Foundation in Law students’ reading awareness of the case law genre

Background: A text of different genre might pose a different problem to students and different genre requires different approach in understanding and comprehending it. Developing the expertise in reading legal texts at an early stage of learning will be very beneficial to the students of law. This study examines the level of pre-university/foundation in law students’ awareness for the case law genre, and the aim of this study is to investigate the extent of awareness of the case law genre among the foundation in law students. Methods: Five students who were pursuing their study in the foundation/pre-university level were selected as the subjects in this study. Qualitative data were obtained through the think-aloud procedure and questionnaire which was administered after the think-aloud procedure. The transcription of each student’s verbal reports was scrutinised for evidence of genre awareness while the answers given in the questionnaire were used to support the findings of the study. Genre analysis of 4-Move structure was used to identify the students’ level of awareness. Results: The findings indicate that the students were aware of the case law genre. However, they displayed a mixed-level of awareness. Conclusion: It is hoped that this study can provide some insights into the reading behaviour of law students especially when reading case law. Knowing and understanding the case law structure is integral for law students, and analysing students understanding of reading case law can help both the students and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) educators.

Relating a concordance-based cloze test to the model of communicative language ability: a verbal protocol study

The literature of empirical studies on the concordance-based cloze test (ConCloze) is far and few between. This is despite the fact that it has a potential for item writing without the aid of native speakers and for making use of corpus-based technology in task design. This article explores the test-taking processes and strategies of a ConCloze item variant. The aim is to investigate the substantive aspect of the construct validity for the item type and increase the generalizability of the findings in the universe of admissible observations. The sample consists of 14 non-native English users who are in higher education and engage with 3 test tasks each, totaling 42 verbal reports. The sampling method is purposive sampling, in which their first language profiles are maximized in terms of heterogeneity for increased power of generalization. It is found that Reading concordance lines and recognizing clue words inside is a major process, and Assessing item components and testing a meaningful compatibility of a word in context a secondary one. A model of communicative language ability is used to provide a context for task use in this study, where strategic competence is represented in ConCloze substantive validity.

Out-of-Body Experience induced by hypnotic suggestion: phenomenology and perceptual characteristics

The aim of this study is the investigation of the perceptual and cognitive characteristics of Out-of- Body Experiences (OBEs) induced by hypnotic induction.Five participants selected for their experience with hypnotic inductions were induced into an OBE and were requested to verbally describe six selected images, either one or two per session, that were located in two different rooms that were hundreds of kilometers from the place where they were under hypnosis.Furthermore, their real-time phenomenological experience was investigated with respect to the minimal phenomenal selfhood (MPS) and the similarities with the characteristics of spatial and temporal perception reported in near death experiences (NDEs).On average, the participants correctly identified 46.7% of the images, whereas two independent judges correctly identified 66.7% of them, compared to a probability of 25% expected due to chance.The phenomenology of their out-of-body perceptual and cognitive experiences revealed a general commonality among all participants. All participants reported a phenomenological experience of a disembodied personal selfhood able to perceive simply by an act of will without the physical limitation of eyesight, to move in the environment instantaneously and exist in a sort of three dimensional world with no awareness of time.The validity of these first person verbal reports was discussed to determine whether they were due to real OBEs or to the participants’ or the hypnotist’s previous knowledge about OBE.

Drawing and Memory: What is the Content of Children’s Drawings and How Does it Differ From Their Verbal Reports?

This study investigated whether the content of children’s drawings of an event changes over three successive interviews about that event. It also assessed whether children recall more details verbally than they draw. Twenty-seven 3- to 6-year old children witnessed a live event which ended with one actor stealing a cuddly toy. They were interviewed about it 1 day, 2 weeks, and 6 months later. At each interview, children were asked to make a drawing of the event while narrating what happened. We analyzed the content of the drawings for seven features relevant to the event as well as inaccurate information. Children’s inclusion of “the perpetrator” and “the victim” decreased over time but the other features remained stable. Children verbally reported significantly more details than they drew. Our findings suggest that children provide less information in drawings than in verbal reports, but this information may be more reliable and stable compared to verbal reports over multiple interviews.

Expressing unconscious general knowledge using Chevreul’s pendulum

Can unconscious knowledge be elicited by ideomotor action when the knowledge fails to be elicited by verbal reports? Using a Ouija board, Gauchou et al. (2012), found ideomotor action produced substantial accuracy for general knowledge questions previously rated as pure “guesses”, and for which later verbal reports produced accuracy close to chance. We replicated the procedure substituting Chevreul’s pendulum rather than a Ouija board. We found that questions whose answer was previously rated as a guess, were answered equally well and at about chance levels by ideomotor action and verbal responses. Thus, one cannot presume that ideomotor action rather than verbal report will allow greater knowledge to be expressed in any particular context, including therefore the hypnotherapy one. An ideomotor action may elicit only conscious knowledge. Further research is recommended to clarify this important issue.

