Communication Research Articles

Predictors of patient satisfaction and perceived quality of healthcare: College healthcare providers and students’ communication

Background: Prior research indicates that healthcare provider-patient communication influences health outcomes such as patient satisfaction, compliance with diagnosis or treatment, and general health quality. However, little is known about this type of inquiry in the context of healthcare centers on college and university campuses. Aim: The objective of this study was to examine the influence of students’ perception of college healthcare providers’ affective and instrumental behaviors on student patient satisfaction and perceived quality of healthcare at a university health center. Methods: 349 participants who were college students took an online survey. Regression analyses were conducted. Results: Affective and instrumental behaviors were important communicative behaviors predicting student patient satisfaction and perceived quality of healthcare. However, directions of these predictions differed between student patient satisfaction and perceived quality of healthcare. Conclusion: Healthcare providers at the university health center are recognizing student patients as partners in the healthcare decision-making processes.

Flexible brain dynamics underpins complex behaviours as observed in Parkinson\u2019s disease

Rapid reconfigurations of brain activity support efficient neuronal communication and flexible behaviour. Suboptimal brain dynamics is associated to impaired adaptability, possibly leading to functional deficiencies. We hypothesize that impaired flexibility in brain activity can lead to motor and cognitive symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD). To test this hypothesis, we studied the ‘functional repertoire’—the number of distinct configurations of neural activity—using source-reconstructed magnetoencephalography in PD patients and controls. We found stereotyped brain dynamics and reduced flexibility in PD. The intensity of this reduction was proportional to symptoms severity, which can be explained by beta-band hyper-synchronization. Moreover, the basal ganglia were prominently involved in the abnormal patterns of brain activity. Our findings support the hypotheses that: symptoms in PD relate to impaired brain flexibility, this impairment preferentially involves the basal ganglia, and beta-band hypersynchronization is associated with reduced brain flexibility. These findings highlight the importance of extensive functional repertoires for correct behaviour.

Inhibitory Copulation Effect of Vibrational Rival Female Signals of Three Stink Bug Species as a Tool for Mating Disruption.

Simple SummaryIn this work, we investigated the effects of conspecific female rival signals in vibratory communication and mating behavior of three species of stink bugs. In the presence of rival female signals, as noisy background vibrations, couples (a male and a female) of the three species showed negative effects in their sexual vibratory communication that resulted in reduced mating and copulation in relation to pairs not exposed to rival signals. The results suggest that female rival signals could be used to disrupt mating and may be a tool for stink bug management by reducing their population increase. Stink bugs are major pests in diverse crops around the world. Pest management strategies based on insect behavioral manipulation could help to develop biorational management strategies of stink bugs. Insect mating disruption using vibratory signals is an approach with high potential for pest management. The objective of this work was to investigate the effect of conspecific female rival signals on the mating behavior and copulation of three stink bug species to establish their potential for mating disruption. Previously recorded female rival signals were played back to bean plants where pairs of the Neotropical brown stink bug, Euschistus heros, and two green stink bugs, Chinavia ubica and Chinavia impicticornis were placed. Vibratory communication and mating behavior were recorded for each pair throughout the experimental time (20 min). Female rival signals show a disrupting effect on the reproductive behavior of three conspecific investigated stink bug species. This effect was more clearly expressed in E. heros and C. ubica than in C. impicticornis. The likelihood of copulating in pairs placed on control plants, without rival signals, increased 29.41 times in E. heros, 4.6 times in C. ubica and 1.71 times in C. impicticornis. However, in the last case, the effect of female rivalry signals in copulation was not significant. The effect of mating disruption of female rival signals of the three stink bug species may originate from the observed reduction in specific vibratory communication signals emitted, which influences the duet formation and further development of different phases of mating behavior. Our results suggest that female rival signals have potential for application in manipulation and disruption of mating behavior of stink bugs. Further work needs to focus on the effects of female rival signals used in long duration experiments and also their interactions with chemical communication of stink bugs.

