Axiological Component of Paroemias: Specificity and Role in Intercultural Communication

The article examines the axiological component of verbal units that comprise the paremiological funds in languages with different structure. The content of proverbs and sayings reflects cultural specificity along with the values adopted in a particular ethnic community. The analysis of 865 examples presented in the Russian, English, French and Latin languages has confirmed the hypothesis that the values of people are vividly reflected in paroemias. The author’s conception of “axiological component” has been clarified. Axiological component is understood as the value associated with the assessment included into the semantics of a paremiological unit. The semantic component of paroemias manifests itself in determining the value of an object or phenomenon in relation to other objects or phenomena. Also, it may reflect the work of categorization and classification mechanisms. The idea of axiological component correlation with the hierarchy of the value system (described by one of the founders of axiology H. Rickert) predetermines the novelty of this research. It is concluded that paroemias can be classified based on the content of the axiological component. The following groups have been singled out: behavioral instruction, basic life values, object assessment, subject assessment and assessment of the subject’s behavior. The didactics of paroemias can be expressed in explicit and implicit forms, but one way or another, it is present in every verbal unit. The value component is a serious obstacle in successful interaction; therefore, a projective analysis of the functioning of paroemias under the conditions of intercultural communication has been carried out.

Creating Engaging Classrooms for All Learners

Actively engaging learners in the classroom has been associated with increases in learners’ academic and behavioral performance. Multiple empirically supported strategies exist for actively engaging learners, including increasing opportunities for learners to respond and planning highly engaging lessons. In support of these engagement strategies, educators also systematically implement empirically supported classroom management strategies to increase the likelihood of appropriate behaviors and decrease the likelihood of inappropriate behaviors. These classroom management strategies include: (a) maximizing structure, which includes both the physical (e.g., desk arrangement) and embedded (e.g., classroom routines) aspects of structure; (b) establishing, operationally defining, teaching, prompting, and monitoring students’ expected classroom behaviors; (c) developing a continuum of acknowledgment strategies to reinforce (i.e., increase the future likelihood of) those expected behaviors; and (d) establishing a continuum of responses for behaviors that do not meet expectations. In addition, educators collect relevant data to evaluate if learners are engaged and meeting academic and behavioral expectations. Finally, to create a classroom environment conducive to engaging all learners, academic and behavioral instruction and support must be: (a) contextually and culturally relevant for learners, and (b) differentiated to meet the diverse learning and behavioral needs within the classroom. If educators explicitly and routinely implement empirically supported academic and behavioral instruction and support for all learners, the majority of learners will engage in instruction and demonstrate behaviors that meet expectations, reducing the number of learners who require additional levels of support. Meanwhile, effective educators review academic and behavioral data to determine if learners require more intensive support at a group or individual learner level.

Surveillance or Self-Surveillance? Behavioral Cues Can Increase the Rate of Drivers’ Pro-Environmental Behavior at a Long Wait Stop

By leaving their engines idling for long periods, drivers contribute unnecessarily to air pollution, waste fuel, and produce noise and fumes that harm the environment. Railway level crossings are sites where many cars idle, many times a day. In this research, testing two psychological theories of influence, we examine the potential to encourage drivers to switch off their ignition while waiting at rail crossings. Two field studies presented different signs at a busy rail crossing site with a 2-min average wait. Inducing public self-focus (via a “Watching Eyes” stimulus) was not effective, even when accompanied by a written behavioral instruction. Instead, cueing a private-self focus (“think of yourself”) was more effective, doubling the level of behavioral compliance. These findings confirm the need to engage the self when trying to instigate self-regulatory action, but that cues evoking self-surveillance may sometimes be more effective than cues that imply external surveillance.

Neural Activity in Monkey Prefrontal Cortex Is Modulated by Task Context and Behavioral Instruction during Delayed-match-to-sample and Conditional Prosaccade—Antisaccade Tasks

Complex behavior often requires the formation of associations between environmental stimuli and motor responses appropriate to those stimuli. Moreover, the appropriate response to a given stimulus may vary depending on environmental context. Stimulus-response associations that are adaptive in one situation may not be in another. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) has been shown to be critical for stimulus-response mapping and the implementation of task context. To investigate the neural representation of sensory-motor associations and task context in the PFC, we recorded the activity of prefrontal neurons in two monkeys while they performed two tasks. The first task was a delayed-match-to-sample task in which monkeys were presented with a sample picture and rewarded for making a saccade to the test picture that matched the sample picture following a delay period. The second task was a conditional visuomotor task in which identical sample pictures were presented. In this task, animals were rewarded for performing either prosaccades or antisaccades following the delay period depending on sample picture identity. PFC neurons showed task selectivity, object selectivity, and combinations of task and object selectivity. These modulations of activity took the form of a reduction in stimulus and delay-related activity, and a pro/anti instruction-based grouping of delay activity in the conditional visuomotor task. These data show that activity in PFC neurons is modulated by experimental context, and that this activity represents the formal demands of the task currently being performed.