Individual Differences in Structure Building: Impacts on Comprehension and Learning, Theoretical Underpinnings, and Support for Less Able Structure Builders

In this article, we highlight an underappreciated individual difference: structure building. Structure building is integral to many everyday activities and involves creating coherent mental representations of conversations, texts, pictorial stories, and other events. People vary in this ability in a way not generally captured by other better known concepts and individual difference measures. Individuals with lower structure-building ability consistently perform worse on a range of comprehension and learning measures than do individuals with higher structure-building ability, both in the laboratory and in the classroom. Problems include a range of comprehension processes, including encoding factual content, inhibiting irrelevant information, and constructing a cohesive situation model of a text or conversation. Despite these problems, recent research is encouraging in that techniques to improve the learning outcomes for low-ability structure builders have been identified. We argue that the accumulated research warrants the recognition of structure building as an important individual difference in cognitive functioning and that additional theoretical work is needed to understand the underpinnings of structure-building deficits.

Sentiment analysis and predictors of optimism: The AUA Presidential addresses, 1902-2019

Objectives The annual addresses of the President of the American Urological Association (AUA) may articulate and reflect the contemporary goals, values, and concerns of contemporary AUA membership. There is no organized archive of such addresses. We aimed to create a searchable database of all AUA Presidents and their addresses to determine variables associated with speech sentiment including positivity, negativity, and emotional tone through the 117 years of the AUA’s history. Methods We queried AUA archives, journals, recorded tape, and personal records, to create a database of all existing AUA Presidential addresses and biographic data. We applied natural language processing and machine learning techniques to evaluate the addresses for overall sentiment with validation using analog analyses (i.e reading and annotation). Multivariable logistic regression was performed to identify significant predictors of Presidential address sentiment. Results Between 1902-2019, a total of 113 AUA meetings were held. A total of 85 of 113 (75.22%) presidential addresses were transcribed and archived in the database representing 254,124 words by male presidents with a median (IQR) age of 61.43 (53.1-66.5) years. AUA Presidents during the second half of the history of the AUA (1960-2019) were significantly older at time of inauguration and gave more positive speeches in the active voice than presidents during the first half (1902-1959) (p < .05). The only significant independent predictor of the degree of positivity in an AUA President’s annual address was speaker age (95% CI 1.007-1.119). Conclusions We created the first digital, searchable database of all AUA Presidential speeches from 1902-2019 and aim to add additional addresses prospectively. Artificial intelligence analyses mirrored the findings of human reading and demonstrated that from 1902-2019 AUA Presidential addresses became more positive and optimistic with increasing speaker age but without consistent predictors of a speech’s emotional or factual content.

Attitudes to fake news verification: Youth orientations to ‘right click’ authenticate

This article examines the phenomenon of fake news through a survey of university students in the United Kingdom. The survey, composed through a selection of factual and non-factual content/news and complemented through a validation tool, sought to assess the attitudes of these respondents to items of factual misinformation before and after these were verified with the tool. The findings from the survey present online misinformation as a very complex and unfolding phenomenon in terms of user behaviour, particularly when presented with an authentication tool. The majority of respondents failed in identifying factual from fake news posts. While respondents indicated mistrust in using third-party validation tools, the majority indicated a critical need for a verification tool that would support their quest and increase their trust in what they read online.

THE FIGURE OF I. MAZEPA IN THE MONOGRAPHIC RESEARCH OF THEODOR MASKIW

The article analyzes the monographic studies of T. Maсkiw, which concerned the figure of I. Mazepa. The personal contribution of the historian to the study of political circumstances and public sentiments in which the documents described by scientists were created, the genesis and texts of research sources, as well as their influence on memoirists of that era are determined. Attention is drawn to the refutation by scientists of falsified data and erroneous assumptions of other researchers about the figure of the hetman. The types and kinds of sources used by T. Maсkiw in his research are described. The differences in the factual content of texts of sources of different European countries, the dependence of these texts on the place of creation of the source and its author are studied, the structure, genesis and differences of the main works of the historian on this subject are analyzed. Emphasis is placed on new information on the history of Ukraine in the time of I. Mazepa, which T. Maсkiw found in European archives. The archeographic aspect of the historian’s activity is also reflected in the article. An important contribution of the author can be considered his reflections on the objectivity / subjectivity of the European press, which covered the events of Europe and Ukraine in the era of hetman I. Mazepa, its influence on European politicians, as well as the dependence of the press on the state. The main attention in the research is paid to the ukrainian-language monograph «Hetman Ivan Mazepa in the that time western European sources 1687-1709». An analysis of the change in assessments of political events in Ukraine by the foreign press after the transition of the hetman to the side of the Swedish king, a description of the reasons for this transition, the dependence of foreign assessments of the events of 1708 on the position of the Russian Empire, causes and consequences for I. Mazepa, vicissitudes of granting the hetman the title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

