Correct Letter Research Articles

Let them sleep: The effects of a scheduled nap during the night shift on sleepiness and cognition in hospital nurses.

The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a scheduled 30-min nap and its interaction with individual factors on sleepiness and cognition during an 8-hr night shift. This prospective, within-subjects study conducted between 2011-2014 compared sleepiness and cognition with/without a nap during the night shift, in 109 female nurses, tested on two nights with and two nights without a nap in counterbalanced order. Nurses completed the Munich ChronoType Questionnaire for Shiftwork, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and Pre-Sleep Arousal Scale at study onset. They reported sleepiness hourly and performed the Digit Symbol Substitution and the Letter Cancellation Tasks at 3:00 and 7:00 a.m. They took a nap at 4:00 a.m. on nap nights and worked as usual on no-nap nights. Sleep-wake patterns were monitored using actigraphs 24hr before and during the shift. Caffeine consumption, workload and adverse events were reported. To assess the effectiveness of a scheduled nap, mixed-models and repeated measures analyses of variance were used. Lower levels of sleepiness were found at 5:00, 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. on nap versus no-nap nights. Increments in performance between 3:00-7:00 a.m. were significantly greater on nap versus no-nap nights for Digit Symbol Substitution Task correct responses and Letter Cancellation Task capacity. No interactions between the nap and any of the individual factors emerged. A scheduled nap provides an effective countermeasure against the negative consequences of night-time shift work in female nurses above and beyond interpersonal differences. Changes in attitude and policy are required to implement this beneficial and cost-effective strategy. ACTRN12618001857291.

Interactive Animation Design of Hijaiyah Letters in Early Age Children at Al-Hidayah Kindergarten Bekasi

Education about religious sciences, especially hijaiyah letters is very important as a provision to be understood by humans as the basis of their lives to face life in the future. The difficulties experienced are quite reasonable, because the Al-Qur'an uses Arabic. Learning with the Koran system is usually done in a relatively long time even sometimes for years. This is not effective and efficient in teaching and learning activities. So with the presence of a new learning media to utilize computer technology, it is expected to be developed into an interesting learning for kindergarten children. Therefore, the authors make interactive animated hijiayah letter recognition so that with interactive application of the introduction to hijaiyah letters for early childhood at Al-Hidayah Kindergarten Bekasi is very helpful in teaching and learning process to be more fun and effective so students are no longer bored in learning and attracted the interest of students to a better understand on how to read good and correct hijaiyah letters. As well as helping teachers to innovate in learning process because with this interactive animation application the instructors become easier to deliver material about the prayer movements to students.

Spelling Scoring Metrics in Malay Language: An Investigation among Young Spellers

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship among three spelling scoring metrics, namely, words spelled correctly (WSC), correct letter sequences (CLS), and phonological coding (PC) in Malay language. The relationship between spelling measure and word reading measure was studied. There were 866 Primary 1 (Grade 1 equivalent) students from 11 randomly selected public primary schools in Kuching, Sarawak Malaysia who participated in this study. The study showed that the scores from each scoring metric were highly correlated to each other. There was a strong relationship between each spelling outcome to word reading.

Distinct fNIRS-Derived HbO2 Trajectories During the Course and Over Repeated Walking Trials Under Single- and Dual-Task Conditions: Implications for Within Session Learning and Prefrontal Cortex Efficiency in Older Adults.

Neural trajectories of gait are not well established. We determined two distinct, clinically relevant neural trajectories, operationalized via functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) HbO2 measures in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), under Single-Task-Walk (STW), and Dual-Task-Walk (DTW) conditions. Course trajectory assessed neural activity associated with attention during the course of a walking task; the second trajectory assessed neural activity associated with learning over repeated walking trials. Improved neural efficiency was defined as reduced PFC HbO2 after practice. Walking was assessed under STW and DTW conditions. fNIRS was utilized to quantify HbO2 in the PFC while walking. Burst measurement included three repeated trials for each experimental condition. The course of each walking task consisted of six consecutive segments. Eighty-three nondemented participants (mean age = 78.05 ± 6.37 years; %female = 49.5) were included. Stride velocity (estimate = -0.5259 cm/s, p = <.0001) and the rate of correct letter generation (log estimate of rate ratio = -0.0377, p < .0001) declined during the course of DTW. In contrast, stride velocity (estimate = 1.4577 cm/s, p < .0001) and the rate of correct letter generation (log estimate of rate ratio = 0.0578, p < .0001) improved over repeated DTW trials. Course and trial effects were not significant in STW. HbO2 increased during the course of DTW (estimate = 0.0454 μM, p < .0001) but declined over repeated trials (estimate = -0.1786 μM, p < .0001). HbO2 declined during the course of STW (estimate = -.0542 μM, p < .0001) but did not change significantly over repeated trials. We provided evidence for distinct attention (course) and learning (repeated trials) trajectories and their corresponding PFC activity. Findings suggest that learning and improved PFC efficiency were demonstrated in one experimental session involving repeated DTW trials.

