Emerging Linguistic Functions in Early Infancy

This paper presents results from experimental studies on early language acquisition in infants and attempts to interpret the experimental results within the framework of the Ecological Theory of Language Acquisition (ETLA) recently proposed by (Lacerda et al., 2004a). From this perspective, the infant’s first steps in the acquisition of the ambient language are seen as a consequence of the infant’s general capacity to represent sensory input and the infant’s interaction with other actors in its immediate ecological environment. On the basis of available experimental evidence, it will be argued that ETLA offers a productive alternative to traditional descriptive views of the language acquisition process by presenting an operative model of how early linguistic function may emerge through interaction

On perceptual expertise

Expertise is a cognitive achievement that clearly involves experience and learning, and often requires explicit, time-consuming training specific to the relevant domain. It is also intuitive that this kind of achievement is, in a rich sense, genuinely perceptual. Many experts—be they radiologists, bird watchers, or fingerprint examiners—are better perceivers in the domain(s) of their expertise. The goal of this paper is to motivate three related claims, by substantial appeal to recent empirical research on perceptual expertise: Perceptual expertise is genuinely perceptual and genuinely cognitive, and this phenomenon reveals how we can become epistemically better perceivers. These claims are defended against sceptical opponents that deny significant top-down or cognitive effects on perception, and opponents who maintain that any such effects on perception are epistemically pernicious

Reading skills can predict the programming performance of novices: an eye-tracking study

Due to the character of programming languages, reading ability may have more impact on learning to program than on learning in other subjects. This paper describes an exploratory study of the relationship between reading skills, as perceived through eye tracking, and the ability to program. An empirical investigation into this relationship determined that students with inadequate reading skills are at risk of failing at introductory programming. As an explanation for the effect of reading ability on learning to program, we argue that a programming language is a special high-level written language and that using it requires high levels of comprehension, inferencing, selective attention, organising and reflecting. As a result, a student’s reading ability will have a considerable effect on learning to program. Lack of reading skills may therefore be a factor that affect students’ ability to learn to program. Eye tracking can expose reading skills and, therefore, be used to identify at-risk introductory programming students. The practical contribution of this research is the demonstration of how eye tracking can reveal reading problems among programming students. We relate these reading problems to their programming performance, providing a theoretical account of the connection. The results suggest that efforts to improve reading skills could have a positive impact on learning to program

How Novices and Experts Understand Hierarchies in Business Process Modeling

Conceptual models are essential for successful IT implementation, as they concisely represent the system\u27s component structures, behavior, and relationships. However, for conceptual models to fully realize their potential, they must be understood. To this end, hierarchy has been employed in business process modeling to enhance understanding of complex models. Prior research has proposed a two-component framework to explain the effects of hierarchy on understanding. Drawing on empirical data, this work extends this framework by investigating the influence of expertise on the understanding of hierarchical business process models. Our findings indicate that experts and novices benefit from hiding task-irrelevant information in subprocesses, with experts benefiting significantly more than novices. Additionally, experts profit more from recognizing familiar patterns in subprocesses than novices. Based on our results, we propose two principles for designing hierarchy and suggest future research avenues. Keywords: Business Process Modeling, Hierarchy, Expertise, Information Hiding

A Load of Cobbler’s Children: Beyond the Model Designing Processor

HCI has developed rich understandings of people at work and at play with technology: most people that is, except designers, who remain locked in the information processing paradigm of first wave HCI. Design methods are validated as if they were computer programs, expected to produce the same results on a range of architectures and hardware. Unfortunately, designers are people, and thus interfere substantially (generally to good effects) with the ‘code’ of design methods. We need to rethink the evaluation and design of design and evaluation methods in HCI. A logocentric proposal based on resource function vocabularies is presented

Mapping dynamic interactions among cognitive biases in depression

Depression is theorized to be caused in part by biased cognitive processing of emotional information. Yet, prior research has adopted a reductionist approach that does not characterize how biases in cognitive processes such as attention and memory work together to confer risk for this complex multifactorial disorder. Grounded in affective and cognitive science, we highlight four mechanisms to understand how attention biases, working memory difficulties, and long-term memory biases interact and contribute to depression. We review evidence for each mechanism and highlight time- and context-dependent dynamics. We outline methodological considerations and recommendations for research in this area. We conclude with directions to advance the understanding of depression risk, cognitive training interventions, and transdiagnostic properties of cognitive biases and their interactions

How People with Low and High Graph Literacy Process Health Graphs: Evidence from Eye-tracking

