Imagining differently: Relationships between reading and gaming habits, mental imagery construction, and perspective-taking when processing a fictional narrative scene

This article discusses the results of an experiment which investigated relationships between participants' reading and gaming histories, their mental imagery construction, and their perspective-taking within that mental imagery construction, when reading a short fictional scenic narrative. Participants (n=106) read segments of a text, selected images corresponding with their visualisation of the scene, and completed a questionnaire probing reading and gaming habits. The resulting data suggest that reading habits may mediate text-prompted mental imagery construction and perspective-taking in two ways: participants who read frequently had a greater tendency to visualise the scene during reading than those who did not read frequently; and participants who read frequently had a greater tendency to visualise the scene from an internal perspective (i.e., the perspective of the character or character-narrator within the fictional scene) than participants who did not read frequently, irrespective of the person and tense of the text stimuli. The resulting data also suggest that computer game playing habits, in particular preferences regarding gaming mode, may mediate textprompted mental imagery construction and perspective-taking: participants who were allocated texts in the present tense and first or second person and who preferred subjective (i.e., 'first person') computer games were less likely to visualise the scene from an internal perspective than participants who did not prefer subjective computer games. This article discusses the possible reasons for these correlations, focussing on differences between experiences of imagery in response to textual and visual media and differences between experiences of absorption in reading and gaming

Lang/Lit from A to BA: integrating Language and Literature study at school and university

This report is based on a workshop held at Middlesex University on 7 July 2012, which focused on Lang/Lit provision at school in English, Wales and Northern Ireland, and at university across the UK. It presents anecdotal and more formal data which we gathered in preparing for the event, and some aspects of discussions that arose following the workshop. We hope that this report will be the beginning of a fuller investigation of issues about Lang/Lit provision. We plan to explore these further ourselves and hope that they will also be explored by other people and institutions involved in the provision of Lang/Lit work. Section 2 explains some of the informal background and motivation for this work. Section 3 considers integrated Lang/Lit provision at A-level (referring collectively to AS and A2 except where the distinction between the two is relevant), the views of students, teachers/lecturers and examiners, and problems and possibilities around this provision. Section 4 addresses the same for BA-level. Section 5 draws these aspects together and reviews transition between the two levels, investigating content, student and provider experience, and obstacles and opportunities for improving the relationships between A-level and BA-level study. Section 6 concludes the report with a summary and suggested avenues for progress

Overview of Australian Indigenous health status

This paper provides information on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations, the context of Indigenous health, various measures of population health status, selected health conditions, and health risk factors. The main purpose of this report is to provide a comprehensive summary of the most recent indicators of the health of Indigenous people. It is beyond the scope of the Overview to analyse trends in the various indicators, so it tends to draw attention to the current health status of Australia\u27s Indigenous peoples. The report doesn\u27t attempt to review other aspects, such as the availability and use of services (including barriers to their use) and strategies and policies related to specific health topics. Readers interested in these aspects should refer to the topic-specific reviews that are available on the HealthInfoNet\u27s website. Research for the report involves the collection, collation, and analysis of a wide range of relevant information, including both published and unpublished material. Sources include government reports, particularly those produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council (AHMAC), and the Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision (SCRGSP). Authored by Andrea MacRae, Neil Thomson, and Anomie, Jane Burns, Michelle Catto, Caitlin Gray, Leah Levitan, Naoibh McLoughlin, Christine Potter, Kathy Ride, Sasha Stumpers, Avinna Trzesinski, and Belinda Urquhart

English: diverse but unified: putting texts at the heart of the discipline

Billy Clark, Marcello Giovanelli and Andrea Macrae argue that ‘language and literature’ points the way towards a coherent vision of English, both at school and at university, as a unified but diverse subject encompassing literature, language, drama, media and creative writing

English after the post-2015 A level Reforms:HE Prerequisites and Perspectives

This article reports the results of a survey of UK Higher Education Institution (HEI) providers of undergraduate degree programmes in English. The survey solicited HEI providers’ views on how well each of the A levels in English prepares students for degree programmes, and asked which of the three A levels are included in the entry requirements for those programmes. The survey also asked how far HEI providers were aware of the post-2015 reforms at A level, and what changes had been made to programmes in response to those reforms. After outlining the rationale and methodology of the survey, this article discusses the data, focussing on prerequisites and perceptions of relative usefulness. Findings include: a significant proportion of programmes for which no A level in English is required; mixed perceptions of the usefulness of the A levels; and a need for more cross-phase dialogue around A level content and teaching methods

Responding to reform: How aware are HE English providers of A level reforms and how have they responded to them?

In September 2015, students in secondary, sixth-form and further education began A-level courses in English (English Literature, English Language, and English Language and Literature), all of which had been newly modified as part of the educational reforms introduced by the coalition government in 2010. This recent modification process was part of a drive to reform school qualifications in England more generally and coincided with a range of other changes to the curriculum and assessment practices in English teaching from primary school upwards. For A level English specifications, the key changes were, in addition to revised content, a shift from a modular to a two-year linear system, the decoupling of AS- and A- level qualifications and a reduction in the weighting of coursework, now rebranded as Non-exam assessment (NEA) (see Ofqual 2015 for a summary of all changes following reform). This paper reports on a survey through which we explored how far undergraduate English course providers were first, aware of this latest round of reform, and second, had made or were making changes to their programmes in light of reform. In the context of discourse around the involvement of universities in reform and the need to develop meaningful links between school and university English, we were interested in the reality of higher education academics’ awareness of and interest in post-16 study. This paper begins by outlining the context and process of A level reform before examining the importance of higher education/school relationships with regards to the curriculum and transition. We then present the findings of the survey, and following this we offer some analysis and discussion of the implications for various stakeholders

You and I, Past and Present: Cognitive Processing of Perspective

This article describes an experiment investigating the relationship between deictic elements of focalisation and readers’ perspective-taking within imaginative conceptualisations of a fictional narrative scene. The text variables tested here are whether the narrative is written in the first or second person, and whether the narrative is written in the present or past tense. The experiment tests the existence and nature of a relationship between these person and temporal deictic elements of focalisation and the likelihood of a reader’s visual perceptual identification with the position of a narrator, narrator-character and / or character focaliser within a fictional scene. Within the experiment, participants read one of four variants of a short fictional text identical but for the person or tense employed in the narration. Results of the experiment suggest that person and temporal deixis both impact upon conceptual perspective-taking. Specifically, the results corroborate predictions that the present tense is more likely than the past tense to elicit readerly conceptual identification with a narrator, narrator-character or character focaliser. Perhaps more surprisingly, however, the results also suggest that there is no significant difference between first and second person narration with respect to readers’ reported conceptual identification with the viewpoint of the narrator, narrator-character or character focaliser designated by that pronoun

English: diverse but unified: putting texts at the heart of the discipline

Billy Clark, Marcello Giovanelli and Andrea Macrae argue that ‘language and literature’ points the way towards a coherent vision of English, both at school and at university, as a unified but diverse subject encompassing literature, language, drama, media and creative writing