Modelling arithmetic strategies

Introduction In interactive team sports, athletes constantly take behavioral decisions in situationally constrained contexts. Ecological perspectives assume that situational cues guide these decisions. Social-cognitive approaches posit that athletes consider internally stored information to complement ecological information. In line with these notions, significant effects of situational information and associative knowledge on passing decisions in Soccer have been found (Steiner, 2015). The aim of this study was to test the existence of similar effects in Basketball. Methods Three Basketball teams (N = 38, M = 23.47 years, SD = 6.41) playing in the third regional league of the ProBasket Association participated in the study. For each team, graphic illustrations of ten offensive game situations taken from championship games served as stimulus material. Participants took the perspective of the person on the ball and indicated which of six predefined acts (shooting [option A], penetration towards the basket [B], passes to each of four team members [C to F]) would be their first, second, and third choice respectively. Two measures representing situational constraints in regard to each act were calculated: The amount of defensive coverage by opponents and the openness of the area required to perform an act. Furthermore, participants rated all team members on six items covering Basketball-relevant abilities. The ratings were used to calculate measures of associative knowledge. A variable representing personal (for options A and B) and team members’ (options C to F) overall competency and one representing (personal and team members’) situation-relevant competency were computed. Ordinal regressions were calculated to estimate the effects of the ecological context and associative knowledge on the participants’ decisions. Results Results showed significant effects of defensive coverage (β = 1.084, p < 0.001) and the openness of the area required to perform the act (β = 1.086, p < 0.001). The harder a specific act was defended, the lower the chances that this option would be chosen. Chances for an act increased with more space available for its performing. There was no effect of the participants’ overall competency rating of the person involved in an act (self-ratings for options A, B; other-ratings for options C to F; β = -0.496, p = 0.222). A significant effect of the situation-relevant competency ratings on decision making was found (β = 1.009, p < 0.001). Pseudo R2 measures for the model were .116 (Cox & Snell) and .127 (Nagelkerke). Discussion/Conclusion The study supports previous findings regarding the importance of ecological informers and associative knowledge in the decision making processes of interactive team sports. Implications for further research are to specify more ecological variables and clusters of associative knowledge and to test their effects on decision making in sports.

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The overall aim of the current thesis was to explore three key components of future-oriented thinking, namely episodic future thinking (EFT), episodic foresight, and prospective memory (PM), in middle childhood. The developmental literature examining each of these future-oriented abilities has generally focused on their emergence in the preschool years, with less known about how these abilities present in middle childhood. In addition, research investigating what cognitive mechanisms may drive these abilities in this age band is limited and findings of those studies that have been conducted are inconsistent. Lastly, the literature has predominantly examined EFT, episodic foresight, and PM in isolation, and research has only just begun to explore interrelations between these future-oriented constructs. The first empirical study therefore aimed to investigate whether EFT ability was associated with age and to examine what cognitive mechanisms may contribute to this skill. The second empirical study aimed to examine, for the first time, whether episodic foresight was associated with age across middle childhood. A second aim of this study was to provide the first investigation of the cognitive mechanisms that may contribute to episodic foresight in this age group, with the particular interest in whether EFT contributed to episodic foresight. The final empirical study aimed to explore whether age was associated with children’s PM performance across event-based and time-based PM tasks. An additional aim of this study was to explore the cognitive abilities that contribute to children’s performance on both event-based and time-based PM tasks, with a particular interest in the contribution of EFT. A single sample of 80 children aged 8 to 12 years were recruited for this research project. Study 1 indicated greater EFT ability was associated with age, consistent with some of the limited studies previously conducted with this age group. Study 1 also demonstrated strong evidence regarding the contribution from episodic memory to children’s EFT and a lack of contribution from executive functions. Study 2 was the first study to examine episodic foresight beyond the preschool years. Results of this study provided the first evidence of an association between age and better episodic foresight performance across the ages of 8 to 12 years. In addition, Study 2 identified age and IQ as significant contributors to successful episodic foresight performance, while retrospective memory, executive functions, and EFT were not found to contribute. The lack of contribution from EFT may have been due to the specific form of episodic foresight task used in this study, which did not require a specific scenario to be envisaged. Further research is now required to investigate whether EFT contributes to other types of episodic foresight task that involve clear scenarios that can be envisaged. The results of Study 3 indicated age was significantly correlated with performance on both event-based and time-based PM tasks. The findings also clearly revealed age, retrospective memory, and EFT were significant contributors to event-based PM performance, while retrospective memory was the only significant contributor to time-based PM performance. Furthermore, the results clearly demonstrated a lack of contribution from executive functions to performance on both task types. Importantly, Study 3 demonstrated that EFT selectively contributed to children’s event-based PM performance. This finding is consistent with the only other study in this age band and used a more comprehensive set of predictors than this previous study. The current research provided novel insights into the profile of children’s future-oriented thinking across the middle childhood period. The findings regarding age-related improvements in EFT, episodic foresight, and PM help to bridge the gap in understanding of the development of these abilities between their emergence in the preschool years and their presentation later in development. Longitudinal research that extends from early childhood to adulthood is now needed to provide a thorough understanding of the developmental trajectory of these abilities across the lifespan. In addition, the current research revealed a clear pattern of results regarding the cognitive mechanisms that contribute to each of these abilities, providing some clarity to the previously mixed findings in the children’s future oriented-thinking literature. Results regarding the inter-relationships between the future-oriented constructs also provided an important extension to current understanding of future-oriented thinking as a broader taxonomy. Furthermore, the current findings bring attention to the need for further theoretical distinction between different forms of episodic foresight and the cognitive processes that contribute to this skill. Overall, the findings from the current thesis have important implications for children’s daily living. In particular, greater understanding of future-oriented thinking in the middle childhood period gained from this thesis may assist in fostering the development of these abilities early in life. This in turn will enable parents and teachers to create reasonable expectations regarding children’s capacity to use these skills in their everyday functioning, thereby maximising success and minimising failure.

