Positive Adult Education, Learned Helplessness and the Pygmalion Effect

Positive education is seen as a transformative methodological approach capable of improving the act of teaching and learning and, above all, essential for the development of students’ personal skills and competences. However, few studies have been carried out on this topic in the field of adult and continuing education; instead, they have been published mainly in the field of formal education and at school age. This study works with a sample of 399 people over 16 years of age and students of the Universidad Popular de Dos Hermanas in order to show the relationship between the Pygmalion effect and learned helplessness in the process of acquiring knowledge in adulthood. In this way, three tools were used: one questionnaire that showed the teachers’ perceptions of the students’ qualities and behaviour and two that provided information on self-concept, self-esteem, personal and social skills and other variables directly related to emotional intelligence and positive education. It shows how exposure to negative operational constraints hinders the psychosocial and socio-educational development of learners in all possible ways, while, on the other hand, it indicates the importance of positive education to compensate for this phenomenon by enhancing the development and growth of those who study and participate in non-formal education through positive reinforcement. Likewise, the factorial interrelation of both positive and negative conditioning factors and their incidence on learning is shown; the importance of neutralising the negative components and strengthening the positive reinforcement and the role played by the community and education professionals as catalysts and behavioural modulators at any stage of learning and age group for the achievement of the objectives of the student and of education itself in a broad sense.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for an Adolescent with Anorexia Nervosa

Introduction: The treatment of anorexia nervosa remains a matter of much debate. Though cognitive behavioural therapy would seem to offer good results, there is still no resounding evidence pointing to a single treatment of choice. The case presented in this paper examines the treatment with CBT of a patient presenting anorexia nervosa. Evaluation/diagnosis: An adolescent girl, 17 years of age, voluntarily attends psychological therapy to address eating behaviour problems. After administering the EAT-26, EDI-2, and BSQ standardised screening tests, as well as a clinical interview for assessment, a psychopathological profile is obtained, providing a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, restricting subtype. Therapeutic goals: The therapeutic goals set were to reach a healthy weight for the patient’s age and height (specified as a minimum BMI of 18.5) and change the structure of thoughts, feelings, and behaviour that was justifying and maintaining the disorder. Treatment: Treatment lasted for 33 sessions and used cognitive behavioural techniques, such as cognitive restructuring, response cost, and positive reinforcement, in addition to family intervention techniques. Nutrition therapy was also carried out in parallel to the treatment sessions. Results: Following eight months of weekly sessions, the patient reached the target weight and changed attitudes towards food and body image, replacing them with healthy thoughts and behaviours. Follow-up made one and two years after the end of the treatment saw that these results were maintained. Discussion and conclusions: In this case, CBT proved effective in achieving the patient’s physical and psychological recovery. Therefore, this case contributes to the evidence of the efficacy of this therapeutic approach in certain cases of ED.

Token Economy for Sustainable Education in the Future: A Scoping Review

This research aims to examine the use of a token economy for education sustainability. It presents a recent review and evaluation of the token economy used among young learners and learners with special needs for behavior management and learning engagement in teaching. Online articles from Google Scholar, ERIC, and UKMLibrary were used. The terms used for reviewing the articles were token economy, token systems, positive reinforcement, and rewards. The scoping review protocol was used for this study. A total of 60 relevant articles published from 2000 to 2020 were filtered and grouped into three major themes for review: behavior management, learning engagement, and types of tokens. Findings suggested that although previous research had examined the impact of a token economy on behavior management and learning engagement, there was limited research on the correlation between teaching methods and social fairness. Teachers as the main participants in assessing the effectiveness of a token economy, were also lacking. Additionally, the use of social and physical reinforcers was found to assist in obtaining the desired behaviors and learning engagement from participants, thereby enabling them to sustain learners’ interest in future lessons.

Randomized Control Trials with Schools: Handling Real-World Practicalities and Problems

There is a need for more evidence-based research in education and research involving the use of randomized control trials (RCTs) to examine the efficacy of interventions. However, the difficulty of conducting interventional research in educational settings is often less acknowledged. This article provides practical examples of the issues encountered when implementing a cognitive science informed intervention and the solutions that were successfully implemented. This article will also highlight the importance of designing a multifaceted intervention while considering the cost of the intervention itself, especially when working with hard-to-reach families. It is helpful to make use of existing classroom resources in the intervention to lower costs. Additionally, being consistent and attentive to the developmental stage of the children and supporting parental engagement are two aspects that are crucial to the implementation of the intervention. Researchers would benefit from conducting workshops and public engagement events and can use these opportunities to provide practical strategies about how to support the development of children’s skills in the home environment. In-person interactions are key as parents can ask any questions that they may have, and it can help to dispel any mistrust that they may have with the research process. The article also provides suggestions for building the researcher-practitioner relationship from study onset, including being flexible and accommodating towards the changes in the school context and communicating effectively with teachers. Lastly, the article outlines the benefit of using scaffolding, positive reinforcement, and play-based learning over the course of the intervention to support child outcomes.

