Connectives as both Semantic and Pragmatic Links in Children's Narratives

Children's (3 to 9 years old) use of the connectives so, because, and but during conversational narration was assessed. The function of each of these connectives for pragmatic versus semantic purposes was studied, and it was found that all are used to fulfill both roles. Specifically, the following pragmatic functions were revealed: (a) to mark the beginning of a narrative or component episode, (b) to change the focus from event recapitulation to listener-directed contextual remarks and vice versa, (c) to indicate that strict temporal  succession is violated, and (d) to mark a narrative conclusion. Children show competence in using connectives pragmatically to regulate narrator-listener interaction and to move among the different levels of discourse that are found in conversational narration

Sex Differences in Conversational Interruptions by Preschool

Interruptions of a conversational partner was assessed in both same-sex and cross-sex dyads of preschoolers; half of the children were 3 years old and the remainder were 4 years old. Each child was successively paired in counterbalanced order with a same-sexand an opposite-sex peer of the same age, and frequency of interruptions was tabulated. In same-sex pairings, both boys and girls interrupted each other equivalently. However, in cross-sex pairings, boys significantly increased and girls significantly decreased interruption frequency; this was equally true for both ages. Thus, children learn at least some aspects of sex-differentiated conversational patterns at a very early age

Earliest Memories and Recent Memories of Highly Salient Events – Are They Similar?

Four- to 11-year-old children were interviewed about two different sorts of memories in the same home visit: recent memories of highly salient and stressful events, namely injuries serious enough to require hospital emergency room treatment, and their earliest memories. Injury memories were scored for amount of unique information, completeness vis à vis a standardized injury prototype, and accuracy while earliest memories were scored for amount of unique information, how old children had been at the time of their earliest memory, and time between their earliest memory and current age. Correlational and regression analyses showed that the two types of memory reports demonstrated considerable similarity in terms of unique information and completeness. Specifically, children with the most informative earliest memories had more informative as well as more complete free recalls of injury events. Such relationships between both sorts of memories suggest similar underlying processes at work when children produce memory reports, even when the length, structure, coherence, and content of those memories is about as divergent as one can imagine

Can Workshops Provide a Way to Enhance Patient/Client Centered Collaborative Teams?: Evidence of Outcomes from TEAMc Online Facilitator Training and Team Workshops

The movement towards collaborative interprofessional teamwork for improving patient care has sometimes been impeded by health providers who have a desire to work together, but are unsure how to move towards such models of care delivery. The situation can be complicated by some reluctance on the part of health care institutions to release staff from normal duties to participate in team building training. The purpose of this study was to report on a collaborative team building process supported by the hospital administration in northern Ontario, Canada, and to provide evaluation results for the Toolkit for Enhancing and Maintaining Team Collaboration (TEAMc) using measurements before the start, at the end of the workshop series and at eight months post-series. Participants were from two teams (Acute Care and Rehabilitation) in a northern Ontario, Canada, hospital. TEAMc was comprised of six, 3-hour workshops offered over six months in 2014/15. A total of 77 health providers completed the pre-intervention Interprofessional Socialization & Valuing Scale (ISVS) and the Assessment of Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale (AITCS), 50 health providers completed the post-intervention instruments and 32 and at the eight month follow-up. The study found that TEAMc can result in changes in team members’ socialization towards wanting to participate in interprofessional teams and in the team’s ability to emulate interprofessional client-centered collaborative practice. The greatest learning gained by participants was around their role clarification and understanding of each other’s roles and expertise, as well as developing their capacity to use a process to resolve interprofessional conflicts

BRIEF REPORT Your Earliest Memory May Be Earlier Than You Think: Prospective Studies of Children's Dating of Earliest Childhood Memories

Theories of childhood amnesia and autobiographical memory development have been based on the assumption that the age estimates of earliest childhood memories are generally accurate, with an average age of 3.5 years among adults. It is also commonly believed that early memories will by default become inaccessible later on and this eventually results in childhood amnesia. These assumptions were examined in 2 prospective studies, in which children recalled and dated their earliest memories at an initial interview and did it again 1 year (Study 1) and 2 years later (Study 2). Systematic telescoping errors emerged: Children substantially postdated their memories for the same events at the follow-up interview, particularly for memories initially dated from earlier ages. These findings have critical methodological and theoretical implications for research on childhood amnesia and autobiographical memory development

