Fragmented Picture Research Articles

Assessment of Nondeclarative Learning in Severe Alzheimer Dementia

Although patients with Alzheimer dementia (AD) have impaired explicit memory, more automatic, implicit aspects of learning and memory may be relatively preserved. However, neuropsychological tests for the assessment of implicit memory are lacking. This study examines a newly developed test, the Implicit Memory Test, in 28 patients with severe AD (mini-mental state examination 5 to 12) and 22 cognitively unimpaired matched controls (mini-mental state examination 25 to 29). The Implicit Memory Test consists of visually presented word (stem-completion) and picture (fragmented picture identification) subtests, each comprising 3 learning trials and a delayed test. Explicit memory was also assessed, using the verbal paired-associate learning subtest from the Wechsler Memory Scale and the Visual Association Test. Patients with AD obtained a floor performance on both explicit memory tests, whereas a significant learning curve was found for both the stem-completion and the fragmented pictures subtests of the Implicit Memory Test. Delayed testing on the fragmented pictures subtest showed a preserved performance that may have been mediated by implicit learning. Delayed performance on the stem-completion subtest, however, showed clear memory decay that suggests contamination by explicit memory function, at least in the controls. These findings extend the earlier results on word-stem completion and fragmented picture identification in patients with mild-to-moderate AD and indicate that residual learning capacity can be assessed in severe AD.

Promoting the Implementation of Evidence‐Based Practice: A Literature Review Focusing on the Role of Nursing Leadership

Despite a growing interest in evidence-based practice (EBP), the implementation into clinical practice of knowledge derived from research has proved to be a cumbersome process. Additionally, the literature seems to present a fragmented picture with research mainly focusing on a few factors of possible importance, among which leadership appears to be one of the more important. Thus, this study aimed to systematically review the literature regarding leadership and its possible influence on the process of implementing EBP. A literature review was conducted. Electronic database searches were conducted to identify studies on leadership, administrators, managers, implementation, evidence-based and nursing. The search identified 43 potentially relevant papers, of which 36 were excluded after an appraisal was performed by two independent reviewers. Results were extracted and synthesised into a narrative text. Seven papers were included in the literature review. The findings can be divided into three major areas: (1) characteristics of the leader, (2) characteristics of the organisation and (3) characteristics of the culture. Our findings indicate that leadership is vital for the process of implementing EBP in nursing and also highlights the possible importance of the organisation and the culture in which the leader operates. These factors together with their characteristics were interpreted to be intrinsic in the creation of a nursing milieu that is open and responsive to the implementation of EBP. Although there seems to be scholarly agreement that leadership is a vital part of the process of implementing EBP, more rigorous research is needed concerning the possible role of the leader. Our findings also indicate that leadership cannot be studied in isolation or without being clearly defined.

Exploring innovating cultures in small and medium-sized enterprises: Findings from Central Switzerland

To date, knowledge about innovating culture in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) remains a puzzle. In literature, entrepreneurship studies focus primarily on the entrepreneur or founder in start-ups. Most other SME innovation studies deliver a fragmented picture as they investigate singular aspects of innovating culture. Therefore, studies exploring the role of culture in SME innovation holistically are rare. This article presents the findings from a longitudinal study exploring innovating cultures in SMEs. The study applied an explorative research design based upon semi-structured and narrative interviews with those responsible for innovation management in 85 Central Swiss SMEs. From this data, four different SME innovation profiles representing clearly discernible innovating cultures were developed. The findings provide in-depth insights into SME innovation reality, thereby enhancing the understanding of the role of culture in SME innovation and providing a framework for improving innovation management.

Administration of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) enhances visual-spatial performance in postmenopausal women.

