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PubMed1986

Standard and modified administrations of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills with learning disabled students.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the performance of junior high school learning disabled students on standard and modified administrations of selected subtests from the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. No significant differences were noted for correlations between types of administration and teachers' ratings on any of the subtest comparisons. Grade placements for Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension using the modified administration were significantly higher than those using the standard administration and more closely aligned with teachers' ratings. Math Concept and Math Problem-solving grade-placement scores did not differ by type of administration; teachers' ratings were higher than those produced by either testing format.

Achievement↗
PubMed1993

A test of Magill's closed-to-open continuum for skill development.

Magill's arrangement of Gentile's 2 x 2 matrix of skills classification into a closed-to-open-skill learning continuum was investigated. 63 volunteer university students were assigned to three experimental groups who performed different learning sequences on the Bachman Ladder for four practice sessions, climbing the unsupported Bachman Ladder (Task 4) in the final scored session. Following practice sessions, a five-trial, scored, Task 4 "retention" session was performed. Analysis of variance of retention trials indicated no difference between the practice groups regardless of practice sequence. Comparison of five selected trials from the Task 4 practice session and the five Task 4 retention performances, using a 4 x 2 analysis of variance with repeated measures, indicated significant group and time effects but no interaction. While Magill's arrangement of related activities into closed-to-open-skill learning continuums is supported, the specific arrangement of the lead-up skills does not appear critical. The question of task specificity for any learning continuum is raised, and further issues for research are proposed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1989

[Epilepsy and the speed of learning motor skills].

In 64 epileptics (mean age 35.7 years, mean onset of the disease at the age of 12.1 years) the author used a test of learning a series of movements (TOSP B). It involves the performance of a series of three asymmetrical movements maximal speed of learning is evaluated. Patients with epilepsy have a significantly reduced rate of motor learning, as compared with two comparable group of healthy subjects (104 and 67 subjects). Patients with a favourable course of the disease (n = 24) are significantly quicker than patients with an adverse development of the disease (n = 40). The author discusses the revealed significant correlation with the duration of the disease, contact with psychiatry, later onset of the disease, IQ and education, Contrary to expectations, the correlation with age was not significant, the factor of the disease being more important than the factor of ageing. Tests of asymmetrical movements are sensitive for the detection of relatively subclinical symptoms of cerebral affections. They prove useful as a stable part of neuropsychological examinations in epileptic patients.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Training for lifting; an unresolved ergonomic issue?

The paper describes a nine year project on lifting training which included nine trans-Australia consensus conferences attended by more than 900 health professionals. Major outcomes were: (1) The essence of lifting work is the need for the performer to cope with variability in task, environment, and self, and the essence of lifting skill is therefore adaptability; (2) the semi-squat approach provides the safest and most effective basis for lifting training; (3) for lifting training to be effective, the basic principles of skill learning must be systematically applied, with adaptability as a specific goal; (4) physical work capacity (aerobic power, strength, endurance, joint mobility) is a decisive ingredient of safe and effective lifting and, in addition to skill learning, should be incorporated in the training of people engaging regularly in heavy manual work; (5) if effective compliance with recommended skilled behaviour is to be achieved, then training must apply the principles and methods appropriate to adult learning and behaviour modification.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Intact learning of artificial grammars and intact category learning by patients with Parkinson's disease.

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have been shown to be impaired on some nondeclarative memory tasks that require cognitive skill learning (perceptual-motor sequence learning, probabilistic classification). To determine what other skill-based tasks are impaired, 13 patients with PD were tested on artificial grammar learning, artificial grammar learning with transfer to novel lettersets, and prototype learning. Patients with PD performed similarly to controls on all 3 tests. The intact learning exhibited by PD patients on these tests suggests that nondeclarative cognitive skill learning is not a single entity supported by the neostriatum. If learning the regularities among visual stimuli is the principal feature of artificial grammar learning and prototype learning, then these forms of skill learning may be examples of perceptual learning, and they may occur in early visual cortical processing areas.

