ALEX®: a mobile Adult Literacy Experiential Learning application

An alarmingly high number of adults in the world's most developed countries are linguistically functionally illiterate. The research presented in this paper describes ALEX©, an ongoing attempt to successfully develop an innovative assistive, mobile, experiential language-learning application to support the daily literacy education and needs of such adults, anywhere, anytime. We introduce a set of guidelines we have collated to inform the design of mobile assistive technologies, introduce our application and describe the design activities to date that have led to the development of our current application. We present this overview in the hope that it is useful to others working in the fledgling domains of mobile assistive technology design and/or mobile experiential language-learning technologies.

Predicting adult occupational environments from childhood personality traits

To test aspects of a theory of the role of personality and gender on the development of vocational interests and their subsequent effects on adult occupational choices, the authors of this study examined associations among childhood personality traits, gender, and occupational environments more than 40 years later. Participants (N = 587) were assessed on the Big Five by their teachers when the participants were between 6 and 12 years old. In middle-age (late 40s), the participants reported their occupation. Holland's (1997) RIASEC vocational types (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional) were used to characterize the job environments of reported occupations. Childhood Openness/Intellect and Conscientiousness, but no other Big Five traits, were associated with occupational environments. For the most strongly sex-typed work environments, associations with Openness/Intellect were moderated by gender. These findings suggest that the roots of the strongest gender-stereotyping effects in occupations may be found not only in the social factors associated with gender but also in the individual differences of children related to Openness/Intellect.

Attitudes towards emotional expression mediate the relationship between childhood invalidation and adult eating concern

Previous research has suggested that invalidating childhood environments are positively related to the symptoms of eating disorders. However, it is unclear how childhood environments might impact upon the development of eating disorder symptoms. This study examined the relationship between parental invalidation and eating disorder-related attitudes in a nonclinical sample and tested the mediating effect of attitudes towards emotional expression. Two hundred women, with a mean age of 21 years, completed measures of invalidating childhood environments, attitudes towards emotional expression, and eating pathology. Eating concerns were positively associated with recollections of an invalidating parental environment. The belief that the expression of emotions is a sign of weakness fully mediated the relationship between childhood maternal invalidation and adult eating concern. Following replication and extension to a clinical sample, these results suggest that targeting the individual's attitude towards emotional expression might reduce eating attitudes among women who have experienced an invalidating childhood environment. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.

Premonitory urges for tics in adult patients with Tourette syndrome

Objective: Patients with Tourette syndrome (TS) often report characteristic sensory experiences, also called premonitory urges (PUs), which precede tic expression and have high diagnostic relevance. This study investigated the usefulness of a scale developed and validated in children and adolescents-the Premonitory Urge for Tics Scale (PUTS, Woods et al., 2005 [13])-for the assessment of PUs in adult patients with TS. Method: Standard statistical methods were applied to test the psychometric properties of the PUTS in 102 adult TS outpatients recruited from two specialist clinics in the United Kingdom. Results: The PUTS showed good acceptability and endorsement rates, with evenly distributed scores and low floor and ceiling effects. Item-total correlations were moderate to strong; PUTS total scores were significantly correlated with quantitative measures of TS severity. The PUTS showed excellent internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha=0.85) and Spearman's correlations demonstrated satisfactory convergent and discriminant validity. Conclusions: Although originally devised to assess urges to tic in young patients with TS, the PUTS demonstrated good psychometric properties in a large sample of adults recruited at specialist TS clinics. This instrument is therefore recommended for use across the life span as a valid and reliable self-report measure of sensory experiences accompanying tic expression. © 2013 The Japanese Society of Child Neurology.

Effect of maternal protein restriction during pregnancy and postweaning high-fat feeding on diet-induced thermogenesis in adult mouse offspring

Purpose: Prenatal undernutrition followed by postweaning feeding of a high-fat diet results in obesity in the adult offspring. In this study, we investigated whether diet-induced thermogenesis is altered as a result of such nutritional mismatch. Methods: Female MF-1 mice were fed a normal protein (NP, 18 % casein) or a protein-restricted (PR, 9 % casein) diet throughout pregnancy and lactation. After weaning, male offspring of both groups were fed either a high-fat diet (HF; 45 % kcal fat) or standard chow (C, 7 % kcal fat) to generate the NP/C, NP/HF, PR/C and PR/HF adult offspring groups (n = 7-11 per group). Results: PR/C and NP/C offspring have similar body weights at 30 weeks of age. Postweaning HF feeding resulted in significantly heavier NP/HF offspring (P <0.01), but not in PR/HF offspring, compared with their chow-fed counterparts. However, the PR/HF offspring exhibited greater adiposity (P <0.01) v the NP/HF group. The NP/HF offspring had increased energy expenditure and increased mRNA expression of uncoupling protein-1 and β-3 adrenergic receptor in the interscapular brown adipose tissue (iBAT) compared with the NP/C mice (both at P <0.01). No such differences in energy expenditure and iBAT gene expression were observed between the PR/HF and PR/C offspring. Conclusions: These data suggest that a mismatch between maternal diet during pregnancy and lactation, and the postweaning diet of the offspring, can attenuate diet-induced thermogenesis in the iBAT, resulting in the development of obesity in adulthood. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Adaptive responses of the embryo to maternal diet and consequences for post-implantation development

