Anmärkningar om attityderna till statistik hos svenska psykologi- och pedagogikstudenter : effekterna av självuppfattning och ångest

A number of studies have pointed out the resistance to statistics courses and the anxiety it induces among social science students. The attitudes to statistics among psychology and education science students in a new university in Sweden were studied. Seven students were from a higher level course eight were from a course at a second year level. The students were asked voluntarily to respond to a questionnaire. The higher level students were given the questionnaire both before and after the course and they were also interviewed for about one hour each. Although all students experienced anxiety about statistics, some of them had become more positive to statistics after the course. This shows that feelings of interest and anxiety can exist at the same time. The anxiety might often be a result of low self perception of one’s own mathematical abilities. This self-perception must be made more positive. Teaching statistics at the same time to both distance and campus students is not to be recommended. The students expressed a wish for a more continuous teaching of statistics, repetitions, more practical examples and practice in using statistical packages.Redaktörer: Christina Hansson, Marie Jedemark och Åse Nygre

Anmärkningar om attityderna till statistik hos svenska psykologi- och pedagogikstudenter : effekterna av självuppfattning och ångest

A number of studies have pointed out the resistance to statistics courses and the anxiety it induces among social science students. The attitudes to statistics among psychology and education science students in a new university in Sweden were studied. Seven students were from a higher level course eight were from a course at a second year level. The students were asked voluntarily to respond to a questionnaire. The higher level students were given the questionnaire both before and after the course and they were also interviewed for about one hour each. Although all students experienced anxiety about statistics, some of them had become more positive to statistics after the course. This shows that feelings of interest and anxiety can exist at the same time. The anxiety might often be a result of low self perception of one’s own mathematical abilities. This self-perception must be made more positive. Teaching statistics at the same time to both distance and campus students is not to be recommended. The students expressed a wish for a more continuous teaching of statistics, repetitions, more practical examples and practice in using statistical packages.Redaktörer: Christina Hansson, Marie Jedemark och Åse Nygre

Notes on Attitudes to Statistics among Swedish Psychology and Education Science Students: The Effects of Self-perception and Anxiety

A number of studies have pointed out the resistance to statistics courses and the anxiety it induces among social science students. The attitudes to statistics among psychology and education science students in a new university in Sweden were studied. Seven students were from a higher level course eight were from a course at a second year level. The students were asked voluntarily to respond to a questionnaire. The higher level students were given the questionnaire both before and after the course and they were also interviewed for about one hour each. Although all students experienced anxiety about statistics, some of them had become more positive to statistics after the course. This shows that feelings of interest and anxiety can exist at the same time. The anxiety might often be a result of low self perception of one’s own mathematical abilities. This self-perception must be made more positive. Teaching statistics at the same time to both distance and campus students is not to be recommended. The students expressed a wish for a more continuous teaching of statistics, repetitions, more practical examples and practice in using statistical packages

Förändringsblindhet när man betraktar websidor

Change blindness on web pages was studied for 20 participants. The purpose was to find how change blindness appears for web pages, and which changes are easier to detect. The task was to detect if a change had occurred and to show this by the means of the cursor. Rensink´s flicker paradigm was used, where four categories of changes were presented. It was easier to detect a change not consisting of a person than one with a person. It was easier to detect a change to the left than to the right. The complexity of the web pages did not appear to have an effect, while large changes were easier to detect than small. The results may indicate that focused attention is differently sensitive for different kinds of changes. They also show that change blindness is a general phenomenon that can be applied to the perception of web pages.Published in a different form in: Steffner, D, and Schenkman, B.N. (2012). Change blindness when viewing web pages. Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment and Rehabilitation, 41, 6098-6102, DOI: 10.3233/WOR-2012-1067-609

Change blindness when viewing web pages

Change blindness on web pages was studied for 20 participants. The purpose was to find how change blindness appears for web pages, and which changes are easier to detect. The task was to detect if a change had occurred and to show this by the means of the cursor. Rensink´s flicker paradigm was used, where four categories of changes were presented. It was easier to detect a change not consisting of a person than one with a person. It was easier to detect a change to the left than to the right. The complexity of the web pages did not appear to have an effect, while large changes were easier to detect than small. The results may indicate that focused attention is differently sensitive for different kinds of changes. They also show that change blindness is a general phenomenon that can be applied to the perception of web pages

