Explore the vast range of titles available.

Enthusiasm for research on the brain and its application in education is growing among teachers. However, a lack of sufficient knowledge, poor communication between educators and scientists, and the effective marketing of dubious educational products has led to the proliferation of numerous 'neuromyths.' As a first step toward designing effective interventions to correct these misconceptions, previous studies have explored the prevalence of neuromyths in different countries. In the present study we extend this applied research by gathering data from a new sample of Spanish teachers and by meta-analyzing all the evidence available so far. Our results show that some of the most popular neuromyths identified in previous studies are also endorsed by Spanish teachers. The meta-analytic synthesis of these data and previous research confirms that the popularity of some neuromyths is remarkably consistent across countries, although we also note peculiarities and exceptions with important implications for the development of effective interventions. In light of the increasing popularity of pseudoscientific practices in schools worldwide, we suggest a set of interventions to address misconceptions about the brain and education.

Background: When measuring complex cognitive constructs, it is crucial to correctly design the evaluation items in order to trigger the intended knowledge and skills. Furthermore, assessing the validity of an assessment requires considering not only the content of the evaluation tasks, but also how examinees perform by engaging construct-relevant response processes. Objectives: We used eye-tracking techniques to examine item response processes in the assessment of digital competence. The eye-tracking observations helped to fill an ‘explanatory gap’ by providing data on the variation in response processes that cannot be captured by other common sources. Method: Specifically, we used eye movement data to validate the inferences made between claimed and observed behavior. This allowed us to interpret how participants processed the information in the items in terms of Area Of Interest (their size, placement, and order). Results and Conclusions: The gaze data provide detailed information about response strategies at the item level, profiling the examinees according to their engagement, response processes and performance/success rate. The presented evidence confirms that the response patterns of the participants who responded well do not represent an alternative to the interpretation of the results that would undermine the assessment criteria. Takeaways: Gaze-based evidence has great potential to provide complementary data about the response processes performed by examinees, thereby contributing to the validity argument.

In a recent report published in PLoS ONE, we found that the performance of PsychoPy degraded with very short timing intervals, suggesting that it might not be perfectly suitable for experiments requiring the presentation of very brief stimuli. The present study aims to provide an updated performance assessment for the most recent version of PsychoPy (v1.80) under different hardware/software conditions. Overall, the results show that PsychoPy can achieve high levels of precision and accuracy in the presentation of brief visual stimuli. Although occasional timing errors were found in very demanding benchmarking tests, there is no reason to think that they can pose any problem for standard experiments developed by researchers.

Over the last few years, microblogging has gained prominence as a form of personal broadcasting media where information and opinion are mixed together without an established order, usually tightly linked with current reality. Location awareness and promptness provide researchers using the Internet with the opportunity to create “psychological landscapes”—that is, to detect differences and changes in voiced (twittered) emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. In our article, we present iScience Maps, a free Web service for researchers, available from http://maps.iscience.deusto.es/ and http://tweetminer.eu/ . Technologically, the service is based on Twitter’s streaming and search application programming interfaces (APIs), accessed through several PHP libraries, and a JavaScript frontend. This service allows researchers to assess via Twitter the effect of specific events in different places as they are happening and to make comparisons between cities, regions, or countries regarding psychological states and their evolution in the course of an event. In a step-by-step example, it is shown how to replicate a study on affective and personality characteristics inferred from first names (Mehrabian & Piercy, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19 , 755–758 1993 ) by mining Twitter data with iScience Maps.Results from the original study are replicated in both world regions we tested (the western U.S. and the U.K./Ireland); we also discover base rate of names to be a confound that needs to be controlled for in future research.

Because of the features provided by an abundance of specialized experimental software packages, personal computers have become prominent and powerful tools in cognitive research. Most of these programs have mechanisms to control the precision and accuracy with which visual stimuli are presented as well as the response times. However, external factors, often related to the technology used to display the visual information, can have a noticeable impact on the actual performance and may be easily overlooked by researchers. The aim of this study is to measure the precision and accuracy of the timing mechanisms of some of the most popular software packages used in a typical laboratory scenario in order to assess whether presentation times configured by researchers do not differ from measured times more than what is expected due to the hardware limitations. Despite the apparent precision and accuracy of the results, important issues related to timing setups in the presentation of visual stimuli were found, and they should be taken into account by researchers in their experiments.

