Ashes to art, dust to diamonds: the incorporation of human cremation ashes into objects and tattoos in contemporary British practices

This thesis examines the incorporation of human cremated remains into objects and tattoos in a range of contemporary practices in British society. Referred to collectively in this study as ‘ashes creations’, the practices explored in this research include human cremation ashes irreversibly incorporated or transformed into: jewellery, glassware, diamonds, paintings, tattoos, vinyl records, photograph frames, pottery, and mosaics. This research critically analyses the commissioning, production, and the lived experience of the incorporation of human cremation ashes into objects and tattoos from the perspective of two groups of people who participate in these practices: people who have commissioned an ashes creations incorporating the cremation ashes of a loved one and people who make or sell ashes creations. This qualitative study begins by exploring processes of commissioning; it argues that ashes creations are practices concerned with commissioners’ desires to maintain spatial proximities and an intimate relatedness with their deceased loved ones. The thesis moves on to explore the making of ashes creations, tracing how conceptual and physical boundaries are transcended as creative materials and cremation ashes irreversibly intermingle. The ashes creations that emerge from these processes perform as subjects and objects as they are experienced as loved ones and beloved things. Concluding with an exploration of how ashes creations are lived with in participants’ ongoing lives, this thesis considers the ways in which intimate relatedness is enacted through performances of presence. These performances are characterised by notions of loved ones returning as the deceased continues to participate in the lives of the living. What emerges, across the materially disparate practices of ashes creations, are recurring narratives of relationality, uniqueness, and presence. As cremation ashes are increasingly being located away from landscapes traditionally associated with death and towards the spatial domains of the living, this study contributes to our understanding of the personalised practices that people engage in with cremation ashes

A longitudinal study of theory of mind and listening comprehension: Is preschool theory of mind important?

Theory of mind has been shown to be important for listening comprehension for children at a range of ages. However, there is a lack of longitudinal evidence for a relationship between early theory of mind and later listening comprehension. The aim of this study was to examine whether preschool theory of mind has a longitudinal direct effect on later listening comprehension over and above the effects of concurrent theory of mind. A total of 147 children were tested on measures of theory of mind, working memory, vocabulary, and grammatical knowledge at Time 1 (mean age = 4;1 [years;months]) and Time 2 (mean age = 5;11). In addition, at Time 2 listening comprehension, comprehension monitoring, and inference making measures were taken. Data were fitted to concurrent and longitudinal models of listening comprehension. Concurrent findings at Time 2 showed theory of mind to have a direct effect on listening comprehension. However, longitudinal findings showed that earlier theory of mind in preschool (Time 1) did not have a direct effect on listening comprehension 22 months later; instead, there was only an indirect effect of earlier theory of mind on later listening comprehension via concurrent theory of mind (Time 2). Taken together, the results give further support for the importance of theory of mind for listening comprehension but show that there are limited additional benefits of early theory of mind acquisition. Implications for the development of children's listening comprehension are discussed. [Abstract copyright: Crown Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas

We present word prevalence data for 61,858 English words. Word prevalence refers to the number of people who know the word. The measure was obtained on the basis of an online crowdsourcing study involving over 220,000 people. Word prevalence data are useful for gauging the difficulty of words and, as such, for matching stimulus materials in experimental conditions or selecting stimulus materials for vocabulary tests. Word prevalence also predicts word processing times, over and above the effects of word frequency, word length, similarity to other words, and age of acquisition, in line with previous findings in the Dutch language

Orthography influences the perception and production of speech.

