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Particular Strategies (particular + strategy)
Selected AbstractsChildren's performance on the ,give x' task: a microgenetic analysis of ,counting' and ,grabbing' behaviourINFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2007Elizabeth Chetland Abstract Children's understanding of the cardinal significance of counting is often assessed by the ,give x' task, in which they are categorized as ,counters' or ,grabbers'. Previous research indicates a sudden stage-like shift, implying insight into a principle. Employing a microgenetic approach, the present study was designed to explore whether this dichotomy masks a more subtle pattern. Fifty-five 39- to 58-month-olds received five ,give x' trials, involving 4, 5, 6, 7, and 10 objects, within a single session counterbalanced across individuals, each child participating in two similar sessions one week apart. Children's spontaneous strategies were recorded. They also completed a simple verbal counting test. Participants seldom simply ,grabbed'; even those who never counted gave items one-by-one. Some gave correct amounts by starting off counting then taking the remainder silently, suggesting internal counting. There was also evidence of children taking correct non -subitizable quantities without overtly counting. Individuals' strategy choice and the way they employed particular strategies varied, both within and between sessions. Furthermore, after achieving procedural mastery, children continued to refine their use of strategies. The results are discussed in relation to Karmiloff-Smith's RR model and Siegler's overlapping waves model. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Test-taking Strategies of 12- and 13-year-old Hungarian Learners of EFL: Why Whales Have MigrainesLANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue 1 2006Marianne Nikolov This paper gives an account of a project exploring 12- and 13-year-old children's uses of strategies while solving reading and writing test tasks in English as a foreign language (EFL). The study was conducted to provide insights into how learners go about solving tasks and what they think and rely on while doing them. The first part provides an overview of strategy research and test-taking strategy research. The second part provides the background of the project and describes the 52 participants, the data collection instruments, and the procedures. The discussions include four case studies of two high achievers and two low achievers and explore what role individual differences played, what strategies learners applied, and how the findings have contributed to a better understanding of what we mean by test-taking strategies. This exploratory qualitative study raises several questions. The analyses of the particular strategies and case studies might provide valuable insights into learners' uses of strategies and useful feedback for test designers and teachers. [source] Philip Corboy and the Construction of the Plaintiffs' Personal Injury BarLAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 2 2005Sara Parikh Drawing on the career of Philip Corboy, this article examines the construction of the plaintiffs' personal injury bar in the second half of the 20th century. Through a relational biography based on Mr. Corboy's career, we look at the development of this subprofession in the context of the sociopolitical environment within which Mr. Corboy and his peers operated, the social capital they possessed, and the particular strategies they used as they worked to establish both a professional and market niche. This analysis shows how and why Mr. Corboy and his peers constructed a thriving subprofession that is characterized by a unique blend of working-class ideology, trial craft, professional bar leadership, Democratic politics, local philanthropy, and a market referral system,all of which reinforce the dominance and prestige of its own elite. [source] Long membrane helices and short loops predicted less accuratelyPROTEIN SCIENCE, Issue 12 2002Chien Peter Chen 3D, three-dimensional; DSSP, program assigning secondary structure (Kabsch and Sander 1983); HMM, hidden Markov model; PDB, Protein Data Bank of experimentally determined 3D structures of proteins (Bernstein et al. 1977; Berman et al. 2000); SWISS-PROT, database of protein sequences (Bairoch and Apweiler 2000); TM, transmembrane; TMH, transmembrane helix Abstract Low-resolution experiments suggest that most membrane helices span over 17,25 residues and that most loops between two helices are longer than 15 residues. Both constraints have been used explicitly in the development of prediction methods. Here, we compared the largest possible sequence,unique data sets from high- and low-resolution experiments. For the high-resolution data, we found that only half of the helices fall into the expected length interval and that half of the loops were shorter than 10 residues. We compared the accuracy of detecting short loops and long helices for 28 advanced and simple prediction methods: All methods predicted short loops less accurately than longer ones. In particular, loops shorter than 7 residues appeared to be very difficult to detect by current methods. Similarly, all methods tended to be more accurate for longer than for shorter helices. However, helices with more than 32 residues were predicted less accurately than all other helices. Our findings may suggest particular strategies for improving predictions of membrane helices. [source] Making Sense of NIMBY poverty, power and community opposition to homeless sheltersCITY & SOCIETY, Issue 2 2001Vincent Lyon-Callo Local citizens mobilizing in opposition to the presence of homeless people and services is increasingly common in communities across the United States. Such "'not in my backyard" politics have often been understood as resulting from prejudice, bigotry, or misguided understandings. I argue for an analysis of these social movements through considering how particular strategies and practices come to seem "natural" to social