Does treadmill workstation use affect user’s kinematic gait symmetry?

The effects of treadmill workstation use on kinematic gait symmetry and computer work performance remain unclear. The purpose of this pilot study was to analyze the effects of treadmill workstation use on lower body motion symmetry while performing a typing task when compared to overground and treadmill walking. The lower body motion of ten healthy adults (6 males and 4 females) was recorded by a motion capture system. Hip, knee, and ankle joint rotations were computed and compared for each condition. Despite comparable lower body kinematic gait asymmetries across conditions, asymmetric knee flexion motions at early gait cycle were only found in treadmill workstation users (left knee significantly more flexed than the right one). This demonstrates that the interaction between walking and another task is dependent on the task cognitive content. Our findings suggest that lower body kinematic gait symmetry may be influenced by the use of treadmill workstations.

For the Question of the Semantic Theories of Antroponyms

The article presents and analyzes the semantic theories and the history of the study of anthroponyms, the syntactic characteristics of anthroponyms, issues related to the semantics of anthroponyms, as well as the features of the primary and secondary use of anthroponyms with a definite and indefinite article. As far as the tradition of research is concerned, linguistic considerations and concepts developed in the form of theories are especially important in this regard. In particular, the theory of names, the descriptive theory of anthroponyms, and the metallinguistic theory of anthroponyms. The subject of their research is the lexical and descriptive meaning of anthroponyms, the main reference, dependence on the context, information and cognitive content, convention (mutual agreement) of the participants in the communicative act.

The Match Between Structural Attributes and Content-Based Orientation of Managerial Cognition: An Exploratory fsQCA Study of ‘Hidden Champions’

ABSTRACT Strategic decision makers interpret information and translate it into organizational action through the lens of strategic schemas. How should firms realize high performance with various strategic schemas? Cognitive content and structure have been shown to underlie strategic schemas, but few studies have considered them together. This study employs aggregation analysis to clarify the interaction between cognitive content (technology orientation, market orientation) and structure (complexity, centrality) in affecting the firm performance (FP) of ‘hidden champion’ companies, identified by the Economy and Information Technology Department of Zhejiang Province, China. The empirical method applies fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to generate strategic schema profiles for high FP. This exploratory study fills a gap in the literature on managerial cognition and provides key lessons from ‘hidden champion’ companies in China and their paths for small- and medium-sized enterprises to grow.

The Cognitive Operator 4.0

While previous Industrial Revolutions have increasingly seen the human as a cog in the system, each step reducing the cognitive content of work, Industry 4.0 contrarily views the human as a knowledge worker putting increased focus on cognitive skills and specialised craftsmanship. The opportunities that technological advancement provide are in abundance and to be able to fully take advantage of them, understanding how humans interact with increasingly complex technology is crucial. The Operator 4.0, a framework of eight plausible scenarios attempting to highlight what Industry 4.0 entails for the human worker, takes advantage of extended reality technology; having real-time access to large amounts of data and information; being physically enhanced using powered exoskeletons or through collaboration with automation; and finally real-time monitoring of operator status and health as well as the possibility to collaborate socially with other agents in the Industrial Internet of Things, Services, and People. Some of these will impose larger cognitive challenges than others and this paper presents and discusses parts of the Operator 4.0 projections that will have implications on cognitive work.

Social and Communicative Competence Formation of Future Boatmasters in the Process of Studying Humanities

The article reveals the research of social and communicative competence formation of future boatmasters in the process of studying humanities. This competence covers a system of social and communicative knowledge, skills, as well as basic values and personal qualities necessary for effective interpersonal interaction and ensuring the safety of a ship. The structure of social and communicative competence of a future boatmaster is determined by the content of his or her professional activity and covers the following components: personal-value, cognitive-content and activity-effective. The results of the study made it possible to establish the educational reserves for improving the quality of training future boatmasters and forming their social and communicative competence. Taking into account the trends of globalization of the maritime shipping industry and the impact on the professional training of future boatmasters, the influence of postmodernism on formation and development of value orientations of students, the emergence of new social values, it is assumed that formation of social and communicative competence will be effective in case at the Maritime institutions of higher education will be introduced such pedagogical conditions: structuring the content of humanitarian disciplines in accordance with the basic values of social and communicative interaction of future boatmasters; using dialogical methods for the development of future boatmasters skills of interpersonal professional interaction; developing on the basis on contextual training of managerial decision making skills; preparation of teaching staff to forming social and communicative competence of future boatmasters. The effectiveness of pedagogical conditions of the formation of social and communicative competence of future boatmasters in the process of studying humanities was confirmed by the results of the pedagogical experiment. According to the results of the study the cadets of experimental group had mostly high (36.03 %) and average (45.96 %) levels of social and communicative competence formation. In control group, these data were 24.38% and 44.37%, respectively. In this group, the number of cadets with a low level, compared to experimental group, was much higher and amounted to 31.25 % (13.24% more than in experimental group).

