An online disconnect : a case study of the effect of social media on a metropolitan newsroom's organizational culture

July 2013.A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri--Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts.Thesis supervisor: Dr. Earnest Perry.This research explores the role of social media use in a traditional newsroom by examining how reporters and editors use social media tools, particularly Twitter and Facebook, in their day-to-day work activities. It uses the theoretical framework of organizational culture to understand how social media is used in story generation, source development, and promotion of news stories. The researcher used a case study consisting of nearly four weeks of newsroom observations, nineteen interviews, and the analysis of more than 400 tweets from The Metropolitan Post, a newspaper in the American Midwest, to understand how the newsroom's culture was changing as a result of social media use. The research identified that the culture of this particular newsroom was not changing due to lack of leadership, communication, and a clear understanding of how to use social media.Includes bibliographical references (pages 81-83)

An evaluation of potential locations for AROD ground stations

Airborne Range and Orbit Determination tracking stations potential locations evaluation and accuracy during early minutes of fligh

Spatial navigation from same and different directions: The role of executive functions, memory and attention in adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

To resolve some of the inconsistencies in existing research into spatial navigation in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), we tested two large age- and ability-matched groups of ASD and typically developing (TD) participants for their spatial navigation abilities in a route learning task, which has been shown to shed light on the strategies participants employ when navigating complex environments. Participants studied a route through a virtual maze by watching a short video of a first-person perspective navigating a maze. The maze included four four-way intersections that were each marked with two unique landmarks in two corners of the intersection. At test, static images of the intersections, either as seen during the video or as approached from a different direction, were presented and participants had to indicate in which direction they would need to travel (straight, left or right) in order to follow the originally studied route. On both types of test trials, the ASD group performed worse and their difficulties were related to reduced cognitive flexibility. Eye-movement data and followup item-memory tests suggested that navigation difficulties may have been related to differences in attention during encoding and less spontaneous use of landmarks as cues for navigation. Spatial navigation performance was best predicted by memory for landmarks as well as by executive functions. The results are discussed in relation to theories of underlying navigation-related brain regions. More research is needed to disentangle the influence of executive functions, memory and attention on spatial navigation

Location, Location, Location: Alterations in the Functional Topography of Face- but not Object- or Place-Related Cortex in Adolescents with Autism

In autism, impairments in face processing are a relatively recent discovery, but have quickly become a widely accepted aspect of the behavioral profile. Only a handful of studies have investigated potential atypicalities in autism in the development of the neural substrates mediating face processing. High-functioning individuals with autism (HFA) and matched typically developing (TD) controls watched dynamic movie vignettes of faces, common objects, buildings, and scenes of navigation while undergoing an fMRI scan. With these data, we mapped the functional topography of category-selective activation for faces bilaterally in the fusiform gyrus, occipital face area, and posterior superior temporal sulcus. Additionally, we mapped category-selective activation for objects in the lateral occipital area and for places in the parahippocampal place area in the two groups. Our findings do not indicate a generalized disruption in the development of the entire ventral visual pathway in autism. Instead, our results suggest that the functional topography of face-related cortex is selectively disrupted in autism and that this alteration is present in early adolescence. Furthermore, for those HFA adolescents who do exhibit face-selective activation, this activation tends to be located in traditionally object-related regions, which supports the hypothesis that perceptual processing of faces in autism may be more akin to the perceptual processing of common objects in TD individuals

Absence of spontaneous action anticipation by false belief attribution in children with autism spectrum disorder

Recently, a series of studies demonstrated false belief understanding in young children through completely nonverbal measures. These studies have revealed that children younger than 3 years of age, who consistently fail the standard verbal false belief test, can anticipate others' actions based on their attributed false beliefs. The current study examined whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who are known to have difficulties in the verbal false belief test, may also show such action anticipation in a nonverbal false belief test. We presented video stimuli of an actor watching an object being hidden in a box. The object was then displaced while the actor was looking away. We recorded children's eye movements and coded whether they spontaneously anticipated the actor's subsequent behavior, which could only have been predicted if they had attributed a false belief to her. Although typically developing children correctly anticipated the action, children with ASD failed to show such action anticipation. The results suggest that children with ASD have an impairment in false belief attribution, which is independent of their verbal ability

Deficits in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders When Processing Multiple Objects in Dynamic Scenes

People with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) process visual information in a manner that is distinct from typically developing individuals. They may be less sensitive to people\u27s goals and, more generally, focus on visual details instead of the entire scene. To examine these differences, people with and without ASD were asked to detect changes in dynamic scenes with multiple elements. Participants viewed a brief video of a person or an inanimate object (the figure ) moving from one object to another; after a delay, they reported whether a second video was the same or different. Possible changes included the figure, the object the figure was moving from, or the object the figure was moving toward (the goal ). We hypothesized that individuals with ASD would be less sensitive to changes in scenes with people, particularly elements that might be the person\u27s goal. Alternately, people with ASD might attend to fewer elements regardless of whether the scene included a person. Our results indicate that, like controls, people with ASD noticed a change in the goal object at the end of a person\u27s movement more often than the object at the start. However, the group with ASD did not undergo the developmental improvement that was evident typically when detecting changes in both the start and end objects. This atypical development led to deficits in adults with ASD that were not specific to scenes with people or to goals. Improvements in visual processing that underlie mature representation of scenes may not occur in ASD, suggesting that late developing brain processes are affected

Determination of trajectory parameters relative to various AROD ground stations

Trajectory parameter determination in relation to various AROD airborne range and orbital determination ground station

Different Verbal Learning Strategies in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test

The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, which requires the free recall of the same list of 15 items over 5 trials, was administered to a group of highfunctioning adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder (PDD) and a group of matched typical individuals. Overall levels of free recall were comparable in the two groups, as were the rates of learning over trials. Both groups also subjectively organised their recall to a similar extent. However, the serial position curve of the PDD participants, although similar to that of the comparison group on the first trial, became flatter on subsequent trials and was characterised by a slower growth in the primacy effect. Growth in the middle and recency portions of the curve was comparable in both groups. The findings are discussed in the light of current models of serial position effects and their implications for memory in ASD

Is He Being Bad? Social and Language Brain Networks during Social Judgment in Children with Autism

Individuals with autism often violate social rules and have lower accuracy in identifying and explaining inappropriate social behavior. Twelve children with autism (AD) and thirteen children with typical development (TD) participated in this fMRI study of the neurofunctional basis of social judgment. Participants indicated in which of two pictures a boy was being bad (Social condition) or which of two pictures was outdoors (Physical condition). In the within-group Social-Physical comparison, TD children used components of mentalizing and language networks [bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), bilateral medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and bilateral posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS)], whereas AD children used a network that was primarily right IFG and bilateral pSTS, suggesting reduced use of social and language networks during this social judgment task. A direct group comparison on the Social-Physical contrast showed that the TD group had greater mPFC, bilateral IFG, and left superior temporal pole activity than the AD group. No regions were more active in the AD group than in the group with TD in this comparison. Both groups successfully performed the task, which required minimal language. The groups also performed similarly on eyetracking measures, indicating that the activation results probably reflect the use of a more basic strategy by the autism group rather than performance disparities. Even though language was unnecessary, the children with TD recruited language areas during the social task, suggesting automatic encoding of their knowledge into language; however, this was not the case for the children with autism. These findings support behavioral research indicating that, whereas children with autism may recognize socially inappropriate behavior, they have difficulty using spoken language to explain why it is inappropriate. The fMRI results indicate that AD children may not automatically use language to encode their social understanding, making expression and generalization of this knowledge more difficult. © 2012 Carter et al