Aged↗
PubMed1998

What differentiates declarative and procedural memories: reply to Cohen, Poldrack, and Eichenbaum (1997)

CPE claim that procedural and declarative representations differ on two important dimensions: flexibility and compositionality. I have proposed that the apparent flexibility of a memory depends entirely on the transfer conditions. Any retest is, in some sense, a test of flexibility, because something has changed since the original encoding episodic. I have argued that if one changes something that does not provide support to memory performance, the memory will appear flexible, and resistant to changes in the environment. If one changes the very thing that the representation codes, the memory will appear inflexible and easily disrupted by changes in the environment. This principle is equally true for procedural and declarative memory. CPE contend that procedural representations lack compositionality. An ideal test of this claim would examine the representation of a task that is widely agreed to be procedural (e.g. that has been demonstrated to be learned normally by amnesic patients, and in the absence of awareness by neurologically intact subjects). Such experiments appear not to have been conducted, and the fact is that many tasks that are widely agreed to be procedural probably are not compositional. They appear to be, as CPE contend, biases in a processing system; it is hard to imagine how repetition priming could be compositional. Nevertheless, this is not true of all procedural memories. There is a good deal of evidence that motor behaviour is organised hierarchically and has compositionality. There is every reason to think that most if not all motor behaviour is procedural; motor behaviour might be driven by goals that are declarative, but the low-level operations that actually manipulate effectors are closed to consciousness, do not depend on the medial temporal lobe or diencephalon, and would therefore be classified as procedural. CPE framed their theory of differences between procedural and declarative memory systems as an account of the deficit in amnesic patients. They therefore predict that the learning of amnesic patients should not show flexibility or compositionality. There is already at least one study showing learning in amnesic patients that is as flexible as that of control participants (Knowlton & Squire, 1996). There are not, to my knowledge, data on whether the motor skill learning of amnesic patients shows compositionality, but one might expect that it would, given that it does in neurologically intact participants, and given that motor skill learning appears unimpaired in amnesic patients. Thus, the conception of declarative and procedural memory provided by CPE may not provide a complete account of amnesic performance. The anatomic distinction between procedural and declarative memory systems appears quite strong, and there is therefore reason to believe that there are accompanying computational differences. There does not, however, appear to be sufficient evidence to support those differences proposed by CPE.

Amnesia↗
PubMed2006

How children make language out of gesture: morphological structure in gesture systems developed by American and Chinese deaf children.

When children learn language, they apply their language-learning skills to the linguistic input they receive. But what happens if children are not exposed to input from a conventional language? Do they engage their language-learning skills nonetheless, applying them to whatever unconventional input they have? We address this question by examining gesture systems created by four American and four Chinese deaf children. The children's profound hearing losses prevented them from learning spoken language, and their hearing parents had not exposed them to sign language. Nevertheless, the children in both cultures invented gesture systems that were structured at the morphological/word level. Interestingly, the differences between the children's systems were no bigger across cultures than within cultures. The children's morphemes could not be traced to their hearing mothers' gestures; however, they were built out of forms and meanings shared with their mothers. The findings suggest that children construct morphological structure out of the input that is handed to them, even if that input is not linguistic in form.

Asian People↗
PubMed2000

Effects of the "Preparing for the Drug Free Years" curriculum on growth in alcohol use and risk for alcohol use in early adolescence.

Preparing for the Drug-Free Years (PDFY) is a curriculum designed to help parents learn skills to consistently communicate clear norms against adolescent substance use, effectively and proactively manage their families, reduce family conflict, and help their children learn skills to resist antisocial peer influences. This study examined the effects of PDFY on the trajectories of these factors, as well as on the trajectory of alcohol use from early to mid adolescence. The sample consisted of 424 rural families of sixth graders from schools randomly assigned to an intervention or a control condition. Data were collected from both parents and students at pretest, posttest, and 1-, 2- and 3 1/2-year follow-ups. Latent growth models were examined. PDFY significantly reduced the growth of alcohol use and improved parent norms regarding adolescent alcohol use over time. Implications for prevention and evaluation are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1998

The birth of the blended curriculum.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: In the struggle to survive economically, our family practice residency program developed a new curriculum that incorporated elements of both the conventional rotational model and the newer longitudinal mode. We also created unique elements: immersion weeks, subspecialty clinics, and Tuesday specials. Immersions weeks provide focused exposures to specialty areas. The resident brings learned skills back to the family practice clinic (FPC). Subspecialty clinics in the FPC bring specialists to the residents and to the residents' patients for reinforcement of learned skills. Tuesday specials provide longitudinal experiences in geriatric, community, and occupational medicine. The blended curriculum has been a success with both Residency Assistance Program consultants and the Residency Review Committee reviewer. It has also increased residents' availability to see patients in the FPC and increased FPC income.

