scholarly journals Task-response times, facilitating and inhibiting factors in cross-signing

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Zeshan

AbstractThis paper reports on data from the “cross-signing” strand of a research project on Sign Multilingualism. Cross-signing investigates the ad-hoc improvised conversations of small groups of deaf sign language users who do not have fluency in any shared language. Participants were filmed in pairs when they met for the very first time, and after a contact period of 4–6 weeks together as a group. The deaf signers involved in this study are from the UK, Jordan, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Nepal. All signers are highly fluent in their own sign language, with varying competence in a language of literacy from their home country, but minimal or no overlapping competence in International Sign, English, or any other shared language between them. The participants used a wide range of multilingual and multimodal communicative resources, including their own and invented signs, fingerspelling, pointing, mouthing, gesture/mime, and various representations of writing. The article considers quantitative data from signed interactions during a picture-based elicitation game. While the overall response times taken by participants for completing the elicitation game are reduced at the end of the contact period compared to the initial contact, differentiating factors are at work that lead to different degrees of response time reduction in the individual signers. As a step towards explaining these patterns, the article explores insights into factors that may inhibit or facilitate communication between cross-signers, such as extent of contact between signers, typological distance between sign languages, or the use of literacy. Moreover, the data suggest a cumulative impact of these factors.

Author(s):  
Pete Dale

Numerous claims have been made by a wide range of commentators that punk is somehow “a folk music” of some kind. Doubtless there are several continuities. Indeed, both tend to encourage amateur music-making, both often have affiliations with the Left, and both emerge at least partly from a collective/anti-competitive approach to music-making. However, there are also significant tensions between punk and folk as ideas/ideals and as applied in practice. Most obviously, punk makes claims to a “year zero” creativity (despite inevitably offering re-presentation of at least some existing elements in every instance), whereas folk music is supposed to carry forward a tradition (which, thankfully, is more recognized in recent decades as a subject-to-change “living tradition” than was the case in folk’s more purist periods). Politically, meanwhile, postwar folk has tended more toward a socialist and/or Marxist orientation, both in the US and UK, whereas punk has at least rhetorically claimed to be in favor of “anarchy” (in the UK, in particular). Collective creativity and competitive tendencies also differ between the two (perceived) genre areas. Although the folk scene’s “floor singer” tradition offers a dispersal of expressive opportunity comparable in some ways to the “anyone can do it” idea that gets associated with punk, the creative expectation of the individual within the group differs between the two. Punk has some similarities to folk, then, but there are tensions, too, and these are well worth examining if one is serious about testing out the common claim, in both folk and punk, that “anyone can do it.”


1988 ◽  
Vol 51 (8) ◽  
pp. 270-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Stowe

Disabled Living Centres (DLCs), of which there are 23 in the UK, provide a valuable service of information for those involved in all aspects of life of disabled people. Most initial contact with the Leeds DLC is made by telephone. All incoming telephone calls were monitored over a 3-month period during 1986–87, with the aim of discovering who was telephoning the centre, for what purpose and from where they had heard of the centre. 145 calls were received: 33 from disabled people, 25 from their carers, 60 from medical and paramedical staff and 27 from others. The source of information covered a wide range, including hospitals (17), occupational therapists and physiotherapists (17), and social services (11). Nearly half of the reasons for calling were for information about equipment. Few (8%) disabled callers and their carers had discussed their problem with their GP. Information about such resource centres must be readily available to both disabled people and those involved in their care.


