The attitude of the clergy toward education for family living in the public schools of Massachusetts.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Coordinated pluralism as a means to facilitate integrative taxonomies of cognition

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The past decade has witnessed a growing awareness of conceptual and methodological hurdles within psychology and neuroscience that must be addressed for taxonomic and explanatory progress in understanding psychological functions to be possible. In this paper, I evaluate several recent knowledge-building initiatives aimed at overcoming these obstacles. I argue that while each initiative offers important insights about how to facilitate taxonomic and explanatory progress in psychology and neuroscience, only a “coordinated pluralism” that incorporates positive aspects of each initiative will have the potential for success

Neuroscientific Kinds Through the Lens of Scientific Practice

In this chapter, I argue that scientific practice in the neurosciences of cognition is not conducive to the discovery of natural kinds of cognitive capacities. The “neurosciences of cognition” include cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology, two research areas that aim to understand how the brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. Some philosophers of neuroscience have claimed that explanatory progress in these research areas ultimately will result in the discovery of the underlying mechanisms of cognitive capacities. Once such mechanistic understanding is achieved, cognitive capacities purportedly will be relegated into natural kind categories that correspond to real divisions in the causal structure of the world. I provide reasons here, however, in support of the claim that the neurosciences of cognition currently are not on a trajectory for discovering natural kinds. As I explain, this has to do with how mechanistic explanations of cognitive capacities are developed. Mechanistic explanations and the kinds they explain are abstract representational byproducts of the conceptual, experimental and integrative practices of neuroscientists. If these practices are not coordinated towards developing mechanistic explanations that mirror the causal structure of the world, then natural kinds of cognitive capacities will not be discovered. I provide reasons to think that such coordination is currently lacking in the neurosciences of cognition and indicate where changes in these practices appropriate to the natural kinds ideal would be required if achieving this ideal is indeed the goal. However, I suggest that an evaluation of current practices in these research areas is suggestive that discovering natural kinds of cognitive capacities is not the goal

New Frontiers in Translational Research: Touchscreens, Open Science, and the Mouse Translational Research Accelerator Platform (MouseTRAP)

Many neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases and other brain disorders are accompanied by impairments in high-level cognitive functions including memory, attention, motivation, and decision-making. Despite several decades of extensive research, neuroscience is little closer to discovering new treatments. Key impediments include the absence of validated and robust cognitive assessment tools for facilitating translation from animal models to humans. In this review, we describe a state-of-the-art platform poised to overcome these impediments and improve the success of translational research, the Mouse Translational Research Accelerator Platform (MouseTRAP), which is centered on the touchscreen cognitive testing system for rodents. It integrates touchscreen-based tests of high-level cognitive assessment with state-of-the art neurotechnology to record and manipulate molecular and circuit level activity in vivo in animal models during human-relevant cognitive performance. The platform also is integrated with two Open Science platforms designed to facilitate knowledge and data-sharing practices within the rodent touchscreen community, touchscreencognition and mousebytes. Touchscreencognition includes the Wall, showcasing touchscreen news and publications, the Forum, for community discussion, and Training, which includes courses, videos, SOPs, and symposia. To get started, interested researchers simply create user accounts. We describe the origins of the touchscreen testing system, the novel lines of research it has facilitated, and its increasingly widespread use in translational research, which is attributable in part to knowledge-sharing efforts over the past decade. We then identify the unique features of MouseTRAP that stand to potentially revolutionize translational research, and describe new initiatives to partner with similar platforms such as McGill’s M3 platform

The effect of group counseling on academic achievement and achievement motivation of alternative high school students

This study compared the effectiveness of two structured small-group counseling techniques, Peer Counseling and Achievement Motivation Training, on the school attendance and academic achievement of underachieving alternative high school students. It also investigated whether participation in daily counseling sessions over a six-week period positively effected measures of self-concept, locus of control, and tendency to achieve.;Experimental subjects were 81 high school students in grades nine through twelve in a public open alternative high school. Subjects were students who had passed fewer than 75 percent of their classes during the marking period preceding the study.;Subjects were assigned randomly to one of four treatment groups: Achievement Motivation Training (AMT), Peer Counseling Training (PC), Attention Placebo control, and No-Treatment control. The AMT group participated in a structured training program designed to facilitate behaviors characteristic of high achievers.;The PC group participated in a structured program in human relations training designed to develop communication skills. The Attention Placebo group engaged in unstructured group discussions, while the No-Treatment control group pursued the normal Groups met daily for fifty minutes for six weeks.;Academic grade point averages and percentage of classes attended were calculated pre- and post-treatment for all subjects. The Tennessee Self Concept Scale, Rotter\u27s I-E Scale, and Mehrabian and Bank\u27s Measure of Achieving Tendency were also administered pre- and post-treatment. It was hypothesized that students participating in the AMT group would show greater increase in achievement motivation and movement toward internal locus of control than those participating in the PC group or control groups. It was also hypothesized that students participating in AMT and PC groups would show greater increase in self-esteem, and greater improvement in attendance and achievement than control group subjects.;Data analysis did not support any of the experimental hypotheses. All groups, experimental and control, showed significant improvement in grade point average subsequent to the experimental treatment period.;It was concluded that neither experimental treatment significantly effected the academic achievement, class attendance, achievement motivation, locus of control, or self-concept for this population. Several possible reasons were discussed for the failure to obtain the hypothesized results