Terms like commutativity degree, non-commuting graph and isoclinism are far well-known for much of the group theorists nowadays. There are so many papers about each of these concepts and also about their relationships in finite groups. Also, there are some recent researches about generalizing these notions in finite rings and their connexions.The concepts of commutativity degree and non-commuting graph are also extended to non-associative structures such as Moufang loops and some part of the known results in group theory in these contexts have been expanded to them.In this paper, we are going to generalize the notion of isoclinism in finite Moufang loops and then study the relationships between these three concepts. Among other results, we prove that two isoclinic finite Moufang loops have the same commutativity degree and if they have the same sizes of centers and commutants then they have isomorphic non-commuting graphs. Also, the converses of these results have been investigated.Furthermore, it has been proved that a finite simple group can be characterized by its non-commuting graph. We will prove the same is true for a finite simple Moufang loop by imposing one additional hypothesis, namely, the isoclinism of the regarding loops.

The issue of employee motivation is related to successful business management. Human resources represent a great potential, because they have knowledge, inventiveness and intelligence. However, a large part of human potential is not used to a sufficient degree, which leads to unused resources and to dissatisfaction and lack of motivation on the part of employees. Good motivation is part of leadership; a manager knows how to motivate and create good relationships. Business entities are part of society, and to achieve economic goals, they must take into account the impact that they have on society and on the human resources of an organization. This paper explains contemporary motivational theories, with the aim of enabling successful business in banking sector. Managers of banks can make decisions about the most significant factors that improve employee motivation. Integrated knowledge, accumulated experience, and employee satisfaction are the main factors behind successful operations in all organizations, and in particular in the banking sector. These factors form a basis for the successful management strategy of any company. The paper presents an overview of motivation in countries whose organizational culture differs with respect to the scope of operations and employees in the banking sector. The first part of the paper gives an overview of motivational theories based on the presentation and comparison of motivational factors in Pakistan, South Asian countries, and Croatia and Serbia. In evaluating motivation for ranking purposes a comparison method was applied, with the use of arithmetic means, while the data obtained from respondents’ questionnaires were processed using the SPSS 22 statistical method. The authors aimed to make a modest contribution in assessing motivational factors and to point to their significance in the banking sector. Better motivated employees in the banking sector are more efficient in carrying out business tasks.

