Difficulties in Reading Comprehension of Hungarian Primary School Students in Slovakia

Our study aimed to assess the level of reading comprehension, one of the cornerstones of education of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, and to answer the research question of what kind of deficits need to be addressed in the development of reading comprehension. The research was conducted with the participation of students from primary schools with Hungarian as the language of instruction in Slovakia. In our study, we shed light on the problems found in cognitive reasoning, accurate interpretation of information and complex reading comprehension. The extent to which the development of new cognitive schemata caused problems for the studied groups was also investigated. In several cases, the responses were not based on textual information, but only on the respondents’ existing schemas. The results also show that it was a problem for the learners to answer both the multiple-choice questions and the open-ended and explanatory questions.

“Bloometizing” the EFL Literature Classroom through a Dialogic Model: A Barometer for Academic Change

On the 21st century scent of educational development, ‘dialogism’ hogs the limelight of leading academics, mapping ergo a stiff stronghold for active learning pedagogies. Regarding the field of literature more sensibly considered in English as Foreign Language (EFL) context, the plea for embracing interactive talks reverberates discernably in the air, yet, engaging practices are still an overlooked real-world praxis. Given this reality, the current paper endeavours to endorse the implementation of a new dialogic model that extrapolates its foundation-stone techniques from both of Bakhtin’s (1983) discursive dialogues and Socratic argumentations. The pertinent problematics in this study is to investigate the effect of this model on enhancing learners’ higher-order critical thinking skills (HOTSs). To fulfil this target, the researcher has embarked on an Experimental Study based on a pre/post-testing, carried on painstakingly with second-year EFL students at Oran2 University, Algeria. Substantially, after appraising the treatment results through SPSS, the study reveals that adopting such a dialogic model is a robust sinew for “Bloometizing” EFL literature classroom, namely by stimulating and revitalizing the learners’ cognitive reasoning potentials at a very high complexity. Besides, in-class interactions help the students build empathy with literary texts and strengthen their analytical strategies. From this vantage point, the paper, finally, hopes that teachers adopt this dialogic model as a fitting instructional capstone to bringing literature back to life before the learners’ eyes and to add the ‘wow’ factor inside literature classrooms.

“Bloometizing” the EFL Literature Classroom through a Dialogic Model: A Barometer for Academic Change

On the 21st century scent of educational development, ‘dialogism’ hogs the limelight of leading ‎‎academics, mapping ergo a stiff stronghold for active learning pedagogies. ‎Regarding the field of literature more sensibly considered in English as Foreign Language (EFL) ‎‎context, the plea for embracing interactive talks reverberates discernably in the air, yet, engaging ‎‎practices are still an overlooked real-world praxis. Given this reality, the current paper ‎endeavours ‎to endorse the implementation of a new dialogic model that extrapolates its foundation-‎stone ‎techniques from both of Bakhtin’s (1983) discursive dialogues and Socratic argumentations. The ‎pertinent ‎problematics in this study is to investigate the effect of this model on enhancing ‎learners’ higher-order critical thinking skills (HOTSs). To fulfil this target, the researcher has ‎embarked on an ‎Experimental Study based on a pre/post-testing, carried on painstakingly with ‎second-year EFL students ‎at Oran2 University, Algeria. Substantially, after appraising the ‎treatment results through SPSS, the ‎study reveals that adopting such a dialogic model is a robust ‎sinew for “Bloometizing” EFL ‎literature classroom, namely by stimulating and revitalizing the ‎learners’ cognitive reasoning potentials at ‎a very high complexity. Besides, in-class interactions ‎help the students build empathy with ‎literary texts and strengthen their analytical strategies. ‎From this vantage point, the paper, finally, hopes that teachers adopt this dialogic model as a ‎fitting instructional capstone to bringing literature ‎back to life before the learners’ eyes and to add ‎the ‘wow’ factor inside literature classrooms.‎

Holistic Framework for Quality Assessment of Mediated Social Communication

Modern immersive multisensory communication systems can provide compelling mediated social communication experiences that approach face-to-face (F2F) communication. Existing frameworks to assess the quality of mediated social communication experiences are typically targeted at specific communication technologies and do not address all relevant aspects of social presence (i.e., the feeling of being in the presence of, and having an affective and intellectual connection with, other persons). Also, they are typically unsuitable for application to social communication in virtual (VR), augmented (AR) or mixed (MR) reality. Here we present a comprehensive and general holistic mediated social communication (H-MSC) framework and associated questionnaire (the H-MSC-Q) for measuring the quality of mediated social communication. The H-MSC framework comprises both the experience of Spatial Presence (i.e., the perceived fidelity, internal and external plausibility, and cognitive, reasoning and behavioral affordances of an environment) and the experience of Social Presence (i.e., perceived mutual proximity, intimacy, credibility, reasoning and behavior of the communication partners). Since social presence is inherently bidirectional (involving a sense of mutual awareness) the H-MSC-Q distinguishes between the internal (‘own’) and external (‘the other’) assessment perspectives. The H-MSC-Q is efficient and parsimonious, using only a single item to tap into each of the relevant processing levels in the human brain: sensory, emotional, cognitive, reasoning, and behavioral. It is also sufficiently general to measure social presence experienced with any (including VR, AR, and MR) type of multi-sensory (visual, auditory, haptic, and olfactory) mediated communication system.

