Investigating Heritage Language Processing: Meaning Composition in Chinese Classifier-Noun Phrasal Contexts

The aim of the present study was to investigate how Chinese-Malay bilingual speakers with Chinese as heritage language process semantic congruency effects in Chinese and how their brain activities compare to those of monolingual Chinese speakers using electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. To this end, semantic congruencies were manipulated in Chinese classifier-noun phrases, resulting in four conditions: (i) a strongly constraining/high-cloze, plausible (SP) condition, (ii) a weakly constraining/low-cloze, plausible (WP) condition, (iii) a strongly constraining/implausible (SI) condition, and (iv) a weakly constraining/implausible (WI) condition. The analysis of EEG data focused on two event-related potential components, i.e., the N400, which is known for its sensitivity to semantic fit of a target word to its context, and a post-N400 late positive complex (LPC), which is linked to semantic integration after prediction violations and retrospective, evaluative processes. We found similar N400/LPC effects in response to the manipulations of semantic congruency in the mono- and bilingual groups, with a gradient N400 pattern (WI/SI > WP > SP), a larger frontal LPC in response to WP compared to SP, SI, and WI, as well as larger centro-parietal LPCs in response to WP compared to SI and WI, and a larger centro-parietal LPC for SP compared to SI. These results suggest that, in terms of event-related potential (ERP) data, Chinese-Malay early bilingual speakers predict and integrate upcoming semantic information in Chinese classifier-noun phrase to the same extent as monolingual Chinese speakers. However, the global field power (GFP) data showed significant differences between SP and WP in the N400 and LPC time windows in bilinguals, whereas no such effects were observed in monolinguals. This finding was interpreted as showing that bilinguals differ from their monolingual peers in terms of global field power intensity of the brain by processing plausible classifier-noun pairs with different congruency effects.

Program evaluation practices and the training of PhD students in STEM

Purpose Program evaluation stands as an evidence-based process that would allow institutions to document and improve the quality of graduate programs and determine how to respond to growing calls for aligning training models to economic realities. This paper aims to present the current state of evaluation in research-based doctoral programs in STEM fields. Design/methodology/approach To highlight the recent evaluative processes, the authors restricted the initial literature search to papers published in English between 2008 and 2019. As the authors were motivated by the shift at NIH, this review focuses on STEM programs, though papers on broader evaluation efforts were included as long as STEM-specific results could be identified. In total, 137 papers were included in the final review. Findings Only nine papers presented an evaluation of a full program. Instead, papers focused on evaluating individual components of a graduate program, testing small interventions or examining existing national data sets. The review did not find any documents that focused on the continual monitoring of training quality. Originality/value This review can serve as a resource, encourage transparency and provide motivation for faculty and administrators to gather and use assessment data to improve training models. By understanding how existing evaluations are conducted and implemented, administrators can apply evidence-based methodologies to ensure the highest quality training to best prepare students.

Learning from Pandemic Mode to Create a Sustainable Digital Future

Public libraries are known as places for information, communication, and gathering, but what happens when a pandemic restricts social contact? In the years 2020 and 2021, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, libraries worldwide revised services and explored new ways to provide information and support to communities—primarily through digital services. This conceptual analytical paper responds to this approach by suggesting the use of a tripartite information access and digital inclusion model that can be used for evaluative processes related to ensuring ongoing physical, intellectual, and social access to public library services during a public crisis shutdown. We provide an overview of some of the new and altered services provided within the case of the Richland Library system in South Carolina, USA, and then discuss these changes using the tripartite model as a means to illustrate how this theoretical model can be employed for practical evaluation and decision-making.

