Optimising Vine Weevil, Otiorhynchus sulcatus F. (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), Monitoring Tool Design

Vine weevil, Otiorhynchus sulcatus F. (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), is an economically important insect pest of horticultural crops. To identify an effective and reliable monitoring system for adult vine weevil, this study investigated the influence of colour, height and entrance position on the efficacy of a model monitoring tool using modified paper cups as refuges. Vine weevil preferences were determined by the number of individuals recorded within a refuge. When provided with a binary choice between black or white refuges, vine weevil adults showed a preference for black refuges. Vine weevils provided with a range of coloured refuges (blue, green, red and yellow) in addition to black and white refuges showed a preference for black and blue over the other colours and white refuges in group choice experiments. Refuge height and entrance position also influenced vine weevil behaviour with individuals exhibiting a preference for taller refuges and those with entrance openings around the refuge base. These results provide insights into refuge selection by adult vine weevils, which can be exploited to improve monitoring tool design. The importance of developing an effective monitoring tool for vine weevil adults as part of an integrated pest management programme is discussed.

Critérios empiricamente verificáveis para a avaliação do vocabulário na produção oral do professor de língua estrangeira

O EPPLE (Exame de Proficiência para Professores de Línguas Estrangeiras) é um instrumento avaliativo em constante aprimoramento (CONSOLO e TEIXEIRA DA SILVA, 2014; COLOMBO, 2019) que se volta para a avaliação da proficiência do professor de LE no contexto brasileiro. Atualmente, o EPPLE possui apenas uma escala holística para a avaliação do desempenho oral de candidatos, desenvolvida intuitivamente. Dessa forma, é necessário que se construa uma escala de proficiência analítica empiricamente embasada para a produção de um argumento para a validade dos critérios avaliativos que classificam os desempenhos orais no exame. A precisão do vocabulário empregado, entre outros construtos da competência linguística, é de extrema importância para a proficiência oral do professor de LE, uma vez que o professor ensina a LE utilizando a língua-alvo em contextos comunicativos (FREEMAN et al., 2015). O presente estudo apresenta resultados da aplicação dos EBBs (Empirically derived, Binary choice, Boundary definition scales), metodologia empírica para o desenvolvimento de critérios avaliativos e escalas de proficiência linguística desenvolvida por Upshur e Turner (1999), em amostras do banco de dados do EPPLE. A partir da análise, construiu-se de um quadro de critérios empiricamente verificáveis para a avaliação da precisão do vocabulário empregado pelos candidatos do exame, assim como desenvolveu-se uma escala de proficiência analítica que contempla a coerência do vocabulário empregado, o uso preciso de terminologia técnica e o (re)conhecimento de palavras-chave relacionadas à tarefa metalinguística.

Sequential Decisions from Sampling: Inductive Generation of Stopping Decisions Using Instance-Based Learning Theory

Sequential decisions from sampling are common in daily life: we often explore alternatives sequentially, decide when to stop such exploration process, and use the experience acquired during sampling to make a choice for what is expected to be the best option. In decisions from experience, theories of sampling and experiential choice are unable to explain the decision of when to stop the sequential exploration of alternatives. In this chapter, we propose a mechanism to inductively generate stopping decisions, and we demonstrate its plausibility in a large and diverse human data set of the binary choice sampling paradigm. Our proposed stopping mechanism relies on the choice process of a theory of experiential choice, Instance-Based Learning Theory (IBLT). The new stopping mechanism tracks the relative prediction errors of the two options during sampling, and stops when such difference is close to zero. Our results from simulation are able to accurately predict human stopping decisions distributions in the dataset. This model provides an integrated theoretical account of decisions from experience, where the stopping decisions are generated inductively from the sampling process.

'It's either Maccas or uni': A Bourdieusian analysis of working-class youth in New Zealand

<p>School to work transitions is often presented as a binary choice. You either pursue a university education that is framed as a sure-fire pathway to both social and economic mobility, or you pursue a ‘lesser’ form of industrial and vocational training, with little of hope of advancement. However, this thesis argues that this assumption must be contested, as it obscures the complexity of all school to work transitions and the potential for social mobility in these ‘lesser’ forms of education. Through interviews with young men and women who are training as an apprentice or have recently completed their apprenticeship, this thesis hopes to provide a more complex snapshot of school to work transitions, focusing on how apprentices find and adapt to their new trade. My overall argument centres on Bourdieu’s theory of practice which is often discussed concerning the specific class-based outcomes of education for students from different class conditions (Bourdieu 1977). While this approach is useful to showing the complexity of school to work transitions from supposedly ‘lesser’ pathways, this approach is overly reliant on habitus, presenting a type of individual agency that is primarily reproductive and non-conducive to any potential transformation. Instead of focusing on just habitus in understanding this transition, a greater emphasis is placed on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’. Specifically, how field conditions can influence both the degree and the type of agency within a field, presenting a more complicated conception of agency that can be simultaneously reproductive and transformative.</p>

'It's either Maccas or uni': A Bourdieusian analysis of working-class youth in New Zealand

