilized to depict the context of each variable, and then a representation learning algorithm node2vec is applied to extracting sophisticated graph-based features for the enrollment analysis. In this manner, the relations between any pair of variables can be measured quantitatively, which enables the variable type to transform from nominal to ratio. These graph-based features are examined by the random forest algorithm, and experiments on 24,663 students, 1,674 courses and 417,590 enrollment records demonstrate that the contextual graph can successfully improve analyzing the cross-college course enrollments, where three of the graph-based features have significantly stronger impacts on prediction accuracy than the others. Besides, the empirical results also indicate that the student’s course preference is the most important factor in predicting future course enrollments, which is consistent to the previous studies that acknowledge the course interest is a key point for course recommendations. PMID:29186171

Analyzing cross-college course enrollments via contextual graph mining.

PubMed

Wang, Yongzhen; Liu, Xiaozhong; Chen, Yan

2017-01-01

The ability to predict what courses a student may enroll in the coming semester plays a pivotal role in the allocation of learning resources, which is a hot topic in the domain of educational data mining. In this study, we propose an innovative approach to characterize students' cross-college course enrollments by leveraging a novel contextual graph. Specifically, different kinds of variables, such as students, courses, colleges and diplomas, as well as various types of variable relations, are utilized to depict the context of each variable, and then a representation learning algorithm node2vec is applied to extracting sophisticated graph-based features for the enrollment analysis. In this manner, the relations between any pair of variables can be measured quantitatively, which enables the variable type to transform from nominal to ratio. These graph-based features are examined by the random forest algorithm, and experiments on 24,663 students, 1,674 courses and 417,590 enrollment records demonstrate that the contextual graph can successfully improve analyzing the cross-college course enrollments, where three of the graph-based features have significantly stronger impacts on prediction accuracy than the others. Besides, the empirical results also indicate that the student's course preference is the most important factor in predicting future course enrollments, which is consistent to the previous studies that acknowledge the course interest is a key point for course recommendations.

Configural learning in contextual cuing of visual search.

PubMed

Beesley, Tom; Vadillo, Miguel A; Pearson, Daniel; Shanks, David R

2016-08-01

Two experiments were conducted to explore the role of configural representations in contextual cuing of visual search. Repeating patterns of distractors (contexts) were trained incidentally as predictive of the target location. Training participants with repeating contexts of consistent configurations led to stronger contextual cuing than when participants were trained with contexts of inconsistent configurations. Computational simulations with an elemental associative learning model of contextual cuing demonstrated that purely elemental representations could not account for the results. However, a configural model of associative learning was able to simulate the ordinal pattern of data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

A Discussion with Sandy O'Sullivan about Key Issues for the Australian Indigenous Studies Learning and Teaching Network

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barney, Katelyn

2014-01-01

This article takes the form of an interview with Sandy O'Sullivan, who is a partner on the Australian Indigenous Studies Learning and Teaching Network, about key issues that have arisen through Network discussions. She is a Wiradjuri woman and a Senior Aboriginal researcher at the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education. O'Sullivan…

Work Keys USA.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Work Keys USA, 1998

1998-01-01

"Work Keys" is a comprehensive program for assessing and teaching workplace skills. This serial "special issue" features 18 first-hand reports on Work Keys projects in action in states across North America. They show how the Work Keys is helping businesses and educators solve the challenge of building a world-class work force.…

A sequential model to link contextual risk, perception and public support for flood adaptation policy.

PubMed

Shao, Wanyun; Xian, Siyuan; Lin, Ning; Small, Mitchell J

2017-10-01

The economic damage from coastal flooding has dramatically increased over the past several decades, owing to rapid development in shoreline areas and possible effects of climate change. To respond to these trends, it is imperative for policy makers to understand individuals' support for flood adaptation policy. Using original survey data for all coastal counties of the United States Gulf Coast merged with contextual data on flood risk, this study investigates coastal residents' support for two adaptation policy measures: incentives for relocation and funding for educational programs on emergency planning and evacuation. Specifically, this study explores the interactive relationships among contextual flood risks, perceived flood risks and policy support for flood adaptation, with the effects of social-demographic variables being controlled. Age, gender, race and partisanship are found to significantly affect individuals' policy support for both adaptation measures. The contextual flooding risks, indicated by distance from the coast, maximum wind speed and peak height of storm surge associated with the last hurricane landfall, and percentage of high-risk flood zone per county, are shown to impact one's perceptions of risk, which in turn influence one's support for both policy measures. The key finding -risk perception mediates the impact of contextual risk conditions on public support for flood management policies - highlights the need to ensure that the public is well informed by the latest scientific, engineering and economic knowledge. To achieve this, more information on current and future flood risks and options available for mitigation as well as risk communication tools are needed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Awareness in contextual cueing of visual search as measured with concurrent access- and phenomenal-consciousness tasks.

PubMed

Schlagbauer, Bernhard; Müller, Hermann J; Zehetleitner, Michael; Geyer, Thomas

2012-10-25

In visual search, context information can serve as a cue to guide attention to the target location. When observers repeatedly encounter displays with identical target-distractor arrangements, reaction times (RTs) are faster for repeated relative to nonrepeated displays, the latter containing novel configurations. This effect has been termed "contextual cueing." The present study asked whether information about the target location in repeated displays is "explicit" (or "conscious") in nature. To examine this issue, observers performed a test session (after an initial training phase in which RTs to repeated and nonrepeated displays were measured) in which the search stimuli were presented briefly and terminated by visual masks; following this, observers had to make a target localization response (with accuracy as the dependent measure) and indicate their visual experience and confidence associated with the localization response. The data were examined at the level of individual displays, i.e., in terms of whether or not a repeated display actually produced contextual cueing. The results were that (a) contextual cueing was driven by only a very small number of about four actually learned configurations; (b) localization accuracy was increased for learned relative to nonrepeated displays; and (c) both consciousness measures were enhanced for learned compared to nonrepeated displays. It is concluded that contextual cueing is driven by only a few repeated displays and the ability to locate the target in these displays is associated with increased visual experience.

Contextual control over task-set retrieval.

PubMed

Crump, Matthew J C; Logan, Gordon D

2010-11-01

Contextual cues signaling task likelihood or the likelihood of task repetition are known to modulate the size of switch costs. We follow up on the finding by Leboe, Wong, Crump, and Stobbe (2008) that location cues predictive of the proportion of switch or repeat trials modulate switch costs. Their design employed one cue per task, whereas our experiment employed two cues per task, which allowed separate assessment of modulations to the cue-repetition benefit, a measure of lower level cue-encoding processes, and to the task-alternation cost, a measure of higher level processes representing task-set information. We demonstrate that location information predictive of switch proportion modulates performance at the level of task-set representations. Furthermore, we demonstrate that contextual control occurs even when subjects are unaware of the associations between context and switch likelihood. We discuss the notion that contextual information provides rapid, unconscious control over the extent to which prior task-set representations are retrieved in the service of guiding online performance.

Hippocampal Regulation of Contextual Cue-Induced Reinstatement of Cocaine-Seeking Behavior

PubMed Central

Atkins, Alison L.; Mashhoon, Yasmin; Kantak, Kathleen M.

2008-01-01

Associations between cocaine and cues facilitate development and maintenance of addiction. We hypothesized that the ventral hippocampus is important for acquisition of these associations. Rats were trained to self-administer cocaine, with or without pre-exposure to distinct sets of cocaine- and saline-paired contextual cues. Next, rats were conditioned for 3 days with the distinct sets of contextual cues paired with cocaine and saline along with distinct discrete cues. Vehicle or lidocaine was infused into the ventral hippocampus prior to conditioning sessions. Following extinction, reinstatement of cocaine-seeking behavior was examined following exposure to contextual cues, discrete cues, or their combination. Inactivation of the ventral hippocampus during conditioning blocked acquisition of the association between cocaine and cocaine-paired contextual cues in that only lidocaine-treated rats with short-term cue exposure failed to reinstate responding in the presence of cocaine-paired contextual cues. Lidocaine also prevented rats in both cue exposure groups from discriminating between cocaine-and saline-paired contextual cues during reinstatement tests. Reinstatement induced by cocaine-paired discrete cues or by contextual and discrete cues together was not impaired for either cue exposure condition. The hippocampus is important for acquisition of the association between cocaine and context and in maintaining discrimination between cocaine-relevant and -irrelevant contextual cues. PMID:18499239

Ten key issues in modern flow chemistry.

PubMed

Wegner, Jens; Ceylan, Sascha; Kirschning, Andreas

2011-04-28

Ten essentials of synthesis in the flow mode, a new enabling technology in organic chemistry, are highlighted as flashlighted providing an insight into current and future issues and developments in this field. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2011

Consequences of contextual factors on clinical reasoning in resident physicians.

PubMed

McBee, Elexis; Ratcliffe, Temple; Picho, Katherine; Artino, Anthony R; Schuwirth, Lambert; Kelly, William; Masel, Jennifer; van der Vleuten, Cees; Durning, Steven J

2015-12-01

Context specificity and the impact that contextual factors have on the complex process of clinical reasoning is poorly understood. Using situated cognition as the theoretical framework, our aim was to evaluate the verbalized clinical reasoning processes of resident physicians in order to describe what impact the presence of contextual factors have on their clinical reasoning. Participants viewed three video recorded clinical encounters portraying straightforward diagnoses in internal medicine with select patient contextual factors modified. After watching each video recording, participants completed a think-aloud protocol. Transcripts from the think-aloud protocols were analyzed using a constant comparative approach. After iterative coding, utterances were analyzed for emergent themes with utterances grouped into categories, themes and subthemes. Ten residents participated in the study with saturation reached during analysis. Participants universally acknowledged the presence of contextual factors in the video recordings. Four categories emerged as a consequence of the contextual factors: (1) emotional reactions (2) behavioral inferences (3) optimizing the doctor patient relationship and (4) difficulty with closure of the clinical encounter. The presence of contextual factors may impact clinical reasoning performance in resident physicians. When confronted with the presence of contextual factors in a clinical scenario, residents experienced difficulty with closure of the encounter, exhibited as diagnostic uncertainty. This finding raises important questions about the relationship between contextual factors and clinical reasoning activities and how this relationship might influence the cost effectiveness of care. This study also provides insight into how the phenomena of context specificity may be explained using situated cognition theory.

Personal and Contextual Factors Affecting the Functional Ability of Children and Adolescents with Chronic Pain: A Systematic Review.

PubMed

Sinclair, Cate M; Meredith, Pamela; Strong, Jenny; Feeney, Rachel

2016-05-01

Chronic pain can significantly impair functioning of children and adolescents; however, evidence suggests that current psychological approaches have limited effect on functioning post treatment. The objective of this review is to present the current evidence for the personal and contextual factors that affect functioning and disability of children and adolescents with chronic pain, to support the evolution of new treatments. Key word searches were conducted in PsycINFO, MEDLINE via Ovid, CINAHL, and PubMed from 1995 to October 2014. Studies were included if they (1) were written in English, (2) included children or adolescents with chronic pain (>3 mo), (3) had at least 1 personal attribute or 1 contextual factor, (4) had 1 measure of functional ability, and (5) had reported correlations between personal or contextual factors and functional measure. Thirty-three studies were identified which met all inclusion criteria. Several personal factors (depression, anxiety, pain intensity, and catastrophizing) and contextual/environmental factors (parenting characteristics) were consistently associated with higher levels of disability, whereas evidence for other factors was less consistent. Complex interactions between personal and contextual factors were reported. Child physical/cognitive capacities, teacher/peer behaviors, and broader cultural and environmental social systems, received little attention. Several parent and child factors were consistently linked with functional disability, whereas better family functioning was associated with functional ability. Applying an ecological framework, assisted identification of areas for further research, and provides direction for treatments that may be more effective in optimizing long-term functional outcomes, extending current psychological approaches.

Using Eight Key Questions as an Inquiry-Based Framework for Ethical Reasoning Issues in a General Education Earth Systems and Climate Change Course

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Johnson, E. A.; Ball, T. C.

2014-12-01

An important objective in general education geoscience courses is to help students evaluate social and ethical issues based upon scientific knowledge. It can be difficult for instructors trained in the physical sciences to design effective ways of including ethical issues in large lecture courses where whole-class discussions are not practical. The Quality Enhancement Plan for James Madison University, "The Madison Collaborative: Ethical Reasoning in Action," (http://www.jmu.edu/mc/index.shtml) has identified eight key questions to be used as a framework for developing ethical reasoning exercises and evaluating student learning. These eight questions are represented by the acronym FOR CLEAR and are represented by the concepts of Fairness, Outcomes, Responsibilities, Character, Liberty, Empathy, Authority, and Rights. In this study, we use the eight key questions as an inquiry-based framework for addressing ethical issues in a 100-student general education Earth systems and climate change course. Ethical reasoning exercises are presented throughout the course and range from questions of personal behavior to issues regarding potential future generations and global natural resources. In the first few exercises, key questions are identified for the students and calibrated responses are provided as examples. By the end of the semester, students are expected to identify key questions themselves and justify their own ethical and scientific reasoning. Evaluation rubrics are customized to this scaffolding approach to the exercises. Student feedback and course data will be presented to encourage discussion of this and other approaches to explicitly incorporating ethical reasoning in general education geoscience courses.

The effect of contextual sound cues on visual fidelity perception.

PubMed

Rojas, David; Cowan, Brent; Kapralos, Bill; Collins, Karen; Dubrowski, Adam

2014-01-01

Previous work has shown that sound can affect the perception of visual fidelity. Here we build upon this previous work by examining the effect of contextual sound cues (i.e., sounds that are related to the visuals) on visual fidelity perception. Results suggest that contextual sound cues do influence visual fidelity perception and, more specifically, our perception of visual fidelity increases with contextual sound cues. These results have implications for designers of multimodal virtual worlds and serious games that, with the appropriate use of contextual sounds, can reduce visual rendering requirements without a corresponding decrease in the perception of visual fidelity.

The time course of attentional deployment in contextual cueing.

PubMed

Jiang, Yuhong V; Sigstad, Heather M; Swallow, Khena M

2013-04-01

The time course of attention is a major characteristic on which different types of attention diverge. In addition to explicit goals and salient stimuli, spatial attention is influenced by past experience. In contextual cueing, behaviorally relevant stimuli are more quickly found when they appear in a spatial context that has previously been encountered than when they appear in a new context. In this study, we investigated the time that it takes for contextual cueing to develop following the onset of search layout cues. In three experiments, participants searched for a T target in an array of Ls. Each array was consistently associated with a single target location. In a testing phase, we manipulated the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the repeated spatial layout and the search display. Contextual cueing was equivalent for a wide range of SOAs between 0 and 1,000 ms. The lack of an increase in contextual cueing with increasing cue durations suggests that as an implicit learning mechanism, contextual cueing cannot be effectively used until search begins.

Contextual diversity facilitates learning new words in the classroom.

PubMed

Rosa, Eva; Tapia, José Luis; Perea, Manuel

2017-01-01

In the field of word recognition and reading, it is commonly assumed that frequently repeated words create more accessible memory traces than infrequently repeated words, thus capturing the word-frequency effect. Nevertheless, recent research has shown that a seemingly related factor, contextual diversity (defined as the number of different contexts [e.g., films] in which a word appears), is a better predictor than word-frequency in word recognition and sentence reading experiments. Recent research has shown that contextual diversity plays an important role when learning new words in a laboratory setting with adult readers. In the current experiment, we directly manipulated contextual diversity in a very ecological scenario: at school, when Grade 3 children were learning words in the classroom. The new words appeared in different contexts/topics (high-contextual diversity) or only in one of them (low-contextual diversity). Results showed that words encountered in different contexts were learned and remembered more effectively than those presented in redundant contexts. We discuss the practical (educational [e.g., curriculum design]) and theoretical (models of word recognition) implications of these findings.

Contextual diversity facilitates learning new words in the classroom

PubMed Central

Tapia, José Luis; Perea, Manuel

2017-01-01

In the field of word recognition and reading, it is commonly assumed that frequently repeated words create more accessible memory traces than infrequently repeated words, thus capturing the word-frequency effect. Nevertheless, recent research has shown that a seemingly related factor, contextual diversity (defined as the number of different contexts [e.g., films] in which a word appears), is a better predictor than word-frequency in word recognition and sentence reading experiments. Recent research has shown that contextual diversity plays an important role when learning new words in a laboratory setting with adult readers. In the current experiment, we directly manipulated contextual diversity in a very ecological scenario: at school, when Grade 3 children were learning words in the classroom. The new words appeared in different contexts/topics (high-contextual diversity) or only in one of them (low-contextual diversity). Results showed that words encountered in different contexts were learned and remembered more effectively than those presented in redundant contexts. We discuss the practical (educational [e.g., curriculum design]) and theoretical (models of word recognition) implications of these findings. PMID:28586354

Contextual Text Mining

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mei, Qiaozhu

2009-01-01

With the dramatic growth of text information, there is an increasing need for powerful text mining systems that can automatically discover useful knowledge from text. Text is generally associated with all kinds of contextual information. Those contexts can be explicit, such as the time and the location where a blog article is written, and the…

Introduction to the Issue on Segregation, Desegregation, and Integration: From History, to Policy, to Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Diem, Sarah; Brooks, Jeffrey

2013-01-01

The articles in this special issue examine the increasingly complex relationship between segregation, desegregation, and integration in a sociopolitical environment vastly different from that of the initial days of desegregation. These issues are examined from historical and political perspectives, contextualizing the complexities of segregation,…

Contextualized Instruction: Teaching Relevant Behaviors in Relevant Contexts.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reboy, Lisa M.; Semb, George B.

In contextualized instruction, the critical features of a context are considered important for the acquisition and transfer of a skill. Examples of contextualized instruction programs are Functional Context Education (FCE) and Anchored Instruction (AI). FCE involves the teaching of reading and mathematics skills in contexts that are relevant to…

Stability of Recent and Remote Contextual Fear Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frankland, Paul W.; Ding, Hoi-Ki; Takahashi, Eiki; Suzuki, Akinobu; Kida, Satoshi; Silva, Alcino J.

2006-01-01

Following initial encoding, memories undergo a prolonged period of reorganization. While such reorganization may occur in many different memory systems, its purpose is not clear. Previously, we have shown that recall of recent contextual fear memories engages the dorsal hippocampus (dHPC). In contrast, recall of remote contextual fear memories…

Contextual cueing impairment in patients with age-related macular degeneration.

PubMed

Geringswald, Franziska; Herbik, Anne; Hoffmann, Michael B; Pollmann, Stefan

2013-09-12

Visual attention can be guided by past experience of regularities in our visual environment. In the contextual cueing paradigm, incidental learning of repeated distractor configurations speeds up search times compared to random search arrays. Concomitantly, fewer fixations and more direct scan paths indicate more efficient visual exploration in repeated search arrays. In previous work, we found that simulating a central scotoma in healthy observers eliminated this search facilitation. Here, we investigated contextual cueing in patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) who suffer from impaired foveal vision. AMD patients performed visual search using only their more severely impaired eye (n = 13) as well as under binocular viewing (n = 16). Normal-sighted controls developed a significant contextual cueing effect. In comparison, patients showed only a small nonsignificant advantage for repeated displays when searching with their worse eye. When searching binocularly, they profited from contextual cues, but still less than controls. Number of fixations and scan pattern ratios showed a comparable pattern as search times. Moreover, contextual cueing was significantly correlated with acuity in monocular search. Thus, foveal vision loss may lead to impaired guidance of attention by contextual memory cues.

Human cortical activity evoked by contextual processing in attentional orienting.

PubMed

Zhao, Shuo; Li, Chunlin; Uono, Shota; Yoshimura, Sayaka; Toichi, Motomi

2017-06-07

The ability to assess another person's direction of attention is paramount in social communication, many studies have reported a similar pattern between gaze and arrow cues in attention orienting. Neuroimaging research has also demonstrated no qualitative differences in attention to gaze and arrow cues. However, these studies were implemented under simple experiment conditions. Researchers have highlighted the importance of contextual processing (i.e., the semantic congruence between cue and target) in attentional orienting, showing that attentional orienting by social gaze or arrow cues could be modulated through contextual processing. Here, we examine the neural activity of attentional orienting by gaze and arrow cues in response to contextual processing using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results demonstrated that the influence of neural activity through contextual processing to attentional orienting occurred under invalid conditions (when the cue and target were incongruent versus congruent) in the ventral frontoparietal network, although we did not identify any differences in the neural substrates of attentional orienting in contextual processing between gaze and arrow cues. These results support behavioural data of attentional orienting modulated by contextual processing based on the neurocognitive architecture.

Contextual mediation of perceptions in hauntings and poltergeist-like experiences.

PubMed

Lange, R; Houran, J; Harte, T M; Havens, R A

1996-06-01

The content of perceived apparitions, e.g., bereavement hallucinations, cannot be explained entirely in terms of electromagnetically induced neurochemical processes. It was shown that contextual variables influential in hallucinatory and hypnotic states also structured reported haunting experiences. As predicted, high congruency was found between the experiential content and the nature of the contextual variables. Further, the number of contextual variables involved in an experience was related to the type of experience and the state or arousal preceding the experience. Based on these findings we argue that a more complete explanation of haunting experiences should take into account both electromagnetically induced neurochemical processes and factors related to contextual mediation.

Experimental contextuality in classical light

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Tao; Zeng, Qiang; Song, Xinbing; Zhang, Xiangdong

2017-03-01

The Klyachko, Can, Binicioglu, and Shumovsky (KCBS) inequality is an important contextuality inequality in three-level system, which has been demonstrated experimentally by using quantum states. Using the path and polarization degrees of freedom of classical optics fields, we have constructed the classical trit (cetrit), tested the KCBS inequality and its geometrical form (Wright’s inequality) in this work. The projection measurement has been implemented, the clear violations of the KCBS inequality and its geometrical form have been observed. This means that the contextuality inequality, which is commonly used in test of the conflict between quantum theory and noncontextual realism, may be used as a quantitative tool in classical optical coherence to describe correlation characteristics of the classical fields.

The impact of contextualization on immersion in healthcare simulation.

PubMed

Engström, Henrik; Andersson Hagiwara, Magnus; Backlund, Per; Lebram, Mikael; Lundberg, Lars; Johannesson, Mikael; Sterner, Anders; Maurin Söderholm, Hanna

2016-01-01

The aim of this paper is to explore how contextualization of a healthcare simulation scenarios impacts immersion, by using a novel objective instrument, the Immersion Score Rating Instrument. This instrument consists of 10 triggers that indicate reduced or enhanced immersion among participants in a simulation scenario. Triggers refer to events such as jumps in time or space (sign of reduced immersion) and natural interaction with the manikin (sign of enhanced immersion) and can be used to calculate an immersion score. An experiment using a randomized controlled crossover design was conducted to compare immersion between two simulation training conditions for prehospital care: one basic and one contextualized. The Immersion Score Rating Instrument was used to compare the total immersion score for the whole scenario, the immersion score for individual mission phases, and to analyze differences in trigger occurrences. A paired t test was used to test for significance. The comparison shows that the overall immersion score for the simulation was higher in the contextualized condition. The average immersion score was 2.17 (sd = 1.67) in the contextualized condition and -0.77 (sd = 2.01) in the basic condition ( p  < .001). The immersion score was significantly higher in the contextualized condition in five out of six mission phases. Events that might be disruptive for the simulation participants' immersion, such as interventions of the instructor and illogical jumps in time or space, are present to a higher degree in the basic scenario condition; while events that signal enhanced immersion, such as natural interaction with the manikin, are more frequently observed in the contextualized condition. The results suggest that contextualization of simulation training with respect to increased equipment and environmental fidelity as well as functional task alignment might affect immersion positively and thus contribute to an improved training experience.

The Influence of Contextual and Psychosocial Factors on Handwashing.

PubMed

Seimetz, Elisabeth; Boyayo, Anne-Marie; Mosler, Hans-Joachim

2016-06-01

Even though washing hands with soap is among the most effective measures to reduce the risk of infection, handwashing rates in infrastructure-restricted settings remain seriously low. Little is known about how context alone and in interaction with psychosocial factors influence hand hygiene behavior. The aim of this article was to explore how both contextual and psychosocial factors affect handwashing practices. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 660 caregivers of primary school children in rural Burundi. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that household wealth, the amount of water per person, and having a designated place for washing hands were contextual factors significantly predicting handwashing frequency, whereas the contextual factors, time spent collecting water and amount of money spent on soap, were not significant predictors. The contextual factors explained about 13% of the variance of reported handwashing frequency. The addition of the psychosocial factors to the regression model resulted in a significant 41% increase of explained variation in handwashing frequency. In this final model, the amount of water was the only contextual factor that remained a significant predictor. The most important predictors were a belief of self-efficacy, planning how, when, and where to wash hands, and always remembering to do so. The findings suggest that contextual constraints might be perceived rather than actual barriers and highlight the role of psychosocial factors in understanding hygiene behaviors. © The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Visual cues that are effective for contextual saccade adaptation.

PubMed

Azadi, Reza; Harwood, Mark R

2014-06-01

The accuracy of saccades, as maintained by saccade adaptation, has been shown to be context dependent: able to have different amplitude movements to the same retinal displacement dependent on motor contexts such as orbital starting location. There is conflicting evidence as to whether purely visual cues also effect contextual saccade adaptation and, if so, what function this might serve. We tested what visual cues might evoke contextual adaptation. Over 5 experiments, 78 naive subjects made saccades to circularly moving targets, which stepped outward or inward during the saccade depending on target movement direction, speed, or color and shape. To test if the movement or context postsaccade were critical, we stopped the postsaccade target motion (experiment 4) or neutralized the contexts by equating postsaccade target speed to an intermediate value (experiment 5). We found contextual adaptation in all conditions except those defined by color and shape. We conclude that some, but not all, visual cues before the saccade are sufficient for contextual adaptation. We conjecture that this visual contextuality functions to allow for different motor states for different coordinated movement patterns, such as coordinated saccade and pursuit motor planning. Copyright © 2014 the American Physiological Society.

Contextual knowledge reduces demands on working memory during reading.

PubMed

Miller, Lisa M Soederberg; Cohen, Jason A; Wingfield, Arthur

2006-09-01

An experiment is reported in which young, middle-aged, and older adults read and recalled ambiguous texts either with or without the topic title that supplied contextual knowledge. Within each of the age groups, the participants were divided into those with high or low working memory (WM) spans, with available WM capacity further manipulated by the presence or absence of an auditory target detection task concurrent with the reading task. Differences in reading efficiency (reading time per proposition recalled) between low WM span and high WM span groups were greater among readers who had access to contextual knowledge relative to those who did not, suggesting that contextual knowledge reduces demands on WM capacity. This position was further supported by the finding that increased age and attentional demands, two factors associated with reduced WM capacity, exaggerated the benefits of contextual knowledge on reading efficiency. The relative strengths of additional potential predictors of reading efficiency (e.g., interest, effort, and memory beliefs), along with knowledge, WM span, and age, are reported. Findings showed that contextual knowledge was the strongest predictor of reading efficiency even after controlling for the effects of all of the other predictors.

Visual cues that are effective for contextual saccade adaptation

PubMed Central

Azadi, Reza

2014-01-01

The accuracy of saccades, as maintained by saccade adaptation, has been shown to be context dependent: able to have different amplitude movements to the same retinal displacement dependent on motor contexts such as orbital starting location. There is conflicting evidence as to whether purely visual cues also effect contextual saccade adaptation and, if so, what function this might serve. We tested what visual cues might evoke contextual adaptation. Over 5 experiments, 78 naive subjects made saccades to circularly moving targets, which stepped outward or inward during the saccade depending on target movement direction, speed, or color and shape. To test if the movement or context postsaccade were critical, we stopped the postsaccade target motion (experiment 4) or neutralized the contexts by equating postsaccade target speed to an intermediate value (experiment 5). We found contextual adaptation in all conditions except those defined by color and shape. We conclude that some, but not all, visual cues before the saccade are sufficient for contextual adaptation. We conjecture that this visual contextuality functions to allow for different motor states for different coordinated movement patterns, such as coordinated saccade and pursuit motor planning. PMID:24647429

Effects of normal aging on memory for multiple contextual features.

PubMed

Gagnon, Sylvain; Soulard, Kathleen; Brasgold, Melissa; Kreller, Joshua

2007-08-01

Twenty-four younger (18-35 years) and 24 older adult participants (65 or older) were exposed to three experimental conditions involving the memorization words and their associated contextual features, with contextual feature complexity increasing from Conditions 1 to 3. In Condition 1, words presented varied only on one binary feature (color, size, or character), while in Conditions 2 and 3, words presented varied on two and three binary features, respectively. Each condition was carried out as follows: (1) learning of a word list; (2) encoding of words and their contextual features; (3) delay; and (4) memory for contextual features through a discrimination task. Results indicated that young adults discriminated more features than older adults on all conditions. In both age groups, contextual feature discrimination accuracy decreased as the number of features increased. Moreover, older adults demonstrated near floor performance when tested with two or more binary features. We conclude that increasing context complexity strains attentional resources.

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.

Contextually Aided Recovery (CARe): a scientific theory for innate healing.

PubMed

Newell, Dave; Lothe, Lise R; Raven, Timothy J L

2017-01-01

The chiropractic profession emerged when scientific explanations for causes of health and disease were still in infancy and the co-existence of notions such as innate healing and vitalism were perhaps admissible within such a historical context. Notwithstanding, within the scientific culture of the 21 st Century all healthcare paradigms require evidential support which in regard these early concepts are in large part, absent. Nevertheless, a large body of emerging scientific evidence supports the existence of innate healing phenomena that may explain a plethora of clinical outcomes observed during chiropractic care. However, in contrast to the notion that removing the putative subluxation constitutes the mechanism by which this healing is initiated, the evidentially supported explanation is one that invokes the impact of contextual factors inherent in the skilful care and authority of the healthcare provider. This perspective is presented here as the scientific model of Contextually Aided Recovery (CARe). This paper contends that;Contextual effects are powerful and desirable and are triggered by contextual factors present in all therapeutic encounters including those encountered in chiropractic practice.These factors can elicit large clinical effects with substantive evidence supporting pain, immune and motor modulation.The compartmentalisation of specific and non-specific effects is a biologically and scientifically false dichotomy, erroneously invoked to de-legitimise treatment approaches that expertly construct contextual healing scenarios.The use of factors to construct contextual healing scenarios that maximise positive (placebo) and minimize negative (nocebo) effects is a skilful clinical art within the multimodal approach that describes modern chiropractic care and should be presented and defended as a legitimate component of orthodox healthcare Clinical improvement during chiropractic care, beyond any biologically specific treatment effects of manipulation

The importance of context: evidence that contextual representations increase intrusive memories.

