From improvisation to learning: how naturalness and systematicity shape language evolution

Silent gesture studies, in which hearing participants from different linguistic backgrounds produce gestures to communicate events, have been used to test hypotheses about the cognitive biases that govern cross-linguistic word order preferences. In particular, the differential use of SOV and SVO order to communicate, respectively, extensional events (where the direct object exists independently of the event; e.g., girl throws ball) and intensional events (where the meaning of the direct object is potentially dependent on the verb; e.g., girl thinks of ball), has been suggested to represent a natural preference, demonstrated in improvisation contexts. However, natural languages tend to prefer systematic word orders, where a single order is used regardless of the event being communicated. We present a series of studies that investigate ordering preferences for SOV and SVO orders using an online forced-choice experiment, where participants select orders for different events i) in the absence of conventions and ii) after learning event-order mappings in different frequencies in a regularisation experiment. Our results show that natural ordering preferences arise in the absence of conventions, replicating previous findings from production experiments. In addition, we show that participants regularise the input they learn in the manual modality in two ways, such that, while the preference for systematic order patterns increases through learning, it exists in competition with the natural ordering preference, that conditions order on the semantics of the event. Using our experimental data in a computational model of cultural transmission, we show that this pattern is expected to persist over generations, suggesting that we should expect to see evidence of semantically-conditioned word order variability in at least some languages.

Improving Newborn Resuscitation by Making Every Birth a Learning Event

One third of all neonatal deaths are caused by intrapartum-related events, resulting in neonatal respiratory depression (i.e., failure to breathe at birth). Evidence-based resuscitation with stimulation, airway clearance, and positive pressure ventilation reduces mortality from respiratory depression. Improving adherence to evidence-based resuscitation is vital to preventing neonatal deaths caused by respiratory depression. Standard resuscitation training programs, combined with frequent simulation practice, have not reached their life-saving potential due to ongoing gaps in bedside performance. Complex neonatal resuscitations, such as those involving positive pressure ventilation, are relatively uncommon for any given resuscitation provider, making consistent clinical practice an unrealistic solution for improving performance. This review discusses strategies to allow every birth to act as a learning event within the context of both high- and low-resource settings. We review strategies that involve clinical-decision support during newborn resuscitation, including the visual display of a resuscitation algorithm, peer-to-peer support, expert coaching, and automated guidance. We also review strategies that involve post-event reflection after newborn resuscitation, including delivery room checklists, audits, and debriefing. Strategies that make every birth a learning event have the potential to close performance gaps in newborn resuscitation that remain after training and frequent simulation practice, and they should be prioritized for further development and evaluation.

Integration of an extended, immersive, gamified pharmacy simulation as a capstone event

Introduction: A gamified simulation was integrated as a capstone event for a new Australian undergraduate pharmacy programme. It aimed to consolidate previous learning and deliver an authentic activity aligned with self-determination theory to develop students’ professional identity and enhance their competence, confidence, and collaborative skills. Description: A full-environment immersive simulation was constructed in which teams of final-year pharmacy students competitively managed their own virtual pharmacies over an extended period. Gamification of the simulation aimed to enhance student motivation and engagement while recognising the consequences of clinical and professional decision-making. Evaluation: Four years of gamified simulation encouraged outstanding student attendance and engagement. The quantitative evaluation revealed high student satisfaction (mean 4.7 out of 5) of the host courses, while the qualitative evaluation revealed that intended outcomes were met through the delivery of authentic, consolidated learning and enhancement of student confidence and professional identity. Conclusion: An extended, gamified simulation may provide a transformative learning event.

Prior episodic learning and the efficacy of retrieval practice

In three experiments we investigated how the level of study-based, episodic knowledge influences the efficacy of subsequent retrieval practice (testing) as a learning event. Possibilities are that the efficacy of a test, relative to a restudy control, decreases, increases, or is independent of the degree of prior study-based learning. The degree of study-based learning was manipulated by varying the number of item repetitions in the initial study phase between one and eight. Predictions of the dual-memory model of test-enhanced learning for the case of one study-phase repetition were used as a reference. Results support the hypothesis that the advantage of testing over restudy is independent of the degree of prior episodic learning, and they suggest that educators can apply cued-recall testing with the expectation that its efficacy is similar across varying levels of prior content learning. Implications for testing effect theory are discussed.

Placing Camelot: Cultivating leadership and learning in the Kennedy presidency

The concept of ‘place’ can play a powerful role in understanding how leadership is socially constructed. This article explores the geographic, symbolic and mythic uses of place in the cultivation of a distinct leadership style around the Presidency of John F. Kennedy. It focuses on the history of a social and learning event that today might be called a leadership development programme: the ‘Hickory Hill Seminars’ of 1961-4, named after and mostly held at the specific location of Robert F. Kennedy’s home. These seminars – only lightly touched on in Kennedy-era history and leadership literatures – were semi-formal occasions organized by the historian Arthur Schlesinger that brought eminent public intellectuals of the day to present their work to the assembled group of insiders. The seminars functioned as a network in action, both cultivating and projecting certain cultural formations of leadership. Bounded by the geographic places inhabited by Washington elites, the seminars formed part of the broader construction of the symbolic place of the ‘New Frontier’ and the mythic place of ‘Camelot’. The Hickory Hill seminars were one part of a broad metaphysical canvas upon which a distinct presidential leadership style and ‘legacy’ was created. Building on critical and social constructivist perspectives, we argue that geographic, symbolic and mythic notions of place can be central to the social construction of particular leadership styles and legacies, but that these creations can be deceptive, and remain always vulnerable to critique, co-optation and distortion by opponents and rivals.

Moment-by-moment tracking of naturalistic learning and its underlying hippocampo-cortical interactions

Humans form lasting memories of stimuli that were only encountered once. This naturally occurs when listening to a story, however it remains unclear how and when memories are stored and retrieved during story-listening. Here, we first confirm in behavioral experiments that participants can learn about the structure of a story after a single exposure and are able to recall upcoming words when the story is presented again. We then track mnemonic information in high frequency activity (70–200 Hz) as patients undergoing electrocorticographic recordings listen twice to the same story. We demonstrate predictive recall of upcoming information through neural responses in auditory processing regions. This neural measure correlates with behavioral measures of event segmentation and learning. Event boundaries are linked to information flow from cortex to hippocampus. When listening for a second time, information flow from hippocampus to cortex precedes moments of predictive recall. These results provide insight on a fine-grained temporal scale into how episodic memory encoding and retrieval work under naturalistic conditions.

K4D’s Work on the Indirect Impacts of COVID-19 in Low- and Middle- Income Countries

This report is not an in-depth nor exhaustive analysis of the many indirect impacts of the pandemic on LMICs. The content is purely based on the requests from FCDO to the K4D services on this topic, and as such can only give an illustrative overview of the findings from these requests. Furthermore, insights are also taken from the data that K4D collects for each request based on the information provided by advisers and FCDO (e.g. purpose of the request, adviser’s cadre), hence, the data is limited to the information available to the K4D team at the time of the request and the level of details available may vary from one request to the other. The selection of relevant K4D outputs on the pandemic’s indirect impacts was based on an extensive search in the K4D repository on titles and research questions. The Annex shows all K4D outputs included in this report. The purpose of this report is to inform FCDO about some of the specifics of their requests on the indirect impacts of COVID-19, in general. This report will also be used as input for a K4D-FCDO learning event that takes place on the 6th of July 2021. During the event learning and evidence, trends will be discussed and how evidence and learning informed decision-making on policy and programming.