Equity and Engagement Through Digital Storytelling and Game-Based Learning

This chapter is founded on the idea that literacy is the cornerstone of teaching and learning across disciplines and is the scaffold for quality communication across modes. Therefore, it contends that the ever-widening education and opportunity gaps seen throughout United States school systems have the potential to be bridged through engaging communicative literacy experiences. Information and resources provided are supported through a theoretical framework based on engagement theory, equitable access as a construct, and multiple literacies theory. As educational equity gaps continue to develop and widen for students based on race, income, language, and technology, it is imperative that innovative practices be researched, reviewed, and put into practice. By utilizing digital storytelling and game-based learning, this chapter attempts to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of issues related to classroom practice, educational equity, learning engagement, and literacy opportunities.

Sense Element Engagement Theory Explains How Neural Networks Produce Cortical Prosthetic Vision

<p>Demonstrating that an understanding of how neural networks produce a specific quality of experience has been achieved would provide a foundation for new research programs and neurotechnologies. The phenomena that comprise cortical prosthetic vision have two desirable properties for the pursuit of this goal: 1) Models of the subjective qualities of cortical prosthetic vision can be constructed; and 2) These models can be related in a natural way to models of the objective aspects of cortical prosthetic vision. Sense element engagement theory portrays the qualities of cortical prosthetic vision together with coordinated objective neural phenomena as constituting sensible spatiotemporal patterns that are produced by neural interactions. Small-scale neural network simulations are used to illustrate how these patterns are thought to arise. It is proposed that simulations and an electronic neural network (ENN) should be employed in devising tests of the theory. Large-scale simulations can provide estimates of parameter values that are required to construct an ENN. The ENN will be used to develop a prosthetic device that is predicted by the theory to produce visual forms in a novel fashion. According to the theory, confirmation of this prediction would also provide evidence that this ENN is a sentient device.</p>

Sense Element Engagement Theory Explains How Neural Networks Produce Cortical Prosthetic Vision

<p>Demonstrating that an understanding of how neural networks produce a specific quality of experience has been achieved would provide a foundation for new research programs and neurotechnologies. The phenomena that comprise cortical prosthetic vision have two desirable properties for the pursuit of this goal: 1) Models of the subjective qualities of cortical prosthetic vision can be constructed; and 2) These models can be related in a natural way to models of the objective aspects of cortical prosthetic vision. Sense element engagement theory portrays the qualities of cortical prosthetic vision together with coordinated objective neural phenomena as constituting sensible spatiotemporal patterns that are produced by neural interactions. Small-scale neural network simulations are used to illustrate how these patterns are thought to arise. It is proposed that simulations and an electronic neural network (ENN) should be employed in devising tests of the theory. Large-scale simulations can provide estimates of parameter values that are required to construct an ENN. The ENN will be used to develop a prosthetic device that is predicted by the theory to produce visual forms in a novel fashion. According to the theory, confirmation of this prediction would also provide evidence that this ENN is a sentient device.</p>

The Aesthetic Engagement Theory of Art

I introduce and explicate a new functionalist account of art, namely that something is an artwork iff the fulfillment of its function by a subject requires that the subject aesthetically engage it. This is the Aesthetic Engagement Theory of art. I show how the Aesthetic Engagement Theory outperforms salient rival theories in terms of extensional adequacy, non-arbitrariness, and ability to account for the distinctive value of art. I also give an account of what it is to aesthetically engage a work that relies on our agential capacity to treat an object as having non-instrumental value, even while the ultimate purpose for our engaging the object is to get something from it.

The Material Origin of Numbers (front matter and introduction)

The Material Origin of Numbers examines how number concepts are realized, represented, manipulated, and elaborated. Utilizing the cognitive archaeological framework of Material Engagement Theory and culling data from disciplines including neuroscience, ethnography, linguistics, and archaeology, Overmann offers a methodologically rich study of numbers and number concepts in the ancient Near East from the late Upper Paleolithic Period through the Bronze Age. This project has received funding from the Clarendon Fund at the University of Oxford, as well as the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 785793.