PubMed

Pearson, David G; Ross, Fiona D C; Webster, Victoria L

2012-03-01

Intrusive memories appear to enter consciousness via involuntary rather than deliberate recollection. Some clinical accounts of PTSD seek to explain this phenomenon by making a clear distinction between the encoding of sensory-based and contextual representations. Contextual representations have been claimed to actively reduce intrusions by anchoring encoded perceptual data for an event in memory. The current analogue trauma study examined this hypothesis by manipulating contextual information independently from encoded sensory-perceptual information. Participants' viewed images selected from the International Affective Picture System that depicted scenes of violence and bodily injury. Images were viewed either under neutral conditions or paired with contextual information. Two experiments revealed a significant increase in memory intrusions for images paired with contextual information in comparison to the same images viewed under neutral conditions. In contrast to the observed increase in intrusion frequency there was no effect of contextual representations on voluntary memory for the images. The vividness and emotionality of memory intrusions were also unaffected. The analogue trauma paradigm may fail to replicate the effect of extreme stress on encoding postulated to occur during PTSD. These findings question the assertion that intrusive memories develop from a lack of integration between sensory-based and contextual representations in memory. Instead it is argued contextual representations play a causal role in increasing the frequency of intrusions by increasing the sensitivity of memory to involuntary retrieval by associated internal and external cues. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Fostering ethical willingness: integrating emotional and contextual awareness with rational analysis.

PubMed

Betan, E J; Stanton, A L

1999-06-01

Ethical dilemmas are inherently challenging. By definition, clinicians decide between conflicting principles of welfare and naturally confront competing pulls and inclinations. This investigation of students' responses to an ethical scenario highlights how emotions and concerns can interfere with willingness to implement ethical knowledge. Clear-cut rules are the exception in psychotherapy, and clinicians must judge ethical issues on the basis of the unique context of each case. As such, subjectivity and emotional involvement are essential tools for determining ethical action, but they must be integrated with rational analysis. Strategies for attending to influential emotions and contextual factors in order to mobilize ethical commitment are described.

Unfinished Student Answer in PISA Mathematics Contextual Problem

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lutfianto, Moch.; Zulkardi; Hartono, Yusuf

2013-01-01

Solving mathematics contextual problems is one way that can be used to enable students to have the skills needed to live in the 21st century. Completion contextual problem requires a series of steps in order to properly answer the questions that are asked. The purpose of this study was to determine the steps performed students in solving…

Introduction to the Special Issue on Visual Working Memory

PubMed Central

Wolfe, Jeremy M

2014-01-01

Objects are not represented individually in visual working memory (VWM), but in relation to the contextual information provided by other memorized objects. We studied whether the contextual information provided by the spatial configuration of all memorized objects is viewpoint-dependent. We ran two experiments asking participants to detect changes in locations between memory and probe for one object highlighted in the probe image. We manipulated the changes in viewpoint between memory and probe (Exp. 1: 0°, 30°, 60°; Exp. 2: 0°, 60°), as well as the spatial configuration visible in the probe image (Exp. 1: full configuration, partial configuration; Exp. 2: full configuration, no configuration). Location change detection was higher with the full spatial configuration than with the partial configuration or with no spatial configuration at viewpoint changes of 0°, thus replicating previous findings on the nonindependent representations of individual objects in VWM. Most importantly, the effect of spatial configurations decreased with increasing viewpoint changes, suggesting a viewpoint-dependent representation of contextual information in VWM. We discuss these findings within the context of this special issue, in particular whether research performed within the slots-versus-resources debate and research on the effects of contextual information might focus on two different storage systems within VWM. PMID:25341647

Semantic Web and Contextual Information: Semantic Network Analysis of Online Journalistic Texts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lim, Yon Soo

This study examines why contextual information is important to actualize the idea of semantic web, based on a case study of a socio-political issue in South Korea. For this study, semantic network analyses were conducted regarding English-language based 62 blog posts and 101 news stories on the web. The results indicated the differences of the meaning structures between blog posts and professional journalism as well as between conservative journalism and progressive journalism. From the results, this study ascertains empirical validity of current concerns about the practical application of the new web technology, and discusses how the semantic web should be developed.

Key issues in the management of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: latest developments and clinical implications

PubMed Central

Jordan, Natasha; D’Cruz, David

2015-01-01

Systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) is a chronic multisystem disease with significant associated morbidity and mortality. A deeper understanding of the pathogenesis of SLE has led to the development of biologic agents, primarily targeting B cells and others inhibiting costimulatory molecules, type I interferons and cytokines such as interleukin-6. Several of these agents have been studied in clinical trials; some have shown promise while others have yielded disappointing results. Economic and regulatory issues continue to hamper the availability of such therapies for SLE patients. With increasing recognition that recurrent flares of disease activity lead to long-term damage accrual, one of the most important recent developments in patient management has been the concept of treat-to-target in SLE while minimizing patient exposure to excessive corticosteroid and other immunosuppressive therapy. This article reviews these key issues in SLE management, outlining recent developments and clinical implications for patients. PMID:26622325

Contextual signals in visual cortex.

PubMed

Khan, Adil G; Hofer, Sonja B

2018-06-05

Vision is an active process. What we perceive strongly depends on our actions, intentions and expectations. During visual processing, these internal signals therefore need to be integrated with the visual information from the retina. The mechanisms of how this is achieved by the visual system are still poorly understood. Advances in recording and manipulating neuronal activity in specific cell types and axonal projections together with tools for circuit tracing are beginning to shed light on the neuronal circuit mechanisms of how internal, contextual signals shape sensory representations. Here we review recent work, primarily in mice, that has advanced our understanding of these processes, focusing on contextual signals related to locomotion, behavioural relevance and predictions. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Executive Summary of the 1999 External Environmental Scan and the Internal Environmental Scan Report Card: Key Issues for Planning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beachler, Judith

This document is the second in a series of summary reports outlining Key Issues for Planning useful to staff throughout the Los Rios Community College District (CA) for the 1999-2000 academic year and beyond. The 1999 Environmental Scan of Greater Sacramento provides a comprehensive look at the external environment. It outlines changes in the…

An update on contextual fear memory mechanisms: Transition between Amygdala and Hippocampus.

PubMed

Chaaya, Nicholas; Battle, Andrew R; Johnson, Luke R

2018-05-09

Context is an ever-present combination of discrete environmental elements capable of influencing many psychological processes. When context is associated with an aversive stimulus, a permanent contextual fear memory is formed. Context is hypothesized to greatly influence the treatability of various fear-based pathologies, in particular, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In order to understand how contextual fear memories are encoded and impact underlying fear pathology, delineation of the underlying neural circuitry of contextual fear memory consolidation and maintenance is essential. Past understandings of contextual fear suggest that the hippocampus only creates a unitary, or single, representation of context. This representation is sent to the amygdala, which creates the associative contextual fear memory. In contrast, here we review new evidence from the literature showing contextual fear memories to be consolidated and maintained by both amygdala and hippocampus. Based on this evidence, we revise the current model of contextual fear memory consolidation, highlighting a larger role for hippocampus. This new model may better explain the role of the hippocampus in PTSD. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

EPA's Reanalysis of Key Issues Related to Dioxin Toxicity and Response to NAS Comments (Volume 1) (Interagency Science Discussion Draft)

EPA Science Inventory

EPA is releasing the draft report, EPA's Reanalysis of Key Issues Related to Dioxin Toxicity and Response to NAS Comments (Volume 1), that was distributed to Federal agencies and White House Offices for comment during the Science Discussion step of the Coping with mental health issues: subjective experiences of self-help and helpful contextual factors at the start of mental health treatment

PubMed Central

Biringer, Eva; Davidson, Larry; Sundfør, Bengt; Lier, Haldis Ø.; Borg, Marit

2016-01-01

Abstract Background: Self-help strategies and various contextual factors support recovery. However, more in-depth knowledge is needed about how self-help strategies and supportive environments facilitate the recovery process. Aims: To explore what individuals who have recently been referred to a specialist Community Mental Health Center experience as helpful and what they do to help themselves. Method: Ten service users participated in in-depth interviews within a collaborative-reflexive framework. A hermeneutic-phenomenological approach was used. Results: Participants described a variety of helpful strategies and environmental supports. Four relevant main themes were identified: helpful activities, helpful people and places, self-instruction and learning about mental problems and medication and self-medication. Conclusions: The process of recovery is initiated before people become users of mental health services. This study confirms that recovery takes place within the person’s daily life context and involves the interplay of contextual factors, such as family, friends, good places, work and other meaningful activities. The coping strategies reported may represent an important focus for attention and clinical intervention. PMID:26484831

Early Adolescents' Emotional Well-Being in the Classroom: The Role of Personal and Contextual Assets.

PubMed

Oberle, Eva

2018-02-01

The objective was to predict early adolescents' emotional well-being from personal and contextual assets in the classroom. Emotional well-being is a key indicator of health. Aligned with the positive youth development (PYD) framework, a supportive classroom environment and positive relationships with teachers and peers were contextual assets in the present study; positive self-concept was a personal asset. The sample was 406 grade 4 to 7 public elementary school students from diverse backgrounds (mean = 11.27 years; SD = 0.89; 50% female). Data were self-, teacher-, and peer-reported. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses were used to evaluate model fit and identify significant pathways. SEM indicated a good model fit. Overall, 68% of variability in early adolescents' emotional well-being was explained. Positive self-concept directly predicted emotional well-being. Supportive classroom environment predicted emotional well-being directly and indirectly through increases in positive social relationships and self-concept. Positive social relationships predicted well-being only indirectly through positive self-concept. Contextual and personal assets are central for early adolescents' emotional well-being. The interrelation among assets needs to be considered when understanding, and ultimately promoting students' emotional well-being. The present findings extend previous research and inform school-based intervention and prevention programming and teacher professional development. © 2018, American School Health Association.

Personal and contextual factors related to delayed HIV diagnosis among men who have sex with men

PubMed Central

Nelson, Kimberly M.; Thiede, Hanne; Jenkins, Richard A.; Carey, James W.; Hutcheson, Rebecca; Golden, Matthew R.

2014-01-01

Delayed HIV diagnosis among men who have sex with men (MSM) in the United States continues to be a significant personal and public health issue. Using qualitative and quantitative data from 75 recently tested, HIV-seropositive MSM (38 delayed and 37 non-delayed testers) we sought to further elucidate potential personal and contextual factors that may contribute to delayed HIV diagnosis among MSM. Our findings indicate MSM who experience multiple life stressors, whether personal or contextual, have an increased likelihood of delaying HIV diagnosis. Further, MSM experiencing multiple life stressors without the scaffolding of social support, stable mental health, and self-efficacy to engage in protective health behaviors may be particularly vulnerable to delaying diagnosis. Interventions targeting these factors as well as structural interventions targeting physiological and safety concerns are needed to help MSM handle their life stressors more effectively and seek HIV testing in a timelier manner. PMID:24694326

Exhibition of Monogamy Relations between Entropic Non-contextuality Inequalities

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhu, Feng; Zhang, Wei; Huang, Yi-Dong

2017-06-01

We exhibit the monogamy relation between two entropic non-contextuality inequalities in the scenario where compatible projectors are orthogonal. We show the monogamy relation can be exhibited by decomposing the orthogonality graph into perfect induced subgraphs. Then we find two entropic non-contextuality inequalities are monogamous while the KCBS-type non-contextuality inequalities are not if the orthogonality graphs of the observable sets are two odd cycles with two shared vertices. Supported by 973 Programs of China under Grant Nos. 2011CBA00303 and 2013CB328700, Basic Research Foundation of Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNList)

Contextually Mediated Spontaneous Retrieval Is Specific to the Hippocampus

PubMed Central

Long, Nicole M.; Sperling, Michael R.; Worrell, Gregory A.; Davis, Kathryn A.; Gross, Robert E.; Lega, Bradley C.; Jobst, Barbara C.; Sheth, Sameer A.; Zaghloul, Kareem; Stein, Joel M.; Kahana, Michael J.

2018-01-01

SUMMARY Although it is now well established that the hippocampus supports memory encoding [1, 2], little is known about hippocampal activity during spontaneous memory retrieval. Recent intracranial electroencephalographic (iEEG) work has shown that hippocampal activity during encoding predicts subsequent temporal organization of memories [3], supporting a role in contextual binding. It is an open question, however, whether the hippocampus similarly supports contextually mediated processes during retrieval. Here, we analyzed iEEG recordings obtained from 215 epilepsy patients as they performed a free recall task. To identify neural activity specifically associated with contextual retrieval, we compared correct recalls, intrusions (incorrect recall of either items from prior lists or items not previously studied), and deliberations (matched periods during recall when no items came to mind). Neural signals that differentiate correct recalls from both other retrieval classes reflect contextual retrieval, as correct recalls alone arise from the correct context. We found that in the hippocampus, high-frequency activity (HFA, 44–100 Hz), a proxy for neural activation [4], was greater prior to correct recalls relative to the other retrieval classes, with no differentiation between intrusions and deliberations. This pattern was not observed in other memory-related cortical regions, including DLPFC, thus supporting a specific hippocampal contribution to contextually mediated memory retrieval. PMID:28343962

Contextually relevant resources in speech-language therapy and audiology in South Africa--are there any?

PubMed

Pascoe, Michelle; Norman, Vivienne

2011-10-01

In this editorial introduction we aim to explore the notion of contextually relevant resources. We argue that it is the responsibility of speech-language therapists (SLTs) and audiologists (As) working in South Africa to develop contextually relevant resources, and not to rely on the countries or cultures where the professions originated to do so. Language is often cited as the main barrier to contextually relevant resources: most SLTs and As are aware of the need for more resources in the local languages. However, the issue is not as straightforward as translating resources from English into other languages. The challenges related to culture, e.g. formal education and familiarity with the test situation, have to be considered, as well as the population on which norms were obtained and the nature of vocabulary or picture items. This paper introduces four original research papers that follow in this edition of the journal, and showcases them as examples of innovative development in our field. At the same time we call for the further development of assessment materials, intervention resources, and contributions to the evidence base in our context. We emphasise the importance of local knowledge to drive the development of these resources in innovative and perhaps unexpected ways, and suggest that all clinicians have an important role to play in this process.

Contextual cueing improves attentional guidance, even when guidance is supposedly optimal.

PubMed

Harris, Anthony M; Remington, Roger W

2017-05-01

Visual search through previously encountered contexts typically produces reduced reaction times compared with search through novel contexts. This contextual cueing benefit is well established, but there is debate regarding its underlying mechanisms. Eye-tracking studies have consistently shown reduced number of fixations with repetition, supporting improvements in attentional guidance as the source of contextual cueing. However, contextual cueing benefits have been shown in conditions in which attentional guidance should already be optimal-namely, when attention is captured to the target location by an abrupt onset, or under pop-out conditions. These results have been used to argue for a response-related account of contextual cueing. Here, we combine eye tracking with response time to examine the mechanisms behind contextual cueing in spatially cued and pop-out conditions. Three experiments find consistent response time benefits with repetition, which appear to be driven almost entirely by a reduction in number of fixations, supporting improved attentional guidance as the mechanism behind contextual cueing. No differences were observed in the time between fixating the target and responding-our proxy for response related processes. Furthermore, the correlation between contextual cueing magnitude and the reduction in number of fixations on repeated contexts approaches 1. These results argue strongly that attentional guidance is facilitated by familiar search contexts, even when guidance is near-optimal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Visual Displays and Contextual Presentations in Computer-Based Instruction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Park, Ok-choon

1998-01-01

Investigates the effects of two instructional strategies, visual display (animation, and static graphics with and without motion cues) and contextual presentation, in the acquisition of electronic troubleshooting skills using computer-based instruction. Study concludes that use of visual displays and contextual presentation be based on the…

Transfer of contextual cueing in full-icon display remapping.

PubMed

Shi, Zhuanghua; Zang, Xuelian; Jia, Lina; Geyer, Thomas; Müller, Hermann J

2013-02-25

Invariant spatial context can expedite visual search, an effect that is known as contextual cueing (e.g., Chun & Jiang, 1998). However, disrupting learned display configurations abolishes the effect. In current touch-based mobile devices, such as the iPad, icons are shuffled and remapped when the display mode is changed. However, such remapping also disrupts the spatial relationships between icons. This may hamper usability. In the present study, we examined the transfer of contextual cueing in four different methods of display remapping: position-order invariant, global rotation, local invariant, and central invariant. We used full-icon landscape mode for training and both landscape and portrait modes for testing, to check whether the cueing transfers to portrait mode. The results showed transfer of contextual cueing but only with the local invariant and the central invariant remapping methods. We take the results to mean that the predictability of target locations is a crucial factor for the transfer of contextual cueing and thus icon remapping design for mobile devices.

Contextual specificity in perception and action

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Proffitt, Dennis R.

1991-01-01

The visually guided control of helicopter flight is a human achievement, and, thus, understanding this skill is, in part, a psychological problem. The abilities of skilled pilots are impressive, and yet it is of concern that pilots' performance is less than ideal: they suffer from workload constraints, make occasional errors, and are subject to such debilities as simulator sickness. Remedying such deficiencies is both an engineering and a psychological problem. When studying the psychological aspects of this problem, it is desirable to simplify the problem as much as possible, and thereby, sidestep as many intractable psychological issues as possible. Simply stated, we do not want to have to resolve such polemics as the mind-body problem in order to contribute to the design of more effective helicopter systems. On the other hand, the study of human behavior is a psychological endeavor and certain problems cannot be evaded. Four related issues that are of psychological significance in understanding the visually guided control of helicopter flight are discussed. First, a selected discussion of the nature of descriptive levels in analyzing human perception and performance is presented. It is argued that the appropriate level of description for perception is kinematical, and for performance, it is procedural. Second, it is argued that investigations into pilot performance cannot ignore the nature of pilots' phenomenal experience. The conscious control of actions is not based upon environmental states of affairs, nor upon the optical information that specifies them. Actions are coupled to perceptions. Third, the acquisition of skilled actions in the context of inherent misperceptions is discussed. Such skills may be error prone in some situations, but not in others. Finally, I discuss the contextual relativity of human errors. Each of these four issues relates to a common theme: the control of action is mediated by phenomenal experience, the veracity of which is context

Contextualizing Nature of Science Instruction in Socioscientific Issues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Eastwood, Jennifer Lynne; Sadler, Troy D.; Zeidler, Dana L.; Lewis, Anna; Amiri, Leila; Applebaum, Scott

2012-10-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two learning contexts for explicit-reflective nature of science (NOS) instruction, socioscientific issues (SSI) driven and content driven, on student NOS conceptions. Four classes of 11th and 12th grade anatomy and physiology students participated. Two classes experienced a curricular sequence organized around SSI (the SSI group), and two classes experienced a content-based sequence (the Content group). An open-ended NOS questionnaire was administered to both groups at the beginning and end of the school year and analyzed to generate student profiles. Quantitative analyses were performed to compare pre-instruction NOS conceptions between groups as well as pre to post changes within groups and between groups. Both SSI and Content groups showed significant gains in most NOS themes, but between-group gains were not significantly different. Qualitative analysis of post-instruction responses, however, revealed that students in the SSI group tended to use examples to describe their views of the social/cultural NOS. The findings support SSI contexts as effective for promoting gains in students' NOS understanding and suggest that these contexts facilitate nuanced conceptions that should be further explored.

Ecological and Developmental Issues in the Practice of Educational Psychology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bowler, Josephine

2005-01-01

This conceptual article examines what is meant by the term "ecological-contextual" in relation to the assessment of children's needs. Revisiting the discipline of ethology, the article applies the construct of niche to the human species, including examples from children's experiences to validate the relevance of this link. Issues of…

Any Ontological Model of the Single Qubit Stabilizer Formalism must be Contextual

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lillystone, Piers; Wallman, Joel J.

Quantum computers allow us to easily solve some problems classical computers find hard. Non-classical improvements in computational power should be due to some non-classical property of quantum theory. Contextuality, a more general notion of non-locality, is a necessary, but not sufficient, resource for quantum speed-up. Proofs of contextuality can be constructed for the classically simulable stabilizer formalism. Previous proofs of stabilizer contextuality are known for 2 or more qubits, for example the Mermin-Peres magic square. In the work presented we extend these results and prove that any ontological model of the single qubit stabilizer theory must be contextual, as defined by R. Spekkens, and give a relation between our result and the Mermin-Peres square. By demonstrating that contextuality is present in the qubit stabilizer formalism we provide further insight into the contextuality present in quantum theory. Understanding the contextuality of classical sub-theories will allow us to better identify the physical properties of quantum theory required for computational speed up. This research was supported by CIFAR, the Government of Ontario, and the Government of Canada through NSERC and Industry Canada.

Contextualizing Competence: Language and LGBT-Based Competency in Health Care.

PubMed

Rossi, Alexis L; Lopez, Eliot J

2017-01-01

Changes in the language and terminology used to refer to individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), as well as how best to discuss issues of sexual and gender identity, can prove challenging for health care providers due to (1) lack of training; (2) interdisciplinary issues; and (3) prejudices on personal and institutional levels. Given the importance of language in the relationship between health care provider and patient as well as the myriad ways in which language can reflect knowledge, skills, and attitudes, we contend that language is both a facilitator and inhibitor of competence. In this article, we discuss language as a means of exhibiting cultural competence as well as the barriers to facilitating this degree of competence. Communicative competence, a concept traditionally used in linguistics, is discussed as a framework for contextualizing LGBT-specific cultural competence in health care. Ideally, a professional will be considered competent once they (1) acquire a foundation in issues associated with LGBT individuals, as well as a basic understanding of appropriate vocabulary' (2) reconcile personal beliefs with their professional role; (3) create an inclusive healthcare environment such that the influence of personal biases does not negatively impact care; and (4) use identifiers suggested by the patient.

School Expulsions, Suspensions, and Dropouts: Understanding the Issues. Hot Topics Series.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gallegos, Arnold, Ed.

This collection of papers examines the causal and contextual issues surrounding the emerging rash of student expulsions, suspensions, and dropouts; discusses legal restrictions that school personnel must consider when establishing and implementing student codes of conduct; and presents promising programs and practices to reduce the number of…

Interpreting Teachers' Perceptions of Contextual Influences on Sexuality Discourses within the School Curriculum: Lessons from Sex Health Education Teachers in Kampala, Uganda

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tushabomwe, Annette; Nashon, Samson Madera

2016-01-01

Analysis of key findings of a study that investigated six Ugandan teachers' perceptions of contextual influences on sexuality discourses revealed that though there is some form of sex education in schools and though teachers are very enthusiastic about its implementation, it is largely constrained by conflicting social stances held by various…

A Multiple Case Study of College-Contextualized Mathematics Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Valenzuela, Hector

2018-01-01

Contextualization is a method used for mathematics curriculum design within lesson plans and as a pedagogical practice in face-to-face classes. Many researchers are studying the effects of using contextualization in the teaching and the learning process for mathematics (Bottge & Cho, 2013; Perin, 2011; Young, Hodge, Edwards, & Leising,…

Spine growth in the anterior cingulate cortex is necessary for the consolidation of contextual fear memory

PubMed Central

Vetere, Gisella; Restivo, Leonardo; Cole, Christina J.; Ross, P. Joel; Ammassari-Teule, Martine; Josselyn, Sheena A.; Frankland, Paul W.

2011-01-01

Remodeling of cortical connectivity is thought to allow initially hippocampus-dependent memories to be expressed independently of the hippocampus at remote time points. Consistent with this, consolidation of a contextual fear memory is associated with dendritic spine growth in neurons of the anterior cingulate cortex (aCC). To directly test whether such cortical structural remodeling is necessary for memory consolidation, we disrupted spine growth in the aCC at different times following contextual fear conditioning in mice. We took advantage of previous studies showing that the transcription factor myocyte enhancer factor 2 (MEF2) negatively regulates spinogenesis both in vitro and in vivo. We found that increasing MEF2-dependent transcription in the aCC during a critical posttraining window (but not at later time points) blocked both the consolidation-associated dendritic spine growth and subsequent memory expression. Together, these data strengthen the causal link between cortical structural remodeling and memory consolidation and, further, identify MEF2 as a key regulator of these processes. PMID:21531906

Key issues and challenges in developing a pedagogical intervention in the simulation skills center--an action research study.

PubMed

Reierson, Inger Åse; Hvidsten, Anne; Wighus, Marianne; Brungot, Solvor; Bjørk, Ida Torunn

2013-07-01

Simulation skills centers (SSC) are considered important learning arenas for preparing and qualifying nursing students. Limited clinical placements and claims of diminished learning opportunities raise concerns that newly educated nurses lack proficiency in many psychomotor skills. Accordingly, there is an increased focus on learning in the SSC. However, it has been questioned if the pedagogical underpinning of teaching and learning in the SSC is missing or unclear. At a bachelor nursing education in Norway, there was a desire to change practice and enhance learning in the SSC by systematic use of The Model of Practical Skill Performance (Bjørk and Kirkevold, 2000). A participatory action research design was chosen. A pedagogical intervention was developed and implemented in 2010 in a cohort of eighty-seven first year bachelor nursing students during their basic nursing skill course. The intervention is shortly described. This article reports key issues and challenges that emerged during development of the new intervention. Data to inform the study were collected via thorough meeting minutes and the project leader's logbook, and analyzed using fieldnotes analysis. Six key issues and challenges were identified. These are presented and discussed consecutively in light of their importance for development and implementation of the new intervention. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Key issues of ultraviolet radiation of OH at high altitudes

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Zhang, Yuhuai; Wan, Tian; Jiang, Jianzheng

2014-12-09

Ultraviolet (UV) emissions radiated by hydroxyl (OH) is one of the fundamental elements in the prediction of radiation signature of high-altitude and high-speed vehicle. In this work, the OH A{sup 2}Σ{sup +}→X{sup 2}Π ultraviolet emission band behind the bow shock is computed under the experimental condition of the second bow-shock ultraviolet flight (BSUV-2). Four related key issues are discussed, namely, the source of hydrogen element in the high-altitude atmosphere, the formation mechanism of OH species, efficient computational algorithm of trace species in rarefied flows, and accurate calculation of OH emission spectra. Firstly, by analyzing the typical atmospheric model, the verticalmore » distributions of the number densities of different species containing hydrogen element are given. According to the different dominating species containing hydrogen element, the atmosphere is divided into three zones, and the formation mechanism of OH species is analyzed in the different zones. The direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method and the Navier-Stokes equations are employed to compute the number densities of the different OH electronically and vibrationally excited states. Different to the previous work, the trace species separation (TSS) algorithm is applied twice in order to accurately calculate the densities of OH species and its excited states. Using a non-equilibrium radiation model, the OH ultraviolet emission spectra and intensity at different altitudes are computed, and good agreement is obtained with the flight measured data.« less

Key issues of ultraviolet radiation of OH at high altitudes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Yuhuai; Wan, Tian; Jiang, Jianzheng; Fan, Jing

2014-12-01

Ultraviolet (UV) emissions radiated by hydroxyl (OH) is one of the fundamental elements in the prediction of radiation signature of high-altitude and high-speed vehicle. In this work, the OH A2Σ+→ X2Π ultraviolet emission band behind the bow shock is computed under the experimental condition of the second bow-shock ultraviolet flight (BSUV-2). Four related key issues are discussed, namely, the source of hydrogen element in the high-altitude atmosphere, the formation mechanism of OH species, efficient computational algorithm of trace species in rarefied flows, and accurate calculation of OH emission spectra. Firstly, by analyzing the typical atmospheric model, the vertical distributions of the number densities of different species containing hydrogen element are given. According to the different dominating species containing hydrogen element, the atmosphere is divided into three zones, and the formation mechanism of OH species is analyzed in the different zones. The direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method and the Navier-Stokes equations are employed to compute the number densities of the different OH electronically and vibrationally excited states. Different to the previous work, the trace species separation (TSS) algorithm is applied twice in order to accurately calculate the densities of OH species and its excited states. Using a non-equilibrium radiation model, the OH ultraviolet emission spectra and intensity at different altitudes are computed, and good agreement is obtained with the flight measured data.

Key Challenges of Using Video When Investigating Social Practices in Education: Contextualization, Magnification, and Representation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blikstad-Balas, Marte

2017-01-01

Audio- and video-recordings are increasingly popular data sources in contemporary qualitative research, making discussions about methodological implications of such recordings timelier than ever. This article goes beyond discussing practical issues and issues of "camera effect" and reactivity to identify three major challenges of using…

Issues in Measuring and Improving Health Care Quality

PubMed Central

Friedman, Maria A.

1995-01-01

This issue of the Health Care Financing Review focuses on issues and advances in measuring and improving the quality of care, particularly for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Discussions of quality-related topics are especially timely, given the growing and widespread interest in improving quality in the organization, financing, and delivery of health care services. This article has several purposes. The first is to provide a brief description of some of the causes underlying the growth of the health care quality movement; the second is to provide a contextual framework for discussion of some of the overarching themes that emerge in this issue. These themes include examining conceptual issues, developing quality measures for specific sites and populations, and creating or adapting data sets for quality-measurement purposes. PMID:10151882

Fundamental monogamy relation between contextuality and nonlocality.

PubMed

Kurzyński, Paweł; Cabello, Adán; Kaszlikowski, Dagomir

2014-03-14

We show that the no-disturbance principle imposes a tradeoff between locally contextual correlations violating the Klyachko-Can-Biniciogˇlu-Shumovski inequality and spatially separated correlations violating the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality. The violation of one inequality forbids the violation of the other. We also obtain the corresponding monogamy relation imposed by quantum theory for a qutrit-qubit system. Our results show the existence of fundamental monogamy relations between contextuality and nonlocality that suggest that entanglement might be a particular form of a more fundamental resource.

Contextual information and perceptual-cognitive expertise in a dynamic, temporally-constrained task.

PubMed

Murphy, Colm P; Jackson, Robin C; Cooke, Karl; Roca, André; Benguigui, Nicolas; Williams, A Mark

2016-12-01

Skilled performers extract and process postural information from an opponent during anticipation more effectively than their less-skilled counterparts. In contrast, the role and importance of contextual information in anticipation has received only minimal attention. We evaluate the importance of contextual information in anticipation and examine the underlying perceptual-cognitive processes. We present skilled and less-skilled tennis players with normal video or animated footage of the same rallies. In the animated condition, sequences were created using player movement and ball trajectory data, and postural information from the players was removed, constraining participants to anticipate based on contextual information alone. Participants judged ball bounce location of the opponent's final occluded shot. The 2 groups were more accurate than chance in both display conditions with skilled being more accurate than less-skilled (Exp. 1) participants. When anticipating based on contextual information alone, skilled participants employed different gaze behaviors to less-skilled counterparts and provided verbal reports of thoughts which were indicative of more thorough evaluation of contextual information (Exp. 2). Findings highlight the importance of both postural and contextual information in anticipation and indicate that perceptual-cognitive expertise is underpinned by processes that facilitate more effective processing of contextual information, in the absence of postural information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Contextual Approach with Guided Discovery Learning and Brain Based Learning in Geometry Learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kartikaningtyas, V.; Kusmayadi, T. A.; Riyadi

2017-09-01

The aim of this study was to combine the contextual approach with Guided Discovery Learning (GDL) and Brain Based Learning (BBL) in geometry learning of junior high school. Furthermore, this study analysed the effect of contextual approach with GDL and BBL in geometry learning. GDL-contextual and BBL-contextual was built from the steps of GDL and BBL that combined with the principles of contextual approach. To validate the models, it uses quasi experiment which used two experiment groups. The sample had been chosen by stratified cluster random sampling. The sample was 150 students of grade 8th in junior high school. The data were collected through the student’s mathematics achievement test that given after the treatment of each group. The data analysed by using one way ANOVA with different cell. The result shows that GDL-contextual has not different effect than BBL-contextual on mathematics achievement in geometry learning. It means both the two models could be used in mathematics learning as the innovative way in geometry learning.