A Committee Machine Neural Network for Dynamic and its Inverse Modeling of Distortions and Impairments in Wireless Transmitters

The tradeoff between bandwidth efficiency and power efficiency with nonlinear distortion introduced by high power amplifier (HPA) in a modern communication system, at a high bit rate has become a prominent problem. Digital predistortion (DPD), the most cost-effective and yet lesser complex method is a widely used linearization method. In this method, the dynamic nonlinear characteristics of the PA are used to obtain an inverse transfer function to abolish the nonlinearity. The development of a good DPD technique depends on its ability to model an accurate PA behavior and its inverse behavior. Recently, several neural network-based predistortion linearizers had been proposed, and these linearizers are effectively proving their worth, but these methods report inadequate generalization performance in the presence of system imperfections like DC offset, IQ imbalance, and both. The present paper proposes a Mixture of Experts (MOE) based committee machine neural network for modeling the PA/transmitter system transfer function and its inverse transfer function under different system conditions. MOE models encompass a family of modular neural network architectures having several experts network and a single gating network, and targeting to divide a complex problem into simple subtasks. An algorithm based on a maximum likelihood criterion is considered for the MOE network training. The results obtained with the proposed model show good generalization performance with nonlinear HPA and with memory effect in the presence of system imperfections.

Low insertion loss optical isolator with widely tunable frequency

An optical isolator with a low insertion loss and high isolation is desirable for quantum networks and modern optical communication. Here, we realize an optical isolator with the far-off resonant Raman process in a thermal Λ-type atomic system. The experimental results show a high isolation, ultra-low insertion loss, and widely tunable frequency simultaneously. The maximum isolation is more than 30 dB with 0.07 dB insertion loss. And, the frequency of the isolation can be tuned continuously over 1.2 GHz. This high-performance magnetic-free optical isolator offers opportunities for applications in integrated optics and quantum networks.

Modern communication technologies in education: book trailer

The article deals with the problem of encouraging the reading activity of pupils through modern communication technologies. As a tool to attract the attention of teenagers to reading, the authors turn to a multimedia advertising product, namely, a book trailer. The relevance of its application in teaching is determined by the context of the time, digitalization and virtualization of education, social trends, and features of the perception of information by today’s reader and viewer. The article substantiates the fruitfulness of using the book trailer in the educational environment by the results of content analysis of scientific works of Russian and foreign researchers, practitioners, and practical testing in the educational process. As an experimental research method, the authors used a survey of pupils of the sixth and seventh grades of the Second Malzhagar Middle School named after M.E. Vasilyeva of the “Khangalassky Ulus” municipal district, as well as rural teachers of the literature of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) of the Far Eastern Region of the Russian Federation. The survey involved 47 pupils and 31 respondents from among regional teachers of the Russian language and literature. The problem of reading was considered in terms of uncovering the creative potential of pupils of the sixth and seventh grades who were studying under the elective program "Book Trailer: Create, Watch, and Read". The research results aimed at determining the book trailer as an effective means of developing pupils’ interest in reading, implementing their creative abilities in the course of developing a product for the information and educational environment of the region. The authors conclude that the creation of book trailers is one of the most relevant motivators for pupils in their cognitive activity as it combines work with a book and mastering modern communication technologies, increases interest in learning and the level of motivation to read.