Todd and Mackintosh (1990) found that recognition memory of pigeons for pictures was better when the same pictures were used each session (a recency task) than when different slides were used (a novelty task); they attributed the superior performance on the recency task to perceptual learning. Three experiments explored two alternative accounts. One was that their use of a within-subject design could have allowed the strategy adopted in the recency task to influence adversely the strategy used in the novelty task. This possibility was ruled out by Experiment 1, which showed superior performance in the recency task when a between-subject design was used. A second account proposes that slide-reward associations formed (in both tasks) during first presentations of slides interfere with appropriate performance during second presentations (associative interference); in the recency task, however, the high long-term associative strength of the slides restricts the consequence of a single slide-reward pairing to a short-term effect, and associative interference occurs at short retention intervals only. This account was explored in Experiment 2, which found no evidence that increases in retention interval resulted in reduction of associative interference in the recency task, and in Experiment 3, where associative interference was shown to occur but was of comparable magnitude in the recency and novelty tasks. By elimination, the results support a perceptual learning interpretation.

Participation in physical activity (PA) is essential for the promotion of physical and mental health outcomes, but children in the UK are not meeting the recommended amounts of PA. Existing literature has linked children’s levels of physical activity to the development of motor competence. Two important components of motor competence are motor proficiency and motor creativity, however limited research has examined their prevalence and relationship in deprived young children. The aim of this study was to examine associations between motor proficiency and motor creativity, as well as to explore gender and age effects on these variables in children aged 5 to 6 years old from areas of high deprivation. This cross-sectional study was realised from the baseline data obtained from a larger project called SAMPLE-PE. A total of 360 children aged 5 to 6 years were recruited, however many children had some missing data and had to be removed from the study. The final sample included 221 children from deprived areas (low SES). The Test of Gross Motor Development (TGMD-3) was used to qualitatively assesses gross motor proficiency in locomotor and ball skills; the test of Stability Skills, was used to measure the stability skill component of motor proficiency. To assess motor creativity the Divergent Movement Ability test (DMA) was used. Associations between motor proficiency and motor creativity were explored using the Pearson’s correlation (bivariate correlations) and the multilevel mixed linear regression. Children’s motor proficiency and motor creativity scores demonstrated a positive but weak relationship. Age was positively related to motor proficiency, indicating that older children demonstrated higher levels of motor proficiency; conversely, age was not associated with total motor creativity. Gender was not associated with total motor proficiency nor total motor creativity. However, gender was associated with all motor proficiency subtests, girls outperformed boys in locomotor and stability skills whereas boys demonstrated higher performance at ball skills. Gender was also associated to motor creativity object control subtest, where boys performed better than girls. The main finding revealed positive but weak associations between motor creativity and motor proficiency. This suggests that these two constructs develop by different means and strategies and are influenced by different biological, psychological and environmental factors. These results suggest that longitudinal research is needed to better understand the nature of the associations between motor creativity and motor proficiency, as well as to understand how motor creativity develops over time and between genders. Future research is needed on the influence of socioeconomic status on the relationship between motor creativity and motor proficiency.

Cross-sectional evidence that environmental noise exposure at school shows negative associations with children's cognition and health has increased, yet longitudinal evidence is lacking. This study examined longitudinal associations of aircraft noise exposure at primary school on children's reading comprehension, noise annoyance, and psychological health at secondary school. This six-year follow-up of 461 children aged 15–16 years, who attended primary and secondary schools around London Heathrow airport, used annual average aircraft noise exposure at the schools from noise contour maps. Multilevel regression modelling showed that aircraft noise exposure at primary school was associated with a significant increase in noise annoyance and with a non-significant decrease in reading comprehension at follow-up. Aircraft noise at primary school was not associated with psychological health at follow-up. This is the first longitudinal study of its type, suggesting that aircraft noise exposure at school might impair reading comprehension, as well as increase noise annoyance in children.