Author(s):  
M. R. Acton ◽  
P. J. Baldwin ◽  
R. P. Cleaver ◽  
D. J. McCollum

This paper describes a package of computer models that has been developed to assess the risks from gas releases at above ground installations associated with natural gas transmission pipelines. The package can be applied to compressor stations (containing compressor enclosures and associated gas treatment equipment) and pressure reduction stations, through to single block valve installations. It has been designed for used by safety engineers in performing quantified risk and hazard analysis, as required to meet regulatory requirements, such as the COMAH Regulations or the DSEAR Regulations in the UK. It can also be used in the design stage of projects to support decisions related to site layout for example. The package contains a range of mathematical models to assess the consequences of accidental releases of gas (including outflow, dispersion, gas accumulation, fire, explosion and thermal and overpressure response), validated by data from large and full scale experiments. The individual models are linked in a logical manner constructed around a series of “knowledge bases” that provide a defined structure to allow a wide range of different scenarios to be assessed. The predictions of the consequences arising from various scenarios can be combined with estimates of the frequency of initiating events (based on industry statistics where available, or using predictive models), in risk calculation routines which sum the outcomes for the different scenarios to calculate individual and/or societal risk. To illustrate the use of the techniques, examples of their application are given. In particular, it is shown how the risks arising from releases from high pressure vessels or in confined volumes, such as compressor enclosures, can be evaluated.


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Vida Zohoori ◽  
Anne Maguire

It is important to monitor systemic fluoride (F) intake from foods, drinks and inadvertent toothpaste ingestion in order to minimise the risk of dental fluorosis while maximising caries prevention. In the UK, an F database containing the F content of commercially available foods and drinks was compiled from 518 products analysed using an acid-diffusion method and F-ion-selective electrode. The individual products analysed ranged from <0.01 µg F/100 g for butter/margarine (miscellaneous foods group) to 1,054.20 µg F/100 g for canned sardines (fish group). These findings, along with the wide range of F contents found within the food groups, highlight the need for comprehensive F content labelling of food and drink products.


2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 509-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Tsagarakis ◽  
Adam Collin ◽  
Aristides Kiprakis

Abstract This article presents a comprehensive statistical analysis of data obtained from a wide range of literature on the most widely used appliances in the UK residential load sector, as well as a comprehensive technology and market survey conducted by the authors. The article focuses on the individual appliances and begins by consideration of the electrical operations performed by the load. This approach allows for the loads to be categorised based on the electrical characteristics, which is particularly important for implementing load-use statistics in power system analysis. In addition to this, device ownership statistics and probability density functions of power demand are presented for the main residential loads. Although the data presented is primarily intended as a resource for the development of load profiles for power system analysis, it contains a large volume of information that provides a useful database for the wider research community.


Author(s):  
David Sands

The Force Concept Inventory, a 30-question multiple choice test, has been used to test the baseline knowledge in mechanics prior to a course of instruction at Hull over the three years corresponding to entry in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Students whose pre-university education occurred outside the UK or who were repeating the year have been excluded from the analysis in order to focus attention on first-time UK students. These constitute the great majority of the entrants and the results essentially characterise the entry-level knowledge of a typical cohort. Two interesting findings have emerged. First, there is a wide range of abilities within each cohort, as judged by the test scores, and secondly, analysis of the scores question by question reveals a remarkable consistency between the different cohorts. This consistency extends even to the distribution of choices within individual questions. Five such questions are analysed in detailed to reveal which aspects of mechanics a typical class finds difficult. Ausubel‟s principle of first finding out what students know in order to teach accordingly can therefore be applied not to the individual students but to the class as a whole and suggestions as to how instruction might be tailored to address the weaknesses revealed by the Force Concept Inventory are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1134-1155
Author(s):  
Claudia Meroni ◽  
Laura Fagnani ◽  
Emanuela Confalonieri ◽  
Davide Baventore ◽  
Veronica Velasco

School psychologists’ relevance has been broadly affirmed. However, there is no shared definition of their professional role, and more efforts are needed to promote an organisational and whole-school approach. The present study aims to investigate practices and representations of Italian school psychologists, advance knowledge of the status and development of school psychology, and learn more about the approaches currently adopted in schools. A qualitative method was used and 11 focus groups with a total of 86 participants were carried out. Ad hoc instruments were defined. The results highlighted that school psychologists are more focused on building one-on-one relationships, whereas relationships with the organisation as a whole appear to be more difficult. However, participants reported a wide range of activities, targeted to both the individual and the organisation. Moreover, efforts to strengthen the relationships with school principals and the entire school community were described. Specific needs emerged and the necessity to better define the school psychologists’ role was reported by the participants. More efforts are needed to promote an organisational approach among Italian school psychologists and specific training should be offered.


