Gestures can help children learn mathematics: How researchers can work with teachers to make gesture studies applicable to classrooms

The gestures we produce serve a variety of functions—they affect our communication, guide our attention and help us think and change the way we think. Gestures can consequently also help us learn, generalize what we learn and retain that knowledge over time. The effects of gesture-based instruction in mathematics have been well studied. However, few of these studies are directly applicable to classroom environments. Here, we review literature that highlights the benefits of producing and observing gestures when teaching and learning mathematics, and we provide suggestions for designing research studies with an eye towards how gestures can feasibly be applied to classroom learning. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence’.</p

Changing language input following market integration in a Yucatec Mayan community.

Like many indigenous populations worldwide, Yucatec Maya communities are rapidly undergoing change as they become more connected with urban centers and access to formal education, wage labour, and market goods became more accessible to their inhabitants. However, little is known about how these changes affect children's language input. Here, we provide the first systematic assessment of the quantity, type, source, and language of the input received by 29 Yucatec Maya infants born six years apart in communities where increased contact with urban centres has resulted in a greater exposure to the dominant surrounding language, Spanish. Results show that infants from the second cohort received less directed input than infants in the first and, when directly addressed, most of their input was in Spanish. To investigate the mechanisms driving the observed patterns, we interviewed 126 adults from the communities. Against common assumptions, we showed that reductions in Mayan input did not simply result from speakers devaluing the Maya language. Instead, changes in input could be attributed to changes in childcare practices, as well as caregiver ethnotheories regarding the relative acquisition difficulty of each of the languages. Our study highlights the need for understanding the drivers of individual behaviour in the face of socio-demographic and economic changes as it is key for determining the fate of linguistic diversity

Changing language input following market integration in a Yucatec Mayan community

Like many indigenous populations worldwide, Yucatec Maya communities are rapidly undergoing change as they become more connected with urban centers and access to formal education, wage labour, and market goods became more accessible to their inhabitants. However, little is known about how these changes affect children’s language input. Here, we provide the first systematic assessment of the quantity, type, source, and language of the input received by 29 Yucatec Maya infants born six years apart in communities where increased contact with urban centres has resulted in a greater exposure to the dominant surrounding language, Spanish. Results show that infants from the second cohort received less directed input than infants in the first and, when directly addressed, most of their input was in Spanish. To investigate the mechanisms driving the observed patterns, we interviewed 126 adults from the communities. Against common assumptions, we showed that reductions in Mayan input did not simply result from speakers devaluing the Maya language. Instead, changes in input could be attributed to changes in childcare practices, as well as caregiver ethnotheories regarding the relative acquisition difficulty of each of the languages. Our study highlights the need for understanding the drivers of individual behaviour in the face of socio-demographic and economic changes as it is key for determining the fate of linguistic diversity

Attitudes, Beliefs, Motivation and Identity in Mathematics Education: An Overview of the Field and Future Directions

Mathematics Education; Educational Psycholog

LKB1 is required for hepatic bile acid transport and canalicular membrane integrity in mice

LKB1 is a ‘master’ protein kinase implicated in the regulation of metabolism, cell proliferation, cell polarity and tumorigenesis. However, the long-term role of LKB1 in hepatic function is unknown. In the present study, it is shown that hepatic LKB1 plays a key role in liver cellular architecture and metabolism. We report that liver-specific deletion of LKB1 in mice leads to defective canaliculi and bile duct formation, causing impaired bile acid clearance and subsequent accumulation of bile acids in serum and liver. Concomitant with this, it was found that the majority of BSEP (bile salt export pump) was retained in intracellular pools rather than localized to the canalicular membrane in hepatocytes from LLKB1KO (liver-specific Lkb1-knockout) mice. Together, these changes resulted in toxic accumulation of bile salts, reduced liver function and failure to thrive. Additionally, circulating LDL (low-density lipoprotein)-cholesterol and non-esterified cholesterol levels were increased in LLKB1KO mice with an associated alteration in red blood cell morphology and development of hyperbilirubinaemia. These results indicate that LKB1 plays a critical role in bile acid homoeostasis and that lack of LKB1 in the liver results in cholestasis. These findings indicate a novel key role for LKB1 in the development of hepatic morphology and membrane targeting of canalicular proteins