Effects of simulated visual acuity and ocular motility impairments on SSVEP brain-computer interface performance: an experiment with Shuffle Speller

ABSTRACTIndividuals with severe speech and physical impairments may have concomitant visual acuity impairments (VAI) or ocular motility impairments (OMI) impacting visual BCI use. We report on use of the Shuffle Speller typing interface for SSVEP BCI copy-spelling with simulated VAI, simulated OMI, and unimpaired vision. To mitigate the effects of visual impairments, we introduce a method that adaptively selects user-specific trial lengths to maximize expected information transfer rate (ITR), which is shown to closely approximate correct letter selection rate. All participants could type under the unimpaired and simulated VAI conditions, without significant differences in typing accuracy or speed. Most participants (31 of 37) could not type under the simulated OMI condition; some achieved high accuracy with slower typing speeds. Reported workload and discomfort were low, and satisfaction high, under the unimpaired and simulated VAI conditions. Implications and future directions for exploration of visual impairment in BCI use are discussed.

Classification of the Correct Quranic Letters Pronunciation of Male and Female Reciters

Recitation of the Holy Quran with the correct Tajweed is essential for every Muslim. Islam has encouraged Quranic education since early age as the recitation of the Quran correctly will represent the correct meaning of the words of Allah. It is important to recite the Quranic verses according to its characteristics (sifaat) and from its point of articulations (makhraj). This paper presents the identification and classification analysis of Quranic letters pronunciation for both male and female reciters, to obtain the unique representation of each letter by male as compared to female expert reciters. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) was used as the classifier to classify the data with Formants and Power Spectral Density (PSD) as the acoustic features. The result shows that linear classifier of PSD with band 1 and band 2 power spectral combinations gives a high percentage of classification accuracy for most of the Quranic letters. It is also shown that the pronunciation by male reciters gives better result in the classification of the Quranic letters.

Agreement analysis comparing iPad LCVA and Sloan testing in multiple sclerosis patients

Background: Visual symptoms are common in multiple sclerosis (MS). Low-contrast visual acuity (LCVA) testing using Sloan charts has demonstrated increased sensitivity for visual deficits compared to high-contrast acuity testing. Computerized testing of visual acuity may facilitate use in the clinic setting. Objectives: To evaluate the agreement between an iPad-based and Sloan testing of LCVA in a cohort of MS patients. Methods: A total of 38 patients with relapsing-remitting MS were enrolled after providing informed written consent at Partners MS Center, Brigham and Women’s hospital. Monocular LCVA was measured using retroilluminated Sloan chart and iPad-based LogMAR chart. Number of correct letters and agreement between two measurements were assessed for each eye using Bland–Altman analysis and paired t-test. Results: For both eyes, there was no significant difference in number correct between the two measurements using a paired t-test, and there was high correlation between two measurements (oculus dextrus (OD) r = 0.89, p < 0.001; oculus sinister (OS) r = 0.78, p < 0.001). The limits of agreement were −7.9 to +8.5 letters for the right eye and −10.9 to +11.2 letters for the left eye. Conclusion: An iPad-based LCVA test shows good agreement with Sloan testing in MS patients.

