Browsing by Subject "Attention"

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    Cultivating a growth mindset within a blended learning environment at a University in South Africa: a design-based research study
    (2024) Titus, Fahiema; Hutchings, Catherine
    This Design Based Research study attempts to unlock the spirit of personal empowerment among professional adult learners within the higher educational system through an interpretivist qualitative lens of observation and reflection. Adult Learners in this research include the educators assigned to transmit subject information and the professional development of relevant skills and competencies as required within a Blended Learning Environment. Candidates were selected from professional academic, training and learning institutions and the sample of individuals hold professional positions in their respective fields. The workshop practices were based on simplified hand, eye, body, breathing, calming, mental stimulations to enhance the awareness of their ability to self regulate their thinking, emotional and physiological processes. Furthermore, the outcomes of the research also showcase how often overlooked qualities of Human Excellence can be unhinged through Intentionality, Awareness and Attentional Training, Reflection/ Contemplation, and Mindful Learning Processes. The overall analysis and feedback sessions are drawn from the candidates' demonstrable understanding of their ability to enhance awareness of their personal perceptions, biases, internal energies, proprioception, mental states, and habitual behavioural conditioning. These components of personal change within a blended learning space are designed as part of the Foundational and Intermittent phases of application to the professional development program. Design principles and related artefacts derived from the DBR methodology provide educators and researchers a means by which educational practices are potentially optimised. In conclusion this DBR incentivises researchers, adult educators and policymakers to deepen investigations in improving professional development standards and practices within Blended Learning environments in the Higher learning institutions.
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    Open Access
    Cultivating a growth mindset within a blended learning environment at a University in South Africa: a design-based research study
    (2024) Titus, Fahiema; Hutchings, Catherine
    This Design Based Research study attempts to unlock the spirit of personal empowerment among professional adult learners within the higher educational system through an interpretivist qualitative lens of observation and reflection. Adult Learners in this research include the educators assigned to transmit subject information and the professional development of relevant skills and competencies as required within a Blended Learning Environment. Candidates were selected from professional academic, training and learning institutions and the sample of individuals hold professional positions in their respective fields. The workshop practices were based on simplified hand, eye, body, breathing, calming, mental stimulations to enhance the awareness of their ability to self regulate their thinking, emotional and physiological processes. Furthermore, the outcomes of the research also showcase how often overlooked qualities of Human Excellence can be unhinged through Intentionality, Awareness and Attentional Training, Reflection/ Contemplation, and Mindful Learning Processes. The overall analysis and feedback sessions are drawn from the candidates' demonstrable understanding of their ability to enhance awareness of their personal perceptions, biases, internal energies, proprioception, mental states, and habitual behavioural conditioning. These components of personal change within a blended learning space are designed as part of the Foundational and Intermittent phases of application to the professional development program. Design principles and related artefacts derived from the DBR methodology provide educators and researchers a means by which educational practices are potentially optimised. In conclusion this DBR incentivises researchers, adult educators and policymakers to deepen investigations in improving professional development standards and practices within Blended Learning environments in the Higher learning institutions
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    Open Access
    Effortful Control, Attention and Executive Functioning in the Context of Autism Spectrum Disorder
    (2019) Page, Teneille; Malcolm-Smith, Susan; Hamilton, Katie
    Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) involves a broad presentation of symptoms classified along continuum of severity, with core deficits in Social Affect and Restricted, Repetitive Behaviours required for formal diagnosis (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Lauritsen, 2013). The development of particular cognitive, behavioural and interpersonal difficulties seen in ASD is of great interest. Temperament offers particular value given that it influences the development of social behaviours, emotionality and self-regulation (Shiner et al., 2012). The self-regulatory temperament factor, effortful control, is known to be diminished in ASD (Garon et al., 2009, 2016) and is theorised to be related to attention and executive functioning (Rothbart & Rueda, 2005). This link is of particular interest, given that attention and executive function deficits are prominent in ASD (Craig et al., 2016; Lai et al., 2017; Sanders, Johnson, Garavan, Gill, & Gallagher, 2008). To date, however, a thorough literature search failed to yield a study which has investigated whether effortful control,attention and executive functioning are concurrently associated with ASD symptomatology.Moreover, the relationship between effortful control, attention and