Explaining the Sentence Superiority Effect and N400s Elicited by Words and Short Sentences with OB1-Reader.

Research into reading has benefitted from the emergence of powerful computational models that account for reading behavior at different levels. Such models become more powerful when the underlying anatomy, architecture or 'physiology' can be linked to the behavior of interest. OB1-reader is a reading model that simulates the processes underlying reading in the human brain. Previous studies showed that OB1-reader can account for various phenomena in the word recognition and text reading literatures. Here we aim to extend OB1's scope, by simulating behavioral performance and evoked EEG activity for two experimental word-recognition tasks: a flanker task in which unrelated flankers generated less accurate responses combined with a larger N400, and a sentence reading task in which words were recognized more accurately at central positions and within intact sentences, than at peripheral positions and in scrambled sentences. OB1 simulated several behavioral findings in both paradigms, including the so-called sentence superiority effect. Moreover, virtual event-related potentials (ERPs) generated from node activity in OB1 were compared to human ERPs. More lexical activity in OB1 predicted the size of the N400 component of human readers in both experiments, but not the N250.

Learning from the Experts: Stimulating Student Engagement in Small-group Active Learning.

Introduction: Engaging students in small-group active learning methods is essential for their development. Yet, medical teachers frequently face difficulties in stimulating this engagement, resulting in students remaining passive or detached from the learning process. The aim of this study was to uncover ways in which expert medical teachers, proficient at cultivating high levels of student engagement, stimulate such engagement. This knowledge might inform faculty development initiatives, so that medical teachers can be better equipped to teach in a way that engages students. Methods: We conducted an interview study using a constructivist grounded theory approach, integrating elements from appreciative inquiry. The eleven participants were qualified medical teachers who repeatedly received high scores on student engagement. Each interview was transcribed, coded, and analyzed using constant comparison until theoretical saturation was achieved. Results: We constructed a grounded theory of expert teaching practice, describing student engagement as an integrated process consisting of three components: 1) aiming for a supportive learning environment; 2) employing a personal educational approach; and 3) facilitating the active learning process. Discussion: This study uncovered that there are multiple ways to stimulate high levels of student engagement. Although there was consensus on the importance of a supportive learning environment and the ability to facilitate the active learning process, participants recognized the contextual nature of student engagement and took on a reflective mindset to adapt strategies to their specific situations. These findings highlight the need for faculty development initiatives to adopt a comprehensive, context-sensitive approach that considers the complexity of student engagement.

Testing the Reciprocal Effect between Value of Education, Time Investment, and Academic Achievement in a Large Non-Western Sample.

Many theories of motivation suggest that motivation and academic achievement reinforce each other over time, yet few longitudinal studies have examined behavioral pathways that may mediate interplay from motivation to achievement. Moreover, empirical studies so far have mostly focused on Western countries. In this study, we first examined whether students' value of education, as a measure of motivation, is reciprocally related to achievement (class rank and self-rated performance) in a sample of junior high schoolers in an East-Asian country (N = 3445, Korean Youth Panel Study). We tested this reciprocity using different statistical models. Second, we investigated whether the relation between motivation and achievement was mediated by time invested in learning. Reciprocal effects between value of education and academic achievement were found in classic cross-lagged panel models, but only unilateral effects (from achievement to value of education) were found when we used random-intercept and random-curve cross-lagged panel models. Adding the time investment variable, the reciprocal effect between value of education, time investment, and academic achievement was found with the random intercept model. In conclusion, the reciprocity between of motivation and achievement are more elusive than previous research suggested; further studies should be dedicated to scrutinizing its existence with various statistical models.

Growth mindset and school burnout symptoms in young adolescents: the role of vagal activity as potential mediator.

