Spoken word classification in children and adults

Purpose: Preschool children often have difficulties in word classification, despite good speech perception and production. Some researchers suggest they represent words using phonetic features rather than phonemes. We examine whether there is a progression from feature based to phoneme based processing across age groups, and whether responses are consistent across tasks and stimuli. Method: In Study 1, 120 3 to 5 year old children completed three tasks assessing use of phonetic features in classification, with an additional 58 older children completing one of the three tasks. In Study 2, all of the children, together with an additional adult sample, completed a nonword learning task. Results: In all four tasks, children classified words sharing phonemes as similar. In addition, children regarded words as similar if they shared manner of articulation, particularly word-finally. Adults also showed this sensitivity to manner, but across the tasks there was a pattern of increasing use of phonemic information with age. Conclusions: Children tend to classify words as similar if they share phonemes or share manner of articulation word finally. Use of phonemic information becomes more common with age. These findings are in line with the theory that phonological representations become more detailed in the preschool years

Lesson Study as a Means for Facilitating Preservice Teacher Reflectivity

This study sought to determine if, how, and the extent to which, the implementation of lesson study with preservice teachers facilitates reflection in its participants. The lesson study reports of 20 preservice teachers were analyzed qualitatively along three dimensions to determine what lesson study reports revealed about their reflections. More specifically, the analysis sought to determine what preservice teachers wrote about in their lesson study reports, and if it showed signs of reflectivity. The analysis revealed that the reflections of the participants, as evidenced within lesson study reports, resided at the lowest levels, thus supporting existing literature on the reflective abilities of preservice teachers. It also highlighted the difficulty of determining the degree to which individuals engage in reflective thinking. The results point to several considerations for those who wish to implement lesson study with preservice teachers, and identify numerous questions that warrant further investigation

African American Artists in the MIdwest

African-American Artists in the Midwest While American art history tends to be fairly parochial with its emphasis on East Coast artists, African American art history seems to suffer even more strongly from this bias. This session will be devoted to African-American artists or art institutions in the Midwest. The Great Migration from 1913-1949 brought hundreds of thousands of black Americans to Midwest industrial cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. And some of these people and their descendents made art. Indeed on a trip to Detroit in 1964, Langston Hughes said, “Harlem used to be the Negro cultural center of America. If Detroit has not already become so, it is well on its way to becoming it.” Literary historians have frequently taken up the topic of Midwestern African-American writers, but this is far less true in the case of black visual artists. In line with the conference\u27s content session of Community and Collaboration, papers treating African American mural projects in the Midwest are especially encouraged, as are papers dealing with the educational outreach activities of artists and art institutions. However, all papers dealing with Midwestern African-American art from all time periods, colonial to the present, are welcomed for consideration

Speech and language difficulties in children with and without a family history of dyslexia

Comorbidity between SLI and dyslexia is well documented. Researchers have variously argued that dyslexia is a separate disorder from SLI, or that children with dyslexia show a subset of the difficulties shown in SLI. This study examines these hypotheses by assessing whether family history of dyslexia and speech and language difficulties are separable risk factors for literacy difficulties. Forty-six children with a family risk of dyslexia (FRD) and 36 children receiving speech therapy (SLT) were compared to 128 typically developing children. A substantial number (41.3%) of the children with FRD had received SLT. The nature of their difficulties did not differ in severity or form from those shown by the other children in SLT. However, both SLT and FRD were independent risk factors in predicting reading difficulties both concurrently and 6 months later. It is argued that the results are best explained in terms of Pennington's (2006) multiple deficits model

The Role of Social Media and the Crowd in Building Digital Community Resilience: Boundary Spanning during Disasters

The increasing frequency of disasters poses severe challenges to communities. In this study, we propose the concept of digital community resilience, which refers to a dynamic process of using digital technologies to support community recovery from a disaster. Among various disaster stakeholders, the crowd represents a powerful force. The crowd leverages social media platforms to contribute to digital community resilience. However, the resulting crowd actions are not always seamless. Rather, they encounter ongoing boundary coordination issues with other stakeholders. We conducted a case study of China’s response to COVID-19, focusing on the crowd’s efforts and the transforming of boundaries with the government and the public. This study identifies three types of boundaries faced by the crowd – administrative, cognitive, and professional. We propose a process model of digital community resilience showing how different disaster stakeholders use social media to span boundaries after a disaster

