Search results for "problem solving"
showing 10 items of 168 documents
Exploring the Enjoyment of Playing Browser Games
2009
Browser games--mostly persistent game worlds that can be used without client software and monetary cost with a Web browser--belong to the understudied digital game types, although they attract large player communities and motivate sustained play. The present work reports findings from an online survey of 8,203 players of a German strategy browser game ("Travian"). Results suggest that multiplayer browser games are enjoyed primarily because of the social relationships involved in game play and the specific time and flexibility characteristics ("easy-in, easy-out"). Competition, in contrast, seems to be less important for browser gamers than for users of other game types. Findings are discuss…
Questionning and reading goals: information seeking questions asked on scientific texts read under different task conditions
2013
Background: A number of studies report that few questions are asked in classrooms and that many of them are shallow questions. Aims: This study investigates the way in which reading goals determine questioning on scientific texts. Reading goals were manipulated through two different tasks: reading for understanding versus reading to solve a problem. Sample: A total of 183 university students. Methods: In the first and third questioning experiments the participants read two short texts. Students in one condition were instructed to understand the texts, while in the alternative condition they had to read texts to solve a problem. Students were instructed to write down any questions they might…
Ventral striatal prediction error signaling is associated with dopamine synthesis capacity and fluid intelligence.
2012
Fluid intelligence represents the capacity for flexible problem solving and rapid behavioral adaptation. Rewards drive flexible behavioral adaptation, in part via a teaching signal expressed as reward prediction errors in the ventral striatum, which has been associated with phasic dopamine release in animal studies. We examined a sample of 28 healthy male adults using multimodal imaging and biological parametric mapping with 1) functional magnetic resonance imaging during a reversal learning task and 2) in a subsample of 17 subjects also with positron emission tomography using 6-[18F]fluoro-L-DOPA to assess dopamine synthesis capacity. Fluid intelligence was measured using a battery of nine…
Echogenicity of the substantia nigra in relatives of patients with sporadic Parkinson’s disease
2003
Increased echogenicity of the substantia nigra (SN) on ultrasound is a typical sonographic finding in Parkinson's disease (PD). Sonographic signal intensity of the SN is related to tissue iron content with higher iron level being associated with increased echogenicity. Recent findings indicate that hyperechogenicity of the SN represents an important susceptibility factor for nigrostriatal degeneration. In this study we determined the prevalence of a characteristic ultrasound sign of Parkinson's disease in first-degree relatives of PD patients. Fourteen patients with sporadic PD and 58 of their relatives underwent neurological, neuropsychological, and ultrasound examination. In addition, fou…
Illusory inferences from a disjunction of conditionals: a new mental models account
2000
(Johnson-Laird, P.N., & Savary, F. (1999, Illusory inferences: a novel class of erroneous deductions. Cognition, 71, 191-229.) have recently presented a mental models account, based on the so-called principle of truth, for the occurrence of inferences that are compelling but invalid. This article presents an alternative account of the illusory inferences resulting from a disjunction of conditionals. In accordance with our modified theory of mental models of the conditional, we show that the way individuals represent conditionals leads them to misinterpret the locus of the disjunction and prevents them from drawing conclusions from a false conditional, thus accounting for the compelling char…
Coping Strategies: Gender Differences and Development throughout Life Span
2012
Development during life-span implies to cope with stressful events, and this coping may be done with several strategies. It could be useful to know if these coping strategies differ as a consequence of personal characteristics. This work uses the Coping with Stress Questionnaire with this aim using a sample of 400 participants. Specifically, the effects of gender and age group (young people, middle age and elderly), as well as its interaction on coping strategies is studied. With regard to age, on one hand, it is hypothesised a decrement in the use of coping strategies centred in problem solving and social support seeking as age increases. On the other hand, the use of emotional coping is h…
The role of parents' self‐esteem, mastery‐orientation and social background in their parenting styles
2000
In order to examine the extent to which parents' levels of education, financial resources, self-esteem, and their mastery-orientation versus task-avoidance are associated with their parenting styles and parental stress, data from two studies were analyzed. In Study I, parents of 105 6 to 7-year old children were asked to fill in scales measuring their parenting styles and parental stress, mastery-orientation, financial resources, and their level of education. In Study II, 235 parents were asked to fill in the same scales. An identical pattern of results was found in the two studies. Parents' self-esteem and their use of mastery-oriented strategy were found to be associated with authoritativ…
Clinical supervision as an interaction between the clinical educator and the student.
2007
The interaction between clinical educators and students is regarded as the strongest element in developing expertise and in forming students' professional identity in clinical education. Although clinical education has been studied in physiotherapy, the natural interaction between clinical educators and students has remained unanalyzed. The aim of this study was to examine how supervised learning sessions during patient treatment were constructed. The focus was on the forms of interaction between clinical educators and students in natural contexts. By videotaping 12 natural patient treatment sessions, which simultaneously comprised part of the clinical education of physiotherapy students, a…
Irregular assimilation progress: Reasons for setbacks in the context of linguistic therapy of evaluation
2012
The assimilation model suggests progress in psychotherapy follows an eight-stage sequence described by the Assimilation of Problematic Experiences Scale (APES). This study sought to reconcile this developmental stage model with the common but superficially contradictory clinical observation that therapeutic advances alternate with setbacks. Setbacks (n=466) were identified in therapy transcripts of two clients and classified using a preliminary nine-category list of possible alternative reasons for setbacks. Most of the setbacks involved switches among the multiple strands of a problem due to (a) therapists exceeding clients' therapeutic zone of proximal development, (b) therapists guiding …
Who are maximizers? Future oriented and highly numerate individuals
2014
Two studies investigated cognitive mechanisms that may be associated with people's tendency to maximize. Maximizers are individuals who are spending a great amount of effort in order to find the very best option in a decision situation, rather than stopping the decision process when they encounter a satisfying option. These studies show that maximizers are more future oriented than other people, which may motivate them to invest the extra energy into optimal choices. Maximizers also have higher numerical skills, possibly facilitating the cognitive processes involved with decision trade-offs.