Contextualizing immigrant access to health resources.

PubMed

Yang, Joshua S

2010-06-01

A vast majority of our understanding of immigrant health centers around traits of individuals and groups. While useful, current approaches to research on immigrant health decontextualize the experience of immigrants in the United States. This paper uses a historical case study of the Chinese community in San Francisco to develop a contextual framework to understand the levels of influence that impact the availability of health resources in immigrant communities. International, transnational, transcommunity, and enclave contexts have shaped health care access for Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. The conceptual framework provides a basis for future research, programmatic, and policy work that integrates individual and contextual factors in assessing and improving immigrant access to health resources.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CLASSIFICATION SCHEME OF CONTEXTUAL AIDS.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

AMES, WILBUR S.

A STUDY WAS CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE FROM THE VERBAL RESPONSES OF READERS THE TYPES OF CONTEXTUAL AIDS THAT SERVE AS CLUES TO THE MEANINGS THAT MIGHT BE ATTACHED TO SIMULATED WORDS AND TO CLASSIFY THESE CONTEXTUAL AIDS ON THE BASIS OF THE ELEMENTS OF THE VERBAL CONTEXT THAT WAS UTILIZED BY THE READER. AN INTROSPECTIVE TECHNIQUE WAS USED IN…

Alternative Models to Deliver Developmental Math: Issues of Use and Student Access

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kosiewicz, Holly; Ngo, Federick; Fong, Kristen

2016-01-01

Objective: Changing how community colleges deliver developmental education has become a key policy lever to increase student achievement. Alternative development education models reduce the amount of time a student spends in remediation, provide students with supplemental instruction and support, and contextualize content to align with student…

Key Durability Issues with Mullite-Based Environmental Barrier Coatings for Si-Based Ceramics

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lee, Kang N.

1999-01-01

Plasma-sprayed mullite (3Al2O3 central dot 2SiO2) and mullite/yttria-stabilized-zirconia (YSZ) dual layer coatings have been developed to protect silicon-based ceramics from environmental attack. Mullite-based coating systems show excellent durability in air. However, in combustion environments, corrosive species such as molten salt or water vapor penetrate through cracks in the coating and attack the Si-based ceramics along the interface, Thus modification of the coating system for enhanced crack-resistance is necessary for long-term durability in combustion environments. Other key durability issues include interfacial contamination and coating/substrate bonding. Interfacial contamination leads to enhanced oxidation and interfacial pore formation, while weak coating/substrate bonding leads to rapid attack of the interface by corrosive species, both of which can cause premature failure of the coating. Interfacial contamination can be minimized by limiting impurities in coating and substrate materials. The interface may be modified to improve the coating/substrate bond.

Key Durability Issues with Mullite-Based Environmental Barrier Coatings for Si-Based Ceramics

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lee, Kang N.

2000-01-01

Plasma-sprayed mullite (3Al2O3.2SiO2) and mullite/yttria-stabilized-zirconia (YSZ) dual layer coatings have been developed to protect silicon -based ceramics from environmental attack. Mullite-based coating systems show excellent durability in air. However, in combustion environments, corrosive species such as molten salt or water vapor penetrate through cracks in the coating and attack the Si-based ceramics along the interface. Thus the modification of the coating system for enhanced crack-resistance is necessary for long-term durability in combustion environments. Other key durability issues include interfacial contamination and coating/substrate bonding. Interfacial contamination leads to enhanced oxidation and interfacial pore formation, while a weak coating/substrate bonding leads to rapid attack of the interface by corrosive species, both of which can cause a premature failure of the coating. Interfacial contamination can be minimized by limiting impurities in coating and substrate materials. The interface may be modified to improve the coating/substrate bond.

Epidemiological Data Management during an Outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease: Key Issues and Observations from Sierra Leone.

PubMed

Owada, Kei; Eckmanns, Tim; Kamara, Kande-Bure O'Bai; Olu, Olushayo Oluseun

2016-01-01

Sierra Leone experienced intense transmission of Ebola virus disease (EVD) from May 2014 to November 2015 during which a total of 8,704 confirmed cases and over 3,589 confirmed deaths were reported. Our field observation showed many issues in the EVD data management system, which may have contributed to the magnitude and long duration of the outbreak. In this perspective article, we explain the key issues with EVD data management in the field, and the resulting obstacles in analyzing key epidemiological indicators during the outbreak response work. Our observation showed that, during the latter part of the EVD outbreak, surveillance and data management improved at all levels in the country as compared to the earlier stage. We identified incomplete filling and late arrival of the case investigation forms at data management centers, difficulties in detecting double entries and merging identified double entries in the database, and lack of clear process of how death of confirmed cases in holding, treatment, and community care centers are reported to the data centers as some of challenges to effective data management. Furthermore, there was no consolidated database that captured and linked all data sources in a structured way. We propose development of a new application tool easily adaptable to new occurrences, regular data harmonization meetings between national and district data management teams, and establishment of a data quality audit system to assure good quality data as ways to improve EVD data management during future outbreaks.

On the role of working memory in spatial contextual cueing.

PubMed

Travis, Susan L; Mattingley, Jason B; Dux, Paul E

2013-01-01

The human visual system receives more information than can be consciously processed. To overcome this capacity limit, we employ attentional mechanisms to prioritize task-relevant (target) information over less relevant (distractor) information. Regularities in the environment can facilitate the allocation of attention, as demonstrated by the spatial contextual cueing paradigm. When observers are exposed repeatedly to a scene and invariant distractor information, learning from earlier exposures enhances the search for the target. Here, we investigated whether spatial contextual cueing draws on spatial working memory resources and, if so, at what level of processing working memory load has its effect. Participants performed 2 tasks concurrently: a visual search task, in which the spatial configuration of some search arrays occasionally repeated, and a spatial working memory task. Increases in working memory load significantly impaired contextual learning. These findings indicate that spatial contextual cueing utilizes working memory resources.

Toward a redefinition and contextualization of the abortion issue.

PubMed

Hartman, A

1991-11-01

The current condition of the abortion issue is that of an ideological stalemate. Each side has retreated to defend positions that will tolerate compromise of consideration of the other's viewpoint. The result is that both sides fail to see the implications of their views. 1 reason for this current state of affairs is the effect of Roe v Wade. The decision is based in privacy rights, rather than bodily integrity, which means that women are to be left alone when it comes to abortion. This can be seen with the Harris v McRae decision which ended federal funding for abortion services and the Rust v Sullivan decision which further limited doctors to counsel, inform, or refer women about abortion if they take federal money. Both sides of the issue defended absolute, immutable rights which do not leave room for personal, civic, and collective responsibility. Both sides have inconsistencies: the pro-choice side does not recognize that while abortion as a backup to birth control is okay, abortion as a primary means of birth control is not. Yet this is the case in many countries today. The pro-life side maintains that the fetus has the right to be born, yet the conservative administration and its supporters do not want to pay for social and health programs that will give these fetuses a descent quality of life. If they care so much for life, how can they stand by while 20% of children live in poverty? The pro-life side continues to ignore that fact that the majority of Americans support the right to chose. The pro-choice side continues to ignore the fact that 40% of those that favor choice, also feel that abortion is immoral. The final result of these arguments about right, is that they do not exist in the context of the real world. They are formed without looking at the social, economic, and personal contexts in which abortion occurs. The right to abortion should not stand alone, it should be a fail safe combined with family planning education and universal contraception.

Practicing Field Hockey Skills Along the Contextual Interference Continuum: A Comparison of Five Practice Schedules

PubMed Central

Cheong, Jadeera Phaik Geok; Lay, Brendan; Grove, J. Robert; Medic, Nikola; Razman, Rizal

2012-01-01

To overcome the weakness of the contextual interference (CI) effect within applied settings, Brady, 2008 recommended that the amount of interference be manipulated. This study investigated the effect of five practice schedules on the learning of three field hockey skills. Fifty-five pre-university students performed a total of 90 trials for each skill under blocked, mixed or random practice orders. Results showed a significant time effect with all five practice conditions leading to improvements in acquisition and learning of the skills. No significant differences were found between the groups. The findings of the present study did not support the CI effect and suggest that either blocked, mixed, or random practice schedules can be used effectively when structuring practice for beginners. Key pointsThe contextual interference effect did not surface when using sport skills.There appears to be no difference between blocked and random practice schedules in the learning of field hockey skills.Low (blocked), moderate (mixed) or high (random) interference practice schedules can be used effectively when conducting a multiple skill practice session for beginners. PMID:24149204

Practicing field hockey skills along the contextual interference continuum: a comparison of five practice schedules.

PubMed

Cheong, Jadeera Phaik Geok; Lay, Brendan; Grove, J Robert; Medic, Nikola; Razman, Rizal

2012-01-01

To overcome the weakness of the contextual interference (CI) effect within applied settings, Brady, 2008 recommended that the amount of interference be manipulated. This study investigated the effect of five practice schedules on the learning of three field hockey skills. Fifty-five pre-university students performed a total of 90 trials for each skill under blocked, mixed or random practice orders. Results showed a significant time effect with all five practice conditions leading to improvements in acquisition and learning of the skills. No significant differences were found between the groups. The findings of the present study did not support the CI effect and suggest that either blocked, mixed, or random practice schedules can be used effectively when structuring practice for beginners. Key pointsThe contextual interference effect did not surface when using sport skills.There appears to be no difference between blocked and random practice schedules in the learning of field hockey skills.Low (blocked), moderate (mixed) or high (random) interference practice schedules can be used effectively when conducting a multiple skill practice session for beginners.

Contextual Learning in Adult Education. Practice Application Brief No. 12.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Imel, Susan

Contextual learning is rooted in a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. According to constructivist theory, individuals learn by constructing meaning through interacting with and interpreting their environments. Current perspectives on what it means for learning to be contextualized include the following: situated cognition, social…

Pigeons Exhibit Contextual Cueing to Both Simple and Complex Backgrounds

PubMed Central

Wasserman, Edward A.; Teng, Yuejia; Castro, Leyre

2014-01-01

Repeated pairings of a particular visual context with a specific location of a target stimulus facilitate target search in humans. We explored an animal model of this contextual cueing effect using a novel Cueing-Miscueing design. Pigeons had to peck a target which could appear in one of four possible locations on four possible color backgrounds or four possible color photographs of real-world scenes. On 80% of the trials, each of the contexts was uniquely paired with one of the target locations; on the other 20% of the trials, each of the contexts was randomly paired with the remaining target locations. Pigeons came to exhibit robust contextual cueing when the context preceded the target by 2 s, with reaction times to the target being shorter on correctly-cued trials than on incorrectly-cued trials. Contextual cueing proved to be more robust with photographic backgrounds than with uniformly colored backgrounds. In addition, during the context-target delay, pigeons predominately pecked toward the location of the upcoming target, suggesting that attentional guidance contributes to contextual cueing. These findings confirm the effectiveness of animal models of contextual cueing and underscore the important part played by associative learning in producing the effect. PMID:24491468

Independence of long-term contextual memory and short-term perceptual hypotheses: Evidence from contextual cueing of interrupted search.

PubMed

Schlagbauer, Bernhard; Mink, Maurice; Müller, Hermann J; Geyer, Thomas

2017-02-01

Observers are able to resume an interrupted search trial faster relative to responding to a new, unseen display. This finding of rapid resumption is attributed to short-term perceptual hypotheses generated on the current look and confirmed upon subsequent looks at the same display. It has been suggested that the contents of perceptual hypotheses are similar to those of other forms of memory acquired long-term through repeated exposure to the same search displays over the course of several trials, that is, the memory supporting "contextual cueing." In three experiments, we investigated the relationship between short-term perceptual hypotheses and long-term contextual memory. The results indicated that long-term, contextual memory of repeated displays neither affected the generation nor the confirmation of short-term perceptual hypotheses for these displays. Furthermore, the analysis of eye movements suggests that long-term memory provides an initial benefit in guiding attention to the target, whereas in subsequent looks guidance is entirely based on short-term perceptual hypotheses. Overall, the results reveal a picture of both long- and short-term memory contributing to reliable performance gains in interrupted search, while exerting their effects in an independent manner.

Security Enhancement Mechanism Based on Contextual Authentication and Role Analysis for 2G-RFID Systems

PubMed Central

Tang, Wan; Chen, Min; Ni, Jin; Yang, Ximin

2011-01-01

The traditional Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system, in which the information maintained in tags is passive and static, has no intelligent decision-making ability to suit application and environment dynamics. The Second-Generation RFID (2G-RFID) system, referred as 2G-RFID-sys, is an evolution of the traditional RFID system to ensure better quality of service in future networks. Due to the openness of the active mobile codes in the 2G-RFID system, the realization of conveying intelligence brings a critical issue: how can we make sure the backend system will interpret and execute mobile codes in the right way without misuse so as to avoid malicious attacks? To address this issue, this paper expands the concept of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) by introducing context-aware computing, and then designs a secure middleware for backend systems, named Two-Level Security Enhancement Mechanism or 2L-SEM, in order to ensure the usability and validity of the mobile code through contextual authentication and role analysis. According to the given contextual restrictions, 2L-SEM can filtrate the illegal and invalid mobile codes contained in tags. Finally, a reference architecture and its typical application are given to illustrate the implementation of 2L-SEM in a 2G-RFID system, along with the simulation results to evaluate how the proposed mechanism can guarantee secure execution of mobile codes for the system. PMID:22163983

Security enhancement mechanism based on contextual authentication and role analysis for 2G-RFID systems.

PubMed

Tang, Wan; Chen, Min; Ni, Jin; Yang, Ximin

2011-01-01

The traditional Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system, in which the information maintained in tags is passive and static, has no intelligent decision-making ability to suit application and environment dynamics. The Second-Generation RFID (2G-RFID) system, referred as 2G-RFID-sys, is an evolution of the traditional RFID system to ensure better quality of service in future networks. Due to the openness of the active mobile codes in the 2G-RFID system, the realization of conveying intelligence brings a critical issue: how can we make sure the backend system will interpret and execute mobile codes in the right way without misuse so as to avoid malicious attacks? To address this issue, this paper expands the concept of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) by introducing context-aware computing, and then designs a secure middleware for backend systems, named Two-Level Security Enhancement Mechanism or 2L-SEM, in order to ensure the usability and validity of the mobile code through contextual authentication and role analysis. According to the given contextual restrictions, 2L-SEM can filtrate the illegal and invalid mobile codes contained in tags. Finally, a reference architecture and its typical application are given to illustrate the implementation of 2L-SEM in a 2G-RFID system, along with the simulation results to evaluate how the proposed mechanism can guarantee secure execution of mobile codes for the system.

Capturing contextual effects in spectro-temporal receptive fields.

PubMed

Westö, Johan; May, Patrick J C

2016-09-01

Spectro-temporal receptive fields (STRFs) are thought to provide descriptive images of the computations performed by neurons along the auditory pathway. However, their validity can be questioned because they rely on a set of assumptions that are probably not fulfilled by real neurons exhibiting contextual effects, that is, nonlinear interactions in the time or frequency dimension that cannot be described with a linear filter. We used a novel approach to investigate how a variety of contextual effects, due to facilitating nonlinear interactions and synaptic depression, affect different STRF models, and if these effects can be captured with a context field (CF). Contextual effects were incorporated in simulated networks of spiking neurons, allowing one to define the true STRFs of the neurons. This, in turn, made it possible to evaluate the performance of each STRF model by comparing the estimations with the true STRFs. We found that currently used STRF models are particularly poor at estimating inhibitory regions. Specifically, contextual effects make estimated STRFs dependent on stimulus density in a contrasting fashion: inhibitory regions are underestimated at lower densities while artificial inhibitory regions emerge at higher densities. The CF was found to provide a solution to this dilemma, but only when it is used together with a generalized linear model. Our results therefore highlight the limitations of the traditional STRF approach and provide useful recipes for how different STRF models and stimuli can be used to arrive at reliable quantifications of neural computations in the presence of contextual effects. The results therefore push the purpose of STRF analysis from simply finding an optimal stimulus toward describing context-dependent computations of neurons along the auditory pathway. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Education Studies: Issues & Critical Perspectives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kassem, Derek; Mufti, Emmanuel; Robinson, John

2006-01-01

This major text for Education Studies students provides a critical account of key issues in education today. The text features: (1) A critical analysis of key issues in Education Studies to encourage students' thinking about education in the broadest terms; (2) Themed sections with introductions to link the issues discussed in each chapter; (3)…

Contextualizing group rape in post-apartheid South Africa.

PubMed

Wood, Kate

2005-01-01

Collective male sexual violence is part of a continuum of sexual coercion in South Africa. This paper is based on long-term ethnographic work in an urban township in the former Transkei region. Drawing on intensive participant observation and interviews with young men in particular, it attempts to make sense of emergent narratives relating to streamlining, a local term for a not uncommon form of collective sexual coercion involving a group of male friends and one or more women. The paper begins with an overview of existing anthropological literature on collective male sexual violence, going onto elaborate the different scenarios associated with group sexual violence in the fieldsite. It seeks to provide a multi-layered contextualization of the phenomenon by considering prevailing gender discourses, subcultural issues pertaining to the urban tsotsi phenomenon, the rural practice of ukuthwala (bride capture), young working-class Africans' experiences of marginalization, and the complex links between political economy and violence in this setting.

Bupropion Dose-Dependently Reverses Nicotine Withdrawal Deficits in Contextual Fear Conditioning

PubMed Central

Portugal, George S.; Gould, Thomas J.

2007-01-01

Bupropion, a norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor and nicotinic acetylcholine receptor antagonist, facilitates smoking cessation and reduces some symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. However, the effects of bupropion on nicotine withdrawal-associated deficits in learning remain unclear. The present study investigated whether bupropion has effects on contextual and cued fear conditioning following withdrawal from chronic nicotine or when administered alone. Bupropion was administered alone for a range of doses (2.5, 5, 10, 20 or 40 mg/kg), and dose-dependent impairments in contextual and cued fear conditioning were observed (20 or 40 mg/kg). Follow-up studies investigated if bupropion disrupted acquisition or expression of fear conditioning. Bupropion (40 mg/kg) administration on training day only produced deficits in contextual fear conditioning. Alternatively, bupropion (20 or 40 mg/kg) administration during testing dose-dependently produced deficits in contextual and cued fear conditioning. To test the effect of bupropion on nicotine withdrawal, mice were withdrawn from 12 days of chronic nicotine (6.3 mg/kg/day) or saline treatment. Withdrawal from chronic nicotine disrupted contextual fear conditioning; however, 5 mg/kg bupropion reversed this deficit. Overall, these results indicate that a low dose of bupropion can reverse nicotine withdrawal deficits in contextual fear conditioning, but that high doses of bupropion produce deficits in fear conditioning. PMID:17868796

The influence of contextual factors on patient involvement during follow-up consultations after colorectal cancer surgery: a case study.

PubMed

Thomsen, Thora G; Soelver, Lisbeth; Hølge-Hazelton, Bibi

2017-11-01

To identify the contextual factors that influence individual patient involvement during colorectal cancer surgical follow-up consultations. The healthcare system is subject to the requirement and expectation of greater involvement of patients and relatives. Increased patient involvement requires the development and implementation of new communication initiatives. Research shows that it is also necessary to consider the contextual circumstances surrounding patient involvement in specific situations. Case study of a single Danish outpatient clinic, which allows the issues and circumstances involved in an everyday situation to be captured. 12 nonparticipative observations of outpatient visits and, subsequently, seven in-depth patient interviews. Content analysis based on a dialogical, interactive framework, which underpinned the identification of current contextual factors. The results showed five contextual factors that seemed to have an impact on patient involvement. The first, 'Two dimensions of patient involvement: treatment-oriented and person-oriented' highlighted a dual interpretation of patient involvement in the consultation situation. The two dimensions seemed to be influenced by four additional factors: 'Doctors leading the agenda', 'Traditional health professional roles', 'Unclear responsibilities' and 'Guidance primarily focused on treatment'. The results showed how patient involvement in clinical practice could be understood as a two-way movement, in which patients are invited to participate in clinical practice, while health professionals are invited to participate in the patients' lives. The movement will change from situation to situation and is influenced by several contextual factors. The results can help doctors and nurses to navigate using a goal-oriented approach towards patient involvement. The study makes visible the need for research-based development of the independent role of the nursing profession in cancer care follow-up, with a view to

Cultural and Contextual Influences on Parenting in Mexican American Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

White, Rebecca M. B.; Roosa, Mark W.; Weaver, Scott R.; Nair, Rajni L.

2009-01-01

Family stress theory can explain associations between contextual stressors and parenting. The theory, however, has not been tested among Mexican Americans or expanded to include cultural-contextual risks. This study examined associations between neighborhood, economic, and acculturative stressors and parenting behaviors in a sample of 570…

Key issues in space nuclear power

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Brandhorst, Henry W.

1991-01-01

The future appears rich in missions that will extend the frontiers of knowledge, human presence in space, and opportunities for profitable commerce. Key to the success of these ventures is the availability of plentiful, cost effective electric power and assured, low cost access to space. While forecasts of space power needs are problematic, an assessment of future needs based on terrestrial experience has been made. These needs fall into three broad categories: survival, self sufficiency, and industrialization. The cost of delivering payloads to orbital locations from LEO to Mars has been determined and future launch cost reductions projected. From these factors, then, projections of the performance necessary for future solar and nuclear space power options has been made. These goals are largely dependent upon orbital location and energy storage needs. Finally the cost of present space power systems has been determined and projections made for future systems.

Enhance placebo, avoid nocebo: How contextual factors affect physiotherapy outcomes.

PubMed

Testa, Marco; Rossettini, Giacomo

2016-08-01

Placebo and nocebo represent complex and distinct psychoneurobiological phenomena in which behavioural and neurophysiological modifications occur together with the application of a treatment. Despite a better understanding of this topic in the medical field, little is known about their role in physiotherapy. The aim of this review is: a) to elucidate the neurobiology behind placebo and nocebo effects, b) to describe the role of the contextual factors as modulators of the clinical outcomes in rehabilitation and c) to provide clinical and research guidelines on their uses. The physiotherapist's features, the patient's features, the patient-physiotherapist relationship, the characteristics of the treatment and the overall healthcare setting are all contextual factors influencing clinical outcomes. Since every physiotherapy treatment determines a specific and a contextual effect, physiotherapists should manage the contextual factors as a boosting element of any manual therapy to improve placebo effects and avoid detrimental nocebo effects. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Developmental trajectory of contextual learning and 24-h acetylcholine release in the hippocampus

PubMed Central

Takase, Kenkichi; Sakimoto, Yuya; Kimura, Fukuko; Mitsushima, Dai

2014-01-01

To determine the developmental trajectory of hippocampal function in rats, we examined 24-h changes in extracellular acetylcholine (ACh) levels and contextual learning performance. Extracellular ACh significantly correlated with spontaneous behavior, exhibiting a 24-h rhythm in juvenile (4-week-old), pubertal (6-week-old), and adult (9- to 12-week-old) rats. Although juveniles of both sexes exhibited low ACh levels, adult males had higher ACh levels than adult females. Moreover, juveniles exhibited much more spontaneous activity than adults when they showed equivalent ACh levels. Similarly, juveniles of both sexes exhibited relatively low contextual learning performance. Because contextual learning performance was significantly increased only in males, adult males exhibited better performance than adult females. We also observed a developmental relationship between contextual learning and ACh levels. Scopolamine pretreatment blocked contextual learning and interrupted the correlation. Since long-term scopolamine treatment after weaning impaired contextual learning in juveniles, the cholinergic input may participate in the development of hippocampus. PMID:24435246

Contextual priming in semantic anomia: a case study.

PubMed

Renvall, Kati; Laine, Matti; Martin, Nadine

2005-11-01

The present case continues the series of anomia treatment studies with contextual priming (CP), being the second in-depth treatment study conducted for an individual suffering from semantically based anomia. Our aim was to acquire further evidence of the facilitation and interference effects of the CP treatment on semantic anomia. Based on the results of the study of , our hypothesis before the treatment was that our participant would show short-term interference and at most modest and short-term benefit from treatment. To acquire such evidence would not only be important for the choice of anomia treatment methods in individual patients, but would also prompt further development of the CP method. The CP technique used for our participant included cycles of repeating and naming items in three contextual conditions (semantic, phonological, and unrelated). As predicted, the overall improvement of naming was modest and short-term. Interestingly, the contextual condition that corresponded with the nature of our patient's underlying naming deficit (semantic) elicited immediate interference in the form of contextual naming errors, as well as short-term improvement of naming. Based on this and a recent study by , it appears that despite short-term positive effects, in its current form the CP treatment is not sufficient for those aphasics who have a semantic deficit underlying their anomia. The possible mechanism and directions for future research are discussed.

Memory consolidation and contextual interference effects with computer games.

PubMed

Shewokis, Patricia A

2003-10-01

Some investigators of the contextual interference effect contend that there is a direct relation between the amount of practice and the contextual interference effect based on the prediction that the improvement in learning tasks in a random practice schedule, compared to a blocked practice schedule, increases in magnitude as the amount of practice during acquisition on the tasks increases. Research using computer games in contextual interference studies has yielded a large effect (f = .50) with a random practice schedule advantage during transfer. These investigations had a total of 36 and 72 acquisition trials, respectively. The present study tested this prediction by having 72 college students, who were randomly assigned to a blocked or random practice schedule, practice 102 trials of three computer-game tasks across three days. After a 24-hr. interval, 6 retention and 5 transfer trials were performed. Dependent variables were time to complete an event in seconds and number of errors. No significant differences were found for retention and transfer. These results are discussed in terms of how the amount of practice, task-related factors, and memory consolidation mediate the contextual interference effect.

Unilateral hippocampal inactivation or lesion selectively impairs remote contextual fear memory.

PubMed

Zhou, Heng; Zhou, Qixin; Xu, Lin

2016-10-01

Contextual fear memory depends on the hippocampus, but the role of unilateral hippocampus in this type of memory remains unclear. Herein, pharmacological inactivation or excitotoxic lesions were used to study the role of unilateral hippocampus in the stages of contextual fear memory. The pharmacological experiments revealed that compared with the control groups, unilateral hippocampal blockade did not impair 1-day recent memory following learning, whereas bilateral hippocampal blockade significantly impaired this memory. The lesion experiments showed that compared with the control groups, the formed contextual fear memory was retained for 7 days and that 30-day remote memory was markedly reduced in unilateral hippocampal lesion groups. These results indicate that an intact bilateral hippocampus is required for the formation of remote memory and that unilateral hippocampus is sufficient for recent contextual fear memory.

Overview of Climate Confluence Security Issues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Reisman, J. P.

2011-12-01

Presentation will focus on an overview of the security perspectives based on the confluence considerations including energy, economics and climate change. This will include perspectives from reports generated by the Quadrennial Defense Review, Joint Forces Command, the Center for Strategic International Studies, MIT, the Inter-agency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Center for Naval Analysis, and other relevant reports. The presentation will highlight the connections between resource issues and climate change which can be interpreted into security concerns. General discussion of global issues, contextual review of AR4 WGII may be included and any other report updates as applicable. The purpose of this presentation is to give a rounded view of the general qualitative and quantitative perspectives regarding climate related security considerations.

Key Issues for Navigation and Time Dissemination in NASA's Space Exploration Program

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nelson, R. A.; Brodsky, B.; Oria, A. J.; Connolly, J. W.; Sands, O. S.; Welch, B. W.; Ely T.; Orr, R.; Schuchman, L.

2006-01-01

The renewed emphasis on robotic and human missions within NASA's space exploration program warrants a detailed consideration of how the positions of objects in space will be determined and tracked, whether they be spacecraft, human explorers, robots, surface vehicles, or science instrumentation. The Navigation Team within the NASA Space Communications Architecture Working Group (SCAWG) has addressed several key technical issues in this area and the principle findings are reported here. For navigation in the vicinity of the Moon, a variety of satellite constellations have been investigated that provide global or regional surface position determination and timely services analogous to those offered by GPS at Earth. In the vicinity of Mars, there are options for satellite constellations not available at the Moon due to the gravitational perturbations from Earth, such as two satellites in an aerostationary orbit. Alternate methods of radiometric navigation as considered, including one- and two-way signals, as well as autonomous navigation. The use of a software radio capable of receiving all available signal sources, such as GPS, pseudolites, and communication channels, is discussed. Methods of time transfer and dissemination are also considered in this paper.

Contextual Stress and Health Risk Behaviors among African American Adolescents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Copeland-Linder, Nikeea; Lambert, Sharon F.; Chen, Yi-Fu; Ialongo, Nicholas S.

2011-01-01

This study examined the longitudinal association between contextual stress and health risk behaviors and the role of protective factors in a community epidemiologically-defined sample of urban African American adolescents (N = 500; 46.4% female). Structural equation modeling was used to create a latent variable measuring contextual stress…

Promoting Historical Contextualization: The Development and Testing of a Pedagogy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huijgen, Tim; van de Grift, Wim; van Boxtel, Carla; Holthuis, Paul

2018-01-01

The aim of this explorative study was to develop and test a pedagogy aimed at promoting students' ability to perform historical contextualization. Teaching historical contextualization was conceptualized in terms of four pedagogical design principles: (1) making students aware of the consequences of a present-oriented perspective when examining…

Nurse Managers' prerequisite for nursing development: a survey on pressure ulcers and contextual factors in hospital organizations.

PubMed

Gunningberg, Lena; Brudin, Lars; Idvall, Ewa

2010-09-01

To describe and compare pressure ulcer prevalence in two county councils and concurrently explore Nurse Managers' perspective of contextual factors in a hospital organization. Despite good knowledge about risk factors and prevention of pressure ulcers, the prevalence of pressure ulcers remains high. Nurse Managers' have a key role in implementing evidence-based practice. The present study included five hospitals in two Swedish county councils: county council A (non-university setting) and county council B (university setting). A pressure ulcer prevalence study was conducted according to the methodology developed by the European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel. The Nurse Managers' answered a (27-item) questionnaire on contextual factors. County council B had significantly less pressure ulcers grade (2-4) (7.7%) than county council A (11.3%). The Nurse Managers' assessed only two out of the 27 general contextual items significantly differently. Some significant differences were observed in ward organization. In county council B, the Nurse Managers' seemed more aware of prevention strategies compared with Nurse Managers' in county council A. The Nurse Managers' should take more responsibility to develop the prerequisite for quality improvement in nursing. Nursing outcomes (e.g. pressure ulcers) should be incorporated into national quality registries for benchmarking and Nurse Managers' competence in evidence-based practice and research methodology increased. © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Consequences of Contextual Factors on Clinical Reasoning in Resident Physicians

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McBee, Elexis; Ratcliffe, Temple; Picho, Katherine; Artino, Anthony R., Jr.; Schuwirth, Lambert; Kelly, William; Masel, Jennifer; van der Vleuten, Cees; Durning, Steven J.

