scholarly journals Learning a Path from Real Navigation: The Advantage of Initial View, Cardinal North and Visuo-Spatial Ability

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 204
Author(s):  
Veronica Muffato ◽  
Chiara Meneghetti

Background: Spatial cognition research strives to maximize conditions favoring environment representation. This study examined how initial (egocentric) navigation headings interact with allocentric references in terms of world-based information (such as cardinal points) in forming environment representations. The role of individual visuo-spatial factors was also examined. Method: Ninety-one undergraduates took an unfamiliar path in two learning conditions, 46 walked from cardinal south to north (SN learning), and 45 walked from cardinal north to south (NS learning). Path recall was tested with SN and NS pointing tasks. Perspective-taking ability and self-reported sense of direction were also assessed. Results: Linear models showed a better performance for SN learning and SN pointing than for NS learning and NS pointing. The learning condition x pointing interaction proved SN pointing more accurate than NS pointing after SN learning, while SN and NS pointing accuracy was similar after NS learning. Perspective-taking ability supported pointing accuracy. Conclusions: These results indicate that initial heading aligned with cardinal north prompt a north-oriented representation. No clear orientation of the representation emerges when the initial heading is aligned with cardinal south. Environment representations are supported by individual perspective-taking ability. These findings offer new insight on the environmental and individual factors facilitating environment representations acquired from navigation.

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Kang ◽  
Stephen Matthews ◽  
Virginia Yip ◽  
Patrick C. M. Wong

AbstractThe question of why native and foreign languages are learned with a large performance gap has prompted language researchers to hypothesize that they are subserved by fundamentally different mechanisms. However, this hypothesis may not have taken into account that these languages can be learned under different conditions (e.g., naturalistic vs. classroom settings). With a large sample of 636 third language (L3) learners who learned Chinese and English as their first (L1) and second (L2) languages, the present study examined the association of learning success across L1–L3. We argue that learning conditions may reveal how these languages are associated in terms of learning success. Because these languages were learned under a continuum of naturalistic to classroom conditions from L1 to L3, this sample afforded us a unique opportunity to evaluate the hypothesis that similar learning conditions between languages could be an important driving force determining language learning success. After controlling for nonlanguage factors such as musical background and motivational factors and using a convergence of analytics including the general linear models, the structural equation models, and machine learning, we found that the closer two languages were on the continuum of learning conditions, the stronger their association of learning success. Specifically, we found a significant association between L1 and L2 and between L2 and L3, but not between L1 and L3. Our results suggest that learning conditions may have important implications for the learning success of L1–L3.


Languages ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Michele Wellsby ◽  
Penny Pexman

Theories of embodied cognition propose that sensorimotor experience is essential to learning, representing, and accessing conceptual information. Embodied effects have been observed in early child development and adult cognitive processing, but there has been less research examining the role of embodiment in later childhood. We conducted two experiments to test whether degree of sensorimotor experience modulates children’s word learning. In Experiment 1, 5-year-old children learned labels for 10 unfamiliar objects in one of six learning conditions, which varied in how much sensorimotor experience and information about the objects children received. Children’s word learning was assessed with a recognition test. Results indicated that there was no effect of learning condition on recognition accuracy, as children performed equally well in all conditions. In Experiment 2, we modified the stimuli to emphasize the sensory features of the objects; 5-year-old children learned labels for these objects in one of two learning conditions. Once again, there was no effect of learning condition on children’s recognition accuracy performance. Overall, children’s word learning was not modulated by the extent to which they had sensorimotor experience with the labelled objects. As such, the results place some limits on the role of embodiment in language learning.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Herms ◽  
Amanda Bolbecker ◽  
Krista Wisner

