Fluid intake in cardiac oedema: with reference to a factor in aetiology

(i) Cases were examined with a view to determining the advisability of giving fluid in Cardiac Oedema. (ii) It was found that fluid might be given so long as a. salt free diet is maintained. (iii) Salt free diet is of the utmost importance in Cardiac Oedema. (iv) Excessive fluid and salt free diet may help the kidney to remove waste products of metabolism and this is beneficial to patient. There also seems to be a thickening of the blood. (v) Excess of fluid and salt free diet may start a diuresis. (vi) Study of salt and fluid intake in Oedema suggested the importance of salt as a factor in Cardiac Oedema. (vii) Salt excretion is deficient in conditions of Cardiac Oedema but fluid excretion remains good. (viii) Salt is therefore retained in circulation which upsets osmotic pressure of blood. Surplus salt therefore driven into tissues and takes fluid with it. (ix) Administration of salt in Oedema is dangerous and if given in sufficient quantities may produce Hydraemia. (x) In this type of Hydraemia alkali reserve is raised and there is therefore probably no acidosis. (xi) Venous pressure is also not raised and therefore it is probable that neither is capillary pressure. (xii) Colloidal osmotic pressure is normal in some cases. (xiii) Glucose if given in sufficient quantity causes increase in weight. (xiv) This appears to be due to mechanism for keeping osmotic pressure constant and Chloride is driven to tissues taking fluid with it. (xv) The suggestion is made that a deficient salt excretion may be one factor in Cardiac Oedema

The Effects of Emotion and Action on Binding in Memory

The ability to successfully bind features and objects at different levels of abstraction is important for everyday functioning of memory. The current study examined how actions and emotional arousal influence item recognition and between-item binding across two experiments. According to the Arousal-Biased Competition Theory (ABC; Mather and Sutherland, 2011), binding can be enhanced by emotional arousal, depending upon what is the focus of attention within a scene. In the current study, participants viewed a series of slides, each of which depicted a person performing an action with an object, as well as an object that is not interacted with. All of the actions performed were emotionally neutral. According to ABC, this difference between attended and non-attended items should be enhanced when in the presence of an emotionally arousing stimulus. In the current experiments, emotional arousal was manipulated using sounds presented before slides depicting a person performing an action using an object. In Experiment 1, actions led to enhanced attention to (and better item memory for) manipulated objects relative to objects that were not the focus of attention. Participants also gave higher confidence ratings for recognized interacted objects than recognized non-interacted objects. However, the predicted interaction between emotional arousal and item type was not obtained. The one impact of emotional arousal was that participants responded more conservatively to faces and items associated with a negative sound. In Experiment 2, there was no evidence for enhanced associative memory as a function of either emotion or action, although overall performance was very poor. The implications of these findings for theoretical views of memory are discussed, as well as future directions for research

Attention as a Mechanism for Object-Object Binding in Complex Scenes

The current study attempted to determine whether direct binding between objects in complex scenes occurs as a function of directed attention at encoding. In Experiment 1, participants viewed objects in one of these different types contexts: unique scenes, similar scenes, or arrays with no contextual information. Critically, only half of the objects were attended for each encoding trial. Participants then completed an associative recognition task on pairs of items created from the previously studied scenes. Test pairs consisted of two attended or unattended objects, and were associated with a unique scene, a similar scene, or an array. Evidence of binding for attended objects was clear. Associative recognition was better for attended pairs, relative to unattended pairs, regardless of the type of context in which the objects were studied. Object-context binding was not observed in memory for attended object pairs, but was observed for unattended object pairs. Experiment 2 explored the extent to which binding strength between object relationships varies as a function of temporal and/or spatial proximity. The procedure for Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1, with the exception that all of the objects in the encoding trials were attended. There were no significant main effects or interactions of spatial and temporal distance on binding strength, as measured by associative recognition

Implementing the theory of multiple intelligences in the junior secondary school

First published in 1983, the theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983) struck a chord with thousands of educators across the world, providing a philosophical and structural framework that helped them make sense of and cater for the vast range of individual difference they encountered daily in their classrooms. However, while MI theory has found a ready audience amongst early childhood and primary school educators, and has been associated with a wide range of positive outcomes across a variety of educational settings, it continues to have little impact on secondary school practice. The aim of this qualitative action research project was to establish a collaborative research group of four junior secondary school teachers, who were interested in exploring MI theory and its implications for learning and teaching. In documenting their experiences, the project aimed to find out whether an MI-based programme was feasible in a junior secondary school context, and to identify the difficulties and barriers that impeded the participating teachers' endeavours to implement MI in their classrooms. The following research questions provided the focus for the project: 1. Can an MI-based approach to teaching and learning be successfully implemented in a junior secondary school programme? 2. What are the issues that secondary school teachers face when implementing MI into their classroom programmes? 3. What are the best ways to address these issues? iii A multiple case study approach provided an effective means of illustrating the individual complexity of teachers' situations, as they interacted with their students, the curriculum, their colleagues and their school environment, and was also flexible enough to accommodate the open-ended and evolving nature of the investigation. The following outcomes for teachers as a result of the MI project were noted: (a) Increased awareness and understanding of student diversity. (b) Extended teaching practice and enhanced teacher creativity. (c) Improved planning framework. (d) Teachers' beliefs about learning and intelligence were affirmed and extended. (e) Teachers experienced improved confidence in their abilities as teachers. (f) The emergence of a cohesive student-centred curriculum. (g) Improved collegiality. As a result of the project, many barriers to implementing MI theory into junior secondary school classrooms were identified, under the following categories: (a) Barriers relating to teacher culture (b) Barriers relating to management requirements (c) Barriers relating to time (d) Barriers relating to personnel (e) Barriers relating to external pressures on the school The outcomes of this project confirm findings in the research literature, which suggest that MI theory can provide a valuable philosophical and structural iv framework that helps teachers develop a greater awareness of student diversity and enhanced teaching practice, as well as the understanding that a uniform approach to teaching and learning meets the needs of too few. However, a number of entrenched structural and cultural barriers characteristic of the secondary school context were also identified, which suggest that the adoption of MI-based teaching practices on a wider scale is unlikely without an in-depth school-wide professional development initiative

05. Memory for Scenes

Discovering how scenes are structured in one’s memory is crucial for understanding event memory. Not only can this add to our understanding of how we remember everyday events, but also topics such as the reliability of eyewitness accounts during criminal investigations. The primary focus of this research is to study the direct binding of objects in the context of scenes and the role of attention in binding. Specifically, the study examines whether objects bind together in memory and to the scene itself or if the scene affects direct binding between these objects. During the experiment, participants use a computer to view a room that contains various objects. While the scene is being shown the participant’s attention is drawn to different objects around the room by a visual cue. The room also contains unattended objects which allows evaluation of the difference in memory for attended and unattended objects. After viewing the scene, the participant is shown a picture of an object and asked to indicate whether they saw the item in the scene. In a separate phase of the experiment, an object is shown along with a blank section of the screen, an attended object, or an unattended object to test the participant’s memory of attended objects when paired with different cues. Current results indicate that memory for attended objects is significantly better than unattended objects. While evidence for direct binding has not yet been found, this may become evident as the sample size continues to increase