The increase in the cost of college textbooks together with the proliferation of digital content and devices has inspired the development of open textbooks, open educational resources that are free, openly licensed, and often peer-reviewed. Although several published studies have investigated the impact of open textbook adoption on educational outcomes, none have separated the effects of textbook openness and format and only two have taken place in Canada (Hendricks, Reinsberg, & Rieger, 2017; Jhangiani & Jhangiani, 2017). This study investigates the perceptions, use, and course performance of Canadian post-secondary students assigned a commercial or open textbook in either print or digital format. Results show that students using the print format of the open textbook perceive its quality to be superior to the commercial textbook. Moreover, students assigned an open textbook in either format perform either no differently from or better than those assigned a commercial textbook. These results are consistent with the existing literature and support the conclusion that the cost savings to students associated with the adoption of open textbooks do not come at the expense of resource quality or student performance. L’augmentation du coût des manuels universitaires ainsi que la prolifération du contenu numérique et des appareils électroniques ont inspiré le développement de manuels ouverts, des ressources éducationnelles qui sont gratuites, dont les licences d’exploitation sont ouvertes et qui sont souvent évalués par les pairs. Bien que plusieurs études publiées aient étudié l’impact de l’adoption de manuels ouverts sur les résultats éducationnels, aucune n’a séparé les effets du caractère ouvert des manuels et du format et seulement deux études ont été menées au Canada (Hendricks, Reinsberg & Rieger, 2017; Jhangiani & Jhangiani, 2017). Cette étude examine les perceptions, l’emploi et les résultats des étudiants dans des établissements d’enseignement supérieur canadiens à qui on avait assigné un manuel commercial ou un manuel ouvert en format imprimé ou numérique. Les résultats ont montré que les étudiants qui avaient utilisé le format imprimé du manuel ouvert avaient perçu que sa qualité était supérieure à celle du manuel commercial. De plus, les étudiants à qui on avait assigné un manuel ouvert dans l’un ou l’autre des formats avaient obtenu des résultats semblables à ceux des étudiants à qui on avait assigné un manuel commercial. Ces résultats concordent avec les publications existantes et confirment la conclusion que les économies de coûts pour les étudiants liées à l’adoption de manuels ouverts n’entraînent pas une dégradation de la qualité des ressources ni des résultats des étudiants.

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Rats with bilateral electrolytic or sham lesions of the mediodorsal thalamic nucleus (MD) were tested on a nonrecurring-items delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) task-a test of object recognition. In Experiment 1, naive rats with MD lesions required more trials to solve the DNMS task at a 4-sec retention delay than did sham-lesion controls, and after they had done so, their performance was worse than that of the controls at delays ranging from 30 to 300 sec. In Experiment 2, rats with MD lesions that had received extensive DNMS training prior to surgery required more trials to remaster the task than -did sham-lesion controls, and subsequently, their performance was worse than that of the controls at delays ranging from 4 to 300 sec. These findings resemble those reported in monkeys and humans with MD lesions, and they suggest that DNMS deficits in rats with MD lesions may be a useful component of a rat model of diencephalic amnesia.Damage to certain structures of the medial diencephalon produces amnesia in humans (see, e.g., Graff-Radford, Tranel, Van Hoesen, & Brandt, 1990; Victor, Adams, & Collins, 1971). Similarly, lesions of the mediodorsal thalamic nucleus (MD) in monkeys have been shown to disrupt the performance of the nonrecurringitems delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) task (Aggleton & Mishkin, 1983a, 1983b Zola-Morgan & Squire, 1985), a test of object recognition that requires the kinds of memory abilities that are typically impaired in human amnesics (Gaffan, 1974;Mishkin, 1978). In the DNMS task, subjects must distinguish between an object that they have recently seen (i.e., the sample) and a different object that they have not. Normal monkeys can make such discriminations after sample-test delays of up to several minutes, but monkeys with MD lesions have difficulty at delays as brief as 10 sec (Aggleton & Mishkin, 1983b). Patients with diencephalic amnesia display similar deficits on the DNMS task (Squire, Zola-Morgan, & Chen, 1988) and on the related delayed matching-to-sample task (Aggleton, Nicol, Huston, & Fairbairn, 1988).There have been many reports of impaired performance on memory tests by rats with MD lesions (e.g.

Although rats (Rattus norvegicus) spend much of their lives in the darkness of burrows, defensive behavior in the dark has rarely been studied. We compared rats' reactions to aversive stimuli in dark and lighted 2-alley, burrowlike environments. Experiment 1 assessed reactions to an unsignaled airblast; Experiment 2 assessed neophobic reactions to an unfamiliar steel ball. Half of the rats were tested in light and half, in total darkness. In both experiments rats directed defensive burying and stretched approach toward the aversive stimulus. Darkness increased airblast-induced burying behavior but not burying behavior toward the unfamiliar object; it had no effect on stretched-approach behavior in either experiment. Because the location and nature of the aversive stimulus was ambiguous in Experiment 1 but not in Experiment 2, these results support the hypothesis that risk assessment is one function of defensive-burying behavior.

Abstract:The present study explores two hypotheses: a) women during early pregnancy should experience increased color discrimination ability, and b) women during early pregnancy should experience shifts in subjective preference away from images of foods that appear either unripe or spoiled. Both of these hypotheses derive from an adaptive view of pregnancy sickness that proposes the function of pregnancy sickness is to decrease the likelihood of ingestion of foods with toxins or teratogens. Changes to color discrimination could be part of a network of perceptual and physiological defenses (e.g., changes to olfaction, nausea, vomiting) that support such a function. Participants included 13 pregnant women and 18 non-pregnant women. Pregnant women scored significantly higher than non-pregnant controls on the Farnsworth-Munsell (FM) 100 Hue Test, an objective test of color discrimination, although no difference was found between groups in preferences for food images at different stages of ripeness or spoilage. These results are the first indication that changes to color discrimination may occur during early pregnancy, and is consistent with the view that pregnancy sickness may function as an adaptive defense mechanism.