Search results

Performance feedback about whether responses are correct or incorrect provides valuable information to help guide learning. Although feedback itself has no extrinsic value, it can produce subjective feelings similar to “rewards” and “punishments.” Therefore, feedback can play both an informative and a motivational role. Over the past decade, researchers have identified a neural circuit that processes reward value and promotes reinforcement learning, involving target regions of dopaminergic input (e.g., striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Importantly, this circuit is engaged by performance feedback even in the absence of reward. Recent research suggests that feedback-related brain activity can be modulated by motivational context, such as whether feedback reflects goal achievement, whether learners are oriented toward the informative versus evaluative aspect of feedback, and whether individual learners are motivated to perform well relative to their peers. This body of research suggests that the brain responds flexibly to feedback, based on the learner’s goals.

The core goal of the “micro-foundational” agenda appears to be less an institutionalism founded in the micro, or reduced to the micro, and more some form of integrative institutionalism: that is, an institutionalism that does justice to the perpetual, co-constitutive interplay of local activities (the micro) and trans-local patterns (the macro). In this chapter, thus, the authors argue for a conscious, explicit embrace of integrative institutionalism; and of the broader agenda that this terminology opens up. Based on this overdue rewording the authors highlight additional problems and possibilities – providing a constructive reformulation and elaboration of the “micro-foundational” agenda as it currently stands.

In this chapter, we consider collaborative models of engaged research in comparison to models of team science that include persons with lived experience of the topic area as team members. ‘Co-led’, ‘co-design’ and ‘co-research’ are all terms used in the literature with distinct, but not precise, definitions and approaches. These collaborative models tend to describe methods that allow those with lived experience to be treated differently than other academic members of the research team. Power imbalances between those with lived experiences and researchers persist in such models, in spite of researcher efforts. For example, persons with lived experience are often described as being compensated with gift cards which may be welcomed but can be perceived as diminishing their role and contribution. In contrast, participatory team science involves persons with lived experience as full members of the research team. In the model that we propose, power is balanced through mutual planning and consensus-based decision-making. We contend that using participatory team science advances research through egalitarian consideration of team members' perspectives of the research problem and the designs necessary to knowledge development.

Engagement, motivation, and persistence are usually associated with positive outcomes. However, too much of it can overtax our psychophysiological system and put it at risk. On the basis of a neuro-dynamic personality and self-regulation model, we explain the neurobehavioral mechanisms presumably underlying engagement and how engagement, when overtaxing the individual, becomes automatically inhibited for reasons of protection. We explain how different intensities and patterns of engagement may relate to personality traits such as Self-directedness, Conscientiousness, Drive for Reward, and Absorption, which we conceive of as functions or strategies of adaptive neurobehavioral systems. We describe how protective inhibitions and personality traits contribute to phenomena such as disengagement and increased effort-sense in chronic fatigue conditions, which often affect professions involving high socio-emotional interactions. By doing so we adduce evidence on hemispheric asymmetry of motivation, neuromodulation by dopamine, self-determination, task engagement, and physiological disengagement. Not least, we discuss educational implications of our model.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the following questions. First, what are the experiences of family caregivers in caring for community-dwelling stroke survivors? Second, what services help or do not help the caregivers in managing their caregiving role?

A qualitative study was conducted with a total of six focus group interviews with 29 stroke caregivers selected using convenience sampling in a local community centre. All interviews were recorded and transcribed for content analysis.

The results pointed to three main themes working together to facilitate desirable outcomes in caregiving and prevent elder abuse: factors contributing to caregiver stress and factors that have a buffering effect on caregiver stress and unmet needs identified from caregivers’ experiences.

The authors found that there were a number of factors contributing to caregiver stress. The findings matched with the concept that caregiver stress should not be considered as the primary cause of elder abuse. Findings provided information for further research to investigate positive coping and adjustment for stroke survivors, caregivers and their families.

Policy makers and service providers may consider specific policies and tailor-made services to enhance the effectiveness of current practice. The themes emerging from the study could be further reviewed in a longitudinal way to explore the cost-effectiveness, the outcomes and trajectory of interventional programmes.

