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Critical thinking is identified as a key educational outcome in higher education curricula; however, it is not trivial to support students in building this multifaceted skill. In this study, we evaluated a brief online learning intervention focusing on informal fallacy identification, a hallmark critical-thinking skill. The intervention used a bite-sized video learning approach, which has been shown to promote student engagement. Video-based learning was implemented within a precision teaching (PT) framework, which modulates the exposure of individual learners to the learning material to enable them to build 'fluency' in the targeted skills. In one of the learning conditions, PT was applied synergistically with domain-general problem-based training to support generalisation. The intervention consisted of two learning episodes and was administered to three groups (learning conditions) of 19 participants each: a PT fluency-based training group; a PT + group, where PT was combined with problem-based training; and a self-directed learning control group. All three groups showed comparable improvements in fallacy identification on taught (post-episode tests) and unseen materials (post-intervention assessment), with lower-scoring participants showing higher gains than high-scoring participants. The results of the knowledge retention tests a week later were also comparable between groups. Importantly, in the domain-general fallacy-identification assessment (post-intervention), the two PT groups showed higher improvements than the control group. These findings suggest that the integration of bite-sized video learning technologies with PT can improve students' critical-thinking skills. Furthermore, PT, on its own or combined with problem-based training, can improve their skill to generalise learning to novel contexts. We discuss the educational implications of our findings.

Press representations of autism and autistic people both reflect and help shape public attitudes towards autism and neurodiversity and may establish critical barriers to social integration for autistic individuals. This study examined such representations in UK newspapers in the period 2011-2020 using a corpus-based approach. It also considered how press representations changed over time and differed with regard to reporting style (tabloids vs broadsheets) and political orientation (left- vs right-leaning). We created the "Autism UK Press Corpus," which included all documents ([approximately]24K) referring to autism in 10 national newspapers. We used document counts (normalised by newspaper size) to assess the 'newsworthiness' of autism. We also employed a synergy of corpus-based and critical-discourse-analysis methodologies to study lexicogrammatical patterns and uncover explicit and implicit attitudes towards autism. Our results showed that the coverage of autism increased slightly over time, especially in broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. Newspapers emphasised adversities associated with autism, often used negative language, and tended to focus on boys. These representations shifted gradually towards more difference-based descriptions and included more diverse age/gender groups, especially in broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. We discuss the broad implications of these findings for the autism community and those interested in a more inclusive society.

Oral communication often takes place in noisy environments, which challenge spoken-word recognition. Previous research has suggested that the presence of background noise extends the number of candidate words competing with the target word for recognition and that this extension affects the time course and accuracy of spoken-word recognition. In this study, we further investigated the temporal dynamics of competition processes in the presence of background noise, and how these vary in listeners with different language proficiency (i.e., native and non-native) using computational modeling. We developed ListenIN (Listen-In-Noise), a neural-network model based on an autoencoder architecture, which learns to map phonological forms onto meanings in two languages and simulates native and non-native spoken-word comprehension. We also examined the model's activation states during online spoken-word recognition. These analyses demonstrated that the presence of background noise increases the number of competitor words, which are engaged in phonological competition and that this happens in similar ways intra and interlinguistically and in native and non-native listening. Taken together, our results support accounts positing a "many-additional-competitors scenario" for the effects of noise on spoken-word recognition.

Press representations of autism and autistic people both reflect and help shape public attitudes towards autism and neurodiversity and may establish critical barriers to social integration for autistic individuals. This study examined such representations in UK newspapers in the period 2011–2020 using a corpus-based approach. It also considered how press representations changed over time and differed with regard to reporting style (tabloids vs broadsheets) and political orientation (left- vs right-leaning). We created the Autism UK Press Corpus, which included all documents (~24K) referring to autism in 10 national newspapers. We used document counts (normalised by newspaper size) to assess the 'newsworthiness' of autism. We also employed a synergy of corpus-based and critical-discourse-analysis methodologies to study lexicogrammatical patterns and uncover explicit and implicit attitudes towards autism. Our results showed that the coverage of autism increased slightly over time, especially in broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. Newspapers emphasised adversities associated with autism, often used negative language, and tended to focus on boys. These representations shifted gradually towards more difference-based descriptions and included more diverse age/gender groups, especially in broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. We discuss the broad implications of these findings for the autism community and those interested in a more inclusive society. Any thriving society must recognise, accept and celebrate all of its diverse talent. But how accepting is British society towards autism and autistic people? This research addressed this question through the lens of the press since the press both reflects and helps shape public attitudes towards various social categories. We used specialised 'corpus-based' methods to carry out a large-scale study, which examined all articles referring to autism or autistic people in 10 national British newspapers in the period 2011–2020. We first investigated how often newspapers referred to autism. We found that the coverage of autism increased slightly over the years, suggesting that autism was becoming an increasingly newsworthy topic. Furthermore, the rise in autism coverage differed considerably between individual newspapers: it was more pronounced in the broadsheets than tabloids, and in left-leaning than right-leaning newspapers. But what was the focus of these articles? We found that newspapers emphasised the adversities associated with autism and portrayed autism with a lot of negative language. Newspapers also tended to focus on autistic children, and particularly on boys. There were some signs of change in more recent years, with some newspapers now representing autism as a difference and, in addition, referring to more diverse groups of autistic people. However, these changes tended to be confined to broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. Our findings suggest that representations of autism in the contemporary British press are skewed towards stereotypically negative views, which may well hinder the acceptance of autism and the fostering of a more inclusive society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adjustments to life and learning following the COVID-19 pandemic have transformed user acceptance of online learning methods. It is, therefore, imperative to analyse factors relating to user performance and preferences for such interactions. In this study, we combined video-based learning with precision teaching to reinforce previously learnt statistics skills in university students without a mathematical background. We developed a learning design consisting of eight 'bite-sized' online learning episodes. Each episode started with a brief learning video followed by a practice phase and an end-of-episode assessment. The practice phase differed in two groups of participants, matched on statistics attainment pre-intervention. A precision-teaching intervention group (N = 19) completed practice guided by a frequency-based approach aiming at building fluency in statistics. A control group (N = 19) completed self-directed practice for the same amount of time as the intervention group. All participants completed a statistics attainment test and a questionnaire on their attitudes towards statistics pre- and post-intervention, and a review of the learning materials post-intervention. The intervention group achieved, consistently, higher scores in all end-of-episode assessments compared to the control group. Both groups showed significant and comparable improvements in statistics attainment post-intervention. Both groups also reported more positive feelings towards statistics post-intervention, while the review of the learning materials suggested that the video-based learning design was well-received by students. Our results suggest that video-based learning has great potential to support, as a supplementary teaching aid, university students in learning statistics. We discuss future research directions and implications of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]