2015-01-01

Context specificity and the impact that contextual factors have on the complex process of clinical reasoning is poorly understood. Using situated cognition as the theoretical framework, our aim was to evaluate the verbalized clinical reasoning processes of resident physicians in order to describe what impact the presence of contextual factors have…

Action Centered Contextual Bandits.

PubMed

Greenewald, Kristjan; Tewari, Ambuj; Klasnja, Predrag; Murphy, Susan

2017-12-01

Contextual bandits have become popular as they offer a middle ground between very simple approaches based on multi-armed bandits and very complex approaches using the full power of reinforcement learning. They have demonstrated success in web applications and have a rich body of associated theoretical guarantees. Linear models are well understood theoretically and preferred by practitioners because they are not only easily interpretable but also simple to implement and debug. Furthermore, if the linear model is true, we get very strong performance guarantees. Unfortunately, in emerging applications in mobile health, the time-invariant linear model assumption is untenable. We provide an extension of the linear model for contextual bandits that has two parts: baseline reward and treatment effect. We allow the former to be complex but keep the latter simple. We argue that this model is plausible for mobile health applications. At the same time, it leads to algorithms with strong performance guarantees as in the linear model setting, while still allowing for complex nonlinear baseline modeling. Our theory is supported by experiments on data gathered in a recently concluded mobile health study.

Implicit contextual learning in prodromal and early stage Huntington's disease patients.

PubMed

van Asselen, Marieke; Almeida, Inês; Júlio, Filipa; Januário, Cristina; Campos, Elzbieta Bobrowicz; Simões, Mário; Castelo-Branco, Miguel

2012-07-01

Huntington's disease (HD) is a genetic neurodegenerative disorder affecting the basal ganglia. These subcortical structures are particularly important for motor functions, response selection and implicit learning. In the current study, we have assessed prodromal and symptomatic HD participants with an implicit contextual learning task that is not based on motor learning, but on a purely visual implicit learning mechanism. We used an implicit contextual learning task in which subjects need to locate a target among several distractors. In half of the trials, the positions of the distractors and target stimuli were repeated. By memorizing this contextual information, attention can be guided faster to the target stimulus. Nine symptomatic HD participants, 16 prodromal HD participants and 22 control subjects were included. We found that the responses of the control subjects were faster for the repeated trials than for the new trials, indicating that their visual search was facilitated when repeated contextual information was present. In contrast, no difference in response times between the repeated and new trials was found for the symptomatic and prodromal HD participants. The results of the current study indicate that both prodromal and symptomatic HD participants are impaired on an implicit contextual learning task.

Key issues in transplant tourism.

PubMed

Akoh, Jacob A

2012-02-24

Access to organ transplantation depends on national circumstances, and is partly determined by the cost of health care, availability of transplant services, the level of technical capacity and the availability of organs. Commercial transplantation is estimated to account for 5%-10% (3500-7000) of kidney transplants performed annually throughout the world. This review is to determine the state and outcome of renal transplantation associated with transplant tourism (TT) and the key challenges with such transplantation. The stakeholders of commercial transplantation include: patients on the waiting lists in developed countries or not on any list in developing countries; dialysis funding bodies; middlemen, hosting transplant centres; organ-exporting countries; and organ vendors. TT and commercial kidney transplants are associated with a high incidence of surgical complications, acute rejection and invasive infection which cause major morbidity and mortality. There are ethical and medical concerns regarding the management of recipients of organs from vendors. The growing demand for transplantation, the perceived failure of altruistic donation in providing enough organs has led to calls for a legalised market in organ procurement or regulated trial in incentives for donation. Developing transplant services worldwide has many benefits - improving results of transplantation as they would be performed legally, increasing the donor pool and making TT unnecessary. Meanwhile there is a need to re-examine intrinsic attitudes to TT bearing in mind the cultural and economic realities of globalisation. Perhaps the World Health Organization in conjunction with The Transplantation Society would set up a working party of stakeholders to study this matter in greater detail and make recommendations.

Key issues in transplant tourism

PubMed Central

Akoh, Jacob A

2012-01-01

Access to organ transplantation depends on national circumstances, and is partly determined by the cost of health care, availability of transplant services, the level of technical capacity and the availability of organs. Commercial transplantation is estimated to account for 5%-10% (3500-7000) of kidney transplants performed annually throughout the world. This review is to determine the state and outcome of renal transplantation associated with transplant tourism (TT) and the key challenges with such transplantation. The stakeholders of commercial transplantation include: patients on the waiting lists in developed countries or not on any list in developing countries; dialysis funding bodies; middlemen, hosting transplant centres; organ-exporting countries; and organ vendors. TT and commercial kidney transplants are associated with a high incidence of surgical complications, acute rejection and invasive infection which cause major morbidity and mortality. There are ethical and medical concerns regarding the management of recipients of organs from vendors. The growing demand for transplantation, the perceived failure of altruistic donation in providing enough organs has led to calls for a legalised market in organ procurement or regulated trial in incentives for donation. Developing transplant services worldwide has many benefits - improving results of transplantation as they would be performed legally, increasing the donor pool and making TT unnecessary. Meanwhile there is a need to re-examine intrinsic attitudes to TT bearing in mind the cultural and economic realities of globalisation. Perhaps the World Health Organization in conjunction with The Transplantation Society would set up a working party of stakeholders to study this matter in greater detail and make recommendations. PMID:24175191

Neural Correlates of Contextual Cueing Are Modulated by Explicit Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Westerberg, Carmen E.; Miller, Brennan B.; Reber, Paul J.; Cohen, Neal J.; Paller, Ken A.

2011-01-01

Contextual cueing refers to the facilitated ability to locate a particular visual element in a scene due to prior exposure to the same scene. This facilitation is thought to reflect implicit learning, as it typically occurs without the observer's knowledge that scenes repeat. Unlike most other implicit learning effects, contextual cueing can be…

Effects of Normal Aging on Memory for Multiple Contextual Features

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gagnon, Sylvain; Soulard, Kathleen; Brasgold, Melissa; Kreller, Joshua

2007-01-01

Twenty-four younger (18-35 years) and 24 older adult participants (65 or older) were exposed to three experimental conditions involving the memorization words and their associated contextual features, with contextual feature complexity increasing from Conditions 1 to 3. In Condition 1, words presented varied only on one binary feature (color,…

MetaBar - a tool for consistent contextual data acquisition and standards compliant submission.

PubMed

Hankeln, Wolfgang; Buttigieg, Pier Luigi; Fink, Dennis; Kottmann, Renzo; Yilmaz, Pelin; Glöckner, Frank Oliver

2010-06-30

Environmental sequence datasets are increasing at an exponential rate; however, the vast majority of them lack appropriate descriptors like sampling location, time and depth/altitude: generally referred to as metadata or contextual data. The consistent capture and structured submission of these data is crucial for integrated data analysis and ecosystems modeling. The application MetaBar has been developed, to support consistent contextual data acquisition. MetaBar is a spreadsheet and web-based software tool designed to assist users in the consistent acquisition, electronic storage, and submission of contextual data associated to their samples. A preconfigured Microsoft Excel spreadsheet is used to initiate structured contextual data storage in the field or laboratory. Each sample is given a unique identifier and at any stage the sheets can be uploaded to the MetaBar database server. To label samples, identifiers can be printed as barcodes. An intuitive web interface provides quick access to the contextual data in the MetaBar database as well as user and project management capabilities. Export functions facilitate contextual and sequence data submission to the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC), comprising of the DNA DataBase of Japan (DDBJ), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory database (EMBL) and GenBank. MetaBar requests and stores contextual data in compliance to the Genomic Standards Consortium specifications. The MetaBar open source code base for local installation is available under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GNU GPL3). The MetaBar software supports the typical workflow from data acquisition and field-sampling to contextual data enriched sequence submission to an INSDC database. The integration with the megx.net marine Ecological Genomics database and portal facilitates georeferenced data integration and metadata-based comparisons of sampling sites as well as interactive data visualization. The ample export

Inhibition of Rac1 activity in the hippocampus impaired extinction of contextual fear.

PubMed

Jiang, Lizhu; Mao, Rongrong; Tong, Jianbin; Li, Jinnan; Chai, Anping; Zhou, Qixin; Yang, Yuexiong; Wang, Liping; Li, Lingjiang; Xu, Lin

2016-10-01

Promoting extinction of fear memory is the main treatment of fear disorders, especially post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, fear extinction is often incomplete in these patients. Our previous study had shown that Rac1 activity in hippocampus plays a crucial role in the learning of contextual fear memory in rats. Here, we further investigated whether Rac1 activity also modulated the extinction of contextual fear memory. We found that massed extinction obviously upregulated hippocampal Rac1 activity and induced long-term extinction of contextual fear in rats. Intrahippocampal injection of the Rac1 inhibitor NSC23766 prevents extinction of contextual fear in massed extinction training rats. In contrast, long-spaced extinction downregulated Rac1 activity and caused less extinction. And Rac1 activator CN04-A promotes extinction of contextual fear in long-spaced extinction rats. Our study demonstrates that inhibition of Rac1 activity in the hippocampus impaired extinction of contextual fear, suggesting that modulating Rac1 activity of the hippocampus may be promising therapy of fear disorders. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of contextual relevance on pragmatic inference during conversation: An fMRI study.

PubMed

Feng, Wangshu; Wu, Yue; Jan, Catherine; Yu, Hongbo; Jiang, Xiaoming; Zhou, Xiaolin

2017-08-01

Contextual relevance, which is vital for understanding conversational implicatures (CI), engages both the frontal-temporal language and theory-of-mind networks. Here we investigate how contextual relevance affects CI processing and regulates the connectivity between CI-processing-related brain regions. Participants listened to dialogues in which the level of contextual relevance to dialogue-final utterance (reply) was manipulated. This utterance was either direct, indirect but relevant, irrelevant with contextual hint, or irrelevant with no contextual hint. Results indicated that compared with direct replies, indirect replies showed increased activations in bilateral IFG, bilateral MTG, bilateral TPJ, dmPFC, and precuneus, and increased connectivity between rTPJ/dmPFC and both IFG and MTG. Moreover, irrelevant replies activated right MTG along an anterior-posterior gradient as a function of the level of irrelevance. Our study provides novel evidence concerning how the language and theory-of-mind networks interact for pragmatic inference and how the processing of CI is modulated by level of contextual relevance. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Development Co-operation and Linkages in Higher Education: Key Issues Concerning Policy and Organisation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

van Audenhove, Leo

1998-09-01

The term linkage is used to indicate co-operation between an institution in the North and an institution in the South. Donor organisations have generally used linkages to support the development of higher education and research in developing countries. Over time, there has been a trend away from co-operation on individual academic projects towards broader development co- operation and concentration on selected institutions. This shift raises questions about organisation, procedures and support mechanisms, and about the mandate and capabilities of universities in the North, given the frequently asymmetrical relationship between Northern institutions with their own research agendas and Southern beneficiaries. The recent restructuring of Canadian, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish support for higher education and research is the result of a search for new, more appropriate models of co-operation. This paper examines the evolution of key issues of policy and organisation within the international donor community.

Key issues for low-cost FGD installations

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

DePriest, W.; Mazurek, J.M.

1995-12-01

This paper will discuss various methods for installing low-cost FGD systems. The paper will include a discussion of various types of FGD systems available, both wet and dry, and will compare the relative cost of each type. Important design issues, such as use of spare equipment, materials of construction, etc. will be presented. An overview of various low-cost construction techniques (i.e., modularization) will be included. This paper will draw heavily from Sargent & Lundy`s database of past and current FGD projects together with information we gathered for several Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) studies on the subject.

Parallel processing implementations of a contextual classifier for multispectral remote sensing data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Siegel, H. J.; Swain, P. H.; Smith, B. W.

1980-01-01

Contextual classifiers are being developed as a method to exploit the spatial/spectral context of a pixel to achieve accurate classification. Classification algorithms such as the contextual classifier typically require large amounts of computation time. One way to reduce the execution time of these tasks is through the use of parallelism. The applicability of the CDC flexible processor system and of a proposed multimicroprocessor system (PASM) for implementing contextual classifiers is examined.

Issues in Rural Primary Education in Europe: A Summary of a Symposium on Issues in Rural Education at the European Conference on Educational Research (Seville, Spain, September 25-29, 1996).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hargreaves, Linda M.

This paper summarizes a symposium on issues in rural education held at the 1996 European Conference on Educational Research held in Seville, Spain. The symposium aimed to gather contextual information about rural primary schools and included presentations from researchers in Sweden, Finland, Scotland, Ireland, and Greece. Participants from the…

The Influence of Contextual Diversity on Eye Movements in Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Plummer, Patrick; Perea, Manuel; Rayner, Keith

2014-01-01

Recent research has shown contextual diversity (i.e., the number of passages in which a given word appears) to be a reliable predictor of word processing difficulty. It has also been demonstrated that word-frequency has little or no effect on word recognition speed when accounting for contextual diversity in isolated word processing tasks. An…

Quantifying Contextual Interference and Its Effect on Skill Transfer in Skilled Youth Tennis Players

PubMed Central

Buszard, Tim; Reid, Machar; Krause, Lyndon; Kovalchik, Stephanie; Farrow, Damian

2017-01-01

The contextual interference effect is a well-established motor learning phenomenon. Most of the contextual interference effect literature has addressed simple skills, while less is known about the role of contextual interference in complex sport skill practice, particularly with respect to skilled performers. The purpose of this study was to assess contextual interference when practicing the tennis serve. Study 1 evaluated tennis serve practice of nine skilled youth tennis players using a novel statistical metric developed specifically to measure between-skill and within-skill variability as sources of contextual interference. This metric highlighted that skilled tennis players typically engaged in serve practice that featured low contextual interference. In Study 2, 16 skilled youth tennis players participated in 10 practice sessions that aimed to improve serving “down the T.” Participants were stratified into a low contextual interference practice group (Low CI) and a moderate contextual interference practice group (Moderate CI). Pre- and post-tests were conducted 1 week before and 1 week after the practice period. Testing involved a skill test, which assessed serving performance in a closed setting, and a transfer test, which assessed serving performance in a match-play setting. No significant contextual interference differences were observed with respect to practice performance. However, analysis of pre- and post-test serve performance revealed significant Group × Time interactions. The Moderate CI group showed no change in serving performance (service displacement from the T) from pre- to post-test in the skill test, but did display improvements in the transfer test. Conversely, the Low CI group improved serving performance (service displacement from the T) in the skill test but not the transfer test. Results suggest that the typical contextual interference effect is less clear when practicing a complex motor skill, at least with the tennis serve skill

The effects of acute nicotine on contextual safety discrimination.

PubMed

Kutlu, Munir G; Oliver, Chicora; Gould, Thomas J

2014-11-01

Anxiety disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), may be related to an inability to distinguish safe versus threatening environments and to extinguish fear memories. Given the high rate of cigarette smoking in patients with PTSD, as well as the recent finding that an acute dose of nicotine impairs extinction of contextual fear memory, we conducted a series of experiments to investigate the effect of acute nicotine in an animal model of contextual safety discrimination. Following saline or nicotine (at 0.0275, 0.045, 0.09 and 0.18 mg/kg) administration, C57BL/6J mice were trained in a contextual discrimination paradigm, in which the subjects received presentations of conditioned stimuli (CS) that co-terminated with a foot-shock in one context (context A (CXA)) and only CS presentations without foot-shock in a different context (context B (CXB)). Therefore, CXA was designated as the 'dangerous context', whereas CXB was designated as the 'safe context'. Our results suggested that saline-treated animals showed a strong discrimination between dangerous and safe contexts, while acute nicotine dose-dependently impaired contextual safety discrimination (Experiment 1). Furthermore, our results demonstrate that nicotine-induced impairment of contextual safety discrimination learning was not a result of increased generalized freezing (Experiment 2) or contingent on the common CS presentations in both contexts (Experiment 3). Finally, our results show that increasing the temporal gap between CXA and CXB during training abolished the impairing effects of nicotine (Experiment 4). The findings of this study may help link nicotine exposure to the safety learning deficits seen in anxiety disorder and PTSD patients. © The Author(s) 2014.

What makes you tic? Translational approaches to study the role of stress and contextual triggers in Tourette syndrome

PubMed Central

Godar, Sean C; Bortolato, Marco

2016-01-01

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by multiple, recurring motor and phonic tics. Rich empirical evidence shows that the severity of tics and associated manifestations is increased by several stressors and contextual triggers; however, the neurobiological mechanisms responsible for symptom exacerbation in TS remain poorly understood. This conceptual gap partially reflects the high phenotypic variability in tics, as well as the existing difficulties in operationalizing and standardizing stress and its effects in a clinical setting. Animal models of TS may be highly informative tools to overcome some of these limitations; these experimental preparations have already provided critical insights on key aspects of TS pathophysiology, and may prove useful to identify the neurochemical alterations induced by different stressful contingencies. In particular, emerging knowledge on the role of contextual triggers in animal models of TS may inform the development of novel pharmacological interventions to reduce tic fluctuations in this disorder. PMID:27939782

Key Issues in the Modes of Action and Effects of Trichloroethylene Metabolites for Liver and Kidney Tumorigenesis

PubMed Central

Caldwell, Jane C.; Keshava, Nagalakshmi

2006-01-01

Trichloroethylene (TCE) exposure has been associated with increased risk of liver and kidney cancer in both laboratory animal and epidemiologic studies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 2001 draft TCE risk assessment concluded that it is difficult to determine which TCE metabolites may be responsible for these effects, the key events involved in their modes of action (MOAs), and the relevance of these MOAs to humans. In this article, which is part of a mini-monograph on key issues in the health risk assessment of TCE, we present a review of recently published scientific literature examining the effects of TCE metabolites in the context of the preceding questions. Studies of the TCE metabolites dichloroacetic acid (DCA), trichloroacetic acid (TCA), and chloral hydrate suggest that both DCA and TCA are involved in TCE-induced liver tumorigenesis and that many DCA effects are consistent with conditions that increase the risk of liver cancer in humans. Studies of S-(1,2-dichlorovinyl)-l-cysteine have revealed a number of different possible cell signaling effects that may be related to kidney tumorigenesis at lower concentrations than those leading to cytotoxicity. Recent studies of trichloroethanol exploring an alternative hypothesis for kidney tumorigenesis have failed to establish the formation of formate as a key event for TCE-induced kidney tumors. Overall, although MOAs and key events for TCE-induced liver and kidney tumors have yet to be definitively established, these results support the likelihood that toxicity is due to multiple metabolites through several MOAs, none of which appear to be irrelevant to humans. PMID:16966105

Time-dependent effects of cortisol on the contextualization of emotional memories.

PubMed

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

2013-12-01

The inability to store fearful memories into their original encoding context is considered to be an important vulnerability factor for the development of anxiety disorders like posttraumatic stress disorder. Altered memory contextualization most likely involves effects of the stress hormone cortisol, acting via receptors located in the memory neurocircuitry. Cortisol via these receptors induces rapid nongenomic effects followed by slower genomic effects, which are thought to modulate cognitive function in opposite, complementary ways. Here, we targeted these time-dependent effects of cortisol during memory encoding and tested subsequent contextualization of emotional and neutral memories. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled design, 64 men were randomly assigned to one of three groups: 1) received 10 mg hydrocortisone 30 minutes (rapid cortisol effects) before a memory encoding task; 2) received 10 mg hydrocortisone 210 minutes (slow cortisol) before a memory encoding task; or 3) received placebo at both times. During encoding, participants were presented with neutral and emotional words in unique background pictures. Approximately 24 hours later, context dependency of their memories was assessed. Recognition data revealed that cortisol's rapid effects impair emotional memory contextualization, while cortisol's slow effects enhance it. Neutral memory contextualization remained unaltered by cortisol, irrespective of the timing of the drug. This study shows distinct time-dependent effects of cortisol on the contextualization of specifically emotional memories. The results suggest that rapid effects of cortisol may lead to impaired emotional memory contextualization, while slow effects of cortisol may confer protection against emotional memory generalization. © 2013 Society of Biological Psychiatry.

Hypobaric hypoxia impairs cued and contextual fear memory in rats.

PubMed

Kumari, Punita; Kauser, Hina; Wadhwa, Meetu; Roy, Koustav; Alam, Shahnawaz; Sahu, Surajit; Kishore, Krishna; Ray, Koushik; Panjwani, Usha

2018-04-26

Fear memory is essential for survival, and its dysregulation leads to disorders. High altitude hypobaric hypoxia (HH) is known to induce cognitive decline. However, its effect on fear memory is still an enigma. We aimed to investigate the temporal effect of HH on fear conditioning and the underlying mechanism. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were trained for fear conditioning and exposed to simulated HH equivalent to 25,000 ft for different durations (1, 3, 7, 14 and 21 days). Subsequently, rats were tested for cued and contextual fear conditioning. Neuronal morphology, apoptosis and DNA fragmentation were studied in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), hippocampus and basolateral amygdala (BLA). We observed significant deficit in cued and contextual fear acquisition (at 1, 3 and 7 days) and consolidation (cued at 1 and 3 days and contextual fear at 1, 3 and 7 days) under HH. HH exposure with retraining showed the earlier restoration of contextual fear memory. Further, we found a gradual increase in the number of pyknotic and apoptotic neurons together with the increase in DNA fragmentation in mPFC, hippocampus, and BLA up to 7 days of HH exposure. The present study concludes that HH exposure equivalent to 25000 ft induced cued and contextual fear memory deficit (acquisition and consolidation) which is found to be correlated with the neurodegenerative changes in the limbic brain regions. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Effects of Prediction and Contextual Support on Lexical Processing: Prediction takes Precedence

PubMed Central

Brothers, Trevor; Swaab, Tamara Y.; Traxler, Matthew J.

2014-01-01

Readers may use contextual information to anticipate and pre-activate specific lexical items during reading. However, prior studies have not clearly dissociated the effects of accurate lexical prediction from other forms of contextual facilitation such as plausibility or semantic priming. In this study, we measured electrophysiological responses to predicted and unpredicted target words in passages providing varying levels of contextual support. This method was used to isolate the neural effects of prediction from other potential contextual influences on lexical processing. While both prediction and discourse context influenced ERP amplitudes within the time range of the N400, the effects of prediction occurred much more rapidly, preceding contextual facilitation by approximately 100ms. In addition, a frontal, post-N400 positivity (PNP) was modulated by both prediction accuracy and the overall plausibility of the preceding passage. These results suggest a unique temporal primacy for prediction in facilitating lexical access. They also suggest that the frontal PNP may index the costs of revising discourse representations following an incorrect lexical prediction. PMID:25497522

Generation and memory for contextual detail.

PubMed

Mulligan, Neil W

2004-07-01

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-c__) and read others (e.g., hot-cold). Generation consistently enhanced item memory but did not enhance context memory. More specifically, generation disrupted context memory for the color of the target word but did not affect context memory for location, background color, and cue-word color. The specificity of the negative generation effect in context memory argues against a general item-context trade-off. A processing account of generation meets greater success. In addition, the results provide no evidence that generation enhances recollection of contextual details. Copyright 2004 APA, all rights reserved

Neuropathological biomarker candidates in brain tumors: key issues for translational efficiency.

PubMed

Hainfellner, J A; Heinzl, H

2010-01-01

Brain tumors comprise a large spectrum of rare malignancies in children and adults that are often associated with severe neurological symptoms and fatal outcome. Neuropathological tumor typing provides both prognostic and predictive tissue information which is the basis for optimal postoperative patient management and therapy. Molecular biomarkers may extend and refine prognostic and predictive information in a brain tumor case, providing more individualized and optimized treatment options. In the recent past a few neuropathological brain tumor biomarkers have translated smoothly into clinical use whereas many candidates show protracted translation. We investigated the causes of protracted translation of candidate brain tumor biomarkers. Considering the research environment from personal, social and systemic perspectives we identified eight determinants of translational success: methodology, funding, statistics, organization, phases of research, cooperation, self-reflection, and scientific progeny. Smoothly translating biomarkers are associated with low degrees of translational complexity whereas biomarkers with protracted translation are associated with high degrees. Key issues for translational efficiency of neuropathological brain tumor biomarker research seem to be related to (i) the strict orientation to the mission of medical research, that is the improval of medical practice as primordial purpose of research, (ii) definition of research priorities according to clinical needs, and (iii) absorption of translational complexities by means of operatively beneficial standards. To this end, concrete actions should comprise adequate scientific education of young investigators, and shaping of integrative diagnostics and therapy research both on the local level and the level of influential international brain tumor research platforms.

The Earth's radiation belts modelling : main issues and key directions for improvement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maget, Vincent; Boscher, Daniel

The Earth's radiation belts can be considered as an opened system covering a wide part of the inner magnetosphere which closely interacts with the surrounding cold plasma. Although its population constitutes only the highly energetic tail of the global inner magnetosphere plasma (electrons from a few tens of keV to more than 5 MeV and protons up to 500MeV), their modelling is of prime importance for satellite robustness design. They have been modelled at ONERA for more than 15 years now through the Salammbˆ code, which models the dynamic of the Earth's radiation belts at the drift timescale (order of the hour). It takes into accounts the main processes acting on the trapped particles, which depends on the electromagnetic configuration and on the characteristics of the surrounding cold plasma : the ionosphere as losses terms, the plasmasheet as sources ones and the plasmasphere through interactions (waves-particles interactions, coulomb scattering, electric fields shielding, . . . ). Consequently, a fine knowledge of these environments and their interactions with the radiation belts is of prime importance in their modelling. Issues in the modelling currently exist, but key directions for improvements can also be highlighted. This talk aims at presenting both of them according to recent developments performed at ONERA besides the Salammbˆ code. o

A review on the key issues for lithium-ion battery management in electric vehicles

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lu, Languang; Han, Xuebing; Li, Jianqiu; Hua, Jianfeng; Ouyang, Minggao

2013-03-01

Compared with other commonly used batteries, lithium-ion batteries are featured by high energy density, high power density, long service life and environmental friendliness and thus have found wide application in the area of consumer electronics. However, lithium-ion batteries for vehicles have high capacity and large serial-parallel numbers, which, coupled with such problems as safety, durability, uniformity and cost, imposes limitations on the wide application of lithium-ion batteries in the vehicle. The narrow area in which lithium-ion batteries operate with safety and reliability necessitates the effective control and management of battery management system. This present paper, through the analysis of literature and in combination with our practical experience, gives a brief introduction to the composition of the battery management system (BMS) and its key issues such as battery cell voltage measurement, battery states estimation, battery uniformity and equalization, battery fault diagnosis and so on, in the hope of providing some inspirations to the design and research of the battery management system.

From Research to Practice: A Framework for Contextualizing Teaching and Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ambrose, Valerie K.; Davis, C. Amelia; Ziegler, Mary F.

2013-01-01

Developmental reading instructors are increasingly pressured to include real-world content in their curriculum to bring contextualized teaching and learning to life. The purpose of this practitioner-focused article is to tie knowledge about contextualized teaching and learning with classroom application techniques. We present a framework that…

A dissociation between renewal and contextual fear conditioning in juvenile rats.

PubMed

Park, Chun Hui J; Ganella, Despina E; Kim, Jee Hyun

2017-05-01

We investigated whether juvenile rats do not express renewal following extinction of conditioned fear due to their inability to form a long-term contextual fear memory. In experiment 1, postnatal day (P) 18 and 25 rats received 3 white-noise and footshock pairings, followed by 60 white-noise alone presentations the next day. When tested in a different context to extinction, P25 rats displayed renewal whereas P18 rats did not. Experiments 2A and 2B surprisingly showed that P18 and P25 rats do not show differences in contextual and cued fear, regardless of the conditioning-test intervals and the number of white-noise-footshock pairings received. Finally, we observed age differences in contextual fear when P25 rats were weaned at P21 in experiment 3. These results indicate that the developmental dissociation observed in renewal of extinguished fear is not related to the widely believed late emergence of contextual fear learning. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A Contextual Information Acquisition Approach Based on Semantics and Mashup Technology

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

He, Yangfan; Li, Lu; He, Keqing; Chen, Xiuhong

Pay per use is an essential feature of cloud computing. Users can make use of some parts of a large scale service to satisfy their requirements, merely at the cost of a little payment. A good understanding of the users' requirement is a prerequisite for choosing the service in need precisely. Context implies users' potential requirements, which can be a complement to the requirements delivered explicitly. However, traditional context-aware computing research always demands some specific kinds of sensors to acquire contextual information, which renders a threshold too high for an application to become context-aware. This paper comes up with an approach which combines contextual information obtained directly and indirectly from the cloud services. Semantic relationship between different kinds of contexts lays foundation for the searching of the cloud services. And mashup technology is adopted to compose the heterogonous services. Abundant contextual information may lend strong support to a comprehensive understanding of users' context and a bettered abstraction of contextual requirements.

Contextuality and Wigner-function negativity in qubit quantum computation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Raussendorf, Robert; Browne, Dan E.; Delfosse, Nicolas; Okay, Cihan; Bermejo-Vega, Juan

2017-05-01

We describe schemes of quantum computation with magic states on qubits for which contextuality and negativity of the Wigner function are necessary resources possessed by the magic states. These schemes satisfy a constraint. Namely, the non-negativity of Wigner functions must be preserved under all available measurement operations. Furthermore, we identify stringent consistency conditions on such computational schemes, revealing the general structure by which negativity of Wigner functions, hardness of classical simulation of the computation, and contextuality are connected.

MetaBar - a tool for consistent contextual data acquisition and standards compliant submission

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background Environmental sequence datasets are increasing at an exponential rate; however, the vast majority of them lack appropriate descriptors like sampling location, time and depth/altitude: generally referred to as metadata or contextual data. The consistent capture and structured submission of these data is crucial for integrated data analysis and ecosystems modeling. The application MetaBar has been developed, to support consistent contextual data acquisition. Results MetaBar is a spreadsheet and web-based software tool designed to assist users in the consistent acquisition, electronic storage, and submission of contextual data associated to their samples. A preconfigured Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet is used to initiate structured contextual data storage in the field or laboratory. Each sample is given a unique identifier and at any stage the sheets can be uploaded to the MetaBar database server. To label samples, identifiers can be printed as barcodes. An intuitive web interface provides quick access to the contextual data in the MetaBar database as well as user and project management capabilities. Export functions facilitate contextual and sequence data submission to the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC), comprising of the DNA DataBase of Japan (DDBJ), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory database (EMBL) and GenBank. MetaBar requests and stores contextual data in compliance to the Genomic Standards Consortium specifications. The MetaBar open source code base for local installation is available under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GNU GPL3). Conclusion The MetaBar software supports the typical workflow from data acquisition and field-sampling to contextual data enriched sequence submission to an INSDC database. The integration with the megx.net marine Ecological Genomics database and portal facilitates georeferenced data integration and metadata-based comparisons of sampling sites as well as interactive data

Minimal Distance to Approximating Noncontextual System as a Measure of Contextuality

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kujala, Janne V.