Maternal periconceptional (PC) nutrition, coupled with maternal physiological condition, can impact on reproductive performance and potential across mammalian species. Oocyte quality and embryo development are affected adversely by either nutrient restriction or excess. Moreover, the quality of maternal PC nutrition can have lasting effects through fetal development and postnatally into adulthood. Chronic disease, notably cardiovascular and metabolic disease, and abnormal behaviour have been identified in adult offspring in small and large animal models of PC nutrient restriction. These long-term effects associate with compensatory responses that begin from the time of early embryo development. This review assesses the field of PC nutrition in vivo on short- and long-term developmental consequences in rodent and ruminant models and considers the implications for human health. © IETS 2012.

Maternal low-protein diet during mouse pre-implantation development induces vascular dysfunction and altered renin-angiotensin-system homeostasis in the offspring

Environmental perturbations during early mammalian development can affect aspects of offspring growth and cardiovascular health. We have demonstrated previously that maternal gestational dietary protein restriction in mice significantly elevated adult offspring systolic blood pressure. Therefore, the present study investigates the key mechanisms of blood pressure regulation in these mice. Following mating, female MF-1 mice were assigned to either a normal-protein diet (NPD; 18% casein) or an isocaloric low-protein diet throughout gestation (LPD; 9% casein), or fed the LPD exclusively during the pre-implantation period (3.5d) before returning to the NPD for the remainder of gestation (Emb-LPD). All offspring received standard chow. At 22 weeks, isolated mesenteric arteries from LPD and Emb-LPD males displayed significantly attenuated vasodilatation to isoprenaline (P=0.04 and P=0.025, respectively), when compared with NPD arteries. At 28 weeks, stereological analysis of glomerular number in female left kidneys revealed no significant difference between the groups. Real-time RT-PCR analysis of type 1a angiotensin II receptor, Na /K ATPase transporter subunits and glucocorticoid receptor expression in male and female left kidneys revealed no significant differences between the groups. LPD females displayed elevated serum angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) activity (P=0.044), whilst Emb-LPD males had elevated lung ACE activity (P=0.001), when compared with NPD offspring. These data demonstrate that elevated offspring systolic blood pressure following maternal gestational protein undernutrition is associated with impaired arterial vasodilatation in male offspring, elevated serum and lung ACE activity in female and male offspring, respectively, but kidney glomerular number in females and kidney gene expression in male and female offspring appear unaffected. © 2010 The Authors.

Adaptive responses by mouse early embryos to maternal diet protect fetal growth but predispose to adult onset disease

Poor maternal nutrition during pregnancy can alter postnatal phenotype and increase susceptibility to adult cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. However, underlying mechanisms are largely unknown. Here, we show that maternal low protein diet (LPD), fed exclusively during mouse preimplantation development, leads to offspring with increased weight from birth, sustained hypertension, and abnormal anxiety-related behavior, especially in females. These adverse outcomes were interrelated with increased perinatal weight being predictive of later adult overweight and hypertension. Embryo transfer experiments revealed that the increase in perinatal weight was induced within blastocysts responding to preimplantation LPD, independent of subsequent maternal environment during later pregnancy. We further identified the embryo-derived visceral yolk sac endoderm (VYSE) as one mediator of this response. VYSE contributes to fetal growth through endocytosis of maternal proteins, mainly via the multiligand megalin (LRP2) receptor and supply of liberated amino acids. Thus, LPD maintained throughout gestation stimulated VYSE nutrient transport capacity and megalin expression in late pregnancy, with enhanced megalin expression evident even when LPD was limited to the preimplantation period. Our results demonstrate that in a nutrient-restricted environment, the preimplantation embryo activates physiological mechanisms of developmental plasticity to stablize conceptus growth and enhance postnatal fitness. However, activation of such responses may also lead to adult excess growth and cardiovascular and behavioral diseases. © 2008 by the Society for the Study of Reproduction, Inc.

