Hypomimia in Parkinson's Disease: What Is It Telling Us?

Introduction: Amimia is one of the most typical features of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, its significance and correlation with motor and nonmotor symptoms is unknown. The aim of this study is to evaluate the association between amimia and motor and nonmotor symptoms, including cognitive status, depression, and quality of life in PD patients. We also tested the blink rate as a potential tool for objectively measuring upper facial bradykinesia.Methods: We prospectively studied amimia in PD patients. Clinical evaluation was performed using the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) and timed tests. Cognitive status, depression, and quality of life were assessed using the Parkinson's Disease Cognitive Rating Scale (PD-CRS), the 16-Item Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (QIDS-SR16), and the PDQ-39, respectively. Amimia was clinically evaluated according to item 19 of UPDRS III. Finally, we studied upper facial amimia by measuring resting blink frequency and blink rate during spontaneous conversation.Results: We included 75 patients. Amimia (item 19 UPDRS III) correlated with motor and total UPDRS (r: 0.529 and 0.551 Spearman), and its rigidity, distal bradykinesia, and motor axial subscores (r: 0.472; r: 0.252, and r: 0.508, respectively); Hoehn and Yahr scale (r: 0.392), timed tests, gait freezing, cognitive status (r: 0.29), and quality of life (r: 0.268) correlated with amimia. Blinking frequency correlated with amimia (measured with item 19 UPDRS), motor and total UPDRS.Conclusion: Amimia correlates with motor (especially axial symptoms) and cognitive situations in PD. Amimia could be a useful global marker of overall disease severity, including cognitive decline.

Verification and Evaluation of a Visual Reaction System for Badminton Training

The two aims of this study were (1) designing and developing an affordable visual reaction system for badminton training that monitors and provides instant feedback on agility; and (2) to measure and improve the footwork and movement of badminton players and output useful reference data. Ten junior high school badminton players were invited to serve as the subjects of this study. They participated in a three-week (nine sessions) training program. Training was primarily in the form of fixed or random footwork drills. Timed tests were performed before and after each session to measure the players’ agility in performing six-point and four-point footwork drills. The results were compared to the training effects calculated using dependent-sample t-tests. In addition, the long-term durability and functionality of the training system were tested. The training system was able to maintain stable and reliable training and evaluation operations for extended periods. Results showed significant improvements in the visual reaction time (p = 0.003) and agility (p = 0.001) of players. The proposed training system is an affordable option for training and monitoring, evaluating, and recording training performance. It can accurately record movement and response times and simulate competitive environments.

The secret of quick thinking: The invention of mental speed in America, 1890–1925

In the early 20th century, mental speed became a dominant measure of intelligence in the United States. For both cultural and technical reasons, this had not always been the case. For 19th-century Americans, quickness of speech and thought often signified lack of self-discipline. Unlike with other objects of temporal measurement and rationalization such as factory work, little scientific or popular consensus existed over how to clock the invisible phenomenon of thought. The cultural and scientific ascent of mental speed thus poses an unsolved historical problem: how and why did Americans adopt this new ideal of intelligence? This essay offers an answer in the introduction and popularization of a new and controversial practice: the timed test. The first timed tests did not so much formalize an existing conception of mental efficiency as establish a new one, using one of the key tools of measurement available to experimental psychology, the mechanical time-keeper. Initially frustrated in their efforts to correlate their subjects' laboratory-measured reaction time with socially recognized achievements such as academic grades, psychologists in the late 1890s borrowed a still-obscure concept from stenography and telegraphy: words per minute. At first, few scientists or members of the public equated reading, speaking, writing, and listening rate with intelligence. Only after American educators, military recruiters, and vocational guidance experts began to adopt timed testing in the 1910s for administrative convenience did mental speed begin to indicate intelligence and knowledge. What began as a way to test minds efficiently evolved almost inadvertently into a test of their efficiency.

Assessing Basic Facts Fluency

Have you had it with timed tests, which present a number of concerns and limitations? Try a variety of alternative assessments from this sampling that allows teachers to accurately and appropriately measure childre's fact fluency.

Research Suggests that Timed Tests Cause Math Anxiety

This department publishes brief news articles, announcements and guest editorials on current mathematics education issues that stimulate the interest of TCM readers and cause them to think about an issue or consider a specific viewpoint about some aspect of mathematics education.

Technology and plagiarism

In many disciplines within higher education, there has been a steady move over the last decade or so away from traditional examinations at the end of courses. Such examinations are seen as inherently unfair, partly because only in rare circumstances can a single set of timed tests genuinely reflect the content of an entire course, and partly because factors extraneous to normal intellectual capabilities, such as a headache, may unexpectedly depress a student's mark. Modularization may go some way to easing educationists' anxieties on this score, but will not in itself completely dispel the perceived problems. Other than dispensing with testing altogether (there are advocates of such an approach), there are only two ways of overcoming, or at least cushioning, the potentially unrepresentative effects of a final examination on which all or a significant part depends. Hie first is to test in the traditional manner but at intervals throughout a course, with the consequent periodic examination results making up the final assessment, or counting towards it. The second way - which has recently gained considerable ground - is to introduce continuous assessment of work done outside the examination room (essays, dissertations, projects, assignments, group work and so forth) either as the sole set of criteria for the final mark or, again, as forming part of it.DOI: 10.1080/0968776930010201