Search

Humans frequently imitate each other's actions with high fidelity, and different reasons have been proposed for why they do so. Here we test the hypothesis that imitation can act as a social signal, with imitation occurring with greater fidelity when a participant is being watched. In a preregistered study, 30 pairs of naïve participants played an augmented-reality game involving moving blocks in space. We compared imitation fidelity between trials where the leader watched the followers' action, and trials where the leader did not watch. Followers imitated the trajectory height demonstrated by the leader, and critically, the strength of this correlation was greater in trials where the follower knew the leader was watching them. This suggests that followers spontaneously used imitation as a social signal in a nonverbal interaction task, supporting socio-communicative hypotheses of imitation.

Students may know the facts but are they able to clearly articulate it at the appropriate time given? This research-based paper looks at students’ perceptions of participating in a panel discussion in a tertiary setting. The students were given a month to prepare for their discussion by researching and practising with their peers in the same group before they presented in front of their peers. The research was conducted for a month and students were given ample time to complete the assigned project. Prior to the presentation, the students were given a lecture on conducting a panel discussion. Furthermore, the students were given time to practise with their peers in two separate sessions to enable them to get more accustomed to the format of forum discussion. The students were then asked to present, after a month of preparation in front of their peers that were also their audience and evaluators. The discussion was conducted with the audience also posing questions that were answered by the panel members during and after the presentation. This is a replacement to the typical assignments that get students to react to online postings where they have a lot of reaction time before giving a response. The findings of this study indicated that students were vocal and responsive and were more confident with their overall performance at the end of the presentation.

Two new flavonol glycosides: 4′-methylquercetagetin 7-O-(6″-E- caffeoyl-β- d -glucoside ) and quercetagetin 7-O-(6- acetyl-β- d -glucoside ) along with the 7- O -glucosides of 6-hydroxykaempferol, quercetin and quercetagetin have been isolated and characterized from the leaves of Eupatorium glandulosum .