The influence of communication technologies and approaches to study on transactional distance in blended learning

This paper explores the role played by communication technologies and study orientations in the amplification and reduction of transactional distance in blended learning. Factor analysis and structural equation modelling of different communication modes (face to face, email and telephone) revealed that students experience at least some transactional distance when separated from their tutors. Email was found to facilitate the highest levels of immediacy of dialogue for most students. The conclusion is that strategic students are best placed to benefit from blended learning, and that the effects of transactional distance could be analysed more deeply if two subvariables of dialogue were recognised. These are social presence (the perception of connectedness between students and their tutors) and immediacy (the temporal effects of dialogue)

First impressions: A survey on vision-based apparent personality trait analysis

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Personality analysis has been widely studied in psychology, neuropsychology, and signal processing fields, among others. From the past few years, it also became an attractive research area in visual computing. From the computational point of view, by far speech and text have been the most considered cues of information for analyzing personality. However, recently there has been an increasing interest from the computer vision community in analyzing personality from visual data. Recent computer vision approaches are able to accurately analyze human faces, body postures and behaviors, and use these information to infer apparent personality traits. Because of the overwhelming research interest in this topic, and of the potential impact that this sort of methods could have in society, we present in this paper an up-to-date review of existing vision-based approaches for apparent personality trait recognition. We describe seminal and cutting edge works on the subject, discussing and comparing their distinctive features and limitations. Future venues of research in the field are identified and discussed. Furthermore, aspects on the subjectivity in data labeling/evaluation, as well as current datasets and challenges organized to push the research on the field are reviewed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The influence of source attractiveness on self-perception and advertising effectiveness for 6- to 7-year-old children

The objective of this article is to examine the effects of using attractive peer models in advertising for 6- to 7-year-old children. This age is important in children’s development, as children of that age are not yet fully aware of the persuasive intent of advertising, are more focused on perceptual than on cognitive information in ads and are more focused on irrelevant rather than relevant ad information. More insights are therefore needed about whether attractive advertising models influence self-perception and advertising effectiveness of children this young, in order to help policy makers, parents and advertisers understand these effects. Two experimental studies are presented in which children are exposed to ads with peer models. Results show that when children of 6- to 7-year-old rate advertising models as being more attractive, advertising effectiveness raises, but children’s perceived self-worth and children’s perceived physical attractiveness are unaffected. We conclude that 6- to 7- year-old children use model attractiveness as a perceptual cue to rate ads but are not yet using comparisons with these models to evaluate themselves

Models of collaboration between psychologist and family doctor: a systematic review of primary care psychology

open2noThe prevalence of psychological suffering is greater than the actual request for clinical consultation in Europe (Alonso et al., 2004). In Italy, no more than 5.5% of the population requested psychological assistance during lifetime (Miglioretti et al., 2008). There are different obstacles that prevent the access to mental health services, such as economic restrictions (Mulder et al., 2011), cultural prejudice (Kim et al., 2010), and lack of knowledge about the service providers that can answer to the patient’s psychological needs (Molinari et al., 2012). Therefore, the psychologist is often consulted as a last resort, only after everything else has failed, when problems have become severe, and thus requiring longer, more intensive, and expensive treatments. The introduction of the Primary Care Psychologist, a professional who works together with the family doctor, allows to overcome the above-mentioned problems and intercept unexpressed needs for psychological assistance. This professional role is operating in many countries since several years. In this study, current literature concerning different models of collaboration between physician and psychologist, in Europe and in Italy, was reviewed. A systematic search of Web of Science (ISI), Pubmed, Scopus, and PsychINFO was conducted using the initial search terms Primary Care Psychologist, Family Doctor, Primary Care, Collaborative Practice, and several relevant papers were identified. The review has shown the improved quality of care when mental health care is integrated into primary. Analyzing how different programs are implemented, results indicated that the more efficacious models of Primary Care Psychology are those tailored on the environment’s needs.The results of our systematic review stress the importance of the Primary Care Psychologist implementation also in Italy, to intercept unexpressed psychological needs and enhance clients’ quality of life.openFrancesca, Bianco; Enrico, BenelliBianco, Francesca; Benelli, Enric

Does increasing communication through visual learning environments enhance student perceptions of lecturers?

