scholarly journals What makes a text interesting? Interest-evoking strategies in expository text from Russian school textbooks

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 991-1016
Author(s):  
Larisa A. Piotrovskaya ◽  
Pavel N. Trushchelev

The article provides the linguistics approach to the study of text-based interest. The purpose of the article is to identify the means and strategies used in expository texts from Russian school textbooks for the creation of text emotiveness. This characteristic of an interesting text has been repeatedly pointed out in the psychological research (Schiefele 2009). The article uses the linguistics methods of communicative and functional analysis and, in particular, the method of semantic modeling of emotive situations (Filimonova 2007). The authors intention to evoke the readers interest is the basis for forming an emotional-evoking type of expository discourse. The implementation of this intention is carried out through special discourse strategies called interest-evoking rhetorical strategies. Some of these strategies are based on the transmission of emotions as a special type of information in verbal interaction. In a text, this type of information is represented by emotiveness, that is, a component of text content through which the emotional states of participants of communication or characters are manifested. The article provides a description of four primary ways to create expository text emotiveness: 1) the usage of emotive insertions - commentaries made by the participant of communication acting as the subject who feels emotions; 2) the verbalization of the emotional scenario of interest for its projection to the reader; 3) the description of the characters emotional states; 4) the representation of abnormal situations (a disruption of normal and expected relations between components of a situation in the real world described in a text). The first two ways are related to the strategies of the text dialogization aimed at creating the dialogue form of an expository text, and the thematization of interest. The third way enhances the text vividness and the fourth increases its dynamics and unexpectedness for the reader.

Author(s):  
Larisa А. Piotrovskaya ◽  

The article provides a description of the general mechanism of text-based interest formation in expository texts. It is based on the psychological research and the linguistic analysis. The authors of textbooks use various linguistic means to increase the emotiogenicity of expository texts. The interest is activated by an incongruence between one’s prediction about an event and the actual event. So, the means of interest evocation affect the psychological mechanism of probabilistic forecasting. They also overcome the contextual predictability of expository text while deploying it. For instance, there are means aimed at overcoming the predictability of communicative context (e. g., unusual introduction) or the semantic context (e. g., contextualization, dialogizing). The analysis allows to claim that the contextual predictability of the interesting expository text is overcome not due to the message of unexpected, interesting information, but due to presentations of the speech subject that are unexpected for the addressee (e. g., challenging exposition). An interesting expository text should be coherent, because the formal, content and pragmatic coherence is the key to its successful understanding by students. Therefore, the means of interest evocation should not destroy the coherence of the completed expository text. They must be communicative and thematically relevant, otherwise the emotiogenic potential of the text will significantly decrease.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 1257-1267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priya Kucheria ◽  
McKay Moore Sohlberg ◽  
Jason Prideaux ◽  
Stephen Fickas

PurposeAn important predictor of postsecondary academic success is an individual's reading comprehension skills. Postsecondary readers apply a wide range of behavioral strategies to process text for learning purposes. Currently, no tools exist to detect a reader's use of strategies. The primary aim of this study was to develop Read, Understand, Learn, & Excel, an automated tool designed to detect reading strategy use and explore its accuracy in detecting strategies when students read digital, expository text.MethodAn iterative design was used to develop the computer algorithm for detecting 9 reading strategies. Twelve undergraduate students read 2 expository texts that were equated for length and complexity. A human observer documented the strategies employed by each reader, whereas the computer used digital sequences to detect the same strategies. Data were then coded and analyzed to determine agreement between the 2 sources of strategy detection (i.e., the computer and the observer).ResultsAgreement between the computer- and human-coded strategies was 75% or higher for 6 out of the 9 strategies. Only 3 out of the 9 strategies–previewing content, evaluating amount of remaining text, and periodic review and/or iterative summarizing–had less than 60% agreement.ConclusionRead, Understand, Learn, & Excel provides proof of concept that a reader's approach to engaging with academic text can be objectively and automatically captured. Clinical implications and suggestions to improve the sensitivity of the code are discussed.Supplemental Materialhttps://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8204786


2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 279-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Hey ◽  
Panagiota Anastasopoulou ◽  
André Bideaux ◽  
Wilhelm Stork

Ambulatory assessment of emotional states as well as psychophysiological, cognitive and behavioral reactions constitutes an approach, which is increasingly being used in psychological research. Due to new developments in the field of information and communication technologies and an improved application of mobile physiological sensors, various new systems have been introduced. Methods of experience sampling allow to assess dynamic changes of subjective evaluations in real time and new sensor technologies permit a measurement of physiological responses. In addition, new technologies facilitate the interactive assessment of subjective, physiological, and behavioral data in real-time. Here, we describe these recent developments from the perspective of engineering science and discuss potential applications in the field of neuropsychology.


