Detecting Cognitive Load during Working Memory Tasks utilizing a Digitizer Tablet

The purpose of this line of research is to determine whether the ‘Digitizer’ is a reliable and valid way to measure cognitive load during dual working memory-drawing tasks. A quasi-experimental study was conducted at the University of Arkansas in a research laboratory, and participants included seven right-handed healthy adults with normal or corrected vision and no reading difficulty. The participants were selected on a volunteer basis. The study required participants to draw circles while continuously performing in three conditions – one baseline and two working memory experimental tasks, administered in counterbalanced order. The baseline task was to read an 8th grade level passage at comfortable speed and loudness level. The working memory tasks were symmetry span and operation span tasks. The operation span task required the participants to remember letters in sequence while simultaneously verifying arithmetic operations presented after each letter. The symmetry span task required participants to remember the position of the highlighted square in a grid in sequence while simultaneously determining the symmetricity of a figure presented afterwards. Both tasks were completed while drawing continuous circles on the ‘Digitizer’. A separate repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted for each measure. A significant omnibus effect was found for the stroke duration measure only. Post-hoc paired tests showed that baseline was higher (p=.01) in stroke duration than in operation span task and symmetry span task. In this literature review, the results and elements of the study are described in full to inform future research. It was initially assumed that the working memory load would be significantly less in the baseline task as compared to the two working memory tasks; however, the data alternatively indicated that it taxed working memory more. With reading comprehension as a reference condition, it is logical to conclude that there is evidence of cognitive load in working memory tasks as measured by manual disfluencies. This literature review outlines potential adaptations and highlights primary weaknesses for future study in this area

How integrated working affected the development of the Caring 4 Kids project (Sharing our experience, Practitioner-led research 2008-2009; PLR0809/025)

This project developed between two separate agencies and aimed to examine and identify, from a participant observer perspective, the specific effects of integrated working on the development of the Caring 4 Kids project. The project, Caring 4 Kids, was a collaborative piece of work between a voluntary sector provider of children’s centres, and a girls’ secondary school. This school has the highest rate of student pregnancy within the local authority. The research consisted largely of interviews with five of the professional participants in the Caring 4 Kids project, one from each discipline: teaching; nursery nursing; social work practitioner/management; social work; and early years consultancy. The participants were: • the director of the voluntary organization providing children’s centres, by background a social worker • the Community Liaison deputy head of a girls’ secondary school, by background a teacher • the manager of one of the children’s centre nurseries, by background a nursery nurse • an ex-social worker • an Early Years consultant with the local authority, by background a SENCO. The questions attempted to address the previous experiences of the interviewee in multidisciplinary working, their attitude to integrated working in relation to their agency’s attitude as they saw it, and their experiences of integrated working in this specific project. In addition to these questions, the research attempted to identify what the participants felt positive and negative about, and if possible to indicate what they might be taking back to their agency, or to their next experience of integrated working, from this present experience. The research identified that • integrated forums were dependent on the consent, real as well as formal, of the agencies seconding to them • the differing values derived from the different professional backgrounds of participants mattered less than the core remits of each of their agencies • some professionals may have identified more with the integrated forum in respect of some of their values than with their own agency • the success of the forum as a ‘workplace’ owed a great deal to participants not feeling disempowered with regard to higher ranking or higher status professionals

Recommendations for Sexuality Education for Early Adolescents

Objective: To determine community support and identify appropriate learning methodologies, parameters of delivery, and intervention content. Design: Qualitative descriptive study in which participants were interviewed in a semistructured format. Data were analyzed thematically. Setting: An urban pediatric primary care clinic from which youths and parents were recruited. Participants: Ten youths, 10 parents, and 10 community members. Community members included professional and laypersons who had experience in working with early adolescents or in working with children of any age on sexuality issues. Overall, most participants were female (67%) and African American (67%). Results: Descriptions of early adolescents ’ knowledge of sexuality, participants ’ support for sexuality education for early adolescents, recommendations for education content, and preferred methods for education delivery. Conclusion: The participants supported comprehensive sexuality education for early adolescents. They believed that it would help youths to be abstinent, would provide some protection from sexual abuse, and would prepare them to practice safer sex in the future

The experiences and perspectives of overseas trained speech and language therapists working in the United Kingdom