Correlation between Triadic Closure and Homophily Formed over Location-Based Social Networks

Social Internet of Things (SIoT) is a variation of social networks that adopt the property of peer-to-peer networks, in which connections between the things and social actors are automatically established. SIoT is a part of various organizations that inherit the social interaction, and these organizations include industries, institutions, and other establishments. Triadic closure and homophily are the most commonly used measures to investigate social networks’ formation and nature, where both measures are used exclusively or with statistical models. The triadic closure patterns are mapped for actors’ communication behavior over a location-based social network, affecting the homophily. In this study, we investigate triads emergence in homophilic social networks. This evaluation is based on the empirical review of triads within social networks (SNs) formed on Big Data. We utilized a large location-based dataset for an in-depth analysis, the Chinese telecommunication-based anonymized call detail records (CDRs). Two other openly available datasets, Brightkite and Gowalla, were also studied. We identified and proposed three social triad classes in a homophilic network to feature the correlation between social triads and homophily. The study opened a promising research direction that relates the variation of homophily based on closure triads nature. The homophilic triads are further categorized into transitive and intransitive groups. As our concluding research objective, we examined the relative triadic throughput within a location-based social network for the given datasets. The research study attains significant results highlighting the positive connection between homophily and a specific social triad class.

Schedule Thinning During Functional Communication Training in the Home for Young Children With Autism

Functional communication training (FCT) is a common function-based intervention for young children with or at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to teach an alternative communicative response to replace problem behavior. While FCT is effective in decreasing problem behavior, often the communicative behavior that is taught occurs at a higher rate than a caregiver can reinforce. For this study, we first examined the effectiveness of an FCT intervention to decrease problem behavior and increase appropriate communication. The intervention was based on a trial-based functional analysis (TBFA) conducted in the home. Next, we applied two approaches for thinning the schedule of reinforcement (i.e., delay to reinforcement and chained schedules) following the FCT. For all three young children (ages 3–5 years) with or at risk for ASD, at least one function of behavior was identified for each participant using TBFA and the subsequent FCT intervention led to a decrease in problem behavior and increase in functional communication. The procedure for thinning the schedule was selected based on the function of the behavior and results showed that both were successful in maintaining low levels of problem behavior following FCT. Implications for research and practice are discussed and suggestions for future research studies are presented.

Uloga medija u procesu socijalizacije djece i adolescenata

Suvremeni diskurs globalne razmjene informacija te medijsko prožimanje kulturne, društvene i ekonomske sfere pretendira prema određenom utjecaju na psihološki i socijalni razvoj djece i adolescenata. Kognitivno-socijalni procesi i razvijanje jezičnih kompetencija obilježeni su utjecajem medija te stvaraju određeni razvojni okvir medijske socijalizacije koja u sazrijevanju djece donosi i dobre strane, ali reflektira i određena antisocijalna ponašanja. Također, razvoj multimedije unutar virtualnog okruženja kod nove generacije naraštaja digitalnih domorodaca donosi i nove obrasce ponašanja. Osim toga, individualni faktori poput dobi i spola te socijalni faktori poput vršnjačkih odnosa karakteriziraju medijsku socijalizaciju djece. Također, suvremenom multimedijskom komunikacijom omogućeno je povećavanje protoka i dostupnosti informacija čime se otvaraju pitanja dvostruke uloge medija u procesu socijalizacije mladih, odnosno otvaraju se pitanja transparentnosti, etičnost, primjerenosti medijski dostupnih sadržaja, kao i pojava antisocijalnih ponašanja koja se implicitno ili eksplicitno dotiču medijskog konteksta

Quad-Band multi-polarized antenna with modified electric-inductive−capacitive resonator

AbstractA compact circularly polarized (CP) patch antenna is presented for modern communication systems. The prospective antenna consists of a microstrip-line inset-fed rectangular patch and a defected ground plane. A rotated rectangular slot and a modified electric-inductive-capacitive (m-ELC) resonator are introduced in the patch and the ground plane to achieve multiband behaviour. A corner of the radiating patch is truncated and an arrow-shaped stub is introduced for generating circular polarization. The physical area of the substrate is 0.26λ0 × 0.22λ0, and the radiator size is 0.16λ0 × 0.14λ0, where λ0 is the free-space wavelength estimated at the lowest frequency. The measured (S11≤-10 dB) bandwidths of the antenna are 80 MHz (3.58%) at 2.23 GHz, 75 MHz (2.64%) at 2.84 GHz, 80 MHz (2.50%) at 3.19 GHz, and 70 MHz (1.82%) at 3.83 GHz. The measured 3-dB axial ratio bandwidths are 40 MHz (1.41%), 100 MHz (3.12%), and 60 MHz (1.57%) at 2.84, 3.20 and 3.82 GHz, respectively. The proposed planar antenna design does not need dual-feed or multi-layered patches for achieving multiple CP bands. It offers easy integration with the printed circuits of the communication systems.