The current article examines the effect of administering dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) on visual-spatial performance in postmenopausal women (N = 24, ages 55-80). The concurrent reduction of serum DHEA levels and visual-spatial performance in this population, coupled with the documented effects of DHEA's androgenic metabolites on visual-spatial performance, suggests that DHEA administration may enhance visual-spatial performance. The current experiment used a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design in which 50 mg of oral DHEA was administered daily in the drug condition to explore this hypothesis. Performance on the Mental Rotation, Subject-Ordered Pointing, Fragmented Picture Identification, Perceptual Identification, Same-Different Judgment, and Visual Search tasks and serum levels of DHEA, DHEAS, testosterone, estrone, and cortisol were measured in the DHEA and placebo conditions. In contrast to prior experiments using the current methodology that did not demonstrate effects of DHEA administration on episodic and short-term memory tasks, the current experiment demonstrated large beneficial effects of DHEA administration on Mental Rotation, Subject-Ordered Pointing, Fragmented Picture Identification, Perceptual Identification, and Same-Different Judgment. Moreover, DHEA administration enhanced serum levels of DHEA, DHEAS, testosterone, and estrone, and regression analyses demonstrated that levels of DHEA and its metabolites were positively related to cognitive performance on the visual-spatial tasks in the DHEA condition.

Product development: An integrative tool and activity research framework

The paper addresses research issues in new product development (NPD) activity, practices and tools, in particular the need to integrate the set of tools practitioners use with the praxis of how they use these tools in day-to-day activity. It draws on the strategy-as-practice literature to derive a model that integrates the concepts of NPD practices, practitioners and praxis. It then draws on a systematic review and synthesis of existing NPD literature to develop a generic multi-stage, 12-perspective organizing framework for NPD activity, and provides examples from the literature of twelve corresponding classes of NPD tools. The literature currently lacks such a framework and hence uses individually defined schemes, resulting in a fragmented and incomplete picture. We have designed our generic framework so that it can both integrate existing findings and stimulate research that overcomes this fragmentation. We use the framework and our model of NPD practitioners, practices and project execution to articulate a comprehensive set of research challenges in NPD tool adoption and use. Our 12-perspective framework could also provide a basis for practitioners to develop or redesign NPD processes for specific situations and purposes.

A theory-based logic model for innovation policy and evaluation

Current policy and program rationale, objectives, and evaluation use a fragmented picture of the innovation process. This presents a challenge since in the United States officials in both the executive and legislative branches of government see innovation, whether that be new products or processes or business models, as the solution to many of the problems the country faces. The logic model is a popular tool for developing and describing the rationale for a policy or program and its context. This article sets out to describe generic logic models of both the R&D process and the diffusion process, building on existing theory-based frameworks. Then a combined, theory-based logic model for the innovation process is presented. Examples of the elements of the logic, each a possible leverage point or intervention, are provided, along with a discussion of how this comprehensive but simple model might be useful for both evaluation and policy development. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

“Where do you Think the Water Comes From?” Teacher–Pupil Dialogues about Water as an Environmental Phenomenon

This article presents results from a study of 36 pupils (8–10 years of age) in face‐to‐face conversations with their teachers about water as an environmental phenomenon based on a photograph of a rainforest. The teachers’ rather vague goal was to have the pupils talk about the water cycle. The sessions were audio‐recorded and analyzed with respect to: (1) scaffolding strategies used by the teachers, (2) possible implications of these strategies on the pupils’ sense‐making, and (3) what accounts of the water cycle as a school‐science learning‐content were made. Three different patterns of scaffolding strategies were found. Some pupils did not even come close to talking about the water cycle, whereas others arrived at a rather fragmented picture.

Identification of fragmented object outlines: A dynamic interplay between different component processes

The speed of fragmented picture identification depends on a large number of factors whose effects might change in time during an identification attempt. Using survival analysis and fixed fragmentation levels, previous research has shown that effects of complexity, fragment curvature, and time interact. Here, we study the effects of presentation duration and dynamic fragmentation levels. Fragmented object outlines were presented repetitively every 2.25 s, and at each presentation longer fragments were shown (possibly until closure). We recorded the lowest presentation number (minimum 1, maximum 10) that resulted in correct naming by the participants (N=84). Survival analysis was employed to investigate whether and when different factors like presentation duration, complexity, object category (natural vs. artifactual), symmetry, proximity, and fragment curvature influence correct identification. The results confirm and extend previous findings, and are interpreted within a dynamic, interactive processing framework.

