scholarly journals On Curiosity: A Fundamental Aspect of Personality, a Practice of Network Growth

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Zurn ◽  
Danielle S. Bassett
Keyword(s):  
Information Seeking ◽  
Network Science ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
Mathematical Object ◽  
Knowledge Network ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Architectural Style ◽  
Network Growth ◽  
Network Building ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractHuman personality is reflected in patterns—or networks—of behavior, either in thought or action. Curiosity is an oft-treasured component of one’s personality, commonly associated with information-seeking proclivities with distinct neurophysiological correlates. The markers of curiosity can differ substantially across people, suggesting the possibility that personality also determines the architectural style of one’s curiosity. Yet progress in defining those styles, and marking their neurophysiological basis, has been hampered by fairly fundamental difficulties in defining curiosity itself. Here, we offer and exercise a definition of the practice of curiosity as knowledge network building, one particular pattern of thought behavior. To unpack this definition and motivate its utility, we begin with a short primer on network science and describe how the mathematical object of a network can be used to map items and relations that are characteristic of bodies of knowledge. Next, we turn to a discussion of how networks grow, how their growth can be modeled, and how the practice of curiosity can be formalized as a process of network growth. We pay particular attention to how individuals may differ in how they build their knowledge networks, and discuss how the sort, manner, and action of building can be modulated by experience. We discuss how this definition of the practice of curiosity motivates new experiments and theory development at the interdisciplinary intersection of network science, personality neuroscience, education, and curiosity studies. We close with a note on the potential of network science to inform studies of other domains of personality, and the patterns of thought– or action–behavior characteristic thereof.

scholarly journals Hunters, busybodies, and the knowledge network building associated with curiosity

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Lydon-Staley ◽  
Dale Zhou ◽  
Ann Sizemore Blevins ◽  
Perry Zurn ◽  
Danielle S Bassett
Keyword(s):  
Information Seeking ◽  
Sensation Seeking ◽  
Small World ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Knowledge Networks ◽  
Knowledge Network ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Network Growth ◽  
Network Building ◽  
Over Time

The information gained when practicing curiosity promotes well-being over extended timescales. The open-ended and internally driven nature of curiosity, however, makes characterizing the diverse styles of information seeking that accompany it a daunting endeavor. A recently developed historicophilosophical taxonomy of curious practice distinguishes between the collection of disparate, loosely connected pieces of information and the seeking of related, tightly connected pieces of information. With this taxonomy, we use a novel knowledge network building framework of curiosity to capture styles of curious information seeking in 149 participants as they explore Wikipedia for over 5 hours spanning 21 days. We create knowledge networks in which nodes consist of distinct concepts (unique Wikipedia pages) and edges represent the similarity between the content of Wikipedia pages. We quantify the tightness of each participants' knowledge networks using graph theoretical indices and use a generative model of network growth to explore mechanisms underlying the observed information seeking. We find that participants create knowledge networks with small-world and modular structure. Deprivation sensitivity, the tendency to seek information that eliminates knowledge gaps, is associated with the creation of relatively tight networks and a relatively greater tendency to return to previously-visited concepts. We further show that there is substantial within-person variability in knowledge network building over time and that building looser networks than usual is linked with higher than usual sensation seeking. With this framework in hand, future research can quantify the information collected during curious practice and examine its association with well-being.

scholarly journals Applications of Network Science to Education Research: Quantifying Knowledge and the Development of Expertise through Network Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia S. Q. Siew
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Change ◽  
Network Science ◽  
Growth Models ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Knowledge Network ◽  
Network Growth ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
Fundamental Goal ◽  
The Subject

A fundamental goal of education is to inspire and instill deep, meaningful, and long-lasting conceptual change within the knowledge landscapes of students. This commentary posits that the tools of network science could be useful in helping educators achieve this goal in two ways. First, methods from cognitive psychology and network science could be helpful in quantifying and analyzing the structure of students’ knowledge of a given discipline as a knowledge network of interconnected concepts. Second, network science methods could be relevant for investigating the developmental trajectories of knowledge structures by quantifying structural change in knowledge networks, and potentially inform instructional design in order to optimize the acquisition of meaningful knowledge as the student progresses from being a novice to an expert in the subject. This commentary provides a brief introduction to common network science measures and suggests how they might be relevant for shedding light on the cognitive processes that underlie learning and retrieval, and discusses ways in which generative network growth models could inform pedagogical strategies to enable meaningful long-term conceptual change and knowledge development among students.