The influence of mouse Ped gene expression on postnatal development

The Ped (preimplantation embryo development) gene, whose product is Qa-2 protein, is correlated with a faster rate of preimplantation development (Ped fast phenotype) in mice that express Qa-2 protein compared with mice with an absence of Qa-2 protein (Ped slow phenotype). In the current study, we have used two congenic mouse strains differentially expressing the Ped gene, strain B6.K1 (Ped slow; Qa-2 negative) and strain B6.K2 (Ped fast; Qa-2 positive), to investigate the effects of Ped gene expression on postnatal growth profiles, systolic blood pressure and adult organ allometry. At birth, B6.K1 mice were moderately lighter than B6.K2 mice. B6.K1 mice became heavier during postnatal life (P

Late development of metric part-relational processing in object recognition

Four experiments with unfamiliar objects examined the remarkably late consolidation of part-relational relative to part-based object recognition (Jüttner, Wakui, Petters, Kaur, & Davidoff, 2013). Our results indicate a particularly protracted developmental trajectory for the processing of metric part relations. Schoolchildren aged 7 to 14 years and adults were tested in 3-Alternative-Forced-Choice tasks to judge the correct appearance of upright and inverted newly learned multipart objects that had been manipulated in terms of individual parts or part relations. Experiment 1 showed that even the youngest tested children were close to adult levels of performance for recognizing categorical changes of individual parts and relative part position. By contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated that performance for detecting metric changes of relative part position was distinctly reduced in young children compared with recognizing metric changes of individual parts, and did not approach the latter until 11 to 12 years. A similar developmental dissociation was observed in Experiment 3, which contrasted the detection of metric relative-size changes and metric part changes. Experiment 4 showed that manipulations of metric size that were perceived as part (rather than part-relational) changes eliminated this dissociation. Implications for theories of object recognition and similarities to the development of face perception are discussed. © 2014 American Psychological Association.

Do little embryos make big decisions? How maternal dietary protein restriction can permanently change an embryo's potential, affecting adult health

Periconceptional environment may influence embryo development, ultimately affecting adult health. Here, we review the rodent model of maternal low-protein diet specifically during the preimplantation period (Emb-LPD) with normal nutrition during subsequent gestation and postnatally. This model, studied mainly in the mouse, leads to cardiovascular, metabolic and behavioural disease in adult offspring, with females more susceptible. We evaluate the sequence of events from diet administration that may lead to adult disease. Emb-LPD changes maternal serum and/or uterine fluid metabolite composition, notably with reduced insulin and branched-chain amino acids. This is sensed by blastocysts through reduced mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 signalling. Embryos respond by permanently changing the pattern of development of their extra-embryonic lineages, trophectoderm and primitive endoderm, to enhance maternal nutrient retrieval during subsequent gestation. These compensatory changes include stimulation in proliferation, endocytosis and cellular motility, and epigenetic mechanisms underlying them are being identified. Collectively, these responses act to protect fetal growth and likely contribute to offspring competitive fitness. However, the resulting growth adversely affects long-term health because perinatal weight positively correlates with adult disease risk. We argue that periconception environmental responses reflect developmental plasticity and 'decisions' made by embryos to optimise their own development, but with lasting consequences.

Auditory training and adult rehabilitation:a critical review of the evidence

Auditory Training (AT) describes a regimen of varied listening exercises designed to improve an individual’s ability to perceive speech. The theory of AT is based on brain plasticity (the capacity of neurones in the central auditory system to alter their structure and function) in response to auditory stimulation. The practice of repeatedly listening to the speech sounds included in AT exercises is believed to drive the development of more efficient neuronal pathways, thereby improving auditory processing and speech discrimination. This critical review aims to assess whether auditory training can improve speech discrimination in adults with mild-moderate SNHL. The majority of patients attending Audiology services are adults with presbyacusis and it is therefore important to evaluate evidence of any treatment effect of AT in aural rehabilitation. Ideally this review would seek to appraise evidence of neurophysiological effects of AT so as to verify whether it does induce change in the CAS. However, due to the absence of such studies on this particular patient group, the outcome measure of speech discrimination, as a behavioural indicator of treatment effect is used instead. A review of available research was used to inform an argument for or against using AT in rehabilitative clinical practice. Six studies were identified and although the preliminary evidence indicates an improvement gained from a range of AT paradigms, the treatment effect size was modest and there remains a lack of large-sample RCTs. Future investigation into the efficacy of AT needs to employ neurophysiological studies using auditory evoked potentials in hearing-impaired adults in order to explore effects of AT on the CAS.