2017-07-01

Let random vectors Rc={Rpc:p\\in Pc} represent joint measurements of certain subsets Pc\\subset P of properties p\\in P in different contexts c\\in C. Such a system is traditionally called noncontextual if there exists a jointly distributed set {Qp:p\\in P} of random variables such that Rc has the same distribution as {Qp:p\\in Pc} for all c\\in C. A trivial necessary condition for noncontextuality and a precondition for many measures of contextuality is that the system is consistently connected, i.e., all Rpc,Rp^{c^' }},\\dots measuring the same property p\\in P have the same distribution. The contextuality-by-default (CbD) approach allows defining more general measures of contextuality that apply to inconsistently connected systems as well, but at the price of a higher computational cost. In this paper we propose a novel measure of contextuality that shares the generality of the CbD approach and the computational benefits of the previously proposed negative probability (NP) approach. The present approach differs from CbD in that instead of considering all possible joints of the double-indexed random variables Rpc, it considers all possible approximating single-indexed systems {Qp:p\\in P}. The degree of contextuality is defined based on the minimum possible probabilistic distance of the actual measurements Rc from {Qp:p\\in Pc}. We show that this measure, called the optimal approximation (OA) measure, agrees with a certain measure of contextuality of the CbD approach for all systems where each property enters in exactly two contexts. The OA measure can be calculated far more efficiently than the CbD measure and even more efficiently than the NP measure for sufficiently large systems. We also define a variant, the OA-NP measure of contextuality that agrees with the NP measure for consistently connected (non-signaling) systems while extending it to inconsistently connected systems.

Contextual Factors Impacting a Pain Management Intervention.

PubMed

Alaloul, Fawwaz; Williams, Kimberly; Myers, John; Jones, Kayla Dlauren; Sullivan, Katelyn; Logsdon, M Cynthia

2017-09-01

To determine if findings from our preliminary study related to patient and nursing satisfaction with a pain management intervention could be replicated in a changed environment, and if contextual factors could impact the effectiveness of a pain management intervention on patient satisfaction with nursing staff's management of pain. A prospective, experimental design was used with six monthly assessments before, during, and after the intervention. Data were collected from 540 patients admitted to eight medical surgical and progressive care units and nurses that worked in these units at an academic health sciences center in the southern United States, from March to July 2015. The script-based, pain management communication intervention included three specific tactics: script-based communication, use of white boards, and hourly rounding. The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey was used to assess two items: "pain is well controlled" and "staff did everything they could to help with pain." Contextual factors focused on the practice setting. Both scores for "pain is well controlled" (β = .028, p = 0.651) and scores for "staff did everything they could to help with pain" (β = .057,p = .385) did not change initially but then increased significantly and were sustained over time. Nurses had high levels of satisfaction with the intervention (M = 7.9, SD = 2.1) and compliance with the intervention (M = 8.0, SD = 1.9), and had little difficulty in implementing the intervention (M = 8.3, SD = 1.4). In terms of contextual factors, the number of beds on the unit and the number of patients being discharged negatively impacted scores for "pain is well controlled" and "staff did everything they could to help with pain." Hospital length of stay positively impacted scores for "pain is well controlled" by staff. Despite challenging contextual variables, the study extended the findings of an early preliminary study in showing the effectiveness of

Response time modeling reveals multiple contextual cuing mechanisms.

PubMed

Sewell, David K; Colagiuri, Ben; Livesey, Evan J

2017-08-24

Contextual cuing refers to a response time (RT) benefit that occurs when observers search through displays that have been repeated over the course of an experiment. Although it is generally agreed that contextual cuing arises via an associative learning mechanism, there is uncertainty about the type(s) of process(es) that allow learning to influence RT. We contrast two leading accounts of the contextual cuing effect that differ in terms of the general process that is credited with producing the effect. The first, the expedited search account, attributes the cuing effect to an increase in the speed with which the target is acquired. The second, the decision threshold account, attributes the cuing effect to a reduction in the response threshold used by observers when making a subsequent decision about the target (e.g., judging its orientation). We use the diffusion model to contrast the quantitative predictions of these two accounts at the level of individual observers. Our use of the diffusion model allows us to also explore a novel decision-level locus of the cuing effect based on perceptual learning. This novel account attributes the RT benefit to a perceptual learning process that increases the quality of information used to drive the decision process. Our results reveal both individual differences in the process(es) involved in contextual cuing but also identify several striking regularities across observers. We find strong support for both the decision threshold account as well as the novel perceptual learning account. We find relatively weak support for the expedited search account.

The Coming Challenge: Are Community Colleges Ready for the New Wave of Contextual Learners?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hull, Dan; Souders, John C., Jr.

1996-01-01

Defines contextual learning, or presenting new information to students in familiar contexts. Argues that community colleges must be ready for an anticipated increase in contextual learners due to its use in tech prep programs. Describes elements of contextual learning, its application in the classroom, and ways that colleges can prepare for…

A view of software management issues

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Manley, J. H.

1985-01-01

The Software Development Environment (SDE) Panel addressed key programmatic, scope, and structural issues raised by its members and the general audience regarding the proposed software development environment for the Space Station program. The general team approach taken by this group led to a consensus on 18 recommendations to NASA mangament regarding the acquisition and definition of the SDE. This approach was keyed by the initial issues presentation given to the general audience. Additional issues (for a total of 23) were developed by the panelists in their first closed session from which key areas were selected and discussed in open session. These discussions led to key recommendations which are summarized and described.

The Trans-Contextual Model of Autonomous Motivation in Education

PubMed Central

Hagger, Martin S.; Chatzisarantis, Nikos L. D.

2015-01-01

The trans-contextual model outlines the processes by which autonomous motivation toward activities in a physical education context predicts autonomous motivation toward physical activity outside of school, and beliefs about, intentions toward, and actual engagement in, out-of-school physical activity. In the present article, we clarify the fundamental propositions of the model and resolve some outstanding conceptual issues, including its generalizability across multiple educational domains, criteria for its rejection or failed replication, the role of belief-based antecedents of intentions, and the causal ordering of its constructs. We also evaluate the consistency of model relationships in previous tests of the model using path-analytic meta-analysis. The analysis supported model hypotheses but identified substantial heterogeneity in the hypothesized relationships across studies unattributed to sampling and measurement error. Based on our meta-analysis, future research needs to provide further replications of the model in diverse educational settings beyond physical education and test model hypotheses using experimental methods. PMID:27274585

Revisiting Employee Assistance Programs and Substance Use Problems in the Workplace: Key Issues and a Research Agenda

PubMed Central

Levy Merrick, Elizabeth S.; Volpe-Vartanian, Joanna; Horgan, Constance M.; McCann, Bernard

2012-01-01

This column describes employee assistance program (EAPs) and identifies key issues for contemporary EAPs. These programs began as occupational alcohol programs and have evolved into more comprehensive resources. To better understand contemporary EAPs, the authors suggest a research agenda at includes descriptive studies to provide an up-to-date picture of services; investigations of how contemporary EAPs address substance use problems, including management consultation for early identification; further study of EAPs’ effects on outcomes, such as productivity and work group outcomes; examination of the relationship between EAPs and other workplace resources; further examination of influences on EAP utilization; and development and testing of EAP performance measures. PMID:17914000

Contextual fear conditioning differs for infant, adolescent, and adult rats

PubMed Central

Esmorís-Arranz, Francisco J.; Méndez, Cástor; Spear, Norman E.

2009-01-01

Contextual fear conditioning was tested in infant, adolescent, and adult rats in terms of Pavlovian conditioned suppression. When a discrete auditory conditioned stimulus (CS) was paired with footshock (unconditioned stimulus, US) within the largely olfactory context, infants and adolescents conditioned to the context with substantial effectiveness but adult rats did not. When unpaired presentations of the CS and US occurred within the context, contextual fear conditioning was strong for adults, weak for infants, but about as strong for adolescents as when pairings of CS and US occurred in the context. Nonreinforced presentations of either the CS or context markedly reduced contextual fear conditioning in infants, but, in adolescents, CS extinction had no effect on contextual fear conditioning, although context extinction significantly reduced it. Neither CS extinction nor context extinction affected responding to the CS-context compound in infants, suggesting striking discrimination between the compound and its components. Female adolescents showed the same lack of effect of component extinction on response to the compound as infants, but CS extinction reduced responding to the compound in adolescent males, a sex difference seen also in adults. Theoretical implications are discussed for the development of perceptual-cognitive processing and hippocampus role. PMID:18343048

Context-specific attentional sampling: Intentional control as a pre-requisite for contextual control.

PubMed

Brosowsky, Nicholaus P; Crump, Matthew J C

2016-08-01

Recent work suggests that environmental cues associated with previous attentional control settings can rapidly and involuntarily adjust attentional priorities. The current study tests predictions from adaptive-learning and memory-based theories of contextual control about the role of intentions for setting attentional priorities. To extend the empirical boundaries of contextual control phenomena, and to determine whether theoretical principles of contextual control are generalizable we used a novel bi-dimensional stimulus sampling task. Subjects viewed briefly presented arrays of letters and colors presented above or below fixation, and identified specific stimuli according to a dimensional (letter or color) and positional cue. Location was predictive of the cued dimension, but not the position or identity. In contrast to previous findings, contextual control failed to develop through automatic, adaptive-learning processes. Instead, previous experience with intentionally changing attentional sampling priorities between different contexts was required for contextual control to develop. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Contextual diversity is a main determinant of word identification times in young readers.

PubMed

Perea, Manuel; Soares, Ana Paula; Comesaña, Montserrat

2013-09-01

Recent research with college-aged skilled readers by Adelman and colleagues revealed that contextual diversity (i.e., the number of contexts in which a word appears) is a more critical determinant of visual word recognition than mere repeated exposure (i.e., word frequency) (Psychological Science, 2006, Vol. 17, pp. 814-823). Given that contextual diversity has been claimed to be a relevant factor to word acquisition in developing readers, the effects of contextual diversity should also be a main determinant of word identification times in developing readers. A lexical decision experiment was conducted to examine the effects of contextual diversity and word frequency in young readers (children in fourth grade). Results revealed a sizable effect of contextual diversity, but not of word frequency, thereby generalizing Adelman and colleagues' data to a child population. These findings call for the implementation of dynamic developmental models of visual word recognition that go beyond a learning rule by mere exposure. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Use of contextual inquiry to understand anatomic pathology workflow: Implications for digital pathology adoption

PubMed Central

Ho, Jonhan; Aridor, Orly; Parwani, Anil V.

2012-01-01

may possibly improve following the introduction of digital pathology systems were identified. These work processes included case management, case examination and review, and final case reporting. Furthermore, a digital slide system should integrate with the anatomic pathologic laboratory information system. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first study that utilized the contextual inquiry method to document AP workflow. Findings were used to establish key requirements for the design of digital pathology systems. PMID:23243553

Contextuality as a Resource for Models of Quantum Computation with Qubits

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bermejo-Vega, Juan; Delfosse, Nicolas; Browne, Dan E.; Okay, Cihan; Raussendorf, Robert

2017-09-01

A central question in quantum computation is to identify the resources that are responsible for quantum speed-up. Quantum contextuality has been recently shown to be a resource for quantum computation with magic states for odd-prime dimensional qudits and two-dimensional systems with real wave functions. The phenomenon of state-independent contextuality poses a priori an obstruction to characterizing the case of regular qubits, the fundamental building block of quantum computation. Here, we establish contextuality of magic states as a necessary resource for a large class of quantum computation schemes on qubits. We illustrate our result with a concrete scheme related to measurement-based quantum computation.

Reconsolidation and update of morphine-associated contextual memory in mice.

PubMed

Escosteguy-Neto, Joao Carlos; Varela, Patricia; Correa-Neto, Nelson Francisco; Coelho, Laura Segismundo; Onaivi, Emmanuel S; Santos-Junior, Jair Guilherme

2016-04-01

Drug addiction can be viewed as a pathological memory that is constantly retrieved and reconsolidated. Since drug abuse takes place in different contexts, it could be considered that reconsolidation plays a role in memory updating. There is consistent evidence supporting the role of reconsolidation in the strength and maintenance of contextual memories induced by drugs of abuse. However, this role is not well established in memory update. The purpose of the current study was to assess the reconsolidation process over memory update. C57BL6 mice were subjected to a morphine-induced, conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm. Based on CPP results, animals were divided into distinct experimental groups, according to the contextual characteristics of the re-exposure and a second CPP Test. Re-exposure in the original context was important for memory maintenance and re-exposure under discrete contextual changes resulted in memory updating, although original memory was maintained. Interestingly, cycloheximide, an inhibitor of protein synthesis, had different outcomes in our protocol. When the re-exposure was done under discrete contextual changes, cycloheximide treatment just after re-exposure blocked memory updating, without changes in memory maintenance. When re-exposure was done under the original context, only two subsequent cycloheximide injections (3 and 6h) disrupted later CPP expression. Considering the temporal window of protein synthesis in consolidation and reconsolidation, these findings suggest that re-exposure, according to the contextual characteristics in our protocol, could trigger both phenomena. Furthermore, when new information is present on retrieval, reconsolidation plays a pivotal role in memory updating. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Use of Contextual Learning to Teach Biochemistry to Dietetic Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Macaulay, J. O.; Van Damme, M. -P.; Walker, K. Z.

2009-01-01

This article describes the use of contextualized and "blended" learning to teach biochemistry to dietetic students during the second year of their professional training in a 4-year undergraduate degree (Bachelor of Nutrition and Dietetics). Contextualized content was used to engage students and motivate them to learn biochemistry, which many…

A Pilot Study of a Functional Contextual Treatment for Bulimia Nervosa

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Drew A.; Simmons, Angela M.

2008-01-01

This paper describes the initial development of a treatment for bulimia nervosa using a functional contextual treatment approach. Seven women (6 with a diagnosis of bulimia nervosa and 1 with a diagnosis of eating disorder not otherwise specified) completed 12 sessions of functional contextual treatment. Participants were assessed with the Eating…

Effects of Minute Contextual Experience on Realistic Assessment of Proportional Reasoning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Matney, Gabriel; Jackson, Jack L., II; Bostic, Jonathan

2013-01-01

This mixed methods study describes the effects of a "minute contextual experience" on students' ability to solve a realistic assessment problem involving scale drawings and proportional reasoning. Minute contextual experience (MCE) is defined to be a brief encounter with a context in which aspects of the context are explored openly. The…

Contextual factors influencing HIV risk behavior in Central Asia

PubMed Central

Smolak, Alex

2010-01-01

Central Asia has experienced a rapid increase in HIV. HIV interventions and prevention programmes are needed that adequately appreciate and account for the ways that ongoing cultural, political, and economic changes in this region affect HIV risk reduction efforts. Drawing on relevant literature, this paper provides a contextual foundation to better understand the impact of context on HIV risk behaviour in the countries of Central Asia and to begin the conversation on the contextual factors of Islam and polygamy. PMID:20301020

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.

Contextual interference processing during fast categorisations of facial expressions.

PubMed

Frühholz, Sascha; Trautmann-Lengsfeld, Sina A; Herrmann, Manfred

2011-09-01

We examined interference effects of emotionally associated background colours during fast valence categorisations of negative, neutral and positive expressions. According to implicitly learned colour-emotion associations, facial expressions were presented with colours that either matched the valence of these expressions or not. Experiment 1 included infrequent non-matching trials and Experiment 2 a balanced ratio of matching and non-matching trials. Besides general modulatory effects of contextual features on the processing of facial expressions, we found differential effects depending on the valance of target facial expressions. Whereas performance accuracy was mainly affected for neutral expressions, performance speed was specifically modulated by emotional expressions indicating some susceptibility of emotional expressions to contextual features. Experiment 3 used two further colour-emotion combinations, but revealed only marginal interference effects most likely due to missing colour-emotion associations. The results are discussed with respect to inherent processing demands of emotional and neutral expressions and their susceptibility to contextual interference.

Health care financing in Asia: key issues and challenges.

PubMed

Kwon, Soonman

2011-09-01

This article examines the major elements of health care financing such as financial risk protection, resource generation, resource pooling, and purchasing and payment; provides key lessons; and discusses the challenges for health care financing systems of Asian countries. With the exception of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, most health care systems of Asia provide very limited financial risk protection. The role of public prepaid schemes such as tax and social health insurance is minimal, and out-of-pocket payment is a major source of financing. The large informal sector is a major challenge to the extension of population coverage in many low-income countries of Asia, which must seek the optimal mix of tax subsidy and health insurance for universal coverage. Implementation of effective payment systems to control the behavior of health care providers is also a key factor in the success of health care financing reform in Asia.

Students' Reasoning and Decision Making about a Socioscientific Issue: A Cross-Context Comparison

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Yeung Chung; Grace, Marcus

2012-01-01

It has been argued that decision making about socioscientific issue (SSIs) necessitates informal reasoning, which involves multiperspective thinking and moral judgment. This study extends the scope of the literature concerning students' reasoning on SSIs to a cross-contextual study by comparing decisions made on avian flu by 12-13-year-old Chinese…

Properties of Contextual Memory Formed in the Absence of αCaMKII Autophosphorylation

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

The alpha-isoform of calcium/calmodulin-dependent kinase II (αCaMKII) is a major synaptic kinase that undergoes autophosphorylation after NMDA receptor activation, switching the kinase into a calcium-independent activity state. This αCaMKII autophosphorylation is essential for NMDA receptor-dependent long-term potentiation (LTP), induced by a single tetanus, in hippocampal area CA1 and in neocortex. Furthermore, the αCaMKII autophosphorylation is essential for contextual long-term memory (LTM) formation after a single training trial but not after a massed training session. Here, we show that in the absence of αCaMKII autophosphorylation contextual fear conditioning is hippocampus dependent and that multi-tetanus-dependent late-LTP cannot be induced in hippocampal area CA1. Furthermore, we show that in the absence of αCaMKII autophosphorylation contextual LTM persists for 30 days, the latest time point tested. Additionally, contextual, but not cued, LTM formation in the absence of αCaMKII autophosphorylation appears to be impaired in 18 month-old mice. Taken together, our findings suggest that αCaMKII autophosphorylation-independent plasticity in the hippocampus is sufficient for contextual LTM formation and that αCaMKII autophosphorylation may be important for delaying age-related impairments in hippocampal memory formation. Furthermore, they propose that NMDA receptor-dependent LTP in hippocampal area CA1 is essential for contextual LTM formation after a single trial but not after massed training. Finally, our results challenge the proposal that NMDA receptor-dependent LTP in neocortex is required for remote contextual LTM. PMID:21276220

Key issues for determining the exploitable water resources in a Mediterranean river basin.

PubMed

Pedro-Monzonís, María; Ferrer, Javier; Solera, Abel; Estrela, Teodoro; Paredes-Arquiola, Javier

2015-01-15

One of the major difficulties in water planning is to determine the water availability in a water resource system in order to distribute water sustainably. In this paper, we analyze the key issues for determining the exploitable water resources as an indicator of water availability in a Mediterranean river basin. Historically, these territories are characterized by heavily regulated water resources and the extensive use of unconventional resources (desalination and wastewater reuse); hence, emulating the hydrological cycle is not enough. This analysis considers the Jucar River Basin as a case study. We have analyzed the different possible combinations between the streamflow time series, the length of the simulation period and the reliability criteria. As expected, the results show a wide dispersion, proving the great influence of the reliability criteria used for the quantification and localization of the exploitable water resources in the system. Therefore, it is considered risky to provide a single value to represent the water availability in the Jucar water resource system. In this sense, it is necessary that policymakers and stakeholders make a decision about the methodology used to determine the exploitable water resources in a river basin. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A Contextual Behavior Science Framework for Understanding How Behavioral Flexibility Relates to Anxiety.

PubMed

Palm Reed, Kathleen M; Cameron, Amy Y; Ameral, Victoria E

2017-09-01

There is a growing literature focusing on the emerging idea that behavioral flexibility, rather than particular emotion regulation strategies per se, provides greater promise in predicting and influencing anxiety-related psychopathology. Yet this line of research and theoretical analysis appear to be plagued by its own challenges. For example, middle-level constructs, such as behavioral flexibility, are difficult to define, difficult to measure, and difficult to interpret in relation to clinical interventions. A key point that some researchers have made is that previous studies examining flexible use of emotion regulation strategies (or, more broadly, coping) have failed due to a lack of focus on context. That is, examining strategies in isolation of the context in which they are used provides limited information on the suitability, rigid adherence, or effectiveness of a given strategy in that situation. Several of these researchers have proposed the development of new models to define and measure various types of behavioral flexibility. We would like to suggest that an explanation of the phenomenon already exists and that we can go back to our behavioral roots to understand this phenomenon rather than focusing on defining and capturing a new process. Indeed, thorough contextual behavioral analyses already yield a useful account of what has been observed. We will articulate a model explaining behavioral flexibility using a functional, contextual framework, with anxiety-related disorders as an example.

Construction and Contextualization of Authority in STEM Fields: An Exploratory Paper

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuglitsch, Rebecca; Bordeaux, Julia R.

2017-01-01

In this paper, we explore how librarians can teach students to deconstruct the concept of authority using questions and considering contextual needs in STEM fields. We argue that examining the complexities of common signifiers of authority, such as peer review, citation rates, and types of sources, as well as exploring contextual factors such as…

Contextual determinants of induced abortion: a panel analysis.

PubMed

Llorente-Marrón, Mar; Díaz-Fernández, Montserrat; Méndez-Rodríguez, Paz

2016-01-01

Analyze the contextual and individual characteristics that explain the differences in the induced abortion rate, temporally and territorially. We conducted an econometric analysis with panel data of the influence of public investment in health and per capita income on induced abortion as well as a measurement of the effect of social and economic factors related to the labor market and reproduction: female employment, immigration, adolescent fertility and marriage rate. The empirical exercise was conducted with a sample of 22 countries in Europe for the 2001-2009 period. The great territorial variability of induced abortion was the result of contextual and individual socioeconomic factors. Higher levels of national income and investments in public health reduce its incidence. The following sociodemographic characteristics were also significant regressors of induced abortion: female employment, civil status, migration, and adolescent fertility. Induced abortion responds to sociodemographic patterns, in which the characteristics of each country are essential. The individual and contextual socioeconomic inequalities impact significantly on its incidence. Further research on the relationship between economic growth, labor market, institutions and social norms is required to better understand its transnational variability and to reduce its incidence.

Contextual determinants of induced abortion: a panel analysis

PubMed Central

Llorente-Marrón, Mar; Díaz-Fernández, Montserrat; Méndez-Rodríguez, Paz

2016-01-01

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE Analyze the contextual and individual characteristics that explain the differences in the induced abortion rate, temporally and territorially. METHODS We conducted an econometric analysis with panel data of the influence of public investment in health and per capita income on induced abortion as well as a measurement of the effect of social and economic factors related to the labor market and reproduction: female employment, immigration, adolescent fertility and marriage rate. The empirical exercise was conducted with a sample of 22 countries in Europe for the 2001-2009 period. RESULTS The great territorial variability of induced abortion was the result of contextual and individual socioeconomic factors. Higher levels of national income and investments in public health reduce its incidence. The following sociodemographic characteristics were also significant regressors of induced abortion: female employment, civil status, migration, and adolescent fertility. CONCLUSIONS Induced abortion responds to sociodemographic patterns, in which the characteristics of each country are essential. The individual and contextual socioeconomic inequalities impact significantly on its incidence. Further research on the relationship between economic growth, labor market, institutions and social norms is required to better understand its transnational variability and to reduce its incidence. PMID:27007684

Forensic case formulation: theoretical, ethical and practical issues.

PubMed

Davies, Jason; Black, Susie; Bentley, Natalie; Nagi, Claire

2013-10-01

Forensic case formulation, of increasing interest to practitioners and researchers raises many ethical, theoretical and practical issues for them. Systemic, contextual and individual factors which need to be considered include the multitude of staff often involved with any one individual, the pressure to 'get it right' because of the range of risk implications that are associated with individuals within forensic mental health settings, and individual parameters, for example reluctance to be engaged with services. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Toward Kuleana (Responsibility): A Case Study of a Contextually Grounded Intervention for Native Hawaiian Youth and Young Adults1

PubMed Central

Trinidad, Alma M.O.

2009-01-01

As a minority ethnic group, Native Hawaiian youth and young adults face an array of issues associated with colonization, such as persistent structural discrimination and the loss of land and indigenous ways of knowing. They are also at risk for a wide range of negative behaviors, including interpersonal violence, suicide, substance use, and juvenile delinquency. This article explores how community youth development, critical pedagogies, and Hawaiian epistemology can help Native Hawaiian young adults cope with such issues. It begins with a brief discussion of critiques on conventional youth violence prevention programs. To address these critiques, three bodies of literature are introduced: 1) community youth development, 2) critical pedagogy, and 3) community epistemology. Data were derived from a single case study of a community-based youth program. The program, located in an impoverished, rural community in Hawai‘i, entailed running an organic farm. Seventeen participants were involved in the study. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. Utilizing critical indigenous qualitative research, a content analysis of the interviews was conducted to build a working conceptual model. Preliminary findings suggest that a program with key processes of community youth development, critical pedagogies, and Hawaiian epistemology may serve as a vehicle for health and wellness, thus preventing a host of negative behaviors, such as violence. Based on the findings, a critical contextually based approach to violence prevention that focuses on providing opportunities for Native Hawaiian young adults to take an active participatory role in promoting health is proposed. PMID:20161447

Contextual learning and context effects during infancy: 30 years of controversial research revisited.

PubMed

Revillo, D A; Cotella, E; Paglini, M G; Arias, C

2015-09-01

Over the last 30years a considerable number of reports have explored learning about context during infancy in both humans and rats. This research was stimulated by two different theoretical frameworks. The first, known as the neuromaturational model, postulates that learning and behavior are context-independent during early ontogeny, a hypothesis based on the idea that contextual learning is dependent on the hippocampal function, and that this brain structure does not reach full maturity until late in infancy. The second theoretical framework views infants not as immature organisms, but rather as perfectly matured ones, given that their behavioral and cognitive capacities allow them to adapt appropriately to the demands of their specific environment in accordance with their maturational level. This model predicts significant ontogenetic variations in learning and memory due to developmental differences in what is perceived and attended to during learning episodes, which can result in ontogenetic differences in contextual learning depending on the specific demands of the task. The present manuscript reviews those studies that have examined potential developmental differences in contextual learning and context effects in rats. The reviewed results show that, during infancy, context can exert a similar influence over learning and memory as that described for the adult rat. Moreover, in some cases, contextual learning and context effects were greater in infants than in adults. In contrast, under other experimental conditions, no evidence of contextual learning or context effects was observed. We analyzed the procedural factors of these studies with the aim of detecting those that favor or impede contextual learning during infancy, and we discussed whether existing empirical evidence supports the claim that the functionality of the hippocampus is a limiting factor for this type of learning during infancy. Finally, conclusions from human research into contextual learning

Contextuality, Nonlocality and Counterfactual Arguments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ghirardi, Gian Carlo; Wienand, Karl

2009-07-01

In this paper, following an elementary line of thought which somewhat differs from the usual one, we prove once more that any deterministic theory predictively equivalent to quantum mechanics unavoidably exhibits a contextual character. The purpose of adopting this perspective is that of paving the way for a critical analysis of the use of counterfactual arguments when dealing with nonlocal physical processes.

Contextualizing Asian American College Student Psychological Health

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liang, Christopher T. H.; Liu, Jessica; Nguyen, David; Song, Ge

2017-01-01

With attention to race, culture, and gender, this chapter contextualizes the help-seeking behaviors and psychological aspects of health facing Asian American college students. Recommendations are provided to student affairs professionals and counselors.

Inhibition of Rac1 Activity in the Hippocampus Impairs the Forgetting of Contextual Fear Memory.

PubMed

Jiang, Lizhu; Mao, Rongrong; Zhou, Qixin; Yang, Yuexiong; Cao, Jun; Ding, Yuqiang; Yang, Yuan; Zhang, Xia; Li, Lingjiang; Xu, Lin

2016-03-01

Fear is crucial for survival, whereas hypermnesia of fear can be detrimental. Inhibition of the Rac GTPase is recently reported to impair the forgetting of initially acquired memory in Drosophila. Here, we investigated whether inhibition of Rac1 activity in rat hippocampus could contribute to the hypermnesia of contextual fear. We found that spaced but not massed training of contextual fear conditioning caused inhibition of Rac1 activity in the hippocampus and heightened contextual fear. Furthermore, intrahippocampal injection of the Rac1 inhibitor NSC23766 heightened contextual fear in massed training, while Rac1 activator CN04-A weakened contextual fear in spaced training rats. Our study firstly demonstrates that contextual fear memory in rats is actively regulated by Rac1 activity in the hippocampus, which suggests that the forgetting impairment of traumatic events in posttraumatic stress disorder may be contributed to the pathological inhibition of Rac1 activity in the hippocampus.

The Role of Search Speed in the Contextual Cueing of Children's Attention.

PubMed

Darby, Kevin; Burling, Joseph; Yoshida, Hanako

2014-01-01

The contextual cueing effect is a robust phenomenon in which repeated exposure to the same arrangement of random elements guides attention to relevant information by constraining search. The effect is measured using an object search task in which a target (e.g., the letter T) is located within repeated or nonrepeated visual contexts (e.g., configurations of the letter L). Decreasing response times for the repeated configurations indicates that contextual information has facilitated search. Although the effect is robust among adult participants, recent attempts to document the effect in children have yielded mixed results. We examined the effect of search speed on contextual cueing with school-aged children, comparing three types of stimuli that promote different search times in order to observe how speed modulates this effect. Reliable effects of search time were found, suggesting that visual search speed uniquely constrains the role of attention toward contextually cued information.

Prospects and applications near ferroelectric quantum phase transitions: a key issues review.

