#esp if it gets to the actual academics or research at a higher level

[vermillioncrown]

"you have maybe... too much logic in there"

"i was intimidated by your definitions"

"i can tell you did the homework, but i just want the answer"

"as a notorious math-hater, i was actually excited to finally get to the math"

"you've covered your ass, alright. no one coming after your life for this thesis"

"put 'read the document' in your vocabulary"

[elftwink]

im pretty close to graduating (i dont wanna talk about it) so most of my courses rn are on topics that i already have a lot of background/base knowledge in. like i think ive said before that at this point ive taken i think 4 or 5 research methods courses and the majority of my higher level courses have been extensions of lower level courses that require more work and go into more depth but use much of the same foundation. except now im at the end and im just taking whatever courses are available for the credits and i was like i’ll take one on a topic ive never studied before sure whatever. and i somehow forgot. that u have to learn all that base knowledge. im not even in a different field it’s still crim i just like forgot how wide a field that is because for the last two years ive been essentially specializing in modern corrections and policing and media portrayals of crime and theory and research methods. which sounds like a lot of things. it’s not because half of that you have to learn in every field ever just to get started but it sounds like a lot

but. im in a class on terrorism rn and im watching the first lecture video and its quickly dawning on me exactly how little i know about the topic. and exactly how much work is going to be required to even keep up. we’re learning some history rn and ive long known that history is a weak point of mine bc i always have to crash course myself on major historical events whenever i do projects outside my typical wheelhouse but i did not expect it to be this bad i was like i know things about criminology. ive been studying it for like 4 years. i’ll be fine. its NOT fine and if people in tutorial tomorrow morning actually know things i’ll pass out on the spot. it’s going to be so hard to get participation marks bc im SO uncertain about everything because literally all of it is new information.

i try to remain optimistic about school whenever possible esp this early in the semester and like realistically this is probably good. i think it’s bad to get too comfy w/my academics and its important to look into topics i have no background in. if nothing else it’s a good reminder that expertise is not translatable. i know wayyy too many people who are smart in their specific fields and use that as grounds to be an asshole to everyone and assume they’re right about everything so i try to humble myself periodically to not fall into that trap. and like when outside of uni am i going to study this. i probably wouldn’t, and certainly not in this much depth. so that’s good.

the workload though........ especially given that one of my other classes has a 50 page group project 😬 and the other is a law class which i am notoriously shit at and find boring.... theres no phoning it in this semester i guess! pain suffering agony etc.

[elcorreodetorreon]

“IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle”, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning difficulties), as well as, to a lesser extent, a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects. It is via negativa not via positiva. Designed for learning disabilities, it ends up selecting exam-takers, paper shufflers, obedient IYIs (intellectuals yet idiots), ill adapted for “real life”. The concept is poorly thought out mathematically (a severe flaw in correlation under fat tails, fails to properly deal with dimensionality, treats the mind as an instrument not a complex system), and seemed to be promoted by

racists/eugenists, people bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ test=intelligence; those have been upset with me for suddenly robbing them of a “scientific” tool, as evidenced by the bitter reactions to the initial post on twitter/smear campaigns by such mountebanks as Charles Murray. (Something observed by the great Karl Popper, psychologists have a tendency to pathologize people who bust them by tagging them with some type of disorder, or personality flaw such as “childish” , “narcissist”, “egomaniac”, or something similar).

psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers (military, large corporations) buying the “this is the best measure in psychology” argument when it is not even technically a measure — it explains at best between 13% and 50% of the performance in some tasks (those tasks that are similar to the test itself), minus the data massaging and statistical cherrypicking by psychologists; it doesn’t satisfy the monotonicity and transitivity required to have a measure (at best it is a concave measure). No measure that fails 60–95% of the time should be part of “science” (nor should psychology — owing to its sinister track record — be part of science (rather scientism), but that’s another discussion).

Some argue that IQ measures intellectual capacity — real world results come from, in addition, “wisdom” or patience, or “conscientiousness”, or decision-making or something of the sort. No. It does not even measureintellectual capacity/mental powers.

If you want to detect how someone fares at a task, say loan sharking, tennis playing, or random matrix theory, make him/her do that task; we don’t need theoretical exams for a real world function by probability-challenged psychologists. Traders get it right away: hypothetical P/L from “simulated” paper strategies doesn’t count. Performance=actual. What goes in people’s head or reaction to a screen image doesn’t exist (except via negativa).

Fat Tails If IQ is Gaussian by construction and if real world performance were, net, fat tailed (it is), then either the covariance between IQ and performance doesn’t exist or it is uninformational. It will show a finite number in samplebut doesn’t exist statistically. Another problem: when they say “black people are x standard deviations away”. Different populations have different variances, even different skewness and these comparisons require richer models. These are severe, severe mathematical flaws (a billion papers in psychometrics wouldn’t count if you have such a flaw). See the formal treatment in my next book.

But the “intelligence” in IQ is determined by academic psychologists like the “paper trading” we mentioned above, via statistical constructs s.a. correlation that I show here (see Fig. 1) that they patently don’t understand. It does correlate to negative performance (as it was initially designed to detect learning special needs) but then any measure would work there. A measure that works in left tail not right tail (IQ decorrelates as it goes higher) is problematic. We have gotten similar results since the famous Terman longitudinal study, even with massaged data for later studies. To get the point, consider that if someone has mental needs, there will be 100% correlation between performance and IQ tests. But the performance doesn’t correlate as well at higher levels, though the psychologists will think it does.(The statistical spin, as a marketing argument, is that a person with an IQ of 70 cannot prove theorems, which is obvious for a measure of unintelligence — but they fail to reveal how many IQs of 150 are doing menial jobs).

