Constrained action selection in children with developmental coordination disorder

The effect of advance (‘precue’) information on short aiming movements was explored in adults, high school children, and primary school children with and without developmental coordination disorder (n = 10, 14, 16, 10, respectively). Reaction times in the DCD group were longer than in the other groups and were more influenced by the extent to which the precue constrained the possible action space. In contrast, reaction time did not alter as a function of precue condition in adults. Children with DCD showed greater inaccuracy of response (despite the increased RT). We suggest that the different precue effects reflect differences in the relative benefits of priming an action prior to definitive information about the movement goal. The benefits are an interacting function of the task and the skill level of the individual. Our experiment shows that children with DCD gain a benefit from advance preparation in simple aiming movements, highlighting their low skill levels. This result suggests that goal-directed RTs may have diagnostic potential within the clinic

Technological Devices in the Archives: A Policy Analysis

Doing research in the archive is the cornerstone of humanities scholarship. Various archives institute policies regarding the use of technological devices, such as mobile phones, laptops, and cameras in their reading rooms. Such policies directly affect the scholars as the devices mediate the nature of their interaction with the source materials in terms of capturing, organizing, note taking, and record keeping for future use of found materials. In this paper, we present our analysis of the policies of thirty archives regarding the use of technology in their reading rooms. This policy analysis, along with data from interviews of scholars and archivists, is intended to serve as a basis for developing mobile applications for assisting scholars in their research activities. In this paper we introduce an early prototype of such a mobile application— AMTracker.Informatio

External sources of political connections: financial advisors and Chinese acquisitions

This study considers the effects of an external form of political connection, namely, politically connected financial advisors, on the value creation of Chinese acquiring firms over the period 2004–2014. Using data consisting of 1,623 Chinese mergers and acquisitions (M&As) deals, we show that politically connected financial advisors create significantly higher market value for acquiring firms, after controlling for firms' own political connections and reputation. Further analysis indicates that the appointment of political advisers can improve an acquiring firm's long‐term industry‐adjusted operating performance and help acquirers reduce bid premiums. We show that private firms and stock‐pay acquisitions are more likely to appoint politically connected financial advisors in M&A transactions, whereas our findings remain unchanged after controlling for endogeneities

Online corrections in children with and without DCD

Human arm movements need ‘online’ corrections due to noise in perception and action. A Step-Perturbation paradigm explored online corrections in control children and children with DCD aged between 7 and 13 years. Control children found the task straightforward: a distracter had no effect and they managed to stop relatively quickly. Children with DCD found the task difficult and the apparatus was modified accordingly (decreased postural and force production demands). The distracter affected some children with DCD and some found it difficult to stop. All of the DCD population showed poorer performance in both the perturbation and non-perturbation condition. Nevertheless, there was no interaction between group and condition. Thus, this study found no evidence for specific deficits in online correction mechanisms in DCD. We suggest that: (i) fundamental problems in generating basic movements can account for the documented difficulties in correcting on-going movements, and (ii) such fundamental difficulties make it very difficult to pinpoint specific mechanism deficits