Lived and perceived space during lock-down in a sensitive map approach

The first lock-down in France due to the Covid-19 pandemic happened during spring 2020. It meant restrictions for everyone regarding reachable space and possible time length outside home. The seminar of sensitive mapping taking place in École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) went online and proposed an exercise to investigate the consequences of these statutory restrictions on individual lived and perceived space. The defined protocol of the exercise was based on the framework of the sensitive map approach. This approach adapts the principles of conventional cartography so that to favour personal information selection and design. Each participant of the seminar had the task to map their space. Displayed information should concern meaningful elements from their spatial environment. Other targeted information was sensitive information including emotions, feelings, and opinions as well as perceived elements from the five senses. The resulted map corpus offers diverse mapping creations. Each map contains several graphic items. Items are mainly cartographical displays enriched with non-cartographical drawings, pictures, photos, records, charts. Techniques were mixed: pen, fabrics, computer-based. The themes of displayed elements are about spatially-stable features like the dwelling, buildings remained open, green spaces, and about ephemeral and sensitive information like social interactions, people, perceived sounds, smells and feelings about the lock-down situation and the pandemic. Some maps have used or were inspired by topographic maps. Though in most maps, distances and topology are subjective. Sensitive mapping appeared as an interesting approach to collect individual testimonies and might be complementary to statistical studies.

Predicting information exposure and continuous consumption: self-level interest similarity, peer-level interest similarity and global popularity

PurposeThis study examines users' information selection strategy on knowledge-sharing platforms from the individual level, peer level and societal level. Though previous literature has explained these three levels separately, few have simultaneously examined their impacts and identified the dominant one according to their effect strengths. The study aims to fill this research gap of the competitions among different levels of information selection mechanisms. Besides, this study also proposes a three-step decision-tree approach to depict the consumption process, including the decision of first-time exposure, the decision of continuous consumption and the decision of feedback behavior participation.Design/methodology/approachThis study analyzed a clickstream dataset of a Chinese information technology blogging site, CSDN.net. Employing a sequential logit model, it examined the impacts of self-level interest similarity, peer-level interest similarity and global popularity simultaneously on each turning point in the consumption process.FindingsThe authors’ findings indicate that self-level interest similarity is the most dominant factor influencing users to browse a knowledge-sharing blog, followed by peer-level interest similarity and then global popularity. All three mechanisms have consistent influences on decision-making in continuous information consumption. Surprisingly, the authors find self-level interest similarity negatively influences users to give feedback on knowledge-sharing blogs.Originality/valueThis paper fulfills the research gap of the dominance among three-levels of selection mechanisms. This study's findings not only could contribute to information consumption studies by providing theoretical insights on audience behavior patterns, but also help the industry advance its recommendation algorithm design and improve users' experience satisfaction.Peer review – The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2020-0475

Subjective confidence influences word learning in a cross-situational statistical learning task

Learning is often accompanied by a subjective sense of confidence in one's knowledge, a feeling of knowing what you know and how well you know it. Subjective confidence has been shown to guide learning in other domains, but has received little attention so far in the word learning literature. Across three word learning experiments, we investigated whether and how a sense of confidence in having acquired a word meaning influences the word learning process itself. First, we show evidence for a confirmation bias during word learning in a cross-situational statistical learning task: Learners who are highly confident they know the meaning of a word are more likely to persist in their belief than learners who are not, even after observing objective evidence disconfirming their belief. Second, we show that subjective confidence in a word-meaning modulates inferential processes based on that word, affecting learning over the whole lexicon: Learners who hold high confidence in a word-meaning are more likely to use that word to make mutual exclusivity inferences about the meaning of other words. We conclude that confidence influences word learning by modulating both information selection processes and inferential processes and discuss the implications of these results for word learning models.

Cortical entrainment to hierarchical contextual rhythms recomposes dynamic attending in visual perception

Temporal regularity is ubiquitous and essential to guiding attention and coordinating behavior within a dynamic environment. Previous researchers have modeled attention as an internal rhythm that may entrain to first-order regularity from rhythmic events to prioritize information selection at specific time points. Using the attentional blink paradigm, here we show that higher-order regularity based on rhythmic organization of contextual features (pitch, color, or motion) may serve as a temporal frame to recompose the dynamic profile of visual temporal attention. Critically, such attentional reframing effect is well predicted by cortical entrainment to the higher-order contextual structure at the delta band as well as its coupling with the stimulus-driven alpha power. These results suggest that the human brain involuntarily exploits multiscale regularities in rhythmic contexts to recompose dynamic attending in visual perception, and highlight neural entrainment as a central mechanism for optimizing our conscious experience of the world in the time dimension.

Strategies, Difficulties, and Written Communication in Solving a Mathematical Problem

In an age where we live surrounded by technology, it is increasingly important to develop capabilities that differentiate us from “machines”. The habit of solving problems can help us develop some of them, including the ability to solve problems, and stimulate critical thinking. It is, therefore, important to propose tasks of a diverse nature in the classroom, and to invest more in mathematical problem-solving by students. For students to solve those problems, it is essential that they know different strategies to use and it is necessary that the teacher can identify the difficulties experienced by students in solving mathematical problems, so the teacher can help students overcome them. This article aims to identify the strategies students use to solve a problem, acknowledge the difficulties students experience, and characterize students’ written communication in their answers. To achieve these objectives, the answers to a mathematical problem which was solved by students of three 12th grade classes were collected and analyzed. In the resolutions analyzed, the strategy students used the most was the construction of schemes/figures. Regarding the difficulties, they were felt more at the level of information selection, as the students tended to add data that were neither in the statement nor could be deduced from it. Finally, when communicating their answers in writing, over half of the students did it with a high level of clarity, and the most frequently used type of justification was the exclusive use of schemes. In addition, the type of representation most used by the students was iconic representation.

Cronica unui eşec academic anunţat: între Google Scholar şi indicele Hirsch

The Romanian university system includes periodical or conjunctural evaluations. In most cases, the tools are given by the unanimously recognized bibliographic databases (Scopus and Web of Science) or by the debatable ones (Google Scholar). The latter, which is also the most accessed in such cases, represents the subject of an analysis in which not only the information selection criteria are challenged, but also the means of calculating the h-index. As a case study, the author analyses his own scientific works, thus revealing great discrepancies between the numbers obtained through the services provided by Google Scholar and the real numbers that exceed the former by more than half. This fact indicates an obvious disadvantage for a scholar who is evaluated through the aforementioned tools in which the analysis of the citations plays a key role. Moreover, the present paper shall also discuss other minuses of the higher education system in which certain individuals’ or certain institutions’ hunt for academic visibility has generated a series of chicaneries. The most often used are those that seek interdisciplinary collectives, in which one’s professional participation is minimal, but the professional prestige is maximal.