Shared Conversations Across Design

Introduction Design is an ubiquitous part of human life, from mundane, day-to-day activities to the most sophisticated concerns of society. Yet it is generally studied from specific disciplinary viewpoints, where a field develops strongly focused academic traditions to meet the needs of that field. For example, engineering design research places significant emphasis on prescribing how complex design processes should be carried out;1, 2 architectural research is greatly concerned with the creation of design ideas;3, 4 product designers are concerned with generating and meeting customer needs;5 fashion designers are interested in the cultural context of their products.6 This characterization of different interests in different fields is neither rigid nor exclusive—there is significant overlap between the interests of particular fields. Nevertheless, it draws attention to a fragmented picture of design as a whole. This paper is concerned with the experience of being a designer and doing design, regardless of the discipline in which the designer works. We want to draw a rich picture of what it means to be a designer by comparing design practices across projects and design domains. Previous researchers have more often aimed to establish general criteria by which core concepts in design research and theory-making can be related to designing and designs.7, 8 They have compared design activities in order to define the general principles across all of design. Other work does not always set out explicitly to be generic but does so by implication when careful analysis of design instances leads to general principles of design, as in the general paradigm of the reflective practitioner, which was derived from a detailed study of conceptual design in architecture.9 By contrast, our aim is to consider the patterns of behavior that designers display across a variety of fields. Here we may find that while professional concerns, such as the need to meet customer requirements or general market trends, are often the same, their manifestations can be very different. Thus, we have developed a research method that brings to design research the benefits of phenomenological analysis, emphasizing comparison of personal experience rather than trying to describe truths that are independent of any person. As described in a previous paper,10 we ran a series of

Giving wings to logic: Mary Everest Boole's propagation and fulfilment of a legacy

In his influential Laws of Thought (1854), the mathematician George Boole presented a formulation of logic using algebraic expressions and manipulations. His widow, Mary Everest Boole, undertook an ambitious project of disseminating his ideas by introducing lay audiences to the law of pulsation, a prescription for correct reasoning that incorporates two of his fundamental insights. Contemporary scholarship presents a fragmented picture of Mary Boole, regarding her largely as a source of information on the religio-psychological impetus for her husband's contributions to logic, among other matters. Some studies rightly acknowledge that her better-known commentary on educational reform relates to a promotion of the Laws of Thought, yet these typically fail to expand on how she articulated such relationships for readers. This paper provides a more complete understanding of her efforts by examining texts on various subjects motivated by a dedication to propagating as much as fulfilling the intellectual legacy she associated with her husband. In doing so it considers her interventions - like those undertaken by other Victorian women who sought to cultivate scientific enterprises - within a contextual framework broad enough to include strategic responses to cultural realities and possibilities.

Agerbruget i enkeltgravskultur – Senneolitikum og ældre bronzealder i Jylland belyst ud fra plantemakrofossil

Agerbruget i enkeltgravskultur – Senneolitikum og ældre bronzealder i Jylland belyst ud fra plantemakrofossil

Bone loss in CF: a fragmented picture

Bone loss in CF: a fragmented picture

Henry Cavendish and Asperger’s syndrome: A new understanding of the scientist

Although it has recently been suggested that Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) suffered from Asperger’s syndrome (James, 2005; Sacks, 2001), there has yet to be a systematic exploration of this claim. For various reasons, Cavendish is considered here through the diagnostic framework described by Gillberg (1989), with further support from the DSM-IV (APA, 1994). The potential for such a retro-diagnosis is evident, given Cavendish’s biographers’ lament of Cavendish as the ‘incomplete man’: the oddly misanthropic man characterised by negations. Such an impression is evident in the memoirs of Cavendish’s contemporaries but finds its best expression in Wilson’s (1851) biography. With a new and cautious interpretation from an Asperger’s syndrome perspective, this fragmented picture dissipates and Cavendish emerges as a man of remarkable intellect whose syndrome stunted his social development and expression, yet so crucially enabled his research into a paradoxically catholic taste of scientific study. Topics relevant to a ‘retro-diagnosis’ are first addressed, before Cavendish is compared to Gillberg’s and the DSM-IV criteria.