It is a false comparison to claim that IQ “measures the hardware” rather than the software. It can measures some arbitrarily selected mental abilities (in a testing environment) believed to be useful. However, if you take a Popperian-Hayekian view on intelligence, you would realize that to measure it you would need to know the mental skills needed in a future ecology, which requires predictability of said future ecology. It also requires the skills to make it to the future (hence the need for mental biases for survival).

Real Life: In academia there is no difference between academia and the real world; in the real world there is. 1) When someone asks you a question in the real world, you focus first on “why is he/she asking me that?”, which shifts you to the environment (see Fat Tony vs Dr John in The Black Swan) and detracts you from the problem at hand. Only suckers don’t have that instinct. 2) Real life never never offers crisp questions with crisp answers (most questions don’t have answers; perhaps the worst problem with IQ is that it seem to selects for people who don’t like to say “there is no answer, don’t waste time, find something else”.) 3) It takes a certain type of person to waste intelligent concentration on classroom/academic problems. These are lifeless bureaucrats who can muster sterile motivation. Some people can only focus on problems that are real, not fictional textbook ones (see the note below where I explain that I can only concentrate with real not fictional problems). 4) IQ doesn’t detect convexity (by an argument similar to bias-variance you need to make a lot of small inconsequential mistake in order to avoid a large consequential one. See Antifragile and how any measure of “intelligence” w/o convexity is sterile edge.org/conversation/n…). To do well you must survive, survival requires some mental biases directing to some errors. 5) Fooled by Randomness: seeing shallow patterns in not a virtue — leads to naive interventionism. Some psychologist wrote back to me: “IQ selects for pattern recognition, essential for functioning in modern society”. No. Not seeing patterns except when they are significant is a virtue in real life. 6) To do well in life you need depth and ability to select your own problems and to think independently.

Functionary Quotient: If you renamed IQ , from “Intelligent Quotient” to FQ “Functionary Quotient” or SQ “Salaryperson Quotient”, then some of the stuff will be true. It measures best the ability to be a good slave. “IQ” is good for @davidgraeber’s “BS jobs”.

Metrification: If someone came up w/a numerical“Well Being Quotient” WBQ or “Sleep Quotient”, SQ, trying to mimic temperature or a physical quantity, you’d find it absurd. But put enough academics w/physics envy on it and it will become an official measure.

Notes And Technical Notes

“IQ” is most predictive of performance in military training, with correlation~.5, (which is circular since hiring isn’t random and training is another test).

There are contradictory stories about whether IQ ceases to work past a threshold, since Terman’s longitudinal study of “geniuses”. What these researchers don’t get is these contradictions come from the fact that the variance of the IQ measure increases with IQ. Not a good thing.

The argument that “some races are better at running” hence [some inference about the brain] is stale: mental capacity is much more dimensional and not defined in the same way running 100 m dash is.

I have here no psychological references for backup: simply, the field is bust. So far ~ 50% of the research does notreplicate, and papers that do have weaker effect. Not counting poor transfer to reality (psychological papers are ludic).

How P values often — rather almost always — fraudulent: my paper arxiv.org/pdf/1603.07532…

The Flynn effect should warn us not just that IQ is somewhat environment dependent, but that it is at least partly circular.

Verbalism: Psychologists have a skin-deep statistical education & can’t translate something as trivial as “correlation” or “explained variance” into meaning, esp. under nonlinearities (see paper at the end).

The “best measure” charlatans: IQ is reminiscent of risk charlatans insisting on selling “value at risk”, VaR, and RiskMetrics saying “it’s the best measure”. That “best” measure, being unreliable blew them up many many times. Note the class of suckers for whom a bad measure is better than no measure across domains.

You can’t do statistics without probability.

Much of the stuff about IQ of physicists is suspicious, from self-reporting biases/selection in tests.

If you looked at Northern Europe from Ancient Babylon/Ancient Med/Egypt, you would have written the inhabitants off... Then look at what happened after 1600. Be careful when you discuss populations.

The same people hold that IQ is heritable, that it determines success, that Asians have higher IQs than Caucasians, degrade Africans, then don’t realize that China for about a Century had one order of magnitude lower GDP than the West.

Mathematical Considerations

CURSE OF DIMENSIONALITY A flaw in the attempts to identify “intelligence” genes. You can get monogenic traits, not polygenic (note: additive monogenic used in animal breeding is NOT polygenic).

The Skin in the game issue

How social scientists have trouble translating a statistical construct into its practical meaning.

Psychology

Data Science

Black Swan

Racism

Alt Right

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John Gordon

Jan 2

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the book, “IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea,” by Stephan Murdoch. I read it recently and recommend it. Even without Taleb’s math prowess excoriating it, IQ’s legitimacy is unconvincing.

Taleb drives a stake through the IQ corpse and helps unveil the shame of 20th

[organisaticns]

so im due to start at cambridge university for bio natural sciences in october and i thought i would write a post about what helped me make a successful application. hopefully this is useful to some people!! (also this is an incredibly long post you’ve been warned)

if anyone wants me to do a more in depth post on one specific section, or you guys have any questions at all, feel free to drop me a message!!