A Comprehensive Survey of Cognitive Graphs: Techniques, Applications, Challenges

The realization of the third-generation artificial intelligence (AI) requires the evolution from perceptual intelligence to cognitive intelligence, where knowledge graphs may not meet the practical needs anymore. Based on the dual channel theory, cognitive graphs are established and developed through coordinating the implicit extraction module and the explicit reasoning module as well as integrating knowledge graphs, cognitive reasoning and logical expressions, which have achieved successes in multi-hop question answering. It is desired for cognitive graphs to be widely used in advanced AI applications such as large-scale knowledge representations and intelligent responses, promoting the development of Al dramatically. This review discusses cognitive graphs systematically and elaborately, including basic concepts, generations, theories and technologies. Moreover, we try to predict the development of cognitive intelligence in the short-term future and further enlighten more researches and studies.

Moonshots, investment booms, and selection bias in the transmission of cultural traits

Biased information about the payoffs received by others can drive innovation, risk taking, and investment booms. We study this cultural phenomenon using a model based on two premises. The first is a tendency for large successes, and the actions that lead to them, to be more salient to onlookers than small successes or failures. The second premise is selection neglect—the failure of observers to adjust for biased observation. In our model, each firm in sequence chooses to adopt or to reject a project that has two possible payoffs, one positive and one negative. The probability of success is higher in the high state of the world than in the low state. Each firm observes the payoffs received by past adopters before making its decision, but there is a chance that an adopter’s outcome will be censored, especially if the payoff was negative. Failure to account for biased censorship causes firms to become overly optimistic, leading to irrational booms in adoption. Booms may eventually collapse, or may last forever. We describe these effects as a form of cultural evolution, with adoption or rejection viewed as traits transmitted between firms. Evolution here is driven not only by differential copying of successful traits, but also by cognitive reasoning about which traits are more likely to succeed—quantified using the Price Equation to decompose the effects of mutation pressure and evolutionary selection. This account provides an explanation for investment booms, merger and initial public offering waves, and waves of technological innovation.

Beyond Objects in Space-Time: Towards a Movement Analysis Framework with ‘How’ and ‘Why’ Elements

Current spatiotemporal data has facilitated movement studies to shift objectives from descriptive models to explanations of the underlying causes of movement. From both a practical and theoretical standpoint, progress in developing approaches for these explanations should be founded on a conceptual model. This paper presents such a model in which three conceptual levels of abstraction are proposed to frame an agent-based representation of movement decision-making processes: ‘attribute,’ ‘actor,’ and ‘autonomous agent’. These in combination with three temporal, spatial, and spatiotemporal general forms of observations distinguish nine (3 × 3) representation typologies of movement data within the agent framework. Thirdly, there are three levels of cognitive reasoning: ‘association,’ ‘intervention,’ and ‘counterfactual’. This makes for 27 possible types of operation embedded in a conceptual cube with the level of abstraction, type of observation, and degree of cognitive reasoning forming the three axes. The conceptual model is an arena where movement queries and the statement of relevant objectives takes place. An example implementation of a tightly constrained spatiotemporal scenario to ground the agent-structure was summarised. The platform has been well-defined so as to accommodate different tools and techniques to drive causal inference in computational movement analysis as an immediate future step.

Economic conditions, task shares, and overqualification

This article demonstrates that economic conditions affect job match quality by influencing the task shares of available jobs. Cognitive (reasoning/communication) and physical (sensory/coordination) task shares and education-based overqualification measures are generated from Canada’s Labour Force Survey, the Career Handbook, and the Occupational Information Network database. In unfavourable labour markets, cognitive task intensity decreases and physical task intensity rises. The task content of newly formed jobs is then shown to be an important empirical determinant of overqualification. A calibrated search model that accounts for these findings quantifies the costs of increased overqualification. Each percentage point increase in unemployment raises overqualification by 5.8 percentage points, partly due to changes in task shares. Economic output subsequently decreases by about 0.6%.