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Perceptual Skills (perceptual + skill)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Life Sciences	33%

Selected Abstracts

Do prior knowledge, personality and visual perceptual ability predict student performance in microscopic pathology?

MEDICAL EDUCATION, Issue 6 2010
Laura Helle
Medical Education 2010:44:621,629 Objectives, There has been long-standing controversy regarding aptitude testing and selection for medical education. Visual perception is considered particularly important for detecting signs of disease as part of diagnostic procedures in, for example, microscopic pathology, radiology and dermatology and as a component of perceptual motor skills in medical procedures such as surgery. In 1968 the Perceptual Ability Test (PAT) was introduced in dental education. The aim of the present pilot study was to explore possible predictors of performance in diagnostic classification based on microscopic observation in the context of an undergraduate pathology course. Methods, A pre- and post-test of diagnostic classification performance, test of visual perceptual skill (Test of Visual Perceptual Skills, 3rd edition [TVPS-3]) and a self-report instrument of personality (Big Five Personality Inventory) were administered. In addition, data on academic performance (performance in histology and cell biology, a compulsory course taken the previous year, in addition to performance on the microscopy examination and final examination) were collected. Results, The results indicated that one personality factor (Conscientiousness) and one element of visual perceptual ability (spatial relationship awareness) predicted performance on the pre-test. The only factor to predict performance on the post-test was performance on the pre-test. Similarly, the microscopy examination score was predicted by the pre-test score, in addition to the histology and cell biology grade. The course examination score was predicted by two personality factors (Conscientiousness and lack of Openness) and the histology and cell biology grade. Conclusions, Visual spatial ability may be related to performance in the initial phase of training in microscopic pathology. However, from a practical point of view, medical students are able to learn basic microscopic pathology using worked-out examples, independently of measures of personality or visual perceptual ability. This finding should reassure students about their abilities to improve with training independently of their scores on tests on basic abilities and personality. [source]

Prolonged maturation of auditory perception and learning in gerbils

DEVELOPMENTAL NEUROBIOLOGY, Issue 9 2010
Emma C. Sarro
Abstract In humans, auditory perception reaches maturity over a broad age range, extending through adolescence. Despite this slow maturation, children are considered to be outstanding learners, suggesting that immature perceptual skills might actually be advantageous to improvement on an acoustic task as a result of training (perceptual learning). Previous non-human studies have not employed an identical task when comparing perceptual performance of young and mature subjects, making it difficult to assess learning. Here, we used an identical procedure on juvenile and adult gerbils to examine the perception of amplitude modulation (AM), a stimulus feature that is an important component of most natural sounds. On average, Adult animals could detect smaller fluctuations in amplitude (i.e., smaller modulation depths) than Juveniles, indicating immature perceptual skills in Juveniles. However, the population variance was much greater for Juveniles, a few animals displaying adult-like AM detection. To determine whether immature perceptual skills facilitated learning, we compared naïve performance on the AM detection task with the amount of improvement following additional training. The amount of improvement in Adults correlated with naïve performance: those with the poorest naïve performance improved the most. In contrast, the naïve performance of Juveniles did not predict the amount of learning. Those Juveniles with immature AM detection thresholds did not display greater learning than Adults. Furthermore, for several of the Juveniles with adult-like thresholds, AM detection deteriorated with repeated testing. Thus, immature perceptual skills in young animals were not associated with greater learning. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 70: 636,648, 2010 [source]