Recent Developments

Context. Tracing nuclear inflows and outflows in active galactic nuclei (AGNs), determining the mass of gas involved in them, and their impact on the host galaxy and nuclear black hole requires 3D imaging studies of both the ionized and molecular gas. Aims. We map the distribution and kinematics of molecular and ionized gas in a sample of active galaxies to quantify the nuclear inflows and outflows. Here, we analyze the nuclear kinematics of NGC 1566 via ALMA observations of the CO J:2-1 emission at 24 pc spatial and ∼2.6 km s−1 spectral resolution, and Gemini-GMOS/IFU observations of ionized gas emission lines and stellar absorption lines at similar spatial resolution, and 123 km s−1 of intrinsic spectral resolution. Methods. The morphology and kinematics of stellar, molecular (CO), and ionized ([N II]) emission lines are compared to the expectations from rotation, outflows, and streaming inflows. Results. While both ionized and molecular gas show rotation signatures, there are significant non-circular motions in the innermost 200 pc and along spiral arms in the central kpc (CO). The nucleus shows a double-peaked CO profile (full width at zero intensity of 200 km s−1), and prominent (∼80 km s−1) blue- and redshifted lobes are found along the minor axis in the inner arcseconds. Perturbations by the large-scale bar can qualitatively explain all features in the observed velocity field. We thus favor the presence of a molecular outflow in the disk with true velocities of ∼180 km s−1 in the nucleus and decelerating to 0 by ∼72 pc. The implied molecular outflow rate is 5.6 M⊙ yr−1, with this gas accumulating in the nuclear 2″ arms. The ionized gas kinematics support an interpretation of a similar but more spherical outflow in the inner 100 pc, with no signs of deceleration. There is some evidence of streaming inflows of ∼50 km s−1 along specific spiral arms, and the estimated molecular mass inflow rate, ∼0.1 M⊙ yr−1, is significantly higher than the SMBH accretion rate (ṁ = 4.8 × 10−5 M⊙ yr−1)

The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: the power spectrum and the matter content of the Universe

The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey has now measured in excess of 160000 galaxy redshifts. This paper presents the power spectrum of the galaxy distribution, calculated using a direct Fourier transform based technique. We argue that, within the k-space region 0.02<~k<~0.15hMpc-1, the shape of this spectrum should be close to that of the linear density perturbations convolved with the window function of the survey. This window function and its convolving effect on the power spectrum estimate are analysed in detail. By convolving model spectra, we are able to fit the power-spectrum data and provide a measure of the matter content of the Universe. Our results show that models containing baryon oscillations are mildly preferred over featureless power spectra. Analysis of the data yields 68 per cent confidence limits on the total matter density times the Hubble parameter Ωmh=0.20+/-0.03, and the baryon fraction Ωb/Ωm=0.15+/-0.07, assuming scale-invariant primordial fluctuations

Anterior eye health recording.

AIMS: To survey eye care practitioners from around the world regarding their current practice for anterior eye health recording to inform guidelines on best practice. METHODS: The on-line survey examined the reported use of: word descriptions, sketching, grading scales or photographs; paper or computerised record cards and whether these were guided by proforma headings; grading scale choice, signs graded, level of precision, regional grading; and how much time eye care practitioners spent on average on anterior eye health recording. RESULTS: Eight hundred and nine eye care practitioners from across the world completed the survey. Word description (p<0.001), sketches (p=0.002) and grading scales (p<0.001) were used more for recording the anterior eye health of contact lens patients than other patients, but photography was used similarly (p=0.132). Of the respondents, 84.5% used a grading scale, 13.5% using two, with the original Efron (51.6%) and CCLRU/Brien-Holden-Vision-Institute (48.5%) being the most popular. The median features graded was 11 (range 1-23), frequency from 91.6% (bulbar hyperaemia) to 19.6% (endothelial blebs), with most practitioners grading to the nearest unit (47.4%) and just 14.7% to one decimal place. The average time taken to report anterior eye health was reported to be 6.8±5.7 min, with the maximum time available 14.0±11 min. CONCLUSIONS: Developed practice and research evidence allows best practice guidelines for anterior eye health recording to be recommended. It is recommended to: record which grading scale is used; always grade to one decimal place, record what you see live rather than based on how you intend to manage a condition; grade bulbar and limbal hyperaemia, limbal neovascularisation, conjunctival papillary redness and roughness (in white light to assess colouration with fluorescein instilled to aid visualisation of papillae/follicles), blepharitis, meibomian gland dysfunction and sketch staining (both corneal and conjunctival) at every visit. Record other anterior eye features only if they are remarkable, but indicate that the key tissue which have been examined

A measurement of the cosmological mass density from clustering in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey

The large-scale structure in the distribution of galaxies is thought to arise from the gravitational instability of small fluctuations in the initial density field of the Universe. A key test of this hypothesis is that forming superclusters of galaxies should generate a systematic infall of other galaxies. This would be evident in the pattern of recessional velocities, causing an anisotropy in the inferred spatial clustering of galaxies. Here we report a precise measurement of this clustering, using the redshifts of more than 141,000 galaxies from the two-degree-field (2dF) galaxy redshift survey. We determine the parameter β = Ω0.6/b = 0.43 +/- 0.07, where Ω is the total mass-density parameter of the Universe and b is a measure of the `bias' of the luminous galaxies in the survey. (Bias is the difference between the clustering of visible galaxies and of the total mass, most of which is dark.) Combined with the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background, our results favour a low-density Universe with Ω ~ 0.3