Evidentials, politeness and prosody in Spanish: A corpus analysis

This paper analyzes three Spanish particles, namely al parecer, por lo visto and según parece, whose status as pure evidentials (i.e., elements that only convey"source of information") has been put into question. The aim of this study is twofold: firstly, to observe the incidence of prosody in triggering the contextual meanings usually expressed by evidentials, i.e., politeness, impoliteness and self-image activities; secondly, to find out whether their prosodic behaviour provides any hint of their core meaning being"source of information". In order to carry out this analysis, a corpus of circa three million words of Peninsular Spanish has been compiled, which aims to reflect a variety of registers (formal and informal) and genres (both confrontational and nonconfrontational). The study reveals different prosodic behaviours exhibited by pure evidentials on the one hand, and contextual meanings on the other. Theoretically speaking, the concept of"relational work" embraces all the contextual meanings, and therefore explains the prosodic difference more effectively than other concepts. On the other hand, data show a high number of cases in Spanish where evidentials are used with their pure meaning, thus supporting the existence of elements exclusively conveying"source of information", without any further contextual nuance

Analyzing how emotion awareness influences students' motivation, engagement, self-regulation and learning outcome

Starting from Volume 17 Issue 4, all published articles of the Journal of Educational Technology & Society are available under Creative Commons CC-BY-ND-NC 3.0 license.Considering social and emotional competence in learning, emotion awareness aims to detect the emotions that students show during their learning interactions and make these emotions explicit to them. Being aware of their emotions, students become more conscious of their situation, what may prompt them to behavioral change. The main goal of this work is to analyze the effects of emotion awareness, supported by specific teaching strategies, on students’ motivation, engagement, self-regulation and learning outcome in long-term blended collaborative learning practices. A bilateral goal also involves an initial study that explores the way emotion awareness affects teacher’s attitude and feedback as well as the competencies that teachers need to have in order to achieve a positive change on students’ affective and cognitive state. To this end a quasi-experimental study was designed with high school students. The results of this study show that when students are aware of their emotions and guided by specific teaching strategies, their learning performance improves in relation to their motivation, engagement and self-regulation. Likewise, when teachers are conscious of students’ emotional state their attitude and feedback become more effective and timely.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Analyzing the effects of emotion management on time and self-management in computer-based learning

Emotional learning involves the acquisition of skills to recognize and manage emotions, develop care and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, and handle challenging situations effectively. Time is an important variable in learning context and especially in the analysis of teaching-learning processes that take place in collaborative learning, whereas time management is crucial for effective learning. The aim of this work has been to analyze the effects of emotion management on time and self-management in e-learning and identify the competencies in time and self-management that are mostly influenced when students strive to achieve effective learning. To this end, we run an experiment with a class of high school students, which showed that increasing their ability to manage emotions better and more effectively enhances their competency to manage the time allocated to the learning practice more productively, and consequently their learning performance in terms of behavioral engagement and achievement and partly, in terms of cognitive engagement and self-regulation. Teacher affective feedback was proved to be a crucial factor to enhance cognitive engagement.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A model for providing emotion awareness and feedback using fuzzy logic in online learning

Monitoring users’ emotive states and using that information for providing feedback and scaffolding is crucial. In the learning context, emotions can be used to increase students’ attention as well as to improve memory and reasoning. In this context, tutors should be prepared to create affective learning situations and encourage collaborative knowledge construction as well as identify those students’ feelings which hinder learning process. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to label affective behavior in educational discourse based on fuzzy logic, which enables a human or virtual tutor to capture students’ emotions, make students aware of their own emotions, assess these emotions and provide appropriate affective feedback. To that end, we propose a fuzzy classifier that provides a priori qualitative assessment and fuzzy qualifiers bound to the amounts such as few, regular and many assigned by an affective dictionary to every word. The advantage of the statistical approach is to reduce the classical pollution problem of training and analyzing the scenario using the same dataset. Our approach has been tested in a real online learning environment and proved to have a very positive influence on students’ learning performance.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A fuzzy-based approach for classifying students' emotional states in online collaborative work

