Exploratory Study of the Relationship Between State Fiscal Effort and Academic Achievement

Prior empirical research has taken many varying approaches to determine if differences in funding significantly impacts student academic achievement. However, much of these studies exhibit weak generalizability due to their limited scope, timeframe and dissimilar achievement measures. To expand upon the already robust literature in education finance this study measures interstate funding disparities via state fiscal effort and determines its impact on several measures of student academic achievement. To control for threats to external validity the research investigates the variables over ten years to determine if the relationships hold over time. Statistical measures employed within the research include bivariate correlation, simple linear regression, time lagged correlation, predictive linear regression modeling and historical panel data analysis via a least square dummy variable model. Findings established that state fiscal effort and academic achievement are not significantly correlated. Additionally, findings were inconclusive in establishing that state fiscal effort is a significant predictor of achievement. The historical relationship between the variables of state fiscal effort and academic achievement negligible given a lack of significant time lagged correlations and the breadth of calculated lead times for states to reach established levels of achievement. Lastly, in the historical panel data analysis the amount of variance explained by other variables such as race and socio economic status were much more significant compared to state fiscal effort

Lifting without Seeing: The Role of Vision in Perceiving and Acting upon the Size Weight Illusion

Published onlineJournal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tBACKGROUND: Our expectations of an object's heaviness not only drive our fingertip forces, but also our perception of heaviness. This effect is highlighted by the classic size-weight illusion (SWI), where different-sized objects of identical mass feel different weights. Here, we examined whether these expectations are sufficient to induce the SWI in a single wooden cube when lifted without visual feedback, by varying the size of the object seen prior to the lift. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Participants, who believed that they were lifting the same object that they had just seen, reported that the weight of the single, standard-sized cube that they lifted on every trial varied as a function of the size of object they had just seen. Seeing the small object before the lift made the cube feel heavier than it did after seeing the large object. These expectations also affected the fingertip forces that were used to lift the object when vision was not permitted. The expectation-driven errors made in early trials were not corrected with repeated lifting, and participants failed to adapt their grip and load forces from the expected weight to the object's actual mass in the same way that they could when lifting with vision. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Vision appears to be crucial for the detection, and subsequent correction, of the ostensibly non-visual grip and load force errors that are a common feature of this type of object interaction. Expectations of heaviness are not only powerful enough to alter the perception of a single object's weight, but also continually drive the forces we use to lift the object when vision is unavailable.This work was supported by a Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) Canada postdoctoral fellowship, awarded to GB. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Smiling makes you look older, even when you wear a mask: the effect of face masks on age perception

The widespread use of face masks in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic has promoted research on their effect on the perception and recognition of faces. There is growing evidence that masks hinder the recognition of identity and expression, as well as the interpretation of speech from facial cues. It is less clear whether and in what manner masks affect the perception of age from facial cues. Recent research has emphasized the role of the upper region of the face, a part not covered by a mask, in the evaluation of age. For example, smile-related wrinkles in the region of the eyes make smiling faces appear older than neutral faces of the same individuals (the aging effect of smiling, AES). In two experiments, we tested the effect of face masks on age evaluations of neutral and smiling faces in a range of different age groups from 20 to 80 years. The results showed that smiling faces were perceived as older than neutral faces even when individuals were wearing a face mask—and there was no effect of masks on bias in age evaluations. Additional analyses showed reduced accuracy in age evaluations for smiling compared to neutral faces and for masked compared to unmasked faces. The results converge on previous studies emphasizing the importance of the upper region of the face in evaluations of age

Non-symmetric trapped surfaces in the Schwarzschild and Vaidya spacetimes

Marginally trapped surfaces (MTSs) are commonly used in numerical relativity to locate black holes. For dynamical black holes, it is not known generally if this procedure is sufficiently reliable. Even for Schwarzschild black holes, Wald and Iyer constructed foliations which come arbitrarily close to the singularity but do not contain any MTSs. In this paper, we review the Wald-Iyer construction, discuss some implications for numerical relativity, and generalize to the well known Vaidya spacetime describing spherically symmetric collapse of null dust. In the Vaidya spacetime, we numerically locate non-spherically symmetric trapped surfaces which extend outside the standard spherically symmetric trapping horizon. This shows that MTSs are common in this spacetime and that the event horizon is the most likely candidate for the boundary of the trapped region.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; v2: minor modifications; v3: clarified conclusion

Radial-maze performance in the rat following lesions of posterior neocortex

The present experiment was designed to investigate the role of posterior neocortex (areas 17, 18 and 18a) in the maintenance of performance on the radial maze. Following training to criterion on the 8-arm radial maze, rats received either sham operations, bilateral eye enucleations, lesions of posterior neocortex, or combined enucleations and lesions of posterior neocortex. While the enucleated animals with intact brains showed a slight, but significant performance decrement relative to the sham-operated group, the other two groups, with lesions of areas 17, 18 and 18a, each showed a massive deficit. This large deficit was observed even in the group in which both the eyes and neocortex had been removed. These results suggest that the visual projection areas of cortex not only play an important role in the maintenance of accurate radial-maze performance in sighted animals, but that the integrity of these areas is necessary for the maintenance of criterion performance in blind animals

Target Selection for Reaching and Saccades Share a Similar Behavioral Reference Frame in the Macaque

The selection of one of two visual stimuli as a target for a motor action may depend on external as well as internal variables. We examined whether the preference to select a leftward or rightward target depends on the action that is performed (eye or arm movement) and to what extent the choice is influenced by the target location. Two targets were presented at the same distance to the left and right of a fixation position and the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was adjusted until both targets were selected equally often. This balanced SOA time is then a quantitative measure of selection preference. In two macaque monkeys tested, we found the balanced SOA shifted to the left side for left-arm movements and to the right side for right-arm movements. Target selection strongly depended on the horizontal target location. By varying eye, head, and trunk position, we found this dependency embedded in a head-centered behavioral reference frame for saccade targets and, somewhat counter-intuitively, for reach targets as well. Target selection for reach movements was influenced by the eye position, while saccade target selection was unaffected by the arm position. These findings suggest that the neural processes underlying target selection for a reaching movement are to a large extent independent of the coordinate frame ultimately used to make the limb movement, but are instead closely linked to the coordinate frame used to plan a saccade to that target. This similarity may be indicative of a common spatial framework for hand-eye coordination

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Acute alcohol consumption impairs controlled but not automatic processes in a psychophysical pointing paradigm.

Numerous studies have investigated the effects of alcohol consumption on controlled and automatic cognitive processes. Such studies have shown that alcohol impairs performance on tasks requiring conscious, intentional control, while leaving automatic performance relatively intact. Here, we sought to extend these findings to aspects of visuomotor control by investigating the effects of alcohol in a visuomotor pointing paradigm that allowed us to separate the influence of controlled and automatic processes. Six male participants were assigned to an experimental correction condition in which they were instructed to point at a visual target as quickly and accurately as possible. On a small percentage of trials, the target jumped to a new location. On these trials, the participants\u27 task was to amend their movement such that they pointed to the new target location. A second group of 6 participants were assigned to a countermanding condition, in which they were instructed to terminate their movements upon detection of target jumps . In both the correction and countermanding conditions, participants served as their own controls, taking part in alcohol and no-alcohol conditions on separate days. Alcohol had no effect on participants\u27 ability to correct movements in flight , but impaired the ability to withhold such automatic corrections. Our data support the notion that alcohol selectively impairs controlled processes in the visuomotor domain