Experiencing school burnout symptoms can have negative consequences for learning. A growth mindset, the belief that human qualities such as intelligence are malleable, has previously been correlated with fewer school burnout symptoms in late adolescents. This might be because adolescents with a stronger growth mindset show more adaptive self-regulation strategies and thereby increasing resilience against academic setbacks. Here we confirmed in a sample of 426 Dutch young adolescents (11-14 years old; 48% female) that this relationship between growth mindset and school burnout symptoms holds after controlling for other potential predictors of school burnout symptoms such as academic achievement, school track, gender, and socio-economic status. Our second aim was to increase our understanding of the mechanism underlying the relation between mindset and school burnout, by measuring physiological resilience (vagal activity, a measure of parasympathetic activity, also known as heart rate variability or HRV) in a subsample (n = 50). We did not find any relation between vagal activity and growth mindset or school burnout symptoms, nor could we establish a mediating effect of vagal activity in their relation. In conclusion, we found evidence for a potential protective effect of a growth mindset on school burnout symptoms in young adolescents, but not for physiological resilience (vagal activity) as an underlying mechanism. The protective effect of growth mindset as confirmed in our younger sample can be leveraged in interventions to prevent increasing school burnout symptoms.

Trajectories of early adolescents' perceptions of school motivation and effort during the pandemic in Perú: A four time point longitudinal observational study.

In this longitudinal, observational study, following 883 adolescents (aged 11-15 years, grades 6th - 8th) we tracked changes in perceived school motivation and effort across four time points during the two years of remote education in Perú as a consequence of COVID-19 (retrospective reports before the pandemic, May 2020, July 2021, and November 2021). Compared to before the pandemic, levels of perceived school motivation and effort dropped sharply in May 2020 and continued to decrease across 2 years. Perceived school motivation was positively associated with perceived school effort at almost all time points. Furthermore, students with lower levels of perceived school motivation had a steeper decline in perceived school effort. In a subsample of 380 students in 8th grade, perceived school effort in July 2021 predicted objective math performance in November 2021. Our findings suggest that COVID-19 has further compounded decreases in subjective and objective indices of school engagement and performance that are typically observed in early adolescence. Our results from a large sample of low- to middle-class Peruvian adolescents highlight the experiences of youth in a country that had particularly long school closures, and that is under-represented in the literature.

Predicting academic success of autistic students in higher education.

LAYMEN SUMMARY: What is already known about the topic?Autistic youths increasingly enter universities. We know from existing research that autistic students are at risk of dropping out or studying delays. Using machine learning and historical information of students, researchers can predict the academic success of bachelor students. However, we know little about what kind of information can predict whether autistic students will succeed in their studies and how accurate these predictions will be.What does this article add?In this research, we developed predictive models for the academic success of 101 autistic bachelor students. We compared these models to 2,465 students with other health conditions and 25,077 students without health conditions. The research showed that the academic success of autistic students was predictable. Moreover, these predictions were more precise than predictions of the success of students without autism.For the success of the first bachelor year, concerns with aptitude and study choice were the most important predictors. Participation in pre-education and delays at the beginning of autistic students' studies were the most influential predictors for second-year success and delays in the second and final year of their bachelor's program. In addition, academic performance in high school was the strongest predictor for degree completion in 3 years.Implications for practice, research, or policyThese insights can enable universities to develop tailored support for autistic students. Using early warning signals from administrative data, institutions can lower dropout risk and increase degree completion for autistic students.

Time-dependent emotional memory transformation: Divergent pathways of item memory and contextual dependency.

Emotional memory can persist strikingly long, but it is believed that not all its elements are protected against the fading effects of time. So far, studies of emotional episodic memory have mostly investigated retention up to 24h postencoding and revealed that central emotional features (items) are usually strengthened, while contextual binding of the event is reduced. However, even though it is known for neutral memories that central versus contextual elements evolve differently with longer passage of time, the time-dependent evolution of emotional memories remains unclear. Hypothetically, compared to neutral memories, emotional item memory becomes increasingly stronger, accompanied by accelerated decay of-already fragile-links with their original encoding contexts, resulting in progressive reductions in contextual dependency. Here, we tested these predictions in a large-scale study. Participants encoded emotional and neutral episodes, and were assessed 30 minutes (N = 40), 1 day (N = 40), 1 week (N = 39), or 2 weeks (N = 39) later on item memory, contextual dependency, and subjective quality of memory. The results show that, with the passage of time, emotional memories were indeed characterized by increasingly stronger item memory and weaker contextual dependency. Interestingly, analyses of the subjective quality of memories revealed that stronger memory for emotional items with time was expressed in familiarity, whereas increasingly smaller contextual dependency for emotional episodes was reflected in recollection. Together, these findings uncover the time-dependent transformation of emotional episodic memories, thereby shedding light on the ways healthy and maladaptive human memories may develop. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

FMTP: A unifying computational framework of temporal preparation across time scales.