La utilización de instrumentos de evaluación en Educación Primaria: análisis de caso en centros educativos de la provincia de Valencia (España)

El objetivo de la investigación presentado en este artículo es el conocer cuáles son instrumentos de evaluación más empleados entre el profesorado de educación primaria en la provincia de Valencia. Este objetivo inicial pretende, en posteriores investigaciones, compararse con las metodologías que estos profesores manifiestan en su docencia. Se presentan los resultados de una encuesta aplicada a dichos profesores, integrando aspectos sobre el proceso evaluativo, identificando los instrumentos de evaluación utilizados y su frecuencia de aplicación dependiendo básicamente del tipo área de aprendizaje desarrollado. En términos de frecuencia, el profesorado reconoce que las pruebas objetivas son las más usadas, prefiriendo instrumentos de evaluación que les permitan demostrar más de una habilidad cognitiva y que a través de los mismos accedan tanto a la temática a tratar teniendo presente la posible diversidad de alumnado como a la búsqueda de una enseñanza personalizada. El profesorado considera que los instrumentos más eficaces al aprendizaje del alumnado son los de desempeño en donde la prevalencia del examen escrito juega un papel porcentual elevado en el conjunto de la nota final otorgada. Por último, esta investigación deja abierta la invitación a continuar profundizando en la búsqueda de técnicas y métodos que contribuyan a una evaluación del alumnado cada vez más personalizada, justa y equitativa, pudiendo con ello mejorar las prácticas docentes en pos de la mejora de los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje. Descubrir las acciones del profesorado frente a los procesos evaluativos podrá desvelar información importante respecto a lo realizado antes, durante y después de las evaluaciones. This study aims to know the most commonly used evaluation instruments by Primary Education teachers in the Province of Valencia. This aim, in subsequent studies, will be compared with the methodologies these teachers use in their classes. Data were obtained through a survey completed by these teachers regarding aspects of the evaluation process, identifying the evaluation instruments used and their frequency of application depending basically on the type of subject. In terms of frequency, teachers recognize that objective tests are the most frequently used instrument, preferring evaluation instruments that activate more than one cognitive ability, foster personalized teaching and take into account students’ diversity when it comes to the teaching of subject content. Teachers consider that the most effective instruments for student learning are those in which the written exam is assigned a high percentage of the final mark. Finally, this study encourages further research to continue searching for techniques and methods that can contribute to student evaluation models which are increasingly fairer and more personalized and equitable. In this vein, teaching practices will improve leading to better teaching-learning processes. Discovering teachers' actions regarding evaluative processes can reveal important information in relation to what was done before, during and after evaluations.

Perceived fatigue does not alter effort-based decision making, but does undermine confidence in the ability to perform physical actions

Introduction: Protracted physical exertion leads to the development of fatigue. The development of fatigue has previously been associated with increased effort costs, influencing decisions to engage in further physical activity. However, whether fatigue-associated changes to effort-based decisions are reflective of a global aversion to effort in response to fatiguing physical exertion, affecting the decision to engage in physical action performed in other parts of the body, is unclear. Methods: To investigate this, we tested whether effort-based choice behaviour was altered by fatigue, pre-induced through physical exertion of a different body part. Twenty-two healthy male participants made a series of choices between two rewarded actions, which varied in both the level of effort required (relative duration of a submaximal contraction of the dominant knee extensors) and reward obtained (monetary incentives). Participants made their choice under two conditions: 1) a pre-induced state of fatigue and 2) a rested (control) state. Results: Across conditions, participants’ choice behaviour demonstrated the anticipated aversion to effort that interacted with the level of reward on offer. However, though prior physical exertion increased the perception of fatigue, prolonged choice selection-time and reduced self-reported confidence in ability to perform chosen effort-demanding actions, participants choice behaviour did not significantly differ between the two conditions. Conclusions:. The findings suggest that a subjective state of fatigue does not increase the general cost of exerting effort across the body but does increase uncertainty within decision-making processes which may alter evaluative processes that precede changes in cost/benefit computations.

