Performance funding policies in higher education have had little effect on student outcomes

Performance and cost efficiency concerns have taken center stage in discussions about the funding and oversight of public universities in recent years. One of the primary manifestations of these concerns is the rise of performance funding policies, or policies that seek to directly link state appropriations to the outcomes institutions generate for students. In a study of over 500 four year post-secondary institutions in all fifty states from 1993-2010, Amanda Rutherford and Thomas Rabovsky find that current performance funding policies are not associated with higher levels of student performance and that these policies may in fact contribute to lower performance over a longer period of time. However, more recent policies linked to institutional base funding may produce some likelihood of long-term improvement and require additional attention by scholars and policymakers

Die Rolle der Psychoedukation in der stationären Behandlung psychisch Kranker: Eine kritische Übersicht

Zusammenfassung: Psychoedukation ist ein nachweislich hocheffektives Verfahren zur Reduzierung von Rückfällen und Klinikeinweisungen bei schizophrenen Patienten. Ein günstiger Einfluss findet sich u.a. auch hinsichtlich Wissensstand und insbesondere Compliance, die wiederum eng mit dem klinischen Verlauf korreliert ist. Trotz der Wirksamkeitsnachweise und entsprechenden Empfehlungen in evidenzbasierten Leitlinien sind die therapeutischen Programme aber v.a. im stationären Behandlungssetting unterrepräsentiert. Wir fassen auf der Basis eines Literaturüberblicks den derzeitigen Kenntnis- und Entwicklungsstand zusammen und formulieren offene Fragen, Erklärungshypothesen und Lösungsmodelle im Hinblick auf eine breitere Anwendung von Psychoedukation v.a. in der stationären Versorgung. Wesentliche Aspekte der Erörterung hinsichtlich zeitgemäßer und zielgruppengerechter Formen sind die bislang übliche Diagnosenspezifität des traditionell in der Schizophreniebehandlung eingesetzten Verfahrens sowie eine methodenintegrative Struktur der informationszentrierten Schulungsprogramm

Attentional modulation of orthographic neighborhood effects during reading: Evidence from event-related brain potentials in a psychological refractory period paradigm

It is often assumed that word reading proceeds automatically. Here, we tested this assumption by recording event-related potentials during a psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, requiring lexical decisions about written words. Specifically, we selected words differing in their orthographic neighborhood size–the number of words that can be obtained from a target by exchanging a single letter–and investigated how influences of this variable depend on the availability of central attention. As expected, when attentional resources for lexical decisions were unconstrained, words with many orthographic neighbors elicited larger N400 amplitudes than those with few neighbors. However, under conditions of high temporal overlap with a high priority primary task, the N400 effect was not statistically different from zero. This finding indicates strong attentional influences on processes sensitive to orthographic neighbors during word reading, providing novel evidence against the full automaticity of processes involved in word reading. Furthermore, in conjunction with the observation of an underadditive interaction between stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and orthographic neighborhood size in lexical decision performance, commonly taken to indicate automaticity, our results raise issues concerning the standard logic of cognitive slack in the PRP paradigm

Diagnosenübergreifende Psychoedukation: "Notbehelf" oder "Mittel der Wahl"?: Ergebnisse der Basler Psychoedukationsstudie

Zusammenfassung: Trotz günstiger Evidenzlage werden die traditionell diagnosehomogenen psychoedukativen Gruppenprogramme aufgrund der oft zu geringen Patientenzahl pro Diagnose nicht routinemäßig eingesetzt. In einer explorativen randomisierten und kontrollierten Studie wurde die Wirksamkeit eines diagnosengemischten Programms hinsichtlich klinischer Variablen, Rehospitalisierungshäufigkeit und "compliance" sowie verlaufsrelevanter subjektiver Einstellungen und Theorien mithilfe quantitativer und qualitativer Methoden bei Patienten der Universitären Psychiatrischen Kliniken Basel (N = 82) über einen 1-jährigen "Follow-up"-Zeitraum untersucht. Signifikante Gruppenunterschiede zeigten sich hinsichtlich Compliance nach 3Monaten und hinsichtlich der Suizidrate zugunsten der Interventionsbedingung. Die Ergebnisse bei den meisten anderen erhobenen klinischen Zielvariablen ergaben deutliche Vorteile für die Psychoeduationsgruppe. Eine erste Analyse qualitativer Daten fand als Akuteffekt eine signifikant günstigere Entwicklung in der Interventionsgruppe. Die bisher einzigen empirischen Daten über eine störungsübergreifende Psychoedukationsgruppe rechtfertigen deren klinischen Einsatz und weitere Untersuchunge

