Teaching open and reproducible scholarship: a critical review of the evidence base for current pedagogical methods and their outcomes.

In recent years, the scientific community has called for improvements in the credibility, robustness and reproducibility of research, characterized by increased interest and promotion of open and transparent research practices. While progress has been positive, there is a lack of consideration about how this approach can be embedded into undergraduate and postgraduate research training. Specifically, a critical overview of the literature which investigates how integrating open and reproducible science may influence student outcomes is needed. In this paper, we provide the first critical review of literature surrounding the integration of open and reproducible scholarship into teaching and learning and its associated outcomes in students. Our review highlighted how embedding open and reproducible scholarship appears to be associated with (i) students' scientific literacies (i.e. students' understanding of open research, consumption of science and the development of transferable skills); (ii) student engagement (i.e. motivation and engagement with learning, collaboration and engagement in open research) and (iii) students' attitudes towards science (i.e. trust in science and confidence in research findings). However, our review also identified a need for more robust and rigorous methods within pedagogical research, including more interventional and experimental evaluations of teaching practice. We discuss implications for teaching and learning scholarship.

Colour category constancy and the development of colour naming.

In this study, we investigated the processes of coordination, adaptation, and calibration during the development of colour naming and colour constancy, and we tested whether colour term knowledge is related to colour constancy. We measured category membership and prototypes with 163 Munsell chips in preschool children (3- to 4-year-old) under neutral, green, and red illuminations, and compared their results to those of adults. We introduced an index of colour term maturity based on the similarity of children's colour term use to adults, and a colour category constancy index that quantifies the variation in colour categorisation that is specific to illumination changes. Results showed that illumination changes affected children's consistency of colour categorisation, but only to a small extent. However, colour term maturity and illumination-specific effects on consistency strongly varied in this age range. Correlations between colour term maturity and illumination-specific consistency indicated that colour constancy increases with colour term acquisition; but those results depended on the type of illumination changes (between neutral, green, and red). Together, our findings suggest that children progressively fine-tune and recalibrate the meaning of colour terms through processes of coordination and adaptation that are also involved in the calibration of colour constancy.

The effects of changes in the referential problem space of infants and toddlers (Homo sapiens): Implications for cross-species comparisons.

Recent reviews have highlighted the tendency in the comparative literature to make claims about species' relative evolutionarily adaptive histories based on studies comparing different species tested with procedurally and methodologically different protocols. One particularly contentious area is the use of the object-choice task, used to measure an individual's ability to use referential cues, which is a core attribute of joint attention. We tested human children with versions of the object-choice task that have been previously used with dogs and nonhuman primates to see if manipulating the setup would lead to behavioral changes. In Study 1, we compared the responses of 18-month-olds and 36-month-olds when tested with and without a barrier. The presence of a barrier between the child and the reward did not suppress performance but did elicit more communicative behavior. Moreover, the barrier had a greater facilitating effect on the younger children, who displayed more communicative behavior in comparison with older children, who more frequently reached through the barrier in acts of direct prehension. In Study 2, we compared the behavior of 36-month-olds when the reward was within reaching distance (proximal) and when it was out of reach (distal). The children used index-finger points significantly more in the distal condition and grabbed more in the proximal condition, showing that they were making spatial judgments about the accessibility of the reward rather than just grabbing per se. We discuss the implications of these within-species differences in behavioral responses for cross-species comparisons. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The effects of shared storybook reading on word learning: A meta-analysis.

Although an abundant literature documents preliterate children's word learning success from shared storybook reading, a full synthesis of the factors which moderate these word learning effects has been largely neglected. This meta-analysis included 38 studies with 2,455 children, reflecting 110 effect sizes, investigating how reading styles, story repetitions, tokens and related factors moderate children's word comprehension, while adjusting for the number of target words. Dialogic reading styles, tokens, and the number of words tested all moderated word learning effects. Children's age, who read the story, and time between story and test were not moderators. We identify story repetition and word types as topics which merit further research. These results provide information to guide researchers and educators alike to the factors with the greatest impact on improving word learning from shared storybook reading. (PsycINFO Database Record

Pointing to Visible and Invisible Targets.

We investigated how the visibility of targets influenced the type of point used to provide directions. In Study 1, we asked 605 passersby in three localities for directions to well-known local landmarks. When that landmark was in plain view behind the requester, most respondents pointed with their index fingers, and few respondents pointed more than once. In contrast, when the landmark was not in view, respondents pointed initially with their index fingers, but often elaborated with a whole-hand point. In Study 2, we covertly filmed the responses from 157 passersby we approached for directions, capturing both verbal and gestural responses. As in Study 1, few respondents produced more than one gesture when the target was in plain view and initial points were most likely to be index finger points. Thus, in a Western geographical context in which pointing with the index finger is the dominant form of pointing, a slight change in circumstances elicited a preference for pointing with the whole hand when it was the second or third manual gesture in a sequence.