Temporal preparation is the cognitive function that takes place when anticipating future events. This is commonly considered to involve a process that maximizes preparation at time points that yield a high hazard. However, despite their prominence in the literature, hazard-based theories fail to explain the full range of empirical preparation phenomena. Here, we present the formalized multiple trace theory of temporal preparation (fMTP), an integrative model which develops the alternative perspective that temporal preparation results from associative learning. fMTP builds on established computational principles from the domains of interval timing, motor planning, and associative memory. In fMTP, temporal preparation results from associative learning between a representation of time on the one hand and inhibitory and activating motor units on the other hand. Simulations demonstrate that fMTP can explain phenomena across a range of time scales, from sequential effects operating on a time scale of seconds to long-term memory effects occurring over weeks. We contrast fMTP with models that rely on the hazard function and show that fMTP's learning mechanisms are essential to capture the full range of empirical effects. In a critical experiment using a Gaussian distribution of foreperiods, we show the data to be consistent with fMTP's predictions and to deviate from the hazard function. Additionally, we demonstrate how changing fMTP's parameters can account for participant-to-participant variations in preparation. In sum, with fMTP we put forward a unifying computational framework that explains a family of phenomena in temporal preparation that cannot be jointly explained by conventional theoretical frameworks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Temporal and specific pathways of change in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) for depression.

BACKGROUND: The present study investigated the specific and temporal role of putative mechanisms of change in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) for major depressive disorder (MDD). METHOD: 200 patients were randomized to CBT weekly, CBT twice weekly, IPT weekly or IPT twice weekly. Outcome and putative mechanisms of change (i.e., dysfunctional thinking, behavioral activation, CBT skills, IPT skills, therapeutic alliance, compliance, motivation) were measured multiple times up to six months after the start of treatment. Latent change score models were used to investigate temporal relations and test mediation. Explorative analyses tested whether baseline working memory moderated the effect of mechanism change on outcome change. RESULTS: CBT skills and dysfunctional thinking mediated the relation between treatment modality and changes in depression. In both treatments, IPT skills and behavioral activation were related to subsequent change in depression while a decrease in depression led to subsequent improvement in therapeutic alliance and a decrease in autonomous motivation. Change in compliance was unrelated to change in depression. Baseline working memory was related to therapy skill improvement. CONCLUSION: CBT skill improvement seems a specific mechanism of change leading to subsequent decrease in depression in CBT. Changes in IPT skills acted as a non-specific mechanism, subsequently reducing depression regardless of treatment modality. The specific role of cognitive change and behavioral activation remains unclear. Future studies should investigate the specificity and direction of the potential mechanisms of change throughout the course of therapy and investigate whether these mechanistic pathways differ between individuals.

Mechanistic pathways of change in twice weekly versus once weekly sessions of psychotherapy for depression.

BACKGROUND: Recently, we showed that twice weekly sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) for depression lead to better and faster treatment outcomes compared to once weekly sessions (Bruijniks et al., 2020). The present study investigated which pathways of change may account for the effects of different session frequencies. METHOD: The sample consisted of 200 patients who were randomized to CBT weekly, CBT twice weekly, IPT weekly, or IPT twice weekly. Outcome and therapy processes were measured at baseline, two weeks and monthly up to month 6 after the start of treatment. Latent change score models investigated temporal relations between change in therapy processes and change in depression and tested whether change in the therapy processes mediated the effect of session frequency on change in depression. RESULTS: IPT skills mediated the relation between session frequency and change in depression. A decrease in depression was related to subsequent improvement in CBT skills and subsequent decrease in motivation for therapy. CONCLUSION: The development of IPT skills may explain why a twice weekly higher session frequency is more effective in reducing depression compared to a once-weekly session frequency. Future studies should disentangle the causal effects of therapy process change throughout the course of therapy.