Recollections of pressure to eat during childhood, but not picky eating, predict young adult eating behavior

Picky eating is a childhood behavior that vexes many parents and is a symptom in the newer diagnosis of Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) in adults. Pressure to eat, a parental controlling feeding practice aimed at encouraging a child to eat more, is associated with picky eating and a number of other childhood eating concerns. Low intuitive eating, an insensitivity to internal hunger and satiety cues, is also associated with a number of problem eating behaviors in adulthood. Whether picky eating and pressure to eat are predictive of young adult eating behavior is relatively unstudied. Current adult intuitive eating and disordered eating behaviors were self-reported by 170 college students, along with childhood picky eating and pressure through retrospective self- and parent reports. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that childhood parental pressure to eat, but not picky eating, predicted intuitive eating and disordered eating symptoms in college students. These findings suggest that parental pressure in childhood is associated with problematic eating patterns in young adulthood. Additional research is needed to understand the extent to which parental pressure is a reaction to or perhaps compounds the development of problematic eating behavior.

The development, application, and implications of a strategy for reflective learning from experience

The problem on which this study focused was individuals' reduced capacity to respond to change and to engage in innovative learning when their reflective learning skills are limited. In this study, the preceding problem was addressed by two primary questions: To what degree can mastery of a strategy for reflective learning be facilitated as a part of an academic curriculum for professional practitioners? What impact will mastery of this strategy have on the learning style and adaptive flexibility of adult learners? The focus of the study was a direct application of human resource development technology in the professional preparation of teachers. The background of the problem in light of changing global paradigms and educational action orientations was outlined and a review of the literature was provided. Roots of thought for two key concepts (i.e., learning to learn from experience and meaningful reflection in learning) were traced. Reflective perspectives from the work of eight researchers were compared. A meta-model of learning from experience drawn from the literature served as a conceptual framework for the study. A strategy for reflective learning developed from this meta-model was taught to 109 teachers-in-training at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. Kolb's Adaptive Style Inventory and Learning Style Inventory were administered to the treatment group and to two control groups taught by the same professor. Three research questions and fourteen hypotheses guided data analysis. Qualitative review of 1565 personal documents generated by the treatment group indicated that 77 students demonstrated "double-loop" learning, going beyond previously established limits to perception, understanding, or action. The mean score for depth of reflection indicated "single-loop" learning with "reflection-in-action" present. The change in the mean score for depth of reflection from the beginning to end of the study was statistically significant (p $<$.05). On quantitative measures of adaptive flexibility and learning style, with two exceptions, there were no significant differences noted between treatment and control groups on pre-test to post-test differences and on post-test mean scores adjusted for pre-test responses and demographic variables. Conclusions were drawn regarding treatment, instrumentation, and application of the strategy and the meta-model. Implications of the strategy and the meta-model for research, for education, for human resource development, for professional practice, and for personal growth were suggested. Qualitative training materials and Kolb's instruments were provided in the appendices.

A qualitative analysis of the congruency of Jungian psychological preferences identified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the human resource development role of instructor/facilitator

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to describe and explain the congruency of psychological preferences identified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the human resource development (HRD) role of instructor/facilitator. This investigation was conducted with 23 HRD professionals who worked in the Miami, Florida area as instructors/facilitators with adult learners in job-related contexts.^ The study was conducted using qualitative strategies of data collection and analysis. The research participants were selected through a purposive sampling strategy. Data collection strategies included: (a) administration and scoring of the MBTI, Form G, (b) open-ended and semi-structured interviews, (c) participant observations of the research subjects at their respective work sites and while conducting training sessions, (d) field notes, and (e) contact summary sheets to record field research encounters. Data analysis was conducted with the use of a computer program for qualitative analysis called FolioViews 3.1 for Windows. This included: (a) coding of transcribed interviews and field notes, (b) theme analysis, (c) memoing, and (d) cross-case analysis.^ The three major themes that emerged in relation to the congruency of psychological preferences and the role of instructor/facilitator were: (1) designing and preparing instruction/facilitation, (2) conducting training and managing group process, and (3) interpersonal relations and perspectives among instructors/facilitators.^ The first two themes were analyzed through the combination of the four Jungian personality functions. These combinations are: sensing-thinking (ST), sensing-feeling (SF), intuition-thinking (NT), and intuition-feeling (NF). The third theme was analyzed through the combination of the attitudes or energy focus and the judgment function. These combinations are: extraversion-thinking (ET), extraversion-feeling (EF), introversion-thinking (IT), and introversion-feeling (IF).^ A last area uncovered by this ethnographic study was the influence exerted by a training and development culture on the instructor/facilitator role. This professional culture is described and explained in terms of the shared values and expectations reported by the study respondents. ^