Empathic tendencies (i.e., perspective taking and empathic concern) and emotion regulation (i.e., reappraisal and suppression) are key factors in successful social relationships. Relationships can also be negatively impacted by mental health symptoms, including psychosis. While psychotic-like experiences are often detrimental to social functioning, it is unclear whether certain psychotic-like experiences, such as delusions, are negatively associated with empathetic tendencies after accounting for emotion regulation skills and comorbid dimensions of psychopathology. Linear models were employed to test these associations in an adult community sample (N = 128). Measures of interest included the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, and the Peter’s Delusion Inventory. Results indicated that perspective taking was positively associated with reappraisal and negatively associated with delusional proneness, after controlling for age, sex, race, intelligence, as well as symptoms of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, a significant change in R2 supported the addition of delusion proneness in this model. Specificity analyses demonstrated perspective taking was also negatively associated with suppression, but this relationship did not remain after accounting for the effects of reappraisal and delusion proneness in the same model. Additional specificity analyses found no association between empathic concern and reappraisal or delusion proneness but replicated previous findings that empathic concern was negatively associated with suppression. Taken together, findings highlight that delusion proneness accounts for unique variance in interpersonal perspective taking, beyond that explained by demographics, intelligence, reappraisal skills, and internalizing psychopathology.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth J. Ploran ◽  
Ericka Rovira ◽  
James C. Thompson ◽  
Raja Parasuraman

Author(s):  
Mitchell Green

We first correct some errors in Lepore and Stone’s discussion of speaker meaning and its relation to linguistic meaning. With a proper understanding of those notions and their relation, we may then motivate a liberalization of speaker meaning that includes overtly showing one’s psychological state. I then distinguish this notion from that of expression, which, although communicative, is less cognitively demanding than speaker meaning since it need not be overt. This perspective in turn enables us to address Lepore and Stone’s broadly Davidsonian view of figurative language, which rightly emphasizes the role of imagination and perspective-taking associated with such language, but mistakenly suggests it is sui generis relative to other types of pragmatic process, and beyond the realm of communication. Figurative utterances may influence conversational common ground, and may be assessed for their aptness; they also have a characteristically expressive role that a Davidsonian view lacks the resources to explain.


Sociology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 1011-1033 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Laurence

Extensive research has demonstrated that neighbourhood ethnic diversity is negatively associated with intra-neighbourhood social capital. This study explores the role of segregation and integration in this relationship. To do so it applies three-level hierarchical linear models to two sets of data from across Great Britain and within London, and examines how segregation across the wider-community in which a neighbourhood is nested impacts trust amongst neighbours. This study replicates the increasingly ubiquitous finding that neighbourhood diversity is negatively associated with neighbour-trust. However, we demonstrate that this relationship is highly dependent on the level of segregation across the wider-community in which a neighbourhood is nested. Increasing neighbourhood diversity only negatively impacts neighbour-trust when nested in more segregated wider-communities. Individuals living in diverse neighbourhoods nested within integrated wider-communities experience no trust-penalty. These findings show that segregation plays a critical role in the neighbourhood diversity/trust relationship, and that its absence from the literature biases our understanding of how ethnic diversity affects social cohesion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yadgar Taha M. Hamakhan

Abstract The popularity of self-service technologies, particularly in the banking industry, more precisely with electronic banking channel services, has undergone a major change as individuals' lifestyles develop. This change has affected individuals’ decisions about accepting any new Information Technology, and Information Communications Technology services that are electronically mediated, for example, E-Banking channel services. This study investigates the effect of Individual Factors on User Behaviour, and the moderating role of Trust in the relationship between Individual Factors, and User Behaviour based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. This research proposes a model, with a second-order components research framework. It improves current explanations of the acceptance of electronic banking channel services. Furthermore, this study highlights the role of trust on the acceptance of electronic banking channel services, which is the most crucial consideration in customers’ decisions to accept electronic banking channels services. Thus, trust is the spine of the system in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Data were collected using an online questionnaire that received 476 valid responses from academic staff who work at the University of Sulaimani. The model tested data using the Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling approach. The results show that Individual Factors have a positive effect on User Behaviour. Besides, results show that trust moderates the relationship between Individual Factors and User Behaviour.


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