Relative letter-position coding revisited.

The notion that the brain achieves visual word recognition by encoding the relative positions of letters with open-bigram representations (e.g., 'h-e', 'h-r' and 'e-r' driving recognition of 'her') has been successful in accounting for many behaviors and phenomena. However, one characteristic of open-bigrams has remained unexplored: How is the activation of a bigram modulated by the distance between its constituents in the visual field? On the one hand, contiguous letters (e.g., 'at' in 'father') may allow for a clearer percept of the bigram. On the other hand, an increasing distance between letters (e.g., 'ae' in 'father') should create more certainty about their relative positions, which is precisely what the bigram is meant to convey. This matter was investigated with two experiments in which participants indicated whether target pairs of letters occurred in random letter strings. They were instructed that letter order mattered (i.e., 'a-b' does not occur in 'kbac'), while letter contiguity did not (i.e., 'a-b' occurs in 'akcb'). Controlling for crowding and eccentricity, bigrams were recognized faster upon decreasing the letter distance. However, when switching the target letter order (meaning the string should be met by a 'no' response), shorter letter distances yielded slower responses and more false positives. Neither relative position-coding models nor absolute position-coding models accommodate both these patterns at once. We discuss how a complete account of our effects may instead combine elements from both model types.

Medical student engagement in small-group active learning: A stimulated recall study.

BACKGROUND: Active learning relies on students' engagement with teachers, study materials and/or each other. Although medical education has adopted active learning as a core component of medical training, teachers have difficulties recognising when and why their students engage or disengage and how to teach in ways that optimise engagement. With a better understanding of the dynamics of student engagement in small-group active learning settings, teachers could be facilitated in effectively engaging their students. METHODS: We conducted a video-stimulated recall study to explore medical students' engagement during small-group learning activities. We recorded one teaching session of two different groups and selected critical moments of apparent (dis)engagement. These moments served as prompts for the 15 individual semi-structured interviews we held. Interview data were analysed using Template Analysis style of thematic analysis. To guide the analysis, we used a framework that describes student engagement as a dynamic and multidimensional concept, consisting of behavioural, cognitive and emotional components. RESULTS: The analysis uncovered three main findings: (1) In-class student engagement followed a spiral-like pattern. Once students were engaged or disengaged on one dimension, other dimensions were likely to follow suit. (2) Students' willingness to engage in class was decided before class, depending on their perception of a number of personal, social and educational antecedents of engagement. (3) Distinguishing engagement from disengagement appeared to be difficult for teachers, because the intention behind student behaviour was not always identifiable. DISCUSSION: This study adds to the literature by illuminating the dynamic process of student engagement and explaining the difficulty of recognising and influencing this process in practice. Based on the importance of discerning the intentions behind student behaviour, we advise teachers to use their observations of student (dis)engagement to initiate interaction with students with open and inviting prompts. This can help teachers to (re-)engage students in their classrooms.

Primary school mathematics during the COVID-19 pandemic: No evidence of learning gaps in adaptive practicing results.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic induced many governments to close schools for months. Evidence so far suggests that learning has suffered as a result. Here, it is investigated whether forms of computer-assisted learning mitigated the decrements in learning observed during the lockdown. METHOD: Performance of 53,656 primary school students who used adaptive practicing software for mathematics was compared to performance of similar students in the preceding year. RESULTS: During the lockdown progress was faster than it had been the year before, contradicting results reported so far. These enhanced gains were correlated with increased use, and remained after the lockdown ended. This was the case for all grades but more so for lower grades and for weak students, but less so for students in schools with disadvantaged populations. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that adaptive practicing software may mitigate, or even reverse, the negative effects of school closures on mathematics learning.