Let R be an associative ring , U be a nonzero Lie ideal of R. In this paper , we will present the definition of (U,R) – strongly derivation pair (d,g) , then we will get d=0 (resp. g=0 ) under certain conditions on d and g for (U,R) – strongly derivation pair (d,g) on semiprime ring . After that we will study prime rings , semiprime rings ,and rings that have a commutator left nonzero divisor with (U,R) – strongly derivation pair (d,g) , to obtain the notation of (U,R) – derivation .

The syntactic monoid of a language is generalized to the level of a symmetric monoidal closed category D. This allows for a uniform treatment of several notions of syntactic algebras known in the literature, including the syntactic monoids of Rabin and Scott (D = sets), the syntactic semirings of Polak (D = semilattices), and the syntactic associative algebras of Reutenauer (D = vector spaces). Assuming that D is a commutative variety of algebras, we prove that the syntactic D-monoid of a language L can be constructed as a quotient of a free D-monoid modulo the syntactic congruence of L, and that it is isomorphic to the transition D-monoid of the minimal automaton for L in D. Furthermore, in the case where the variety D is locally finite, we characterize the regular languages as precisely the languages with finite syntactic D-monoids.

This study aims to determine (1) the influence of the implementation of entrepreneurship subject to the motivation of entrepreneurship of civil engineering students (2) the effect of the implementation of entrepreneurship subject to build the soul of civil engineering students. This research is a causal associative research with quantitative approach. Variables of this research are entrepreneurship subject as independent variable, motivation and build soul of business as dependent variable. Respondents in this research are students of civil Engineering Department of Mahasaraswati Mataram University amounted to 85 students. Techniques of data collection using questionnaires and documentation. Data analysis method used is simple linear regression. The results of this study indicate that (1) entrepreneurship education has a positive and significant effect on entrepreneurship motivation is shown by the value of F arithmetic 0,619 with a significance value of 0.035 and R2 0.053. (2) Entrepreneurship courses have a positive and significant impact on entrepreneurship skill by showing F value of 13,124 with significance value 0,001 and R2 0,137 .

Parental Time or Money: What Matters More for Children’s School Success? Aleksandra Holod Previous research suggests that the home environment explains up to one half of the association between poverty and low cognitive skills. Building on this research, this study provides a more nuanced analysis of the family processes through which socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with children’s academic outcomes by: 1) including maternal education and family income as predictors of parenting and children’s academic skills, and 2) separating the home environment into parental investments of time and materials. Data are drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K; n=20,582). Structural equation modeling is used to examine the extent to which these parental investments mediate associations between markers of SES and children’s reading and math achievement. Models also test for moderation of the productivity of parental investments. Results indicate that SES is associated with children’s school success via a pathway in which maternal education influences the extent to which parents invest in learning materials for their children, and these learning materials in turn foster development of early literacy and numeracy skills. Parental time has an unexpected negative association with children’s achievement, which is explained in supplemental models. Family income and maternal education also moderate the productivity of parental investments, such that the negative effect of time and the positive effect of materials are magnified in more advantaged households. Findings suggest that the following interventions may be worthwhile policy priorities: 1) support for low-SES mothers’ pursuit of further education, and/or 2) provision of learning materials for children in disadvantaged families.