PubMed

Chandra, P; Lonzarich, G G; Rowley, S E; Scott, J F

2017-11-01

The emergence of complex and fascinating states of quantum matter in the neighborhood of zero temperature phase transitions suggests that such quantum phenomena should be studied in a variety of settings. Advanced technologies of the future may be fabricated from materials where the cooperative behavior of charge, spin and current can be manipulated at cryogenic temperatures. The progagating lattice dynamics of displacive ferroelectrics make them appealing for the study of quantum critical phenomena that is characterized by both space- and time-dependent quantities. In this key issues article we aim to provide a self-contained overview of ferroelectrics near quantum phase transitions. Unlike most magnetic cases, the ferroelectric quantum critical point can be tuned experimentally to reside at, above or below its upper critical dimension; this feature allows for detailed interplay between experiment and theory using both scaling and self-consistent field models. Empirically the sensitivity of the ferroelectric T c 's to external and to chemical pressure gives practical access to a broad range of temperature behavior over several hundreds of Kelvin. Additional degrees of freedom like charge and spin can be added and characterized systematically. Satellite memories, electrocaloric cooling and low-loss phased-array radar are among possible applications of low-temperature ferroelectrics. We end with open questions for future research that include textured polarization states and unusual forms of superconductivity that remain to be understood theoretically.

Prospects and applications near ferroelectric quantum phase transitions: a key issues review

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chandra, P.; Lonzarich, G. G.; Rowley, S. E.; Scott, J. F.

2017-11-01

The emergence of complex and fascinating states of quantum matter in the neighborhood of zero temperature phase transitions suggests that such quantum phenomena should be studied in a variety of settings. Advanced technologies of the future may be fabricated from materials where the cooperative behavior of charge, spin and current can be manipulated at cryogenic temperatures. The progagating lattice dynamics of displacive ferroelectrics make them appealing for the study of quantum critical phenomena that is characterized by both space- and time-dependent quantities. In this key issues article we aim to provide a self-contained overview of ferroelectrics near quantum phase transitions. Unlike most magnetic cases, the ferroelectric quantum critical point can be tuned experimentally to reside at, above or below its upper critical dimension; this feature allows for detailed interplay between experiment and theory using both scaling and self-consistent field models. Empirically the sensitivity of the ferroelectric T c’s to external and to chemical pressure gives practical access to a broad range of temperature behavior over several hundreds of Kelvin. Additional degrees of freedom like charge and spin can be added and characterized systematically. Satellite memories, electrocaloric cooling and low-loss phased-array radar are among possible applications of low-temperature ferroelectrics. We end with open questions for future research that include textured polarization states and unusual forms of superconductivity that remain to be understood theoretically.

Learning contextual gene set interaction networks of cancer with condition specificity

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Identifying similarities and differences in the molecular constitutions of various types of cancer is one of the key challenges in cancer research. The appearances of a cancer depend on complex molecular interactions, including gene regulatory networks and gene-environment interactions. This complexity makes it challenging to decipher the molecular origin of the cancer. In recent years, many studies reported methods to uncover heterogeneous depictions of complex cancers, which are often categorized into different subtypes. The challenge is to identify diverse molecular contexts within a cancer, to relate them to different subtypes, and to learn underlying molecular interactions specific to molecular contexts so that we can recommend context-specific treatment to patients. Results In this study, we describe a novel method to discern molecular interactions specific to certain molecular contexts. Unlike conventional approaches to build modular networks of individual genes, our focus is to identify cancer-generic and subtype-specific interactions between contextual gene sets, of which each gene set share coherent transcriptional patterns across a subset of samples, termed contextual gene set. We then apply a novel formulation for quantitating the effect of the samples from each subtype on the calculated strength of interactions observed. Two cancer data sets were analyzed to support the validity of condition-specificity of identified interactions. When compared to an existing approach, the proposed method was much more sensitive in identifying condition-specific interactions even in heterogeneous data set. The results also revealed that network components specific to different types of cancer are related to different biological functions than cancer-generic network components. We found not only the results that are consistent with previous studies, but also new hypotheses on the biological mechanisms specific to certain cancer types that warrant further

Working memory dependence of spatial contextual cueing for visual search.

PubMed

Pollmann, Stefan

2018-05-10

When spatial stimulus configurations repeat in visual search, a search facilitation, resulting in shorter search times, can be observed that is due to incidental learning. This contextual cueing effect appears to be rather implicit, uncorrelated with observers' explicit memory of display configurations. Nevertheless, as I review here, this search facilitation due to contextual cueing depends on visuospatial working memory resources, and it disappears when visuospatial working memory is loaded by a concurrent delayed match to sample task. However, the search facilitation immediately recovers for displays learnt under visuospatial working memory load when this load is removed in a subsequent test phase. Thus, latent learning of visuospatial configurations does not depend on visuospatial working memory, but the expression of learning, as memory-guided search in repeated displays, does. This working memory dependence has also consequences for visual search with foveal vision loss, where top-down controlled visual exploration strategies pose high demands on visuospatial working memory, in this way interfering with memory-guided search in repeated displays. Converging evidence for the contribution of working memory to contextual cueing comes from neuroimaging data demonstrating that distinct cortical areas along the intraparietal sulcus as well as more ventral parieto-occipital cortex are jointly activated by visual working memory and contextual cueing. © 2018 The British Psychological Society.

Dynamics of contextual modulation of perceived shape in human vision

PubMed Central

Gheorghiu, Elena; Kingdom, Frederick A. A.

2017-01-01

In biological vision, contextual modulation refers to the influence of a surround pattern on either the perception of, or the neural responses to, a target pattern. One studied form of contextual modulation deals with the effect of a surround texture on the perceived shape of a contour, in the context of the phenomenon known as the shape aftereffect. In the shape aftereffect, prolonged viewing, or adaptation to a particular contour’s shape causes a shift in the perceived shape of a subsequently viewed contour. Shape aftereffects are suppressed when the adaptor contour is surrounded by a texture of similarly-shaped contours, a surprising result given that the surround contours are all potential adaptors. Here we determine the motion and temporal properties of this form of contextual modulation. We varied the relative motion directions, speeds and temporal phases between the central adaptor contour and the surround texture and measured for each manipulation the degree to which the shape aftereffect was suppressed. Results indicate that contextual modulation of shape processing is selective to motion direction, temporal frequency and temporal phase. These selectivities are consistent with one aim of vision being to segregate contours that define objects from those that form textured surfaces. PMID:28230085

Stimulus Equivalence, Generalization, and Contextual Stimulus Control in Verbal Classes

PubMed Central

Sigurðardóttir, Zuilma Gabriela; Mackay, Harry A; Green, Gina

2012-01-01

Stimulus generalization and contextual control affect the development of equivalence classes. Experiment 1 demonstrated primary stimulus generalization from the members of trained equivalence classes. Adults were taught to match six spoken Icelandic nouns and corresponding printed words and pictures to one another in computerized three-choice matching-to-sample tasks. Tests confirmed that six equivalence classes had formed. Without further training, plural forms of the stimuli were presented in tests for all matching performances. All participants demonstrated virtually errorless performances. In Experiment 2, classifications of the nouns used in Experiment 1 were brought under contextual control. Three nouns were feminine and three were masculine. The match-to-sample training taught participants to select a comparison of the same number as the sample (i.e., singular or plural) in the presence of contextual stimulus A regardless of noun gender. Concurrently, in the presence of contextual stimulus B, participants were taught to select a comparison of the same gender as the sample (i.e., feminine or masculine), regardless of number. Generalization was assessed using a card-sorting test. All participants eventually sorted the cards correctly into gender and number stimulus classes. When printed words used in training were replaced by their picture equivalents, participants demonstrated almost errorless performances. PMID:22754102

Self-verification and contextualized self-views.

PubMed

Chen, Serena; English, Tammy; Peng, Kaiping

2006-07-01

Whereas most self-verification research has focused on people's desire to verify their global self-conceptions, the present studies examined self-verification with regard to contextualized selfviews-views of the self in particular situations and relationships. It was hypothesized that individuals whose core self-conceptions include contextualized self-views should seek to verify these self-views. In Study 1, the more individuals defined the self in dialectical terms, the more their judgments were biased in favor of verifying over nonverifying feedback about a negative, situation-specific self-view. In Study 2, consistent with research on gender differences in the importance of relationships to the self-concept, women but not men showed a similar bias toward feedback about a negative, relationship-specific self-view, a pattern not seen for global self-views. Together, the results support the notion that self-verification occurs for core self-conceptions, whatever form(s) they may take. Individual differences in self-verification and the nature of selfhood and authenticity are discussed.

Managing Spatial Selections With Contextual Snapshots

PubMed Central

Mindek, P; Gröller, M E; Bruckner, S

2014-01-01

Spatial selections are a ubiquitous concept in visualization. By localizing particular features, they can be analysed and compared in different views. However, the semantics of such selections often depend on specific parameter settings and it can be difficult to reconstruct them without additional information. In this paper, we present the concept of contextual snapshots as an effective means for managing spatial selections in visualized data. The selections are automatically associated with the context in which they have been created. Contextual snapshots can also be used as the basis for interactive integrated and linked views, which enable in-place investigation and comparison of multiple visual representations of data. Our approach is implemented as a flexible toolkit with well-defined interfaces for integration into existing systems. We demonstrate the power and generality of our techniques by applying them to several distinct scenarios such as the visualization of simulation data, the analysis of historical documents and the display of anatomical data. PMID:25821284

Contextual mediation of perceptions during hauntings and poltergeist-like experiences: a replication and extension.

PubMed

Harte, T M

2000-10-01

This study is a replication of the experiment by Lange, Houran, Harte, and Havens (1996 on contextual variables, in which hallucinations appear to be affected by the environmental context. These contextual variables are influential in the reporting of haunting and poltergeist-like episodes. This study extended the previous study by adding new factors of time of day, climactic conditions, and emotional feelings. These were analyzed for a different sample, looking for further congruency between experiential content and the context. The sample (N=8431 were reports found on the Internet and in one book. The Lange, et al. study was replicated in that contextual variables were identified in 99.2% of the reports, the content of the reports was judged to be consistent with the nature of the contextual variables in 58.8% of the reports, and contextual variables were related to the percipients' state of arousal and the modalities of experience.

Effect of ablated hippocampal neurogenesis on the formation and extinction of contextual fear memory

PubMed Central

Ko, Hyoung-Gon; Jang, Deok-Jin; Son, Junehee; Kwak, Chuljung; Choi, Jun-Hyeok; Ji, Young-Hoon; Lee, Yun-Sil; Son, Hyeon; Kaang, Bong-Kiun

2009-01-01

Newborn neurons in the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the hippocampus incorporate into the dentate gyrus and mature. Numerous studies have focused on hippocampal neurogenesis because of its importance in learning and memory. However, it is largely unknown whether hippocampal neurogenesis is involved in memory extinction per se. Here, we sought to examine the possibility that hippocampal neurogenesis may play a critical role in the formation and extinction of hippocampus-dependent contextual fear memory. By methylazoxymethanol acetate (MAM) or gamma-ray irradiation, hippocampal neurogenesis was impaired in adult mice. Under our experimental conditions, only a severe impairment of hippocampal neurogenesis inhibited the formation of contextual fear memory. However, the extinction of contextual fear memory was not affected. These results suggest that although adult newborn neurons contribute to contextual fear memory, they may not be involved in the extinction or erasure of hippocampus-dependent contextual fear memory. PMID:19138433

Functional Contextualism: An Ideal Framework for Theory in Instructional Design and Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reigeluth, Charles M.; An, Yun-Jo

2006-01-01

In this article, the authors comment on Eric Fox's description of functional contextualism which makes several contributions to instructional design and technology (IDT). They agree that functional contextualism does indeed provide some "theoretical clarity and philosophical cohesion," not just for constructivism, but also for understanding…

A unifying Bayesian account of contextual effects in value-based choice

PubMed Central

Friston, Karl J.; Dolan, Raymond J.

2017-01-01

Empirical evidence suggests the incentive value of an option is affected by other options available during choice and by options presented in the past. These contextual effects are hard to reconcile with classical theories and have inspired accounts where contextual influences play a crucial role. However, each account only addresses one or the other of the empirical findings and a unifying perspective has been elusive. Here, we offer a unifying theory of context effects on incentive value attribution and choice based on normative Bayesian principles. This formulation assumes that incentive value corresponds to a precision-weighted prediction error, where predictions are based upon expectations about reward. We show that this scheme explains a wide range of contextual effects, such as those elicited by other options available during choice (or within-choice context effects). These include both conditions in which choice requires an integration of multiple attributes and conditions where a multi-attribute integration is not necessary. Moreover, the same scheme explains context effects elicited by options presented in the past or between-choice context effects. Our formulation encompasses a wide range of contextual influences (comprising both within- and between-choice effects) by calling on Bayesian principles, without invoking ad-hoc assumptions. This helps clarify the contextual nature of incentive value and choice behaviour and may offer insights into psychopathologies characterized by dysfunctional decision-making, such as addiction and pathological gambling. PMID:28981514

Differential patterns of contextual organization of memory in first-episode psychosis.

PubMed

Murty, Vishnu P; McKinney, Rachel A; DuBrow, Sarah; Jalbrzikowski, Maria; Haas, Gretchen L; Luna, Beatriz

2018-02-15

Contextual information is used to support and organize episodic memory. Prior research has reliably shown memory deficits in psychosis; however, little research has characterized how this population uses contextual information during memory recall. We employed an approach founded in a computational framework of free recall to quantify how individuals with first episode of psychosis (FEP, N = 97) and controls (CON, N = 55) use temporal and semantic context to organize memory recall. Free recall was characterized using the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R). We compared FEP and CON on three measures of free recall: proportion recalled, temporal clustering, and semantic clustering. Measures of temporal/semantic clustering quantified how individuals use contextual information to organize memory recall. We also assessed to what extent these measures relate to antipsychotic use and differentiated between different types of psychosis. We also explored the relationship between these measures and intelligence. In comparison to CON, FEP had reduced recall and less temporal clustering during free recall (p < 0.05, Bonferroni-corrected), and showed a trend towards greater semantic clustering (p = 0.10, Bonferroni-corrected). Within FEP, antipsychotic use and diagnoses did not differentiate between free recall accuracy or contextual organization of memory. IQ was related to free recall accuracy, but not the use of contextual information during recall in either group (p < 0.05, Bonferroni-corrected). These results show that in addition to deficits in memory recall, FEP differed in how they organize memories compared to CON.

Ground Penetrating Radar as a Contextual Sensor for Multi-Sensor Radiological Characterisation

PubMed Central

Ukaegbu, Ikechukwu K.; Gamage, Kelum A. A.

2017-01-01

Radioactive sources exist in environments or contexts that influence how they are detected and localised. For instance, the context of a moving source is different from a stationary source because of the effects of motion. The need to incorporate this contextual information in the radiation detection and localisation process has necessitated the integration of radiological and contextual sensors. The benefits of the successful integration of both types of sensors is well known and widely reported in fields such as medical imaging. However, the integration of both types of sensors has also led to innovative solutions to challenges in characterising radioactive sources in non-medical applications. This paper presents a review of such recent applications. It also identifies that these applications mostly use visual sensors as contextual sensors for characterising radiation sources. However, visual sensors cannot retrieve contextual information about radioactive wastes located in opaque environments encountered at nuclear sites, e.g., underground contamination. Consequently, this paper also examines ground-penetrating radar (GPR) as a contextual sensor for characterising this category of wastes and proposes several ways of integrating data from GPR and radiological sensors. Finally, it demonstrates combined GPR and radiation imaging for three-dimensional localisation of contamination in underground pipes using radiation transport and GPR simulations. PMID:28387706

The Future We Want: Key Issues on Sustainable Development in Higher Education after Rio and the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leal Filho, Walter; Manolas, Evangelos; Pace, Paul

2015-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to provide a description of the achievements of the United Nations (UN) Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) with a focus on higher education, and it describes some of the key issues which will guide sustainable development in the coming years. Design/methodology/approach: The paper initially…

Hippocampal GABAB(1a) Receptors Constrain Generalized Contextual Fear

PubMed Central

Lynch, Joseph F; Winiecki, Patrick; Gilman, T Lee; Adkins, Jordan M; Jasnow, Aaron M

2017-01-01

Many anxiety disorders are characterized by generalization of fear responses to neutral or ambiguous stimuli. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms contributing to generalized fear is essential for formulating successful treatments for anxiety disorders. Previous research shows that GABA-mediated presynaptic inhibition has a critical role in cued fear generalization, as animals with genetically deleted presynaptic GABAB(1a) receptors cannot discriminate between CS+ and CS− tones. Work from our laboratory has further identified that GABAB(1a) receptors are necessary for maintaining contextual memory precision, thereby constraining generalized contextual fear. We previously found that GABAB(1a) KO mice show generalized fear to a neutral context 24 h after training, but not 2 h after training. A similar pattern was observed with object location and recognition, suggesting that this receptor subtype affects consolidation and/or retrieval of precise contextual and spatial memories. Here we sought to specifically examine the involvement of GABAB(1a) receptors in consolidation or retrieval of a precise fear memory. To do so, we infused a selective GABAB(1a) receptor antagonist, CGP 36216, intracerebroventricularly (ICV), or locally into the dorsal hippocampus, ventral hippocampus, or anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), during consolidation and retrieval of context fear training. Blockade of GABAB(1a) receptors through ICV, dorsal hippocampal, or ventral hippocampal infusions ‘after' training (consolidation) resulted in fear generalization to the neutral context when mice were tested 24, but not 6 h after training. Post-training infusions of CGP into the ACC, however, did not promote generalized fear. In addition, ICV, dorsal hippocampal, ventral hippocampal, or ACC infusions immediately ‘before' testing (retrieval) did not result in context fear generalization. These data suggest that GABA-mediated presynaptic inhibition is not critical for

Contextual Admissions and Affirmative Action: Developments in Higher Education Policy in England

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lane, Laura; Birds, Rachel

2013-01-01

This paper explores the value of explaining contextual admissions policy directives through the conceptual lenses of meritocracy and social reproduction. It is suggested that examining these concepts can assist in highlighting some of the ideological and practical complexities associated with contextual admissions whilst providing opportunities to…

The impact of signal-to-noise ratio on contextual cueing in children and adults.

PubMed

Yang, Yingying; Merrill, Edward C

2015-04-01

Contextual cueing refers to a form of implicit spatial learning where participants incidentally learn to associate a target location with its repeated spatial context. Successful contextual learning produces an efficient visual search through familiar environments. Despite the fact that children exhibit the basic ability of implicit spatial learning, their general effectiveness in this form of learning can be compromised by other development-dependent factors. Learning to extract useful information (signal) in the presence of various amounts of irrelevant or distracting information (noise) characterizes one of the most important changes that occur with cognitive development. This research investigated whether signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) affects contextual cueing differently in children and adults. S/N was operationally defined as the ratio of repeated versus new displays encountered over time. Three ratio conditions were created: high (100%), medium (67%), and low (33%) conditions. Results suggested no difference in the acquisition of contextual learning effects in the high and medium conditions across three age groups (6- to 8-year-olds, 10- to 12-year-olds, and young adults). However, a significant developmental difference emerged in the low S/N condition. As predicted, adults exhibited significant contextual cueing effects, whereas older children showed marginally significant contextual cueing and younger children did not show cueing effects. Group differences in the ability to exhibit implicit contextual learning under low S/N conditions and the implications of this difference are discussed. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Role of the Basal Ganglia in Implicit Contextual Learning: A Study of Parkinson's Disease

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van Asselen, Marieke; Almeida, Ines; Andre, Rui; Januario, Cristina; Goncalves, Antonio Freire; Castelo-Branco, Miguel

2009-01-01

Implicit contextual learning refers to the ability to memorize contextual information from our environment. This contextual information can then be used to guide our attention to a specific location. Although the medial temporal lobe is important for this type of learning, the basal ganglia might also be involved considering its role in many…

Contextual control using a go/no-go procedure with compound abstract stimuli.

PubMed

Modenesi, Rafael Diego; Debert, Paula

2015-05-01

Contextual control has been described as (1) a five-term contingency, in which the contextual stimulus exerts conditional control over conditional discriminations, and (2) allowing one stimulus to be a member of different equivalence classes without merging them into one. Matching-to-sample is the most commonly employed procedure to produce and study contextual control. The present study evaluated whether the go/no-go procedure with compound stimuli produces equivalence classes that share stimuli. This procedure does not allow the identification of specific stimulus functions (e.g., contextual, conditional, or discriminative functions). If equivalence classes were established with this procedure, then only the latter part of the contextual control definition (2) would be met. Six undergraduate students participated in the present study. In the training phases, responses to AC, BD, and XY compounds with stimuli from the same classes were reinforced, and responses to AC, BD, and XY compounds with stimuli from different classes were not. In addition, responses to X1A1B1, X1A2B2, X2A1B2, and X2A2B1 compounds were reinforced and responses to the other combinations were not. During the tests, the participants had to respond to new combinations of stimuli compounds YCD to indicate the formation of four equivalence classes that share stimuli: X1A1B1Y1C1D1, X1A2B2Y1C2D2, X2A1B2Y2C1D2, and X2A2B1Y2C2D1. Four of the six participants showed the establishment of these classes. These results indicate that establishing contextual stimulus functions is unnecessary to produce equivalence classes that share stimuli. Therefore, these results are inconsistent with the first part of the definition of contextual control. © Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

The Work/Family Challenge: A Key Career Development Issue.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kahnweiler, William M; Kahnweiler, Jennifer B.

1992-01-01

A few corporations are responding to the impact of family structural changes on workers' ability to balance their roles with flexible benefits and schedules and with training. Work/family issues are an integral part of career and life decision making and must be incorporated into the career development process. (SK)

Are C-reps contextual representations? A reply to Brewin and Burgess.

PubMed

Pearson, David G

2014-03-01

Brewin and Burgess (2013) argue that our recent papers investigating the role of contextual representations in intrusive memories do not pose a challenge to dual-representation theory as originally claimed (Pearson, 2012; Pearson, Ross, & Webster, 2012). Here I point out that their alternative explanation for our results can be rejected using data already published in both papers. I also argue that their definition of what constitutes a contextual representation renders their revised dual-representation theory incompatible with experimental results that have previously been argued in the literature to support it. Valuable though their contribution is, it does not impact on our main conclusion that abstract contextual representations serve to increase intrusive memories for traumatic material. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Multi-Dimensional Pattern Discovery of Trajectories Using Contextual Information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sharif, M.; Alesheikh, A. A.

2017-10-01

Movement of point objects are highly sensitive to the underlying situations and conditions during the movement, which are known as contexts. Analyzing movement patterns, while accounting the contextual information, helps to better understand how point objects behave in various contexts and how contexts affect their trajectories. One potential solution for discovering moving objects patterns is analyzing the similarities of their trajectories. This article, therefore, contextualizes the similarity measure of trajectories by not only their spatial footprints but also a notion of internal and external contexts. The dynamic time warping (DTW) method is employed to assess the multi-dimensional similarities of trajectories. Then, the results of similarity searches are utilized in discovering the relative movement patterns of the moving point objects. Several experiments are conducted on real datasets that were obtained from commercial airplanes and the weather information during the flights. The results yielded the robustness of DTW method in quantifying the commonalities of trajectories and discovering movement patterns with 80 % accuracy. Moreover, the results revealed the importance of exploiting contextual information because it can enhance and restrict movements.

Identifying contextual influences of community reintegration among injured servicemembers.

PubMed

Hawkins, Brent L; McGuire, Francis A; Britt, Thomas W; Linder, Sandra M

2015-01-01

Research suggests that community reintegration (CR) after injury and rehabilitation is difficult for many injured servicemembers. However, little is known about the influence of the contextual factors, both personal and environmental, that influence CR. Framed within the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and Social Cognitive Theory, the quantitative portion of a larger mixed-methods study of 51 injured, community-dwelling servicemembers compared the relative contribution of contextual factors between groups of servicemembers with different levels of CR. Cluster analysis indicated three groups of servicemembers showing low, moderate, and high levels of CR. Statistical analyses identified contextual factors (e.g., personal and environmental factors) that significantly discriminated between CR clusters. Multivariate analysis of variance and discriminant analysis indicated significant contributions of general self-efficacy, services and assistance barriers, physical and structural barriers, attitudes and support barriers, perceived level of disability and/or handicap, work and school barriers, and policy barriers on CR scores. Overall, analyses indicated that injured servicemembers with lower CR scores had lower general self-efficacy scores, reported more difficulty with environmental barriers, and reported their injuries as more disabling.

Representing idioms: syntactic and contextual effects on idiom processing.

PubMed

Holsinger, Edward

2013-09-01

Recent work on the processing of idiomatic expressions argues against the idea that idioms are simply big words. For example, hybrid models of idiom representation, originally investigated in the context of idiom production, propose a priority of literal computation, and a principled relationship between the conceptual meaning of an idiom, its literal lemmas and its syntactic structure. We examined the predictions of the hybrid representation hypothesis in the domain of idiom comprehension. We conducted two experiments to examine the role of syntactic, lexical and contextual factors on the interpretation of idiomatic expressions. Experiment I examines the role of syntactic compatibility and lexical compatibility on the real-time processing of potentially idiomatic strings. Experiment 2 examines the role of contextual information on idiom processing and how context interacts with lexical information during processing. We find evidence that literal computation plays a causal role in the retrieval of idiomatic meaning and that contextual, lexical and structural information influence the processing of idiomatic strings at early stages during processing, which provide support for the hybrid model of idiom representation in the domain of idiom comprehension.

Correlates of Parental Differential Treatment: Parental and Contextual Factors during Middle Childhood

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atzaba-Poria, Naama; Pike, Alison

2008-01-01

The current study examined whether parental and contextual risk factors contribute to mothers' and fathers' differential treatment (MDT/FDT) when accounting for sibling dyad characteristics. Also explored was whether family type (single mothers vs. 2 parents) moderated the links between the parental and contextual correlates and MDT. One hundred…

Contextual control of conditioning is not affected by extinction in a behavioral task with humans.

PubMed

Nelson, James Byron; Lamoureux, Jeffrey A

2015-06-01

The Attentional Theory of Context Processing (ATCP) states that extinction will arouse attention to contexts resulting in learning becoming contextually controlled. Participants learned to suppress responding to colored sensors in a video-game task where contexts were provided by different gameplay backgrounds. Four experiments assessed the contextual control of simple excitatory learning acquired to a test stimulus (T) after (Exp. 1) or during (Exp. 2-4) extinction of another stimulus (X). Experiment 1 produced no evidence of contextual control of T, though renewal to X was present both at the time T was trained and tested. In Experiment 2 no contextual control of T was evident when X underwent extensive conditioning and extinction. In Experiment 3 no contextual control of T was evident after extensive conditioning and extinction of X, and renewal to X was present. In Experiment 4 contextual control was evident to T, but it neither depended upon nor was enhanced by extinction of X. The results presented here appear to limit the generality of ATCP.

Contextual cueing in multiconjunction visual search is dependent on color- and configuration-based intertrial contingencies.

PubMed

Geyer, Thomas; Shi, Zhuanghua; Müller, Hermann J

2010-06-01

Three experiments examined memory-based guidance of visual search using a modified version of the contextual-cueing paradigm (Jiang & Chun, 2001). The target, if present, was a conjunction of color and orientation, with target (and distractor) features randomly varying across trials (multiconjunction search). Under these conditions, reaction times (RTs) were faster when all items in the display appeared at predictive ("old") relative to nonpredictive ("new") locations. However, this RT benefit was smaller compared to when only one set of items, namely that sharing the target's color (but not that in the alternative color) appeared in predictive arrangement. In all conditions, contextual cueing was reliable on both target-present and -absent trials and enhanced if a predictive display was preceded by a predictive (though differently arranged) display, rather than a nonpredictive display. These results suggest that (1) contextual cueing is confined to color subsets of items, that (2) retrieving contextual associations for one color subset of items can be impeded by associations formed within the alternative subset ("contextual interference"), and (3) that contextual cueing is modulated by intertrial priming.

Predicting Contextual Informativeness for Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kapelner, Adam; Soterwood, Jeanine; Nessaiver, Shalev; Adlof, Suzanne

2018-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is essential to educational progress. High quality vocabulary instruction requires supportive contextual examples to teach word meaning and proper usage. Identifying such contexts by hand for a large number of words can be difficult. In this work, we take a statistical learning approach to engineer a system that predicts…

Real-Life Contextual Manifestations of Wisdom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Shih-Ying

2008-01-01

Wisdom pertains to managing human affairs, and it arises in highly contextualized situations. The present study aims to investigate manifestations of wisdom in real-life contexts through semi-structured interviews with 66 individuals nominated as wise persons. All nominees were ethnic Chinese from Taiwan, an East Asian country which has…

Generalized monogamy of contextual inequalities from the no-disturbance principle.

PubMed

Ramanathan, Ravishankar; Soeda, Akihito; Kurzyński, Paweł; Kaszlikowski, Dagomir

2012-08-03

In this Letter, we demonstrate that the property of monogamy of Bell violations seen for no-signaling correlations in composite systems can be generalized to the monogamy of contextuality in single systems obeying the Gleason property of no disturbance. We show how one can construct monogamies for contextual inequalities by using the graph-theoretic technique of vertex decomposition of a graph representing a set of measurements into subgraphs of suitable independence numbers that themselves admit a joint probability distribution. After establishing that all the subgraphs that are chordal graphs admit a joint probability distribution, we formulate a precise graph-theoretic condition that gives rise to the monogamy of contextuality. We also show how such monogamies arise within quantum theory for a single four-dimensional system and interpret violation of these relations in terms of a violation of causality. These monogamies can be tested with current experimental techniques.

Synchronous contextual irregularities affect early scene processing: replication and extension.

PubMed

Mudrik, Liad; Shalgi, Shani; Lamy, Dominique; Deouell, Leon Y

2014-04-01

Whether contextual regularities facilitate perceptual stages of scene processing is widely debated, and empirical evidence is still inconclusive. Specifically, it was recently suggested that contextual violations affect early processing of a scene only when the incongruent object and the scene are presented a-synchronously, creating expectations. We compared event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by scenes that depicted a person performing an action using either a congruent or an incongruent object (e.g., a man shaving with a razor or with a fork) when scene and object were presented simultaneously. We also explored the role of attention in contextual processing by using a pre-cue to direct subjects׳ attention towards or away from the congruent/incongruent object. Subjects׳ task was to determine how many hands the person in the picture used in order to perform the action. We replicated our previous findings of frontocentral negativity for incongruent scenes that started ~ 210 ms post stimulus presentation, even earlier than previously found. Surprisingly, this incongruency ERP effect was negatively correlated with the reaction times cost on incongruent scenes. The results did not allow us to draw conclusions about the role of attention in detecting the regularity, due to a weak attention manipulation. By replicating the 200-300 ms incongruity effect with a new group of subjects at even earlier latencies than previously reported, the results strengthen the evidence for contextual processing during this time window even when simultaneous presentation of the scene and object prevent the formation of prior expectations. We discuss possible methodological limitations that may account for previous failures to find this an effect, and conclude that contextual information affects object model selection processes prior to full object identification, with semantic knowledge activation stages unfolding only later on. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contextual influences on environmental concerns cross-nationally: A multilevel investigation.