Episodic memory enhancement versus impairment is determined by contextual similarity across events.

For over a century, stability of spatial context across related episodes has been considered a source of memory interference, impairing memory retrieval. However, contemporary memory integration theory generates a diametrically opposite prediction. Here, we aimed to resolve this discrepancy by manipulating local context similarity across temporally disparate but related episodes and testing the direction and underlying mechanisms of memory change. A series of experiments show that contextual stability produces memory integration and marked reciprocal strengthening. Variable context, conversely, seemed to result in competition such that new memories become enhanced at the expense of original memories. Interestingly, these patterns were virtually inverted in an additional experiment where context was reinstated during recall. These observations 1) identify contextual similarity across original and new memories as an important determinant in the volatility of memory, 2) present a challenge to classic and modern theories on episodic memory change, and 3) indicate that the sensitivity of context-induced memory changes to retrieval conditions may reconcile paradoxical predictions of interference and integration theory.

Learning about stress from building, drilling and flying: a scoping review on team performance and stress in non-medical fields.

BACKGROUND: Teamwork is essential in healthcare, but team performance tends to deteriorate in stressful situations. Further development of training and education for healthcare teams requires a more complete understanding of team performance in stressful situations. We wanted to learn from others, by looking beyond the field of medicine, aiming to learn about a) sources of stress, b) effects of stress on team performance and c) concepts on dealing with stress. METHODS: A scoping literature review was undertaken. The three largest interdisciplinary databases outside of healthcare, Scopus, Web of Science and PsycINFO, were searched for articles published in English between 2008 and 2020. Eligible articles focused on team performance in stressful situations with outcome measures at a team level. Studies were selected, and data were extracted and analysed by at least two researchers. RESULTS: In total, 15 articles were included in the review (4 non-comparative, 6 multi- or mixed methods, 5 experimental studies). Three sources of stress were identified: performance pressure, role pressure and time pressure. Potential effects of stress on the team were: a narrow focus on task execution, unclear responsibilities within the team and diminished understanding of the situation. Communication, shared knowledge and situational awareness were identified as potentially helpful team processes. Cross training was suggested as a promising intervention to develop a shared mental model within a team. CONCLUSION: Stress can have a significant impact on team performance. Developing strategies to prevent and manage stress and its impact has the potential to significantly increase performance of teams in stressful situations. Further research into the development and use of team cognition in stress in healthcare teams is needed, in order to be able to integrate this 'team brain' in training and education with the specific goal of preparing professionals for team performance in stressful situations.

The warning stimulus as retrieval cue: The role of associative memory in temporal preparation.

In a warned reaction time task, the warning stimulus (S1) initiates a process of temporal preparation, which promotes a speeded response to the impending target stimulus (S2). According to the multiple trace theory of temporal preparation (MTP), participants learn the timing of S2 by storing a memory trace on each trial, which contains a temporal profile of the events on that trial. On each new trial, S1 serves as a retrieval cue that implicitly and associatively activates memory traces created on earlier trials, which jointly drive temporal preparation for S2. The idea that S1 assumes this role as a retrieval cue was tested across eight experiments, in which two different S1s were associated with two different distributions of S1-S2 intervals: one with predominantly short and one with predominantly long intervals. Experiments differed regarding the S1 features that made up a pair, ranging from highly distinct (e.g., tone and flash) to more similar (e.g., red and green flash) and verbal (i.e., "short" vs "long"). Exclusively for pairs of highly distinct S1s, the results showed that the S1 cue modified temporal preparation, even in participants who showed no awareness of the contingency. This cueing effect persisted in a subsequent transfer phase, in which the contingency between S1 and the timing of S2 was broken - a fact participants were informed of in advance. Together, these findings support the role of S1 as an implicit retrieval cue, consistent with MTP.

How to optimize knowledge construction in the brain.