The decisions people make, and the actions they take, depend on how they conceptualize and experience time. This fundamental and influential factor is seldom acknowledged, little understood, and rarely considered explicitly in planning; be that for the material systems or the knowledge systems in the water sector. The objectives of the research that is described in this thesis were (1) to characterize similarities and differences in the Time Perspectives of people working in the water sector worldwide and (2) to theorize about how this temporal ambiguity influences, and can be used for, water planning and setting research agendas. First an interpretive framework was developed including a model of Time Perspective, which was designed to make clear the most fundamental assumptions about the (relationships between) aspects of an individual’s Time Perspective that influence the decisions they make and the actions they take. This model builds on explicit foundations from Critical Realism and brings together psychological theories of motivation and internal time consciousness. The model formed a framework that was used to develop the Foreseeable Future Multi-measure Method. This new method was designed to characterize relevant aspects of an individual’s Time Perspective in an integrated fashion. It is a structured interview with five successive steps that are sequenced to account for socially acceptable responses and to facilitate triangulation: 1. Describe the goals and events that motivate the interviewee’s decisions and actions 2. Characterize the structure and orientation of the interviewee’s concept of time 3. Measure the temporal extension of the interviewee’s motivational objects 4. Triangulate the indirect measures with direct questions by completion of sentences 5. Triangulate the preceding measures with an inventory for typifying orientation The Foreseeable Future Multi-measure Method was used to interview 309 managers, practical workers, and scientists in the Netherlands, Ghana, Brazil, and Japan. The author of this thesis conducted all of the interviews in person together with a local interpreter in each country. The four countries were chosen to represent the international diversity in Time Perspectives and the three professional roles provided a sample of the diversity in the level of abstraction of water professionals from theory to practice. The most noteworthy conclusions of the empirical study concern differences in the temporal extent of the goals and events that motivate people. Scientists are motivated by objects that lie furthest into the future followed by managers and then practical workers (Group medians: 8.4; 3.5; 1.7 years). Across national cultures, the time horizons of the Japanese and Brazilian interviewees were found to be longest. The differences across professional roles are greater and more significant than those across countries. But the characteristics of national cultures were found to amplify the differences across professional roles. Within the context of national cultures that were characterized as being most orientated towards the future, for example, scientists had especially long-term Time Perspectives. To map ambiguity in Time Perspectives on a global scale the data from the empirical study was extrapolated and reinterpreted using correlations with national scale cultural dimensions for 22 countries. This theoretical study resulted in an indicator of the potential for intercultural cooperation on wicked problems in water sector worldwide. Brazil, India, and China, countries whose answers to wicked problems in the Water-Energy-Food nexus will be of global importance, are likely to frame problems quite differently from each other but, more importantly, with a longer term vision than recent world powers such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The conclusions are important because the time horizons considered in planning and setting research agendas influence what problems are perceived, what questions are asked, and what solutions are sought. An important recommendation is to invest more resources in the framing of problems, goals, and questions. This is particularly important for participatory planning and transdisciplinary research where the diversity in Time Perspectives is greatest. Insight into Time Perspectives can be used in planning to define milestones with temporal targets that are most likely to motivate the relevant actors. It is also useful for directing strategic horizon-scanning activities. For setting research agendas it is important to match the Time Perspectives of those who prioritize the questions with the purpose of the research.

The purpose of this study is to explore the correlations among knowledge Management strategy, school-based management and school effectiveness. It includes; (a) to investigate the present status of knowledge management strategy, school-based management effectiveness; (b) to compare the differences among the knowledge management strategy, school-based management, school effectiveness; (c) to probe into the correlation between knowledge management strategy and school-based management, knowledge management strategy and school effectiveness, school-based management and school effectiveness. Some of 44 public elementary schools in Tainan are selected as samples. One way ANOVA, Canonical Correlation, Multiple Regression, Cluster analysis, Discriminant analysis and T-test are applied on the data obtained from questionnaires of the 44 schools. The results show that those schools adopted codificational knowledge management strategy have positive influence on both school-based management ability and school effectiveness. Those schools adopted codificational knowledge management strategy are shown to be better on both school-based management ability and school effectiveness.

Using a latent learning paradigm, the experiments examine two hypotheses of how rats solve place navigation tasks. According to associative theory, experience with all relevant cues is required for accurate navigation. According to cognitive mapping theory, animals can generate novel trajectories from knowledge of spatial relations of objects in the environment. Rats that had been placed on a platform, which was submerged in a pool of opaque water and was moved each day, were tested later for their ability to find the platform using only surrounding room cues. One 30-sec exposure to a platform location was effective in improving performance. Improvement was greatest when tests were given within minutes of placement, but facilitation was obtained for as long as 4 hr. Improved performance was obtained as soon as rats acquired the procedural aspects of the task but did not increase with subsequent practice. Improved performance was also obtained when pre-trained rats were tested in a novel environment. Despite the advantage conferred by exposure to the target platform, test swims were not accurate, placement-induced improvement was not as great as that following a single swimming trial, and placement combined with a swim resulted in best performance. The results suggest that rats use associative learning processes rather than cognitive mapping to solve place problems in a swimming pool.