Graphs facilitate the communication of important quantitative information, often serving as effective decision support tools. Yet, graphs are not equally useful for all individuals, as people differ substantially in their graph literacy-the ability to understand graphically presented information. Although some features of graphs can be interpreted using spatial-to-conceptual mappings that can be established by adults and children with no graphing experience (e.g., "higher bars equal larger quantities"), other features are linked to arbitrary graph conventions (e.g., axes labels and scales). In two experiments, we examined differences in the processes underlying the comprehension of graphs presenting medical information in individuals with low and high graph literacy. Participants' eye movements were recorded while they interpreted graphs in which information in conventional features was incongruent with that conveyed by spatial features. Results revealed that participants with low graph literacy more often relied on misleading spatial-to-conceptual mappings and misinterpreted the data depicted. Higher graph literacy was often associated with more time spent viewing the conventional features containing essential information for accurate interpretations. This suggests that individuals with high graph literacy are better able to identify the task-relevant information in graphs, and thus attend to the relevant features to a larger extent. Theoretical, methodological, and prescriptive implications for customization of decision-support systems are discussed

University students’ regulation of learning and text processing – examples from medical and teacher education

The general aim of the thesis was to study university students’ learning from the perspective of regulation of learning and text processing. The data were collected from the two academic disciplines of medical and teacher education, which share the features of highly scheduled study, a multidisciplinary character, a complex relationship between theory and practice and a professional nature. Contemporary information society poses new challenges for learning, as it is not possible to learn all the information needed in a profession during a study programme. Therefore, it is increasingly important to learn how to think and learn independently, how to recognise gaps in and update one’s knowledge and how to deal with the huge amount of constantly changing information. In other words, it is critical to regulate one’s learning and to process text effectively. The thesis comprises five sub-studies that employed cross-sectional, longitudinal and experimental designs and multiple methods, from surveys to eye tracking. Study I examined the connections between students’ study orientations and the ways they regulate their learning. In total, 410 second-, fourth- and sixth-year medical students from two Finnish medical schools participated in the study by completing a questionnaire measuring both general study orientations and regulation strategies. The students were generally deeply oriented towards their studies. However, they regulated their studying externally. Several interesting and theoretically reasonable connections between the variables were found. For instance, self-regulation was positively correlated with deep orientation and achievement orientation and was negatively correlated with non-commitment. However, external regulation was likewise positively correlated with deep orientation and achievement orientation but also with surface orientation and systematic orientation. It is argued that external regulation might function as an effective coping strategy in the cognitively loaded medical curriculum. Study II focused on medical students’ regulation of learning and their conceptions of the learning environment in an innovative medical course where traditional lectures were combined wth problem-based learning (PBL) group work. First-year medical and dental students (N = 153) completed a questionnaire assessing their regulation strategies of learning and views about the PBL group work. The results indicated that external regulation and self-regulation of the learning content were the most typical regulation strategies among the participants. In line with previous studies, self-regulation wasconnected with study success. Strictly organised PBL sessions were not considered as useful as lectures, although the students’ views of the teacher/tutor and the group were mainly positive. Therefore, developers of teaching methods are challenged to think of new solutions that facilitate reflection of one’s learning and that improve the development of self-regulation. In Study III, a person-centred approach to studying regulation strategies was employed, in contrast to the traditional variable-centred approach used in Study I and Study II. The aim of Study III was to identify different regulation strategy profiles among medical students (N = 162) across time and to examine to what extent these profiles predict study success in preclinical studies. Four regulation strategy profiles were identified, and connections with study success were found. Students with the lowest self-regulation and with an increasing lack of regulation performed worse than the other groups. As the person-centred approach enables us to individualise students with diverse regulation patterns, it could be used in supporting student learning and in facilitating the early diagnosis of learning difficulties. In Study IV, 91 student teachers participated in a pre-test/post-test design where they answered open-ended questions about a complex science concept both before