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BackgroundPregnant women often find it difficult to choose from among the wide variety of available prenatal screening options. To help pregnant women and their partners make informed decisions based on their values, needs, and preferences, a decision aid and a web-based shared decision making (SDM) training program for health professionals have been developed. In Canada, nurses provide maternity care and thus can train as decision coaches for prenatal screening. However, there is a knowledge gap about the effectiveness of SDM interventions in maternity care in nursing practice. ObjectiveThis study aims to assess the impact of an SDM training program on nurses’ intentions to use a decision aid for prenatal screening and on their knowledge and to assess their overall impressions of the training. MethodsThis is a 2-arm parallel randomized trial. French-speaking nurses working with pregnant women in the province of Quebec were recruited online by a private survey firm. They were randomly allocated (1:1 ratio) to either an experimental group, which completed a web-based SDM training program that included prenatal screening, or a control group, which completed a web-based training program focusing on prenatal screening alone. The experimental intervention consisted of a 3-hour web-based training hosted on the Université Laval platform with 4 modules: (1) SDM; (2) Down syndrome prenatal screening; (3) decision aids; and (4) communication between health care professionals and the patient. For the control group, the topic of SDM in Module 1 was replaced with “Context and history of prenatal screening,” and the topic of decision aids in Module 3 was replaced with “Consent in prenatal screening.” Participants completed a self-administered sociodemographic questionnaire with close-ended questions. We also assessed the participants' (1) intention to use a decision aid in prenatal screening clinical practice, (2) knowledge, (3) satisfaction with the training, (4) acceptability, and (5) perceived usefulness of the training. The randomization was done using a predetermined sequence and included 40 nurses. Participants and researchers were blinded. Intention to use a decision aid will be assessed by a t test. Bivariate and multivariate analysis will be performed to assess knowledge and overall impressions of the training. ResultsThis study was funded in 2017 and approved by Genome Canada. Data were collected from September 2019 to late January 2020. This paper was initially submitted before data analysis began. Results are expected to be published in winter 2020. ConclusionsStudy results will inform us on the impact of an SDM training program on nurses’ intention to use and knowledge of decision aids for prenatal screening and their overall impressions of the training. Participant feedback will also inform an upgrade of the program, if needed. Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT04162288; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04162288 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)DERR1-10.2196/17878

Engineering education has traditionally focused on the development of technical skills and knowledge. Nowadays, the need for educating engineers in non-technical skills, such as reflective thinking, is being recognised internationally. This paper proposes that socio-cultural impacts of technology be studied together with the technology itself through the integration of social awareness modules into advanced technical courses, providing a venue for students to exercise their reflective thinking skills in the context of technologies that are of interest to them. The paper presents an exploratory study of the essays of senior year engineering students on the socio-cultural impacts of computer vision technologies. It provides insights on the themes that are of interest to the students and on the students' strengths and weaknesses relating to their reflective thinking abilities. Similar modules would apply well to other advanced courses in the engineering curriculum, to help contextualise technology and enhance the reflective abilities of engineering graduates.

Engineering education has traditionally focused on the development of technical skills and knowledge. Nowadays, the need for educating engineers in non-technical skills, such as reflective thinking, is being recognised internationally. This paper proposes that socio-cultural impacts of technology be studied together with the technology itself through the integration of social awareness modules into advanced technical courses, providing a venue for students to exercise their reflective thinking skills in the context of technologies that are of interest to them. The paper presents an exploratory study of the essays of senior year engineering students on the socio-cultural impacts of computer vision technologies. It provides insights on the themes that are of interest to the students and on the students' strengths and weaknesses relating to their reflective thinking abilities. Similar modules would apply well to other advanced courses in the engineering curriculum, to help contextualise technology and enhance the reflective abilities of engineering graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new manual search method was used to investigate the impact of naming on object individuation in 12-month-old infants. In Experiment 1, on a two-word trial, an experimenter looked into a box while the infant was watching and provided two labels (e.g., 'Look, a fep!' and 'Look, a wug!'). On a one-word trial, the experimenter instead repeated the same label (e.g., 'Look, a zav!'). After the infant retrieved one object from the box, subsequent search behavior was recorded. Infants searched more persistently (i.e., for a longer duration) after hearing two labels than one, suggesting that hearing two labels led the infants to expect two objects inside the box. In Experiment 2, infants' search behavior did not differ depending on whether they heard one or two emotional expressions, suggesting that the facilitation effect observed in Experiment 1 may be specific to linguistic expressions. Thus, we provide the first evidence that infants as young as 12 months are able to use intentional and referential cues to guide their object representations. These findings also suggest that a rudimentary version of the mutual-exclusivity constraint may be functional by the end of the first year.