choosing a course

this is the most important bit!!! you’re dedicating 3/4/5/6 years of your life to this

oxbridge as rule (esp cambridge) have slightly different courses to other universities so do your research - on their websites and at open days

i know top students are supposed to apply to oxbridge bc “it’s the best” and stuff but if the courses offered don’t interest you or you prefer how other unis teach that course, DON’T APPLY!! it’s not worth it 

generally, look at your a level/ib/etc subjects and which sort of courses they meet the entry requirements for then look at websites and stuff to try and narrow it down

talk to current students! the blog askacambridgestudent on tumblr is great, each area has an oxbridge conference each april if you can go, ask students at open days

they can tell you what it’s actually like

read some books in the subject area you’re considering, watch ted talks, go to masterclasses, do work experience

this will help you choose a course and also be useful later when you write your personal statement

okay so when i was applying people kept telling me i would only be successful if the only thing i thought about 24/7 was biology and it was the love of my life. this is not true. you can have other interests don’t believe the people that tell you that you cant

that being said you need to be passionate about your subject!! refer to bullet point 1!! they want to know that you’re interested in it and this needs to show

oxford vs cambridge

this is really hard for some people but my course is only offered at cambridge so i did not have this problem

so first see if you prefer the course offered at one of them

if not, visit both and hopefully you’ll get a better vibe from one

i have no good advice here

writing your personal statement

okay writing a ps is just not fun okay prepare yourself for that

if anyone wants a biology/natural sciences example message me and i can send you mine

this post has some really good advice

start early, aim to have it completely done and edited by early september (oxbridge deadline is 15th october)

first, think about things you want to write about - i wrote a paragraph on a book i’d read, a paragraph each on two summer schools i did, a paragraph on my epq, and a paragraph on extracurricular

things you can talk about - books, ted talks, lectures, summer schools, masterclasses, epq, independent research into stuff, work experience

when you’re writing about stuff you gotta engage with it, so dedicate a whole paragraph to one book, then take one key theme and talk about how it interested you and how you looked up other things to do with it - link it to a different concept or talk about which theory you like best if theres conflicting theories in the field etc

it’s a hard thing to do but just pick different bits you liked about the book and try to discuss it - a key theory, theme, character etc

you can be asked about your ps in interview so make sure you’re comfortable discussing the books on your ps

you also do not need to talk about multiple books if you don’t want to, i only talked about one and i know people who didn’t mention any

don’t just say things like “im passionate about biology”!! back it up with something!! say you’re passionate about one specific topic in your field and why, discuss how different things you did/read consolidated your interest, show your interest through discussion about the subject

try to link in slightly different subject areas or experiences, and definitely link everything to your course and why you’d be a good student

i managed to link my latin AS level to biology so anything is possible folks

while you want all your paragraphs to be very supercurricular based on things you’ve done and read, try and drop in some of those buzz words they love - you know like about your academic writing skills, enthusiasm, opportunity, dedication, communication, interdisciplinary skills etc.

oxbridge do not give a shit about your extracurricular but other unis do so you want one paragraph max on it and try to link it to transferable skills - it makes you a good communicator etc

write your first draft - it will be shitty but just write it, leave the intro and conclusion to last

introductions and conclusions are super hard to write but it’s doable. try to take the general idea you’re trying to include (mine was how interdisciplinary study is important to both all the sciences together and sub disciplines in bio) and write a little bit about it

it doesn’t have to be long, your intro should introduce your passion to the subject (please don’t do the whole “i’ve wanted to study bio since i was five and x happened” thing)

conclusion can be super short, just reinforce you’re excited to study your subject in a new environment and have new opportunities

look at the tsr examples for inspiration

try to make it cohesive ish? have a running theme? (like how this one has a running theme? i actually took a lot of inspiration from that ps)

don’t say things like “im a motivated and commited student with good time management skills” without smth to back it up - “while undertaking an independent research project, i developed time management skills, and researching x made me more interested bc y” is better (i mean still not incredible but i wrote that literally just now okay)

the student room has a load of examples from people who’ve already applied

read the ones in your subject, work out which bits you like and don’t like, apply to your own (be careful of plagiarism tho)

disclaimer: not all the ps on there are good

once you have a complete and awful first draft show it to a teacher

most people show it to the relevant subject teacher, but also to your tutor, the higher education adviser, oxbridge adviser

they will hopefully help you make it less awful but don’t let them change it so much it doesn’t sound like you

i showed mine to the oxbridge adviser at my school and well he laughed at it bc it was so bad so you know

but i didn’t listen to everything he said bc some of the things he wrote like no 17 year old would say

keep revising drafts, showing to teachers until you can’t stand reading it anymore then get someone else (maybe parents?) to spell check and be done with the horrible thing

no one likes their personal statement, you will read it in august and wonder how you could possibly write something so bad

the actual ucas application

make sure your predicted grades are at least as high as the entrance requirements

you don’t really have much control over your teacher reference but you can use it to mention things you couldn’t fit in your personal statement if you can convince your teachers to include stuff

make sure all your qualifications and stuff are accurate

the saq (cambridge only)

you have to fill this in straight after october 15th

it’s mostly boring admin stuff, filling in topics and class sizes etc.

you have an option to write an additional (shorter) personal statement

this is really useful if the course you’re applying to at oxbridge is different to the other courses youve applied to - such as if you applied to politics everywhere else but hsps at cambridge - use it to explain why you want to do that specific course at cambridge

but you definitely don’t have to write one, i didnt!

