Promoting Sociability: Staff Perceptions of Music Therapy as a Way to Enhance Social Skills.

<p>This thesis is the result of working with nine students and one teacher aide in group music therapy in special education. Through opportunities to learn about music and sound, the students were invited to use descriptive language to express emotions and thoughts about their music therapy experience. This research used a qualitative research design, where the purpose was to learn about the perceptions that staff may have of music therapy and to highlight how music therapy can promote sociability in an educative setting. The data collected mainly through research journal entries and two interviews (as well as material from a discussion group) offer evidence about how improvisational group music therapy can help create a positive social environment in the classroom and complement socialisation goals in education.</p>

Promoting Sociability: Staff Perceptions of Music Therapy as a Way to Enhance Social Skills.

<p>This thesis is the result of working with nine students and one teacher aide in group music therapy in special education. Through opportunities to learn about music and sound, the students were invited to use descriptive language to express emotions and thoughts about their music therapy experience. This research used a qualitative research design, where the purpose was to learn about the perceptions that staff may have of music therapy and to highlight how music therapy can promote sociability in an educative setting. The data collected mainly through research journal entries and two interviews (as well as material from a discussion group) offer evidence about how improvisational group music therapy can help create a positive social environment in the classroom and complement socialisation goals in education.</p>

KAJIAN SOSIO-TEOLOGIS TERHADAP MAKNA METAFORA DALAM NATONI PADA PENERIMAAN PENDETA DI GMIT

Natoni is one of the traditions, exactly a traditional speech, to Meto tribe. As a tradition, natoni is often used in ceremonial activities by the Meto tribe in Timor Island. As an expression closely related to the gods, natoni is considered very sacred to the Meto tribe. The ceremony used is, among others, a reception where natoni is the sense of respect and appreciation to others. This study was conducted to describe and to analyze the knowledge the congregation in Timor has about the meaning of metaphors in natoni of the reception of pastors at GMIT. A qualitative research method with a descriptive approach was used in this study and in-depth interview was used as technique of collecting data. The result shows that the congregation in Timor understands, interprets, and uses metaphors or descriptive language in the natoni of acceptance of the priests as respect and hope for the priests in which the metaphor is obtained from the lives of Meto tribe ancestors. In addition, the congregation’s understanding of the metaphor is currently based on the illustration of story in the Bible. Thus, the understanding is manifested into natoni verses with metaphors.

Narrative therapy and the autism spectrum: A model for clinicians

Narrative therapy practices have a long history of application to a wide range of mental health conditions. This paper discusses a novel narrative approach specific to autism and the application of narrative therapy constructs for clinicians working with families who have a member with a diagnosis of autism spectrum brain style differences. The author introduces a visual framework and descriptive language as a reference point to think and talk about autism within the context of narrative family therapy. This framework guides clinicians toward supporting an individualized narrative of the pattern of strengths and differences that are part of the autism spectrum brain style. The narrative approach outlined in this paper provides the entry point for clinicians to guide families toward the development of strength-based narratives that foster connections and resiliency within the family. A narrative therapy model is introduced with three key features highlighted: structuring the session to accommodate for autism spectrum brain style differences, using descriptive language to support the development of alternative narratives, and highlighting key narrative shifts taken from family therapy sessions. Readers are provided with a case study that illustrates the use of narrative therapy structures when working with this unique population of families.

Joint Descriptive Modeling (JDM) for Assembly-Aware Timber Structure Design

Joints design is an essential step in the process of designing timber structures. Complex architectural topologies require thorough planning and scheduling, as it is necessary to consider numerous factors such as structural stability, fabrication capabilities, and ease of assembly. This paper introduces a novel approach to timber joints design that embed both fabrication and assembly considerations within the same model to avoid mistakes that might cause delays and further expenses. We developed a workflow that allows us to identify the fundamental data to describe a given joint geometry, machine-independent fabrication procedures, and the assembly sequence. Based on this, we introduce a comprehensive descriptive language called Joint Descriptive Model (JDM) that leverages industry standards to convert a joint into a usable output for both fabrication and assembly simulations. Finally, we suggest a seed of a joint’s library with some common joints.

Sensory Descriptor Analysis of Whisky Lexicons through the Use of Deep Learning

This paper is concerned with extracting relevant terms from a text corpus on whisk(e)y. “Relevant” terms are usually contextually defined in their domain of use. Arguably, every domain has a specialized vocabulary used for describing things. For example, the field of Sensory Science, a sub-field of Food Science, investigates human responses to food products and differentiates “descriptive” terms for flavors from “ordinary”, non-descriptive language. Within the field, descriptors are generated through Descriptive Analysis, a method wherein a human panel of experts tastes multiple food products and defines descriptors. This process is both time-consuming and expensive. However, one could leverage existing data to identify and build a flavor language automatically. For example, there are thousands of professional and semi-professional reviews of whisk(e)y published on the internet, providing abundant descriptors interspersed with non-descriptive language. The aim, then, is to be able to automatically identify descriptive terms in unstructured reviews for later use in product flavor characterization. We created two systems to perform this task. The first is an interactive visual tool that can be used to tag examples of descriptive terms from thousands of whisky reviews. This creates a training dataset that we use to perform transfer learning using GloVe word embeddings and a Long Short-Term Memory deep learning model architecture. The result is a model that can accurately identify descriptors within a corpus of whisky review texts with a train/test accuracy of 99% and precision, recall, and F1-scores of 0.99. We tested for overfitting by comparing the training and validation loss for divergence. Our results show that the language structure for descriptive terms can be programmatically learned.

The Color Pile: Equitable Self-Expression Through Color and Abstraction

The Color Pile is a visual tool transported from the author’s art-student context, and builds on the teaching model of Connie Smith Siegel and the Color Contrast work of Johannes Itten. As re-positioned, it offers a novel path to eliciting student narratives and point of view in language-dependent learning settings. Can this playful exercise support the clear articulation of complex ideas and help generate descriptive language? The Color Pile process moves from prompt to reflection to abstract visual composition, and resolves in a verbal, written or drawn reflection. Color and abstraction may help students gain access to their full capacities for complex thought and self-expression. Could this approach provide differently equitable support for student-produced narratives and descriptive language than is afforded by viewing representational imagery? Direct observations of middle school students using the Color Pile suggest the method could be meaningful to a diverse audience of teachers and learners. Its usefulness in a broad spectrum of language-oriented learning settings is considered.

Mediating actio in distans: Leibniz, Clarke and Newton on the communicability of forces

This article revisits the debate between Leibniz and Clarke to explore conceptual shifts in the use of the term medium. A basic tenet of physics since antiquity says that every act of communication ‐ that is, every transmission of a force from the place of its cause to that of its effect ‐ requires a medium to ensure its interaction. In the context of the Early Modern Period, media were regarded as mediating instances that enabled communication. If these instances were not immediately connected but rather spatially separated from one another ‐ as in the case of gravitation, magnetism or electricity ‐ then there had to be a medium to ensure both the transmission of the force and the causal connection. Although the mediation of the medium took place in an inexplicable way, it seemed to explain one process or another by its mere introduction. The epistemological foundations of communicability ‐ those with which Leibniz, Clarke and Newton were attempting to come to terms ‐ remain relevant to the descriptive language with which we depict our present and its technological condition. Without duration there is no mediation but rather immediacy and simultaneity. Immediacy means that the necessary separation between the two events, the abyss of communication, is negated. Immediacies, like instantaneous actions at a distance, presuppose the difference they are deemed to eradicate.