The time course of semantic richness effects in visual word recognition

The richness of semantic representations associated with individual words has emerged as an important variable in reading. In the present study we contrasted different measures of semantic richness and explored the time course of their influences during visual word processing as reflected in event-related brain potentials (ERPs). ERPs were recorded while participants performed a lexical decision task on visually presented words and pseudowords. For word stimuli, we orthogonally manipulated two frequently employed measures of semantic richness: the number of semantic features generated in feature-listing tasks and the number of associates based on free association norms. We did not find any influence of the number of associates. In contrast, the number of semantic features modulated ERP amplitudes at central sites starting at about 190 ms, as well as during the later N400 component over centro-parietal regions (300–500 ms). Thus, initial access to semantic representations of single words is fast and word meaning continues to modulate processing later on during reading

N400 amplitudes reflect change in a probabilistic representation of meaning:Evidence from a connectionist model

The N400 component of the event-related brain potential iswidely used in research on language and semantic memory,but the cognitive functions underlying N400 amplitudes arestill unclear and actively debated. Recent simulations with aneural network model of word meaning suggest that N400amplitudes might reflect implicit semantic prediction error.Here, we extend these simulations to sentencecomprehension, using a neural network model of sentenceprocessing to simulate a number of N400 effects obtained inempirical research. In the model, sequentially incoming wordsupdate a representation capturing probabilities of elements ofsentence meaning, not only reflecting the constituentspresented so far, but also the model’s best guess at all featuresof the sentence meaning based on the statistical regularities inthe model’s environment internalized in its connectionweights. Simulating influences of semantic congruity, clozeprobability, a word’s position in the sentence, reversalanomalies, semantic and associative priming, categoricallyrelated incongruities, lexical frequency, repetition, andinteractions between repetition and semantic congruity, wefound that the update of the predictive representation ofsentence meaning consistently patterned with N400amplitudes. These results are in line with the idea that N400amplitudes reflect semantic surprise, defined as the change inthe probability distribution over semantic features in anintegrated representation of meaning occasioned by the arrivalof each successive constituent of a sentence

Efficacy of bifocal diagnosis-independent group psychoeducation in severe psychiatric disorders: results from a randomized controlled trial

Despite evidence for its efficacy, diagnosis-specific psychoeducation is not routinely applied. This exploratory randomized controlled trial analyses the efficacy of an easily implementable bifocal diagnosis-mixed group psychoeducation in the treatment of severe psychiatric disorders regarding readmission, compliance and clinical variables, for example global functioning. Inpatients of the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel (N=82) were randomly assigned to a diagnosis-mixed psychoeducational (PE) or a non-specific intervention control group. Relatives were invited to join corresponding family groups. Results at baseline, 3- and 12-month follow-ups are presented. Better compliance after 3months and a lower suicide rate were significant in favour of PE. For most other outcome variables, no significant differences, however advantages, in PE were found. In summary, it can be concluded that diagnosis-mixed group psychoeducation is effective in the treatment of severe psychiatric disorders. The effects can be classified as induced by distinctive psychoeducational elements. Findings similar to those on psychosis-specific programmes justify clinical application and further investigatio

Distrust before first sight: Knowledge- and appearance-based effects of trustworthiness on the visual consciousness of faces

Not all visual stimuli processed by the brain reach the level of conscious perception. Previous research has shown that the emotional value of a stimulus is one of the factors that can affect whether it is consciously perceived. Here, we investigated whether social-affective knowledge influences a face’s chance to reach visual consciousness. Furthermore, we took into account the impact of facial appearance. Faces differing in facial trustworthiness (i.e., being perceived as more or less trustworthy based on appearance) were associated with neutral or negative socially relevant information. Subsequently, an attentional blink task was administered to examine whether the manipulated factors affect the faces’ chance to reach visual consciousness under conditions of reduced attentional resources. Participants showed enhanced detection of faces associated with negative as compared to neutral social information. In event-related potentials (ERPs), this was accompanied by effects in the time range of the early posterior negativity (EPN) component. These findings indicate that social-affective person knowledge is processed already before or during attentional selection and can affect which faces are prioritized for access to visual consciousness. In contrast, no clear evidence for an impact of facial trustworthiness during the attentional blink was found