make sure you get this in on time

written work

for some courses you have to send in written work

i didn’t have to so i don’t have loads of advice, but make sure you send in stuff that you’re comfortable discussing at interview

they’ll be guidelines on the cambridge website and on your specific college’s website

admissions tests

not the most fun things

find the specification on the website and go through, highlighting and revising the points you don’t know

try to find some past papers and do them

this really depends on the subject you’re doing so i can’t give much more advice but if anyone needs advice specific to the NSAA shoot me a message

also, these are just part of your application and even if you came out of yours thinking it’s the worst test you’ve ever had it probably didn’t go that badly 

the NSAA is the hardest test i’ve ever sat and i thought i had done completely shit and i still got an offer so there’s still hope

interviews

okay so first, don’t believe the rumours

you know the ones where people say they got given a banana and asked to use it to explain how quantum mechanics relates to of mice and men

interviews are definitely scary, but they are nowhere near as bad as people make them out to be, and they don’t ask you weird unrelated questions

make sure you know your personal statement inside out and you feel comfortable talking about the topics/books/etc you mentioned on there in depth

keep up to date with any recent news or high profile research in your field (you don’t need to know details, just have a vague idea of what’s going on)

this is especially important if you’re applying for politics or economics or something like that

if your school offers a mock interview, definitely have one, though don’t panic if you can’t have one there’s other ways to prepare

the whole point of interview is them wanting to see how you think and how you respond to unfamiliar problems

so i looked up a list of “past oxbridge interview questions” and practised writing down a quick answer to them and thinking about how i would go about solving the problem

oxford has some examples on the “sample questions” bit here

i also used this site but remember a lot of these probably aren’t actual interview questions 

if you have an opportunity, just talk to your relevant subject teacher about the topics beyond your specification

you honestly don’t need to do too much interview prep, just do enough so you feel a bit calmer about the whole thing

hope some of that helps :)

[jamfingers]

Some Background on That One Super Famous Cluster B Personality Disorder and Some Brief Meta Tying It to Kai Parker’s Problematic (but Fine AF) Ass Because I Said I Would Do This

Okay, this isn’t a research paper, so I’m not going to put ref points throughout the post, but I’ll write down the full names of the texts and articles I used at the bottom in case you’re interested in checking them out yourself. Some info/pics come from old annotated notes, but I likely will only use those for examples provided by previous professors. NONE of these visuals are mine, they’re copyrighted and I’m posting them for educational purposes. I’m making no profit off of this. Obviously. This is a damn fan blog. 

First off, lets talk behavior and psychopathology, then I’ll get into like...the barest bit of some of the complex anatomy and physiology behind them. Then I’ll talk Kai Parker a little and how he fits this. This post is gonna be hellaciously long, since it’s an academic reference/meta, so read more under the cut:

Personality is something pervasive, long term, and generally not mutable in a person. And individual’s personality will develop in childhood and are measured by rating the general patterns of disordered conduct/socializing of traits known as the big 5: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. These traits, like anything dealing with the mind, are measured on a spectrum and patterns of extremely high pervasiveness of traits in some areas and extremely low pervasiveness in others that results in a diminished or troubled quality of life is what results in a personality disorder.

Personality disorders are sorted into 3 groups called clusters:

Kai falls into cluster B - he has antisocial personality disorder (ASPD from here on, can also be noted as APD), historically called “sociopathy”. ASPD is more commonly diagnosed in men than in women, (although this might be in part due to societal/gender biases of both the patient and the clinician, but I digress), with a prevalence in the clinical population of 3.9-5.9% and in the general population of 1.0%-1.8%. It’s rare, but not the rarest personality disorder by any means. No unicorns here.

I personally denote ASPDers as the biggest con-artist assholes you’ll ever have the displeasure of meeting, but that’s not very academic, so I’ll copy my one of my textbook’s format and break this up into a few categories. More information can be found in references.

Clinical Description And Criteria:

“I am entitled to break rules.”

That right there is the sun with which ASPD revolves around. The disorder is characterized by extreme selfishness and disregard for others, highly impulsive and risky behavior (like drug use, reckless stunts, fighting), and unusual emotional responses and fits of rage, but no deficits in reasoning ability. People with ASPD know what they’re doing, understand the social norms/ rules behind them and don’t care. In regards to the Big 5 personality traits this is what they look like (L is low, H is high):

And diagnostic criteria for ASPD on the DSM-5 looks like this:

YOU HAVE TO HAVE DISPLAYED CONDUCT DISORDER AS A CHILD TO BE DIAGNOSED WITH ASPD AFTER 18. Remember an individual’s personality develops in childhood and is long-lasting. Conduct disorder in children is diagnosed with this criteria:

ASPD has a pretty high heritabilty (about 40-50%) and it’s fostered in hostile environments characterized by lack of warmth, exposure to violence, high negativity, parental inconsistency or parental ASPD, and/or poverty.

While ASPD is associated with poor impulse control, there is still no deficit in reasoning ability. ASPDers with a high intelligence quotient (IQ) are less likely to get caught or engage in illegal or destructive behavior because they know the game. They’d rather be free to fuck people over than in a system and can be quite adept at hiding their traits. This leads me to psychopathy. There’s still some debate about whether psychopathy should be considered different from ASPD, but most clinicians these days agree that psychopathy as a subset of symptoms that fall under ASPD. So just like all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares, all psychopaths (at this point) are ASPDers, but not all ASPDers are psychopaths. 

Psychopathy:

Defining characteristics of psychopathy include:

If you’re having a hard time reading this, the red and blue branches indicate what aspects of psychopathy are influenced by what bit of anatomy dysregulation. AMG - amygdala, PCC - posterior cingulate cortex, MPFC - medial prefrontal cortex. The coronal slices (red, bottom blue) are as if you’re looking at a person face to face - your left is their right. Top blue is scanned from the right side (See that scrunchy round thing behind the straight part? Below the “PCC”? That’s the cerebellum behind the brain stem. It’s in the back of your head, to help with orientation.) Middle blue is as if you and the person are facing the same direction, but you’re taller and looking straight down on their head. Hope that helps you out!

In general, with regards to criminal behavior, high IQ psychopaths are called “subclinical” psychopaths and are not generally studied bc...well, they blend in. They find other, legal or discreet ways to fulfill thrill seeking behavior.

