Sabine Müller / Marcus Pietsch / Wilfried Bos (Hrsg.): Schulinspektion in Deutschland, Eine Zwischenbilanz aus empirischer Sicht. Münster / New York / München / Berlin: Waxmann 2011 [Rezension]

Rezension von: Sabine Müller / Marcus Pietsch / Wilfried Bos (Hrsg.): Schulinspektion in Deutschland, Eine Zwischenbilanz aus empirischer Sicht, Münster / New York / München / Berlin: Waxmann 2011 (262 S.; ISBN 978-3-8309-2542-2)

CIL 6.1284-1285 – Metrical epitaph on a sarcophagus for Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus

Photographs and translation

CIL 6.1286 – Metrical epitaph for Lucius Cornelius Scipio, son of Barbatus

Photograph

CIL 6.1287 – Metrical epitaph for Lucius Cornelius Scipio, son of Barbatus

Photographs, notes by A.E. Gordon, and translation by A.J. Heisserer

CIL 6.1288 – Metrical epitaph for Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of Publius

Photograph and notes by A.E. Gordon

CIL 6.1289 (bottom) + 6.1294 (top) – Metrical epitaph for Lucius Cornelius Scipio, son of Gnaeus, grandson of Gnaeus

Photograph and notes by A.E. Gordon

CIL 14.4182a – Dedication to Diana by Marcus Livius

Photograph

CIL 3.7234 – Inscribed base for equestrian (?) statue for L. Cornelius Sulla

Photographs and notes by A.E. Gordon

CIL 3.7235 – Inscribed statue base for L. Cornelius Sulla

Photograph and notes by A.E. Gordon

CIL 3.14147.5 – Trilingual dedication to the dei patriei and the Nile by C. Cornelius Gallus, first prefect of Egypt

Photographs and notes by A.E. Gordon

Effects of efficient fronto-temporal circuitry on lexical ambiguity resolution: converging evidence from cross-age comparisons in eye-tracking and ERP data

Eye-tracking was used to examine how younger and older adults use syntactic and semantic information to disambiguate noun/verb (NV) homographs (e.g., park). We find that young adults exhibit inflated first fixations to NV-homographs when only syntactic cues are available for disambiguation (i.e., in syntactic prose). This effect is eliminated with the addition of disambiguating semantic information. Older adults (60+) as a group fail to show the first fixation effect in syntactic prose; they instead reread NV homographs longer. This pattern mirrors that in prior event-related potential work (Lee & Federmeier, 2009, 2011), which reported a sustained frontal negativity to NV-homographs in syntactic prose for young adults, which was eliminated by semantic constraints. The frontal negativity was not observed in older adults as a group, although older adults with high verbal fluency showed the young-like pattern. Analyses of individual differences in eye-tracking patterns revealed a similar effect of verbal fluency in both young and older adults: high verbal fluency groups of both ages show larger first fixation effects, while low verbal fluency groups show larger downstream costs (rereading and/or refixating NV homographs). Jointly, the eye-tracking and ERP data suggest that effortful meaning selection recruits frontal brain areas important for suppressing contextually inappropriate meanings, which also slows eye movements. Efficacy of fronto-temporal circuitry, as captured by verbal fluency, predicts the success of engaging these mechanisms in both young and older adults. Failure to recruit these processes requires compensatory rereading or leads to comprehension failures (Lee & Federmeier, in press).

Adaptive and Maladaptive Implications of Reinforcement Learning Processes: Fronto-Striatal Loops and Behavioural Correlates

That humans and animals learn from interaction with the environment is a foundational idea underlying nearly all theories of learning and intelligence. Learning that certain outcomes are associated with specific actions or stimuli (both internal and external), is at the very core of the capacity to adapt behaviour to environmental changes. In the present work, appetitive and aversive reinforcement learning paradigms have been used to investigate the fronto-striatal loops and behavioural correlates of adaptive and maladaptive reinforcement learning processes, aiming to a deeper understanding of how cortical and subcortical substrates interacts between them and with other brain systems to support learning. By combining a large variety of neuroscientific approaches, including behavioral and psychophysiological methods, EEG and neuroimaging techniques, these studies aim at clarifying and advancing the knowledge of the neural bases and computational mechanisms of reinforcement learning, both in normal and neurologically impaired population.