A measure of nature connectedness for children and adults: Validation, performance, and insights

With benefits to both human well-being and pro-nature conservation behaviors, nature connectedness is emerging as an important psychological construct for a sustainable future. The growing research and applied and policy-related interests require a straightforward measure of nature connectedness that is suitable for both children and adult populations. To establish the reliability of the new Nature Connection Index (NCI) three factor analyses were conducted. One was based on a large Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment (MENE) dataset for adults (n = 3568) with a replication from data sets collected online (n = 553), and a third used MENE data from children (n = 351). To validate the NCI as a measure for nature connectedness an online comparison study (n = 153) included the NCI alongside other established measures. The results showed that the NCI was a reliable and valid scale that offers a short, simple alternative to other measures of nature connectedness, particularly for populations including both children and adults, measured face to face or online. The utility of the NCI is also supported, with variations associated with various pro-environmental and pro-conservation behaviors observed, and importantly the NCI also revealed changes in nature connectedness across the lifespan.N/

Contextual Influences on Phonetic Categorization in School-Aged Children

Perceptual stability in adult listeners is supported by the ability to process acoustic-phonetic variation categorically and dynamically adjust category boundaries given systematic contextual influences. The current study examined the developmental trajectory of such flexibility. Adults and school-aged children (5–10 years of age) made voicing identification decisions to voice-onset-time (VOT) continua that differed in speaking rate and place of articulation. The results showed that both populations were sensitive to contextual influences; the voicing boundary was located at a longer VOT for the slow compared to the fast speaking rate continuum and for the velar compared to the labial continuum, and the magnitude of the displacement was slighter greater for the adults compared to the children. Moreover, the two populations differed in terms of the absolute location of the voicing boundaries and the categorization slopes, with slopes becoming more categorical as age increased. These results demonstrate that sensitivity to contextual influences on speech perception emerges early in development, but mature perceptual tuning requires extended experience

Antineutrino Detectors Remain Impractical for Nuclear Explosion Monitoring

Fission explosions produce large numbers of antineutrinos. It is occasionally asked whether this distinctive, unshieldable emission could help reveal clandestine nuclear weapon explosions. The practical challenge encountered is that detectors large enough for this application are cost prohibitive, likely on the multi-billion-dollar scale. In this paper, we review several hypothetical use cases for antineutrino detectors as supplements to the seismic, infrasound, hydroacoustic, and airborne radionuclide sensors of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization's International Monitoring System. In each case, if an anti-neutrino detector could be constructed that would compete with existing capabilities, we conclude that the cost would considerably outstrip the value it might add to the existing monitoring network, compared to the significantly lower costs for the same or superior capability.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

An Exploratory Examination of Burnout in NCAA Division II Athletes

The purpose of this study was to assess the causes of burnout among student-athletes in Division II institutions. The authors distributed the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ) to 125 undergraduate student-athletes enrolled at three Division II colleges and universities. The athletes competed in various sports. A 2 (Gender) × 2 (Type of Scholarship) × 2 (School Status) analysis of variance revealed that women and men reported different levels of burnout dependent upon type of scholarship. Men with no scholarship reported the lowest levels of burnout among the three types (None/Academic/Athletic), whereas women with no type of scholarship reported the highest levels of burnout. The authors discuss the results and offer implications, limitations, and future directions

Transformational leadership and student outcomes: evidence from Rivers State, Nigeria

Despite the widely accepted theories on transformational leadership and its impact on student outcomes, in the West, much less is known about this model in developing countries, including Nigeria. This study explored how learners' outcomes are affected by transformational leadership in Rivers State. The research mapped the prevalent leadership styles to see whether, and to what extent, they illustrated any components of transformational leadership, using Bass’s six transformational leadership (TL) measuring instruments. This exploratory study adopted a mixed-methods approach to investigate this phenomenon, with a multiple case-study design, in five schools from the rural riverine and urban communities of Rivers State, Nigeria. Learners' attainments were examined using a documentary approach while principal and teacher perspectives were obtained via semi-structured interviews. Existing Western theories relating to transformational leadership were confirmed, contradicted, modified, and extended, in this African context. The findings revealed that transformational leadership in Rivers State shares some similarities with Western research and literature but also exhibits certain dissimilarities. The research confirms the growing recognition that leadership theories and models need to be adapted when applied to new, and developing, contexts

