“Write it Down!”—a Learning-Psychology-Based Analysis of the Use of Written Work in Economics Lessons

To date, the use of written work in economics lessons at vocational colleges has been insufficiently researched. Relevant studies on this topic may be found primarily at primary or secondary school level. These studies demonstrate among other things that written work can have great significance for learning, retentiveness, and cognitive development. However, particularly because of the process of digitalization in schools, the amount of written work or writing tasks has dropped. The study at hand will examine the benefit of writing as a teaching method. Using learning-psychology-based findings on the processing of learning incentives by information models, the study focuses on the impact of writing by hand on the retention processes of the learners in economics lessons. To this end, two groups of learners are formed who will learn and repeat the material of a standardized lesson via different methods. One group writes the learned material down; the other group receives a handout containing the material. By means of short-term and long-term written learning outcome tests in the form of multiple choice, we obtain information about the knowledge retention effectiveness of written work in classroom teaching. We show that writing down, as a teaching method, does not lead to better absolute results in the learning outcome tests. However, in the long term, writing down does lead to fewer variances in the results of the learning outcome tests and thus to a more stable anchoring of knowledge in the learners’ longterm memory

The connection between mathematics and physics from the aspect of reasoning based on proportions and errors in the conclusion

Numerous researchers emphasized the connection between mathematics and physics, as well as the pupil's lack of linking knowledge gained within these subjects. In this paper, examples of the connection between mathematics and physics will be examined by the scientific reasoning test and the initial test created for this research. In the research related to the initial knowledge and scientific research, 235 students of the first and second grade of gymnasiums in Novi Sad and Backa Palanka participated. The results of the research have shown that most of the students did not correctly answer questions related to reasoning based on proportions. The obtained result points to the pupil's misunderstanding of the notion of the smallest interval of an instrument, that is, the value of an instrumental error, which is the basis of the correct reading of the experimental results in the teaching of physics. From the point of view of physics, it is important for pupils to point out the mistakes they have made in concluding, in order to correct their claims and the exact information associated with existing ones in longterm memory.

Bio-Inspired Dynamical Tools for Analyzing Cognition

The knowledge about higher brain centres in insects and how they affect the insect’s behaviour has increased significantly in recent years by theoretical and experimental investigations. Nowadays, a large body of evidence suggests that higher brain centres of insects are important for learning, short-term, longterm memory and play an important role for context generalisation (Bazhenof et al., 2001). Related to these subjects, one of the most interesting goals to achieve would be to understand the relationship between sequential memory encoding processes and the higher brain centres in insects in order to develop a general “insect-brain” control architecture to be implemented on simple robots. In this contribution, it is showed a review of the most important and recent results related to spatio-temporal coding and it is suggested the possibility to use continuous recurrent neural networks (CRNNs) (that can be used to model non-linear systems, in particular Lotka-Volterra systems) in order to find out a way to model simple cognitive systems from an abstract viewpoint. After showing the typical and interesting behaviors that emerge in appropriate Lotka- Volterra systems (in particular, winnerless competition processes) next sections deal with a brief discussion about the intelligent systems inspired in studies coming from the biology.

Cognitive dysfunction, brain-derived neurotrophic factor and IL-6 levels in cancer patients with depression

8632 Background: Increased proinflammatory cytokines (IL-6) and decreased brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels have been implicated in the pathophysiology of depression. Depression has been shown to be associated with cognitive dysfunction. The objective of this study was to assess the correlations between cognitive dysfunction, IL-6 and BDNF in cancer patients (pts) with depression. Methods: Depression was assessed in 55 patients with metastatic cancer by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and diagnosis was established according to DSM-IV criteria. Cognitive function was assessed by the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). Plasma concentrations of Interleukin-6 and BDNF were measured at 8 AM the same day. In the statistical analysis the Mann-Whitney test and the Pearson correlation were applied. Results: Pts characteristics (n=55): median age 60 y (25–85); 76.9% Females, 23.1% males. 52% of pts had depression. There were no significant differences in mean age or Karnofsky-index between pts with and without depression. Depression was associated with a significant higher median IL-6 level (14.8 vs. 3.7 pg/ml; p<0,001). For Cognitive function only the longterm memory was significantly reduced in depression (p=0.01). However, there was no difference in BDNF levels between both groups (p=0.164). There were correlations between HADS-D score and IL6 (r=4.11; p=0.002), IL-6 and BDNF (r= −0.42; p=0.001), BDNF and longterm memory (r=0.48; p=0.02). No correlations were found for level of depression (HADS-D score) and BDNF levels (r= −0.20; P=0.14). Conclusions: Depression and increased plasma IL-6 concentrations are strongly associated in pts with cancer. There seems to be no association between BDNF and depression in cancer pts. However there is a positive correlation between the cognitive function, at least for longterm memory, with BDNF. No significant financial relationships to disclose.