This single-case study compared the effects of a typical practice baseline phase to those of a treatment phase. Seven students with learning disabilities (LD) in Grades 4 and 5 participated in the two-school-site study. Each student had basic word-reading proficiency and a distinct deficit in comprehension. Baseline lessons consisted of text reading with corrective feedback, a text-based summary with corrective feedback, and a daily quiz. In treatment, students read text with corrective feedback, used a graphic organizer to study and teach the content to the instructor, and completed a daily quiz. The baseline and treatment lessons were influenced by direct, systematic, and explicit instruction. Analysis indicates that an experimental effect was present for all students when the daily quiz results for baseline and treatment phases are compared. Percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) results were 100% for five students, which is characterized as a highly effective treatment according to single-case standards. Two students had minimal overlap between baseline and treatment, but their scores indicate that the treatment was effective at improving informational text learning. On a cumulative pre/post social studies test, students at School A improved from 26% to 56%, and at School B, students scored 28% on pretest and 81% on posttest. Results indicate that treatment components that were previously effective for students with LD in secondary school are promising for enhancing informational text learning for students in upper elementary school. A social validity questionnaire indicated that students perceived graphic organizers as an efficacious practice for improving learning potential. / text

This thesis consists of four independent essays, which consider different topics in information economics and political economy. The first two papers are variants of the same idea. An uninformed principal, e.g., a government, will make a decision. In order to gain more information it may consult two experts; however, these experts have a private interest in certain policies being implemented. The question is, to gain as much information as possible, should the principal consult experts who are biased in the same direction, or experts who prefer different decisions? The main result is that, as long as collusion between experts can be prevented, homogeneous panels are superior to heterogeneous ones, and this advantage increases with the experts’ informational precision. In the third paper, two firms consider entry in a new product market and must decide when to enter the market and how to design their product. Firms do not know for certain what the best design is, so both firms want to outwait the other’s decision in order to gain more information. The focus of the paper is on which firm will make the first decision. The main result is that if products are strong (strategic) substitutes, the worst informed firm makes the first decision in equilibrium. The analysis should apply to a range of other contexts, such as investors’ trading decisions or the policy choices of political candidates. The final paper asks the following question: Could it be that parties in a two-party system may benefit from using several candidates in the same election? To promote the use of multiple candidates, I assume that a party never runs the risk of having its votes split up among its candidates. Despite this, it turns out that parties have a strong incentive to restrict their number of nominees. Paradoxically, it seems that the more uncertain parties are about voter opinion, the fewer candidates they want to use. In particular, with a uniform voter distribution the optimal number of candidates is one. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2001 S. v-vii: sammanfattning, s. 1-72: 4 uppsatser