Psychopathy has some actual distinct differences in the brain that can be physiologically measured. It’s typically shown by differences in the the right amygdala and the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex (arPFC from here on), especially on the right side. (The right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for emotional recognition and expression, while the amygdala controls fear responses/recognition and the PFC in general controls different aspects of higher cognition. In this case, it’s likely the conversion of emotionality to morality, since emotions play a large part in fostering sympathy and from there moral judgement.) See?

Integrative Biopsychosocial Model of APD:

Bio (Genetics and neurobiology): Twin and adoption studies show that ASPD is highly heritable, but it’s the gene-environment interaction that is integral for ASPD development. ASPD is an endophenotype - the underlying aspects of disorder are genetic (low levels serotonin and dopamine (the chemical neurotransmitters), or in the case of psychopaths, low levels of serotonergic or dopaminergic axons (the anatomy that receives the NT)) and provide the unique emotional aspects of ASPD, but the social behavior presentation is guided by the environment (early childhood stress, lack of social guidance, etc). The arousal theory, if you’re interested, is based of the endophenotypes and can explain how certain behaviors arise from them (i.e. ASPDers, esp. psychopaths, are stimulation seeking bc of low response in reward systems (serotonergic/dopaminergic)). *I add on dopamine bc it’s an important chemical in the brain’s reward system, but serotonin is the key one.

Psychosocial (mental and environmental): Inconsistent parental punishments, lack of punishment for aggressive/antagonist behavior, environments that propagate violence, high risk-reward and fearless psychology all lend themselves to the development of the disorder. 

The disorder is like a measuring cup and each influence is water filling it until the water level reaches the mark where the disorder presents itself. 

When it comes to ASPD, prevention, not treatment is preferred. Redirecting behavior patterns in kids with conduct disorder is your best bet compared to trying to get a fully formed, highly aggressive ASPD adult to behave.

Here’s a case study from my abnormal psych textbook depicting what the you’d most likely see in clinical ASPD case (i.e. in “the system” , like prison or a hospital):

(See why I said con-artists asshole? Ryan’s a fucking dick.)

References:

“Abnormal Psychology: An Integrative Approach” 7th Edition, David H. Barlow & V. Mark Durand {This is the book I used in my psychopathology class, which is for...understanding pathologies of the mind lol.}

“Neuroscience” 5th Edition, Dale Purves {Great book for detailed anatomy and physiology of neural circuits, and I didn’t get into like I could, but the emotion chapter is dense and that’s a lot of info to slam you with.}

“The Foundations of Behavioral Neuroscience” 9th Edition, Neil R. Carlson {Easy to read and a great general capstone text} 

Okay, so now that we got the science, on to Kai Parker:

Right, so I think it’s safe to say that, canonically, Kai mostly fits the criteria for ASPD, but you’re def free to go back over all that up there and do your own comparison. We all know how Kai is an admitted “sociopath”. Considering Joshua Parker’s behavior, we can probably take a gander on the genetic component and considering the entire Gemini premise, plus the way Kai in particular was raised as the outsider in his family, we have an idea of the hostile and warmth-lacking environment that fostered it.

Because it’s TVD, I do think Kai was written to cater that whole “handsome, suburban white boy gone wrong” schtick, but I also think he’s one of the most subtly well-fleshed characters that show ever produced. There’s this one article I read for a neuro lit course (“Loneliness and associated violent antisocial behavior: analysis of the case reports of Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nilsen.” authored by W.H. Martens and G.B. Palmero) that really stuck to me in a pervasive way and it’s about how chronically festering feelings of neglect and loneliness, of feeling like an unaccepted outsider, drove Dahmer and Nilsen to take their victim’s lives in a misguided way to dissuade the loneliness.

Having read that makes me wonder how Kai, the fictional serial killer, reflects his real life counterparts. The drive for merging and becoming coven leader is something that would force others to acknowledge him, which ties into his “black sheep” speech, his “I was never hugged as a child and my siblings were kept away” complaint (There are a lot of inconsistencies in his dialogued back story that bother me, but it makes me wonder if he ever lied about his past: “my favorite memory is when I finally beat him to death” and the preceding story about Mario Kart with the bby bro seems like something he might have just made up to fuck with Elena), and other vocalizations he’s made about his past which point to him being the misfit and desiring a sense of belonging. While we know Kai’s ASPD is a part of his characterization, this to me seems out of the norm for this disorder, simply because it indicates an understanding of sympathy that is unwittingly emotional.

Of course, Kai could also just want to be able to lord the world’s biggest “FU!” over his abusers.

Either way, anti or not, when using the ASPD/sociopath argument to defend or dismantle Kai as a character, I think it’s a good idea to keep in mind that Kai was written inconsistently. He shows very little impulsivity or recklessness in 1994, one trait which is almost a given with ASPD, nor was he flightly/irresponsible. He always had some end-goal or plan in mind. This was pre-merge. But he was also manipulative and showed no regret about the people he hurt. Obviously, each case of the disorder is unique because they exist on a spectrum, but the pattern and criteria are there due to broad commonalities in each case. The way the media tends to portray ASPD is not all consistent with the way the disorder presents irl.

[rociopinero-blog]

Materials Development for English for Specific Purposes: A Task Sheet for a Reading-Only Course in Psychopedagogy

Students: Piñero, Rocío Belén

               Siccardi, Facundo

Teachers: Liruso, Susana

                  Lauría, Patricia

                  Barrea, Irina              

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to describe and reflect upon the process and product of the Materials Development Project. We were expected to design a task sheet for a reading-only course in the field of Psychopedagogy, i.e. materials for a hypothetical English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course.