BER Performance Using Linear Phase Orthogonal Binary Codes for Multi-users Mobile Communication

Nowadays, modern wireless mobile communication systems attempt to increase the number of subscribers simultaneously, starting from the third to fifth generations. The purpose of this research is to explain the correlation between the efficiency of the multi-user communication system and linear phase orthogonal binary codes (LPOBC) like Walsh and Gold codes. Query This work focuses on orthogonal binary sequences that are concurrent distributed over frequency and time domains according to the behavior of the correlation functions. Besides, the effect of using different code lengths with variable number of users will be examined and discussed. The communication system performance will be examined based on the cross-correlation and the autocorrelation behavior. This criterion is affected and influenced by the code length, bit error rate and signal to noise ratio. Furthermore, the impact of using the LPOBC on different modulation schemes is discussed. Finally, a case study utilizing code division multiple access is chosen as a practical case that has the potential of being further developed toward the fifth generation communication system.

A virtual tourist counselor expressing intimacy behaviors: A new perspective to create emotion in visitors and offer them a better user experience?

Professional embodied conversational agents (ECAs) deployed in the market are dedicated to satisfying the digital customer relationship. However, ECAs still suffer from a lack of user adoption, in particular because most of them have few social skills. Inspired by social presence theories and based on the ergonomic components of user experience (CUE) model (Mahlke and Lindgaard, 2007), the paper focuses on one social skill, i.e., virtual intimacy, a 3-dimensional concept including honesty and genuineness, positivity and mutual comprehension. Virtual intimacy may be a way to reinforce the social dimension of human-agent interactions and to provide a better user experience. We therefore propose an interactive experiment that incorporates natural interactions between real tourists and an autonomously intimate virtual counselor who is an expert in tourism and able to express intimacy-related behaviors in verbal and nonverbal communication. The paper studies the impact of the agent’s expression of intimacy-related behaviors on the perception of virtual intimacy, social presence and the user experience. The results show that users adopt a social attitude toward the intimate counselor, and although they do not significantly perceive virtual intimacy, they clearly perceive the dimension of honesty and genuineness. Moreover, the agent’s expression of intimacy only enhances copresence, the first perceptive level of social presence. Except for user social status, which is enhanced, the user experience is also not significantly influenced by intimate expression. The study results further demonstrate that perceiving virtual intimacy is a good predictor of social presence and user experience, especially user emotional reactions. Perceiving virtual intimacy influences user experience independently of social presence, which thereby indicates that independent intimacy-related mechanisms, such as emotional contagion, may be involved. Mediation analyses also underline that perceiving virtual intimacy has a direct effect on user emotional reactions, but this finding is not supported by the CUE model. The findings in this study provide new evidence that perceiving virtual intimacy in human-agent interaction elicits emotions in users and enhances user experience. In line with this, we propose an outline for an ECA-adapted, user experience model based on the CUE model.

Towards alignment strategies in human-agent interactions based on measures of lexical repetitions

Alignment of communicative behaviour is an important feature of Human–Human interaction that directly affects the collaboration and the social connection of conversational partners. With the aim of improving the communicative abilities of a virtual agent, and in particular its strategies related to (lexical) verbal alignment, this article focuses on the alignment of linguistic productions of dialogue participants in task-oriented dialogues. We propose a new framework to quantify both the lexical alignment and the self-repetition behaviours of dialogue participants from dyadic dialogue transcripts. The framework involves easily computable measures based on repetition of lexical patterns automatically extracted via a sequential pattern mining approach. These measures allow the characterisation of the nature of these processes by addressing various informative aspects such as their variety, complexity, and strength. This framework is implemented in the freely available and open-source software dialign. Using these measures, we present a contrastive study between Human–Human and Human–Agent dialogues on various corpora that reveals major differences in the lexical alignment and self-repetition behaviours. Lastly, we address the challenge of integrating lexical alignment capabilities in artificial agents. To this end, we describe guidelines and we discuss the integration of the proposed framework in a real-time dialogue system.

