Selective Attention in Hyperactive Children Responsive to Methylphenidate

Electrophysiological measures of cortical activity have indicated that hyperactive children who show a positive response to methylphenidate may have a deficit in inhibitory innervation. It has been suggested that this deficit may occur in the sensory and motor systems and result in two major symptoms of hyperactivity, poor attention and excessive motor activity. In this experiment sensory inhibition was evaluated for hyperactive and normal subjects using a shadowing task with various types of distractors. It was hypothesized that if attentional deficits of hyperactive subjects were due to their inability to inhibit irrelevant sensory input, then shadowing performance for the hyperactive group should be equivalent to the performance of controls when no distractor was present, but inferior when speech was the distractor. In addition, it was hypothesized that methylphenidate should increase accuracy of shadowing performance for hyperactive subjects. Errors of omission were used as the dependent measure. It was found that overall hyperactive subjects did more poorly than controls on shadowing letters under all three distractor conditions tests: no distractor, white noise, and speech. In addition, the interference during the three conditions was found to be different with speech being the most disruptive and white noise and no distractor being equivalent. Neither the hypothesis of increased interference for hyperactive subjects with increased sensory input nor the hypothesis of improved performance with medication for the hyperactive children was supported. The lack of significance of these two tests must be qualified by the fact that a ceiling effect was found in the data. It was concluded that in this experiment hyperactive subjects demonstrated an attentional deficit when compared to normal subjects and that this deficit was not related to sensory input. However, conclusions cannot be made concerning the effect of medication or sensory input on hyperactive children\u27s attention because of the ceiling effects in the data

Predicting leadership and performance in uniformed organisations using the five factor model of personality

This is a digitised version of a thesis that was deposited in the University Library. If you are the author and you have a query about this item please contact PEARL Admin ([email protected])Metadata merged with duplicate record (http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/743 - now deleted) on 20.12.2016 by CS (TIS).Selection has been primarily focussed on the use of ability and aptitude measures as they have been shown to predict job performance in uniformed organisations. Personality assessment has largely been ignored as a possible contributor to improving predictions of performance. The emergence of the Five Factor Model as a framework for personality research, together with the development of the Trait Self Description Inventory (TSDI), has provided the opportunity to investigate how personality assessment might improve upon existing selection methods to predict performance in training. It was found that existing criterion measures did not fully reflect the core aims of the training organizations. This led to the use of a Leadership Trait Rating Scale as a criterion measure for subsequent investigation of the psychometric properties of the TSDI, and the development of a performance taxonomy. Five studies were carried out. Four of the studies involved soldiers and officers from the British Army as participants. These studies were undertaken to contrast the predictive validity of the Big Five factors against overall and specific areas of performance and to examine the incremental validity of the Big Five factors and their sub factors over general ability measures. The fifth study examined the general isability of the findings using similar data gathered from the Metropolitan Police Service. Contextual factors were found to have great influence on relationships between personality assessment and criterion measures. A novel, robust, two factor leadership model was identified. The first factor represented cognitively orientated leadership traits and the second, personality orientated leadership traits. These factors broadly equated to "can do" and "will do" attributes. Overall, the Big Five personality measures predicted no worse than, and, in some cases, as well as, some of the Army's Regular Commissions Board (RCB) dimensions. Big Five sub factors (facets) in certain situations were shown to predict performance better than the Big Five factors. The development potential of personality assessment for improving existing selection systems in uniformed organizations was confirmed by the findings.The University of Plymouth, the British Army, the Defence Leadership and Management Centre, Defence Academy, Shrivenham, and the Metropolitan Police Servic

Geographical variation in the carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus content of blue mussels, Mytilus edulis

Shellfish farming contributes to nutrient removal in coastal and estuarine systems, as bivalves incorporate nutrients into their tissues and shells, which is removed from the marine system on harvest. Fourteen locations around the UK were surveyed to explore geographic variation in carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus content of tissue and shell in blue mussels. Phosphorus in tissue had a significant negative relationship with mean annual seawater temperature for both rope and bottom cultured sites. Per tonne of live mussel, rope culture removed significantly more nitrogen (8.50 ± 0.59 kg) and phosphorus (0.95 ± 0.07 kg) than bottom cultured (5.00 ± 0.013 kg nitrogen and 0.43 ± 0.01 kg phosphorus). Bottom culture, however, provides significantly more C removal in shell (60.15 ± 0.77 kg) than in rope cultured (46.12 ± 1.69 kg). Further studies are required to examine the effect of growth rate, on the nitrogen and phosphorus remediation, and carbon stored in shell, of rope culture and bottom cultured mussel aquaculture

Socio-Demographic Patterning of Physical Activity across Migrant Groups in India: Results from the Indian Migration Study

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between rural to urban migration and physical activity (PA) in India. METHODS: 6,447 (42% women) participants comprising 2077 rural, 2,094 migrants and 2,276 urban were recruited. Total activity (MET hr/day), activity intensity (min/day), PA Level (PAL) television viewing and sleeping (min/day) were estimated and associations with migrant status examined, adjusting for the sib-pair design, age, site, occupation, education, and socio-economic position (SEP). RESULTS: Total activity was highest in rural men whereas migrant and urban men had broadly similar activity levels (p<0.001). Women showed similar patterns, but slightly lower levels of total activity. Sedentary behaviour and television viewing were lower in rural residents and similar in migrant and urban groups. Sleep duration was highest in the rural group and lowest in urban non-migrants. Migrant men had considerably lower odds of being in the highest quartile of total activity than rural men, a finding that persisted after adjustment for age, SEP and education (OR 0.53, 95% CI 0.37, 0.74). For women, odds ratios attenuated and associations were removed after adjusting for age, SEP and education. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that migrants have already acquired PA levels that closely resemble long-term urban residents. Effective public health interventions to increase PA are needed

William Hazlitt and The Examiner

This study represents Hazlitt as a journalist and a key figure in the Leigh Hunt circle in the years 1814 to 1817 when he was one of the chief contributors to The Examiner, which Hunt edited.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Numerical Simulation Of Circulation And Advection-diffusion Processes In Saginaw Bay, Michigan.

PhDOceanographyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/188878/2/7529169.pd