Social networking has surpassed e-mail and instant messaging as the dominant form of online communication (Meeker, Devitt, & Wu, 2010 ). Currently, all large social networks are proprietary, making it difficult to impossible for researchers to make changes to such networks for the purpose of study design and access to user-generated data from the networks. To address this issue, the authors have developed and present Social Lab, an Internet-based free and open-source social network software system available from http://www.sociallab.es . Having full availability of navigation and communication data in Social Lab allows researchers to investigate behavior in social media on an individual and group level. Automated artificial users (“bots”) are available to the researcher to simulate and stimulate social networking situations. These bots respond dynamically to situations as they unfold. The bots can easily be configured with scripts and can be used to experimentally manipulate social networking situations in Social Lab. Examples for setting up, configuring, and using Social Lab as a tool for research in social media are provided.

Using the Web to run behavioural and social experiments quickly and efficiently has become increasingly popular in recent years, but there is some controversy about the suitability of using the Web for these objectives. Several studies have analysed the accuracy and precision of different web technologies in order to determine their limitations. This paper updates the extant evidence about presentation accuracy and precision of the Web and extends the study of the accuracy and precision in the presentation of multimedia stimuli to HTML5-based solutions, which were previously untested. The accuracy and precision in the presentation of visual content in classic web technologies is acceptable for use in online experiments, although some results suggest that these technologies should be used with caution in certain circumstances. Declarative animations based on CSS are the best alternative when animation intervals are above 50 milliseconds. The performance of procedural web technologies based on the HTML5 standard is similar to that of previous web technologies. These technologies are being progressively adopted by the scientific community and have promising futures, which makes their use advisable to utilizing more obsolete technologies.

Until recently, most of the digital literacy frameworks have been based on assessment frameworks used by commercial entities. The release of the DigComp framework has allowed the development of tailored implementations for the evaluation of digital competence. However, the majority of these digital literacy frameworks are based on self-assessments, measuring only low-order cognitive skills. This paper reports on a study to develop and validate an assessment instrument, including interactive simulations to assess citizens’ digital competence. These formats are particularly important for the evaluation of complex cognitive constructs such as digital competence. Additionally, we selected two different approaches for designing the tests based on their scope, at the competence or competence area level. Their overall and dimensional validity and reliability were analysed. We summarise the issues addressed in each phase and key points to consider in new implementations. For both approaches, items present satisfactory difficulty and discrimination indicators. Validity was ensured through expert validation, and the Rasch analysis revealed good EAP/PV reliabilities. Therefore, the tests have sound psychometric properties that make them reliable and valid instruments for measuring digital competence. This paper contributes to an increasing number of tools designed to evaluate digital competence and highlights the necessity of measuring higher-order cognitive skills.

During the last decades, digital competence has become essential at workplace. Nowadays, it is difficult to find a job where no ICT skills are required. At the same time, there is a lack of ecosystems for adult reskilling in digital competence. Moreover, most of them do not use of a common language and terminology, decreasing the possibilities of being used by a wider public. In addition, the assessment of digital competence cannot be done using simple self-assessment tests, but more complex tools such as simulations or other activities based on real scenarios. Considering this, we designed a performance-based evaluation system following a pragmatic approach based on DigComp framework. We carried out a needs analysis based on expert consultation (63 teleworkers and 82 entrepreneurs) to create an assessment syllabus and implement the assessment modules. Then, we conducted an analysis by experts (n = 21) of the relationship between the content of the tests and the construct it was intended to measure. After refinement, the system was piloted by end-users all over Europe (n = 525). Results confirmed that DigComp was the most appropriate reference when considering the transversality of digital competence, providing researchers with well-defined clear criteria.

From an early age, girls disregard studies related to science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM), and this means that a gender gap begins during secondary education and continues to increase over time. Multiple causes have been identified for this phenomenon in the literature, and numerous initiatives are being carried out to reverse this situation. In this paper, we analyze the impact that a group mentoring initiative led by a female STEM role model had on the young people who participated and whether the impact was different based on their sex. We analyzed how these mentoring sessions affected their attitudes towards technology, mathematical self-efficacy, gender stereotypes, science and technology references, and career vocations. To this end, 303 students between the ages of 10 and 12 years old from 10 schools in Spain participated in the six sessions comprising the program and completed a series of questionnaires before and after participating. The results show that the program had an impact on the students’ attitudes towards technology, increased the number of female STEM references they knew, and improved their opinions of vocations and professions related to science and technology. The impact was greater among girls, although in aspects such as attitudes towards technology, the female participants still demonstrated lower values than boys. The program did not improve the stereotypes that the young participants had about mathematical self-efficacy, which was also always lower among girls. We conclude that the lack of STEM vocations among girls is rooted in multiple social, educational, and personal aspects that need to be addressed from a very early age and that should involve multiple agents.