Low motivation drives poor performance of infected, anorexic crows on a string-pulling task.

Background: Test anxiety is one of the medical student’s problems that need attention in medical education. Test anxiety can have negative effect on students such as negative self-evaluation beliefs, low motivation, poor performance, and decreased concentration which can result in increased dropout rates and trigger general anxiety. Test anxiety can affect performance on clinical skill examination and outcomes.Aim: To identify factors correlated with medical students’ anxiety in clinical skills examination.Methods: This was a cross-sectional study involving the second and fourth year medical students in Universitas Mataram. Possible Anxiety Determinant Instrument (PADI) was used to measure factors associated with test anxiety and Performance Test Anxiety (PTA) inventory to measure students’ anxiety in clinical skills examination. Data collection took place after the clinical skill exam. Pearson and Spearman correlation test were used in analyzing the data.Results: Total of 185 students participated in this study (response rate 96,9%). Factors found to be correlated with test anxiety score were internal belief factors (r = -0,686), health and lifestyle factors (r = -0,424), curriculum factors (r= -0,414), social support factors (r = -0,395), learning atmosphere factors (r = -0,312), and examination factors (r = -0,270). Preparedness and experience of examination were not correlated with the test anxiety.Conclusion: Students’ internal belief was found to have the strongest correlation with the test anxiety, while examination factor showed the weakest correlation. These findings can guide medical education institution in developing strategies to reduce students’ anxiety toward the clinical skills examination.

A self‐teaching scheme was investigated using two complementary experimental approaches: statistical analysis of data and semistructured interviews. It was possible to identify which groups of students may perform less well than others on this scheme. Questionnaires, completed by students, indicated the general acceptability of the scheme but more than 80 per cent of the students suggested that mastery of one unit should precede progress to the next. Semistructured interviews indicated that poor study habits and low motivation towards science were major causes of the identified groups’ relatively poor performance.

Functional near-infrared (fNIR) spectroscopy is a promising new technology that has demonstrated utility in the study of normal human cognition. We utilized fNIR spectroscopy to examine the effect of social anxiety and performance on hemodynamic activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Socially phobic participants and non-clinical participants with varying levels of social anxiety completed a public speaking task in front of a small virtual audience while the DLPFC was being monitored by the fNIR device. The relationship between anxiety and both blood volume (BV) and deoxygenated hemoglobin (Hb) varied significantly as a function of speech performance, such that individuals with low social anxiety who performed well showed an increase in DLPFC activation relative to those who did not perform well. This result suggests that effortful thinking and/or efficient top-down inhibitory control may have been required to complete an impromptu speech task with good performance. In contrast, good performers who were highly socially anxious showed lower DLPFC activation relative to good performers who were low in social anxiety, suggesting autopilot thinking or less-effortful thinking. In poor performers, slight increases in DLPFC activation were observed from low to highly anxious individuals, which may reflect a shift from effortless thinking to heightened self-focused attention. Heightened self-focused attention, poor inhibitory control resulting in excessive fear or anxiety, or low motivation may lower performance. These results suggest that there can be different underlying mechanisms in the brain that affect the level of speech performance in individuals with varying degrees of social anxiety. This study highlights the utility of the fNIR device in the assessment of changes in DLPFC in response to exposure to realistic phobic stimuli, and further supports the potential utility of this technology in the study of the neurophysiology of anxiety disorders.

This study aimed to analyze the trends in academic performance, establish the possible causes of the poor academic performance, and explore and implement some mitigation strategies for 5 years. After observing a sharp decline in the Grade seven national examination pass rate at one rural Private Primary School, the Department of Education committed itself to work in collaboration with the school administrators and teachers to improve the pass rate. Several trips were made to the Primary school to establish rapport, assess their needs, and establish the contributing causes of the sharp decline in the pass rates. In-depth interviews were carried out with key informants. The major factors identified to be contributing to the decline in pass rates were low motivation among both students and teachers. In addition, inadequate resources; particularly educational materials and basic needs for teachers such as water and food were also identified. A strategic plan was formulated with goals projected for the coming 4 years. Regular visits to the school were made by the department of Education at least once every school term. Special training programs were done in the third term of each year in preparation for writing final exams. The teachers and students were incentivized by provision of basic needs such as water and food and other basic commodities. Other motivational promises were made, such as prizes for the best-performing students and teachers. The results were recorded and compared every year. After the first year of implementing the strategies, there was a noticeable change in the academic performance. The pass rates were beginning to rise when COVID-19 pandemic broke out. The overall pass rate dropped from 42 % to 15% during the COVID-19 pandemic era. However, after the COVID-19 Pandemic the intervention strategies continued. Despite experiencing the drastic negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the graph of academic performance rose, there was a sharp rise from 33% in 2022 to 52% in 2023. The study recommends that a detailed longitudinal study be carried out to investigate the impact of other strategies (such as encouraging parental involvement). If these strategies carried out in this study are implemented coupled with other strategies such as parental involvement, this may result in marked improvements in academic performance of the learners and very high pass rates.