Hydrothermal Ageing Effect on Reinforcement Efficiency of Nanofibrillated Cellulose/Biobased Poly(butylene succinate) Composites

Nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) is a sustainable functional nanomaterial known for its high strength, stiffness, and biocompatibility. It has become a key building block for the next-generation of lightweight, advanced materials for applications such as consumer products, biomedical, energy storage, coatings, construction, and automotive. Tunable and predictable durability under environmental impact is required for high performance applications. Bio-based poly (butylene succinate) (PBS) composites containing up to 50% NFC content were designed and aged in distilled water or at high relative humidity (RH98%). PBS/NFC composites are characterized by up to 10-fold increased water absorption capacity and diffusivity and the data are correlated with model calculations. Aged samples exhibited decreased crystallinity and melting temperature. Incorporation of NFC into PBS showed up to a 2.6-fold enhancement of the elastic modulus, although accompanied by a loss of strength by 40% and 8-fold reduction in the strain at failure of maximally loaded composites. Hydrothermal ageing had almost no influence on the tensile characteristics of PBS; however, there were considerable degradation effects in PBS/NFC composites. Altered reinforcement efficiency is manifested through a 3.7-fold decreased effective elastic moduli of NFC determined by applying the Halpin–Tsai model and a proportional reduction of the storage moduli of composites. The adhesion efficiency in composites was reduced by hydrothermal ageing, as measured Puckanszky’s adhesion parameter for the strength, which decreased from 3 to 0.8. For the loss factor, Kubat’s adhesion parameter was increased by an order. PBS filled with 20 wt.% NFC is identified as the most efficient composition, for which negative environmental degradation effects are counterbalanced with the positive reinforcement effect. The PBS matrix can be used to protect the NFC network from water.

EnTraP: A factorial randomised controlled trial embedded within world hip trauma evaluation eight COPAL investigating the effect of an enhanced trainee principal investigator package and digital nudge on recruitment rates

Background Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) often struggle with various aspects of participant recruitment, including engaging clinicians to recruit effectively, and subsequently fail to reach their target sample size. Studies evaluating interventions to improve recruitment aimed specifically at recruiters to the trial are limited in number. The RCTs embedded into the World Hip Trauma Evaluation (WHiTE) cohort study use Trainee Principal Investigators (TPIs) to help manage and drive recruitment at trial sites. No formalised training or support is provided by central trials units to the TPIs. Additionally, trial recruiters receive a generic automated email confirming randomisation to the trial with no other communication to influence or incentivise their behaviour to further recruit. The primary aim of this factorial trial was to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational intervention to TPIs and a positive reinforcement intervention via an email (digital) nudge on increasing recruitment. Secondary aims included feasibility of implementing the interventions and surveying TPIs on the educational package quality of content, delivery and ongoing support. Design This was a multicentre, open, cluster, 2x2 factorial RCT embedded in the WHiTE 8 COPAL RCT, in which research sites were randomised 1:1:1:1 to receive the enhanced TPI package, the digital nudge intervention, both, or neither. Results 1215 patients were recruited to the WHiTE 8 COPAL trial across 20 sites during the SWAT between August 2018 and March 2019. There was a statistically significant interaction between the interventions (IRR 2.09, 95% CI 1.64 to 2.68, p < 0.001). There was a statistically significant benefit on recruitment (IRR 1.23 95% 1.09 to 1.40, p=0.001) from utilizing an enhanced TPI education intervention. The digital nudge intervention had no significant impact on recruitment (IRR 0.89 95% CI 0.79 to 1.01, p=0.07). Within enhanced TPI package sites, the digital nudge had a beneficial effect, while in the standard practice TPI sites it had a detrimental effect. Feasibility analysis showed the median time to site digital nudge and enhanced TPI set up were one day and 17 days, respectively. 353 digital nudges were created taking an average of 12 min to construct, log the activity and then disseminate to recruiters. Median induction time for enhanced TPI was 32 min and 100% of the groups were extremely satisfied with the induction content, delivery and ongoing support. Discussion An education and support programme targeted at surgical TPIs involving a digital education package, 1:1 telephone induction and subsequent support package was effective in increasing recruitment in the first 6 months of trial commencement. There was no evidence for the effectiveness of the digital nudge intervention in isolation, although our results show that when combined with an education programme, it leads to enhanced effectiveness of that programme.