PubMed

Marquart-Pyatt, Sandra T

2012-09-01

Environmental issues continue to grow in international prominence, as environmental conditions are recognized as some of the most important problems facing the world. Research examining this globalization of environmental concern shown in public opinion surveys emphasizes the importance of context yet is currently underspecified. To address this gap, this research uses a multi-level, cross-national study to examine individual-level and country-level influences on three measures of environmental concern: environmental threat awareness, environmental efficacy, and willingness to pay. At the individual level, education, age, and gender affect environmental concerns. At the national level, economic, political, and environmental factors affect environmental concerns. Importantly, contextual factors differ in their effects depending on the dimension of environmental concern measured. Results from cross-level interactions for education confirm these complexities across these measures, supporting a dimensionality argument. The importance of the measurement of environmental concern shown in this research is emphasized for future cross-national scholarship. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Contextualizing educational differences in "vaccination uptake": A thirty nation survey.

PubMed

Makarovs, Kirils; Achterberg, Peter

2017-09-01

This paper addresses the issue of public acceptance of vaccination with specific attention being paid to the role of education in vaccine uptake. Using Flash Eurobarometer 287 (2009) survey data and exploring it through the lens of Beck's reflexive modernization and Roger's protection motivation theories we examined how individual-level factors affect intention to get vaccinated, particularly aimed at examining whether higher education predicts more or less vaccination intention in different societies. The empirical results support an idea that at least for seasonal flu educational differences in vaccination uptake are contextual upon the reflexivity of the society in which respondent happens to live. Educated people living in more reflexive modernized countries tend to oppose vaccination against seasonal flu more that those highly educated living in less advanced societies, indicating that skeptical attitude towards science that is intrinsic to the modern post-industrial nations induces the immunization opposition among most informed and distrustful social group. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues in Health Technology Assessment for Prenatal/Preconceptional and Newborn Screening: A Workshop Report

PubMed Central

Potter, B.K.; Avard, D.; Entwistle, V.; Kennedy, C.; Chakraborty, P.; McGuire, M.; Wilson, B.J.

2008-01-01

Prenatal/preconceptional and newborn screening programs have been a focus of recent policy debates that have included attention to ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSIs). In parallel, there has been an ongoing discussion about whether and how ELSIs may be addressed in health technology assessment (HTA). We conducted a knowledge synthesis study to explore both guidance and current practice regarding the consideration of ELSIs in HTA for prenatal/preconceptional and newborn screening. As the concluding activity for this project, we held a Canadian workshop to discuss the issues with a diverse group of stakeholders. Based on key workshop themes integrated with our study results, we suggest that population-based genetic screening programs may present particular types of ELSIs and that a public health ethics perspective is potentially highly relevant when considering them. We also suggest that approaches to addressing ELSIs in HTA for prenatal/preconceptional and newborn screening may need to be flexible enough to respond to diversity in HTA organizations, cultural values, stakeholder communities, and contextual factors. Finally, we highlight a need for transparency in the way that HTA producers move from evidence to conclusions and the ways in which screening policy decisions are made. PMID:19023190

Key issues in life cycle assessment of ethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass: Challenges and perspectives.

PubMed

Singh, Anoop; Pant, Deepak; Korres, Nicholas E; Nizami, Abdul-Sattar; Prasad, Shiv; Murphy, Jerry D

2010-07-01

Progressive depletion of conventional fossil fuels with increasing energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have led to a move towards renewable and sustainable energy sources. Lignocellulosic biomass is available in massive quantities and provides enormous potential for bioethanol production. However, to ascertain optimal biofuel strategies, it is necessary to take into account environmental impacts from cradle to grave. Life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques allow detailed analysis of material and energy fluxes on regional and global scales. This includes indirect inputs to the production process and associated wastes and emissions, and the downstream fate of products in the future. At the same time if not used properly, LCA can lead to incorrect and inappropriate actions on the part of industry and/or policy makers. This paper aims to list key issues for quantifying the use of resources and releases to the environment associated with the entire life cycle of lignocellulosic bioethanol production. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contextual and individual determinants of periodontal disease: Multilevel analysis based on Andersen's model.

PubMed

Valente, Maria I B; Vettore, Mario V

2018-04-01

To investigate the relationship of contextual and individual factors with periodontal disease in dentate adults and older people using the Andersen's behavioural model. Secondary individual data from 6011 adults and 2369 older people from the Brazilian Oral Health Survey (2010) were combined with contextual data for 27 cities. Attachment loss (AL) categories for each sextant were coded and summed to obtain the periodontal disease measure. The association of predisposing, enabling and need characteristics at city and individual level with periodontal disease was assessed using an adapted version of the Andersen's behavioural model. Multilevel Poisson regression was used to estimate rate ratios (RR) and 95% CIs. Periodontal disease was associated with contextual predisposing (RR 0.93; 95% CI = 0.87-0.99) and enabling factors (RR 0.99; 95% CI = 0.98-0.99) in adults. Contextual predisposing was also associated with periodontal disease in older people (RR 0.82; 95% CI = 0.73-0.92). Individual predisposing (age, sex and schooling) and need characteristics (perceived treatment need) were common predictors of periodontal disease in adults and older people. Periodontal disease was also associated with behaviours in the latter age group. Contextual predisposing factors and individual characteristics influenced periodontal disease experience in adults and older people. Contextual enabling factors were also meaningful determinants of periodontal disease in the former age group. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Cholinergic blockade frees fear extinction from its contextual dependency

PubMed Central

Zelikowsky, Moriel; Hast, Timothy A.; Bennett, Rebecca Z.; Merjanian, Michael; Nocera, Nathaniel A.; Ponnusamy, Ravikumar; Fanselow, Michael S.

2012-01-01

Background Fears that are maladaptive or inappropriate can be reduced through extinction training. However, extinction is highly context-sensitive, resulting in the renewal of fear following shifts in context, and limiting the clinical efficacy of extinction training. Lesion and inactivation studies have shown that the contextualization of extinction depends on the hippocampus. Parallel studies have found that intrahippocampal scopolamine blocks contextual fear conditioning. Importantly, this effect was replicated using a non-invasive technique in which a low dose of scopolamine was administered systemically. We aimed to transfer the effects of this non-invasive approach to block the contextualization of fear extinction. Methods Rats were tone fear conditioned and extinguished under various systemic doses of scopolamine or the saline vehicle. They were subsequently tested (off drug) for tone fear in a context that was the same (controls) or shifted (renewal group) with respect to the extinction context. Results The lowest dose of scopolamine produced a significant attenuation of fear renewal when renewal was tested either in the original training context or a novel context. The drug also slowed the rate of long-term extinction memory formation, which was readily overcome by extending extinction training. Scopolamine only gave this effect when it was administered during, but not after extinction training. Higher doses of scopolamine severely disrupted extinction learning. Conclusions We discovered that disrupting contextual processing during extinction with the cholinergic antagonist scopolamine blocked subsequent fear renewal. Low doses of scopolamine may be a clinically promising adjunct to exposure therapy by making extinction more relapse-resistant. PMID:22981655

Contextual influence on evaluation capacity building in a rapidly changing environment under new governmental policies.

PubMed

Chen, Karen Hui-Jung

2017-12-01

Evaluation capacity building (ECB) is a context-dependent process. Contextual factors affecting ECB implementation have been explored theoretically and practically, but their influence within a changing environment has seldom been discussed. This study examined essential context-sensitive parameters, particularly those involved in implementing new governmental policies regarding higher education. Taiwan was used as a case study for exploring the effect of contextual change on ECB attributes from the perspectives of training receivers and providers. Surveys and interviews were used for data collection and importance-performance analysis was applied for data analysis. Four prominent features were identified. First, the ECB attributes perceived as important by receivers were performed adequately, whereas those perceived as less important were performed less well. Second, under new policies, training provider designed training covering a wide range of ECB, whereas receivers focused on those can be directly applied in evaluation process. Third, in a small education system such as Taiwan's, the complexity of peer review is high and ethical issues become important. Fourth, because the evaluation structure has been changed from single- to dual-track, receivers expect more training for institution staff, whereas providers insist on hierarchical training. Aligning ECB supply and needs is paramount for adaptation to new policies. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Engaging Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Science Contextually with Scientific Approach Instructional Video

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Susantini, E.; Kurniasari, I.; Fauziah, A. N. M.; Prastowo, T.; Kholiq, A.; Rosdiana, L.

2018-01-01

Contextual teaching and learning/CTL presents new concepts in real-life experiences and situations where students can find out the meaningful relationship between abstract ideas and practical applications. Implementing contextual teaching by using scientific approach will foster teachers to find the constructive ways of delivering and organizing science content. This research developed an instructional video that represented a modeling of using a scientific approach in CTL. The aim of this research are to engage pre-service teachers in learning how to teach CTL and to show how pre-service teachers’ responses about learning how to teach CTL using an instructional video. The subjects of this research were ten pre-service teachers in Department of Natural Sciences, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Indonesia. All subjects observed the instructional video which demonstrated contextual teaching and learning combined with the scientific approach as they completed a worksheet to analyze the video content. The results showed that pre-service teachers could learn to teach contextually as well as applying the scientific approach in science classroom through a modeling in the instructional video. They also responded that the instructional video could help them to learn to teach each component contextual teaching as well as scientific approach.

The portion size effect on food intake is robust to contextual size information.

PubMed

Reily, Natalie M; Vartanian, Lenny R

2016-10-01

Larger portion sizes have consistently been shown to lead to greater food intake. However, studies of the portion size effect typically provided participants with a single portion of food at a time without any objective information about the size of the portion, and hence failed to consider the potential significance of contextual size information. In order to investigate whether contextual size information moderates the portion size effect, participants were served small or large portions of pasta for lunch in the presence or absence of contextual size information. Study 1 found that the portion size effect on food intake was robust to contextual size information. Study 2 replicated this finding in an online paradigm, showing that contextual size information also had no influence on prospective intake, even when participants chose the portion size they preferred. Both studies also showed that participants' perceptions of how much was appropriate to eat mediated the effect of portion size on intake. A practical implication of our findings is that modifying consumption norms may be an effective way to promote healthier consumer food decisions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contextual classification on the massively parallel processor

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Tilton, James C.

1987-01-01

Classifiers are often used to produce land cover maps from multispectral Earth observation imagery. Conventionally, these classifiers have been designed to exploit the spectral information contained in the imagery. Very few classifiers exploit the spatial information content of the imagery, and the few that do rarely exploit spatial information content in conjunction with spectral and/or temporal information. A contextual classifier that exploits spatial and spectral information in combination through a general statistical approach was studied. Early test results obtained from an implementation of the classifier on a VAX-11/780 minicomputer were encouraging, but they are of limited meaning because they were produced from small data sets. An implementation of the contextual classifier is presented on the Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) at Goddard that for the first time makes feasible the testing of the classifier on large data sets.

Socio-contextual Network Mining for User Assistance in Web-based Knowledge Gathering Tasks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rajendran, Balaji; Kombiah, Iyakutti

Web-based Knowledge Gathering (WKG) is a specialized and complex information seeking task carried out by many users on the web, for their various learning, and decision-making requirements. We construct a contextual semantic structure by observing the actions of the users involved in WKG task, in order to gain an understanding of their task and requirement. We also build a knowledge warehouse in the form of a master Semantic Link Network (SLX) that accommodates and assimilates all the contextual semantic structures. This master SLX, which is a socio-contextual network, is then mined to provide contextual inputs to the current users through their agents. We validated our approach through experiments and analyzed the benefits to the users in terms of resource explorations and the time saved. The results are positive enough to motivate us to implement in a larger scale.

The effect of contextual cues on the encoding of motor memories.

PubMed

Howard, Ian S; Wolpert, Daniel M; Franklin, David W

2013-05-01

Several studies have shown that sensory contextual cues can reduce the interference observed during learning of opposing force fields. However, because each study examined a small set of cues, often in a unique paradigm, the relative efficacy of different sensory contextual cues is unclear. In the present study we quantify how seven contextual cues, some investigated previously and some novel, affect the formation and recall of motor memories. Subjects made movements in a velocity-dependent curl field, with direction varying randomly from trial to trial but always associated with a unique contextual cue. Linking field direction to the cursor or background color, or to peripheral visual motion cues, did not reduce interference. In contrast, the orientation of a visual object attached to the hand cursor significantly reduced interference, albeit by a small amount. When the fields were associated with movement in different locations in the workspace, a substantial reduction in interference was observed. We tested whether this reduction in interference was due to the different locations of the visual feedback (targets and cursor) or the movements (proprioceptive). When the fields were associated only with changes in visual display location (movements always made centrally) or only with changes in the movement location (visual feedback always displayed centrally), a substantial reduction in interference was observed. These results show that although some visual cues can lead to the formation and recall of distinct representations in motor memory, changes in spatial visual and proprioceptive states of the movement are far more effective than changes in simple visual contextual cues.

Literacy and Deaf Students in Taiwan: Issues, Practices and Directions for Future Research--Part I

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Hsiu Tan; Liu, Chun Jung; Andrews, Jean F.

2014-01-01

We describe the literacy issues facing young deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) learners in Taiwan who are learning both a logographic and an alphabetic script. We describe the contextual factors that surround their reading and writing processes such as island demographics, reading achievement levels, and background language learning variables…

Central and peripheral vision loss differentially affects contextual cueing in visual search.

PubMed

Geringswald, Franziska; Pollmann, Stefan

2015-09-01

Visual search for targets in repeated displays is more efficient than search for the same targets in random distractor layouts. Previous work has shown that this contextual cueing is severely impaired under central vision loss. Here, we investigated whether central vision loss, simulated with gaze-contingent displays, prevents the incidental learning of contextual cues or the expression of learning, that is, the guidance of search by learned target-distractor configurations. Visual search with a central scotoma reduced contextual cueing both with respect to search times and gaze parameters. However, when the scotoma was subsequently removed, contextual cueing was observed in a comparable magnitude as for controls who had searched without scotoma simulation throughout the experiment. This indicated that search with a central scotoma did not prevent incidental context learning, but interfered with search guidance by learned contexts. We discuss the role of visuospatial working memory load as source of this interference. In contrast to central vision loss, peripheral vision loss was expected to prevent spatial configuration learning itself, because the restricted search window did not allow the integration of invariant local configurations with the global display layout. This expectation was confirmed in that visual search with a simulated peripheral scotoma eliminated contextual cueing not only in the initial learning phase with scotoma, but also in the subsequent test phase without scotoma. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Risk management of key issues of FPSO

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sun, Liping; Sun, Hai

2012-12-01

Risk analysis of key systems have become a growing topic late of because of the development of offshore structures. Equipment failures of offloading system and fire accidents were analyzed based on the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) features. Fault tree analysis (FTA), and failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) methods were examined based on information already researched on modules of relex reliability studio (RRS). Equipment failures were also analyzed qualitatively by establishing a fault tree and Boolean structure function based on the shortage of failure cases, statistical data, and risk control measures examined. Failure modes of fire accident were classified according to the different areas of fire occurrences during the FMEA process, using risk priority number (RPN) methods to evaluate their severity rank. The qualitative analysis of FTA gave the basic insight of forming the failure modes of FPSO offloading, and the fire FMEA gave the priorities and suggested processes. The research has practical importance for the security analysis problems of FPSO.

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…

Contributions of the Medial Temporal Lobe to Declarative Memory Retrieval: Manipulating the Amount of Contextual Retrieval

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tendolkar, Indira; Arnold, Jennifer; Petersson, Karl Magnus; Weis, Susanne; Brockhaus-Dumke, Anke; van Eijndhoven, Philip; Buitelaar, Jan; Fernandez, Guillen

2008-01-01

We investigated how the hippocampus and its adjacent mediotemporal structures contribute to contextual and noncontextual declarative memory retrieval by manipulating the amount of contextual information across two levels of the same contextual dimension in a source memory task. A first analysis identified medial temporal lobe (MTL) substructures…

Medial prefrontal cortex serotonergic and GABAergic mechanisms modulate the expression of contextual fear: intratelencephalic pathways and differential involvement of cortical subregions.

PubMed

Almada, R C; Coimbra, N C; Brandão, M L

2015-01-22

Several lines of evidence indicate that the dorsal hippocampus (dH) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) regulate contextual fear conditioning. The prelimbic (PrL), infralimbic (IL) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) subregions of the mPFC likely play distinct roles in the expression of fear. Moreover, studies have highlighted the role of serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT)- and γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-mediated mechanisms in the modulation of innate fear in the mPFC. The present study characterized dH-mPFC pathways and investigated the role of serotonergic and GABAergic mechanisms of the PrL, IL and ACC-area 1 (Cg1) in the elaboration of contextual fear conditioning using fear-potentiated startle (FPS) and freezing behavior in Rattus norvegicus. The results of neurotracing with microinjections of biotinylated dextran amine into the dH revealed a neural link of the dH with the PrL and ACC. Intra-PrL injections of the 5-HT1A receptor agonist 8-hydroxy-2-(di-n-propylamino) tetralin (8-OH-DPAT) and the GABAA receptor-selective agonist muscimol reduced contextual FPS and freezing responses. Intra-Cg1 injections of muscimol but not 8-OH-DPAT decreased FPS and freezing responses. However, neither intra-IL injections of a 5-HT1A agonist nor of a GABAA agonist affected these defensive responses. Labeled neuronal fibers from the dH reached the superficial layers of the PrL cortex and spread to the inner layers of PrL and Cg1 cortices, supporting the pharmacological findings. The present results confirmed the involvement of PrL and Cg1 in the expression of FPS and freezing responses to aversive conditions. In addition, PrL serotoninergic mechanisms play a key role in contextual fear conditioning. This study suggests that PrL, IL and Cg1 distinctively contribute to the modulation of contextual fear conditioning. Copyright © 2014 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Adolescent prosocial behavior: the role of self-processes and contextual cues.

PubMed

Wentzel, Kathryn R; Filisetti, Laurence; Looney, Lisa

2007-01-01

Peer- and teacher-reported prosocial behavior of 339 6th-grade (11-12 years) and 8th-grade (13-14 years) students was examined in relation to prosocial goals, self-processes (reasons for behavior, empathy, perspective taking, depressive affect, perceived competence), and contextual cues (expectations of peers and teachers). Goal pursuit significantly predicted prosocial behavior, and goal pursuit provided a pathway by which reasons for behavior were related to behavior. Reasons reflected external, other-focused, self-focused, and internal justifications for behavior; each reason was related to a unique set of self-processes and contextual cues. Associations between prosocial outcomes and sex and race (Caucasian and African American) were mediated in part by self-processes and contextual cues. The implications of studying prosocial behavior from a motivational perspective are discussed.

Entering into dialogue about the mathematical value of contextual mathematising tasks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yoon, Caroline; Chin, Sze Looi; Moala, John Griffith; Choy, Ban Heng

2018-03-01

Our project seeks to draw attention to the rich mathematical thinking that is generated when students work on contextual mathematising tasks. We use a design-based research approach to create ways of reporting that raise the visibility of this rich mathematical thinking while retaining and respecting its complexity. These reports will be aimed for three classroom stakeholders: (1) students, who wish to reflect on and enhance their mathematical learning; (2) teachers, who wish to integrate contextual mathematising tasks into their teaching practice and (3) researchers, who seek rich tasks for generating observable instances of mathematical thinking and learning. We anticipate that these reports and the underlying theoretical framework for creating them will contribute to greater awareness of and appreciation for the mathematical value of contextual mathematising tasks in learning, teaching and research.

Emotional valence and contextual affordances flexibly shape approach-avoidance movements

PubMed Central

Saraiva, Ana Carolina; Schüür, Friederike; Bestmann, Sven

2013-01-01

Behavior is influenced by the emotional content—or valence—of stimuli in our environment. Positive stimuli facilitate approach, whereas negative stimuli facilitate defensive actions such as avoidance (flight) and attack (fight). Facilitation of approach or avoidance movements may also be influenced by whether it is the self that moves relative to a stimulus (self-reference) or the stimulus that moves relative to the self (object-reference), adding flexibility and context-dependence to behavior. Alternatively, facilitation of approach avoidance movements may happen in a pre-defined and muscle-specific way, whereby arm flexion is faster to approach positive (e.g., flexing the arm brings a stimulus closer) and arm extension faster to avoid negative stimuli (e.g., extending the arm moves the stimulus away). While this allows for relatively fast responses, it may compromise the flexibility offered by contextual influences. Here we asked under which conditions approach-avoidance actions are influenced by contextual factors (i.e., reference-frame). We manipulated the reference-frame in which actions occurred by asking participants to move a symbolic manikin (representing the self) toward or away from a positive or negative stimulus, and move a stimulus toward or away from the manikin. We also controlled for the type of movements used to approach or avoid in each reference. We show that the reference-frame influences approach-avoidance actions to emotional stimuli, but additionally we find muscle-specificity for negative stimuli in self-reference contexts. We speculate this muscle-specificity may be a fast and adaptive response to threatening stimuli. Our results confirm that approach-avoidance behavior is flexible and reference-frame dependent, but can be muscle-specific depending on the context and valence of the stimulus. Reference-frame and stimulus-evaluation are key factors in guiding approach-avoidance behavior toward emotional stimuli in our environment. PMID

Contextualizing the Policy and Pragmatics of Reintegrating Sex Offenders.

PubMed

Fox, Kathryn J

2017-02-01

As sanctions for those convicted of sex offenses have increased over recent years, the risk for reoffense presented by social isolation increases. Because most jurisdictions struggle with how best to manage and reintegrate sex offenders, this study analyzes bureaucratic and contextual issues with arranging community-based reintegration programs. Specifically, this qualitative, process-oriented study examines and compares Circles of Support & Accountability (CoSA) programs from the United States (specifically, Vermont) and New Zealand. CoSAs provide support for medium- to high-risk sex offenders as they are released to communities. The programs are compared with regard to their structures, the relationship to Corrections, the role of communities, and core members' reentry challenges. The implications of each configuration are explored. As most of the existing research on CoSAs is focused on recidivism, and as the U.S. federal government is expanding the use of CoSA, this article fills a void in our understanding of the role that communities can play in reintegrating sexual offenders and how program structures shape reentry.

Sexual Health Services for Young People in a Rural Area of Northern Ireland: A Study of the Key Issues for Those Who Provide Them

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCann, Lyndsey; Donnelly, Lyn; Quinn, Phelim; McAnerney, Rosemary

2008-01-01

Objective: To identify the key issues for service providers in delivering high quality sexual health services, responsive to the needs of young people, in a rural area of Northern Ireland. Design: A triangulation survey approach using questionnaires, in-depth interviews and focus groups was undertaken with a range of organizations and…

Key issues in the prevention of obesity.

PubMed

Gill, T P

1997-01-01

Obesity is a serious, chronic medical condition which is associated with a wide range of debilitating and life-threatening conditions. It imposes huge financial burdens on health care systems and the community at large. Obesity develops over time and once it has done so, is difficult to treat. Therefore, the prevention of weight gain offers the only truly effective means of controlling obesity. Very little research has directly addressed the issue of obesity prevention and previous efforts to prevent obesity amongst individuals, groups or whole communities have had very limited success. However, we have learned sufficient from past preventive activities to realise that the management of obesity will require a comprehensive range of strategies with actions that target those with existing weight problems, those at high risk of developing obesity as well as the community as a whole. The prevention and management of obesity in children should be considered a priority as there is a high risk of persistence into adulthood.

Contextual profiles of young adult Ecstasy users: a multisite study

PubMed Central

Ramtekkar, Ujjwal P.; Striley, Catherine W; Cottler, Linda B

2010-01-01

These analyses assess contextual profiles of 612 young adult Ecstasy users, 18–30 years of age, from St. Louis (USA), Miami (USA) and Sydney (Australia). Bivariate analyses revealed different contextual factors influencing Ecstasy use. Friends were the most common sources of Ecstasy at all sites and most used with friends. St. Louis and Miami use mostly occurred in residences, whereas in Sydney use was mostly at clubs, bars or restaurants. Ecstasy consumption at public places and in cars, trains or ferries was significantly higher in Miami (89% and 77%) than in St. Louis (67% and 65%) and Sydney (67% and 61%). At all sites, simultaneous use of LSD/mushroom and nitrous oxide with Ecstasy was common; concurrent amphetamines predominated in Sydney and heroin/opiates in St. Louis Contextual factors influencing Ecstasy use among young adults vary by geographic region. Their inclusion may help tailor effective prevention programs to reduce or ameliorate Ecstasy use. PMID:21094585

Temporal and peripheral extraction of contextual cues from scenes during visual search.

PubMed

Koehler, Kathryn; Eckstein, Miguel P

2017-02-01

Scene context is known to facilitate object recognition and guide visual search, but little work has focused on isolating image-based cues and evaluating their contributions to eye movement guidance and search performance. Here, we explore three types of contextual cues (a co-occurring object, the configuration of other objects, and the superordinate category of background elements) and assess their joint contributions to search performance in the framework of cue-combination and the temporal unfolding of their extraction. We also assess whether observers' ability to extract each contextual cue in the visual periphery is a bottleneck that determines the utilization and contribution of each cue to search guidance and decision accuracy. We find that during the first four fixations of a visual search task observers first utilize the configuration of objects for coarse eye movement guidance and later use co-occurring object information for finer guidance. In the absence of contextual cues, observers were suboptimally biased to report the target object as being absent. The presence of the co-occurring object was the only contextual cue that had a significant effect in reducing decision bias. The early influence of object-based cues on eye movements is corroborated by a clear demonstration of observers' ability to extract object cues up to 16° into the visual periphery. The joint contributions of the cues to decision search accuracy approximates that expected from the combination of statistically independent cues and optimal cue combination. Finally, the lack of utilization and contribution of the background-based contextual cue to search guidance cannot be explained by the availability of the contextual cue in the visual periphery; instead it is related to background cues providing the least inherent information about the precise location of the target in the scene.

[Contextual indicators to assess social determinants of health and the Spanish economic recession].

PubMed

Cabrera-León, Andrés; Daponte Codina, Antonio; Mateo, Inmaculada; Arroyo-Borrell, Elena; Bartoll, Xavier; Bravo, María José; Domínguez-Berjón, María Felicitas; Renart, Gemma; Álvarez-Dardet, Carlos; Marí-Dell'Olmo, Marc; Bolívar Muñoz, Julia; Saez, Marc; Escribà-Agüir, Vicenta; Palència, Laia; López, María José; Saurina, Carme; Puig, Vanessa; Martín, Unai; Gotsens, Mercè; Borrell, Carme; Serra Saurina, Laura; Sordo, Luis; Bacigalupe, Amaia; Rodríguez-Sanz, Maica; Pérez, Glòria; Espelt, Albert; Ruiz, Miguel; Bernal, Mariola

To provide indicators to assess the impact on health, its social determinants and health inequalities from a social context and the recent economic recession in Spain and its autonomous regions. Based on the Spanish conceptual framework for determinants of social inequalities in health, we identified indicators sequentially from key documents, Web of Science, and organisations with official statistics. The information collected resulted in a large directory of indicators which was reviewed by an expert panel. We then selected a set of these indicators according to geographical (availability of data according to autonomous regions) and temporal (from at least 2006 to 2012) criteria. We identified 203 contextual indicators related to social determinants of health and selected 96 (47%) based on the above criteria; 16% of the identified indicators did not satisfy the geographical criteria and 35% did not satisfy the temporal criteria. At least 80% of the indicators related to dependence and healthcare services were excluded. The final selection of indicators covered all areas for social determinants of health, and 62% of these were not available on the Internet. Around 40% of the indicators were extracted from sources related to the Spanish Statistics Institute. We have provided an extensive directory of contextual indicators on social determinants of health and a database to facilitate assessment of the impact of the economic recession on health and health inequalities in Spain and its autonomous regions. Copyright © 2016 SESPAS. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

Documentation Status as a Contextual Determinant of HIV Risk Among Young Transgender Latinas.

PubMed

Palazzolo, Sarah L; Yamanis, Thespina J; De Jesus, Maria; Maguire-Marshall, Molly; Barker, Suyanna L

2016-04-01

The purpose of this study was to explore the contextual factors that determine or mitigate vulnerability to HIV among Latina transgender women. Documentation status (legal authorization to live in the United States) has been cited by other studies as a barrier to recruitment or engagement in HIV-related care among immigrant Latinos, but not explored as a determinant of HIV risk for transgender immigrant Latinas. We collaborated with a community-based organization to explore these contextual, including social and structural, factors. In-depth interviews in Spanish captured life histories of eight 18- to 29-year-old transgender Latinas, who collectively self-identify as chicas trans. Codes were assigned deductively from the interview guide, and emerging themes were identified throughout data collection. Most participants migrated to the United States from Central America after experiencing discrimination and violence in their countries of origin. Participants emphasized documentation status as a critical factor in three areas related to social and structural determinants of HIV risk: gender identity expression, access to services, and relationship power dynamics. Chicas trans who gained legal asylum reported greater control over sexual relationships, improved access to services, and less risky employment. Documentation status emerged as a key HIV risk factor for this population. For undocumented transgender Latinas, legal asylum appears to be a promising HIV-related protective factor. Further research could assess whether legal assistance combined with wraparound support services affects HIV prevention for this population.

Documentation Status as a Contextual Determinant of HIV Risk Among Young Transgender Latinas

PubMed Central

Palazzolo, Sarah L.; De Jesus, Maria; Maguire-Marshall, Molly; Barker, Suyanna L.

2016-01-01

Abstract Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the contextual factors that determine or mitigate vulnerability to HIV among Latina transgender women. Documentation status (legal authorization to live in the United States) has been cited by other studies as a barrier to recruitment or engagement in HIV-related care among immigrant Latinos, but not explored as a determinant of HIV risk for transgender immigrant Latinas. Methods: We collaborated with a community-based organization to explore these contextual, including social and structural, factors. In-depth interviews in Spanish captured life histories of eight 18- to 29-year-old transgender Latinas, who collectively self-identify as chicas trans. Codes were assigned deductively from the interview guide, and emerging themes were identified throughout data collection. Results: Most participants migrated to the United States from Central America after experiencing discrimination and violence in their countries of origin. Participants emphasized documentation status as a critical factor in three areas related to social and structural determinants of HIV risk: gender identity expression, access to services, and relationship power dynamics. Chicas trans who gained legal asylum reported greater control over sexual relationships, improved access to services, and less risky employment. Conclusions: Documentation status emerged as a key HIV risk factor for this population. For undocumented transgender Latinas, legal asylum appears to be a promising HIV-related protective factor. Further research could assess whether legal assistance combined with wraparound support services affects HIV prevention for this population. PMID:26669583

Implicit sequence learning and contextual cueing do not compete for central cognitive resources.