and after reading either a traditional, expository science text or a refutational text that prompted the reader to change his/her beliefs according to scientific beliefs about the phenomenon. The student teachers completed a questionnaire concerning their regulation and processing strategies. The results showed that the students’ understanding improved after text reading intervention and that refutational text promoted understanding better than the traditional text. Additionally, regulation and processing strategies were found to be connected with understanding the science phenomenon. A weak trend showed that weaker learners would benefit more from the refutational text. It seems that learners with effective learning strategies are able to pick out the relevant content regardless of the text type, whereas weaker learners might benefit from refutational parts that contrast the most typical misconceptions with scientific views. The purpose of Study V was to use eye tracking to determine how third-year medical studets (n = 39) and internal medicine residents (n = 13) read and solve patient case texts. The results revealed differences between medical students and residents in processing patient case texts; compared to the students, the residents were more accurate in their diagnoses and processed the texts significantly faster and with a lower number of fixations. Different reading patterns were also found. The observed differences between medical students and residents in processing patient case texts could be used in medical education to model expert reasoning and to teach how a good medical text should be constructed. The main findings of the thesis indicate that even among very selected student populations, such as high-achieving medical students or student teachers, there seems to be a lot of variation in regulation strategies of learning and text processing. As these learning strategies are related to successful studying, students enter educational programmes with rather different chances of managing and achieving success. Further, the ways of engaging in learning seldom centre on a single strategy or approach; rather, students seem to combine several strategies to a certain degree. Sometimes, it can be a matter of perspective of which way of learning can be considered best; therefore, the reality of studying in higher education is often more complicated than the simplistic view of self-regulation as a good quality and external regulation as a harmful quality. The beginning of university studies may be stressful for many, as the gap between high school and university studies is huge and those strategies that were adequate during high school might not work as well in higher education. Therefore, it is important to map students’ learning strategies and to encourage them to engage in using high-quality learning strategies from the beginning. Instead of separate courses on learning skills, the integration of these skills into course contents should be considered. Furthermore, learning complex scientific phenomena could be facilitated by paying attention to high-quality learning materials and texts and other support from the learning environment also in the university. Eye tracking seems to have great potential in evaluating performance and growing diagnostic expertise in text processing, although more research using texts as stimulus is needed. Both medical and teacher education programmes and the professions themselves are challenging in terms of their multidisciplinary nature and increasing amounts of information and therefore require good lifelong learning skills during the study period and later in work life.Tässä väitöskirjassa tutkittiin yliopisto-opiskelijoiden oppimista oppimisen säätelyn ja tekstin prosessoinnin näkökulmasta. Tutkimukseen osallistuneet opiskelijat valittiin lääketieteen ja luokanopettajakoulutuksen koulutusohjelmista, joita yhdistää tarkasti aikataulutettu opiskelu, monitieteisyys, teorian ja käytännön monimutkainen suhde sekä lääkärin ja luokanopettajan ammattien professionaalinen luonne. Nykyinen tietoyhteiskunta, jossa tieto lisääntyy ja muuttuu nopeasti, asettaa uusia haasteita oppimiselle, kun kaikkea ammatinharjoittamisessa tarvittavaa tietoa ei voi oppia koulutuksen aikana. Yhä tärkeämpää onkin oppia ajattelemaan ja oppimaan itsenäisesti, huomaamaan aukkoja omissa tiedoissaan ja päivittämään tietojaan, sekä oppia käsittelemään alati lisääntyvää ja muuttuvaa informaatiota. Toisin sanoen tulee oppia säätelemään omaa oppimistaan ja prosessoimaan tehokkaasti tekstejä. Väitöskirja koostuu viidestä osatutkimuksesta, joissa hyödynnettiin pitkittäis-, poikittais- ja kokeellisia asetelmia sekä monimetodista lähestymistapaa. Väitöskirjan ensimmäisessä osatutkimuksessa selvitettiin yleisten opiskeluorientaatioiden ja oppimisen säätelystrategioiden välisiä yhteyksiä. Yhteensä 410 toisen, neljännen ja kuudennen vuoden lääketieteen opiskelijaa kahdesta suomalaisesta yliopistosta vastasivat opiskeluorientaatioita ja oppimisen säätelystrategioita koskevaan kyselyyn. Tulokset osoittivat lääketieteen opiskelijoiden orientoituvan opiskeluunsa valtaosin syväsuuntautuneesti. Sitä vastoin tyypillisimpänä säätelystrategiana näyttäytyi oppimisen ulkoinen säätely. Lisäksi tutkimus paljasti useita teoreettisesti kiinnostavia ja ymmärrettäviä yhteyksiä yleisten opiskeluorientaatioiden ja oppimisen säätelystrategioiden välillä. Esimerkiksi itsesäätely oli positiivisesti yhteydessä syväorientaatioon ja suoritusorientaatioon, mutta negatiivisesti opiskeluun sitoutumattomuuteen. Ulkoinen säätely oli niin ikään positiivisesti yhteydessä syvä- ja suoritusorientaatioon, mutta