There is a growing body of research which has investigated the experience of the migrant health worker. However, only one of these studies has included speech and language therapists thus far, and then only with extremely small numbers. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences and perspectives of migrant speech and language therapists living in the UK. Twenty-three overseas qualified speech and language therapists living in the UK completed an online survey consisting of 36 questions (31 closed question, 5 open-ended questions). The majority of participants came from Australia or the USA and moved to the UK early in their careers. Participants reported a range of benefits from working in another country and more specifically working in the UK. The findings were consistent with other research on migrant health workers regarding known pull factors of travel, finance, and career. This study suggests additional advantages to working in the UK were realised once participants had started working in the UK, such as the UK job lifestyle. Finally, the migrant speech and language therapists were similar in profile to other migrant health workers in terms of age and country of origin previously reported in the literature

Working memory load elicits attentional bias to threat

Anxious individuals tend to show attentional bias to threats and dangers; this is usually in-terpreted as a specific bias in threat-processing. However, they also tend to show general working memory and cognitive control impairments. We hypothesised that the lack of work-ing memory resources might contribute to attentional bias, by limiting anxious individuals’ ability to regulate their responses to emotional stimuli. If this is true, then loading working memory should elicit attentional bias to threat, even in non-anxious participants. We tested this hypothesis in two experiments, with participants unselected for anxiety. In Experiment 1, a phonological working memory load (remembering a string of digits) elicited an attentional bias to fear-conditioned Japanese words. In Experiment 2, a visuo-spatial working memory load (remembering a series of locations in a matrix of squares) elicited an attentional bias to emotional schematic faces. Results suggest that working memory and cognitive control may moderate the attentional bias to threat commonly observed in anxiety

A case study in online formal/informal learning: was it collaborative or cooperative learning?

Developing skills in communication and collaboration is essential in modern design education, in order to prepare students for the realities of design practice, where projects involve multidisciplinary teams, often working remotely. This paper presents a learning activity that focusses on developing communication and collaboration skills of undergraduate design students working remotely and vocational learners based in a community makerspace. Participants were drawn from these formal and informal educational settings and engaged in a design-make project framed in the context of distributed manufacturing. They were given designer or maker roles and worked at distance from each other, communicating using asynchronous online tools. Analysis of the collected data has identified a diversity of working practice across the participants, and highlighted the difficulties that result from getting students to work collaboratively, when not collocated. This paper presents and analysis of participants’ communications, with a view to identify whether they were learning collaboratively, or cooperatively. It was found that engaging participants in joint problem solving is not enough to facilitate collaboration. Instead effective collaboration depends on symmetry within the roles of participants and willingness to share expertise through dialogue. Designing learning activities to overcome the challenges that these factors raise is a difficult task, and the research reported here provides some valuable insight

Evaluation of participants' experiences with a non-restrictive minimally-structured lifestyle intervention. CHERE Working Paper 2010/11

While there is increasing evidence that group-based lifestyle-focussed interventions may provide more realistic, effective and cost-effective alternatives to intensive, individualised dietary counselling and exercise training, relatively little is known about individuals? preferences for and perceptions of these programs. This paper reports the results of qualitative interviews conducted with participants of a lifestyle intervention trial (Shape up for Life? (SufL) aimed to improve body composition and metabolic health through long-term non-restrictive behaviour modification. Purposive sampling was used to identify 22 participants who participated in detailed interviews regarding their expectations of the intervention, perceptions of benefits and their experience post-intervention and capacity to maintain the lifestyle changes. The results indicate that in general participants are focussed on weight loss as a goal, even when the intervention offered and provided other benefits such as improved fitness and body shape and composition. The individuals who benefited most from the intervention typically had lower baseline knowledge about dietary and exercise guidelines. While the relatively non-restrictive nature of SufL provided flexibility for participants, many participants perceived that a more structured program may have assisted in achieving weight loss goals.Obesity, lifestyle intervention, weight loss, metabolic syndrome

Self-awareness and reflection: exploring the 'therapeutic use of self'

Assesses what the participants gained from a pilot partnership course set up to help social care staff to explore new therapeutic ways of working with people with learning disabilities. Therapeutic use of self; Empathy as a cornerstone of therapeutic work; Presencing; Illustration that all the participants felt that the course had increased their awareness in the areas addressed by the course

Effects of Age and Work Experience on Job Satisfaction of Primary School Teachers: Implications for Career Counselling

This descriptive survey investigated the influence of age and working experience on job satisfaction of primary school teachers. The participants (n=238) were primary school teachers randomly selected from public and private schools in Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria. An adapted version of Bellingham (2004) job satisfaction survey with reliability index of .96 was employed to generate data from the participants. Pearson Moment Correlation Coefficient and t-test statistics were used to analyse the three hypotheses set to channel the study. The results obtained indicated that there were significant positive relationship between age and work experience and job satisfaction (r =.312; .229) and that significant difference existed between teachers with less and above five years of working experience (t = -2.68,