scholarly journals Probabilistic tools to gauge 6-month infants' ability to detect contingency

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Dauphin ◽  
J. Kevin O'Regan

Adults are capable of very fine motor skills whereas newborn babies’ motions are less accurately adjusted to the environment. It has been suggested that babies are sensitive to sensorimotor contingencies so they can acquire their body knowhow by gradually linking each body movement to its perceptual consequences. The research we pursued in the team is part of this theoretical framework. We use behavioural measurements to study how babies refine their body knowhow over time.During my internship, we studied arm differentiation in infants of age 6 months. An artificial contingency was established between the movements of one of the babies’ arms and the appearance of visual and auditory stimuli on both of their arms. My goal was to develop analytical tools to assess if babies detect the contingency (i.e. if they realize that they caused the occurrence of the stimuli). I tried to reproduce the probabilistic methodology developed by J. Watson in his experiments with 4month old babies. I could not obtain reliable results and so pursued my investigations. I adapted Watson’s analytical tools to create a binary indicator measuring the success of babies at the individual level. I showed that babies can differentiate between a situation where without doubt they have no control and a situation where they could be the cause of the stimulus. However, because babies who tried to test the contingency behaved similarly in both the test and the control group I can not ascertain that babies from the contingent group understood that they triggered the contingency.

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-34
Author(s):  
Edward C. Warburton

This essay considers metonymy in dance from the perspective of cognitive science. My goal is to unpack the roles of metaphor and metonymy in dance thought and action: how do they arise, how are they understood, how are they to be explained, and in what ways do they determine a person's doing of dance? The premise of this essay is that language matters at the cultural level and can be determinative at the individual level. I contend that some figures of speech, especially metonymic labels like ‘bunhead’, can not only discourage but dehumanize young dancers, treating them not as subjects who dance but as objects to be danced. The use of metonymy to sort young dancers may undermine the development of healthy self-image, impede strong identity formation, and retard creative-artistic development. The paper concludes with a discussion of the influence of metonymy in dance and implications for dance educators.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Elsayed S. Mehrem ◽  
Lamyaa A. Fergany ◽  
Said A. Mohamed ◽  
Hany M. Fares ◽  
Roshdy M. Kamel

Background: Childhood hearing impairment is a major disability associated with delayed motor development. The affected Fine motor performance in children with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) could be due to dynamic balance deficits and visual-motor incoordination. Objective: This study was designed to investigate the effects of fine motor exercises with or without balancing exercises on fine motor skills in children with SNHL. Methods: One hundred and eighty (180) children their age ranged from 8 to 18 years old diagnosed with SNHL were selected. They were divided into three groups, 60 children (control group) practiced only their ordinary activities of daily living, 60 children (fine motor exercises group) practiced fine motor exercises, and 60 children (fine motor and balance exercise) group practiced fine motor and balance exercises. The outcomes were assessed by the Bruininks Oseretsky Test of the motor proficiency second edition scale (BOT-2). Results: Generally, there was a statistically significant difference between control group and fine motor exercises group where (p <  0.05), besides, there was a statistically significant difference between control group and fine motor and balance exercises group where (p <  0.05). But, there was no statistically significant difference between fine motor exercises group and fine motor and balance exercises group where (p >  0.05). Conclusions: The Fine Motor performance of children with SNHL has been improved by Fine motor with or without balancing exercises according to (BOT-2).


Author(s):  
Suryati Romauli

The Child development speed is unique; it varies due to the child’s nature and its stimulants. Lack of stimulants will affect late fine motoric development of children. Data from the Waena Health Center inform, 190 toddlers have impaired fine motor development. This research objective was to determine the effect of mosaic techniques on the enhancement of fine motor skills in children aged 3-4 years in Integrated Health Care Waena area, Jayapura City. A quantitative descriptive research was done with Two Group Pretest-Postest Group Design. The results before the mosaic technique showed in intervention group, had dubious fine motor skills (55.6%) and 16.6% deviant. Whereas in the control group had dubious fine motor skills (83.3%) and 5.6% deviant. After using mosaic technique the intervention group had fine motor skills (77.8%) and small part doubted (22.2%). The average score after improving fine motor skills in the intervention group was 8, while the control group was 7.1 with independent t-test statistical test at a significance value of 95% ( = 0.05) obtained p-value 0.042 or p <α (0.05), thus there is an effect of mosaic techniques on improving fine motor skills of children at the Integrated Health Care Waena area, Jayapura City. Keyword: Mozaik Technique, Fine motor skill, children age 3-4 tahun