The current study was conducted in an effort to examine whether increased levels of communication using visual learning environments (VLEs) alters student perceptions of lecturers. Eighty-six MSc students in Computing Science participated by using She and Fisher’s (2002) Teacher Communication Behavior Questionnaire (TCBQ). In addition to using the questionnaire, data from the electronic class site were used to make assessments about the quality and quantity of communication. Two types of classrooms were evaluated: a) a control condition in which the lecturer did not alter any communication aspect of the module, and b) the experimental condition in which the lecturer posted weekly discussion topics. Significant differences were found by cultural background and gender of the students. The bulletin board postings in the experimental condition were more heavily content-based than the control condition ones. The consistency in discussion topic of the experimental condition postings, both bulletin board and email, were more fluid than in the control condition

Investigating the psychological and emotional dimensions in instructed language learning: obstacles and possibilities

In this article I put forth the core argument that Second Language Acquisition (SLA) needs to account for the psychological and emotional dimensions of second language (L2) learning, but that a number of epistemological and methodological difficulties must be surmounted before this new research program can be a reality. To illustrate my arguments, I examine in depth 2 research programs developed by my colleagues and me over the last decade: research on extraversion as a psychological variable investigated within the tradition of individual differences in SLA, and research on the expression of emotion in the L2. Throughout the article, I argue against research isolationism and for more interdisciplinarity in the field of instructed SLA. I contend that research on instructed SLA would benefit from an increased methodological and epistemological diversity and that a focus on affect and emotion among researchers might inspire authors of teaching materials and foreign language teachers to pay increased attention to the communication of emotion and the development of sociocultural competence in a L2

Talking the Talk: The Effect of Vocalics in an Interview

Our voices carry more than just content. People continuously make assumptions of one’s intelligence, credibility, personality, and other characteristics merely based on the way we talk. As the diversity of individuals in the workplace increases, so too do the differences in how those individuals talk. It is important that we understand how these different ways of speaking are being perceived in the workplace. More specifically, how are individuals being perceived prior to being hired via the interview process? This Honors Capstone project aims to understand the impact that vocal characteristics in an individual have on the interviewer’s perception of the interviewee, and how that impacts the hiring process. This project will offer professionals of all ages tangible advice on ways to increase one’s chances of receiving a job just by altering aspects of one’s voice

Does increasing communication through virtual learning environments enhance student perceptions of lecturers?

The current study was conducted in an effort to examine whether increased levels of communication using visual learning environments (VLEs) alters student perceptions of lecturers. Eighty-six MSc students in Computing Science participated by using She and Fisher’s (2002) Teacher Communication Behavior Questionnaire (TCBQ). In addition to using the questionnaire, data from the electronic class site were used to make assessments about the quality and quantity of communication. Two types of classrooms were evaluated: a) a control condition in which the lecturer did not alter any communication aspect of the module, and b) the experimental condition in which the lecturer posted weekly discussion topics. Significant differences were found by cultural background and gender of the students. The bulletin board postings in the experimental condition were more heavily content-based than the control condition ones. The consistency in discussion topic of the experimental condition postings, both bulletin board and email, were more fluid than in the control condition

Profile of high-performing college soccer teams: An exploratory multi-level analysis

Purpose: To determine the profile of high-performing college soccer teams through the use of exploratory hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) based on a socio-cognitive approach. Design and Measures: A correlational design was employed in this study. The sample consisted of 340 college soccer players of both genders (178 female and 162 male), representing 17 different teams (8 female and 9 male) ranked in the top-32 of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Numerous demographic and soccer-related variables represented level-1 in the HLM model. Group Environment Questionnaire and Team Assessment Diagnostic Measure were entered as level-2 variables, representing cohesion and team mental models, respectively. Perceived performance potential (PPP) served as the dependent variable. Objective performance scores were correlated with PPP, attesting a moderate to high-level of criterion related validity (r = .78). Results: The final model suggested that: (1) International athletes perceive their performance lower than others, (2) different field positions share different covariance coefficients with PPP, and (3) perception of social cohesion from a group, rather than individual, standpoint is positively associated with perceptions of team performance. Conclusions: High performing teams have clearly defined task-related and team-related goals. Accordingly, social rather than task related factors may represent a competitive edge, further energizing the interactions and performance of top-ranked teams. International athletes perceive team performance lower than locals, perhaps due to differences in preferred game-style and acculturation experiences. Players from different field positions (i.e., goalkeepers, defensive, and offensive players) relate differently to team performance in college soccer