Levels of Processing and Amnesia Affect Perceptual Priming in Fragmented Picture Naming

In this paper we examine the impact of amnesia and of levels of processing on implicit memory by using a well-established fragmented picture-naming test with proven adequate reliability. A group of patients with amnesia of non-Korsakoff etiology was compared to a control group. While amnesic patients showed a deficit in perceptual priming, both groups showed a comparable level of processing effect. Our results confirm that when a reliable implicit memory test is used amnesia and levels of processing can both be shown to affect implicit memory performance. Thus, functional dissociations between explicit and implicit memory tests may be the consequence of a methodological artifact, that is, a difference in the reliability of the tests.

Neuroanatomical and cognitive mediators of age-related differences in perceptual priming and learning.

Our objectives were to assess age differences in perceptual repetition priming and perceptual skill learning and to determine whether they are mediated by cognitive resources and regional cerebral volume differences. Fragmented picture identification paradigm allows the study of both priming and learning within the same task. The authors presented this task to 169 adults (ages 18-80), assessed working memory and fluid intelligence, and measured brain volumes of regions that were deemed relevant to those cognitive skills. The data were analyzed within a hierarchical path modeling framework. In addition to finding age-related decrease in both perceptual priming and learning, the authors observed several dissociations with regards to their neural and cognitive mediators. Larger visual cortex volume was associated with greater repetition priming, but not perceptual skill learning, and neither process depended upon hippocampal volume. In contrast, the volumes of the prefrontal gray and white matter were differentially related to both processes via direct and indirect effects of cognitive resources. The results indicate that age-related differences in perceptual priming and skill learning have dissociable cognitive and neural correlates.

A fragmented picture: reflections on the photographic practices of young people

Research on children and youth increasingly features young people's photographs and/or young people as photographers. While this suggests that quite a lot is known about young people's relationships to photographs and camera technologies, this is not the case. Following an overview of studies that engage with young photographers, this article demonstrates why still very little is known about young people's photographic practices – that is, the range of ways and media through which young people take, feature in, and use photographs. The author argues that this gap in knowledge needs to be addressed. Important aspects of childhood, youth and growing up, including identity, belonging and memory, are often experienced and/or expressed in part through photographs and photography.

Perceptual priming does not transfer interhemispherically in the acallosal brain

Acallosal participants usually do not display any disconnection signs in tasks requiring an explicit or declarative type of response. They can accurately compare stimuli placed in each hand and they perform normally on lateralized recognition tasks. They, however, show impairment in tasks assessing interdependent motor control, bilateral coordination and they are also unable to intermanually transfer an implicit procedural motor skill. These deficits suggest that compensation might be limited when a motor component is involved. Alternately, it is also possible that interhemispheric transmission in callosal agenesis might be limited when implicit or unconscious processes are involved (Berlucchi et al. in Neuropsychologia 33:923-936, 1995; De Guise et al. in Brain 122:1049-1062, 1999). The aim of the present study was to assess interhemispheric transfer in two distinct nondeclarative tasks, namely visuoperceptual skill learning and perceptual priming, with a lateralized version of the fragmented picture task developed by Snodgrass et al. (Behav Res Methods Inst Comp 19:270-274, 1987) that did not involve any motor component. The performance of five acallosal and one early-callosotomized individuals was compared to that of control participants divided into four groups (n = 10) according to which hemisphere was trained (left or right) and which response mode was used (manual or verbal). Visuoperceptual skill learning was observed in all control groups except for the group submitted to training of the left hemisphere in the manual modality of response. The acallosal and early-callosotomized participants did not show any implicit learning of the visuoperceptual skill on any of the conditions. The evaluation of the perceptual priming effect in the second part of the testing revealed that the priming effect was restricted to the trained hemisphere in participants without corpus callosum, as opposed to all neurogically intact participants who presented interhemispheric transfer of the priming effect. These findings indicate that the compensatory pathways, most probably subcortical commissures, are insufficient to allow interhemispheric transfer of perceptual priming, confirming the limits of neural plasticity in the absence of the corpus callosum. They also support the dissociation between declarative and nondeclarative memory in the split-brain and acallosal participants suggested by Berlucchi et al. (1995) and observed by De Guise et al. (Brain 122:1049-1062, 1999). These results are further discussed within the context of neurobiological theories of memory systems.