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Murat Taş ◽  
Elif Kiyici ◽  
Fatih Kiyici

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of skiing on the biomotoric characteristics of children with evaluating tests of girls between the ages of eight and 14 before and after the season. The experimental group of this study was 15 girls who had just started skiing and the control group of 30 girls. In total, 45 volunteers joined the study. To follow the development of the children in the study, the Bruininks biomotoric-Oseretsky proficiency testing of engines, Second Edition Short Form (BOT 2 brief) test: Fine Motor Precision, Fine Motor Integration, Manual Dexterity, Bilateral Coordination, Balance, Running Speed and Agility, Upper-Limb Coordination, and Strength was used and total scores were measured. All measurements observed changes in the first test by applying the latest testing methods. The Windows SPSS 17.0 statistical package program was used to analyze the data with Independent-Sample t-test to find the differences between the groups. Statistically meaningful levels resulted as p< 0.05 and p< 0.001. No meaningful differences were found in the comparison of the motoric features of the girls who ski and those who do not in their pre-test. A meaningful difference was found in fine motor skills, fine motor accord and total score after ski training. Ski training contributed to the fine motor skills, fine motor accord and total score of the girls.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Moonjoo Kim

In order to understand cultural value orientations of Korean employees, in the study I adopted the concept of dynamic collectivism, defined as the tendency of showing high on both collectivism and individualism at the individual level. I hypothesized that employees with collective dynamism would show organizational commitment and creativity in performance. I tested the hypothesis with 384 employees of Korean firms representing different industries. As predicted, dynamic collectivism increased both organizational commitment and creativity in performance. Beyond this finding, the results indicated that collectivism increased organizational commitment but decreased creativity, and individualism dampened organizational commitment and increased creativity. I concluded that dynamic collectivism is key to understanding organizational dynamics and employees' orientations in Korean firms.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 356
Author(s):  
Tsubasa Kawasaki ◽  
Masashi Kono ◽  
Ryosuke Tozawa

The present study examined whether (a) verbally describing one’s own body movement can be potentially effective for acquiring motor skills, and (b) if the effects are related to motor imagery. The participants in this study were 36 healthy young adults (21.2 ± 0.7 years), randomly assigned into two groups (describing and control). They performed a ball rotation activity, with the describing group being asked by the examiner to verbally describe their own ball rotation, while the control group was asked to read a magazine aloud. The participants’ ball rotation performances were measured before the intervention, then again immediately after, five minutes after, and one day after. In addition, participants’ motor imagery ability (mental chronometry) of their upper extremities was measured. The results showed that the number of successful ball rotations (motor smoothness) and the number of ball drops (motor error) significantly improved in the describing group. Moreover, improvement in motor skills had a significant correlation with motor imagery ability. This suggests that verbally describing an intervention is an effective tool for learning motor skills, and that motor imagery is a potential mechanism for such verbal descriptions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grunden ◽  
Giorgio Piazza ◽  
Carmen García-Sánchez ◽  
Marco Calabria