LIPS TRACKING IDENTIFICATION OF A CORRECT QURANIC LETTERS PRONUNCIATION FOR TAJWEED TEACHING AND LEARNING

Mastering the recitation of the holy Quran is an obligation among Muslims. It is an important task to fulfill other Ibadat like prayer, pilgrimage and zikr. However, the traditional way of teaching Quran recitation is a hard task due to the extensive training time and effort required from both teacher and learner. In fact, learning the correct pronunciation of the Quranic letters is the first step in mastering Tajweed (Rules and Guidance) in Quranic recitation. The pronunciation of Arabic letters is based on its points of articulation and the characteristics of a particular letter. In this paper we implement the lip identification technique from video signal acquired from expert to extract the movement data of the lips while pronouncing the correct Quranic letters. The extracted lip movement data from expert helps in categorizing the letters into 5 groups and in deciding the final shape of the lips. Later the technique was then tested among a public reciter and then compared for similarity verification between the public and the professional reciter. The system is able to extract the lips movement of the random user and draw the displacement graph and compared with the pronunciation of the expert. The error will be shown if the user has mistakenly pronounced the letter and suggested for improvement. More subjects with different background will be tested in very near future with feedback instructions. Machine learning techniques will be implemented at later stage for the real time application for learning process.

Обучение каллиграфически правильному письму как педагогическая проблема

The article considers the problem of teaching first-grade pupil calligraphic correct letter as a basis of handwriting, which is a stable personality characteristic in the future is difficult to correcting. As the process of writing is extremely complex and covers various areas of mental activity, the teacher is recommended to take into account the hygiene, physiological and educational components that contribute to conscious mastery of technique first-grade pupil letters formation of skills of visual-motor development of self-control on the basis of geometric eye estimation. The&#x0D; author offers the technique “Line-art formation of calligraphic writing”, characterizes its components, compares with the traditional method of teaching writing.

Arabic Text Cryptanalysis Using Genetic Algorithm

In this paper a Genetic Algorithm (GA) is proposed to attack an Arabic encrypted text by Vigenere cipher. The frequency of occurrence of Arabic letters has been calculated by using the text of the holy book of Quran, since it has rich language features compared to many other books. The algorithm is tested to find the key letters for different ciphertext sizes and key lengths. The results shows 100% correct letters retrieved from medium size ciphertext and short key length, while 90% of the ciphertext is retrieved from long ciphertext and medium key length, and 82% of the ciphertext is retrieved from long ciphertext and long key.

Orthographic Reading Deficits in Dyslexic Japanese Children: Examining the Transposed-Letter Effect in the Color-Word Stroop Paradigm.

In orthographic reading, the transposed-letter effect (TLE) is the perception of a transposed-letter position word such as “cholocate” as the correct word “chocolate.” Although previous studies on dyslexic children using alphabetic languages have reported such orthographic reading deficits, the extent of orthographic reading impairment in dyslexic Japanese children has remained unknown. This study examined the TLE in dyslexic Japanese children using the color-word Stroop paradigm comprising congruent and incongruent Japanese hiragana words with correct and transposed-letter positions. We found that typically developed children exhibited Stroop effects in Japanese hiragana words with both correct and transposed-letter positions, thus indicating the presence of TLE. In contrast, dyslexic children indicated Stroop effects in correct letter positions in Japanese words but not in transposed, which indicated an absence of the TLE. These results suggest that dyslexic Japanese children, similar to dyslexic children using alphabetic languages, may also have a problem with orthographic reading.

An Empirical Comparison of the Words Spelled Correctly and Correct Letter Sequence Spelling Scoring Methods in Third- and Fourth-Grade Classrooms

ABSTRACTSpelling words can be scored using a wide variety of scoring methods that vary in prerequisite phonological knowledge required by the scorer, as well as the complexity of scoring rules used in assigning scores. Two of the simpler spelling word scoring methods (i.e., Words Spelled Correctly and Correct Letter Sequence) typically used by most teachers, school psychologists, and educational diagnosticians were used to score weekly spelling word lists administered to 6 third-grade classrooms, two fourth-grade classrooms, and one combined third-/fourth-grade classrooms in two elementary schools throughout the academic year. Results indicated a high degree of association between scores produced by the scoring methods, as well as significant correlations with annual group achievement test results in the communication arts. Tests for the sensitivity of the Correct Letter Sequence scoring method in detecting improvement across consecutive incorrectly spelled words revealed no significant improvement trend over a 9-week scoring interval, but a significant improvement trend over a 21-week scoring interval. Results suggest that both methods adequately predict achievement in language arts skills; however, the more complex Correct Letter Sequence scoring method is most useful when words to be spelled are slightly more difficult than the speller's current level of competence, and progress can be tracked throughout the academic year.

