Reducing Enrollee Churning in Medicaid, Child Health Plus, and Family Health Plus

Examines the reasons a high percentage of beneficiaries of the state's public health insurance programs do not complete the annual recertification process and the consequences of their loss of coverage. Suggests improvements for simplifying the process

Phonetics Learning Anxiety – Results of a Preliminary Study

The Phonetics Learning Anxiety Scale, a 44-item questionnaire based on a 6-point Likert scale, designed for the purpose of the research sheds light on the nature of this peculiar type of apprehension experienced by advanced FL learners in a specific educational context (i.e. a traditional classroom, rather than a language or computer laboratory), in which the major focus is on pronunciation practice. The obtained quantitative data imply that such factors as fear of negative evaluation (represented by general oral performance apprehension and concern over pronunciation mistakes, pronunciation self-image, pronunciation self-efficacy and self-assessment) and beliefs about the nature of FL pronunciation learning are significant sources of PhLA. Anxiety about the transcription test (IPA Test Anxiety) - one of the other hypothetical determinants of PhLA - did not prove to be correlated with the general level of Phonetics Learning Anxiet

Insistence among family and friends in Quiteño Spanish: from connectedness to empowerment?

Drawing on sociopragmatics and some ethnographic work in communication studies, in this paper I examine the occurrence of insistence in interactions among family and friends in middle-class Quiteño society (Ecuador) in relation to suggestions, offers and invitations. I interpret insistence in these contexts as a marker of affiliation through which an interpersonal ideology of connectedness (cf. Fitch, 1998) is recreated. However, I find that there is some generational variation in the use of this practice. I suggest that this may be an indication of a possible shift in interpersonal ideology –from connectedness towards empowerment– gradually taking place in middle-class Quiteño society

The role of culture and diversity in the prevention of falls among older Chinese people

Original article can be found at : http://journals.cambridge.org/ Copyright Canadian Association on GerontologyThis grounded-theory study explored the perceptions of Chinese older people, living in England, on falls and fear of falling, and identified facilitators and barriers to fall prevention interventions. With a sample of 30 Chinese older people, we conducted two focus groups and 10 in-depth interviews in Mandarin or Cantonese. Interview transcripts, back translated, were analyzed using N6. Constant comparative analysis highlighted a range of health-seeking behaviors after a fall: Chinese older people were reluctant to use formal health services; talking about falls was avoided; older people hid falls from their adult children to avoid worrying them; and fatalistic views about falls and poor knowledge about availability and content of interventions were prevalent. Cost of interventions was important. Chinese older adults valued their independence, and cultural intergenerational relations had an impact on taking action to prevent falls. Cultural diversity affects older adults’ acceptance of fall prevention interventions.Peer reviewe

How reflective exchanges of second language students can have an impact on their learning outcomes and on future curriculum planning in a tertiary environment

Teaching academic English and study skills at tertiary level can be a restricted and pressured environment due to factors such as heavy course content, large numbers of students or lack of time to teach all areas that are needed. Situations like this often mean there is little opportunity for students to voice personal opinions on the content and method of how they are being taught in ESL oriented papers or their mainstream majors. It also means limited chances for them to articulate and share personal learning experiences and cultural backgrounds to allow them to extend their knowledge of their present situations. This paper describes how giving students time for reflection on these areas in an undergraduate second language academic discourse paper allowed them to contemplate learning and studying strategies for this and other papers they were engaged with. The outcomes for them included an increase in confidence to express themselves to their peers, a realisation that their previous learning and cultural backgrounds had value and use to their New Zealand experiences and a greater understanding of some basic tertiary processes. Web conferencing was used to support their reflection process. The results of these reflective exchanges for the tutor has had an impact on current and future curriculum design and led to the compiling of a list of simple but important factors that could of be of use to the wider tertiary community in their teaching of non-English speaking background students

The Ever-Shifting Internet Population

Presents findings from surveys conducted between March and May 2002. Takes a new look at Internet access and the digital divide. Explores factors of cost, lack of technology skills, and physical access (particularly for persons with disabilities)

Wittgenstein and the memory debate

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0732118X Copyright Elsevier Ltd. DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2008.04.015In this paper, I survey the impact on neuropsychology of Wittgenstein’s elucidations of memory. Wittgenstein discredited the storage and imprint models of memory, dissolved the conceptual link between memory and mental images or representations and, upholding the context-sensitivity of memory, made room for a family resemblance concept of memory, where remembering can also amount to doing or saying something. While neuropsychology is still generally under the spell of archival and physiological notions of memory, Wittgenstein's reconceptions can be seen at work in its leading-edge practitioners. However, neuroscientists, generally, are finding memory difficult to demarcate from other cognitive and noncognitive processes, and I suggest this is largely due to their considering automatic responses as part of memory, termed nondeclarative or implicit memory. Taking my lead from Wittgenstein's On Certainty, I argue that there is only remembering where there is also some kind of mnemonic effort or attention, and therefore that so-called implicit memory is not memory at all, but a basic, noncognitive certainty.Peer reviewe

Behaviors That Eliminate Health Disparities for Racial and Ethnic Minorities: A Narrative Systematic Review

Within the health care provider-health care recipient relationship the communication must be culturally competent to eliminate barriers to equitable health care for all Americans. This assertion has conceptual grounding in Public Law 106-129 (the Health Care Research and Quality Act of 1999) and Public Law 106-525 (the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000). This narrative systematic review examines this assertion by using selection and exclusion criteria to gather interventions, assessments, and testimonies conducted from 2000-2007. Reports that were not eliminated via these criteria were analyzed to determine the effect of specific practices that were undertaken in interventions, assessments, and testimonies. Which practices does research propose as indispensable to efforts to eliminate health disparities for racial and ethnic minority health care recipients? Findings indicate that culturally competent behaviors by providers and recipients promote effective intercultural communication that eliminates health care disparities, and removes obstacles to care

Minds, Brains and Turing

Turing set the agenda for (what would eventually be called) the cognitive sciences. He said, essentially, that cognition is as cognition does (or, more accurately, as cognition is capable of doing): Explain the causal basis of cognitive capacity and you’ve explained cognition. Test your explanation by designing a machine that can do everything a normal human cognizer can do – and do it so veridically that human cognizers cannot tell its performance apart from a real human cognizer’s – and you really cannot ask for anything more. Or can you? Neither Turing modelling nor any other kind of computational r dynamical modelling will explain how or why cognizers feel