Reparative Futures

The past is present in all future making activities. However, there is more that futuring processes can do to engage with past-present relationships, namely by bringing to the fore frameworks of reparation and redress. This article explores how ideas of reparative action may offer generative resources for Futures Studies. It suggests that in order to create futures characterised by justice it is essential to listen to and engage with ongoing histories of repression, violence and domination and find ways to talk about the past that support individuals, communities and nations to reimagine and remake social relations that are just and inclusive. The article explores reparative futures as they are negotiated in practice, through the lens of their pedagogical potential and ethical demands, and as world-making political possibilities. In doing so, it highlights the necessity for enhanced dialogue between Future Studies and the ‘reparative turn’ within the humanities and social sciences. We explore the tensions and unresolved questions of reparative futures along with the possibilities for future-making practices characterised by justice, care, creativity and humility for humans and nonhumans

Reparative Futures

The past is present in all future making activities. However, there is more that futuring processes can do to engage with past-present relationships, namely by bringing to the fore frameworks of reparation and redress. This article explores how ideas of reparative action may offer generative resources for Futures Studies. It suggests that in order to create futures characterised by justice it is essential to listen to and engage with ongoing histories of repression, violence and domination and find ways to talk about the past that support individuals, communities and nations to reimagine and remake social relations that are just and inclusive. The article explores reparative futures as they are negotiated in practice, through the lens of their pedagogical potential and ethical demands, and as world-making political possibilities. In doing so, it highlights the necessity for enhanced dialogue between Future Studies and the ‘reparative turn’ within the humanities and social sciences. We explore the tensions and unresolved questions of reparative futures along with the possibilities for future-making practices characterised by justice, care, creativity and humility for humans and nonhumans

Examining fatigue and performance in critical care clinicians

Background: Fatigue related to sleep deprivation has a degrading effect on human performance. In critical care health settings this represents a potential hazard to the safety of patients. This thesis aimed to identify and assess possible effects of acute clinician fatigue using a measure with direct relevance to safe and effective clinical performance. The focus was on critical care clinicians, particularly those who work in the high risk and somewhat isolated setting of intensive care patient air transfer. The specific research objectives for the thesis were to assess the degree of fatigue the clinicians experience in the course of routine duties, develop and test a meaningful method of measuring clinical performance, and assess the effect of routinely-experienced levels of fatigue on clinical performance. Methods: In an initial field-based study doctors and flight nurses from two intensive care inter-hospital transport teams routinely completed subjective fatigue report forms before and after patient transport missions, over a 4 month period. Multivariate hierarchical linear and logistic models were used to evaluate the influence of various mission characteristics on post-mission fatigue. In the next phase of the research an existing non-technical skills measurement system was adapted to the aeromedical setting, using data collected directly from clinician groups and published literature. It was evaluated by: surveying experienced clinicians; testing it in the field; and undertaking a clinical simulation study, to determine whether the tool distinguished the different levels of performance expected in clinicians experienced versus inexperienced in patient transfer. Rank-based statistical tests were used to examine performance differences and associations between assessment approaches. Finally, a second clinical simulation study utilising a randomised crossover design compared the non-technical performance of individual clinicians when they were fatigued versus non-fatigued. Within-subject differences in performance were analysed using paired t-tests. Analysis of covariance was used to examine the relationship between possible covariates and within-subject performance differences, while controlling for the effect of scenario order (fatigued or non-fatigued first). Results: Results from the initial field-based research showed there was at least one clinician reporting severe fatigue on 11.2% of routine interhospital transport missions. Fatigue levels were influenced by clinicians’ baseline fatigue, their workload, and working during any part of the night. From the second phase of research the adapted aeromedical non-technical skills framework showed good face and content validity, and the ability to distiguish between differing performance levels, with clinicians experienced in interhospital transport performing more highly than those without experience, according to both non-technical skills ratings (Mann-Whitney U, p = 0.001) and independently observed general performance ratings (Mann-Whitney U, p = 0.003). Self ratings did not distinguish experienced from inexperienced transport clinicians (Mann-Whitney U, p = 0.32). The main finding from the third phase of research was that the non-technical skills performance scores of clinicians were higher when they were in non-fatigued versus fatigued states (mean difference with 95%CI, 2.8 [2.2 - 3.4]), as assessed by raters blinded to the fatigue status of the clinicians.This finding remained consistent when controlling for an order effect and examining the impact of a number of possible co-variates. There was no difference in self-ratings of clinical performance between non-fatigued and fatigued states (Wilcoxon signed-ranks test, p = 0.153). Conclusion: In critical care settings clinicians’ non-technical skills are recognised as being directly linked to safe and effective treatment of patients. The findings of the research undertaken here support a conclusion that non-technical skills performance is degraded at levels of fatigue clinicians routinely experience. In addition, clinicians may fail to recognise their performance is compromised. Non-technical skills frameworks provide an ideal foundation for assessing a range of clinically-relevant behaviours, and could be routinely incorporated into critical care training programmes and practice. In combination with an active fatigue-education approach, they could also be used to identify and develop methods for managing or mitigating fatigue effects in critical care settings