Ars dictaminis im Mittelalter und in der gegenwart

Medieval ars dictaminis or the art of correct letters writing represented one of key elements in medieval education. Although traditional correspondence takes a backseat today and is substituted by e-mails more and more, this skill is considered to be a part of the “equipment” that literates should possess even today. Topic of this paper is the comparison of medieval ars dictaminis handbooks with current manuals by comparing particular texts. Aim is to identify kinds of differences occurring in structure of medieval and nowadays handbooks, paper also focuses on changes of definition of letter during the time and how the role and function of letters in Middle Ages and today differs. Paper also considers how the rules of letter writing vary and how the approaches to ars dictaminis have changed over the time.

Mojibake - The rehearsal of word fragments in verbal recall.

Theories of verbal rehearsal usually assume that whole words are being rehearsed. However, words consist of letter sequences, or syllables, or word onset-vowel-coda, amongst many other conceptualizations of word structure. A more general term is the ‘grain size’ of word units (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005). In the current study, a new method measured the quantitative percentage of correctly remembered word structure. The amount of letters in the correct letter sequence as per cent of word length was calculated, disregarding missing or added letters. A forced rehearsal was tested by repeating each memory list four times. We tested low frequency (LF) English words versus geographical (UK) town names to control for content. We also tested unfamiliar international (INT) non-words and names of international (INT) European towns to control for familiarity. An immediate versus distributed repetition was tested with a between-subject design. Participants responded with word fragments in their written recall especially when they had to remember unfamiliar words. While memory of whole words was sensitive to content, presentation distribution and individual sex and language differences, recall of word fragments was not. There was no trade-off between memory of word fragments with whole word recall during the repetition, instead also word fragments significantly increased. Moreover, while whole word responses correlated with each other during repetition, and word fragment responses correlated with each other during repetition, these two types of word recall responses were not correlated with each other. Thus there may be a lower layer consisting of free, sparse word fragments and an upper layer that consists of language-specific, orthographically and semantically constrained words.

Evidence for an eye-movement contribution to normal foveal crowding.

Along with contour interaction, inaccurate and imprecise eye movements and attention have been suggested to contribute to poorer acuity for "crowded" versus uncrowded targets. To investigate the role of eye movements in foveal crowding, we compared percent correct letter identification for short and long lines of near-threshold letters with different separations. Five normal observers read short (4 to 6 letters) and long (10 to 12 letters) lines of near-threshold, Sloan letters with edge-to-edge letter separations of 0.5, 1, and 2 letter spaces. Percent correct letter identification for the 2 to 4 interior letters in short strings and the 8 to 10 interior letters in long strings was compared with a no-crowding condition. Letter identification was significantly worse than the no-crowding condition for long letter strings with a separation of 1 letter space and for both long and short letter strings with a separation of 0.5 letter spaces. Observers more often reported the incorrect number of letters in long than in short letter strings, even for a separation of 2 letter spaces. Similar results were obtained during straight-ahead gaze and while viewing in 30 to 40 degrees left gaze, where two of the five observers exhibited an increase in horizontal fixational instability. We argue that lower percent correct letter identification and more frequent errors in reporting the number of letters in long compared with short letter strings reflect an eye-movement contribution to foveal crowding.

Utility of the Spelling Sensitivity Score to analyze spellings of children with specific language impairment

The purpose of this study was to examine the utility of the Spelling Sensitivity Score (SSS) beyond percentage correct scoring in analyzing the spellings of children with specific language impairment (SLI). Participants were 31 children with SLI and 28 children with typical language in grades 2–4. Spellings of individual words were scored using two methods: (1) percentage correct and (2) SSS. Children with SLI scored lower than children with typical language when spelling was analyzed with percentage correct scoring and with SSS scoring. In addition, SSS scoring highlighted group differences in the nature of spelling errors. Children with SLI were more likely than children with typical language to omit elements and to represent elements with an illegal grapheme in words, whereas children with typical language were more likely than children with SLI to represent all elements with correct letters.