Curriculum↗
PubMed1992

Effects of contextual interference on learning technical sports skills.

The effects of contextual interference on learning skills of volleyball (volley, bump, serve) are influenced by the scheduling of actual practice sessions: the activities can be proposed in a repetitive practice schedule (blocked practice) by continuously repeating the same task (low interference) or in random practice schedules by performing more tasks or variations of one same activity (high interference). High contextual interference, even though causing immediate limited performance, leads to superior performance on retention and transfer tests. Four experimental groups (13 students each) were placed in conditions of random, blocked, serial, and serial with high interference practice for 8 meetings (2 tests and 6 practice). Analysis yielded significant differences among the groups on a transfer test (long transfer) for the serve, so results in this instructional setting are partially in line with those generally found in laboratory experiments.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Neurochemical specificity of learning: dopamine and motor learning.

In previous reports of studies of patients with alcoholic Korsakoff's psychosis, data were presented showing significant correlations between neuropsychometric measures of amnesia and the CSF levels of the major brain metabolite of norepinephrine (NE), which was consistently reduced among a large group of experimental subjects. Dopamine (DA) metabolite concentrations in the CSF of this same patient population were also significantly lowered but to a lesser degree and less consistently than the NE metabolite. CSF levels of the DA metabolite did not correlate with any measures of amnesia but did significantly correlate with performance on the Digit-Symbol Substitution Test (DSST) of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), which involves psychomotor skill learning. DSST performance did not correlate with CSF levels of the NE metabolite. These findings led to the hypothesis that the acquisition of motor learning skills is related to brain DA activity. In this study, we tested the hypothesis by correlating the ability of a group of Korsakoff patients to learn two different motor tasks (rotary pursuit and mirror tracing) with the concentrations of CSF metabolites of NE, DA, and serotonin. For both tasks, improvement in performance over three daily testing sessions significantly correlated only with the DA metabolite levels. The data are consistent with the hypothesis of a specific role for DA in motor learning.

Alcohol Amnestic Disorder↗
PubMed2004

Giving effective presentations.

Apprehension about oral communication, or public speaking is rated as the number one fear among most individuals. Developing skill in, and comfort with, public speaking is important whether we are presenting oral reports and proposals, responding to questions, or training co-workers. Effective speakers are able to communicate information in a way that stimulates interest, helps the audience to understand and remember, and influences attitudes and behaviours. Many of us think that effective speakers are born rather than made. In truth most successful speakers work hard and invest a great deal of time and effort in to improving their speaking capabilities. Effective public speaking is a learned skill and activity that requires lots of practice. Like other learned skills, having a strategy with clear action steps can help you achieve your goal.

Anxiety↗
PubMed2006

Long-term behavioral consequences of soman poisoning in mice.

We investigated the long-term (up to 90 days) consequences of soman intoxication in mice on weight, motor performances (grip strength, rotarod) and mnemonic cognitive processes (T-maze, Morris water maze test). First, a relative weight loss of 20%, measured 3 days after intoxication, was evidenced as a threshold beyond which neuropathological damage was observed in the hippocampus. Animals were then distributed into either low weight loss (LWL) or high weight loss (HWL) groups according to the relative 20% weight loss threshold. Compared to controls, both groups of poisoned mice quickly exhibited a decrease in their motor performance subsequent to an acute soman toxicity phase. Then, total motor recovery occurred for the LWL group. Comparatively, HWL mice showed only transient recovery prior to a second decrease phase due to soman-induced delayed toxicity. One month after intoxication, mnemonic cognitive performances of the LWL group were similar to controls while the HWL group did not exhibit any learning skill. Three months after poisoning, compared to controls, the LWL group showed similar mnemonic performances in the maze test but a mild deficit in the Morris water maze task. At the same time, learning skills slightly recovered in the HWL group. Mnemonic cognitive data are discussed in relation to the neuropathology, neurogenesis and sprouting occurring in the hippocampus of soman-intoxicated animals.

Animals↗