Effects of Education, Occupation, and Setting on Reading Practices

1986 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Guthrie ◽  
Mary Seifert ◽  
Irwin S. Kirsch

Reading activities contribute to individual and societal development, according to qualitative studies. Hypotheses regarding the social contexts of reading activities were tested in two studies. Social context was operationalized in terms of educational environment, occupational category, and the settings of work and leisure. Significant three-way interactions were found between (a) education, setting, and the contents (subject matters) of reading (p < .001); and (b) occupation, setting, and reading contents (p < .001). Because social contexts influence reading practices they should be considered in educational planning.

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick A. R. Jones ◽  
Helen C. Spence-Jones ◽  
Mike Webster ◽  
Luke Rendell

Abstract Learning can enable rapid behavioural responses to changing conditions but can depend on the social context and behavioural phenotype of the individual. Learning rates have been linked to consistent individual differences in behavioural traits, especially in situations which require engaging with novelty, but the social environment can also play an important role. The presence of others can modulate the effects of individual behavioural traits and afford access to social information that can reduce the need for ‘risky’ asocial learning. Most studies of social effects on learning are focused on more social species; however, such factors can be important even for less-social animals, including non-grouping or facultatively social species which may still derive benefit from social conditions. Using archerfish, Toxotes chatareus, which exhibit high levels of intra-specific competition and do not show a strong preference for grouping, we explored the effect of social contexts on learning. Individually housed fish were assayed in an ‘open-field’ test and then trained to criterion in a task where fish learnt to shoot a novel cue for a food reward—with a conspecific neighbour visible either during training, outside of training or never (full, partial or no visible presence). Time to learn to shoot the novel cue differed across individuals but not across social context. This suggests that social context does not have a strong effect on learning in this non-obligatory social species; instead, it further highlights the importance that inter-individual variation in behavioural traits can have on learning. Significance statement Some individuals learn faster than others. Many factors can affect an animal’s learning rate—for example, its behavioural phenotype may make it more or less likely to engage with novel objects. The social environment can play a big role too—affecting learning directly and modifying the effects of an individual’s traits. Effects of social context on learning mostly come from highly social species, but recent research has focused on less-social animals. Archerfish display high intra-specific competition, and our study suggests that social context has no strong effect on their learning to shoot novel objects for rewards. Our results may have some relevance for social enrichment and welfare of this increasingly studied species, suggesting there are no negative effects of short- to medium-term isolation of this species—at least with regards to behavioural performance and learning tasks.


2020 ◽  
pp. 107780122095427
Author(s):  
Jessica A. Blayney ◽  
Tiffany Jenzer ◽  
Jennifer P. Read ◽  
Jennifer Livingston ◽  
Maria Testa ◽  
...  

Sexual victimization (SV) risk can begin in social contexts, ones where friends are present, though it is unclear how friends might be integrated into SV prevention. Using focus groups, female college drinkers described (a) the role of friends in preventing SV, (b) the strategies friends use to reduce vulnerability, and (c) the barriers to implementation. Friends-based strategies (keeping tabs on one another, using signals to convey potential danger, interrupting escalating situations, taking responsibility for friends, relying on male friends) and barriers (intoxication, preoccupation, situation ambiguity, social consequences) were discussed. Interventions can draw on these strategies, but must address the critical barriers.


One aspect of profiling to enhance teaching and learning involves the various contexts in which learners will engage, such as particular social media ecosystems and their attendant microcultures (the social norms and common practices in these spaces), particularly if learners will be engaging with individuals outside of the formal classroom. Understanding the larger online social context helps define the affordances and constraints of what can be effectively taught and learned. This involves profiling the current user base of the online social spaces where the learners will be engaging and interacting and co-creating knowledge.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-55
Author(s):  
Vinodkumar Prabhakaran ◽  
Owen Rambow

Understanding how the social context of an interaction affects our dialog behavior is of great interest to social scientists who study human behavior, as well as to computer scientists who build automatic methods to infer those social contexts. In this paper, we study the interaction of power, gender, and dialog behavior in organizational interactions. In order to perform this study, we first construct the Gender Identified Enron Corpus of emails, in which we semi-automatically assign the gender of around 23,000 individuals who authored around 97,000 email messages in the Enron corpus. This corpus, which is made freely available, is orders of magnitude larger than previously existing gender identified corpora in the email domain. Next, we use this corpus to perform a largescale data-oriented study of the interplay of gender and manifestations of power. We argue that, in addition to one’s own gender, the “gender environment” of an interaction, i.e., the gender makeup of one’s interlocutors, also affects the way power is manifested in dialog. We focus especially on manifestations of power in the dialog structure — both, in a shallow sense that disregards the textual content of messages (e.g., how often do the participants contribute, how often do they get replies etc.), as well as the structure that is expressed within the textual content (e.g., who issues requests and how are they made, whose requests get responses etc.). We find that both gender and gender environment affect the ways power is manifested in dialog, resulting in patterns that reveal the underlying factors. Finally, we show the utility of gender information in the problem of automatically predicting the direction of power between pairs of participants in email interactions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Martín-Luengo ◽  
Karlos Luna ◽  
Yury Shtyrov

