Matthew H. Scheel

Integrating cultural competency throughout a first-year physician assistant curriculum steadily improves cultural awareness.

Purpose: This study tracked student self‐assessments of cultural awareness at regular intervals during the first year of a masters of science physician assistant (PA) program to test effectiveness of a cultural competency component in the curriculum. Method: Students completed a cultural awareness survey at the beginning of the program and retook the survey at approximately 4‐month intervals throughout the first year. Results: Regression analyses confirmed positive linear relationships between survey number and score on 31 of 31 items. Conclusion: Cultural awareness among PA students benefits from repeated exposures to lessons on cultural competency. Schools attempting to develop or expand cultural awareness among students should consider presenting material in multiple courses across terms.

Incomparable Methods Vitiate Cross-Species Comparisons: A Comment on Haun, Rekers, and Tomasello (2014)

In their article, “Children Conform to the Behavior of Peers; Other Great Apes Stick With What They Know,” Haun, Rekers, and Tomasello (2014a) report how they used a puzzle box to compare human children, chimpanzees, and orangutans on conformity. Haun et al. claim that children are more likely than apes to conform to the behavior exhibited by their peers, and they conclude that their “results demonstrate an important difference between the social learning of humans and great apes, a difference that might help to account for differences in human and nonhuman cultures” (p. 2160). However, the differences that Haun et al. found between children and apes are highly likely to reflect methodological confounds as much as, or more than, they reflect species differences.

Cultural competency in the physician assistant curriculum in the United States: a longitudinal study with two cohorts

Purpose: Many physician assistant (PA) programs have recently integrated cultural competency into their curricula. However, there is little evidence of the longitudinal effectiveness of such curricula on culture competency. This study tested whether the amount of exposure to a cultural competency curriculum affected self-assessments of cultural awareness in two cohorts of students. Methods: Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 students completed a cultural awareness survey at the beginning of the program and retook the survey at three intervals during the first year. Results: Regression analyses confirmed a significant linear relationship (two-tailed 0.05) between the responses and the interval number on all questions for each cohort, with the exception of Question 8, on the ability to identify discrimination, for Cohort 2. Conclusion: Results from Cohort 2 replicated those from Cohort 1, suggesting that cultural awareness among PA students benefits from repeated exposure to lessons on cultural competency. Schools attempting to develop or expand cultural awareness among students should consider integrating cultural competency training throughout the PA curriculum.

Captive spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) arm-raise to solicit allo-grooming.

Old World monkeys solicit allo-grooming from conspecifics. However, there are relatively few studies of allo-grooming among spider monkeys, and descriptions of allo-grooming solicitation among spider monkeys are anecdotal. In this study, eighty-one hours of video, shot over eight weeks, captured 271 allo-grooming bouts among small groups of captive spider monkeys. Six of eight monkeys made heretofore unreported arm-raises that solicited higher than normal rates of allo-grooming. Allo-grooming bout durations following arm-raises also tended to be longer than bouts not preceded by arm-raises. The efficacy of the arm-raise at soliciting allo-grooming suggests spider monkeys are capable of intentional communication.

More examples of chimpanzees teaching

Darwinism is a principle of biological continuity. This commentary argues against any claim of discontinuity between humans and other animals that must be based on absence of evidence. Instead, we offer additional examples of active teaching by chimpanzees.

Sugar ingestion and dichotic listening: Increased perceptual capacity is more than motivation.

Participants ingested a sugar drink or a sugar-free drink and then engaged in a pair of dichotic listening tasks. Tasks presented category labels then played a series of word pairs, one in the left ear and one in the right. Participants attempted to identify pairs containing a target category member. Target category words were homonyms. For example, arms appeared as a target in the “body parts” category. Nontargets that played along with targets were related to a category-appropriate version of the target (e.g., sleeves), a category-inappropriate version (e.g., weapons), or were unrelated to either version of the target (e.g., plant). Hence, an effect of nontarget type on number of targets missed was evidence that participants processed nontargets for meaning. In the divided attention task, participants monitored both ears. In the focused attention task, participants monitored the left ear. Half the participants in each group had the divided attention task before the focused attention task; the other half had the focused attention task before the divided attention task. We set task lengths to about 12 min so working on the first task would give sufficient time for metabolizing sugar from the drink before the start of the second task. Nontarget word type significantly affected targets missed in both tasks. Drink type affected performance in the divided attention task only after sufficient time for converting sugar into blood glucose. The result supports an energy model for the effect of sugar ingestion on perceptual tasks rather than a motivational model.

Resource depletion promotes automatic processing: implications for distribution of practice.

Recent models of cognition include two processing systems: an automatic system that relies on associative learning, intuition, and heuristics, and a controlled system that relies on deliberate consideration. Automatic processing requires fewer resources and is more likely when resources are depleted. This study showed that prolonged practice on a resource-depleting mental arithmetic task promoted automatic processing on a subsequent problem-solving task, as evidenced by faster responding and more errors. Distribution of practice effects (0, 60, 120, or 180 sec. between problems) on rigidity also disappeared when groups had equal time on resource-depleting tasks. These results suggest that distribution of practice effects is reducible to resource availability. The discussion includes implications for interpreting discrepancies in the traditional distribution of practice effect.