The text is structured as follows. First, we will describe the needs analysis stage. After that, we will account for the process of text selection. Finally, we will give details regarding the actual process of developing the activities for the worksheet. In that section, we will explain and justify the choices we made as part of the process. Throughout this paper, we will present the theoretical framework that guided the process.

Needs Analysis

On the basis of the premise that “any course should be based on an analysis of learner need” (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987: 53), we carried out the needs analysis (NA) in order to identify the different target and learning needs that the potential students may have. We consider that this analysis is essential for the development of the material even though in this case students are imaginary since it is a hypothetical situation. The needs analysis was carried out taking into account different sources and methods to collect and analyze the data. Except for one case, all of our sources were outsiders. The theoretical framework we have followed regarding needs analysis is Hutchinson & Waters’ ideas (1987).

First, we considered the guidelines we were given by the chair. In that task assignment, we knew that the aim was the development of a task sheet on reading comprehension aimed at second-year bachelor students of Psychopedagogy at Universidad Católica de Córdoba. We also got to know that their level of English is low intermediate, and that they are proficient L1 readers, which might be useful for compensating for their weaknesses regarding their reading abilities in English.

Taking into account the information provided in the task, we explored the university webpage for information about the curriculum, the profile of bachelors of Psychopedagogy, and the syllabi of the subjects. It was difficult for us to collect information about the course of studies because there was not much information on the web. Even though we could not find the full program of studies with the description of the subjects or with some syllabi, we could find the list of subjects per year. From the list of subjects belonging to their first academic year, we chose the subject “Non-Formal Education” as the theme for our prospect guide, so we did research on that topic for the selection of a suitable text, which is an issue that we will develop in the following section. We also looked for information in other universities to compare and thus have a better understanding of the prospective learners’ course of studies. We searched the websites of the Universidad Nacional de Villa María and Instituto de Educación Superior “Dr. Domingo Cabred” at Universidad Provincial de Córdoba because they have similar courses of studies. With respect to the former, we found scarce information regarding the different subjects. As regards the latter, we found out the detailed curriculum, which was valuable for us even though the program of studies has differences with the one at UCC.  

The main reason for the selection of the theme “non-formal education” was that we thought it could be a very interesting topic for students since learning about the theory and application of different methods that divert from the traditional ones may be appealing to them. Moreover, following Tomlinson’s principle (1998) “materials should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful”, we considered that focusing on a topic that explored a different perspective to learning and development could be profitable for them in potential research on alternative education and in the future career. Also, the topic may have a motivating effect on learners (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987), who will have to take up a compulsory course even if they are not interested in it. However, it is true that all learners react differently to materials and courses, so the actual interest or motivation would not be seen until the implementation of the guide.

As an interesting but disappointing experience, we carried out an unstructured interview via Messenger with one ex-student of that course of studies. It was not successful since she did not remember much about her first years at college except for the fact that students were expected to read exhaustively in L1 and sometimes in English. Even though we did not get much information from that source, the fact that students are used to reading confirms what was pointed out in the guidelines for the task, which is that they are proficient L1 readers. This fact also coincides with what Jordan argues in relation to the development of skills in EAP: “Many students (...) already possess study skills to an advanced level in their own language. They may simply need to transfer their skills into English, and, possibly, to adjust them with other elements of EAP” (1997: 5).

Due to the similarities between the field of Psychopedagogy and our field of study—i.e. education—, we took advantage of our previous knowledge of pedagogy and psychology to design a task sheet that was appropriate for their knowledge of the field and of the language. Our knowledge of the field and the analysis and interpretation of the data we collected allowed us to identify that learners have the need of improving their reading skills in L2 in order to read texts in English throughout their higher education and afterwards, in their careers, or while doing research.

Text Selection and Adaptation

After the initial NA, we followed the ESP process with the text selection and the production of the materials (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998). For the selection of the text, we followed the checklist given by the chair, the Text as a Vehicle of Information (TAVI) approach proposed by Johns & Davies (1983; in Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998), and the recommendations of Grabe & Stoller (2001). Grabe & Stoller point out that the material “should complement students’ intellectual levels and be at appropriate levels of difficulty” (2001: 4). They also state some major “sources of difficulties” (2001: 4) that arise when selecting reading materials, such as grammatical complexity, length of texts, unusual formatting and organization, which we tried to avoid or minimize when deciding for a text.

During the initial NA, we identified the topics students were familiar with. Choosing a text that deals with one of the topics they have studied guarantees, up to a certain degree, that students have some prior knowledge that could help them manage the carrier content. After the NA, we looked for texts within different subjects, genres, and sources to make a text bank so that we could compare and contrast the texts keeping in mind the objectives of our assignment and the TAVI approach. The result of the text selection process was the essay “The Montessori Method” by the university professor Chris Holfester (2008), which is an authentic text (Long, 2007; McGrath, 2002) that gives an overview of the Montessori Method. This text is part of a collection of summative articles written for undergraduate and graduate students beginning a career in research. The source, EBSCO, is a reliable source that belongs to the academic field. When choosing the text, we tried to meet the text selection criteria proposed by Dudley-Evans & St. Johns regarding carrier and real contents (1998: 99) and match them with the learning objectives.

We considered the text under different perspectives, namely, how readily we could devise activities that would help our students achieve the proposed teaching objectives, how engaging the text content would be, and how challenging the text itself would be. Regarding the challenge, the text presents a clear division into sections, has a clear structuring, and its grammatical complexity is appropriate for their level. However, the text was too long for a single task sheet, so we decided to choose a fragment taking into account that it remained as a coherent unit. We think that the text is suitable for learners since the topic is related to the students’ field, yet it presents aspects of education we considered new, and therefore engaging for the prospective students. The fragment we chose also lends itself to work with our teaching objectives: recognition of present perfect, identification of primary and secondary ideas using graphic organizers (GOs) and the recognition of connectors of exemplification.