Well-structured knowledge allows us to quickly understand the world around us and make informed decisions to adequately control behavior. Knowledge structures, or schemas, are presumed to aid memory encoding and consolidation of new experiences so we cannot only remember the past, but also guide behavior in the present and predict the future. However, very strong schemas can also lead to unwanted side effects such as false memories and misconceptions. To overcome this overreliance on a schema, we should aim to create robust schemas that are on the one hand strong enough to help to remember and predict, but also malleable enough to avoid such undesirable side effects. This raises the question as to whether there are ways to deliberately influence knowledge construction processes, with the goal to reach such optimally balanced schemas. Here, we will discuss how the mnemonic processes in our brains build long-term knowledge and, more specifically, how different phases of memory formation (encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and reconsolidation) contribute to this schema build-up. We finally provide ways how to best keep a balance between generalized semantic and detailed episodic memories, which can prove very useful in, e.g., educational settings.

The Role of Attention in Word Recognition: Results from OB1-Reader.

When reading, orthographic information is extracted not only from the word the reader is looking at, but also from adjacent words in the parafovea. Here we examined, using the recently introduced OB1-reader computational model, how orthographic information can be processed in parallel across multiple words and how orthographic information can be integrated across time and space. Although OB1-reader is a model of text reading, here we used it to simulate single-word recognition experiments in which parallel processing has been shown to play a role by manipulating the surrounding context in flanker and priming paradigms. In flanker paradigms, observers recognize a central word flanked by other letter strings located left and right of the target and separated from the target by a space. The model successfully accounts for the finding that such flankers can aid word recognition when they contain bigrams of the target word, independent of where those flankers are in the visual field. In priming experiments, in which the target word is preceded by a masked prime, the model accounts for the finding that priming occurs independent of whether the prime and target word are in the same location or not. Crucial to these successes is the key role that spatial attention plays within OB1-reader, as it allows the model to receive visual input from multiple locations in parallel, while limiting the kinds of errors that can potentially occur under such spatial pooling of orthographic information.

Congruency and reactivation aid memory integration through reinstatement of prior knowledge.

Building knowledge schemas that organize information and guide future learning is of great importance in everyday life. Such knowledge building is suggested to occur through reinstatement of prior knowledge during new learning, yielding integration of new with old memories supported by the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and medial temporal lobe (MTL). Congruency with prior knowledge is also known to enhance subsequent memory. Yet, how reactivation and congruency interact to optimize memory integration is unknown. To investigate this question, we used an adapted AB-AC inference paradigm in combination with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Participants first studied an AB-association followed by an AC-association, so B (a scene) and C (an object) were indirectly linked through A (a pseudoword). BC-associations were either congruent or incongruent with prior knowledge (e.g. bathduck or hammer in a bathroom), and participants reported subjective B-reactivation strength while learning AC. Behaviorally, both congruency and reactivation enhanced memory integration. In the brain, these behavioral effects related to univariate and multivariate parametric effects in the MTL, mPFC, and Parahippocampal Place Area (PPA). Moreover, mPFC exhibited larger PPA-connectivity for more congruent associations. These outcomes provide insights into the neural mechanisms underlying memory enhancement, which has value for educational learning.

EEG dynamics reveal a dissociation between storage and selective attention within working memory.

Selective attention plays a prominent role in prioritizing information in working memory (WM), improving performance for attended representations. However, it remains unclear whether unattended WM representations suffer from information loss. Here we tested the hypothesis that within WM, selectively attending to an item and stopping storing other items are independent mechanisms. We recorded EEG while participants performed a WM recall task in which the item most likely to be tested was cued retrospectively during retention. By manipulating retro-cue reliability (i.e., the ratio of valid to invalid cue trials), we varied the incentive to retain non-cued items. Storage and selective attention in WM were measured during the retention interval by contralateral delay activity (CDA) and contralateral alpha power suppression, respectively. Soon after highly reliable cues, the cued item was attended, and non-cued items suffered information loss. However, for less reliable cues, initially the cued item was attended, but unattended items were kept in WM. Later during the delay, previously unattended items suffered information loss despite now attention being reallocated to their locations, presumably to strengthen their weakening traces. These results show that storage and attention in WM are distinct processes that can behave differently depending on the relative importance of representations.