As studies of bilingual language control (BLC) seek to explore the underpinnings of bilinguals’ abilities to juggle two languages, different types of language switching tasks have been used to uncover switching and mixing effects and thereby reveal what proactive and reactive control mechanisms are involved in language switching. Voluntary language switching tasks, where a bilingual participant can switch freely between their languages while naming, are being utilized more often due to their greater ecological validity compared to cued switching paradigms. Because this type of task had not yet been applied to language switching in bilingual patients, our study sought to explore voluntary switching in bilinguals with aphasia (BWAs) as well as in healthy bilinguals. In Experiment 1, we replicated previously reported results of switch costs and mixing benefits within our own bilingual population of Catalan-Spanish bilinguals. With Experiment 2, we compared both the performances of BWAs as a group and as individuals against control group performance. Results illustrated a complex picture of language control abilities, indicating varying degrees of association and dissociation between factors of BLC. Given the diversity of impairments in BWAs’ language control mechanisms, we highlight the need to examine BLC at the individual level and through the lens of theoretical cognitive control frameworks in order to further parse out how bilinguals regulate their language switching.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-84
Author(s):  
Eeva-Liisa Nyqvist

Abstract There are two primary goals for this study – first, to analyse definiteness and article use in spontaneous writing in Swedish by 15-year-old Finnish immersion students (n = 162) and secondly, to compare their performance with that of non-immersion students at the same age (n = 67). Analyses at the group level show that immersion students usually perform significantly better than the control group, but they also reveal similar problems to what L2-Swedish non-immersion students have demonstrated in previous studies, such as omission of indefinite articles and difficulty in choosing the right definite form of the noun. Still, these inaccuracies occurred less often in the data from the immersion students. The studied constructions also show at the group level an acquisition order similar to that reported in previous studies, explainable by different aspects of complexity and cross-linguistic influence. Analyses on the individual level, however, show different acquisition orders depending on the criteria being used.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Roshdy M. Kamel ◽  
Samir M Mounir ◽  
Mohamed Ahmed Elbedewy ◽  
Mohamed M. Essa ◽  
Lamyaa A. Fergany ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND: Sensorineural hearing loss is the most common type of permanent hearing impairment and results in balance and motor deficits in children which may affect and/or delay all developmental indicators. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the consequences of sensorineural hearing loss regarding fine motor skills in children and adolescents. METHODS: Two hundred children with an age range between 7 to 18 years and diagnosed with sensorineural hearing loss were selected from the Public School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in El-Minia district, Minia governorate, Egypt. The outcome was assessed by the use of Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency Second Edition scale (BOT-2) to measure fine motor skills. RESULTS: There was a statistically significant difference between the scores of Fine Motor Precision and Fine Motor Integration subtests of each study subgroup and its counterpart subgroup in the control group (normative values according to the scale) which has the same age and gender characteristics where p value equals (0.0008 or less, 0.0009 or less) respectively, with a large effect size less than –0.83. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study suggest that children with sensorineural hearing loss have a defect in their fine motor skills when compared to normal children of the same gender and age groups according to Bruininks-Oseretsky scale.


2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 256-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Gehring ◽  
Neil K. Aaronson ◽  
Chad M. Gundy ◽  
Martin J.B. Taphoorn ◽  
Margriet M. Sitskoorn

AbstractThis study investigated the specific patient factors that predict responsiveness to a cognitive rehabilitation program. The program has previously been demonstrated to be successful at the group level in patients with gliomas, but it is unclear which patient characteristics optimized the effect of the intervention at the individual level. Four categories of possible predictors of improvement were selected for evaluation: sociodemographic and clinical variables, self-reported cognitive symptoms, and objective neuropsychological test performance. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses were conducted, beginning with the most accessible (sociodemographic) variables and ending with the most difficult (baseline neuropsychological) to identify in clinical practice. Nearly 60% of the participants of the intervention were classified as reliably improved. Reliable improvement was predicted by age (p = .003) and education (p = .011). Additional results suggested that younger patients were more likely to benefit specifically from the cognitive rehabilitation program (p = .001), and that higher education was also associated with improvement in the control group (p = .024). The findings are discussed in light of brain reserve theory. A practical implication is that cognitive rehabilitation programs should take the patients’ age into account and, if possible, adapt programs to increase the likelihood of improvement among older participants. (JINS, 2011, 17, 256–266)


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