PubMed

Jiménez, Luis; Vázquez, Gustavo A

2011-02-01

Sequence learning and contextual cueing explore different forms of implicit learning, arising from practice with a structured serial task, or with a search task with informative contexts. We assess whether these two learning effects arise simultaneously when both remain implicit. Experiments 1 and 2 confirm that a cueing effect can be observed under a continuous setting and that there is no interference between contextual cueing and sequence learning. Experiments 3a and 3b tested whether an interference arises specifically when the sequence becomes explicit. Results show that the expression of contextual cueing disappeared in those conditions but that context information is still acquired, and it affects performance when the sequence is removed. The results are discussed in relation to the current debates about the automaticity of implicit learning, and about the role of attention in the acquisition and expression of contextual cueing. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

The Role of Search Speed in the Contextual Cueing of Children’s Attention

PubMed Central

Darby, Kevin; Burling, Joseph; Yoshida, Hanako

2013-01-01

The contextual cueing effect is a robust phenomenon in which repeated exposure to the same arrangement of random elements guides attention to relevant information by constraining search. The effect is measured using an object search task in which a target (e.g., the letter T) is located within repeated or nonrepeated visual contexts (e.g., configurations of the letter L). Decreasing response times for the repeated configurations indicates that contextual information has facilitated search. Although the effect is robust among adult participants, recent attempts to document the effect in children have yielded mixed results. We examined the effect of search speed on contextual cueing with school-aged children, comparing three types of stimuli that promote different search times in order to observe how speed modulates this effect. Reliable effects of search time were found, suggesting that visual search speed uniquely constrains the role of attention toward contextually cued information. PMID:24505167

Process dissociation between contextual retrieval and item recognition.

PubMed

Weis, Susanne; Specht, Karsten; Klaver, Peter; Tendolkar, Indira; Willmes, Klaus; Ruhlmann, Jürgen; Elger, Christian E; Fernández, Guillén

2004-12-22

We employed a source memory task in an event related fMRI study to dissociate MTL processes associated with either contextual retrieval or item recognition. To introduce context during study, stimuli (photographs of buildings and natural landscapes) were transformed into one of four single-color-scales: red, blue, yellow, or green. In the subsequent old/new recognition memory test, all stimuli were presented as gray scale photographs, and old-responses were followed by a four-alternative source judgment referring to the color in which the stimulus was presented during study. Our results suggest a clear-cut process dissociation within the human MTL. While an activity increase accompanies successful retrieval of contextual information, an activity decrease provides a familiarity signal that is sufficient for successful item recognition.

Impact of Contextuality on Mobile Learning Acceptance: An Empirical Study Based on a Language Learning App

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Böhm, Stephan; Constantine, Georges Philip

2016-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to focus on contextualized features for mobile language learning apps. The scope of this paper is to explore students' perceptions of contextualized mobile language learning. Design/Methodology/Approach: An extended Technology Acceptance Model was developed to analyze the effect of contextual app features on students'…

The impact of distracter-target similarity on contextual cueing effects of children and adults.

PubMed

Yang, Yingying; Merrill, Edward C

2014-05-01

Contextual cueing reflects a memory-based attentional guidance process that develops through repeated exposure to displays in which a target location has been consistently paired with a specific context. In two experiments, we compared 20 younger children's (6-7 years old), 20 older children's (9-10 years old), and 20 young adults' (18-21 years old) abilities to acquire contextual cueing effects from displays in which half of the distracters predicted the location of the target and half did not. Across experiments, we varied the similarity between the predictive and nonpredictive distracters and the target. In Experiment 1, the predictive distracters were visually similar to the target and dissimilar from the nonpredictive distracters. In Experiment 2, the nonpredictive distracters were also similar to the target and predictive distracters. All three age groups exhibited contextual cueing in Experiment 1, although the effect was not as strong for the younger children relative to older children and adults. All participants exhibited weaker contextual cueing effects in Experiment 2, with the younger children not exhibiting significant contextual cueing at all. Apparently, when search processes could not be guided to the predictive distracters on the basis of salient stimulus features, younger children in particular experienced difficulty in implicitly identifying and using aspects of the context to facilitate with the acquisition of contextual cueing effects. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Bloodstain pattern classification: Accuracy, effect of contextual information and the role of analyst characteristics.

PubMed

Osborne, Nikola K P; Taylor, Michael C; Healey, Matthew; Zajac, Rachel

2016-03-01

It is becoming increasingly apparent that contextual information can exert a considerable influence on decisions about forensic evidence. Here, we explored accuracy and contextual influence in bloodstain pattern classification, and how these variables might relate to analyst characteristics. Thirty-nine bloodstain pattern analysts with varying degrees of experience each completed measures of compliance, decision-making style, and need for closure. Analysts then examined a bloodstain pattern without any additional contextual information, and allocated votes to listed pattern types according to favoured and less favoured classifications. Next, if they believed it would assist with their classification, analysts could request items of contextual information - from commonly encountered sources of information in bloodstain pattern analysis - and update their vote allocation. We calculated a shift score for each item of contextual information based on vote reallocation. Almost all forms of contextual information influenced decision-making, with medical findings leading to the highest shift scores. Although there was a small positive association between shift scores and the degree to which analysts displayed an intuitive decision-making style, shift scores did not vary meaningfully as a function of experience or the other characteristics measured. Almost all of the erroneous classifications were made by novice analysts. Copyright © 2016 The Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Integration of contextual cues into memory depends on "prefrontal" N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors.

PubMed

Starosta, Sarah; Bartetzko, Isabelle; Stüttgen, Maik C; Güntürkün, Onur

2017-10-01

Every learning event is embedded in a context, but not always does the context become an integral part of the memory; however, for extinction learning it usually does, resulting in context-specific conditioned responding. The neuronal mechanisms underlying contextual control have been mainly investigated for Pavlovian fear extinction with a focus on hippocampal structures. However, the initial acquisition of novel responses can be subject to contextual control as well, although the neuronal mechanisms are mostly unknown. Here, we tested the hypothesis that contextual control of acquisition depends on glutamatergic transmission underlying executive functions in forebrain areas, e.g. by shifting attention to critical cues. Thus, we antagonized N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors with 2-amino-5-phosphonovaleric acid (AP5) in the pigeon nidopallium caudolaterale, the functional analogue of mammalian prefrontal cortex, during the concomitant acquisition and extinction of conditioned responding to two different stimuli. This paradigm has previously been shown to lead to contextual control over extinguished as well as non-extinguished responding. NMDA receptor blockade resulted in an impairment of extinction learning, but left the acquisition of responses to a novel stimulus unaffected. Critically, when responses were tested in a different context in the retrieval phase, we observed that NMDA receptor blockade led to the abolishment of contextual control over acquisition performance. This result is predicted by a model describing response inclination as the product of associative strength and contextual gain. In this model, learning under AP5 leads to a change in the contextual gain on the learned association, possibly via the modulation of attentional mechanisms. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Involvement of the prelimbic cortex in contextual fear conditioning with temporal and spatial discontinuity.

PubMed

Santos, Thays Brenner; Kramer-Soares, Juliana Carlota; Favaro, Vanessa Manchim; Oliveira, Maria Gabriela Menezes

2017-10-01

Time plays an important role in conditioning, it is not only possible to associate stimuli with events that overlap, as in delay fear conditioning, but it is also possible to associate stimuli that are discontinuous in time, as shown in trace conditioning for a discrete stimuli. The environment itself can be a powerful conditioned stimulus (CS) and be associated to unconditioned stimulus (US). Thus, the aim of the present study was to determine the parameters in which contextual fear conditioning occurs by the maintenance of a contextual representation over short and long time intervals. The results showed that a contextual representation can be maintained and associated after 5s, even in the absence of a 15s re-exposure to the training context before US delivery. The same effect was not observed with a 24h interval of discontinuity. Furthermore, optimal conditioned response with a 5s interval is produced only when the contexts (of pre-exposure and shock) match. As the pre-limbic cortex (PL) is necessary for the maintenance of a continuous representation of a stimulus, the involvement of the PL in this temporal and contextual processing was investigated. The reversible inactivation of the PL by muscimol infusion impaired the acquisition of contextual fear conditioning with a 5s interval, but not with a 24h interval, and did not impair delay fear conditioning. The data provided evidence that short and long intervals of discontinuity have different mechanisms, thus contributing to a better understanding of PL involvement in contextual fear conditioning and providing a model that considers both temporal and contextual factors in fear conditioning. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A Contextual Factors Framework to Inform Implementation and Evaluation of Public Health Initiatives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vanderkruik, Rachel; McPherson, Marianne E.

2017-01-01

Evaluating initiatives implemented across multiple settings can elucidate how various contextual factors may influence both implementation and outcomes. Understanding context is especially critical when the same program has varying levels of success across settings. We present a framework for evaluating contextual factors affecting an initiative…

Nicotinic Receptors in the Dorsal and Ventral Hippocampus Differentially Modulate Contextual Fear Conditioning

PubMed Central

Kenney, Justin W.; Raybuck, Jonathan D.; Gould, Thomas J.

2012-01-01

Nicotine administration alters various forms of hippocampus-dependent learning and memory. Increasing work has found that the dorsal and ventral hippocampus differentially contribute to multiple behaviors. Thus, the present study examined whether the effects of nicotine in the dorsal and ventral hippocampus have distinct influences on contextual fear learning in male C57BL/6J mice. Direct infusion of nicotine into the dorsal hippocampus resulted in an enhancement of contextual fear learning, whereas nicotine infused into the ventral hippocampus resulted in deficits. Nicotine infusions into the ventral hippocampus did not alter hippocampus-independent cued fear conditioning or time spent in the open arm of the elevated plus maze, a measure of anxiety, suggesting the effects are due to alterations in contextual learning and not other general processes. Finally, results from using direct infusions of MLA, a low-affinity α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) antagonist, in conjunction with systemic nicotine, provide evidence that α7-nAChRs in the ventral hippocampus mediate the detrimental effect of ventral hippocampal nicotine on contextual fear learning. These results suggest that with systemic nicotine administration, competition exists between the dorsal and ventral hippocampus for behavioral control over contextual learning. PMID:22271264

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.

Contextual descriptors and neural networks for scene analysis in VHR SAR images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Del Frate, Fabio; Picchiani, Matteo; Falasco, Alessia; Schiavon, Giovanni

2016-10-01

The development of SAR technology during the last decade has made it possible to collect a huge amount of data over many regions of the world. In particular, the availability of SAR images from different sensors, with metric or sub-metric spatial resolution, offers novel opportunities in different fields as land cover, urban monitoring, soil consumption etc. On the other hand, automatic approaches become crucial for the exploitation of such a huge amount of information. In such a scenario, especially if single polarization images are considered, the main issue is to select appropriate contextual descriptors, since the backscattering coefficient of a single pixel may not be sufficient to classify an object on the scene. In this paper a comparison among three different approaches for contextual features definition is presented so as to design optimum procedures for VHR SAR scene understanding. The first approach is based on Gray Level Co- Occurrence Matrix since it is widely accepted and several studies have used it for land cover classification with SAR data. The second approach is based on the Fourier spectra and it has been already proposed with positive results for this kind of problems, the third one is based on Auto-associative Neural Networks which have been already proven effective for features extraction from polarimetric SAR images. The three methods are evaluated in terms of the accuracy of the classified scene when the features extracted using each method are considered as input to a neural network classificator and applied on different Cosmo-SkyMed spotlight products.

Misleading contextual cues: how do they affect visual search?

PubMed

Manginelli, Angela A; Pollmann, Stefan

2009-03-01

Contextual cueing occurs when repetitions of the distractor configuration are implicitly learned. This implicit learning leads to faster search times in repeated displays. Here, we investigated how search adapts to a change of the target location in old displays from a consistent location in the learning phase to a consistent new location in the transfer phase. In agreement with the literature, contextual cueing was accompanied by fewer fixations, a more efficient scan path and, specifically, an earlier onset of a monotonic gaze approach phase towards the target location in repeated displays. When the repeated context was no longer predictive of the old target location, search times and number of fixations for old displays increased to the level of novel displays. Along with this, scan paths for old and new displays became equally efficient. After the target location change, there was a bias of exploration towards the old target location, which soon disappeared. Thus, change of implicitly learned spatial relations between target and distractor configuration eliminated the advantageous effects of contextual cueing, but did not lead to a lasting impairment of search in repeated displays relative to novel displays.

The Neural Basis of Contextual Influences on Face Categorization

PubMed Central

Freeman, Jonathan B.; Ma, Yina; Barth, Maria; Young, Steven G.; Han, Shihui; Ambady, Nalini

2015-01-01

From only brief exposure to a face, individuals spontaneously categorize another's race. Recent behavioral evidence suggests that visual context may affect such categorizations. We used fMRI to examine the neural basis of contextual influences on the race categorization of faces. Participants categorized the race of faces that varied along a White-Asian morph continuum and were surrounded by American, neutral, or Chinese scene contexts. As expected, the context systematically influenced categorization responses and their efficiency (response times). Neuroimaging results indicated that the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) exhibited highly sensitive, graded responses to the compatibility of facial and contextual cues. These regions showed linearly increasing responses as a face became more White when in an American context, and linearly increasing responses as a face became more Asian when in a Chinese context. Further, RSC activity partially mediated the effect of this face-context compatibility on the efficiency of categorization responses. Together, the findings suggest a critical role of the RSC and OFC in driving contextual influences on face categorization, and highlight the impact of extraneous cues beyond the face in categorizing other people. PMID:24006403

Contextually guided very-high-resolution imagery classification with semantic segments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Wenzhi; Du, Shihong; Wang, Qiao; Emery, William J.

2017-10-01

Contextual information, revealing relationships and dependencies between image objects, is one of the most important information for the successful interpretation of very-high-resolution (VHR) remote sensing imagery. Over the last decade, geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) technique has been widely used to first divide images into homogeneous parts, and then to assign semantic labels according to the properties of image segments. However, due to the complexity and heterogeneity of VHR images, segments without semantic labels (i.e., semantic-free segments) generated with low-level features often fail to represent geographic entities (such as building roofs usually be partitioned into chimney/antenna/shadow parts). As a result, it is hard to capture contextual information across geographic entities when using semantic-free segments. In contrast to low-level features, "deep" features can be used to build robust segments with accurate labels (i.e., semantic segments) in order to represent geographic entities at higher levels. Based on these semantic segments, semantic graphs can be constructed to capture contextual information in VHR images. In this paper, semantic segments were first explored with convolutional neural networks (CNN) and a conditional random field (CRF) model was then applied to model the contextual information between semantic segments. Experimental results on two challenging VHR datasets (i.e., the Vaihingen and Beijing scenes) indicate that the proposed method is an improvement over existing image classification techniques in classification performance (overall accuracy ranges from 82% to 96%).

A contextual perspective on talented female participants and their development in extracurricular STEM programs.

PubMed

Stoeger, Heidrun; Schirner, Sigrun; Laemmle, Lena; Obergriesser, Stefanie; Heilemann, Michael; Ziegler, Albert

2016-08-01

We advocate a more contextual perspective in giftedness research. In our view, doing so opens up three particularly interesting research areas, which we refer to as the participation issue, the effectiveness issue, and the interaction issue. To illustrate their utility, we examined characteristics of females participating in German high achiever-track secondary education who had applied for participation in a 1-year extracurricular e-mentoring program in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) (n = 1237). Their characteristics were compared with male and female random-sample control groups. We assessed the effectiveness of the mentoring program by comparing the developmental trajectories of program participants with those of three control groups: applicants who were randomly chosen for later participation (waiting-list control group) and a female and a male control group. Finally, we examined whether differences in program effectiveness could be partially explained by characteristics of the interaction with the domain. Program applicants possessed more advantageous individual characteristics but, unexpectedly, less advantageous home and school environments than female and male members of the control groups. Program participation affected positive changes in certainty about career goals (independent of STEM) and in the number of STEM activities. The amount of STEM communication partially explained differences in program effectiveness. © 2016 New York Academy of Sciences.

Differential Involvement of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex across Variants of Contextual Fear Conditioning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heroux, Nicholas A.; Robinson-Drummer, Patrese A.; Sanders, Hollie R.; Rosen, Jeffrey B.; Stanton, Mark E.

2017-01-01

The context preexposure facilitation effect (CPFE) is a contextual fear conditioning paradigm in which learning about the context, acquiring the context-shock association, and retrieving/expressing contextual fear are temporally dissociated into three distinct phases. In contrast, learning about the context and the context-shock association…

Discriminative latent models for recognizing contextual group activities.

PubMed

Lan, Tian; Wang, Yang; Yang, Weilong; Robinovitch, Stephen N; Mori, Greg

2012-08-01

In this paper, we go beyond recognizing the actions of individuals and focus on group activities. This is motivated from the observation that human actions are rarely performed in isolation; the contextual information of what other people in the scene are doing provides a useful cue for understanding high-level activities. We propose a novel framework for recognizing group activities which jointly captures the group activity, the individual person actions, and the interactions among them. Two types of contextual information, group-person interaction and person-person interaction, are explored in a latent variable framework. In particular, we propose three different approaches to model the person-person interaction. One approach is to explore the structures of person-person interaction. Differently from most of the previous latent structured models, which assume a predefined structure for the hidden layer, e.g., a tree structure, we treat the structure of the hidden layer as a latent variable and implicitly infer it during learning and inference. The second approach explores person-person interaction in the feature level. We introduce a new feature representation called the action context (AC) descriptor. The AC descriptor encodes information about not only the action of an individual person in the video, but also the behavior of other people nearby. The third approach combines the above two. Our experimental results demonstrate the benefit of using contextual information for disambiguating group activities.

Contextual and social influences on valuation and choice.

PubMed

Engelmann, Jan B; Hein, Grit

2013-01-01

To survive in our complex environment, we have to adapt to changing contexts. Prior research that investigated how contextual changes are processed in the human brain has demonstrated important modulatory influences on multiple cognitive processes underlying decision-making, including perceptual judgments, working memory, as well as cognitive and attentional control. However, in everyday life, the importance of context is even more obvious during economic and social interactions, which often have implicit rule sets that need to be recognized by a decision-maker. Here, we review recent evidence from an increasing number of studies in the fields of Neuroeconomics and Social Neuroscience that investigate the neurobiological basis of contextual effects on valuation and social choice. Contrary to the assumptions of rational choice theory, multiple contextual factors, such as the availability of alternative choice options, shifts in reference point, and social context, have been shown to modulate behavior, as well as signals in task-relevant neural networks. A consistent picture that emerges from neurobiological results is that valuation-related activity in striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex is highly context dependent during both social and nonsocial choice. Alternative approaches to model and explain choice behavior, such as comparison-based choice models, as well as implications for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Future of Contextual Fear Learning for PTSD Research: A Methodological Review of Neuroimaging Studies.

PubMed

Glenn, Daniel E; Risbrough, Victoria B; Simmons, Alan N; Acheson, Dean T; Stout, Daniel M

2017-10-21

There has been a great deal of recent interest in human models of contextual fear learning, particularly due to the use of such paradigms for investigating neural mechanisms related to the etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder. However, the construct of "context" in fear conditioning research is broad, and the operational definitions and methods used to investigate contextual fear learning in humans are wide ranging and lack specificity, making it difficult to interpret findings about neural activity. Here we will review neuroimaging studies of contextual fear acquisition in humans. We will discuss the methodology associated with four broad categories of how contextual fear learning is manipulated in imaging studies (colored backgrounds, static picture backgrounds, virtual reality, and configural stimuli) and highlight findings for the primary neural circuitry involved in each paradigm. Additionally, we will offer methodological recommendations for human studies of contextual fear acquisition, including using stimuli that distinguish configural learning from discrete cue associations and clarifying how context is experimentally operationalized.

Understanding "The Old Man and the Sea": A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Valenti, Patricia Dunlavy

"The Old Man and the Sea" remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. This casebook helps readers interpret and appreciate the thematic concerns of the novel, as well as the contextual issues it explores. Topic chapters provide information on Cuba, including its natural geography, sociopolitical history, and the ethnic…

A qualitative study of contextual factors' impact on measures to reduce surgery cancellations.

PubMed

Hovlid, Einar; Bukve, Oddbjørn

2014-05-13

Contextual factors influence quality improvement outcomes. Understanding this influence is important when adapting and implementing interventions and translating improvements into new settings. To date, there is limited knowledge about how contextual factors influence quality improvement processes. In this study, we explore how contextual factors affected measures to reduce surgery cancellations, which are a persistent problem in healthcare. We discuss the usefulness of the theoretical framework provided by the model for understanding success in quality (MUSIQ) for this kind of research. We performed a qualitative case study at Førde Hospital, Norway, where we had previously demonstrated a reduction in surgery cancellations. We interviewed 20 clinicians and performed content analysis to explore how contextual factors affected measures to reduce cancellations of planned surgeries. We identified three common themes concerning how contextual factors influenced the change process: 1) identifying a need to change, 2) facilitating system-wide improvement, and 3) leader involvement and support. Input from patients helped identify a need to change and contributed to the consensus that change was necessary. Reducing cancellations required improving the clinical system. This improvement process was based on a strategy that emphasized the involvement of frontline clinicians in detecting and improving system problems. Clinicians shared information about their work by participating in improvement teams to develop a more complete understanding of the clinical system and its interdependencies. This new understanding allowed clinicians to detect system problems and design adequate interventions. Middle managers' participation in the improvement teams and in regular work processes was important for successfully implementing and adapting interventions. Contextual factors interacted with one another and with the interventions to facilitate changes in the clinical system, reducing

Contextual representations increase analogue traumatic intrusions: evidence against a dual-representation account of peri-traumatic processing.

PubMed

Pearson, David G

2012-12-01

Information processing accounts of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) state that intrusive memories emerge due to a lack of integration between perceptual and contextual trauma representations in autobiographical memory. This hypothesis was tested experimentally using an analogue trauma paradigm in which participants viewed an aversive film designed to elicit involuntary recollections. Participants viewed scenes from the film either paired with contextual information or with the contextual information omitted. After viewing the film participants were asked to record for one week any involuntary intrusions for the film using a provided intrusions diary. The results revealed a significant increase in analogue intrusions for the film when viewed with contextual information in comparison to when the film was viewed with the contextual information omitted. In contrast there was no effect of contextual information on valence ratings or voluntary memory for the film, or on the reported vividness and emotionality of the intrusions. The analogue trauma paradigm may have failed to reproduce the effect of extreme stress on encoding that is postulated to occur during PTSD. The findings have potential implications for trauma intervention as they suggest that the contextual understanding of a scene during encoding can be integral to the subsequent occurrence of traumatic intrusions. The pattern of results found in the study are inconsistent with dual-representation accounts of intrusive memory formation, and instead provide new evidence that contextual representations play a casual role in increasing the frequency of involuntary intrusions for traumatic material. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The relationship of contextual cueing and hippocampal volume in amnestic MCI patients and cognitively normal older adults

PubMed Central

Negash, Selam; Kliot, Daria; Howard, Darlene V.; Howard, James H.; Das, Sandhistu R.; Yushkevich, Paul A.; Pluta, John B.; Arnold, Steven E.; Wolk, David A.

2015-01-01

Objective There is currently some debate as to whether hippocampus mediates contextual cueing. In the present study, we examined contextual cueing in patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and healthy older adults, with the main goal of investigating the role of hippocampus in this form of learning. Method amnestic MCI (aMCI) patients and healthy controls completed the contextual cueing task, in which they were asked to search for a target (a horizontal T) in an array of distractors (rotated L’s). Unbeknownst to them, the spatial arrangement of elements on some displays was repeated thus making the configuration a contextual cue to the location of the target. In contrast, the configuration for novel displays was generated randomly on each trial. The difference in response times between repeated and novel configurations served as a measure of contextual learning. Results aMCI patients, as a group, were able to learn spatial contextual cues as well as healthy older adults. However, better learning on this task was associated with higher hippocampal volume, particularly in right hemisphere. Further, contextual cueing performance was significantly associated with hippocampal volume, even after controlling for age and MCI status. Conclusions These findings support the role of the hippocampus in learning of spatial contexts, and also suggest that the contextual cueing paradigm can be useful in detecting neuropathological changes associated with the hippocampus. PMID:25991413

Developmental Differences in the Impact of Contextual Factors on Susceptibility to Retroactive Interference

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Levy-Gigi, Einat; Vakil, Eli

2010-01-01

The influence of contextual similarity on children's recognition memory performance was examined using a retroactive interference paradigm. In the study, 9- and 12-year-olds were randomly assigned to one of two contextual conditions. In both conditions, target and interfering information were presented in distinctive contexts by using different…

Key Scientific Issues in the Health Risk Assessment of Trichloroethylene

PubMed Central

Chiu, Weihsueh A.; Caldwell, Jane C.; Keshava, Nagalakshmi; Scott, Cheryl Siegel

2006-01-01

Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a common environmental contaminant at hazardous waste sites and in ambient and indoor air. Assessing the human health risks of TCE is challenging because of its inherently complex metabolism and toxicity and the widely varying perspectives on a number of critical scientific issues. Because of this complexity, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drew upon scientific input and expertise from a wide range of groups and individuals in developing its 2001 draft health risk assessment of TCE. This scientific outreach, which was aimed at engaging a diversity of perspectives rather than developing consensus, culminated in 2000 with 16 state-of-the-science articles published together as an Environmental Health Perspectives supplement. Since that time, a substantial amount of new scientific research has been published that is relevant to assessing TCE health risks. Moreover, a number of difficult or controversial scientific issues remain unresolved and are the subject of a scientific consultation with the National Academy of Sciences coordinated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-sponsored by a number of federal agencies, including the U.S. EPA. The articles included in this mini-monograph provide a scientific update on the most prominent of these issues: the pharmacokinetics of TCE and its metabolites, mode(s) of action and effects of TCE metabolites, the role of peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor in TCE toxicity, and TCE cancer epidemiology. PMID:16966103

Investigating implicit statistical learning mechanisms through contextual cueing.

PubMed

Goujon, Annabelle; Didierjean, André; Thorpe, Simon

2015-09-01

Since its inception, the contextual cueing (CC) paradigm has generated considerable interest in various fields of cognitive sciences because it constitutes an elegant approach to understanding how statistical learning (SL) mechanisms can detect contextual regularities during a visual search. In this article we review and discuss five aspects of CC: (i) the implicit nature of learning, (ii) the mechanisms involved in CC, (iii) the mediating factors affecting CC, (iv) the generalization of CC phenomena, and (v) the dissociation between implicit and explicit CC phenomena. The findings suggest that implicit SL is an inherent component of ongoing processing which operates through clustering, associative, and reinforcement processes at various levels of sensory-motor processing, and might result from simple spike-timing-dependent plasticity. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Quantum contextuality in N-boson systems

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Benatti, Fabio; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Trieste, I-34014 Trieste; Floreanini, Roberto

2011-09-15

Quantum contextuality in systems of identical bosonic particles is explicitly exhibited via the maximum violation of a suitable inequality of Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt type. Unlike the approaches considered so far, which make use of single-particle observables, our analysis involves collective observables constructed using multiboson operators. An exemplifying scheme to test this violation with a quantum optical setup is also discussed.

Computing multiple aggregation levels and contextual features for road facilities recognition using mobile laser scanning data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Bisheng; Dong, Zhen; Liu, Yuan; Liang, Fuxun; Wang, Yongjun

2017-04-01

In recent years, updating the inventory of road infrastructures based on field work is labor intensive, time consuming, and costly. Fortunately, vehicle-based mobile laser scanning (MLS) systems provide an efficient solution to rapidly capture three-dimensional (3D) point clouds of road environments with high flexibility and precision. However, robust recognition of road facilities from huge volumes of 3D point clouds is still a challenging issue because of complicated and incomplete structures, occlusions and varied point densities. Most existing methods utilize point or object based features to recognize object candidates, and can only extract limited types of objects with a relatively low recognition rate, especially for incomplete and small objects. To overcome these drawbacks, this paper proposes a semantic labeling framework by combing multiple aggregation levels (point-segment-object) of features and contextual features to recognize road facilities, such as road surfaces, road boundaries, buildings, guardrails, street lamps, traffic signs, roadside-trees, power lines, and cars, for highway infrastructure inventory. The proposed method first identifies ground and non-ground points, and extracts road surfaces facilities from ground points. Non-ground points are segmented into individual candidate objects based on the proposed multi-rule region growing method. Then, the multiple aggregation levels of features and the contextual features (relative positions, relative directions, and spatial patterns) associated with each candidate object are calculated and fed into a SVM classifier to label the corresponding candidate object. The recognition performance of combining multiple aggregation levels and contextual features was compared with single level (point, segment, or object) based features using large-scale highway scene point clouds. Comparative studies demonstrated that the proposed semantic labeling framework significantly improves road facilities recognition

Dual-state modulation of the contextual cueing effect: Evidence from eye movement recordings.

PubMed

Zhao, Guang; Liu, Qiang; Jiao, Jun; Zhou, Peiling; Li, Hong; Sun, Hong-jin

2012-06-08

The repeated configurations of random elements induce a better search performance than that of the displays of novel random configurations. The mechanism of such contextual cueing effect has been investigated through the use of the RT × Set Size function. There are divergent views on whether the contextual cueing effect is driven by attentional guidance or facilitation of initial perceptual processing or response selection. To explore this question, we used eye movement recording in this study, which offers information about the substages of the search task. The results suggest that the contextual cueing effect is contributed mainly by attentional guidance, and facilitation of response selection also plays a role.

Type 1 Adenylyl Cyclase is Essential for Maintenance of Remote Contextual Fear Memory

PubMed Central

Shan, Qiang; Chan, Guy C.-K.; Storm, Daniel R.

2008-01-01

Although molecular mechanisms for hippocampus-dependent memory have been extensively studied, much less is known about signaling events important for remote memory. Here we report that mice lacking type 1 adenylyl cyclase (AC1) are able to establish and retrieve remote contextual memory but unable to sustain it as long as wild type mice. Interestingly, mice over-expressing AC1 show superior remote contextual memory even though they exhibit normal hippocampus-dependent contextual memory. These data illustrate that calcium coupling to cAMP contributes to the stability of remote memory and identifies AC1 as a potential drug target site to improve long-term remote memory. PMID:19036980

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.

Mapping Neuronal Activation and the Influence of Adrenergic Signaling during Contextual Memory Retrieval

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Wei-Ping; Guzowski, John F.; Thomas, Steven A.

2005-01-01

We recently described a critical role for adrenergic signaling in the hippocampus during contextual and spatial memory retrieval. To determine which neurons are activated by contextual memory retrieval and its sequelae in the presence and absence of adrenergic signaling, transcriptional imaging for the immediate-early gene "Arc" was used in…

ESL Distance Learners' Participation in an Online Forum: The Interplay of Contextual Factors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nair-Prakash, Sadhna; Stapa, Siti Hamin

2013-01-01

This paper highlights the findings of a study examining the contextual factors that mediated distance learners' participation in an online forum (OLF). Contextual factors are elements that emerge as a result of distance learners' interaction with their social environment. The study drew on a sociocultural perspective that encompassed the concepts…