Коммуникации в спорте и «околоспорта»: вехи на пути к медиатизации

The article is devoted to the development of such direction of modern communication science as the analysis of both intra-sports interactions and "near-sports" space of communication, i.e. communication channels between sports and adjacent social segments. A special place belongs to the media, which not only reflect a sports life, but also shape its public perception, interests, and assessment. It is reflected the stages and models of interaction between sports and the media, starting with pre-revolutionary print media and ending with Internet communications, the role of media in the sport’s images formation, its position in the sociocultural space. The process of sports mediatization, accompanied by the complication of its interaction with other communicative discourses, is considered.

Keep Calm in Heated Debates: How People Perceive Different Styles of Discourse in a Scientific Debate

Scientific debates are, in an epistemological sense, argumentative approaches aimed at coming to the most appropriate conclusion. However, as these debates sometimes involve interpersonal rather than content-driven attacks (e.g., an argument between scientific experts might involve personal dislike), the following question arises: How do such communication behaviors affect people’s perception of the argument? In an empirical study, we presented prospective teachers (N = 222) with a newspaper article about two scientific experts controversially discussing the pros and cons of a fictional vocabulary training program. Using a 1 × 2 between-subject design, the article contained either a neutral or an incivil discourse style. The dependent measures evaluated how participants perceived the experts’ trustworthiness and how they viewed the practical relevance of the scientific topic at hand. Results revealed that participants who read the neutral-style discourse perceived the two experts as having more expertise, higher integrity, and higher benevolence than participants who read the incivil-style discourse. However, the groups did not differ in their ratings of how beneficial the scientific findings might be in the classroom. Overall, this study shows that discourse style indeed influences the perceived trustworthiness of experts, in that it might be damaged in heated debates. The study therefore suggests that the scientific community’s methodological and social conventions should be addressed in higher education, in this case teacher education, as understanding these conventions is important for substantially evaluating heated scientific debates.

Analysis of Alienation of College Students' Network Communication from the Perspective of Communicative Behavior Theory

According to Habermas' theory of communicative behavior, communicative behavior is the most reasonable social behavior. It takes language as the medium, takes the life world as the background, and pays attention to the intersubjectivity between actors. At present, there are some alienation phenomena of network communication among college students, such as addiction to Internet communication, crisis of trust, difficulties in real communication and decline of ethics and morality. The theory of communication behavior has certain enlightening significance for solving the alienation of college students' network communication, including strengthening the cultivation of the inter subjectivity awareness of College Students' network communication, improving the network communication qualification of college students, and standardizing the network communication environment of college students. Alienation refers to the things that originally belong to human beings or the result of human activities gain the independence and in turn become the power of restricting and ruling people. [1] Communication is the basic existence mode of people in society, which is a kind of equal and free direct communication, established with language as the medium, between people. When the relationship between people changes from "subject-subject" to "subject-object", communication begins to dissimilate. In the era of network information, the network communication, with the Internet as the intermediary and text information as the symbol, can change the constraints of the identity background of the communication subject and cross the obstacles of time and space, so as to expand the scope of communication. However, due to the college student’s irrational cognition of the network and characteristics of the network communication, such as the virtual and hidden, the network communication will have a negative impact on their "online" and "offline" communication, resulting in the alienation of network communication. The theory of communicative behavior has made great achievements in criticizing the alienation of communication brought about by instrumental rationality, realizing the rationalization of communication, and standardizing the social public order. It is of great significance to solve the problem of network communication alienation of contemporary college students.

