2.5 Masking and attention Before I summarise the material in this section, and we move on to consider attentional processes with clearly-seen displays, it would be appropriate to consider the relevance of the masking studies to the issue of attention. We began the whole subject by enquiring about the fate of material which was, in principle, available for processing, but happened not to be at the focus of attention. Somehow we have moved into a different enquiry, concerning the fate of material that a participant was
2.3 Towards a theory of parallel processing When people are asked to guess about masked material, they are commonly able to provide some information, but it often lacks detail. For example, if participants in a Sperling-type experiment have recalled three letters, but are pressed for more, then they can often provide one or two. However, they generally do not know information such as whereabouts in the display the letters occurred, or what colour they were. These, of course, are exactly the kinds of detail that can be used to select it
References 3.4 Biological approaches Certain kinds of psychological disturbances may be seen as ‘malfunctions’ of the brain. If a psychological problem has an obvious biological explanation, then it may be possible to direct therapeutic approaches at this level. However, as we have seen, it is difficult to identify precise biological causes for complex psychological phenomena. Even if this were possible, it would not always be practicable to use treatments to change the underlying biological factors. Genetic ‘explanationsâ 3.5.1 Expectancy versus effect One of the biggest problems in evaluating psychological interventions is that even if a treatment appears to ‘work’ it can still be difficult to ascertain whether the results were a consequence of the treatment itself. The improvement might have occurred anyway, with or without the treatment, or the apparent benefits might have resulted from other factors, such as being able to discuss the difficulties with a professional who understands. Any treatment can lead to expectations of i 2.2.2 ‘Visual deficit’ hypotheses Samuel Orton was one of the earliest and most influential researchers into dyslexia, although he used the term strephosymbolia – literally meaning ‘twisted symbols’. He noticed that children with specific reading difficulties often wrote letters back to front, confused letters such as ‘b’ and ‘d’, and would swap the position of letters within a word during spelling (e.g. ‘was’ might be written ‘saw’). From these and other observations, he suggested that their read 3.5.2 Pre-post test studies Another method for evaluating the effectiveness of a therapy is to use a pre-post test design. This is where a group of people is assessed before and after a programme of intervention. Ideally, these people would be matched to a control group who are also tested twice, but do not receive the same (or any) intervention during that period. However, as with randomised controlled trials, there are ethical issues if it becomes clear that the intervention is having an adverse affect on the e 2.2.1 The phonological processing deficit Recall Alexander Faludy's difficulties in learning to read and write, and the other behavioural characteristics associated with having dyslexia. You might have noticed that many features of dyslexia point to a difficulty with some aspects of memory. That is, people with dyslexia have difficulty with tasks that require short-term memory processing such as mental arithmetic, writing and learning new information. However, these tasks have an additional feature in common: they contain a phonologi Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: identify and discuss the issues that relate to the definition, explanation and remediation of ‘abnormal’ psychological functioning understand the complexities involved in identifying, explaining and managing dyslexia. Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence Course image: Author(s): Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: explain the composition of governing bodies and to consider the respective roles of the ‘officers’ of the governing body understand the sharing of the governing body's workload within an agreed formal committee structure develop governors as effective managers of their role through critical self-evaluation encourage governors to undertake appropriate training as a means of establi 5.6.2 Accessibility design guidelines Listed below is a selection of accessibility guidelines that offer a starting point for your own research into the guidelines available for designing accessible, user-friendly products. 5.2.2 Key accessibility principles Below are listed 10 principles for accessibility. These principles underpin many of the sets of accessibility guidelines available, which are referred to in ‘Design guidelines and their limitations’. 1. Keyboard operation: the ability to operate applications fully via the keyboard. This means supporting the standard keyboard shortcuts available for the operating system, such as Alt+F4 to close a wi 4.5.1 Don't – alter courses to the disadvantage of non-disabled students Educators are not expected to make changes that would make the course less effective for most other students. For example, audioconferencing may be a valuable tool that has a positive effect on students’ grades. In this case, you would not be expected to abandon it, even if the audioconferencing cannot be made accessible for deaf students. Health and safety for all students also has to be maintained, although it is rare for there to be a conflict. 4.4.1 Do – anticipate that there may be disabled students Every subject area is likely to have potential disabled students. Regardless of any feeling that you may have that students with particular disabilities will never want to do your course, you have to consider that they might apply and that you have a duty to consider your response. 3.3.4 Screen readers and speech synthesisers A refreshable Braille display is a row of cells each containing pins that represent Braille dots. These pins are raised or lowered to form Braille letters. The screen reader program sends text a line at a time or as set by the user. The hardware is expensive, a 40 character display costs about £4000 ($7000, €6000); so this option is most often used by those in employment. Its main advantage over speech output is that refreshable Braille distinguishes between individual characters, so there 2.5.1 References Channel 4 (undated) ‘Watch your language’ [online], London, Channel 4 Television, www.channel4.com/life/microsites/B/bornfreak/language.htm (Accessed 31 July 2007). DEMOS (2003) website http://jarmin.com/demos/. DEMOS (2002) ‘Disability Awareness’ module [online], Manchester, DEMOS Project, http://jarmin.com/ de 2.1 Communication aids Communication aids are devices to enable those with l 1.2.2 Usability The second factor is good practice. In general terms, and business terms, it is good practice to make a product available to as wide a market as possible. A design that incorporates the requirements for disabled students is likely to be more accessible and useful for non-disabled students than a design without such consideration. One example would be a user interface that is usable by a blind person will also be usable by a person whose eyes are busy (for example people who are doing a task t 3 The challenge of change …although we may be striving to turn a profession that has the inertia of a supertanker, as individuals each of us is a speed boat that can turn on a dime… (Pate and Hohn (1994), p. 217) The American authors of the quote above suggest that PE needs to change so that it places primary emphasis on the promotion of lifelong exercise. However, they consider that this could be slow and difficult