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-08-23Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:13:54Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 silva_mv_me_mar.pdf: 1273377 bytes, checksum: b36bbec5504c566d46ec5915fd963296 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Na atual sociedade globalizada e em constante modificação, o acesso à informação atualizada e confiável é de suma importância para os diversos profissionais que necessitam de tal insumo para obter sucesso em suas atividades profissionais. Para os advogados, em especial, a informação, tanto jurídica quanto de outras áreas do conhecimento, é um recurso imprescindível. Diante do exposto, objetivou-se em âmbito mais geral: identificar as características do comportamento informacional de advogados relacionadas ao desenvolvimento de suas atividades de trabalho. Em um contexto mais específico, objetivouse: a) verificar as fontes de informação utilizadas pelos advogados para identificar e obter informação; b) identificar as fontes de informação utilizadas pelos advogados; c) determinar os fatores positivos e negativos que influenciam o comportamento de busca de informação dos advogados. Para tanto, foi analisada uma amostra composta por 10 advogados que atuam na cidade de Marília e região, os quais totalizam, aproximadamente, 1000 profissionais. A coleta de dados foi realizada por meio de entrevista semi-estruturada e os dados coletados foram analisados qualitativamente. Os resultados demonstraram que as fontes de informação mais utilizadas para identificar informação são os livros; a fonte de informação mais utilizada para obter informação é o contato com colegas de profissão (conversa informal para troca de informações) e com profissionais de outras áreas; dentre as fontes de informação disponíveis em seus escritórios, a Internet é a mais utilizada e considerada a mais importante; as fontes formais de informação (Internet e livros) são as mais utilizadas para localizar informação; a maioria sente dificuldade para localizar e ter acesso à informação, principalmente quando se depara com algum assunto inovador ou desafiador; pedir auxílio nas... / In the present globalized society, which is in constantly changing, updated and reliable information access is essentially important to several professionals who need such input to be successful in their activities. Especially for lawyers, information, both legal and from other areas of knowledge is an essential resource. In this sense, it is intended in a general scope: to identify the informational behavior characteristics of lawyers related to their daily work. In a more specific context, the goals were: a) verify the sources of information used by lawyers to identify and obtain information; b) identify the sources of information used by lawyers; c) determine the positive and negative aspects that influence the informational behavior of lawyers. For such, a sample made of 10 lawyers who work in Marília and the nearby area was analyzed, representing a total of approximately 1,000 professionals. The data collection was carried out by a semi-structured interview and the collected data were qualitatively analyzed. Results show that the most common mechanism to obtain information is the coworker contact (informal chat for information exchange), and with professionals from other areas; among the sources of information available in their offices, the Internet is the most popular and considered the most important; the formal sources of information (the Internet and books) are the most used; most of the professionals have difficulty to find and access information, mainly when they come across some innovative or challenging subject; ask for help in the activities of information seeking is a very common practice to most of them; several aspects may influence informational behavior, but the one that is positive with the greatest influence is related to people (family and office coworkers). On the other hand, the negative aspects are related to technology. It was concluded that the proposed goals... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

The thesis explores the relationships between knowledge and knowing in contemporary 21st century information society, using the foundation of the Faculty of Media Design & New Media Art at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milano as a research apparatus. This Faculty was established between 2003 and 2012, in Milano, Italy. The starting point of the research was established in the hypothesis that technics have tertiarised memory (Stiegler B., 1994), that knowledge is always founded on an ontological pessimism (Queneau R., 1933, Lyotard F., 1979) and on a perpetual process of the generation of meaning (Gadda C., 1923-29, Foucault M., 1966). Knowledge is always and inevitably linked to the technics with which it is passed on. Pedagogy becomes a questioning of the object of knowledge, which transmutes into a definition of the ways it can be visualised. This research then, setting out from a pessimistic position in relation to knowledge and truth, amplifies them to infinite possible forms and therefore causes a dual shift of philosophy towards art and of pedagogy towards hermeneutics. The methodology consisted of a textual and visual description of a territory in a cartography of meaning, seen as the relation between intuition and the way in which practices as knowledges, arts, form remnants.

ackground Previous research has shown that parents of children with learning disabilities (LD) and/ or autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are more psychologically distressed than parents of neuro‐typical children. The literature suggests that there is significant variation in the rates of maladjustment within this population, and the research into factors that influence parental adjustment is developing. This study aims to add to the research into the factors influencing adjustment to parenting a child with LD/ ASD. In particular, relatively under‐researched concepts such as parental acceptance, time since diagnosis, and the influence of informational support to understand a child’s needs, will be explored. Method Two hundred and thirty five parents of children aged 4‐19 participated in a questionnaire study, conducted through local additional support needs (ASN) schools and bases. Measures of psychological adjustment were gathered alongside measures of acceptance, positive gains, level of child’s challenging behaviour and demographic information. Results Along with other variables, psychological acceptance and was found to account for significant variance in parental adjustment. There were no observed relationships between adjustment and time since diagnosis, or level of informational support. Conclusions The results have implications for the understanding of the role of acceptance in parent adjustment. Implications for intervention development and future research directions are discussed, in addition to the methodological limits of the study.

This study measured the effects of reading aloud informational books to fourth and sixth grade students in the inner city.