Driving Simulator Performance Across the Lifespan: A Preliminary Study

OBJECTIVES Normal aging is associated with decline in abilities that may put an individual at increased riskfor a crash. Older individuals may have slowed processing speed and motor responses, a reduceduseful field of view (Ball et al., 1988), and greater difficulty with mental rotation (Armstrong etal., 1998). Although collision rates increase with age (Transportation Research Board, 1988), ithas been argued that specific age-related functional impairments, and not age itself, put one atrisk (Ball & Owsley, 2003). The goal of this study was to examine the relationship betweenaging and performance on driving simulations assessing specific components of driving—accident avoidance, divided attention, and navigation—and the degree to which they predict onroaddriving performance.METHODSForty control drivers (age 22 to 84; \u3c 50 yo, n = 14; 50-70 yo, n = 13; and \u3e 70 yo, n = 13)completed 3 simulations and an on-road driving evaluation. Exclusion criteria includedneurologic confounds, substance use and psychiatric disorders, as well as abnormalneuropsychological performance (based upon demographically-corrected norms). Thesimulations were presented on a Pentium III PC computer using a 17” monitor at 1280 x 1024resolution, and running STISIM Drive version 2.0 software (Systems Technology, Inc.;Hawthorne, CA). Hardware included a steering wheel, turn signal, and brake/accelerator pedals.The simulations consisted of 1) Advanced Routine and Emergency Driving (ARED), a 15-minute route simulating city/country driving, in which drivers must obey traffic signs, pass cars,and respond to high-risk crash scenarios; 2) Virtual City (VC), in which drivers must navigate toand from a location in a 5 x 5 block simulated city, and 3) Divided Attention, in which driversare to maintain a constant speed and lane position while responding to divided attention tasks inthe corner of the monitor. Participants also completed a 35-minute on-road assessment. Lastly,participants were assessed on a battery of neuropsychological tests. Earlier versions of thesimulations were predictive of on-road driving performance in an HIV-infected cohort (Marcotteet al., 2004). RESULTSThe three groups performed similarly on ARED (crashes, speeding tickets), as well as on the VCtask when the map was oriented to the same direction as the participant. On the other hand, olderparticipants had significantly more difficulty navigating when their orientation on the map wasreversed (e.g., the \u3c 50 group took 1.2 blocks beyond optimum to return from the destination; the50-70 and \u3e 70 years old groups took approximately 7.5 blocks). The three groups performedsimilarly with respect to lane deviation on the Divided Attention task, but the older groups hadincreased variability in speed maintenance, and the oldest group failed to respond to a greaternumber of divided attention stimuli (\u3c 50 yo = .3 (.83), 50-70 yo = 1.0 (1.3), \u3e 70 yo = 3.6 (2.7)).Although only one participant failed the on-road drive (50-70 yo), the percent of driversconsidered marginal or worse increased with age (7% vs. 25% vs. 55%). In a logistic regression,the simulator variables that best discriminated safe vs. marginal on-road came from the DividedAttention task: the number of missed stimuli and speed deviation, both of which require an intactuseful field of view and the shifting of gaze away from the roadway. Age did not enter into amodel that included these variables.CONCLUSIONSIn this study of normal, healthy controls, older participants drove similarly to young-to-middleaged participants on a simulation that most closely approximated real driving. Consistent withcognitive declines seen in normal aging, older participants had greater difficulty on a taskrequiring navigating when map orientation was reversed (perhaps indicative of impairedegocentric spatial abilities), as well as on a measure of driving-related divided attention, witholder participants appearing to allocate more attention to the roadway at the cost of attending andresponding to peripheral cues. Although older drivers had more difficulty during the on-road test,these difficulties were a function of deficits in the ability to divide attention efficiently, ratherthan aging per se.REFERENCESArmstrong, C.L., & Cloud, B. (1998). The emergence of spatial rotation deficits in dementia andnormal aging. Neuropsychology, 12(2), 208-217.Ball, K.K., Beard, B.L., Roenker, D.L., Miller, R.L., & Griggs, D.S. (1988). Age and visualsearch: Expanding the useful field of view. J Opt Soc Am A, 5(12), 2210-2219.Ball, K., & Owsley, C. (2003). Driving competence: It\u27s not a matter of age. J Am Geriatr Soc,51(10), 1499-1501.Marcotte, T.D., Wolfson, T., Rosenthal, T.J., Heaton, R.K., Gonzalez, R., Ellis, R.J., et al.(2004). A multimodal assessment of driving performance in HIV infection. Neurology, 63(8),1417-1422.Transportation Research Board. (1988). Transportation in an Aging Society, Vol 1. Washington,D.C.: National Research Council

Using TMS to evaluate a causal role for right posterior temporal cortex in talker-specific phonetic processing

Available online 21 April 2023Theories suggest that speech perception is informed by listeners’ beliefs of what phonetic variation is typical of a talker. A previous fMRI study found right middle temporal gyrus (RMTG) sensitivity to whether a phonetic variant was typical of a talker, consistent with literature suggesting that the right hemisphere may play a key role in conditioning phonetic identity on talker information. The current work used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to test whether the RMTG plays a causal role in processing talker-specific phonetic variation. Listeners were exposed to talkers who differed in how they produced voiceless stop consonants while TMS was applied to RMTG, left MTG, or scalp vertex. Listeners subsequently showed near-ceiling performance in indicating which of two variants was typical of a trained talker, regardless of previous stimulation site. Thus, even though the RMTG is recruited for talker-specific phonetic processing, modulation of its function may have only modest consequences.This research was supported by NSF 1554810 (PI: EBM), NIH NIDCD 2R01 DC013064 (PI: EBM) and NSF NRT 1747486 (PI: JSM). This research was supported in part by the Basque Government through the BERC 2022–2025 program, by the Spanish State Research Agency through BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation CEX2020-001010- S and award PID2020-119131 GB-I000