<p>School to work transitions is often presented as a binary choice. You either pursue a university education that is framed as a sure-fire pathway to both social and economic mobility, or you pursue a ‘lesser’ form of industrial and vocational training, with little of hope of advancement. However, this thesis argues that this assumption must be contested, as it obscures the complexity of all school to work transitions and the potential for social mobility in these ‘lesser’ forms of education. Through interviews with young men and women who are training as an apprentice or have recently completed their apprenticeship, this thesis hopes to provide a more complex snapshot of school to work transitions, focusing on how apprentices find and adapt to their new trade. My overall argument centres on Bourdieu’s theory of practice which is often discussed concerning the specific class-based outcomes of education for students from different class conditions (Bourdieu 1977). While this approach is useful to showing the complexity of school to work transitions from supposedly ‘lesser’ pathways, this approach is overly reliant on habitus, presenting a type of individual agency that is primarily reproductive and non-conducive to any potential transformation. Instead of focusing on just habitus in understanding this transition, a greater emphasis is placed on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’. Specifically, how field conditions can influence both the degree and the type of agency within a field, presenting a more complicated conception of agency that can be simultaneously reproductive and transformative.</p>

Faixas de proficiência empiricamente desenvolvidas para avaliar a fluência do professor de língua estrangeira

A consideração de evidências empíricas para o desenvolvimento de critérios avaliativos em exames de proficiência constitui um argumento para a validade do construto operacionalizado, assim como confere maior confiabilidade aos resultados produzidos por instrumentos avaliativos. O Exame de Proficiência para Professores de Língua Estrangeira (EPPLE), instrumento avaliativo em desenvolvimento para a avaliação de professores de línguas no contexto educacional brasileiro, carece de validação empírica de seus critérios para a avaliação da fluência, assim como não possui uma escala de proficiência linguística analítica. Este trabalho apresenta resultados da aplicação dos Empirically derived, Binary choice, Boundary Definition scales (EBBs), metodologia empírica para a seleção de critérios avaliativos utilizada para a análise de amostras de desempenho oral de futuros professores de língua estrangeira, oriundas do banco de dados do EPPLE. A partir da análise das amostras de desempenho oral, sugere-se que a escala de proficiência analítica e o quadro de critérios avaliativos incorporem fenômenos de hesitação a partir de uma perspectiva global e comunicativa. Além disso, pausas, autocorreções, repetições e reformulações de enunciados foram identificados como aspectos determinantes para definir os desempenhos característicos de cada faixa de proficiência linguística.

The effects of proactive form-focused instruction and individual differences on second language acquisition

This study investigated the extent to which second language (L2) learners benefited from proactive form-focused instruction (FFI) targeting French grammatical gender attribution and the degree to which L2 learners’ attention control and working memory predicted their learning gains. A total of 102 L2 learners received either proactive FFI targeting French grammatical gender attribution or their regular instruction (i.e. control condition) for six 80-minute instructional sessions. A pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest were administered, each entailing binary-choice, text-completion, picture-description, and listening tasks. The L2 learners also completed the Simon Test and the Corsi Block-Tapping Test, which measured their attention control and working memory. Results showed that L2 learners receiving the proactive FFI condition significantly outperformed those receiving the control condition in all tasks after the instructional sessions. More importantly, L2 learners’ attention control and working memory were significant predictors of their learning gains in the binary-choice and listening tasks, but not in the text-completion and picture-description tasks. The current study highlighted the roles of L2 learners’ attention control and working memory in proactive FFI.

Neighborhood-Based Information Costs

We derive a new cost of information in rational inattention problems, the neighborhood-based cost functions, starting from the observation that many settings involve exogenous states with a topological structure. These cost functions are uniformly posterior separable and capture notions of perceptual distance. This second property ensures that neighborhood-based costs, unlike mutual information, make accurate predictions about behavior in perceptual experiments. We compare the implications of our neighborhood-based cost functions with those of the mutual information in a series of applications: perceptual judgments, the general environment of binary choice, regime-change games, and linear-quadratic-Gaussian settings. (JEL C70, D11, D82, D83, D91)

Do low-confidence individuals decrease group judgments’ accuracy? Investigations in terms of the wisdom of crowds framework

In group judgments in a binary choice task, the judgments of individuals with low confidence (i.e., they feel that the judgment was not correct) may be regarded as unreliable. Previous studies have shown that aggregating individuals’ diverse judgments can lead to high accuracy in group judgments, a phenomenon known as the wisdom of crowds. Therefore, if low-confidence individuals make diverse judgments between individuals and the mean of accuracy of their judgments is above the chance level (.50), it is likely that they will not always decrease the accuracy of group judgments. To investigate this issue, the present study conducted behavioral experiments using binary choice inferential tasks, and computer simulations of group judgments by manipulating group sizes and individuals’ confidence levels. Results revealed that (I) judgment patterns were highly similar between individuals regardless of their confidence levels; (II) the low-confidence group could make judgments as accurate as the high-confidence group, as the group size increased; and (III) even if there were low-confidence individuals in a group, they generally did not inhibit group judgment accuracy. The results suggest the usefulness of low-confidence individuals’ judgments in a group and provide practical implications for real-world group judgments.