The Modified Imitation Game: A Method for Measuring Interactional Expertise

The study of the sociology of scientific knowledge distinguishes between contributory and interactional experts. Contributory experts have practical expertise—they can “walk the walk.” Interactional experts have internalized the tacit components of expertise—they can “talk the talk” but are not able to reliably “walk the walk.” Interactional expertise permits effective communication between contributory experts and others (e.g., laypeople), which in turn facilitates working jointly toward shared goals. Interactional expertise is attained through long-term immersion into the expert community in question. To assess interactional expertise, researchers developed the imitation game—a variant of the Turing test—to test whether a person, or a particular group, possesses interactional expertise of another. The imitation game, which has been used mainly in sociology to study the social nature of knowledge, may also be a useful tool for researchers who focus on cognitive aspects of expertise. In this paper, we introduce a modified version of the imitation game and apply it to examine interactional expertise in the context of blindness. Specifically, we examined blind and sighted individuals’ ability to imitate each other in a street-crossing scenario. In Phase I, blind and sighted individuals provided verbal reports of their thought processes associated with crossing a street—once while imitating the other group (i.e., as a pretender) and once responding genuinely (i.e., as a non-pretender). In Phase II, transcriptions of the reports were judged as either genuine or imitated responses by a different set of blind and sighted participants, who also provided the reasoning for their decisions. The judges comprised blind individuals, sighted orientation-and-mobility specialists, and sighted individuals with infrequent socialization with blind individuals. Decision data were analyzed using probit mixed models for signal-detection-theory indices. Reasoning data were analyzed using natural-language-processing (NLP) techniques. The results revealed evidence that interactional expertise (i.e., relevant tacit knowledge) can be acquired by immersion in the group that possesses and produces the expert knowledge. The modified imitation game can be a useful research tool for measuring interactional expertise within a community of practice and evaluating practitioners’ understanding of true experts.

Cognitive Processes of ESL Learners in Pragmatic Role-Play Tasks in Academic Settings

The purpose of the study was to investigate the cognitive processes of English as second language (L2) learners that are involved in their task-based pragmatic performances in academic settings. This study, therefore, examined the cognitive processes of 30 English L2 learners when engaging in various role-play-based pragmatic performances, such as requesting a recommendation letter from a professor and negotiating an agreeable meeting time with classmates. The qualitative analyses of the retrospective verbal reports (RVRs) data of the participants indicated that the learners employed a series of cognitive, metacognitive, and pragmatic strategies when accomplishing various speech acts (e.g., requests and refusals). This study hoped to make two new contributions to the field. First, the study provided empirical evidence to validate the theoretical taxonomy of the strategy use of learners in L2 pragmatics. Additionally, the theoretical foundations of current research on cognitive processes are primarily informed by pragmatic theories. Thus, the study aims to explicate a more comprehensive view of the cognitive processes of L2 learners in pragmatic performances by employing the theories from both pragmatic and learner strategy perspectives.

Weak Central Coherence in Adults With ASD: Evidence From Eye-Tracking And Thematic Content Analysis Of Social Scenes

Central coherence theory proposes that a specific perceptual-cognitive process that limits the ability to derive overall meaning from details underlies the central disturbance in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In a social context, it may interfere with the ability of individuals with ASD to understand interactions between people by recognizing emotional clues or attributing a particular mental state, and to play a role in the social difficulties associated with ASD. A sample of 28 adults diagnosed with ASD Level 1 and 25 controls were submitted to a cartoon-like task with the instruction to describe social scenes and a Navon letter task. Both quantitative measures and qualitative (thematic content analysis) procedures were used to assess performance. Heatmap and fixation preferences according to the stimuli quadrants were used to investigate eye-tracking patterns. A tendency to local processing, independently of the stimuli type, in the ASD participants was seen. In social scenes, quadrants with components such as characters' faces were neglected, resulting in a loss of implicit content related to interactions, as evidenced by verbal reports. A significantly longer reaction times and response durations in ASD. The findings corroborate the idea that weak central coherence may be part of the cognitive phenotype in ASD.

EXPRESS: Practice and Transfer with Mappings of Spoon Tip and Handle to Keypress Responses

When orientation of a horizontal spoon image varies to the left or right, instructions can map left and right keypresses to the tip or handle location. We conducted Experiment 1 to determine whether practice with an incompatible mapping of the salient tip transfers to a test session in which the relevant part and/or mapping are changed. Participants performed 80 practice trials with tip-incompatible mapping, followed by 80 test trials with tip-compatible, tip-incompatible, handle-compatible, or handle-incompatible mapping. Performance improved across 20-trial blocks in the practice session. In the test session, responses were 65-ms faster with tip-compatible than tip-incompatible mapping but 31-ms faster with handle-incompatible than handle-compatible mapping. This latter result, and verbal reports, indicate that some participants adopted a strategy of responding compatibly to the salient tip even though instructed to respond to the handle. Experiment 2 focused on whether participants with handle-incompatible mapping instructions would adopt the tip-compatible strategy spontaneously or after receiving a hint. 77% of participants reported adopting the tip-compatible strategy in session 1, showing that prior experience responding to the tip is not necessary. 9% of participants did not report using that strategy in session 1 but reported changing to it in session 2 after receiving the hint. Their responses in session 2 were slower than those who used the strategy throughout, but this difference was minimal in the last two trial blocks. Compatible mapping of the salient spoon tip to keypresses dominated performance over prior practice with incompatible tip mapping and instructions with incompatible handle mapping.