The Preschool Kitchen Task Assessment (PKTA): A Pilot Study Exploring Executive Functioning in Children Ages 3 to 6 Years

Background and purpose. The Preschool Kitchen Task Assessment (PKTA) is a newly developed assessment tool based on the principles of the Kitchen Task Assessment (KTA) and may be a valuable tool for assessing executive function (EF). There is a lack of age-appropriate assessments for EF in occupational therapy. The purpose of this study was to examine the use of the PKTA as a new assessment and determine if it is a valid measure of EF in preschool children. Subjects. The total sample consisted of 11 willing preschool-aged children and their parents, with a female to male ratio of 8:3 and a mean age of 4.5 years. Methods. A non-experimental exploratory design was utilized to examine the relationship between the PKTA and other neuropsychological assessments. A series Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated to examine the relationship between the PKTA and two other neuropsychological tests: BRIEF-P and a modified Digit Span Backward. Results. A low, non significant correlation between PKTA total score and BRIEF-P GEC score (r = .12). A moderate to good correlation between the PKTA time and BRIEF-P GEC score (r = .68). Little to fair correlations between PKTA total score and the BRIEF-P clinical scales with a range of .17 to .41. A correlation could not be found between PKTA and Digit Span Backward. A moderate, negative correlation found between age in months and PKTA total scores (r = .74). Through qualitative observations, the PKTA was found to be ecologically valid. Discussion and conclusion. Results revealed weak support that the PKTA is a valid measure in assessing EF in preschoolers. The PKTA is developmentally sensitive to age with support that it is an ecologically valid assessment. The PKTA may be a beneficial tool in order to gain a complete understanding of a child’s needs

Do low vision interventions, including prescription and training in the use of low vision devices, such as magnifiers, telescopes, selective transmission lenses, electronic devices, and computers, enhance older adults’ vision in reading standard labels on medication bottles?

The objective of this study is to assess the impact of low vision rehabilitation interventions on individuals with low vision, particularly on the ability to read standard labels on medication bottles

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7