APPROACHES IN TEACHING BULGARIAN TO CHILDREN WITH ANOTHER FAMILY LANGUAGE

Teaching Bulgarian to children with another family language is a condition for a successful transition to school education. Pedagogical support in Bulgarian language education is necessary to ensure quality education and progress for each child. This paper analyzes approaches that determine the organization of cognitive content and pedagogical interaction to build lasting speech and language skills. The systematic approach determines the sequence of introducing the cognitive content according to the specificity of the Bulgarian language system. The communicative-activity approach focuses on the interactions during which speech and language skills are acquired. The differentiated approach allows the teacher to work with each child and provide appropriate support. A concept and pedagogical technology is proposed.

Exploring sources of engineering teaching self-efficacy for pre-service elementary teachers

Background The Next Generation Science Standards (2013) put a special emphasis on engineering for K-12 science education. However, a significant number of elementary teachers still feel unprepared to integrate engineering into their science programs. It is, therefore, incumbent upon science educators to update their elementary science methods courses to accommodate engineering especially in the states which adopted the NGSS. In this study, we taught an engineering unit in an elementary science teaching methods course to examine what instructional components and learning experiences provided in the engineering unit enhance teachers’ engineering teaching self-efficacy beliefs. Our research questions addressed to what extent the engineering education intervention improved pre-service teachers’ engineering teaching efficacy beliefs and what instructional components and learning experiences served as sources of self-efficacy contributing to the improvement of pre-service elementary teachers’ engineering teaching efficacy beliefs. We also explored how pre-service teachers viewed the relative importance of the sources of teaching efficacy stemming from the engineering unit. Results The participants comprised 84 pre-service teachers enrolled in an elementary education program at a public university in the Southwestern United States. Data obtained from the Engineering Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument (ETEBI) indicated that the pre-service teachers’ personal teaching efficacy beliefs significantly improved after the engineering intervention; however, the engineering intervention had a small impact on teachers’ engineering teaching outcome expectancy beliefs. Written reflections used to explore the sources of engineering teaching efficacy and the relative importance of each source showed that cognitive content mastery and cognitive pedagogical mastery were the major sources of engineering teaching self-efficacy among the pre-service elementary teachers. Conclusion Our study illustrated that integrating engineering design activities with explicit-reflective instruction on the nature of engineering concepts could enhance pre-service teachers’ personal engineering teaching efficacy beliefs even though a relatively small impact was observed in their engineering teaching outcome expectancy beliefs. Also, the study indicated cognitive content mastery and cognitive pedagogical mastery were the most important sources of engineering teaching efficacy. Therefore, the study suggests that it is vital to integrate a variety of mastery and vicarious experiences in methods courses to support the development of teachers’ engineering teaching efficacy beliefs. Besides, the current study could provide an example for integrating engineering education in methods courses.

Metaphors in Mentalization-Based Treatment: Reintroducing the Language of Change in “Plain Old Therapy”

Metaphors, a central conduit of change in psychotherapy, have not been taken adequately into account in Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT). Despite successfully utilized by other evidence-based treatments for borderline personality disorder (BPD), MBT considers metaphors confusing for patients with low mentalizing abilities. For metaphors and teaching stories to stimulate growth within the window of tolerance, interventions should be responsively tailored (e.g., explained). Metaphors might be a route to making spoken matter more apprehensible, and bridge emotions with cognitive content. They hold the potential for challenging without being too confronting, and to translate knowledge between different range of understanding. This theoretical article presents why the use of metaphors in MBT—in the hands of a responsive therapists—may prove a powerful tool to open social trust, despite being considered a “high risk” intervention. The timeless lens of the metaphor may help us connect with archetypical versions of our own narratives, hence understanding our subjectivity in a larger perspective. By reaching towards concepts beyond our normal reasoning, typically denoted perennial philosophy or wisdom, they may substitute and/or supplement mentors in a memorable way.

Nonconceptualism and content independence

State Nonconceptualism is the view that perceptual states (not perceptual content) are different in kind from cognitive states (not cognitive content), insofar as a subject could be in perceptual states even if she lacked the concepts necessary to describe those states. Although this position has recently met serious criticism, this piece aims to argue on its behalf. A point I specifically want to highlight is that, thanks to State Nonconceptualism, it is possible to characterize perceptual experiences as nonconceptual or concept-independent without relying on the notion of perceptual content - a feature I term here the content independence of State Nonconceptualism. I think one should welcome this result: for, although a nonconceptualist characterization of perceptual experience is quite plausible, nonrepresentationalist approaches to perception have persuasively challenged the thought that perceptual experiences have representational content. This brief piece is divided into three parts: (i) I introduce two versions of Perceptual Nonconceptualism, namely, Content and State Nonconceptualism; (ii) I go on to stress State Nonconceptualism’s content independence; and (iii), I briefly address three prominent objections against the state nonconceptualist.