Dyslexia and music: measuring musical timing skills

DYSLEXIA, Issue 1 2003
Katie Overy
Abstract Over the last few decades, a growing amount of research has suggested that dyslexics have particular difficulties with skills involving accurate or rapid timing, including musical timing skills. It has been hypothesised that music training may be able to remediate such timing difficulties, and have a positive effect on fundamental perceptual skills that are important in the development of language and literacy skills (Overy, 2000). In order to explore this hypothesis further, the nature and extent of dyslexics' musical difficulties need to be examined in more detail. In the present study, a collection of musical aptitude tests (MATs) were designed specifically for dyslexic children, in order to distinguish between a variety of musical skills and sub-skills. 15 dyslexic children (age 7,11, mean age 9.0) and 11 control children (age 7,10, mean age 8.9) were tested on the MATs, and their scores were compared. Results showed that the dyslexic group scored higher than the control group on 3 tests of pitch skills (possibly attributable to slightly greater musical experience), but lower than the control group on 7 out of 9 tests of timing skills. Particular difficulties were noted on one of the tests involving rapid temporal processing, in which a subgroup of 5 of the dyslexic children (33%) (mean age 8.4) was found to account for all the significant error. Also, an interesting correlation was found between spelling ability and the skill of tapping out the rhythm of a song, which both involve the skill of syllable segmentation. These results support suggestions that timing is a difficulty area for dyslexic children, and suggest that rhythm skills and rapid skills may need particular attention in any form of musical training with dyslexics. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Samuel Todes's Account of Non,conceptual Perceptual Knowledge and its Relation to Thought

RATIO, Issue 4 2002
Hubert L. Dreyfus
Samuel Todes's book, Body and World, makes an important contribution to the current debate among analytic philosophers concerning non,conceptual intentional content and its relation to thought. Todes's relevant theses are: (1) Our unified, active body, in moving to meet our needs, generates a unified, spatio,temporal field. (2) In that field we use our perceptual skills to make the determinable perceptual objects that show up relatively determinate. (3) Once we have made the objects of practical perception determinate, we can make ,practical perceptual judgements' about them. Such ,judgements' have conditions of satisfaction, but they are non,conceptual in that they are a way of coping with an actual object in this situation, from this point of view, in this light, in this orientation, and so forth. (4) By withholding our activity, however, we can transform our practical perception into a detached, spectatorial perception of qualities that are experienced as independent of the object they qualify. (5) Thanks to our conceptual imagination, we can then treat these qualities as reidentifiable properties of reidentifiable objects that can be entertained by thought. [source]

Age-specific functions of Stone Handling, a solitary-object play behavior, in Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata)

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PRIMATOLOGY, Issue 3 2007
Charmalie A.D. Nahallage
Abstract Stone handling (SH) in Japanese macaques, a form of solitary-object play, is newly acquired only by young individuals, and is the first example of a directly nonadaptive behavior that is maintained as a behavioral tradition within free-ranging provisioned social troops. We report here the first systematic investigation of this behavior in a stable captive social troop, the Takahama troop, which is housed in an outdoor enclosure of the Primate Research Institute (PRI), Kyoto University, Japan. This study was conducted to evaluate relevant competing hypotheses regarding the function of object play (e.g., misdirected foraging behavior and motor training) to explain the proximal causes and ultimate function(s) of SH. The "misdirected foraging behavior" hypothesis can be ruled out because of the lack of a clear temporal relationship between feeding and the occurrence of SH in any age class. Age-related differences in SH performance and behavioral patterns were observed, suggesting possible differences in the immediate cause and ultimate function between young and adults. Young individuals engaged in frequent bouts of short duration, involving locomotion and vigorous body actions throughout the day, which is typical for play by young in general. This pattern of behavior is consistent with the motor training hypothesis, which states that play occurs during the development of motor and perceptual skills and is thus potentially critical for neural and cognitive development. This practice is continued by those who acquire it at an early age, with adults engaging in significantly fewer but longer bouts that involve more stationary, complex manipulative patterns, almost exclusively in the late afternoon. We propose that for adults, at the proximate level SH is psychologically relaxing, but ultimately functions to maintain and regenerate neural pathways, and potentially helps to slow down the deterioration of cognitive function associated with advanced age in long-lived provisioned and captive macaques. Am. J. Primatol. 69:1,15, 2007.© 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]