Search

Although various versions of degraded image tasks exist, the complete process of creating these tasks can be effortful, time-consuming, and costly. The aim of the present tutorial is to provide a step-by-step, user-friendly, economical guide to creating a degraded image task using freely available resources, and provide resources to create multiple experiments adaptable to address many research questions. We demonstrated the utility of this method by designing, implementing, and analyzing a facial expression-decoding task, and confirmed the validity of the task by replicating often-found sex differences in face processing. Using this tutorial will enable new investigators with limited prior experience and available funding to quickly and easily design experiments using degraded image tasks, thereby reducing the delay between idea conceptualization and data acquisition.

Identifying meaningful cognitive and noncognitive predictors of mathematical competence is critical for developing targeted interventions for students struggling with mathematics. Here, 317 students' short-term verbal memory, verbal and visuospatial working memory, complexspatial abilities, intelligence, and mathematics attitudes and anxiety were assessed, and their teachers reported on their attentive behavior in 7th-grade mathematics classrooms. Bayesian regression models revealed that complex spatial abilities and in-class attention were the most plausible predictors of 7th-grade mathematics, but not word reading achievement, controlling for prior mathematics achievement. These results were confirmed with multilevel models that revealed interactions between these factors and prior achievement. The largest gains were among students with strong mathematical competencies in 6th grade, and average or better in-class attention in 7th grade as well as above average spatial abilities. High mathematics anxiety was associated with lower attention and through this indirectly influenced achievement gains. These results have implications for how to best target interventions for students at risk for long-term difficulties with mathematics.

The study tested the hypotheses that boys will have an advantage learning the fractions number line and this advantage will be mediated by spatial abilities. Fractions number line and, as a contrast, fractions arithmetic performance were assessed for 342 adolescents, as was their intelligence, working memory, and various spatial abilities. Boys showed smaller placement errors on the fractions number line (d = -0.22) and correctly solved more fractions arithmetic problems (d = 0.23) than girls. Working memory and intelligence predicted performance on both fractions measures, and a measure of visuospatial attention uniquely predicted number line performance and fully mediated the sex difference. Visuospatial working memory uniquely predicted fractions arithmetic performance and fully mediated the sex difference. The results help to clarify the nuanced relations between spatial abilities and formal mathematics learning and the sex differences that often emerge in mathematical domains that have a visuospatial component.

Pre-algebra mathematical competencies were assessed for a large and diverse sample of sixth graders (n = 1,926), including whole number and fractions arithmetic, conceptual understanding of equality and fractions magnitudes, and the fractions number line. The goal was to determine if there were clusters of students with similar patterns of pre-algebra strengths and weaknesses and if variation between clusters was related to mathematics attitudes, anxiety, or for a subsample (n = 342) some combination of intelligence, working memory, or spatial abilities. Critically, strengths and weaknesses were not uniform across the three identified clusters. Lower-performing students had pronounced deficits in their understanding of mathematical equality, fractions magnitudes, and the fractions number line. Higher-performing students had particular advantages in whole number and fractions arithmetic, and the fractions number line. Students could be reliably placed into clusters based on their mathematics self-efficacy and a combination of intelligence and spatial abilities. The results contribute to our understanding of key aspects of students' mathematical development, highlight areas in need of intervention for at-risk students, and identify cognitive areas in which scaffolds might be incorporated into these interventions.

Sex differences in the strength of the relations between mathematics anxiety, mathematics attitudes, and mathematics achievement were assessed concurrently in sixth grade (n = 1,091, 545 boys) and longitudinally from sixth to seventh grade (n = 190, 97 boys). Mathematics anxiety was composed of two facets, one associated with evaluations and the other for learning more generally. Girls had higher mathematics anxiety for evaluations than did boys (ds = -0.30 to -0.52), but not for mathematics learning. In sixth grade, the negative correlation between mathematical competence and mathematics anxiety for evaluations was stronger in girls than in boys. Longitudinally, higher mathematical competence in sixth grade was associated with lower mathematics anxiety for evaluations and better mathematics attitudes in seventh grade for girls but not for boys. The key finding is that adolescent girls' mathematics anxiety and their attitudes toward mathematics are more reflective of their actual mathematical competence than they are for boys. One implication is that relative to boys with low mathematics achievement, girls with low achievement are at higher risk of developing mathematics anxiety and poor attitudes toward mathematics.

A study of the influence of temperature (T) and gate-voltage (Vg) on 1/f noise of p-channel and n-channel MOS transistors fabricated in a single chip reveals the similarity between the temperature dependence and the gate-voltage dependence of the noise. A simple trapping model accounts for the influence of both parameters on 1/f noise in p- and n-MOS transistors. Trap density decides the noise at a given T and Vg. It remains constant near the silicon conduction band edge and increases as the trap energy moves close to the valence band edge.