One intriguing question in language research concerns the extent to which orthographic information impacts on spoken word processing. Previous research has faced a number of methodological difficulties and has not reached a definitive conclusion. Our research addresses these difficulties by capitalizing on recent developments in the area of word learning. Participants were trained to criterion on a set of associations between novel pictures and novel spoken words. Spelling-sound consistent or spelling-sound inconsistent spellings were introduced on the 2nd day, and the influence of these spellings on speech processing was assessed on the 3rd day. Results showed significant orthographic effects on speech perception and speech production in a situation in which spelling–sound consistency was manipulated with perfect experimental control. Results are discussed in terms of a highly interactive language system in which there is a rapid and automatic flow of activation in both directions between orthographic and phonological representations

Examining the association between elementary students lexcio-syntactic writingfeatures and cognitive-motivational profiles using Natural Language Processing

Natural language processing (NLP) provides an innovative avenue to understand and explore human language content,yet minimal research has utilized it to classify students literacy, cognition, or motivation. This study investigated theassociation between grade 4-6 students (n = 143) writing and their cognitive-motivational profiles (CMPs) based on theirself-regulated learning, locus of control, writing self-efficacy, and goal-orientation. LPA (Mplus 7.4) results indicated atwo-class CMP solution with predominantly positive or negative CMPs. Using NLP, 404 lexico-syntactic writing featureswere extracted from students writing. Random forest with 10-fold cross-validation was implemented in Weka 3.8 (withSMOTE to equate class instances) to accurately (93%) classify students CMPs (class 1 True Positive Rate (TPR) = .942;class 2 TPR = .925) based on the NLP-processed lexico-syntactic writing features. These results highlight the potentialfor machine learning to analyze students writing and accurately classify learner profiles to provide formative feedback andcustomized interventions

Innovation Opportunities and Digital Storytelling: An Exploratory Study of the Midlands and North Wine Region. Report of Findings

This report discusses findings from an exploratory study of digital storytelling in the context of the Midlands and North wine region of the UK, carried out by CHEFS: the Culture, Health, Environment, Food and Society research cluster of Sheffield Hallam University. Section 1 introduces the context to the project: the importance of storytelling and storytellers for small-scale wineries, and the ways in which the Coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally disrupted small-scale wineries’ typical marketing practices, routes to market, and approaches to engaging with their consumers. These conditions form the background to the project aims, which are to: • scope the current state of play of Midlands and North regional wineries’ digital marketing tools and content; • identify innovation opportunities through digital storytelling. To deliver on these aims, a mixed method, cross-sectional study was conducted via desk research, a qualitative content analysis ‘audit’ of regional wineries’ digital marketing content, and an online survey and semi-structured interviews with winery representatives. Section 2 reviews insights from existing research on: storytelling and the generation of value for small-scale wines; two scales of stories, for individual wineries and for regions; the Midlands and North wine and tourism consumer. Sections 3 reports on the digital marketing audit, reviewing main digital platforms, key digital innovations and innovation opportunities since the start of the pandemic; and ongoing interest in further digital development and support. Section 4 focuses on identifying common ground for an emergent, credible regional wine story that resonates with the region’s winery stakeholders, in relation to shared attributes across regional winery’s individual external-facing stories (re. family, provenance, and diversity) and shared internal perceptions of the Midlands and North region (regional confidence, collaboration, and difference). Section 5 reviews key takeaways from the research, highlighting key attributes that might underpin a 'local, regional destination' story for the wineries of the Midlands and North, focused on artisanal, authentic wines and wine experiences; family, community and connection with and for local/regional wine consumers; and diversity and difference through small-scale producers who work with diverse grape varieties and styles to offer wines to be valued for their difference from what is available on the supermarket shelf, or elsewhere across English and Welsh wine

Assessing Quality and Equity in High-Impact Practices: Comprehensive Report

The Assessing Quality and Equity in High-Impact Practices: Comprehensive Report is the inial report on findings from the Lumina Foundation supported examination of High-Impact Practice (HIP) quality and equity. This report summarizes the project purpose, research design and questions, development and testing HIP quality instrument, and early findings about assessment feasibility, evidence of elements of HIP quality, measuring high-quality HIPs, and evidence of equity. The report also explores measures of students' satisfaction with their HIP experience, differences by racial identity, and evidence of high quality and equity by HIP.Lumina Foundatio