Booklets as a Community Based Education Related To Child Development for Kotaanyar Community, Probolinggo

In the context of the availability of literacy sources about early childhood development, the people of Kotaanyar District, Probolinggo Regency are constrained by limited access and understanding. The limited access in this case is the limitation in finding main literacy sources such as books and online literacy content. The limitation of understanding in this case is the difficulty of them (parents of early childhood) to understand content that contains scientific and technical concepts regarding information on children's development. This is due to the low participation rate in taking education in this area. With this problem, researchers conducted research & development of booklets with stimulus content for early childhood growth and development which were made in such a way as to be completed with pictures and by using simple exposures, direct practice, and local language. The content developed is divided according to the stages of developmental age and children's growth, ages 0-12 months, 12-24 months, 24-36 months, 36-48 months, pre-school age 48-60 months. The development of stimulation content is divided based on general information on growth and developmental aspects including aspects of motoric physical development, aspects of cognitive development, aspects of language development, aspects of social emotional development. As a basis for development, we use some references related to children's accumulation strategies from several books, the rest we add stimulus content on the basis of child development problems that were found in a typical and contextual manner in the Kotaanyar District community. Presentation in bilingual form is needed so that it can be understood by the local community, who mostly speak the Madura Pendalungan area (slightly different from the language of the island Madurese / origin Madurese). Therefore, after the content and illustration development stage, the researcher translated the booklet into the Madurese Pendalungan language. This is solely done to facilitate understanding of the local community, and also to facilitate early childhood education coaches / socializers to explain in the local language. Finally, we need to package a booklet with an attractive and illustrated layout to serve as an illustration of the child's stimulation activity.

Signal transfer of visual stimuli to V4 occurs in gamma-rhythmic, pulsed information packages

SummarySelective visual attention allows the brain to focus on behaviorally relevant information while ignoring irrelevant signals. As a possible mechanism, routing by synchronization was proposed: neural populations sending attended signals align their gamma-rhythmic activities with receiving populations, such that spikes from the senders arrive at excitability peaks of the receivers, enhancing signal transfer. Conversely, the non-attended signals arrive unaligned to the receiver’s oscillation, reducing signal transfer. Therefore, visual signals should be transferred through periodically pulsed information packages, resulting in a modulation of the stimulus content within the receiver’s activity by its gamma phase and amplitude. To test this prediction, we quantified gamma phase-specific stimulus content within neural activity from area V4 of macaques performing a visual attention task. For the attended stimulus we find enhanced stimulus content reaching its maximum near excitability peaks, with effect magnitude increasing with oscillation amplitude, establishing a functional link between selective processing and gamma activity.

Depth sensitivity investigation on multi-view glasses-free 3D display

Compared with the 2-view 3D display, the multiview 3D display provides more views to the observers, which allows a stereoscopic perception relatively closer to real viewing condition. Depth sensitivity (DS) on multi-view 3D display has not been investigated with respect to view number and stimulus contents. A lenticular glasses-free 3D display with alternative view numbers (2 views and 28 views) was used as the test platform. Two types of stimulus were implemented for DS investigation, including random dot stereogram (RDS) and contour stereogram (CS). 20 adults (22.8 ±2.1 years old) with normal vision participated in the experiment. Experimental results showed that the DS on 2-view display mode was consistent with that measured with the conventional DS test (t-ratio = 0.2560, P=0.8569). Besides, the DS was significantly better for 28-view display mode, compared with 2- view display mode (t-ratio = 4.326, P<0.0001). For the influence of stimulus type, subjects were able to perceive more precise depth information with the RDS (t-ratio=2.023, P=0.0422), compared with the CS. The proposed investigation indicates that depth perception is closely related to view numbers and stimulus content, the proposed investigation provides essential cues for the choice of view numbers and contents to achieve the desired perception effect.

Mental models use common neural spatial structure for spatial and abstract content

Mental models provide a cognitive framework allowing for spatially organizing information while reasoning about the world. However, transitive reasoning studies often rely on perception of stimuli that contain visible spatial features, allowing the possibility that associated neural representations are specific to inherently spatial content. Here, we test the hypothesis that neural representations of mental models generated through transitive reasoning rely on a frontoparietal network irrespective of the spatial nature of the stimulus content. Content within three models ranges from expressly visuospatial to abstract. All mental models participants generated were based on inferred relationships never directly observed. Here, using multivariate representational similarity analysis, we show that patterns representative of mental models were revealed in both superior parietal lobule and anterior prefrontal cortex and converged across stimulus types. These results support the conclusion that, independent of content, transitive reasoning using mental models relies on neural mechanisms associated with spatial cognition.