actors while other possibilities are effaced. Analyzing these "common sense" reactions thus must entail examining the interplay between discursively made representations of homeless people and historical, class, and power dynamics that impact on people within particular communities. [Ethnography, homelessness, inequality, NIMBY, Massachusetts] [source] Relationship between post-fire regeneration and leaf economics spectrum in Mediterranean woody speciesFUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY, Issue 1 2009S. Saura-Mas Summary 1Recent work has identified global-scale relationships between key leaf traits (leaf economics spectrum). However, it is important to determine whether this approach can be applied at local scale with smaller subsets of species facing similar environments. Since fire is a key process in Mediterranean shrubland dynamics we analyze whether fire-related life-history traits influence the pattern of correlation between the leaf economic spectrum and leaf moisture traits. 2Using structural equation modelling and exploratory path analysis, we developed alternative models to test how interspecific leaf traits are related to the seasonal variation of water content (leaves and shoots) and to the type of post-fire regeneration of Mediterranean woody species. 3This study demonstrates that for these species seasonal variation in water content and fuel moisture would be better predicted by the presence or absence of a trait describing post-fire seedling establishment than by the leaf economic spectrum traits. However, leaf dry matter content (LDMC) is influenced by both the leaf economic spectrum and the post-fire regenerative type. 4Seeder species (those that recruit via seeds immediately after fire) present lower LDMC and higher relative seasonal variation of relative water content (RWCrsv) than non-seeders. We hypothesize that since seeder species mostly evolved under the Mediterranean climate, they developed a particular strategy of drought tolerance (without causing an effect to the relation between the volume occupied by cytoplasm relative to the volume occupied by cell walls), which is the cause of the observed relation between LDMC and RWCrsv. 5This study suggests that the leaves of Mediterranean woody species would follow the general leaf economics spectrum (Wright et al. 2004) but that specific selective forces, such as disturbance regime, acting at regional scale also play a relevant role to explain leaf traits related to water content. [source] Toward More Effective Stakeholder Dialogue: Applying Theories of Negotiation to Policy and Program Evaluation,JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 12 2006Bernadette Campbell Borrowing from the negotiation literature, we tested 2 factors that might improve stakeholder dialogue in program and policy evaluation. Undergraduate stakeholders (61 pairs) engaged in dialogue about their universities' alcohol policies. Pairs were randomly assigned to levels of accountability audience and dialogue structure. The audience for the videotaped dialogue was described as holding either (a) views about the policy similar to the participant's, consistent across audience members (homogeneous), or (b) mixed views, on both sides of the issue (heterogeneous). Pairs approached the dialogue with either (a) problem-solving goals or (b) no particular strategy. Dyads accountable to a heterogeneous audience and given problem-solving instructions exhibited the most effective dialogue. Accountability to a heterogeneous audience facilitated satisfaction with and optimism about dialogue. Accountability to homogeneous audiences and adopting no particular strategy yielded the least positive perceptions of dialogue. Implications for stakeholder dialogue, and for the role of social psychology in evaluation are discussed. [source] Measurement error modelling with an approximate instrumental variableJOURNAL OF THE ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY: SERIES B (STATISTICAL METHODOLOGY), Issue 5 2007Paul Gustafson Summary., Consider using regression modelling to relate an exposure (predictor) variable to a disease outcome (response) variable. If the exposure variable is measured with error, but this error is ignored in the analysis, then misleading inferences can result. This problem is well known and has spawned a large literature on methods which adjust for measurement error in predictor variables. One theme is that the requisite assumptions about the nature of the measurement error can be stronger than what is actually known in many practical situations. In particular, the assumptions that are required to yield a model which is formally identified from the observable data can be quite strong. The paper deals with one particular strategy for measurement error modelling, namely that of seeking an instrumental variable, i.e. a covariate S which is associated with exposure and conditionally independent of the outcome given exposure. If these two conditions hold exactly, then we call S an exact instrumental variable, and an identified model results. However, the second is not checkable empirically, since the actual exposure is unobserved. In practice then, investigators typically seek a covariate which is plausibly thought to satisfy it. We study inferences which acknowledge the approximate nature of this assumption. In particular, we consider Bayesian inference with a prior distribution that posits that S is probably close to conditionally independent of outcome given exposure. We refer to this as an approximate instrumental variable assumption. Although the approximate instrumental variable assumption is more realistic for most applications, concern arises that a non-identified model may result. Thus the paper contrasts inferences arising from the approximate instrumental variable assumption with their exact instrumental variable counterparts, with particular emphasis on the benefit of basing inferences on a more realistic model versus the cost of basing inferences on a non-identified model. [source] | |||||||||||||