2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Zeshan

AbstractIn a small group of deaf sign language users from different countries and with no shared language, the signers’ initial conversational interactions are investigated as they meet in pairs for the very first time. This case study allows for a unique insight into the initial stages of pidginisation and the conceptual processes involved. The participants use a wide range of linguistic and communicative resources, and it can be argued that they construct shared multilingual-multimodal cognitive spaces for the purpose of these conversations. This research explores the nature of these shared multilingual-multimodal spaces, how they are shaped by the signers in interaction, and how they can be understood in terms of conceptual blending. The research also focuses on the meta-linguistic skills that signers use in these multilingual-multimodal interactions to “make meaning”.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (10(79)) ◽  
pp. 12-18
Author(s):  
G. Bubyreva

The existing legislation determines the education as "an integral and focused process of teaching and upbringing, which represents a socially important value and shall be implemented so as to meet the interests of the individual, the family, the society and the state". However, even in this part, the meaning of the notion ‘socially significant benefit is not specified and allows for a wide range of interpretation [2]. Yet the more inconcrete is the answer to the question – "who and how should determine the interests of the individual, the family and even the state?" The national doctrine of education in the Russian Federation, which determined the goals of teaching and upbringing, the ways to attain them by means of the state policy regulating the field of education, the target achievements of the development of the educational system for the period up to 2025, approved by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of October 4, 2000 #751, was abrogated by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of March 29, 2014 #245 [7]. The new doctrine has not been developed so far. The RAE Academician A.B. Khutorsky believes that the absence of the national doctrine of education presents a threat to national security and a violation of the right of citizens to quality education. Accordingly, the teacher has to solve the problem of achieving the harmony of interests of the individual, the family, the society and the government on their own, which, however, judging by the officially published results, is the task that exceeds the abilities of the participants of the educational process.  The particular concern about the results of the patriotic upbringing served as a basis for the legislative initiative of the RF President V. V. Putin, who introduced the project of an amendment to the Law of RF "About Education of the Russian Federation" to the State Duma in 2020, regarding the quality of patriotic upbringing [3]. Patriotism, considered by the President of RF V. V. Putin as the only possible idea to unite the nation is "THE FEELING OF LOVE OF THE MOTHERLAND" and the readiness for every sacrifice and heroic deed for the sake of the interests of your Motherland. However, the practicing educators experience shortfalls in efficient methodologies of patriotic upbringing, which should let them bring up citizens, loving their Motherland more than themselves. The article is dedicated to solution to this problem based on the Value-sense paradigm of upbringing educational dynasty of the Kurbatovs [15].


2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. David Plumlee ◽  
Philip M. J. Reckers

SYNOPSIS: In 2005, an ad hoc committee appointed by the American Accounting Association (AAA) documented a crisis-level shortage of accounting Ph.D.s and recommended significant structural changes to doctoral programs (Kachelmeier, Madeo, Plumlee, Pratt, and Krull 2005). However, subsequent studies show that the shortage continues and the cumulative costs grow (e.g., Fogarty and Holder 2012; Brink, Glasscock, and Wier 2012). The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) recently called for renewed attention to the problem (AACSB 2013b). We contribute to the literature by providing updated information regarding responses by doctoral programs and, from the eyes of potential candidates, of continuing impediments to solving the doctoral shortage. In this paper, we present information gathered through surveys of program administrators and master's and Accounting Doctoral Scholars Program (ADS) students. We explore (1) the cumulative impact of the Ph.D. shortage as of 2013, including its impact on accounting faculty composition, across different types of institutions, (2) negative student perceptions of Ph.D. programs and academic accounting careers, which discourage applicants from pursuing Ph.D. programs, and (3) impediments facing institutions in expanding doctoral programs.


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