The purpose of present paper is to discuss the concept of horizontal hostility, a special type of workplace violence among working women. Horizontal hostility has been identified as aggressive behavior inflicted by women towards other women due to gender issues or towards minority group members due to minority issues. Different psychological and organizational level drivers have been analyzed through literature. Horizontal hostility among working women is significant and results in psychological and physical outcomes including stress, low motivation, poor job performance and intension to leave. The need is to provide healthy and peaceful work environment that will enable competent women to achieve objectives of career success. In this regard, Government aims to protect women against violence at social and organizational level through different legislative frameworks. Organizations must eradicate drivers of horizontal hostility and provide women peaceful work environment. In order to develop coping skills, training and mentoring must be provided to them.

Anxiety is one of the most important affective factors which effects students’ performance and participation in EFl classrooms. Anxiety can have a negative effect on the overall performance and communicative competence of secondary school level learners that are at an adolescent level, which is associated with high academic pressure and examination needs. This paper attempts to deal with anxiety-its sources, its effects and the classroom implications of this phenomenon among higher secondary students while learning English. The study used a convergent parallel mixed-methods research design. Quantitative data were obtained through a survey instrument adapted from the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale and 180 higher secondary students participated in the data collection. There was triangulation of findings as the qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, in addition to classroom observations. The findings also show that students have moderate to high levels of English language anxiety. The factors that influence the respondents are the fear to make mistakes, test anxiety, speaking in English, lack of confidence and teacher pressure. The research also indicates sex difference is significant where female students feel more anxiety than their fellow male classmates. Anxiety was seen to have two effects: academic as well as psychological in nature, including reduced participation in the classroom, poor oral performance, low motivation and avoidance of communicative tasks. Observational data of classrooms also indicates that teacher feedback style and classroom interaction patterns are important determinants of learners’ anxiety. The results imply that English language learning anxiety is not only an individual learner problem but also a classroom-driven phenomenon shaped by pedagogical and assessment practices. The study emphasizes on the provision of supportive pedagogical strategies, learner-centered teaching and anxiety-sensitive assessment to encourage affective learning in English at higher secondary level.

This article aimed at investigating the impact of speech and language disorders on learners’ learning journey with focus on English language and to propose the way forward. This article used a review research design guided by Bronfenbrenner’s (1990) Bioecological Systems Theory. Secondary qualitative data were collected by reviewing existing records, books and research articles about speech and language disorders in English language learners and their impact on their English language learning. The results revealed that some schools and education stakeholders have documented statistics of students with speech and language disorders while others have no segregated statistics of learners with speech and language disorders. Thus, learners with speech and language disorders are in the mainstream education but they are not given proper support to help them learn and succeed in their educational journey. Current literature revealed that the impacts of speech and language disorders on English learners are low self-esteem and motivation, low participation in classroom learning activities and poor performance in English in general. Their low receptive and expressive skills cannot allow them to put thoughts into words and sentences in a way that makes a sense and grammatically correct. It was recommended that surveys should be done to show the exact statistics of learners with speech and language disorders who are in the mainstream education, education stakeholders should provide specialist (counselors) support to these students and curriculum adapted to their educational needs should be designed by policy makers and other stakeholders, and awareness sessions should be initiated so that teachers and parents could help such learners to overcome English language learning difficulties they face at home and at school.

Native Americans are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers. We examine communal goal incongruence-the mismatch between students' emphasis on communal work goals and the noncommunal culture of STEM-as a possible factor in this underrepresentation. First, we surveyed 80 Native American STEM freshmen and found they more highly endorsed communal goals than individualistic work goals. Next, we surveyed 96 Native American and White American students in STEM and non-STEM majors and confirmed that both Native American men and women in STEM highly endorsed communal goals. In a third study, we conducted a follow-up survey and in-depth interviews with a subset of Native American STEM students in their second semester to assess their experiences of belonging uncertainty, intrinsic motivation, persistence intentions, and perceived performance in STEM as a function of their initial communal work goals. Results demonstrate the prominence of communal goals among incoming Native American freshman (especially compared with White male STEM majors) and the connection between communal goals and feelings of belonging uncertainty, low motivation, and perceived poor performance 1 semester later. The interview data illustrate that these issues are particularly salient for students raised within tribal communities, and that a communal goal orientation is not just a vague desire to "help others," but a commitment to helping their tribal communities. The interviews also highlight the importance of student support programs for fostering feelings of belonging. We end by discussing implications for interventions and institutional changes that may promote Native American student retention in STEM.