Self-Control at Meals in Order Not to Gain Weight and Its Relationship with Food Cravings in Low-Carb Dieters

Aims: This study’s objective was to verify the level of food cravings and cognitive restraint in women who reported having followed a low-carb diet. Methods: The volunteers filled out the binge eating scale, the cognitive restraint subscale, the food cravings trait and state questionnaires, and the food frequency questionnaire. This study has also compared participants according to the self-reported practice of a low-carb diet. Parametric tests were used to compare the groups and Pearson’s correlations between some variables of interest (p > 0.05 adopted). Results: According to the question regarding the practice of the low-carb diet, 39 participants had tried a low-carb diet in the last six months (46.2% of these with binge eating) and 48 did not (16.7% with binge eating). Dieters showed higher levels of binge eating, cognitive restriction, and food cravings (trait and state). Dieters consumed less rice and bread but did not present lower consumption of sweets. Correlations showed that for dieters who ‘Consciously hold back at meals in order not to gain weight’, it was negatively associated with ‘Intention and plans to eat’, ‘positive reinforcement’ and ‘relieving negative states’ and food cravings scores. Conclusions: Despite the higher levels of cognitive restriction in dieters, they are negatively correlated with food craving factors and negatively associated with the consumption of sweets.

Improving Homeostatic Set-Point through Proper Training Adaptations for Better Sporting Outcome

The concept of homeostasis is based on Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest. In order to survive one has to maintain a stable internal and external environment. For attaining positive change of an individual’s physical, physiological, psychological, and mechanical performance stress is required in a systematic and scientific planned way. Regular upsetting the homeostatic set point, a new set-point is able to create within the body, which can be termed as adaptation. In the case of sports performance, the training load must be adopted by an athlete through the process of super-compensation in order to exhibit better performance in the competitive sports arena. Adaptation is facilitated the positive reinforcement through a negative feedback loop in physical, physiological, and psychological areas of any individual and able to develop the concept of feed-forward mechanism. If adaptation stimuli are applied properly, training can be expected to have accumulative effect. The sporting world depends upon the positive adaptation of training load through improving the sporting performance by elevating the homeostatic set point. Long term training has also positive impact on health sports performance by modifying the qualitative and quantitative physiological component. A physiological adaptation refers to the metabolic or physiologic adjustment within the cell, or tissues, of an organism in response to an environmental stimulus resulting in the improved ability of that organism to cope with its changing environment adaptation. The purpose of the present study is to critically discuss the various aspects of homeostatic regulations and the way to create a new set point of an athlete for better performance through the adaptation process.

The experimental emergence of convention in a non-human primate

Conventions form an essential part of human social and cultural behaviour and may also be important to other animal societies. Yet, despite the wealth of evidence that has accumulated for culture in non-human animals, we know surprisingly little about non-human conventions beyond a few rare examples. We follow the literature in behavioural ecology and evolution and define conventions as systematic behaviours that solve a coordination problem in which two or more individuals need to display complementary behaviour to obtain a mutually beneficial outcome. We start by discussing the literature on conventions in non-human primates from this perspective and conclude that all the ingredients for conventions to emerge are present and therefore that they ought to be more frequently observed. We then probe the emergence of conventions by using a unique novel experimental system in which pairs of Guinea baboons ( Papio papio ) can voluntarily participate together in touchscreen-based cognitive testing and we show that conventions readily emerge in our experimental set-up and that they share three fundamental properties of human conventions (arbitrariness, stability and efficiency). These results question the idea that observational learning, and imitation in particular, is necessary to establish conventions; they suggest that positive reinforcement is enough. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

Impact of Positive Reinforcement Theory on Weightlifter’s Performance

A common problem was observed at local level weightlifting clubs in Lahore, Pakistan i.e., coaches use inappropriate ways (shouting and abusing) to get desired performance results but, it ends in young weightlifter’s resentment and take them away from their sport targets and some choose to quit weightlifting sport as well. The existing literature about acquiring desired results in sports suggests; only positive approach can be useful i.e., Positive Reinforcement Theory ‘PRT’ developed by B F Skinner (Marzieh Gordan, 2014). Hence, in this applied deductive type quantitative study, an eight-week experiment was conducted in Lahore which tested the implications of Positive Reinforcement Theory on young weightlifters’ performance. The objectives of this study were; (a) to apply Positive Reinforcement Theory in weightlifting sport to examine the cause-and-effect relationship between positive reinforcement and young weightlifter’s performance, (b) to test if the study’s Positive Reinforcement Program ‘PRP’ model helps young weightlifters to achieve desired targets within given timeframe or not? At first, pre-competition was administered to record standard performance results of both groups. Secondly, ‘PRP’ Model based on ‘PRT’ was introduced to experimental group and then post-competition testing was conducted to record and compare performance results of both groups. The results of both groups’ Paired Sample t-test and Independent Sample t-test, using statistical package SPSS version 23, showed a significant impact of ‘PRP’ model on the young weightlifter’s performance. Therefore, it is concluded that; acquisition of young weightlifters’ desired performance results. Coaches should use ‘PRP’ model rather than applying inappropriate ways to motivate young weightlifters. The PRP model also helps young weightlifters to achieve their targeted performance results within given timeframe.