Evaluating Preschoolers’ Comprehension of Educational Television: The Role of Viewer Characteristics, Stimuli Features, and Contextual Expectations

This study represents the first experimental investigation to simultaneously evaluate the impact of three key areas of a child’s television viewing experience -individual differences (story schema), the stimulus (narrative type), and the environment (perceived demand characteristics). Guided by the capacity model (Fisch, 2000, 2004), preschoolers’ comprehension of an educational television program was evaluated in a 2 (story schema: low, high) x 2 (perceived demand characteristics: fun (low), learning (high)) x 2 (narrative type: participatory cues absent, participatory cues present) between-subjects fully crossed factorial experiment. Comprehension was operationalized as both narrative (i.e. central, incidental, and inferential comprehension) and educational content comprehension. A total of 172 preschoolers (102 females) participated in the study (Mean Age = 4.2 years). Children were randomly assigned to one of four conditions created by crossing the perceived demand characteristic manipulation with the narrative type manipulation. Story schema level was assigned through a median-split procedure based on story schema scores. In addition to program comprehension, data was collected on expressive vocabulary, story schema skills, program familiarity, and engagement with and attention to stimuli. Advanced story schema supported narrative comprehension, and this reduction in narrative processing demands translated to educational content comprehension. Children’s television programmers are advised to design educational television content which conforms to a prototypical story structure while integrating educational content within the narrative. Additionally, while children seemed able to devote greater attention to content when asked to “watch to learn”, they appeared to struggle with how to differentially distribute this attention, resulting in minimally enhanced inferential processing and no additional benefits to educational content comprehension. Finally, the inclusion of participatory cues in children’s television programming was not sufficient to support comprehension. Rather, it seems that engagement with participatory cues is necessary to support comprehension – particularly for children with low story schema and children viewing “for fun”. When integrating the findings for perceived demand characteristics and narrative type, children’s television programmers are advised to use participatory cues strategically to highlight educational content

Does passion predict enjoyment and performance in an interteaching-based course?

The present study sought to examine whether passion for academic activities predicted students’ enjoyment of and performance in an interteaching-based course. Although previous studies have shown interteaching to produce better student-learning outcomes than lecture, few studies have examined factors that predict how students respond to interteaching. Because people who have higher levels of harmonious passion tend to approach activities in an open and flexible manner, we predicted that harmonious passion for academic activities would predict increased enjoyment of and performance in an interteaching-based course. In contrast, because people with higher levels of obsessive passion approach activities in a rigid and inflexible manner, we predicted that obsessive passion for academic activities would predict less enjoyment and decreased performance in an interteaching-based class. In contrast with our hypotheses, we found that obsessive passion, but not harmonious passion, predicted higher mid-semester enjoyment. Neither type of passion, however, predicted enjoyment at the end of the semester. In addition, harmonious passion was negatively related to overall course performance

The Endoderm Plays an Important Role in Patterning the Segmented Pharyngeal Region in Zebrafish (Danio rerio)

AbstractThe development of the vertebrate head is a highly complex process involving tissues derived from all three germ layers. The endoderm forms pharyngeal pouches, the paraxial mesoderm gives rise to endothelia and muscles, and the neural crest cells, which originate from the embryonic midbrain and hindbrain, migrate ventrally to form cartilage, connective tissue, sensory neurons, and pigment cells. All three tissues form segmental structures: the hindbrain compartmentalizes into rhombomeres, the mesoderm into somitomeres, and the endoderm into serial gill slits. It is not known whether the different segmented tissues in the head develop by the same molecular mechanism or whether different pathways are employed. It is also possible that one tissue imposes segmentation on the others. Most recent studies have emphasized the importance of neural crest cells in patterning the head. Neural crest cells colonize the segmentally arranged arches according to their original position in the brain and convey positional information from the hindbrain into the periphery. During the screen for mutations that affect embryonic development of zebrafish, one mutant, called van gogh (vgo), in which segmentation of the pharyngeal region is absent, was isolated. In vgo, even though hindbrain segmentation is unaffected, the pharyngeal endoderm does not form reiterated pouches and surrounding mesoderm is not patterned correctly. Accordingly, migrating neural crest cells initially form distinct streams but fuse when they reach the arches. This failure to populate distinct pharyngeal arches is likely due to the lack of pharyngeal pouches. The results of our analysis suggest that the segmentation of the endoderm occurs without signaling from neural crest cells but that tissue interactions between the mesendoderm and the neural crest cells are required for the segmental appearance of the neural crest-derived cartilages in the pharyngeal arches. The lack of distinct patches of neural crest cells in the pharyngeal region is also seen in mutants of one-eyed pinhead and casanova, which are characterized by a lack of endoderm, as well as defects in mesodermal structures, providing evidence for the important role of the endoderm and mesoderm in governing head segmentation

Enhanced interactive parallel coordinates using machine learning and uncertainty propagation for engineering design

© 2019 IEEE. The design process of an engineering system requires thorough consideration of varied specifications, each with potentially large number of dimensions. The sheer volume of data, as well as its complexity, can overwhelm the designer and obscure vital information. Visualisation of big data can mitigate the issue of information overload but static display can suffer from overplotting. To tackle the issue of overplotting and cluttered data, we present an interactive and touch-screen capable visualisation toolkit that combines Parallel Coordinates and Scatter Plot approaches for managing multidimensional engineering design data. As engineering projects require a multitude of varied software to handle the various aspects of the design process, the combined datasets often do not have an underlying mathematical model. We address this issue by enhancing our visualisation software with Machine Learning methods which also facilitate further insights into the data. Furthermore, various software within the engineering design cycle produce information of different level of fidelity (accuracy and trustworthiness), as well as with different speed. The induced uncertainty is also considered and modelled in the synthetic dataset and is also presented in an interactive way. This paper describes a new visualisation software package and demonstrates its functionality on a complex aircraft systems design dataset

PCIExpress Communication Layer for ATCA-based Linear Accelerator Control System

PCIExpress architecture is widely used communication bus designed, among other things, for industrial application. Additionally, according to PICMG 3.4 specification it is part of an ATCA architecture. For that reason PCIExpress was used as communication interface for data transmission between ATCA carrier boards and AMC modules for the new control system for XFEL linear accelerator. In this paper authors present general overview of this system, describe communication protocols designed to exchange data with external user application and show results of performance test