(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, 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 components of this work in other works.Emotion awareness is becoming a key aspect in collaborative work at academia, enterprises and organizations that use collaborative group work in their activity. Due to pervasiveness of ICT's, most of collaboration can be performed through communication media channels such as discussion forums, social networks, etc. The emotive state of the users while they carry out their activity such as collaborative learning at Universities or project work at enterprises and organizations influences very much their performance and can actually determine the final learning or project outcome. Therefore, monitoring the users' emotive states and using that information for providing feedback and scaffolding is crucial. To this end, automated analysis over data collected from communication channels is a useful source. In this paper, we propose an approach to process such collected data in order to classify and assess emotional states of involved users and provide them feedback accordingly to their emotive states. In order to achieve this, a fuzzy approach is used to build the emotive classification system, which is fed with data from ANEW dictionary, whose words are bound to emotional weights and these, in turn, are used to map Fuzzy sets in our proposal. The proposed fuzzy-based system has been evaluated using real data from collaborative learning courses in an academic context.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Exploring learners' emotions over time in virtual learning

Time constitutes an important factor influencing every process related to e-learning. Along these lines, we need to study how students manage time in their learning processes. We need to know if they feel that they have enough time to carry out a learning activity or whether they feel stressed and frustrated by the lack of time. We are also interested in what kind of emotions they express and how these emotions evolve over this period of time.Our work focuses on studying the nature and role time plays in the affective states learners experience during a long-term e-learning process. Our methodological design shows the type of data we need to collect, which methods are more suitable for analysing this data in order to detect and interpret the learners’ emotions across time

Frustration Tolerance, Stress and Self-Esteem as Predictors of Planning and Decision-Making Among Adolescents

[Resumen] Dentro del complejo constructo de las funciones ejecutivas, el componente de planificación y toma de decisiones es un pilar básico en el ajuste psicológico de los adolescentes. En este estudio se analiza la relación y el carácter predictivo de la tolerancia a la frustración, la autoestima y el estrés percibido, en la planificación y toma de decisiones. Participaron 161 estudiantes de Madrid (España) con edades comprendidas entre los 12 y 18 años (M = 14.51; DT = 1.74). Los datos se recogieron mediante la subescala para la Evaluación de la Planificación y Toma de Decisiones de la Life Skills Development Scale - Adolescent Form (LSDS-B), la Escala de la Tolerancia a la Frustración (ETF), la Escala de Autoestima de Rosenberg (RSE), y la Escala de Estrés Percibido (PSS-14). Se realizaron análisis descriptivos, correlacionales y regresión logística binaria. Los resultados mostraron una alta tolerancia a la frustración, alta autoestima y menores niveles de estrés percibido entre los adolescentes con mayores puntuaciones en planificación y toma de decisiones. El análisis de regresión confirmó que el alto nivel de planificación y toma de decisiones es predicho por niveles altos de tolerancia a la frustración y autoestima, así como por niveles bajos de estrés percibido. Estos resultados ponen de manifiesto la necesidad de seguir aplicando los principios del desarrollo positivo para proporcionar a los adolescentes una mayor protección contra los factores y las conductas de riesgo.[Abstract] Within the complex construct of executive functions, the planning and decision-making component are two of the basic pillars of psychological adjustment among adolescents. This study analyses how frustration tolerance, self-esteem and perceived stress are related to and predictive of planning and decision-making. The participants were 161 students from Madrid (Spain), aged between 12 and 18 years (M = 14.51; SD = 1.74). Data were collected using the Problem Solving/Decision Making subscale of the Life Skills Development Scale - Adolescent form (LSDS-B), the Escala de la Tolerancia a la Frustración (ETF) [Frustration Tolerance Scale], the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (RSE) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14). Descriptive, correlational, and binary logistic regression analyses were carried out. The results showed high frustration tolerance, high self-esteem and lower levels of perceived stress among adolescents with higher planning and decision-making scores. The regression analysis confirmed that a high level of planning and decision-making is predicted by high levels of frustration tolerance and self-esteem, as well as by low levels of perceived stress. The findings highlight the need for continued implementation of the principles of positive development to provide adolescents with greater protection against risk factors and risky behaviour

Frustration tolerance, stress and self-esteem as predictors of planning and decision-making among adolescents