The development of treatments for impaired cognition in schizophrenia has been characterized as the most important challenge facing psychiatry at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The Cognitive Neuroscience Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (CNTRICS) project was designed to build on the potential benefits of using tasks and tools from cognitive neuroscience to better understanding and treat cognitive impairments in psychosis. These benefits include: (1) the use of fine-grained tasks that measure discrete cognitive processes; (2) the ability to design tasks that distinguish between specific cognitive domain deficits and poor performance due to generalized deficits resulting from sedation, low motivation, poor test taking skills, etc.; and (3) the ability to link cognitive deficits to specific neural systems, using animal models, neuropsychology, and functional imaging. CNTRICS convened a series of meetings to identify paradigms from cognitive neuroscience that maximize these benefits and identified the steps need for translation into use in clinical populations. The Cognitive Neuroscience Test Reliability and Clinical Applications for Schizophrenia (CNTRaCS) Consortium was developed to help carry out these steps. CNTRaCS consists of investigators at five different sites across the country with diverse expertise relevant to a wide range of the cognitive systems identified as critical as part of CNTRICs. This work reports on the progress and current directions in the evaluation and optimization carried out by CNTRaCS of the tasks identified as part of the original CNTRICs process, as well as subsequent extensions into the Positive Valence systems domain of Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). We also describe the current focus of CNTRaCS, which involves taking a computational psychiatry approach to measuring cognitive and motivational function across the spectrum of psychosis. Specifically, the current iteration of CNTRaCS is using computational modeling to isolate parameters reflecting potentially more specific cognitive and visual processes that may provide greater interpretability in understanding shared and distinct impairments across psychiatric disorders.

Motivation plays a pivotal role in shaping students’ engagement and achievement, particularly in subjects such as physics that are often perceived as difficult and abstract. Numerous studies have shown that low motivation among junior high school students contributes to poor performance and limited participation. This highlights the urgency of innovative instructional approaches that can foster interest and persistence. Gamification has emerged as a promising solution, with platforms such as Kahoot! providing interactive features designed to increase student engagement through competition, feedback, and collaboration. The objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of Kahoot!-based gamification in enhancing students’ learning motivation in physics, measured comprehensively using Keller’s ARCS model (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction). A quasi-experimental design with a one-group pretest–posttest approach was employed, involving 175 eighth-grade students from six junior high schools in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Data were collected through a validated ARCS-based motivation questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics, the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test, effect size calculation, and normalized gain (N-Gain). The findings revealed a significant increase in students’ motivation, with overall scores rising from 3.15 to 4.10, a large effect size (r = 0.85), and a medium N-Gain (0.51). The greatest improvement occurred in attention, while satisfaction increased the least. These results confirm that Kahoot! effectively improves multiple dimensions of motivation and demonstrates its value as an innovative tool for fostering interactive, student-centered learning in physics. The novelty of this study lies in applying the ARCS framework to analyze gamification outcomes in junior high school physics. The contribution of this study lies in demonstrating that gamification, particularly through Kahoot!, can effectively enhance multiple dimensions of learning motivation in physics. Furthermore, the findings enrich the body of knowledge on gamification in science education and present valuable implications for improving physics learning in Indonesia and comparable educational contexts.

In literature, the role of self-directed learning is highlighted to counteract poor academic performance and dropouts caused by low motivation to learn and inadequate learning strategies. This study used the self-determination theory as a framework to explore teachers’ perceptions of the effects of motivation on learners’ self-directed learning skills in township schools. This qualitative study, positioned in an interpretivist paradigm, engaged purposively and conveniently selected teachers to explore their perceptions of the role of motivation in learners’ self-directed development. Semi-structured, single face-to-face interviews with the ten participants facilitated data collection. Thematic, inductive analysis was employed. Findings revealed that many teachers have low expectations, blaming learner demotivation on insufficient parental involvement and contextual challenges. The motivation for self-directed learning is hindered in some teacher-and-student relationships. Demotivated teachers and their insufficient demonstration of self-directed learning skills emerged as a barrier to the fostering of self-directed learning skills and learner motivation. Recommendations are proposed for different stakeholders to enhance learners’ motivation and self-directed learning skills.