scholarly journals Likelihood-based approach to discriminate mixtures of network models that vary in time

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi A. Arnold ◽  
Raul J. Mondragón ◽  
Richard G. Clegg
Keyword(s):  
Network Model ◽  
Change Point ◽  
Network Science ◽  
Preferential Attachment ◽  
Network Models ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Growth Mechanisms ◽  
Artificial Data ◽  
Network Growth ◽  
Over Time

AbstractDiscriminating between competing explanatory models as to which is more likely responsible for the growth of a network is a problem of fundamental importance for network science. The rules governing this growth are attributed to mechanisms such as preferential attachment and triangle closure, with a wealth of explanatory models based on these. These models are deliberately simple, commonly with the network growing according to a constant mechanism for its lifetime, to allow for analytical results. We use a likelihood-based framework on artificial data where the network model changes at a known point in time and demonstrate that we can recover the change point from analysis of the network. We then use real datasets and demonstrate how our framework can show the changing importance of network growth mechanisms over time.

scholarly journals Firm’s strategic choices and network knowledge dynamics: how do they affect innovation?

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Antonio Belso-Martinez ◽  
Isabel Diez-Vial
Keyword(s):  
Absorptive Capacity ◽  
Knowledge Networks ◽  
Knowledge Network ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Network Growth ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Endogenous Factors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Innovative Capacity ◽  
Over Time

Purpose This paper aims to explain how the evolution of knowledge networks and firms’ strategic choices affect innovation. Endogenous factors associated with a path-dependent evolution of the knowledge network are jointly considered with a firm’s development of international relationships and increasing internal absorptive capacity over time. Design/methodology/approach In a biotech cluster, the authors gathered data on the firms’ characteristics and network relationships by asking about the technological knowledge they received in the cluster in 2007 and 2012 – “roster-recall” method. Estimation results were obtained using moderated regression analysis. Findings Firms that increase their involvement in knowledge networks over time also tend to increase their innovative capacity. However, efforts devoted to building international links or absorptive capacity negatively moderate the impact of network growth on innovation. Practical implications Practitioners have two alternative ways of increasing innovation inside knowledge networks: they can increase their centrality by developing their knowledge network interactions or invest in developing their internal absorptive capacity and new international sources of knowledge. Investing in both of these simultaneously does not seem to improve a firm’s innovative capacity. Originality/value Coupling firms’ strategic options with knowledge network dynamics provide a more complete way of explaining how firms can improve their innovative capacity.

Thematic expansion: A new strategy for theory development

2021 ◽  
pp. 019394592098479
Author(s):  
Katherine P. Kelly ◽  
Kathleen A. Knafl ◽  
Susan Keller ◽  
Pamela S. Hinds
Keyword(s):  
Grounded Theory ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
Good Parent ◽  
Child Study ◽  
Worked Example ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Purposeful Selection ◽  
Seriously Ill ◽  
Multiple Conditions

We developed and applied metasynthesis methods to expand previously reported thematic descriptions of parents’ internal definition of “being a good parent to my seriously ill child” as part of a larger study to examine parenting of children with serious illness. Our systematic approach included: literature search, purposeful selection of grounded theories regarding parenting a seriously ill child, study summaries, mapping evidence of good parent themes onto structural elements of grounded theory, cross-study comparisons, and theoretical memoing to summarize analytic insights. Twenty-five grounded theory studies from 32 reviewed reports reflected multiple conditions (n=5), countries (n=10) and family members (n=386 families). We report a worked example of the processes used to extend the original good parent themes and detail our processes through one good parent theme. The methods we describe are a promising approach to extend thematic analysis findings and advance thematic expansions toward development of more formal theoretical syntheses.

scholarly journals LIBER Digital Humanities and Digital Cultural Heritage Working Group: a case study of international collaboration and network building

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-63
Author(s):  
Lotte Wilms ◽  
Caleb Derven ◽  
Merisa Martinez
Keyword(s):  
Working Group ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Knowledge Network ◽  
European Research ◽  
Research Libraries ◽  
Network Building ◽  
Digital Scholarship ◽  
Group A