Ramus ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
A.J. Boyle

oratio certam regulam non habet; consuetudo illam ciuitatis, quae numquam in eodem diu stetit, uersat.Style has no fixed rules; the usage of society changes it, which never stays still for long.Seneca Epistle 114.13This is the first of two volumes of critical essays on Latin literature of the imperial period from Ovid to late antiquity. The focus is upon the main postclassical period (A.D. 1-150), especially the authors of the Neronian and Flavian principates (A.D. 54-96), several of whom, though recently the subject of substantial investigation and reassessment, remain largely unread, at best improperly understood. The change which took place in Roman literature between the late republic/early Augustan period and the post-Augustan empire, between the ‘classicism’ of Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Livy and the ‘postclassicism’ of Seneca, Lucan, Persius, Tacitus is conventionally misdescribed (albeit sometimes with qualifications) as the movement from Golden to Silver Latin. The description misleads on many counts, not least because it misconstrues a change in literary and poetic sensibility, in the mental sets of reader and audience, and in the political environment of writing itself, as a change in literary value. What in fact happened awaits adequate description, but it seems clear that the change began with Ovid (43 B.C. to A.D. 17), whose rejection of Augustan classicism (especially its concept of decorum or ‘appropriateness’), cultivation of generic disorder and experimentation (witness, e.g., Ars Amatoria and Metamorphoses), love of paradox, absurdity, incongruity, hyperbole, wit, and focus on extreme emotional states, influenced everything that followed. Ovid also witnessed and suffered from the increasing political repression of the principate; he was banished for — among other things — his words, carmen. And political repression seems to have been a signal factor, if difficult to evaluate, in the formation of the postclassical style.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-45
Author(s):  
Vladimir A. MAZILOV

The article is devoted to the evaluation of perspectives of interdisciplinary researches using in psychological science in modern conditions. There are formulated approaches that let to improve the efficiency of interdisciplinary researches. Although this issue has received considerable attention of researchers, the problem is not solved at the moment. The theory of complex psychological researches as a scientific concept, reflecting the specificity of psychological research has not been developed yet. The reason for this is that researchers try to develop the principles of organization and procedure of this kind of researches. It is possible to develop the methodology and theory of complex psychological researches, based on the understanding of the subject of psychology. It is alleged that at present time the most adequate understanding of the subject of psychology is his interpretation like the subjective world of human.


1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Louw ◽  
Julie Binedell ◽  
Welmoet Brimmer ◽  
Pindi Mabena ◽  
Annemarie Meyer ◽  
...  

Thirty-three journal articles reporting empirical findings published by South African psychologists before 1939 were examined to establish the dominant research models of the time. Danziger's study provided the initial impetus as well as methodological guidelines. Findings indicate that three models of research were present, but that one, the Galtonian form of experimentation, soon dominated the field. One possible explanation is to be found in the early involvement of South African psychologists in applied and practical matters. Thus an investigative practice which enabled psychologists to develop knowledge which was relevant to the needs of socially important markets, and still be acceptable as ‘scientific’ knowledge, had significant advantages over rival investigative practices.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 5960-5966
Author(s):  
Liu Zijie

Objectives: This paper discusses the ideological and political education resources in literary works. Based on the focus group interviews with college students and employees of tobacco enterprises, this paper further explains the three forms of manifestation related to the ideological and political education resources in literary works: First, the ideological and political education themes in literary works; secondly, the literary discourse strategies can provide reference for the discourse system of the ideological and political education; thirdly, literary works can involve the subject construction in the discourse system of the ideological and political education. An in-depth study of these problems will bridge the originally wide gap between the literary narration and the ideological and political education so that the ideological and political education can absorb and learn from the advantages of literary narration in the ideological dissemination.


2021 ◽  
pp. 228-234
Author(s):  
V.A. Mazilov ◽  

The article is a review of the book "Sources of the meaning of life: a new method of personality psychodiagnostics" by the Belarusian psychologist K.V. Karpinskij. It is argued that the meaning of life became the subject of special psychological research only in the 20th century. In recent years, there have been many breakthroughs in this area, and undoubted progress is visible. There was a transition to the interpretation of the meaning of life as a systemic, that means, in other words, multicomponent and multilevel mental education. In his previous works K.V. Karpinskij subjected the problem of the psychology of the meaning of life to a comprehensive analysis. This book has no analogues among the observable thematic literature and contains new theoretical ideas, original methodological solutions and rich factual material, which together form a new look at the key methodological issues of the psychology of the meaning of life. First of all, this is a question about the subject and method of research. Despite the fact that the study of the psychology of the meaning of life is largely represented in foreign psychology, the author of the monograph consistently adheres to the methodology of Russian psychology. The book offers the author's methodology "Sources of the meaning of life", which was created with a full understanding of the advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and limitations of existing foreign analogues. Being a diagnostic complex in its composition, this technique has incorporated proven diagnostic techniques, as well as completely new techniques for studying the meaning of life. The methodology clearly surpasses the existing tools in its diagnostic (research) capabilities.


Author(s):  
Saurabh K. Singh ◽  
Shashi Shekhar Jha ◽  
Shivashankar B. Nair

Emotion and memory have been two intermingled areas in psychological research. Although researchers are still fairly clueless on how human emotions or memory work, several attempts have been made to copy the dynamics of these two entities in the realm of robotics. This chapter describes one such attempt to capture the dynamics of human emotional memories and model the same for use in a real robot. Emotional memories are created at extreme emotional states, namely, very positive or happy events or very negative ones. The positive ones result in the formation of positive memories while the negative ones form the negative counterparts. The robotic system seeks the positive ones while it tries to avoid the negative ones. Such memories aid the system in making the right decisions, especially when situations similar to the one which caused their generation, repeat in the future. This chapter introduces the manner in which a multi-agent emotion engine churns out the emotions which in turn generate emotional memories. Results obtained from simulations and those from using a real situated robot described herein, validate the working of these memories.


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