The role of materiality in numerical cognition

Numerical elaboration and the extension of numbers to non-tangible domains such as time have been linked to cultural complexity in several studies. However, the reasons for this phenomenon remain insufficiently explored. In the present analysis, Material Engagement Theory, an emerging perspective in cognitive archaeology, provides a new perspective from which to reinterpret the cultural nexus in which quantification develops. These insights are then applied to representative Neolithic, Upper Palaeolithic, and Middle Stone Age artifacts used for quantification: clay tokens from Neolithic Mesopotamia, notched tallies from the European Upper Palaeolithic, hand stencils with possible finger-counting patterns as documented at Cosquer and Gargas, and stringed beads from Blombos Cave in South Africa.

Concepts and how they get that way

Drawing on the material culture of the Ancient Near East as interpreted through Material Engagement Theory, the journey of how material number becomes a conceptual number is traced to address questions of how a particular material form might generate a concept and how concepts might ultimately encompass multiple material forms so that they include but are irreducible to all of them together. Material forms incorporated into the cognitive system affect the content and structure of concepts through their agency and affordances, the capabilities and constraints they provide as the material component of the extended, enactive mind. Material forms give concepts the tangibility that enables them to be literally grasped and manipulated. As they are distributed over multiple material forms, concepts effectively become independent of any of them, yielding the abstract irreducibility that makes a concept like number what it is. Finally, social aspects of material use—collaboration, ordinariness, and time—have important effects on the generation and distribution of concepts.

Updating the Abstract-Concrete Distinction in Ancient Near Eastern Numbers

The characterization of early token-based accounting using a concrete concept of number, later numerical notations an abstract one, has become well entrenched in the literature. After reviewing its history and assumptions, this article challenges the abstract-concrete distinction, presenting an alternative view of change in Ancient Near Eastern number concepts, wherein numbers are abstract from their inception and materially bound when most elaborated. The alternative draws on the chronological sequence of material counting technologies used in the Ancient Near East—fingers, tallies, tokens, and numerical notations—as reconstructed through archaeological and textual evidence and as interpreted through Material Engagement Theory, an extended-mind framework in which materiality plays an active role (Malafouris 2013).

Beyond Writing: The Development of Literacy in the Ancient Near East

Previous discussions of the origins of writing in the Ancient Near East have not incorporated the neuroscience of literacy, which suggests that when southern Mesopotamians wrote marks on clay in the late-fourth millennium, they inadvertently reorganized their neural activity, a factor in manipulating the writing system to reflect language, yielding literacy through a combination of neurofunctional change and increased script fidelity to language. Such a development appears to take place only with a sufficient demand for writing and reading, such as that posed by a state-level bureaucracy; the use of a material with suitable characteristics; and the production of marks that are conventionalized, handwritten, simple, and non-numerical. From the perspective of Material Engagement Theory, writing and reading represent the interactivity of bodies, materiality, and brains: movements of hands, arms, and eyes; clay and the implements used to mark it and form characters; and vision, motor planning, object recognition, and language. Literacy is a cognitive change that emerges from and depends upon the nexus of interactivity of the components.

Engagement of Ethnic-Minority Consumers with Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) on Social Media: The Pivotal Role of Intercultural Factors

Social network sites (SNS) facilitate eWOM communication among consumers of different cultures. Building on contact theory and the theory of planned behavior, we propose a conceptual framework that integrates intercultural factors as predictors of minority consumers’ engagement with eWOM communicated by and to individuals of the dominant culture on social media. A partial least squares (PLS) analysis on data collected from the Israeli-Arab minority shows that intercultural factors (i.e., acculturation, social interaction, and language proficiency) are antecedents of minority consumer engagement with eWOM. However, this relationship is mediated by consumer beliefs (attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) concerning this behavior, and moderated by the cultural distance between minority and dominant culture consumers. The findings help marketers plan marketing communications that engage audiences meaningfully and generate positive eWOM when targeting ethnic-cultural minorities. The current study contributes to our understanding of minority consumers’ engagement with eWOM communicated by and to members of the hegemonic culture. It further contributes to consumer engagement theory and acculturation research by supporting the post-assimilationist view. The proposed model is highly valuable in light of the importance of the concept of consumer engagement in marketing research.