The adaptation of the text for the task sheet required some rearrangements of paragraphs and the elaboration (Long, 2007) of one passage so as to enhance the comprehensibility of the ideas. The rearrangement of paragraphs and shortening of the text was done by keeping the original layout and visual features of the original text. As regards the adaptation of the text, we elaborated one sentence in paragraph #7 by adding the connector “for example” so as to specify that what follows are examples of what comes before. This elaboration also serves as an instance of a relation of exemplification, which is an part of the real content students are expected to learn while doing this task sheet. We only modified that only sentence so as to keep the text as authentic as possible (McGrath, 2002: 105). It is true that it was impossible for us to keep the real length of the text because of space and time. However, in the pre-reading stage, we included an activity that would make students aware of the fact that the text is incomplete, and we also included the table of contents that specifies the parts and contents of the complete text.

Design of Activities

Once the text was selected, we designed the task sheet. The aim of the design was to create engaging and meaningful activities that allow students to understand the text by working on it by means of pre-, during and post-reading framework (Grabe & Stoller, 2001).

Following the TAVI approach, we think that the task sheet fosters self-learning and the development of metacognitive abilities. Self-learning is encouraged by providing clarification and explanations within the task sheet so that students can complete the activities without the need of a teacher that explains everything in detail to them. Besides, the activities don’t have one correct answer, i.e. they have a teaching approach rather than a testing approach. Metacognitive development is fostered by specifying the objectives of the activities, so students are aware of them and are able to assess their own learning process.

As regards the pre-reading stage, in the first activity—previewing—, students have to look at the text, identify its genre and briefly discuss general features of it. This is so to activate their prior knowledge about the text type. It is expected that by doing this they will be better prepared to identify logical relationships and discourse organization within the text. Once the features of the particular genre are discussed, the students will read the keywords of the text. This activity will activate their knowledge about the topic and provide a first approach to terminology in the text that also belongs to their study field. By asking them to write the ideas they associate with the keywords, they will be predicting the ideas in the text. That prediction will be contrasted with the first reading of the text. By means of these pre-reading activities we expect students to be better prepared to understand the text. Identifying the genre and some of its characteristics is a fruitful start so as to have a general idea of what to expect from the text (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998).

Once a first approach to the text has been carried out, students’ attention will focus on strategic reading, which in this case will be the identification of main and secondary ideas in a text. In this while-reading section, students are asked to read only the first sentence of each paragraph and then summarize its information by means of a noun phrase, which will encompass the main idea of the paragraph. This activity is followed by a second complete reading of the text to fill in graphic organizers in which they will have to discriminate between main and secondary ideas. Through these activities, it is expected that students become more aware of the general text organization and get a better understanding of the content of this particular text. Once these activities are completed, students will move on to another scanning activity aimed at increasing their metatextual knowledge about academic texts by focusing on direct and indirect quotes, which are a distinctive feature of this type of text.

In the structure of the task sheet, the strategic reading activities were placed after the skimming section so as to follow a TAVI approach. As Hutchinson and Waters explain, “for ESP learners, extracting information accurately and quickly is more significant than language details; that understanding the macrostructure comes before language study; and that application of the information in the text is of paramount importance” (1987: 96). Thus, we thought that it was more fruitful to work with the content of the text first. The article we chose for this task sheet has a clear and well-organized structure that allows students to identify primary and secondary ideas without the need to fully understand Present Perfect or connectors of exemplification. Most probably students will have already learnt the simple past tense, which is the predominant one in the text. Therefore, they will possibly infer the past reference of the verb phrases from their prior knowledge and from the context too. The other language element—connectors of exemplification—does not present a hindrance to comprehension since the instances are transparent and self-explanatory in the text.

After having completed the proposed activities, students will be able to focus their attention on certain features of the language: the present perfect tense and connectors of exemplification. The first part deals with the recognition of the present perfect tense. To do this, students have to read a fragment of the text that contain an instance of a verb in present perfect. They are asked to identify the time it refers to, and then to reformulate the fragment in Spanish. Then, they have to recognize and reformulate the two other instances of present perfect in the text. Since students are not expected to understand subtle differences between simple past and present perfect, and they will have already discussed simple past before recognizing present perfect, we think that this type of activity will be enough for them to understand the meaning of the new verb tense and have a better understanding of the text. The inclusion of a section that focuses on linguistic features goes hand in hand with Tomlinson’s principle “The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input” (1998: 13-14).

As regards logical-semantic relations, the task sheet includes the teaching of exemplifying connectors. Since the connector “for example” is transparent enough for the students, we decided to present them a fragment with the connector “such as” as it may pose more difficulty. Thus, by presenting the connector in context, students will be able to recognize it by looking at the ideas that are connected. Next, they will have to recognize another connector in the text—”for example”—, and then complete a chart which will help them remember the different connectors. As Dudley-Evans & St. John (1998) argue, “logical connectors (...) are generally seen as a key to understanding the logical relationships in texts and therefore relevant to the teaching of reading, listening and writing in EAP” (1998: 78). Therefore, the awareness and recognition of different connectors—exemplification connectors in this case—allows students to distinguish the logical-semantic relationships between ideas in a text, and contribute to the understanding of the text. In the case of connectors of exemplification, they may help students realize that what comes after the connector are instances of details and secondary ideas, whose identification was also an objective of the task sheet.