There is an ongoing debate among psychologists regarding the psychological factors underlying moral judgments. Rationalists argue that informational assumptions (i.e. ideological beliefs about how the world works) play a causal role in shaping moral judgments whereas intuitionists argue that informational assumptions are post hoc justifications for judgments made automatically by innate intuitions. In order to compare these two perspectives, the author conducted two studies in which informational assumptions related to ingroups and outgroups varied across conditions. In Study 1, political conservatives and liberals completed the moral relevance questionnaire while imagining they were in the US, Iran, or no specific country. Keeping in line with the predictions of the intuitionist perspective, the results showed that the judgments of conservatives and liberals did not significantly differ across conditions. Study 2 used a more in depth manipulation in which participants read a vignette about a government (US, Iran, or the fictional country of Kasbara) violating the rights of a minority group. As in Study 1, the results support the intuitionist perspective--the judgments of conservatives and liberals did not significantly differ across conditions. These findings play a small part in clarifying the role of informational assumptions in moral judgments.

The Regulation of Credit Rating Agencies The thesis is concentrated on the regulation of credit rating agencies and aims to contribute to a current discussion regarding the future of credit rating agencies. A primary focus of the work was to explore whether a negative role of credit rating agencies in current crisis was caused by their insufficient, unnecessary or unsuitable regulation. An evaluation of sufficiency of newly adopted regulation with respect to the effective functioning of the rating market was chosen as an additional purpose of research. For the fulfillment of the stated aim analytical and comparative methods and synthesis were used. The style of the thesis falls within the Law and Economics approach. The research is based on EU and US legal norms, legislative documents of the European Commission and legal jurisprudence. Part I describes the emergence, development and the functioning of credit rating agencies, structure of rating market and legal meaning of the rating. Part II analyzes the ratio for regulation of credit rating agencies from the perspective of economic analysis of law. Mainly, whether agencies fulfill their function, what could potentially restrain them and how can be regulation helpful in this field. Part III compares and examines current regulatory reform of credit...

Magister Artium - MA / Adolescence is a phase when youth engage in risk-taking behaviour, which could result in poor physical and psychological adjustment. Risk behaviour is a result of poor decision- making. Decision-making is associated with exploration and commitment, also referred to as identity styles. During the phase of developing an identity style, parenting is challenging; however, research reveals that parental involvement, as well as a more positive approaches to parenting, have been observed to influence child behaviour and outcomes. For parenting and identity styles, this is not very clear. Therefore, the aim of this current study was to assess the effect of parental involvement on the identity styles of adolescents. The study employed a quantitative, cross-sectional, correlational research design. The respondents were conveniently sampled. The final sample was Grade 10 learners in the Metro East Education District, with a mean age of 16.01 (SD=1.04). Data were collected through a self-reported questionnaire, which comprised three parts: demographic details of participants, Parent Involvement Mechanisms Measure, and Identity Styles Scale. Data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The results revealed that informational identity style was the most prevalent identity style, which was significantly and positively predicted, with 18% of variance. For mothers, maternal modelling and maternal instruction significantly predicted the informational style. For fathers, paternal reinforcement significantly and positively predicted commitment style, with 14% of variance. Recommendations are provided based on the findings of this current study.

Civil disputes between doctor and patient in medical healthcare The issue of civil disputes between doctor and patient in medical healthcare is characterized by a high degree of interdependence of substantive and procedural questions. The main issue here is inequality between doctor and patient in their relationship, which is based more on factual inequality than inequality in rights. The patient as consumer and therefore the weaker party has limited access to relevant information concerning the subject of the relationship between doctor and patient. On the other hand, a doctor is a subject which has in its power almost all the relevant information. As can be seen, for a given relationship is characteristic a high degree of inequality of information. This inequality, which arises in the relationship always, is not sufficiently addressed by the substantive regulation and its effects are present in subsequent court proceedings in the form of an information deficit. Intention of this paper is to present the fundamentals of the relationship between physician and patient, the reasons for the information deficit and its consequences in legal proceedings and ways of its compensation. The aim is to assess whether the current regulation is to ensure equality between doctor and patient with emphasis on the...