Within the complex construct of executive functions, the planning and decision-making component are two of the basic pillars of psychological adjustment among adolescents. This study analyses how frustration tolerance, self-esteem and perceived stress are related to and predictive of planning and decision-making. The participants were 161 students from Madrid (Spain), aged between 12 and 18 years (M = 14.51; SD = 1.74). Data were collected using the Problem Solving/Decision Making subscale of the Life Skills Development Scale - Adolescent form (LSDS-B), the Escala de la Tolerancia a la Frustración (ETF) [Frustration Tolerance Scale], the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (RSE) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14). Descriptive, correlational, and binary logistic regression analyses were carried out. The results showed high frustration tolerance, high self-esteem and lower levels of perceived stress among adolescents with higher planning and decision-making scores. The regression analysis confirmed that a high level of planning and decision-making is predicted by high levels of frustration tolerance and self-esteem, as well as by low levels of perceived stress. The findings highlight the need for continued implementation of the principles of positive development to provide adolescents with greater protection against risk factors and risky behaviour.Dentro del complejo constructo de las funciones ejecutivas, el componente de planificación y toma de decisiones es un pilar básico en el ajuste psicológico de los adolescentes. En este estudio se analiza la relación y el carácter predictivo de la tolerancia a la frustración, la autoestima y el estrés percibido, en la planificación y toma de decisiones. Participaron 161 estudiantes de Madrid (España) con edades comprendidas entre los 12 y 18 años (M = 14.51; DT = 1.74). Los datos se recogieron mediante la subescala para la Evaluación de la Planificación y Toma de Decisiones de la Life Skills Development Scale - Adolescent Form (LSDS-B), la Escala de la Tolerancia a la Frustración (ETF), la Escala de Autoestima de Rosenberg (RSE), y la Escala de Estrés Percibido (PSS-14). Se realizaron análisis descriptivos, correlacionales y regresión logística binaria. Los resultados mostraron una alta tolerancia a la frustración, alta autoestima y menores niveles de estrés percibido entre los adolescentes con mayores puntuaciones en planificación y toma de decisiones. El análisis de regresión confirmó que el alto nivel de planificación y toma de decisiones es predicho por niveles altos de tolerancia a la frustración y autoestima, así como por niveles bajos de estrés percibido. Estos resultados ponen de manifiesto la necesidad de seguir aplicando los principios del desarrollo positivo para proporcionar a los adolescentes una mayor protección contra los factores y las conductas de riesgo

Integración de herramientas en las prácticas de Informática Gráfica

La Informática Gráfica ha alcanzado en la actualidad un alto grado de desarrollo y complejidad, apareciendo continuamente nuevas y poderosas herramientas que permiten la creación y diseño de gráficos y escenas en 3D cada vez con mayor calidad y menor esfuerzo para el programador/diseñador. Esto, unido a la irrupción de Internet y a la potencia de los nuevos ordenadores y tarjetas de video, obliga a una mayor especialización y a un mayor conocimiento de las diferentes opciones que tanto el hardware como el software ponen en manos del programador. En esta ponencia comentamos cómo en las prácticas de la asignatura de Informática Gráfica se hace un recorrido por diferentes herramientas software, como OpenGL y VRML, y diversos entornos, como Windows95/NT y navegadores como NetScape 6 Explorer con extensiones VRML, o programas visores de mundos virtuales, como Viscape

Chagas disease in Costa Rica: comparative studyin two different stages

Para actualizar la situación de la Enfermedad de Chagas en Costa Rica se realizó un estudio serológico y epidemiológico parcial en 4 zonas de riesgo en el país. Un total de 1.561 estudiantes de 6 a 12 años fueron estudiados por anticuerpos contra T.cruzi usando una prueba de ELISA como tamiz previo a una confirmatoria. En la primera prueba se obtuvo una positividad que osciló entre 0,6% y 14,9% mientras que en la prueba confirmatoria esta positividad fue de 0,1%. El estudio del 10% de las casas de los estudiantes seleccionados indicó índices de infestación del 2,9% al 9,3% y los triatominos, encontrados peridomiciliarmente presentaron un 8,1% de infección por T. cruzi. Al comparar estos datos con los conocidos antes de 1980 y basados en un análisis socioeconómico de ambas épocas, se concluye que las mejores condiciones de vida actuales han disminuido la incidencia de Enfermedad de Chagas en Costa RicaTo bring a date the real situation of Chagas disease in Costa Rica, a partial serological and epidemiological study was done in four risk zones in this country. To achieve that, 1561 students 6 to 12 years old were studied for Trypanosoma cruzi antibodies presence by the ELISA technique. Once all the confirmatory tests were performed, 0.1% of seropositivity was detected in the student population. The study of 10% of houses of the corresponding random selected students, showed a 2.9% T. dimidiata infestation index and 9.3% of the insects were infected with T. cruzi. Comparing these data and the social and economic situation of Costa Rica in years 1980 and 2000, it is inferred that the improvement of the general conditions in Costa Rica, has decreased the Chagas disease incidence in this country.Universidad de Costa Rica//UCR/Costa RicaWorld Health Organization/[980413]/TDR/WHO/SuizaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias de la Salud::Centro de Investigación en Enfermedades Tropicales (CIET)UCR::Vicerrectoría de Docencia::Salud::Facultad de Microbiologí