Does context shape comprehension: evaluating the influence of presentation on inquiry strategies in science learning

Purpose Approaches to learning have the ability to influence knowledge acquisition, comprehension, retention and even motivation to learn. Previous work indicates that despite age, experience, or prior knowledge, students have a tendency to approach learning differently as a function of the presented content. The purpose of this study is to explore how context influences student approaches to learning science. Design/methodology/approach The authors adopt a question-asking methodology to evaluate if approaches to learning the same science content vary when presented within the context of Pure Science or the History of Science. Findings Results indicate that contextualizing the presentation of science content, shifts the approaches students take in attempting to learn science content as evidenced by the questions they ask to deepen their understanding. Additional variables of prior experience with each scientific concept, task persistence at a distractor task and later recall of the presented concepts were related to different inquiry strategies. Research limitations/implications Implications for instructional design and pedagogy are discussed. Practical implications The framework in which scientific information is presented may impact how students modify existing and create a new schema, impacting their beliefs about scientific knowledge and the way in which students question, hypothesize and engage within the domain of science. Social implications By studying the role of inquiry while students engage in science learning, the authors explore the role of context, content and knowledge retention. Originality/value The current study probes at the nature of student questioning and its reliance on the content, context and its relationship to outcome variables such as learning and, perhaps, even persistence as it relates to students’ prior knowledge within content areas which may, in turn, lead to varying levels of student self-efficacy.

Cognitive load decreases cooperation and moral punishment in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with punishment option

The present study serves to test whether cooperation and moral punishment are affected by cognitive load. Dual-process theories postulate that moral behavior is intuitive which leads to the prediction that cooperation and moral punishment should remain unaffected or may even increase when cognitive load is induced by a secondary task. However, it has also been proposed that cognitive control and deliberation are necessary to choose an economically costly but morally justified option. A third perspective implies that the effects of cognitive load may depend on the specific processes involved in social dilemmas. In the present study, participants played a simultaneous Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a punishment option. First, both players decided to cooperate or defect. Then they had the opportunity to punish the partners. In the cognitive-load group, cognitive load was induced by a continuous tone classification task while the no-load group had no distractor task. Under cognitive load, cooperation and moral punishment decreased in comparison to the no-load condition. By contrast, hypocritical and antisocial punishment were not influenced by the dual-task manipulation. Increased cognitive load was associated with a bias to punish the partners irrespective of the outcome of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, suggesting that punishment was applied less purposefully in the cognitive-load condition. The present findings are thus in line with the idea that the availability of cognitive resources does not always have a suppressive effect on moral behaviors, but can have facilitating effects on cooperation and moral punishment.

Not so terrifying after all? A set of failed replications of the mortality salience effects of Terror Management Theory

Terror Management Theory (TMT) postulates that humans, in response to awareness of their death, developed complex defenses to remove the salience of those thoughts. In a typical paradigm, an individual is presented with either a death-related prime (Mortality Salience; MS) or a control prime, such as writhing the details of their own death, whereas others describe something neutral such as watching television. After a distractor task, participants then complete the dependent variable, rating how much they like or agree with a pro- or anti-national essay. Individuals in the MS condition typically rates the pro-national essay higher and the anti-national essay lower than the control condition. We completed five separate studies across five unique samples with the goal of replicating and extending this well-established finding related to TMT and providing further understanding of the phenomena that underlie the effects of the MS. However, across these studies, we were unable to replicate basic patterns of the dependent variable in the MS conditions despite faithfully using standard procedures. Further, pooling these data into a brief meta-analysis found no support for the MS condition having impacted the dependent variable in the expected direction. We discuss the theoretical implications of these (unintended) failures to replicate and possible methodological refining that should be pursued in future studies.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY REGARDING PAIN PERCEPTION AMONG MALES AND FEMALES OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN PUNJAB, SINDH & BALOCHISTAN

Objective: To compare gender differences on pain perception in Pakistani culture. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Public and private universities of Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Gujrat, Karachi, and Quetta, from Mar to May 2019. Methodology: A scale of religious identity was developed (n=300). Additionally, participants (n=240) were assigned to pain condition and no pain condition (control condition). Pain condition made them aware of headaches, while the control condition made them aware of death. Participants in both conditions were informed to jot down their emotions. They were also pro-vided Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), a distractor task in the form of a story followed by a religious identity scale to compare the difference in percentages of males and females in pain and no pain perception on religious identity. Results: The alpha reliability of the religious identity scale was 0.60 depicting a moderately internally consistent scale. Furthermore, the findings of the present study showed significant gender differences on pain perception. Mean values indicated high score for females (226.39 ± 28.43) than males (216.39 ± 31.73) in pain condition and similar was the case of no pain condition for females (130.81 ± 23.27) and males (133.35 ± 20.06). Whereas, males 33 (63.04%) were high on religious identity as compared to females 35 (56.06%) in pain condition whereas females 34 (50.84%) were high in no pain condition on religious identity as compared to males 22 (37.31%). Conclusion: Findings suggested that significant differences exist between males and females in perceiving pain.

Autobiographical Brand Images Give a Higher Chance to False Memory as Compared to Neutral Images

Consumers’ prior experiences shape an episodic memory which largely influences their decision-making process. This episodic memory is mainly linked to cognitive and emotional perception and we know that a brand image influences our cognitive and emotional perception. Nevertheless, it has not been well described how autobiographical memories of brand images differ from those of other types of images. In this study, we hypothesized that brand pictures have a higher chance to create false memories as compared to neutral ones. We investigated this hypothesis using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm with lists of brand pictures from the local market and associated neutral images from the international affective picture system. Thirty graduate students were exposed to image stimuli followed by a distractor task and a recognition task. After the test of normality, reaction times, and false recognition rates of brands and neutral images were statistically compared using a pairwise t-test. The results showed a significant decrease in reaction times and an increase in false recognition rates of brand pictures as compared to neutral ones. Interestingly, the effect of gender on the creation of false memory by autobiographical brand images was not significant. We hope these findings could pave the way for a better understanding of the false memory mechanism.