Blind people are more sensitive than sighted people to binaural sound-location cues, particularly inter-aural level differences

Blind people use auditory information to locate sound sources and sound-reflecting objects (echolocation). Sound source localization benefits from the hearing system's ability to suppress distracting sound reflections, whereas echolocation would benefit from "unsuppressing" these reflections. To clarify how these potentially conflicting aspects of spatial hearing interact in blind versus sighted listeners, we measured discrimination thresholds for two binaural location cues: inter-aural level differences (ILDs) and inter-aural time differences (ITDs). The ILDs or ITDs were present in single clicks, in the leading component of click pairs, or in the lagging component of click pairs, exploiting processes related to both sound source localization and echolocation. We tested 23 blind (mean age = 54 y), 23 sighted-age-matched (mean age = 54 y), and 42 sighted-young (mean age = 26 y) listeners. The results suggested greater ILD sensitivity for blind than for sighted listeners. The blind group's superiority was particularly evident for ILD-lag-click discrimination, suggesting not only enhanced ILD sensitivity in general but also increased ability to unsuppress lagging clicks. This may be related to the blind person's experience of localizing reflected sounds, for which ILDs may be more efficient than ITDs. On the ITD-discrimination tasks, the blind listeners performed better than the sighted age-matched listeners, but not better than the sighted young listeners. ITD sensitivity declines with age, and the equal performance of the blind listeners compared to a group of substantially younger listeners is consistent with the notion that blind people's experience may offset age-related decline in ITD sensitivity

Förändringsblindhet när man betraktar websidor

Change blindness on web pages was studied for 20 participants. The purpose was to find how change blindness appears for web pages, and which changes are easier to detect. The task was to detect if a change had occurred and to show this by the means of the cursor. Rensink´s flicker paradigm was used, where four categories of changes were presented. It was easier to detect a change not consisting of a person than one with a person. It was easier to detect a change to the left than to the right. The complexity of the web pages did not appear to have an effect, while large changes were easier to detect than small. The results may indicate that focused attention is differently sensitive for different kinds of changes. They also show that change blindness is a general phenomenon that can be applied to the perception of web pages.Published in a different form in: Steffner, D, and Schenkman, B.N. (2012). Change blindness when viewing web pages. Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment and Rehabilitation, 41, 6098-6102, DOI: 10.3233/WOR-2012-1067-609

Human Echolocation in Static Situations: Auditory Models of Detection Thresholds for Distance, Pitch, Loudness and Timbre

Human echolocation describes how people use reflected sounds to obtain information about their ambient world. We investigated, by using auditory models, how three perceptual parameters, loudness, pitch and sharpness, determine echolocation. We used acoustic recordings from two previous studies, both from stationary situations, and their resulting perceptual data as input to our analysis. An initial analysis was on the room acoustics of the recordings. The parameters of interest were sound pressure level, autocorrelation and spectral centroid. The auditory models were used to analyze echolocation resulting from the perceptual variables, i.e. loudness, pitch and sharpness. Relevant auditory models were chosen to simulate each variable. Based on these results, we calculated psychophysical thresholds for detecting a reflecting object with constant physical size. A non-parametric method was used to determine thresholds for distance, loudness, pitch and sharpness. Difference thresholds were calculated for the psychophysical variables, since a 2-Alternative-Forced-Choice Paradigm had originally been used. We found that (1) blind persons could detect objects at lower loudness values, lower pitch strength, different sharpness values and at further distances than sighted persons, (2) detection thresholds based on repetition pitch, loudness and sharpness varied and depended on room acoustics and type of sound stimuli, (3) repetition pitch was useful for detection at shorter distances and was determined from the peaks in the temporal profile of the autocorrelation function, (4) loudness at shorter distances provides echolocation information, (5) at longer distances, timbre aspects, such as sharpness, might be used to detect objects. We also discuss binaural information, movements and the auditory model approach. Autocorrelation was assumed as a proper measure for pitch, but the question is raised whether a mechanism based on strobe integration is a viable possibility.QC 20200225Övrig finansiär: Promobilia, projektnummer 12006</p