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The meeting of the Earli Special Interest Group 2 (Comprehension of text and graphics) deals with the influence the representation of learning material has on learning.

Besides text and picture, the SIG also considers other forms of representation as graphs, diagrams, concept maps, animations, equations, virtual reality, information and scientific visualization, haptics, multimedia, hypermedia, and simulations.

For a closer look at the program, please visit the conference website.

For her PhD thesis on "The inclusion of a new group into the self-concept" Dr. Christina Matschke was honored by the University of Tuebingen with this year's reward for the best PhD thesis at the Department of Informational and Cognitive Science.

Ms Matschke has been working at the KMRC since 2007 and is actually coordinating the project Patongo.

A joint German-Turkish research study with first-time film viewers shows under what conditions viewers understand or do not understand stylistic devices and scenic sequences in films.

As a basis for their current study (recently published in Psychological Science 21 (7), p.1-7) researchers from the Knowledge Media Research Center and the Istanbul University recruited 20 adult inexperienced film viewers from isolated mountain villages in southern Turkey and showed them 14 short film clips. The results give new insights in the perceptual and cognitive basis of film: for comprehending films the reference to conditions of natural perception is less important than assumed. More important seems to be the existence of a line of action or a line of events. Both can even help to compensate problems that arise with shots which provide discontinuities. Without such a line, first-time film viewers had great problems to interpret stylistic devices within the film correctly.

Key researchers Prof. Dr. Stephan Schwan and Dr. Sermin Ildirar demonstrate that comprehending films roots in cultural preconditions as well as in higher cognitive processes such as being used to filmic design and presentation.

Lead partners from five different countries participate in the kick off meeting of MIRROR, a new project within the 7th Framework Program dealing with "Reflective Learning at Work".

The overall objective of MIRROR is to empower and engage employees to reflect on past work performances and personal learning experiences in order to learn in real-time, and to creatively solve pressing problems immediately.

KMRC will be heavily involved in the conceptualization of the reflection model and conduction of user studies to establish a scientific and methodological common ground among the project partners, as well as in determining the effectiveness of MIRROR-applications.

Renowned scientists and laymen alike are using blogs and social networks to get their messages to the public. Thereby, they are eleminating the middlemen and making scientific topics available to a broader audience. But are acacemic research and blogs compatible?

Does the new form of direct communication make scientific findings more transparent? What does science gain from direct contact with the general public and is this a positive experience?

Together with Bruno Rezende, winner of the Special Award Climate Change (Deutsche Welle), Nina Heinze, will discuss questions of "Climate Change and social Media".