Marrying Family Law to the Nation

This paper revisits the creation of the modern Greek state in the early nineteenth century and the role that family law played in the process of generating a sense of national identity. According to the mainstream legal historical narrative Greeks managed to survive as a nation during the Ottoman years thanks to the consistent application of family law rules by the Orthodox Church. This paper reinterprets the standard narrative as the result of the institutional compromises struck between the Orthodox Church, westernizing revolutionary Greeks and local leaders at the moment of creation of the Greek state, rather than a reflection of the legal realities on the ground. It argues that competition between the Orthodox Church, Islamic judges, and local secular leaders on precisely the issues that the Church considered under its exclusive jurisdiction (marriage, divorce, inheritance) had resulted in a highly fragmented legal picture right before the creation of the Greek state. Despite this fragmentation, the first regent for judicial affairs of the nascent state, Bavarian Georg Ludwig von Maurer, argued in his seminal book Greek People that Greek Orthodox canon law had been applied consistently throughout the territories of the Greek state and that the Greeks has survived as a nation partly thanks to the efforts of the Church which saved the Greeks from barbarism. The institutional compromise he then fashioned for Church/State relations rewarded the former, by making it an important institutional player on marriage and divorce in the new state. The last part of the paper discusses the importance of revisiting the history of the state's role in generating narratives of national identity for European politics, at a moment when the distribution of resources between European citizens and non European, often Muslim, non citizens living and working in Europe is increasingly justified or tacitly accepted through appeals to notions of concrete, coherent national identities. The dynamics of relying on a named or unnamed uncivilized other against whom identity formation takes place seems to be repeating itself today with a vengeance in the case of Turkey's accession to the European Union, and the thinly veiled vs. barbarism discursive themes emerging there. Not accidentally, they are heavily concentrated in the field of family law. Without suggesting that revisiting history will solve current political problems by deductive magic it can at least help push against the more essentialist, clash of civilization versions of identity that have remade their appearance in political discussions in Europe.

Performance Measurement Innovation in English Planning Authorities

Much scholarly and practical policy work has been carried out in recent years on evidence-based policy making and measurement-based performance management. Yet research on performance measurement in spatial planning is still rare. The ‘Best Value’ performance management framework imposed by the UK central government has precipitated a flurry of initiatives amongst English local planning authorities. This article reports on innovations in performance measurement amongst some of these local authorities, reviewing the objectives and mechanisms of measurement, as well as the drivers and inhibitors of measurement behaviour. The research reflects a nationally fragmented picture of measurement and uneven innovation within and amongst authorities, but highlights a number of initiatives that show promise as the basis upon which to develop a more holistic framework for measurement in the future, both in the UK and elsewhere.

Implicit and Explicit Memory in Children With Congenital and Acquired Brain Disorder.

Implicit and explicit memory were examined in 8- to 15-year-old children with myelomeningocele and shunted hydrocephalus, severe traumatic brain injuries, or orthopedic injuries. Each group included between 22 and 29 children. Children completed a fragmented picture identification task to assess perceptual priming and a semantic decision-making task to assess conceptual priming. Each task also assessed procedural learning as well as explicit recall and recognition. All 3 groups showed significant perceptual and semantic priming of similar magnitude. In contrast, both brain-disordered groups displayed poorer explicit memory than did the comparison group. No group showed significant procedural learning on either task. Age and IQ were stronger predictors of explicit recall than of implicit memory. The findings indicate that implicit memory is relatively intact in many children with congenital and acquired brain disorders, despite deficits in explicit memory, and support the existence of separate memory systems in children.