How can European library staff working in digital humanities connect with peers in the library sector, determine where to find relevant information about digital scholarship, provide their collections as data and to be an equal partner in digital humanities research? The LIBER Digital Humanities Working Group was created as a participatory knowledge network in 2017 to address these questions. Through a series of workshops, knowledge sharing activities, and a Europe-wide survey and resulting report, the Working Group engaged with the international LIBER DH community. Useful reflections are provided on organising an open, voluntary DH community and planning for inclusive activities that benefit digital scholarship in European research libraries.

scholarly journals Social exclusion in primary healthcare settings: the time for measurement has come

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-13
Author(s):  
Patrick O’Donnell ◽  
Khalifa Elmusharaf
Keyword(s):  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Primary Healthcare ◽  
Knowledge Network ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Healthcare Settings ◽  
Published Evidence ◽  
Measurement Tools ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

Social exclusion is a concept that has been discussed and debated in many disciplines in recent decades. In 2006 the WHO Social Exclusion Knowledge Network published a report detailing their work explaining the relevance of social exclusion to the domain of health. As part of that work, the authors formulated a complex definition of social exclusion that has proven difficult to adapt or operationalize in healthcare settings. We looked at this WHO work, and at other published evidence, and decided that social exclusion is a concept that is worth measuring at the individual level in healthcare settings. We suggest that the primary healthcare space, in particular, is an ideal setting in which to do that measurement. We have examined existing social exclusion measurement tools, and scrutinised the approaches taken by their authors, and the various domains they measured. We now propose to develop and validate such a tool for use in primary healthcare settings.

Exploded Points

1981 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-75
Author(s):  
Okan Gurel
Keyword(s):  
Lorenz System ◽  
Stability Index ◽  
Mathematical Object ◽  
Recursive Formula ◽  
Functional Characteristics ◽  
Mathematical Objects ◽  
The Lorenz System ◽  
Definition Of

A new concept of a mathematical object of zero dimension, an exploded point, is introduced. The dimension used is defined on the basis of the functional characteristics of the system, thus it may be referred to as f-dimension. A stability index is also defined for the mathematical objects including exploded points, which can be related to the f-dimension. It is shown that the mathematical object exhibited by the Lorenz system after the second bifurcation is such a point. A recursive formula based on the definition of the exploded point

scholarly journals From HRM to Employment Rules and Lifestyles. Theory Development through Qualitative Case Study Research into the Creative Industries

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Haunschild ◽  
Doris Ruth Eikhof
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Case Study Research ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
Data Interpretation ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Employment System ◽  
Theoretical Reasoning ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship

In contrast to result-driven publications in which the academic narrative constructs the process of data analysis and the conceptual framework as purposefully designed and inevitably leading to the findings, this article will take a closer look at the concrete development of interpretative schemes and the openness of this process. We will do so by referring to an extensive empirical study of the German theatrical employment system. Following the course of our research project, the article will explicate and discuss (1) the decision for conducting qualitative rather than quantitative research, (2) the identification and definition of ‘what is the case’ and how this decision was influenced by ongoing data interpretation and changing and new theoretical inputs, and (3) the question of the generalisability of our findings. The main focus of the article, however, will be to explore the relationship between data and theory. We hope to encourage researchers to creatively use the inherent openness of data interpretation, and we argue that the freedom of qualitative research can only be used in a productive way if methodological decisions and data interpretations are driven by theoretical reasoning.

Evaluation Use Theory, Practice, and Future Research: Reflections on the Alkin and King AJE Series

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-602
Author(s):  
Michael Quinn Patton
Keyword(s):  
Theory Development ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Evaluation Use ◽  
Research On Evaluation ◽  
Complex Dynamic Systems ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Future Theory

Marvin Alkin and Jean King published three AJE articles on evaluation use over four years, a coherent and comprehensive series covering the historical development of evaluation use, definitions and factors associated with use and misuse, and theories of evaluation use and influence, concluding with assessment of the first 50 years of use research. They conclude with recommendations for future theory development and research on evaluation. I draw a different set of conclusions and pathway forward. Where they seek a common universal operational definition of evaluation use, I propose treating use as a thick sensitizing concept that invites diversity of context-specific meanings. Where they find evaluation use theory inadequate, I argue that it is sufficient for its purpose. Where they seek more development of evaluation-specific utilization theory, I propose drawing on more established and validated theories from social sciences to explain and illuminate evaluation use as occurring in complex dynamic systems.

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