Assessing Signed Language Development in Deaf/Signing Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

In this chapter, the authors discuss assessment of signed language development in deaf/hard of hearing (D/HH) signing children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The development of sign in D/HH children with ASD is an area of growing research, with recent papers describing how the language profile of such children is both similar to and different from hearing/speaking children with ASD. The authors highlight the difficulties of assessing signed language in this population, focusing on a lack of tests designed specifically for D/HH children. Furthermore, they describe how variations in degree of exposure to sign at home and different behavioral norms in the Deaf community complicate identification and assessment. Finally, the authors suggest some directions for possible future research.

An Overview of Social Aspects of COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 pandemic is more than a health crisis. It is a human, economic and social crisis. As a pandemic, it is attacking societies at their core. 1Many changes and challenges are developing in the society during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the COVID-19 pandemic situation in the social context. This paper deals with association of COVID-19 genesis and globalization, phase of involuntary immobility due to lockdown, sick role of COVID-19 patient, social stigma associated with COVID-19 patient, new behavioral norms to reduce the transmission of corona virus and the importance of community participation to combat this pandemic and prepare for the future. A lesson can be learned from this pandemic situation that implementation of all precautionary social measures effectively and construction of social support system strong collectively are very important tools to reduce damage from COVID-19 like public health crisis. Community involvement can drive every citizen to be aware about transmission of corona virus and practice of all precautionary measures to prevent from COVID19 virus. Key words: COVID-19 pandemic, corona virus, social aspects, health crisis

Mechanism of Health Vocational Education Alliance and its Influencing Factors on Smoking Cognition

Objectives: The construction of healthy society and country can not be separated from the development of health vocational education. Among them, it is of great significance to help people, especially teenagers, to establish correct cognition and behavioral norms of smoking through health vocational education for delaying the time of first attempt to smoke and reducing the smoking rate of the whole population and its derived harm. With the extension of the scope of health vocational education and the increasing complexity of factors influencing smoking cognition, it is necessary to build health vocational education alliance to optimize resources, reduce risks and achieve their own strategic goals. Based on the research data, this paper makes an empirical study on the influencing factors of alliance mechanism selection by using the ordered multi-classification Logit model, and makes an in-depth analysis on the mechanism selection of alliance establishment from the perspective of health vocational education institutions..

The problems of digital ethics in higher education (using Kazan SMU as an example)

Актуальностьданного исследования обусловлена проблемой отсутствия системной области научного знания, всесторонне исследующего цифровизацию образования в период пандемии СOVID-19. Цель данной статьи – выявление проблем цифровой этики высшего образования, обусловленных переструктурированием классической образовательной среды, изменением образовательного пространства, норм и правил поведения преподавателей во взаимодействии со студентами, коллегами, администрацией. Ведущими методами исследования проблем являлись анализ педагогических, психологических источников, периодических профессиональных изданий, общенаучные идеи системного подхода. Экспериментальная часть заключалась в проведении опросов, бесед со студентами, преподавателями, администрацией Казанского ГМУ. В статье рассмотрены некоторые этические проблемы, связанные с использованием цифровых информационных потоков внутри образовательной среды. Изменение способов коммуникации со студентами (на примере «цифровых» ассистентов преподавателя), внедрение новых методов преподавания (на примере технологии «равный - равному» (peer - to - peer), повышение контроля за деятельностью преподавателя со стороны администрации требуют пересмотра норм и правил профессиональной этики преподавателя высшей школы. В статье даются рекомендации о необходимости разработки нового этического кодекса, учитывающего использование цифровых технологий в образовательных учреждениях. А также организации мастер - классов для преподавателей по выстраиванию этичных взаимоотношений со студентами, коллегами, администрацией с учетом новых реалий. Материалы статьи представляют практическую ценность для преподавателей высших учебных заведений, администрациям вузов, исследователям, занимающихся данной проблематикой. The urgency of this study is caused by the problem of absence of the field of scientific knowledge examining comprehensively the digitalization of education in the period of COVID–19 pandemic. The aim of this article is to reveal the problems of digital ethics in higher education due to reorganization of classical educational environment, change of educational environment, behavioral norms and rules for teachers in interaction with students, colleagues, and authorities. The leading methods of the problems’ study were analysis of pedagogical, psychological sources, professional periodicals, and general scientific ideas of system approach. The experimental part consisted in carrying out surveys, conversations with students, teachers, and authorities of the Kazan SMU. The article deals with some ethical problems associated with application of digital information flows within the educational environment. The change of ways of communication with students (as exemplified by “digital” assistant teachers), the introduction of new methods of teaching (as in the case of “peer – to - peer” techniques), exercising stronger control of the teacher’s activities by the authorities require the revision of norms and rules of professional ethics of a teacher in higher education. Recommendations оn the necessity of developing a new code of ethics, considering the application of digital technologies in educational institutions, as well as arrangement of master classes for teachers on building up ethical relationships with students, colleagues, and authorities with account of new realities are given in the article. The materials of the article are of practical relevance for the teachers of higher educational institutions, university authorities, and researchers dealing with these issues.