Muscarinic M1, but not M4, receptor antagonism impairs divided attention in male rats

Divided attention may be more important than ever to comprehend, given ubiquitous distractors in modern living. In humans, concern has been expressed about the negative impact of distraction in education, the home, and the workplace. While acetylcholine supports divided attention, in part via muscarinic receptors, little is known about the specific muscarinic subtypes that may contribute. We designed a novel, high-response rate test of auditory sustained attention, in which rats complete variable-ratio runs on one of two levers, rather than emitting a single response. By doing this, we can present a secondary visual distractor task during some trials, for which a correct nosepoke response is reinforced with a more palatable food pellet. The nonspecific muscarinic antagonist scopolamine impaired performance, and slowed and reduced lever press activity. We then explored antagonists that preferentially block the M1 and M4 subtypes, because these receptors are potential therapeutic targets for cognitive enhancers. Telenzepine, an M1-preferring antagonist, impaired divided attention performance, but not performance of the attention task without distraction. Telenzepine also had fewer nonspecific effects than scopolamine. In contrast, the M4-preferring antagonist tropicamide had no effects. Analysis of overall behavior also indicated that accuracy in the main attention task decreased as a function of engagement with the distractor task. These results implicate the M1 receptor in divided attention.

Affect and State Mindfulness

Does individuals personality influence how mindful they are? In a pre-registered experiment, we investigated whether previously established relationships between Neuroticism, Behavioral Inhibition, and mindfulness are due to differences in negative affect reactivity. We expected participants high on Neuroticism/Behavioral Inhibition to show greater negative affect reactivity which in turn would reduce their mindful emotion regulation and self-awareness. We examined the change in mindfulness and affect of 331 participants after exposure to a negative affect stimuli and a distractor task. We found that while negative affect predicted lower Non-Judging and Acting with Awareness, negative affect reactivity did not mediate the relationship between Neuroticism/BIS and the mindfulness facets. Importantly, we only found effects of negative affect on mindfulness facets capturing self-awareness and emotion regulation but not general attention. This indicates that negative affect might shift cognitive resources to threat detection reducing resources available for emotional processing. While our proposed mechanism was not supported, our study holds important implications for clinical practice and future research on individual differences in mindfulness.

Autobiographical Brand Images Give a Higher Chance to False Memory as Compared to Neutral Images

Consumers’ prior experiences shape an episodic memory which largely influences their decision-making process. This episodic memory is mainly linked to cognitive and emotional perception and we know that a brand image influences our cognitive and emotional perception. Nevertheless, it has not been well described how autobiographical memories of brand images differ from those of other types of images. In this study, we hypothesized that brand pictures have a higher chance to create false memories as compared to neutral ones. We investigated this hypothesis using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm with lists of brand pictures from the local market and associated neutral images from the international affective picture system. Thirty graduate students were exposed to image stimuli followed by a distractor task and a recognition task. After the test of normality, reaction times, and false recognition rates of brands and neutral images were statistically compared using a pairwise t-test. The results showed a significant decrease in reaction times and an increase in false recognition rates of brand pictures as compared to neutral ones. Interestingly, the effect of gender on the creation of false memory by autobiographical brand images was not significant. We hope these findings could pave the way for a better understanding of the false memory mechanism.

The Ventriloquist Effect is not Consistently Affected by Stimulus Realism

Despite more than 60 years of research, it has remained uncertain if and how realism affects the ventriloquist effect. Here, a sound localization experiment was run using spatially disparate audio-visual stimuli. The visual stimuli were presented using virtual reality, allowing for easy manipulation of the degree of realism of the stimuli. Starting from stimuli commonly used in ventriloquist experiments, i.e., a light flash and noise burst, a new factor was added or changed in each condition to investigate the effect of movement and realism without confounding the effects of an increased temporal correlation of the audio-visual stimuli. First, a distractor task was introduced to ensure that participants fixated their eye gaze during the experiment. Next, movement was added to the visual stimuli while maintaining a similar temporal correlation between the stimuli. Finally, by changing the stimuli from the flash and noise stimuli to the visuals of a bouncing ball that made a matching impact sound, the effect of realism was assessed. No evidence for an effect of realism and movement of the stimuli was found, suggesting that, in simple scenarios, the ventriloquist effect might not be affected by stimulus realism.

The Ventriloquist Effect is not Consistently Affected by Stimulus Realism †

Despite more than 60 years of research, it has remained uncertain if and how realism affects the ventriloquist effect. Here, a sound localization experiment was run using spatially disparate audio-visual stimuli. The visual stimuli were presented using virtual reality, allowing for easy manipulation of the degree of realism of the stimuli. Starting from stimuli commonly used in ventriloquist experiments, i.e., a light flash and noise burst, a new factor was added or changed in each condition to investigate the effect of movement and realism without confounding the effects of an increased temporal correlation of the audio-visual stimuli. First, a distractor task was introduced to ensure that participants fixated their eye gaze during the experiment. Next, movement was added to the visual stimuli while maintaining a similar temporal correlation between the stimuli. Finally, by changing the stimuli from the flash and noise stimuli to the visuals of a bouncing ball that made a matching impact sound, the effect of realism was assessed. No evidence for an effect of realism and movement of the stimuli was found, suggesting that, in simple scenarios, the ventriloquist effect might not be affected by stimulus realism.