Changes in Prefrontal-Limbic Function in Major Depression after 15 Months of Long-Term Psychotherapy

Neuroimaging studies of depression have demonstrated treatment-specific changes involving the limbic system and regulatory regions in the prefrontal cortex. While these studies have examined the effect of short-term, interpersonal or cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy, the effect of long-term, psychodynamic intervention has never been assessed. Here, we investigated recurrently depressed (DSM-IV) unmedicated outpatients (N = 16) and control participants matched for sex, age, and education (N = 17) before and after 15 months of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Participants were scanned at two time points, during which presentations of attachment-related scenes with neutral descriptions alternated with descriptions containing personal core sentences previously extracted from an attachment interview. Outcome measure was the interaction of the signal difference between personal and neutral presentations with group and time, and its association with symptom improvement during therapy. Signal associated with processing personalized attachment material varied in patients from baseline to endpoint, but not in healthy controls. Patients showed a higher activation in the left anterior hippocampus/amygdala, subgenual cingulate, and medial prefrontal cortex before treatment and a reduction in these areas after 15 months. This reduction was associated with improvement in depressiveness specifically, and in the medial prefrontal cortex with symptom improvement more generally. This is the first study documenting neurobiological changes in circuits implicated in emotional reactivity and control after long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy

How Do Employers Use Compensation History?: Evidence from a Field Experiment

We report the results of a field experiment in which treated employers could not observe the compensation history of their job applicants. Treated employers responded by evaluating more applicants, and evaluating those applicants more intensively. They also responded by changing what kind of workers they evaluated: treated employers evaluated workers with 7% lower past average wages and hired workers with 16% lower past average wages. Conditional upon bargaining, workers hired by treated employers struck better wage bargains for themselves. Using a structural model of bidding and hiring, we find that the selection effects we observe would also occur in equilibrium

Female chromosome X mosaicism is age-related and preferentially affects the inactivated X chromosome

To investigate large structural clonal mosaicism of chromosome X, we analysed the SNP microarray intensity data of 38,303 women from cancer genome-wide association studies (20,878 cases and 17,425 controls) and detected 124 mosaic X events >2 Mb in 97 (0.25%) women. Here we show rates for X-chromosome mosaicism are four times higher than mean autosomal rates; X mosaic events more often include the entire chromosome and participants with X events more likely harbour autosomal mosaic events. X mosaicism frequency increases with age (0.11% in 50-year olds; 0.45% in 75-year olds), as reported for Y and autosomes. Methylation array analyses of 33 women with X mosaicism indicate events preferentially involve the inactive X chromosome. Our results provide further evidence that the sex chromosomes undergo mosaic events more frequently than autosomes, which could have implications for understanding the underlying mechanisms of mosaic events and their possible contribution to risk for chronic diseases

Female chromosome X mosaicism is age-related and preferentially affects the inactivated X chromosome

To investigate large structural clonal mosaicism of chromosome X, we analysed the SNP microarray intensity data of 38,303 women from cancer genome-wide association studies (20,878 cases and 17,425 controls) and detected 124 mosaic X events42Mb in 97 (0.25%) women. Here we show rates for X-chromosome mosaicism are four times higher than mean autosomal rates; X mosaic events more often include the entire chromosome and participants with X events more likely harbour autosomal mosaic events. X mosaicism frequency increases with age (0.11% in 50-year olds; 0.45% in 75-year olds), as reported for Y and autosomes. Methylation array analyses of 33 women with X mosaicism indicate events preferentially involve the inactive X chromosome. Our results provide further evidence that the sex chromosomes undergo mosaic events more frequently than autosomes, which could have implications for understanding the underlying mechanisms of mosaic events and their possible contribution to risk for chronic diseases