Factors for Implementation of Circular Economy in Firms in COVID-19 Pandemic Times: The Case of Peru

The circular economy can contribute to the eco-efficient use of resources. Firms can obtain relevant benefits if they implement a circular economy. In Peru, the circular economy would create benefits, but it is not fully clear what factors explain the acceptance of firms of implementing a circular economy. Following the theory of planned behavior, the current research assesses the influence of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral norms, intentions, and pressures on behaviors towards the circular economy. A total of 71 medium-size firms based in Peru participated in an online survey. Six questions were focused on general information, and forty-seven questions evaluated the circular economy behavior of firms. A partial least square structural equation modeling technical analysis was used. It was found that attitudes (0.144), subjective norms (0.133), and perceived behavioral control (0.578) had a positive influence on intentions; also, perceived behavioral control (0.461) had a positive influence on behaviors towards the circular economy. Finally, pressures had a positive influence (0.162) on behaviors towards the circular economy. The model explained 64.3% of the behaviors towards the circular economy. The outcomes of the bootstrapping test were used to evaluate if the path coefficients are significant. This study showed that attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral norms, intentions, and pressures explained circular economy behaviors. This information can help firms develop strategies to move forward a circular economy and provide governments information about the current situation of circular economy implementation to generate new norms and strategies for more implementation of circular economy measures in enterprises. The novelty is based on using the PLS-SEM technique.

The reflection of Russian mentality in proverbs (on the example of proverbs with the semantic component “summer” and “autumn”)

The subject of this research is the interrelation between mentality and language. Mentality is conventionally understood as subconscious, archetypal manifestation of the system of values and attitudes of ethnolinguistic consciousness. National mentality is traced in the process of studying the semantics of idioms and paroemias of the language. The genre of proverbs, due to its semantic peculiarities, is characterized by various means of expression of mental groups, which corresponds to their cognitive-pragmatic status. Idioms and paroemias play the role of representatives of the mental characteristics of the ethos, which contribute to preservation of cultural distinctness and affect the mentality of native speakers, lead to the behavior stereotypical to the Russian culture and allow assessing life situations from the perspective of stereotypes. The main conclusion of the analysis conducted on paremiological units indicates that national mentality traits reflected in proverbs and idioms are associated with certain stereotypes in perception of the surrounding world, assessment of life situations, reconsideration of the essence of the phenomena, response to the ongoing transformations and events. All of the listed above fully corresponds to the main edificatory, didactic function of paroemias and idioms, as well as the key purpose of proverbs – enculturation of a person in the process of familiarizing with behavioral norms and riles, recommendations, dogmas and basic stereotypical models of perception of the surrounding worlds and the phenomena occurring therein.