The last activity before the closing task involves a vocabulary activity aimed at fostering learners’ reading comprehension by finding specific vocabulary items in the text, explaining their meaning in Spanish and providing a suitable equivalent. This activity is placed towards the end of the task sheet since we thought that it would be a good idea to continue exploring the text by paying attention to terminology related to the topic. As Dudley-Evans & St. John sustain, “deducing the meaning of vocabulary from the context and from the structure of the actual word is the most important method of learning new vocabulary” (1998: 83). Even though the chosen terms may seem transparent and from General English, they acquire a particular meaning in the education field. Searching for the terms in their context and explaining them in the learners’ own words can certainly contribute to a better understanding of these terms.

Finally, students will move on to the closing task, which was actually the first to be designed. As Hutchinson & Waters argue “knowing what students would really do, and why, with a text, is necessary for setting the task” (1998; 100). In this case, students are studying English for Academic Purposes mostly; therefore, in a real situation, they would probably need to read a text to keep learning later on in their degree course or as part of a postgraduate degree. These ideas also coincide with the notion of “authentic task” by Nunan (1988, in McGrath, 2002: 80). This activity focuses on the information contained in the text and makes student reflect on it, both to imitate a real need and also, as Grabe & Stoller suggest for post-reading activities, to ensure “that the major ideas and supporting information are well understood” (2001: 5). Asking students to reflect upon the content of the text—in this case whether they would apply the principles proposed by the Montessori Method—is a task that students are used to doing when they have to read text for a subject. In that sense, we think that reflecting upon the relevance and applicability of the content responds to the principle “what is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful” (Tomlinson, 1998: 10). After all the previous activities, students should be in a position to discuss the usefulness of the text. Designing this task at the very beginning is crucial since all the activities that precede it should guide the understanding of the text and the learning of the language structures in order that students can eventually complete that final task.

Though the present task sheet was the only one we have developed for this potential ESP/EAP course, it is possible to recognize a certain logic inside of it. As regards the structure of the worksheet, the activities are organized according to their complexity so that students can build on one activity in order to complete the following one. Its layout tries to keep a balance between the visual elements and the text. We included visual elements in all the activities so as to minimize the amount of text in the pages, following Dudley-Evans & St. John’s recommendation regarding variety in activity types (1998: 178). We included different elements such as boxes with theory or tips related to grammar and strategic reading. They can easily be identified since they are written with the same font, which is a bit more informal than the one in the rubrics. These elements contrast with the rubrics, which are numbered, and written in a formal voice and in bold type. In both cases, the size is big and clear enough. We left enough blank space for students to write the answers or take down notes. We have tried to design an “attractive presentation” and also select an “appealing content”, which are key ideas that follow Tomlinson’s principle that “materials should achieve impact” (1998: 7).

As regards variety in interaction (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998), most of the activities are expected to be done individually except for the pre-reading stage, in which activation of prior knowledge and engagement in the tasks are crucial for motivation and the achievement of the learning objectives. Therefore, the interaction and collaboration among partners at the beginning can foster positive feelings towards the learning process.

The use of labels for the different sections of the task sheet was done with a specific purpose in mind. We think that, by making students realize what the theme and objectives of the activities are, we foster a metacognitive approach to learning. Students know why the activity is there, what its goal is, and then they can put into use or practice specific reading skills or strategies needed for each activity.

Conclusions

In this paper, we have developed a thorough explanation of the process of designing a tasksheet for an EAP course. We have accounted for the needs analysis that was carried out at the beginning of the process, the decisions we made regarding text selection and adaptation as well as the actual process of designing the activities for the task sheet. The final product—the task sheet—is the result of readings, analysis, trial and error, creativity and the application of the appropriate theoretical framework we have learnt during this year. This worksheet may be useful for EAP Psychopedagogy learners because they can work with an authentic text dealing with a relevant topic that belongs to their field of study.

We think that this task sheet complies with what is expected from a reading comprehension guide for college students according to the TAVI approach and some of Tomlinson’s principles for materials development. The chosen text is authentic and clear, and contains relevant information. The task sheet has variety in activities, it is appealing and it deals with a topic that seems interesting. The distribution of activities follows the idea that reading comprehension is a process that encompasses pre-, while- and post-reading mini steps that contribute to having a general and/or specific understanding of the text and to have the possibility of exploiting it in different ways. The use of an inductive approach for language learning is also beneficial because students can learn by discovery. In the end, one of the main objectives of teaching reading-only EAP courses is that of “helping students become strategic readers by focusing on metacognitive awareness and strategy learning” (Grabe & Stoller, 2001: 2).

For us, being tasked with creating an EAP task sheet brought us closer to a field we may work with in our professional life. It proved to be challenging in every step. The process of carrying out a needs analysis, choosing a text and designing the activities resulted in a very enriching learning experience. However, it is true that with a pilot test and the implementation of the material in an actual teaching situation, we could identify flaws and mistakes, and then improve the task sheet.

Reference list

Dudley-Evans, T. & St. John, M. J. (1998). Developments in English for Specific Purposes. CUP.

Grabe, W. & F. L. Stoller. (2001). “Reading for Academic Purposes: Guidelines for the ESL/EFL teacher”. In Celce Murcia, M. Teaching English as a second or foreign language (Third Edition). Heinle & Heinle.

Holfester, C. (2008). The Montessori Method. In EBSCO Research Starters Education. EBSCO Publishing Inc. Retrieved from: http://www.williamsburgmontessori.org/wpcontent/uploads/2010/08/The_Montessori_Method.pdf

Hutchinson, T. & A. Waters (1987). English for Specific Purposes. CUP.

Jordan, R. R. (1997) Part 1: English for Academic Purposes and study skills. In English for Academic Purposes. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Long, M. (2007). Chapter 5: Texts, tasks, and the advanced learner. In Problems in SLA. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

McGrath, Ian. (2002). Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd.

Tomlinson, B. (Ed.) (1998). Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.