Responding to a TOEFL iBT integrated speaking task: Mapping task demands and test takers’ use of stimulus content

Integrated speaking tasks requiring test takers to read and/or listen to stimulus texts and to incorporate their content into oral performances are now used in large-scale, high-stakes tests, including the TOEFL iBT. These tasks require test takers to identify, select, and combine relevant source text information to recognize key relationships between source text ideas, and to organize and transform information. Despite being central to evaluations of validity, relationships between stimulus content, task demands, and the oral discourse produced by test takers are yet to be empirically scrutinized to an adequate degree. In this study, we focus on a TOEFL iBT reading–listening–speaking task, applying discourse analytic measures developed by Frost, Elder and Wigglesworth (2012) to 120 oral performances to examine (a) the integration of source text ideas by test takers across three proficiency levels, and (b) the appropriateness of content-related criteria in the TOEFL integrated speaking rubric. We then combine analyses of these aspects of performances with a qualitative analysis of the generic structure and semantic profiles of stimulus texts to explore relationships between stimulus text properties and oral performances. Findings suggest that the extent to which content-related rating scale criteria distinguish between proficiency levels is contingent on stimulus text properties, with important implications for construct definitions and task design.

Temporal neural mechanisms underlying conscious access to different levels of facial stimulus contents

An important issue facing the empirical study of consciousness concerns how the contents of incoming stimuli gain access to conscious processing. According to classic theories, facial stimuli are processed in a hierarchical manner. However, it remains unclear how the brain determines which level of stimulus content is consciously accessible when facing an incoming facial stimulus. Accordingly, with a magnetoencephalography technique, this study aims to investigate the temporal dynamics of the neural mechanism mediating which level of stimulus content is consciously accessible. Participants were instructed to view masked target faces at threshold so that, according to behavioral responses, their perceptual awareness alternated from consciously accessing facial identity in some trials to being able to consciously access facial configuration features but not facial identity in other trials. Conscious access at these two levels of facial contents were associated with a series of differential neural events. Before target presentation, different patterns of phase angle adjustment were observed between the two types of conscious access. This effect was followed by stronger phase clustering for awareness of facial identity immediately during stimulus presentation. After target onset, conscious access to facial identity, as opposed to facial configural features, was able to elicit more robust late positivity. In conclusion, we suggest that the stages of neural events, ranging from prestimulus to stimulus-related activities, may operate in combination to determine which level of stimulus contents is consciously accessed. Conscious access may thus be better construed as comprising various forms that depend on the level of stimulus contents accessed. NEW & NOTEWORTHY The present study investigates how the brain determines which level of stimulus contents is consciously accessible when facing an incoming facial stimulus. Using magnetoencephalography, we show that prestimulus activities together with stimulus-related activities may operate in combination to determine conscious face detection or identification. This finding is distinct from the previous notion that conscious face detection precedes identification and provides novel insights into the temporal dynamics of different levels of conscious face perception.

Stimulus content shapes cortical response statistics

SummarySpike count correlations (SCCs) are ubiquitous in sensory cortices, are characterized by rich structure and arise from structured internal interactions. Yet, most theories of visual perception focus exclusively on the mean responses of individual neurons. Here, we argue that feedback interactions in primary visual cortex (V1) establish the context in which individual neurons process complex stimuli and that changes in visual context give rise to stimulus-dependent SCCs. Measuring V1 population responses to natural scenes in behaving macaques, we show that the fine structure of SCCs is stimulus-specific and variations in response correlations across-stimuli are independent of variations in response means. Moreover, we demonstrate that stimulus-specificity of SCCs in V1 can be directly manipulated by controlling the high-order structure of synthetic stimuli. We propose that stimulus-specificity of SCCs is a natural consequence of hierarchical inference where inferences on the presence of high-level image features modulate inferences on the presence of low-level features.