Key pedagogic thinkers: Paulo Freire

This paper emerged out of a Key Thinkers series that the Institute for Research in Education at the University of Bedfordshire introduced during the academic year 2011-12. Paulo Freire was one of the key thinkers discussed. This paper provides an opportunity to develop wider insight into Freire's key educational ideas, and seeks to examine his influence on educational theory and practice

And then came complex project management (revised)

The subject of management is renowned for its addiction to fads and fashions. Project Management is no exception. The issue of interest for this paper is the establishment of standards in the area, specifically the 'College of Complex Project Managers' and their 'competency standard for complex project managers'. Both the college and the standard have generated significant interest in the Project Management community. Whilst the need for development of the means to manage complex projects is acknowledged, a critical evaluation show significant flaws in the definition of complex in this case, the process by which the College and its standard have emerged, and the content of the standard. If Project Management is to continue to develop as a profession, it will need an evidence-based approach to the generation of knowledge and standards. The issues raised by the evaluation provide the case for a portfolio of research that extends the existing bodies of knowledge into large-scale complicated (or major) projects. We propose that it would be owned by the practitioner community, rather than focused on one organization. Research questions are proposed that would commence this stream of activity towards an intelligent synthesis of what is required to manage in both complicated and truly complex environments. This is a revised paper previously presented at the 21st IPMA World Congress on Project Management Cracow, Poland

When awareness gets in the way : reactivation aversion effects resolve the generality/specificity paradox in sensorimotor interference tasks

Interference tasks combining different distractor types usually find that between-trial adaptations (congruency sequence effects [CSEs]) do not interact with each other, suggesting that sensorimotor control is domain-specific. However, within each trial, different distractor types often do interact, suggesting that control is domain-general. The present study presents a solution to this apparent paradox. In 3 experiments, testing 130 participants in total, we (a) confirm the simultaneous presence of between-trial domain-specific (noninteracting) CSEs and within-trial “domain-general” interactions in a fully factorial hybrid prime-Simon design free of repetition or contingency confounds; (b) demonstrate that the within-trial interaction occurs with supraliminal, but not with subliminal primes; and (c) show that it is disproportionately enlarged in older adults. Our findings suggest that whereas interference (priming and Simon) effects and CSEs reflect direct sensorimotor control, the within-trial interaction does not reflect sensorimotor control but “confusion” at higher-level processing stages (reactivation aversion effect [RAE])

An internet study of prospective memory across adulthood

In an Internet study, 73,018 18-79-year-olds were asked to “remember to click the smiley face when it appears”. A smiley face was present/absent at encoding, and participants were told to expect it “at the end of the test”/“later in the test.” In all 4 conditions, it occurred after 20 min of retrospective memory tests. Prospective remembering benefited at all ages from both prior target exposure and temporal uncertainty; moreover, it resembled working memory in its linear decline from young adulthood. The study demonstrates the power of Internet methodology to reveal age-related deficits in a single-trial prospective memory task outside the laboratory

Speech errors across the lifespan

Dell, Burger, and Svec (1997) proposed that the proportion of speech errors classified as anticipations (e.g., " moot and mouth ") can be predicted solely from the overall error rate, such that the greater the error rate, the lower the anticipatory proportion (AP) of errors. We report a study examining whether this effect applies to changes in error rates that occur developmentally and as a result of ageing. Speech errors were elicited from 8- and 11-year-old children, young adults, and older adults. The error rate decreased and the AP increased from children to young adults, but neither error rate nor AP differed significantly between young and older adults. In cases where fast speech resulted in a higher error rate than slow speech, the AP was lower. Thus, there was overall support for Dell et al.'s prediction from speech error data across the lifespan

Habitual prospective memory in schizophrenia

Background Prospective memory (PM), the act of remembering that something has to be done in the future without any explicit prompting to recall, provides a useful framework with which to examine problems in internal-source monitoring. This is because it requires distinguishing between two internally-generated processes, namely the intention to perform an action versus actual performance of the action. In habitual tasks, such as taking medicine every few hours, the same PM task is performed regularly and thus it is essential that the individual is able to distinguish thoughts (i.e., thinking about taking the medicine) from actions (i.e., actually taking the medicine). Methods We assessed habitual PM in patients with schizophrenia by employing a laboratory analogue of a habitual PM task in which, concurrently with maneuvering a ball around an obstacle course (ongoing activity), participants were to turn over a counter once during each trial (PM task). After each trial, participants were asked whether they had remembered to turn the counter over. Results Patients with schizophrenia made a disproportionate number of errors compared to controls of reporting that a PM response had been made (i.e., the counter turned over) after an omission error (i.e., the counter was not turned over). There was no group difference in terms of reporting that an omission error occurred (i.e., forgetting to turn over the counter) when in fact a PM response had been made. Conclusion Patients with schizophrenia displayed a specific deficit distinguishing between two internally-generated sources, attributable to either poor source monitoring or temporal discrimination

