The relationship between visually evoked effects and concussion in youth

ABSTRACTIncreased sensitivity to light is common following concussion. Viewing a flickering light can also produce uncomfortable somatic sensations like nausea or headache. Here we examined effects evoked by viewing a patterned, flickering screen in a cohort of 81 uninjured youth athletes and 84 youth with concussion. We used exploratory factor analysis and identified two primary dimensions of variation: the presence or absence of visually evoked effects, and variation in the tendency to manifest effects that localized to the eyes (e.g., eye watering), versus more generalized neurologic symptoms (e.g., headache). Based on these two primary dimensions, we grouped participants into three categories of evoked symptomatology: no effects, eye-predominant effects, and brain-predominant effects. A similar proportion of participants reported eye-predominant effects in the uninjured (33.3%) and concussion (32.1%) groups. By contrast, participants who experienced brain-predominant effects were almost entirely from the concussion group (1.2% of uninjured, 35.7% of concussed). The presence of brain-predominant effects was associated with a higher concussion symptom burden and reduced performance on visio-vestibular tasks. Our findings indicate that the experience of negative constitutional, somatic sensations in response to a dynamic visual stimulus is a salient marker of concussion and is indicative of more severe concussion symptomatology. We speculate that differences in visually evoked effects reflect varying levels of activation of the trigeminal nociceptive system.

Hierarchy in Regime Complexes: Understanding Authority in Antarctic Governance

Many scholars argue that regime complexes are nonhierarchical. However, if that is true, then how does authority function? This article argues that the conceptualization of regime complexes as largely devoid of hierarchy is mistaken. Instead, it offers a new definition of regime complexes: emergent patterns of authority among state and non-state actors, which vary in their degree of hierarchy. Hierarchy in regime complexes looks different from political scientists’ traditional conceptualization. It is systemic, emergent, and positional. I present two dimensions of variation in hierarchy: deference and autonomy. These dimensions provide both a conceptual and an empirical strategy for understanding how authority relations are constituted. Conceptually, they allow us to “see” hierarchy in regime complexes. Empirically, they provide transparent, replicable and variable measures, which have eluded much of the work to date. I use topic modeling coupled with network analysis to detect hierarchy in the regime complex for Antarctica. I demonstrate that the inclusion of non-state actors and their governance activities changes our understanding of the Antarctic regime complex. This approach reveals a hierarchical regime complex, where some non-state actors have considerable authority and are governing issues not regulated by formal rules.

El “residente como docente”: estudio fenomenográfico sobre las experiencias docentes en residentes de Medicina Familiar de una Universidad en Chía, Colombia

Los residentes médicos representan un rol fundamental en el proceso de formación de estudiantes, internos y co-residentes, con labores implícitas de docencia en sus obligaciones como estudiantes de posgrado y sin ningún tipo de formación para ello. Previo a la implementación de programas de “residente como docente”, resulta útil indagar sobre las experiencias docentes en contexto, para así desarrollar programas acordes a las características y necesidades del medio. Este estudio buscó identificar las variaciones en las experiencias docentes de residentes de Medicina Familiar de una Universidad en Colombia. Corresponde a una investigación cualitativa con un enfoque fenomenográfico. Participaron 15 residentes de diferentes años de formación. Se identificaron 5 categorías de descripción relacionadas de manera jerárquica y determinadas a partir de 7 dimensiones de variación. Las formas identificadas de experimentar el rol del “residente como docente” son el transmisor pasivo impuesto, el facilitador del conocimiento, el facilitador de la práctica clínica, el role model y el “lifelong learner”. Las variaciones en las experiencias del “residente como docente”, estuvieron determinadas por la interacción de factores personales y contextuales. Se identificó que las categorías de descripción se encuentran interconectadas, con el potencial de avanzar hacia la siguiente categoría. Lo anterior puede ser utilizado como sustrato para el desarrollo de un programa de “residente como docente” orientado a potenciar la transformación hacia las categorías de descripción en los niveles de mayor comprensión del rol, situación deseable en el contexto latinoamericano donde los residentes tienen diversas responsabilidades docentes. medical residents represent a fundamental role in the training process of students, interns and peer-residents, with implicit teaching obligations as postgraduate students and without any type of training for it. Prior to the implementation of a “resident as teacher” program, it is useful to inquire about teaching experiences in context, in order to develop programs according to the characteristics and needs of the environment. This study sought to identify the variations in the teaching experiences in Family Medicine residents in a Colombian University. This is a qualitative research with a phenomenographic approach. Fifteen residents from different years of training responded a semi-structures interview. We identified 5 categories of description related in a hierarchical way by 7 dimensions of variation. The ways of experiencing the “resident as teacher” role are the imposed passive transmitter, the facilitator of knowledge, the facilitator of clinical practice, the role model and the “lifelong learner”. Variations in experiences of "resident as teacher" are determined by the interaction of personal and contextual factors. It is necessary to emphasize that the description categories are interconnected, with the potential to advance to the next category. The above can be used as a platform for the development of a "resident as teacher" program aimed to promote functional academic transformations towards the description categories with deeper understanding of the teacher role, a desirable situation in the Latin American context where residents have diverse teaching responsabilities.