Conversational pragmatics studies, among others, factors that affect the information we share with others. Previous research showed that when participants are unsure about the correctness of an answer, they report fewer answers. This behavior strongly depends on the incentive structure of the social context where the question-response exchange takes place. In this research we studied how the different incentive structure of several types of social contexts affects conversational pragmatics and the amount of information we are willing to share. In addition, we also studied how different levels of knowledge may affect memory reporting in different social contexts. Participants answered easy, intermediate, and difficult general knowledge questions and decided whether they would report or withhold their selected answer in different social contexts: formal vs. informal, and constrained (a context that promotes providing only responses we are certain about) vs. loose (with an incentive structure that maximizes providing any type of answer). Overall, our results confirmed that social contexts are associated with a different incentive structure which affect memory reporting strategies, and that the effect of social contexts depended on the difficulty of the questions. Our results highlight the relevance of studying the different incentive structures of social contexts to understand the underlying processes of conversational pragmatics, and stress the importance of considering metamemory theories of memory reporting.


2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Cecil Smith

This study used a diary method to obtain detailed information about the reading practices of a sample of adult readers with diverse educational and occupational experiences. Reading practices were identified in two principal settings, home and work. Participants were found to read periodicals and books at home both to engage in leisure and to perform a variety of functional tasks. They read informational materials, correspondence, and functional texts at work to perform workplace-related tasks. Readers' efforts at and enjoyment of the reading tasks they engaged in varied depending on the texts and purpose for reading. Several strategic actions were reported when adults were reading to learn and remember text information, but most readers relied on activation of prior knowledge, rereading of text, and note taking. The study also examined the role of the social contexts of age, educational attainment, and occupation in contributing to adult reading behavior. A significant three-way interaction was found between reading source, setting, and occupation only. The results support the findings of previous readership studies and further illustrate how specific social context factors account for differences in adults' reading practices.


Author(s):  
Lasana T. Harris

The seventh chapter argues for the importance of the social context in continuing to influence whether social cognition is engaged or not, and describes a version of the delayed sudden death virus outbreak thought experiment without the death and virus components, set in modern society. This chapter then reviews classical social psychological studies that illustrate the power of the social context in shaping social cognition and resulting behaviour. It describes different types of social contexts, and explores the role of consistency motives in guiding human behaviour. Finally, it makes an appeal for a spectrum metaphor for social behavior, rather than alternative metaphors that categorise the phenomenon too narrowly.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Baird ◽  
Ryan Plummer ◽  
Diane Dupont ◽  
Blair Carter

Drinking water quality problems are persistent and challenging for many of Canada's First Nations communities despite past and ongoing initiatives to improve the situation. These initiatives have often been employed without consideration for understanding the social context that is so critical for the development of appropriate water governance approaches. This article offers insights about the relationship between institutions for water governance and perceptions in three Ontario First Nations communities. Similarities among communities were particularly noticeable for gender where women valued water more highly and were less content with water quality. The findings presented here highlight potential impacts of displacement, gender, and water sources on perceptions of water quality and offer initial insights that indicate the need for further research to consider the potential for adaptive governance approaches that enhance fit between problem and social contexts.


Fire ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis B. Paveglio ◽  
Catrin M. Edgeley ◽  
Matthew Carroll ◽  
Mark Billings ◽  
Amanda M. Stasiewicz

There is a growing recognition that the social diversity of communities at risk from wildland fire may necessitate divergent combinations of policies, programs and incentives that allow diverse populations to promote fire adapted communities (FACs). However, there have been few coordinated research efforts to explore the perceived utility and effectiveness of various options for FACs among residents, professionals, and local officials in disparate communities with different social contexts. The research presented here attempts to systematically explore the combination of local social factors that influence support for coordinated wildfire risk management across locations. We conducted 19 interactive focus groups across five communities spanning five Western U.S. states using a mixed-method design that allowed for the collection of quantitative and qualitative data. Results indicate a number of significant differences in effectiveness ratings for adaptation approaches across communities, including requirement of vegetation mitigations on private properties, fostering Firewise communities, and zoning efforts in fire-prone areas. We used qualitative data to help explain the differences between communities as a function of unique local social context operating in each location. We also compare our results with existing frameworks promoting community “archetypes” to evaluate their continued use in wildfire management planning or response.


1993 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 20-24
Author(s):  
Judith Fiene

The battering of women by their partners is a common occurrence around the world, and historical records show that the abuse of women has been legitimized through the ages. In the United States battering is to be found in all social classes and across all racial and ethnic groups. However, the experience of being battered is structured by the social contexts in which it occurs. How victims perceive and react to that experience is influenced by their social world, the construction of gender and family roles and interpersonal relationships in their community, and the response of local people to male violence. These social context variables must be considered as well in programs designed to assist battered women and to prevent further battering.


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