The morphosyntax of the German inseparable prefixes in a figure/ground framework

niis study attempts a comprehensive analysis of the German so-called inseparable prefixes be-, ge-. er-, ver-, ent-. The framework Is Talmy's (1978) Figure/Ground distinction, in which a Figure is perceived as located or moving with respect to a frame of reference, the Ground. The pre-syntactic templates of X categories [Figure V [[±LOC] Ground]] and [Agent V Figure [[+LOC] Ground]]derive Das Heu war auf dem Wagen "The hay was on the cart' and Er bid Heu avf den Wagen ‘He loaded hay onto the cart'. The be- prefix and its inverse the ent- prefix are prepositional allomorphs which alternatively realize the feature (+LOC]. Foregrounding of [[+LOC] Ground]] causes the feature [+LOC] to be adjoined to the verb as the prefix be-: Er belud den Wagen mitt Heu 'He be-loaded the cart with hay’. The Figure argument may also be incorporated by substitution into the verb forming a denominal be- or ent-verb (bewaffnen 'be-weapon, arm', entwaffnen 'ent-arm, disarm'. Adjunction of [+LOC] and substitution of the Figure are according to Van Riemsdijk's (1998) Head Adjacency Principle for syntactic head movement A set of verb Classes is established according to whether the Figure and Ground arguments are VP-internal, subjects, or incorporated, thus rendering the traditional notions of 0-roles (Patient, Experiencer, theme. etc.) superfluous. I propose a crucial development of Talmas Figure/Ground distinction, the hidden’ Ground, whereby the Ground is the prior location or state of the Figure, hi tills case the prefixes are allomorphs of the change of state' P that 1 denote as (-*). On simplex verbs this feature means simply 'forth, onward', as in geleiten 'ge-lead, escort', bestehen 'be-stand, continue to exist', verführen 'ver-lead, tempt". The Figure N can substitute into a null V : The template [[ env ] N [ → Film ]] gives Er machte Hamlet zu einem Film He made Hamlet into a film'. The Ground is the prior state of Hamlet (not a film). The same template permits adjunction of (→) and substitution of Film into the null verb slot: [[ver-(_i) Film(_j) –en(_v) ] [ t(_i) t(_j) ]]. Thus. we get Er verfilmte Hamlet He filmed Hamlet'. Deadjectival prefixed verbs are of two types. The prefix er- alternatively realizes (→) with positive degree adjectives ( from not-A → A), ver- alternatively realizes the (→) that is the feature [COMPARATIVE]. Thus, erblassen 'er-pale' (from not-pale to pale) means '(suddenly) become pale', whereas verblassen 'ver-pale' (from pale to more-pale) means (gradually) fade, lose colour". The feature (←) on ent- is the inverse of [→) and denotes 'return to prior state", as in entfalten "ent-fold, unfold", entwaffnen "ent-weapon. disarm'. Connotations such as inchoative, pejorative, concealment that are associated with certain prefixes are accounted for by the underlying change of state template. Key concepts: Figure/Ground, inseparable prefix, incorporation, abstract feature, alternative realization. Locative Alternation. Dative Alternation, diachronic. morphological cases, prepositions

Associations between a one-shot delay discounting measure and age, income, education and real-world impulsive behavior

There has been discussion over the extent to which delay discounting – as prototypically shown by a preference for a smaller-sooner sum of money over a larger-later sum – measures the same kind of impulsive preferences that drive non-financial behavior. To address this issue, a dataset was analyzed containing 42,863 participants’ responses to a single delay-discounting choice, along with self-report behaviors that can be considered as impulsive. Choice of a smaller-sooner sum was associated with several demographics: younger age, lower income, and lower education; and impulsive behaviors: earlier age of first sexual activity and recent relationship infidelity, smoking, and higher body mass index. These findings suggest that at least an aspect of delay discounting preference is associated with a general trait influencing other forms of impulsivity, and therefore that high delay discounting is another form of impulsive behavior