A multilingual corpus study of the competition between past and perfect in narrative discourse

The western European present perfect is subject to substantial crosslinguistic variation. The literature, however, focuses on individual languages or on comparisons of a restricted number of languages. We piece together the puzzle and do so in a data-driven way by comparing the use of the present perfect through a parallel corpus based on the French novel L’Étranger and its translations in Italian, German, Dutch, European Spanish, British English, and Modern Greek. We introduce and showcase Translation Mining, a software suite combining a parallel corpus database with annotation and analysis tools. Translation Mining allows us to generate descriptive statistics of tense use across languages but also to visualize variation through its multidimensional scaling component and to link the variation we find to the underlying data through its integrated setup. We confirm that the present perfect competes with the past and we reveal the fine-grained scalar nature of the variation. To complete the puzzle, we ascertain the dimensions of variation, ranging from lexical and compositional semantics to dynamic semantics and pragmatics.1

Curiosity-driven exploration: Diversity of mechanisms and functions

Intrinsically motivated information-seeking, also called curiosity-driven exploration, is widely believed to be a key ingredient for autonomous learning in the real world. Such forms of spontaneous exploration have been studied in multiple independent lines of computational research, producing a diverse range of algorithmic models that capture different aspects of these processes. These algorithms resolve some of the limitations of neurocognitive theories by formally describing computational functions and algorithmic implementations of intrinsically motivated learning. Moreover, they reveal a high diversity of effective forms of intrinsically motivated information-seeking that can be characterized along different mechanistic and functional dimensions. This chapter aims at reviewing different classes of algorithms and highlighting several important dimensions of variation among them. Identifying these dimensions provides means for structuring a comprehensive taxonomy of approaches. We believe this exercise to be useful in working towards a general computational account of information-seeking. Such an account should facilitate the proposition of new hypotheses about information-seeking in humans and complement the existing psychological theory of curiosity.

Teacher Unions, Political Machines, and the Thorny Politics of Education Reform in Latin America

Existing research on developing countries emphasizes the decisive power of teacher unions in education politics. Yet that power varies, and a full understanding of the roots of union power and the sources of cross-national variation requires deeper analysis of organizational dynamics within unions. This analysis supports four arguments. First, teachers have a range of advantages in overcoming obstacles to collective action. Second, unions are not all alike; they vary widely, from interest groups (in Chile, Brazil, and Peru) to powerful political machines (in Mexico and Ecuador). Third, the source of this variation lies in factors (e.g., influence over teacher hiring) that shift power within unions from members to leaders in political-machine unions. Fourth, analyzing the dimensions of variation helps explain the different outcomes of recent reforms to teacher careers in Latin America, especially in highlighting the staunch opposition from political-machine unions.

Realizations of oppositional speech acts in English: a contrastive analysis of discourse in L1 and L2 settings

This paper presents the results of a study seeking insights into how speakers express oppositional stance in an online genre (businesses’ responses to negative customer reviews on TripAdvisor). The research is contrastive, exploring the differences between the practices of speakers in two types of setting – L1 English-speaking countries and countries where English is L2 – when performing oppositional speech acts (e.g. disagreement, criticism of the review/reviewer, etc.). Although there exists a large body of work concerned with contrastive differences in speech act realizations, oppositional speech acts remain under-researched – especially in contexts of non-politeness or impoliteness. This paper presents the results of a mixed-method qualitative/quantitative analysis revealing substantial differences along two principal dimensions of variation: the (in)directness with which opposition is expressed, and the downgrading (mitigation) or upgrading (aggravation) of oppositional speech acts. Some of these differences can be traced to well-known tendencies related to L1 versus L2 language use, while others represent new empirical findings that open up potential avenues for future research.

Intraindividual Variability in Narrative Identity: Complexities, Garden Paths, and Untapped Research Potential

This paper introduces key concepts for studying intraindividual variability in narratives (narrative IIV). Narrative IIV is conceptualized in terms of sources of within–person variation (events and audiences) and dimensions of variation (structural and motivational/affective dimensions of narratives). Possible implications of narrative IIV for well–being and self and social development are outlined. Considering narrative IIV leads to complexity in both theory and method, raising the issue of whether some avenues might be more productive than others. Using previously collected data, we sought to evaluate the research potential of different indices of narrative IIV ( n = 106 participants; n = 1272 narratives). All analyses were preregistered: doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/SXV4W . Findings show that narrative IIV is distinct depending on source and dimension, replicating previous work. However, narrative IIV was largely unrelated to the measures of well–being and self and social development used in the present study. These findings support the practice of aggregating across narratives in existing research, at least for these outcomes and sources of variation, and provide important guidance for investigators who remain interested in the possible insights that narrative IIV may reveal about the person. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology

Exploring Finnish Guidance Counselors’ Conceptions of Career Management Skills

This article reports the findings from a phenomenographic investigation into guidance counselors’ conceptions of career management skills (CMS). The results show that CMS was conceived as (a) information-based knowledge, (b) personal skills development, (c) interpersonal skills development, and (d) autonomous application of skills. The differences appeared along six dimensions of variation that included awareness of CMS, emphasis, promotion of CMS, teaching practice, assessment, and attitude. The findings give us a more profound understanding of critical aspects that may have an important role in the development of individual’s CMS.