EXTRADITION AS A CRIMINAL LAW INSTITUTION: PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION AND APPLICATION

The article considers topical issues of definition and implementation of the institution of extradition in the criminal law of Ukraine. There is a view that extradition should be understood only as the institution of extradition of offenders, and the transfer of convicts to serve their sentences is an independent institution of criminal law. In our opinion, this statement cannot be accepted, as it concerns an identical procedure, the systemic material and legal feature of which is its security focus on the realization of individual criminal responsibility, and this view is supported by lexical analysis of terminological concepts "extradition" and «transfer». as identical in factual content. It is noted that the obligatory legal condition for extradition (as well as transfer) is a valid international agreement, the parties to which must be Ukraine and the state requesting the extradition of the person. It is proved that the institution of extradition has a complex interdisciplinary nature, because it arises at the crossroads of constitutional law, criminal law, criminal procedure and international law. It allows to define it as a comprehensive legal procedure for transferring a person to another state to implement the principle of inevitability of criminal liability, regardless of the place of temporary actual stay. It is shown that the main task of the institute of extradition is to ensure the inevitability of bringing a person guilty of a crime to criminal responsibility, which allows to determine the fundamental basis and essence of this institution as a criminal law. It is emphasized that the institution of extradition is complex, combining the extradition of persons suspected of committing a crime and persons convicted of a crime, and both cases of its application have a common purpose – to ensure that the person guilty of the crime is prosecuted.

Is It Possible to Educate, Intervene or “Cure” Autism Spectrum Disorder? A Content Analysis of YouTube Videos

YouTube is one of the most well-known and widely accessed websites worldwide, thus having a powerful pedagogical potential. Nonetheless, the quality and the veracity of some YouTube videos are questionable. Doubts regarding the trustworthiness of factual content is a controversial factor that needs to be taken into account, especially when addressing public health issues. For this reason, the main objective of this work is to analyze the content of the most viewed videos in Spanish on YouTube related to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To carry out this research, the terms “autism AND education”, “autism AND intervention”, and “autism AND cure” were used (in Spanish). The analysis of these searches results indicated that videos included in the “cure” category are shorter, and less valued by internet users, obtaining the lowest ratings on the “Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool” for audiovisual materials (PEMAT-A/V), in addition to present therapies that are in fact more harmful than videos in other categories. In general, videos containing recommendations for therapies that are harmful are the ones that have received most views, along with the videos that include alternative non-harmful therapies. Practical implications of these findings and recommendations for further research are discussed.

Fundamentos de la explicación en ciencias sociales: revisitando el constructivismo de Niklas Luhmann (20 años después)

In this work, it is argued that one of the foundations of NiklasLuhmann’s theory of social systems, namely that it has no ontology, would prevent the elaboration of explanations in sociology. Because the theory has a formal-logical foundation, which does not presuppose ontology, there are insurmountable obstacles to achieving this objective. For this reason, it is valid to wonder about the merit of a theory that, after 20 years, insists on not aligning itself with ontological premises in a robust way and suggests, therefore, a refusal to integrate sociology within the set of factual sciences. However, we think that the richness of Luhmann’s work allows a dialogue with the mainstream of contemporary theoretical practice. Three rules about what “should not be done” are revalidated from this analysis to philosophically base a theory in sociology and a key suggestion to overcome the problem of explanation in Luhmann’s sociology: social science seeks and directs its activity towards discovery and the use of substantive, real distinctions that also enrich the factual content of statements about social reality.

«NATIONAL IN FORM, PROLETARIAN IN CONTENT»: PROJECT OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE АLL-CRIMEAN RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF NATIONAL-CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION AND LOCAL HISTORY

The author studies and analyzes the process of reorganization of the Crimean research institute and the creation of the All-Crimean research institute of national-cultural construction and local history on its basis in 1932. Previously unpublished archival documents identified in the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation have been put into scientific circulation. The study uses little-known materials from the newspaper «Red Crimea», which allow us to fill the process of transformation of Soviet social and cultural life in the first half of the 30s of the twentieth century with factual content. The role of the teaching staff of the Crimean State Pedagogical Institute named after M. V. Frunze in the creation, development and activity of the institution is shown. The work plans of the Institute’s sectors and sections for the fourth quarter of 1932, as well as the influence of the People’s Commissariat of the RSFSR on the successful functioning of the organization, are considered in detail.

The weaponization of web archives: Data craft and COVID-19 publics

An unprecedented volume of harmful health misinformation linked to the coronavirus pandemic has led to the appearance of misinformation tactics that leverage web archives in order to evade content moderation on social media platforms. Here we present newly identified manipulation techniques designed to maximize the value, longevity, and spread of harmful and non-factual content across social media using provenance information from web archives and social media analytics. After identifying conspiracy content that has been archived by human actors with the Wayback Machine, we report on user patterns of “screensampling,” where images of archived misinformation are spread via social platforms. We argue that archived web resources from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and subsequent screenshots contribute to the COVID-19 “misinfodemic” in platforms. Understanding these manipulation tactics that use sources from web archives reveals something vexing about information practices during pandemics—the desire to access reliable information even after it has been moderated and fact-checked, for some individuals, will give health misinformation and conspiracy theories more traction because it has been labeled as specious content by platforms.

Is Technology Value-Neutral?

According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis (VNT), technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech or nontrivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term implications that surpass their designers and builders. I further argue that taking sides in this debate has real-world implications in the form of moral constraints on the development of technology.