Education would be essential to let the public understand caregivers’ difficulties and needs. Prevention of elder abuse may be approached with a range of risk factors for both perpetrating and being elder abuse victim.

From the findings of the study, the authors found that there were service gaps within policy and interventions. Concrete suggestions for improving the public's attitude and public facilities/transport for the disabled were captured in the study. In addition to personal resilience, caregivers had a strong wish for a supportive environment and services that would facilitate a better caregiving outcome.

Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food, stated in the House of Lords, on March 11th, that “to reduce the tonnage used for the transport of wheat” the Government had decided to increase to 85 per cent. the ratio of flour from the wheat milled in this country; and that it will be illegal to sell, except under licence, any “white” bread from April 6th. In the discussion that followed, Lord Horder stated that he and his medical colleagues were satisfied that no other step concerning the nation's food was so calculated to raise the level of the nation's nutrition. He added that there was no evidence that 85 per cent. extraction flour is indigestible; and that where bread of any kind is permissible in diseases of the digestive system, it may be given with impunity. Moreover, Sir Ernest Graham Little, M.D., has rendered a great service to the public by his oft‐repeated and strong advocacy, in the House of Commons, of better bread than that which constitutes the “white loaf.” The unanimous verdict of those who are best qualified to express an opinion supports the conclusion that adequate nutrition is the prime requirement for the physical well‐being of mankind. Neglect this and all other hygienic props fail to support us. It is deplorable, therefore, that so little has been done hitherto in the sphere of national welfare to support the findings of science in favour of the more adequate loaf which has been so powerfully advocated for years. It is no exaggeration to state that the “white loaf” has been a real impediment to an improvement in the hygienic development of the growing child; as the “national loaf” (which will be superior to the “standard bread” of the last war) will not only reduce the tonnage for the transport of wheat, but will also greatly benefit the children, more especially those of the poorer section of the community with whom bread is the main food. Although from a standpoint of nutrition the “National” loaf falls short of the desirable “Wholemeal” loaf, it certainly represents a valuable step in the right direction. As the much impoverished wheat of the “white loaf” is a matter for considerable national concern, it is an anomaly that it should be permitted, seeing that similar impoverishments of natural foodstuffs have for long been punishable by law. For instance, prosecutions and fines for the watering of milk occupy pages of most issues of The British Food Journal. Why, then, should the serious reduction of the valuable mineral matter and vitamins of the wheat used for the wheaten loaf be suffered to continue? The general public do not readily accept guidance upon what they should eat, and it is unlikely that they will have displayed a concerted predilection for the “national loaf” by the time the war ends. But by then much will have been gained by the reduction of prejudice and the increased accommodation which even short phases of custom can confer. Therefore the war‐time expedient of a “national loaf” may very usefully contribute to the perpetuity of its advantages. If we are wise, propaganda to this end will be maintained meanwhile, and be made to develop in power and authority during the early clays of peace. If the Government and the Local Health Authorities are in default in impressing, and (if need be) imposing such a major interest to the nation, the passing of the “white loaf” will soon be followed by its return. Especially is it to be hoped that the Ministry of Health will then give greater support to the advocacy of a better loaf than hitherto. The British Food Journal has often given expression to the public need for an improved loaf, and if this is destined to become an accomplished fact it will partake of the nature of a crowning event to our modest efforts.

It is contended that knowledge management is directed towards finding out how and why information users think, what they know about what they know, the knowledge and attitudes they have and the decisions they make when they interact with others. At the heart lies the mutation of information into knowledge, a process best understood through seeing, knowing and information retrieval as features common to cognitive psychology and information management. The knowledge we have of knowledge, and changes to knowledge, can be monitored in negotiations like knowledge interviews for trainees. Such knowledge and belief systems can also be translated into managerial strategies, both qualitative, as when we emphasise value and benefit in the marketing approach to information, and quantitative, as when we devise ways of assessing probabilities with which desired outcomes will occur. Knowledge management is as much the management of meaning as management of entities and people, for in meaning lies the key to our understanding of what we decide to do as information managers. It is a multi‐disciplinary field offering a semantics and pragmatics for the evaluating and self‐evaluating manager.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.