The importance of developing intercultural communication skills in teaching foreign languages

The article considers teaching a foreign language as a means of everyday communication with native speakers of another culture. Special attention is paid to crosscultural learning, which contributes to the achievement of cross-cultural communication. The article offers opportunities for developing the abilities and skills of cross-cultural communication with the involvement of the material of linguistic and cultural content, provides examples of exercises for the development and consolidation of cross-cultural communication skills, aimed at the ability to interpret the existing various models of perception of the world, to relate other cultural customs and mores with their behavioral norms.

Looming Diasporic In-Betweenness: A Critical Study of Hybridity and Culture in Agha Shahid Ali’s Poetic World

Hybridity is an outcome of consistent movement and interaction of two different aspects of human existence. The forces of nature when confluence each other cause hybrid existence bringing the traces of both into it. It may by and large cohabit the space and time, race and culture, philosophy and religion etc. It encompasses the divergent modes of existence, thinking patterns, behavioral norms, socio-cultural ethos, political and administrative ambience. Diasporic Hybridity is pertinent discourse. It is cause of anxiety in the early stage of migrant experience whereas settling base of later stage of existence of diasporic community. Present paper is an attempt to trace the threads of looming diasporic in-betweenness as reflected in the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali.

When and How to Make Breaking Changes

Open source software projects often rely on package management systems that help projects discover, incorporate, and maintain dependencies on other packages, maintained by other people. Such systems save a great deal of effort over ad hoc ways of advertising, packaging, and transmitting useful libraries, but coordination among project teams is still needed when one package makes a breaking change affecting other packages. Ecosystems differ in their approaches to breaking changes, and there is no general theory to explain the relationships between features, behavioral norms, ecosystem outcomes, and motivating values. We address this through two empirical studies. In an interview case study, we contrast Eclipse, NPM, and CRAN, demonstrating that these different norms for coordination of breaking changes shift the costs of using and maintaining the software among stakeholders, appropriate to each ecosystem’s mission. In a second study, we combine a survey, repository mining, and document analysis to broaden and systematize these observations across 18 ecosystems. We find that all ecosystems share values such as stability and compatibility, but differ in other values. Ecosystems’ practices often support their espoused values, but in surprisingly diverse ways. The data provides counterevidence against easy generalizations about why ecosystem communities do what they do.

A Scale for Measuring Social Distancing Behavior: Survey Questions and National Norms, USA 2020

"Social distancing", a set of "nonpharmaceutical interventions" or NPIs in the medical literature, is a primary defence, perhaps the primary defence, against infectious disease, universally advocated by medical authorities in the US and throughout the world during the current coronavirus pandemic. The idea is not new. Perhaps the first government-directed quarantine system was mid-fourteenth-century Venice's “quaranta giorni", forty days of mandated isolation for incoming ships. We propose a 5-item primary scale of "social distancing" behavior (KEK-3) and a slightly extended variant (KEK-3m), developed for use during the COVID-19 epidemic (and, potentially, beyond). The candidate items all had 7 answer categories. Assessment aligns very well with the classical measurement model for multi-item scales: interitem correlations are high; alpha reliability is 0.86; correlations with criterion variables are similar across the candidate items; factor analysis (oblimin rotation) finds a single dimension with an eigenvalue over 1 and loadings around .7. We provide behavioral norms for America during the 2020 pandemic and describe KEK-3's links to demographic and socioeconomic factors. Developing a replicable scale is especially important now, because many researchers are making erroneous comparisons using the same terminology to describe aspects of the epidemic which have been measured differently. To successfully assess the "...meaning of social change related to COVID-19, the newly emerging social practices due to lockdown measures..." (Esposito, Stark and Squazzoni 2020), high-quality measurements sufficiently reliable and robust to be replicated in different times as the epidemic evolves and in different settings are desperately needed: KEK-3 contributes to such a set of measures. Data: four large national sample surveys conducted April - July, 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. Data collection was through Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk. This scale may be freely used by other researchers so long as its origin is acknowledged.