AN AUDIT OF THE ACCURACY OF DRUG PRESCRIPTION INFORMATION ON TRANSFER LETTERS FROM THE PAEDIATRIC INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

AimTo audit the accuracy of prescribing following transfer from a Paediatric Intensive Care Unit using electronic prescribing.MethodsHistorical data: Transfer from PICU letters sent to both external Trusts and wards within...

Cognitive workload and visual behavior in elderly drivers with hearing loss

To examine eye tracking data and compare visual behavior in individuals with normal hearing (NH) and with moderate hearing loss (HL) during two types of driving conditions: normal driving and driving while performing a secondary task. 24 participants with HL and 24 with NH were exposed to normal driving and to driving with a secondary task (observation and recall of 4 visually displayed letters). Eye movement behavior was assessed during normal driving by the following performance indicators: number of glances away from the road; mean duration of glances away from the road; maximum duration of glances away from the road; and percentage of time looking at the road. During driving with the secondary task, eye movement data were assessed in terms of number of glances to the secondary task display, mean duration of glances to the secondary task display, and maximum duration of glances to the secondary task display. The secondary task performance was assessed as well, counting the number of correct letters, the number of skipped letters, and the number of correct letters ignoring order. While driving with the secondary task, drivers with HL looked twice as often in the rear-view mirror than during normal driving and twice as often as drivers with NH regardless of condition. During secondary task, the HL group looked away from the road more frequently but for shorter durations than the NH group. Drivers with HL had fewer correct letters and more skipped letters than drivers with NH. Differences in visual behavior between drivers with NH and with HL are bound to the driving condition. Driving with a secondary task, drivers with HL spend as much time looking away from the road as drivers with NH, however with more frequent and shorter glances away. Secondary task performance is lower for the HL group, suggesting this group is less willing to perform this task. The results also indicate that drivers with HL use fewer but more focused glances away than drivers with NH, they also perform a visual scan of the surrounding traffic environment before looking away towards the secondary task display.

Assessing spelling in kindergarten: Further comparison of scoring metrics and their relation to reading skills

Early reading and spelling development share foundational skills, yet spelling assessment is underutilized in evaluating early reading. This study extended research comparing the degree to which methods for scoring spelling skills at the end of kindergarten were associated with reading skills measured at the same time as well as at the end of first grade. Five strategies for scoring spelling responses were compared: totaling the number of words spelled correctly, totaling the number of correct letter sounds, totaling the number of correct letter sequences, using a rubric for scoring invented spellings, and calculating the Spelling Sensitivity Score (Masterson & Apel, 2010b). Students (N=287) who were identified at kindergarten entry as at risk for reading difficulty and who had received supplemental reading intervention were administered a standardized spelling assessment in the spring of kindergarten, and measures of phonological awareness, decoding, word recognition, and reading fluency were administered concurrently and at the end of first grade. The five spelling scoring metrics were similar in their strong relations with factors summarizing reading subskills (phonological awareness, decoding, and word reading) on a concurrent basis. Furthermore, when predicting first-grade reading skills based on spring-of-kindergarten performance, spelling scores from all five metrics explained unique variance over the autoregressive effects of kindergarten word identification. The practical advantages of using a brief spelling assessment for early reading evaluation and the relative tradeoffs of each scoring metric are discussed.

Early literacy skills in Latvian preschool children with specific language impairment

The present study explores differences in early literacy skills of Latvian preschool children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) compared to children from general population. The participants were 21 children with diagnosis of Specific developmental disorders of speech and language (F80; ICD-10) and 21 children as matched control group (in each group: mean age=79 months, 88% boys). Both samples were selected from the adaptation and standardization study of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS Next) in Latvia (Good & Kaminski et al., 2011; Latvian version, Rascevska et al., 2013a). The results show significant differences between two groups in DIBELS Next composite score (t=3.09, p<.01), First Sound Fluency (t = 2.54, p<.05), Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (t = 2.80, p<.01), Correct Letter Sounds (t = 3.38, p<.01) and Whole Words Read (t = 3.39, p<.01) from Nonsense Word Fluency. Phoneme awareness represented by first sound and phoneme segmentation fluency and phonological decoding observed during nonsense word reading was poorer for the SLI group, albeit letter naming did not differ in both groups. No differences in letter naming might be explained due to intensive instruction the children with SLI are receiving in their institution of special education, while children from general population might not have this enhanced support.