lisäksi myös pinnallisempaan orientaatioon. Ulkoinen säätely saattaakin toimia tehokkaana selviytymisstrategiana kognitiivisesti raskaassa lääketieteen koulutusohjelmassa. Toisessa osatutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin ensimmäisen vuoden lääketieteen ja hammaslääketieteen opiskelijoiden (N = 153) oppimisen säätelyä ja käsityksiäoppimisympäristöstä, jossa perinteisen luento-opetuksen ohella järjestettiin ongelmalähtöisen oppimisen (PBL) periaatteiden mukaista pienryhmätyöskentelyä. Aineisto kerättiin kyselylomakkeen avulla. Tulokset osoittivat opiskelijoiden tyypillisimmiksi säätelystrategioiksi oppimisen ulkoisen säätelyn sekä opittavien sisältöjen itsesäätelyn, esimerkiksi aktiivisen tiedonhaun. Yhdenmukaisesti aiempien tutkimusten kanssa itsesäätelyn todettiin olevan yhteydessä opintomenestykseen. Opiskelijat pitivät luentoja hyödyllisempinä kuin PBL-istuntoja, vaikkakin heidän näkemyksensä pienryhmästä ja opettajatuutorista olivat pääosin positiivisia. Tulokset haastavat opetuksen kehittäjät pohtimaan uudenlaisia ratkaisuja oppimisympäristöiksi, jotka mahdollistavat oman oppimisen reflektoinnin ja lisäävät itsesäätelyn kehittymistä. Kolmannessa osatutkimuksessa oppimisen säätelystrategioita tutkittiin yksilötasolla. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli tunnistaa erilaisia oppimisen säätelyn profiileja lääketieteen opiskelijoilla (N = 162) ajan suhteen, sekä selvittää missä määrin nämä profiilit ennustavat opintomenestystä lääketieteen opintojen prekliinisessä vaiheessa. Neljä erilaista oppimisen säätelyprofiilia löydettiin. Opiskelijat, joilla oppimisen itsesäätely oli heikointa ja jotka ilmensivät lisääntyviä vaikeuksia oppimisen säätelyssä, suoriutuivat opinnoista muita ryhmiä heikommin. Koska yksilökeskeinen lähestymistapa mahdollistaa oppimisen säätelyltään erilaisten opiskelijoiden tunnistamisen, sitä voitaisiin hyödyntää opiskelijoiden oppimisen tukemiseen ja oppimisvaikeuksien varhaiseen tunnistamiseen. Neljännessä osatutkimuksessa 91 luokanopettajaopiskelijan ymmärrystä monimutkaisesta tieteellisestä ilmiöstä selvitettiin esi-jälki-mittausasetelmalla, jossa opiskelijat vastasivat avoimiin kysymyksiin ennen ja jälkeen tekstin lukemisen. Tekstinä käytettiin joko perinteistä selittävää tekstiä tai ns. törmäyttävää tekstiä, joka kannustaa opiskelijaa muuttamaan uskomuksensa tieteellisen käsityksen mukaisiksi. Lisäksi opiskelijoiden oppimisen säätelyä ja tekstinprosessointistrategioita selvitettiin kyselylomakkeen avulla. Tulokset osoittivat opiskelijoiden ymmärryksen kehittyvän tekstin lukemisen myötä ja törmäyttävän tekstin tukevan ymmärryksen rakentumista paremmin kuin selittävän tekstin. Oppimisen säätely- ja tekstinprosessointistrategiat olivat yhteydessä ilmiön ymmärtämiseen. Näyttää siltä, että tehokkaita opiskelustrategioita hyödyntävät opiskelijat kykenevät löytämään tekstistä ilmiön ymmärtämisen kannalta olennaiset asiat tekstityypistä riippumatta, kun taas heikommat opiskelijat saattavat hyötyä enemmän törmäyttävästä tekstistä, jossa tyypillisimpiä virhekäsityksiä on törmäytetty tieteellisen selityksen kanssa. Viidennessä osatutkimuksessa selvitettiin silmänliikemenetelmän avulla, miten kolmannen vuoden lääketieteen opiskelijat (n = 39) lukevat ja ratkaisevat potilastapaustekstejä verrattuna sisätautien erikoistuviin lääkäreihin (n = 13). Tutkimus osoitti erikoistuvien lääkärien olevan tarkempia diagnoosien tekijöitä sekä prosessoivan tekstit huomattavasti nopeammin ja vähemmillä fiksaatioilla kuin opiskelijat. Lisäksi opiskelijoiden ja erikoistuvien lääkäreiden lukustrategiat poikkesivat toisistaan. Havaittuja eroja potilastapausten prosessoinnissa voitaisiin hyödyntää lääketieteen koulutuksessa asiantuntijan päättelyn mallintamiseen sekä sen opettamiseen, miten hyvä potilastapausteksti rakennetaan. Väitöskirjan päälöydökset osoittavat, että oppimisen säätelyssä ja tekstin prosessointistrategioissa saattaa olla huomattavia eroja jopa hyvin valikoitujenopiskelijapopulaatioiden sisällä. Tämä asettaa haasteita niin opiskelijoille kuin opetuksen järjestäjille, sillä edellä kuvatut oppimisstrategiat ovat yhteydessä opinnoissa pärjäämiseen ja opintomenestykseen. Opiskelijoiden sitoutumista opiskeluun ei usein voi kuitenkaan tiivistää yhteen strategiaan tai lähestymistapaan, vaan ennemminkin opiskelijat tuntuvat yhdistelevän erilaisia strategioita opiskelussaan. Näin pelkistettyyn näkemykseen oppimisen itsesäätelystä hyvänä ja oppimisen ulkoisesta säätelystä huonona tapana tulee suhtautua kriittisesti. Yliopisto-opintojen alku saattaa olla monelle kuormittavaa, sillä lukio- ja korkeakouluopintojen erilaisuus voi olla merkittävä ja lukiossa toimivaksi osoittautuneet opiskelustrategiat eivät välttämättä enää toimi yhtä hyvin. Siksi olisikin tärkeää kartoittaa opiskelijoiden oppimisstrategioita ja kannustaa heitä korkeatasoisten strategioiden käyttöön jo opintojen alkuvaiheista lähtien. Irrallisten opiskelutaitokurssien sijaan tulisi pohtia opiskelutaitojen integrointia kurssisisältöjen opetukseen. Väitöskirjan tulokset antavat lisäksi viitteitä siitä, että monimutkaisten tieteellisten sisältöjen oppimista voitaisiin tukea kiinnittämällä huomiota korkea-laatuisiin oppimateriaaleihin ja teksteihin, sekä muuhun oppimisympäristön antamaan tukeen myös yliopistossa. Silmänliiketutkimuksella on mahdollista kartoittaa asiantuntijuutta tekstin prosessoinnissa, vaikkakin lisätutkimusta tarvitaan. Monitieteisyys ja alati lisääntyvä tieto tekevät lääketieteen ja luokanopettajan koulutuksista haastavia, joten hyvät elinikäisen oppimisen taidot ovat tarpeen niin koulutuksen aikana kuin myöhemmin työelämässäkin.Siirretty Doriast