Discriminating Palates: Evaluation and Ethnoracial Inequality in American Fine Dining

Elite cultural fields are often not diverse. Existing studies have examined how marginalized cultural producers are actively discriminated against or excluded from positions of prestige, but less is known about how ethnoracial inequality affects the evaluative processes used to assess products in fields of cultural production. This article analyzes 120 in-depth interviews with critically-recognized chefs in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area and 1,380 Michelin restaurant reviews to uncover the system of insidious racial inequality that shapes evaluation in the American fine dining field. I find that there are three logics of evaluation—of (1) technique, (2) creativity, and (3) authenticity—that are differentially enacted for distinct ethnoracial categories of restaurants in the field. I show how these different, racialized evaluative processes result in the systematic devaluation of culinary products categorically associated with non-whiteness, what I call Ethnic restaurants, and disproportionate consecration of products associated with whiteness, which I term Classic and Flexible restaurants. I bring the race/ethnicity and sociology of culture literatures together to illuminate the ways in which inequality infiltrates the logics that organize systems of value in fields of cultural production.

The Emancipated Listener

An aesthetic controversy regarding the value of conceptual and ambient sound art opens this theoretical investigation into sensation, perception, and understanding. The contrast between valuing sound through language or listening calls on aesthetic philosophy and social phenomenology to transcend existing theories of perception that tend to be rooted in the sense of sight. Extending from the sensus communis, the phenomenology of expanded listening demonstrates that sonic percepts are specified in terms of cognitive attention and temporal adumbration. Judgment and conviction are distinct evaluative processes that draw on cultivated taste and embodied sensation, respectively. An emancipated listener finds enhanced political agency in a sonic sensorium, obviating the mediation of text. Though the history of visual art has tended to value the skillful hand or conceptual mind of the artist, sound art may allow listeners to contribute a broad spectrum of meaning and value through bodies with diverse sensory abilities engaged in expanded discourse.

Why Do Actions in Slow Motion Appear to Last Longer? On the Effect of Video Speed Information

When displayed in slow motion, actions are often perceived longer compared with original speed. However, it remains to be determined why this bias exists. Is it possible that the bias emerges because participants underestimate the factor by which a video was slowed down and hence arrive at erroneous conclusions about the original duration? If true, providing explicit information about the respective video speed should eliminate this slow motion effect. To scrutinize the nature of this bias, participants rated the original duration of sports actions displayed at original speed or slow motion. Results revealed the expected overestimation bias consisting in longer ratings with increasing slow motion. However, the bias disappeared when information about the current video speed was provided. The observations suggest an influence of knowledge about video playback speed on cognitive-evaluative processes which may hold important implications for future research and practice.

Interpretive Constructs in Contrast: The Case of Flattery in Hebrew and in Palestinian Arabic

The contrastive study of interpretive constructs, the end products of evaluative processes, enables identification of patterns of meaning-making that may result in cross-cultural misunderstandings. The study focuses on judgments of flattery in Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic. Using contrastive metapragmatic methodology, it examines how flattery is used and perceived in two neighbouring speech communities with different cultural speaking styles: Israeli dugri (and its related firgun) and Arabic musayara. Findings indicate more similarities than differences in the performance and evaluation of flattery, with a slight departure with regard to evaluation and stance. We hypothesize that following the asymmetrical contact between Hebrew speakers and Arabic speakers in Israel, younger Arabic speakers tend to adopt the majority group’s patterns of politeness.

Evaluation processes in the school context: Production of collective knowledge

School evaluative processes are motivators for several discussions in pedagogical environments, so that, if evaluations are poorly constructed and decontextualized, they imply learning processes and school permanence. In this sense, the present study aims to relate the performance obtained by high school students, during the four academic terms of the year 2014, with the contents taught during each of these two months, in order to promote useful discussions to the pedagogical environment. We present a reflection on the structural mechanisms of exclusion and dropout, and also on the evaluation processes in the discipline of chemistry, in high school classes. We emphasize that it is necessary to employ pedagogical practices aimed at the plurality and democratization of knowledge, with classes that include qualitative methods of assessment, and linked to the context of students, based on training for the promotion of autonomy.