Optimization of Linear Antenna Array Using Binary Cat Swarm Optimization (BCSO)

Background: Antennas serve a vital aspect in modern wireless communication. Designing antennas with very high directivity is very important to solve the long-distance communication problem. Though regularly excited and evenly spaced linear antenna arrays delivers good directivity but also leads to problem related to higher side lobe. For diminishing the level of side lobe, the array can be constructed either by amending the excitation amplitudes non-uniformly with all physical spaces of the antenna elements keeping consistent or vice versa. Methods: In this work, a novel mathematical objective function has been formulated. The objective function has been solved using a recently developed evolutionary optimization technique, i.e., Binary cat swarm optimization. So for better efficiency, the cat swarm optimization technique has been modified. Results: The results have been compared with the popular algorithms like Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Cat Swarm Optimization (CSO) in terms of Side Lobe Level (SLL), achieved fitness and execution time. The proposed algorithm achieves 0.5dB, 1.7 dB and 3dB smaller SLL as compared to CSO, PSO and GA respectively. In addition to SLL, achieved fitness using BCSO is in the range of 0.001 which is smallest among the compared algorithms. Conclusion: It was found that the modified version namely binary cat swarm optimization algorithm outperform other well-known evolutionary optimization algorithms.

Testing the Validity and Reliability of the Adapted Health Communication Assessment Tool©

BackgroundCommunication skills of nursing students is an area of interest for development, research, and refinement. The Health Communication Assessment Tool (HCAT©), allows evaluation of nursing students’ communication skills and behaviors. MethodData were collected to determine the statistically significant difference in student group evaluations. ResultsChi-square statistics revealed a 33% difference in student group evaluations proving the alternative hypothesis true. Cohen's kappa, Cronbach's alpha, and factor analysis confirmed interrater reliability and validity of adapted HCAT©. Conclusion(s)The adapted HCAT© is an effective evaluation tool of students’ communication skills.

Early Regulatory Skills and Social Communication Development in Infants with Down Syndrome

Children with Down syndrome (DS) demonstrate substantial variability in communication and language outcomes. One potential source of variability in this skill area may be early regulatory function. Characterizing the early link between regulatory function and early social communication may benefit infants with DS at risk of difficulties with social communication and language skill acquisition. Forty-three infants with DS were assessed at two time points, six months apart. At Time 1, the average chronological age was 9.0 months (SD = 3.9) and caregivers completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R) to assess regulatory function. Six months later, caregivers rated infant communication at the second visit using the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Infant Toddler Checklist (CSBS-ITC). Infant developmental level was assessed at both visits using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition and caregivers reported on developmental history and biomedical comorbidities. Infant regulatory function at Time 1 predicted social communication outcomes at Time 2, six months later. Findings from this study suggest that elevated risk for pronounced communication challenges may be detectable as early as infancy in DS.

Delay-Constrained Buffer-Aided Relay Selection in the Internet of Things With Decision-Assisted Reinforcement Learning

This paper investigates the reinforcement learning for the relay selection in the delay-constrained buffer-aided networks. The buffer-aided relay selection significantly improves the outage performance but often at the price of higher latency. On the other hand, modern communication systems such as the Internet of Things often have strict requirement on the latency. It is thus necessary to find relay selection policies to achieve good throughput performance in the buffer-aided relay network while stratifying the delay constraint. With the buffers employed at the relays and delay constraints imposed on the data transmission, obtaining the best relay selection becomes a complicated high-dimensional problem, making it hard for the reinforcement learning to converge. In this paper, we propose the novel decision-assisted deep reinforcement learning to improve the convergence. This is achieved by exploring the a-priori information from the buffer-aided relay system. The proposed approaches can achieve high throughput subject to delay constraints. Extensive simulation results are provided to verify the proposed algorithms.