Immersive moodboards, a comparative study of industrial design inspiration material

A recent trend in our industrial culture has been the gradual emergence of digital tools in various fields of human activity. They aim to reduce development time, cost, or to insure a low error, high quality process. Many fields have been improved thanks to this new computerized approach. This paper is centered on how industrial design could be assisted by virtual reality tools. More specifically it presents a new vision of early design methodologies through immersive technologies. It also presents the results of an experimentation aiming to compare traditional moodboards with a newly developed immersive moodboard. When analyzing and comparing the relationship of the industrial designer to a traditional and an immersive moodboard, our result highlights the fact that immerging the industrial designer in an immersive moodboard induces a high emotional activity without radically modifying the meaning of the represented trend. The moodboard data spatialization stimulates and engages the designer into interacting with the immersive moodboard. The virtual reality system provides the illusion of a potential reality, which can be used by the designer as a reflection basis for his work. We believe that delivering this immersive experience during the early design process will help the industrial designer make style related decisions.Projet CARNO

An integrated theory of language production and comprehension

Currently, production and comprehension are regarded as quite distinct in accounts of language processing. In rejecting this dichotomy, we instead assert that producing and understanding are interwoven, and that this interweaving is what enables people to predict themselves and each other. We start by noting that production and comprehension are forms of action and action perception. We then consider the evidence for interweaving in action, action perception, and joint action, and explain such evidence in terms of prediction. Specifically, we assume that actors construct forward models of their actions before they execute those actions, and that perceivers of others' actions covertly imitate those actions, then construct forward models of those actions. We use these accounts of action, action perception, and joint action to develop accounts of production, comprehension, and interactive language. Importantly, they incorporate well-defined levels of linguistic representation (such as semantics, syntax, and phonology). We show (a) how speakers and comprehenders use covert imitation and forward modeling to make predictions at these levels of representation, (b) how they interweave production and comprehension processes, and (c) how they use these predictions to monitor the upcoming utterances. We show how these accounts explain a range of behavioral and neuroscientific data on language processing and discuss some of the implications of our proposal