executive functioning is not as unambiguous as previously theorised in typical development, with little investigation into these relationships in ASD. To elucidate the association effortful control, attention and executive functioning have with ASD symptomatology, the relationship between effortful control and these cognitive variable needs to be better established empirically. Therefore the current investigation’s aims were twofold. Study One investigated the relationship of effortful control with attention and executive functions in neurotypical and ASD samples. Study Two explored the association between effortful control, attention, executive functions and core ASD deficits (i.e. Social Affect and Restricted, Repetitive Behaviours). A sample of 38 ASD and 38 neurotypical boys (aggregate-matched on key demographic factors), aged 6 - 15, and their primary caregivers were recruited. Study One considered both groups (n=76) and featured both quasi-experimental and relational investigations. Study Two focused only on the ASD sample (n=38) and used a purely relational design. Neurocognitive measures were used to assess two attention domains (i.e. attention span and sustained attention), and three executive functions (i.e. working memory, inhibition and switching). Effortful control was measured using a parent-report questionnaire and ASD core deficits were examined using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second edition (ADOS-2; Lord, Luyster, Gotham, & Guthrie, 2012). Results of Study One revealed effortful control was a significant predictor of attention span, working memory and inhibition, with ASD participants performing significantly more poorly on these cognitive domains and rated significantly more poorly on effortful control. Study Two’s results indicated that Social Affect was significantly correlated with inhibition and the interaction effect between effortful control and working memory. Furthermore, only effortful control, attention span and their interaction effect were significantly associated with Restricted Repetitive Behaviours. Specifically, effortful control was found to moderate this relationship. At high levels of effortful control, increased attention span was associated with less Restricted, Repetitive Behaviours. These findings may aid efforts to establish a predictive model for ASD core deficits on the basis of temperament and cognitive difficulties. Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Effortful Control, Attention, Executive Functions, Social Affect, Restricted Repetitive Behaviours
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    Own-Race Faces Capture Attention Faster than Other-Race Faces: Evidence from Response Time and the N2pc
    (Public Library of Science, 2015) Zhou, Guomei; Cheng, Zhijie; Yue, Zhenzhu; Tredoux, Colin; He, Jibo; Wang, Ling
    Studies have shown that people are better at recognizing human faces from their own-race than from other-races, an effect often termed the Own-Race Advantage. The current study investigates whether there is an Own-Race Advantage in attention and its neural correlates. Participants were asked to search for a human face among animal faces. Experiment 1 showed a classic Own-Race Advantage in response time both for Chinese and Black South African participants. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), Experiment 2 showed a similar Own-Race Advantage in response time for both upright faces and inverted faces. Moreover, the latency of N2pc for own-race faces was earlier than that for other-race faces. These results suggested that own-race faces capture attention more efficiently than other-race faces.
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    Paradoxical facilitation of working memory after basolateral amygdala damage
    (Public Library of Science, 2012) Morgan, Barak; Terburg, David; Thornton, Helena B; Stein, Dan J; van Honk, Jack
    Working memory is a vital cognitive capacity without which meaningful thinking and logical reasoning would be impossible. Working memory is integrally dependent upon prefrontal cortex and it has been suggested that voluntary control of working memory, enabling sustained emotion inhibition, was the crucial step in the evolution of modern humans. Consistent with this, recent fMRI studies suggest that working memory performance depends upon the capacity of prefrontal cortex to suppress bottom-up amygdala signals during emotional arousal. However fMRI is not well-suited to definitively resolve questions of causality. Moreover, the amygdala is neither structurally or functionally homogenous and fMRI studies do not resolve which amygdala sub-regions interfere with working memory. Lesion studies on the other hand can contribute unique causal evidence on aspects of brain-behaviour phenomena fMRI cannot "see". To address these questions we investigated working memory performance in three adult female subjects with bilateral basolateral amygdala calcification consequent to Urbach-Wiethe Disease and ten healthy controls. Amygdala lesion extent and functionality was determined by structural and functional MRI methods. Working memory performance was assessed using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III digit span forward task. State and trait anxiety measures to control for possible emotional differences between patient and control groups were administered. Structural MRI showed bilateral selective basolateral amygdala damage in the three Urbach-Wiethe Disease subjects and fMRI confirmed intact functionality in the remaining amygdala sub-regions. The three Urbach-Wiethe Disease subjects showed significant working memory facilitation relative to controls. Control measures showed no group anxiety differences. Results are provisionally interpreted in terms of a 'cooperation through competition' networks model that may account for the observed paradoxical functional facilitation effect.