Familiar Context Research Articles

Context-Dependent Responses to the Spread of COVID-19 Among National and International Students During the First Lockdown: An Online Survey.

Restrictions to minimize social contact was necessary to prevent the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus but may have impacted individuals' mental well-being. Emotional responses are modulated by contextual information. Living abroad during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic may have boosted the feeling of isolation as the context is unfamiliar. This study compared the psychological impact of social distancing in national students (living in a familiar context) versus international students (living in an unfamiliar context). During March/April 2020 (first lockdown in the Netherlands), 850 university students completed an online survey. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to compare how students' responses to the virus were predicted by health anxiety, emotional distress, and personal traits. Compared with national students, international students showed higher levels in 4 identified factors (COVID-19-related worry, perceived risk of infection, distance from possibly contaminated objects, distance from social situations). The factors were mainly predicted by health anxiety across international students, while emotional distress and individual traits (eg, intolerance of uncertainty) played a role across national students. In the familiar context, individual characteristics (traits) predicted the responses to the virus, while the unfamiliar context drove individuals' health-focused responses. Living in a foreign country is associated with psychological burdens and this should be considered by universities for more pronounced social support and clear references to health-related institutions.

Children with profound intellectual disabilities metod of communication in family environments in new situational contexts part II

The first part of the article presents the characteristics of communication of a child with profound intellectual disability with an adult in the family environment in a familiar situational context during dressing and undressing activities. The second part of the article describes the activity of dressing and undressing in a new situational context (compared to the first part, one context selected by parents from five possible ones, such as place, time, accessories, adult participant, actions of an adult participant of the interaction, has changed. In the conducted research, a qualitative research orientation, as well as the method of observation, the technique of observing samples of events and the authors Sheet for Observation, Analysis and Interpretation of Communicative Behaviour in a Communicative Situation were used. The research material was developed according to the planned stages: (1) analysis of the collected recordingsdescription of the situational context, recording of the childs and adults communicative behaviour; (2) analysis of the childs communicative behaviouridentification of non-verbal and verbal communicative behaviour according to the communicative channels of children with profound intellectual disability(breathing, body signals, facial expression, eye expression, gestures, posture/body position, speech); (3) interpretation of observed communicative behaviours assigning characteristics (effectiveness and appropriateness) to communicative behaviour and attempting to give them meaning (identifying childrens behaviour that may indicate attempts to initiate, maintain or interrupt interactions). The article includes an analysis of fragments of communication situations, which was aim at drawing conclusions about the factors determining the effectiveness and appropriateness of communication of a child with profound intellectual disability. An attempt was also made to consider the impact of changes made in the course of dressing and undressing activities. The presented article is part of the nationwide research that was carried out as part of the doctoral dissertation entitled Communication of children with profound intellectual disability in the family environment in familiar and new situational contexts.

Spline local basis methods for nonparametric density estimation

This work reviews the literature on spline local basis methods for non-parametric density estimation. Particular attention is paid to B-spline density estimators which have experienced recent advances in both theory and methodology. These estimators occupy a very interesting space in statistics, which lies aptly at the cross-section of numerous statistical frameworks. New insights, experiments, and analyses are presented to cast the various estimation concepts in a unified context, while parallels and contrasts are drawn to the more familiar contexts of kernel density estimation. Unlike kernel density estimation, the study of local basis estimation is not yet fully mature, and this work also aims to highlight the gaps in existing literature which merit further investigation.

The world of interpretations in culture space

Text interpretation is essentially a dialogical form of knowledge. The sense of a text exists in reality only within human communication, within a situation of a dialogue. Dialogue turns out to be impossible when its participants only consider the interlocutor's messages through their own usual and limited set of senses, or they try to fully perceive the interlocutor’s way of comprehension by tending to break all links with their sociocultural environment’s normative-valued systems. And only partial digression beyond the limits of the conventional enables us to find common ground for understanding. Therefore, understanding always appears not simply as a dialogue, but as a collision of "the usual" and "the unusual". This process is connected with loosening of well-known ideas, taking phenomena out of their comprehension’s familiar context and destructing the old sense. Understanding starts from the initial point in dialogical movement – a given text requiring understanding as a communicative subject. A movement to the past – past contexts, when it is necessary to understand the text the way the author understood it himself without going beyond this understanding. The solution of this hermeneutic issue is rather difficult and requires the involvement of a huge amount of material. And finally, a movement to the future – prescience, construction of further contexts. Senses "flatten" without such a work of understanding. They transform into knowledge and stop dividing (changing). Every author is a prisoner of his epoch, of his contemporaneity. Subsequent times liberate him from this captivity, and literary studies are called upon to assist this liberation. Hence there is a need for the skills of not only understanding, but also explaining and interpreting texts. When we move from understanding a text to interpreting it, we leave the text in its semantic uniqueness and move into the communicative space of semantic transformations.

Building rapport as a technique to motivate a young incarcerated to learn English

Teaching prison inmates may seem very difficult as the context is quite unfamiliar to the majority of English as a foreign language teachers. There are even prejudices that can blind us. Being able to motivate this particular type of student to learn the language is, however, also part of our job and duty as educators. This study aims to analyse if building rapport with prisoners actually increases the motivation we try to encourage. It also aims to identify techniques that may be helpful for achieving the desired response from this type of student. In addition, I hope this work will motivate many other teachers to lose their fear of teaching a language beyond already familiar contexts, to dare to practice in contexts where prejudices abound. The data comprises 13 reflections, written after sixteen sessions. These were analysed for themes, and these were the grouped and coded under different labels or categories. The results suggest that establishing and building rapport with students whose learning and living context is a jail, can help to increase their attention and desire to learn more, and also to promote their active participation regarding to planning their learning.

Unintentional cannabis intoxication in infants and toddlers presenting with neurological impairment in a Pediatric Emergency Department.

Recent data show that the rising consumption of cannabis has increased the rate of acute intoxication in pediatric age. Common patterns of pediatric poisoning consist of exploratory ingestions in younger children. A history of poisoning is often not provided; therefore, it could be advisable to use an objective biological marker. The clinical presentation of occult ingestion can range from asymptomatic to critically ill. Neurological involvement is one of the most described presentations. The goal of our study was to examine the presentation of acute cannabis intoxication in a sample of 13 pediatric patients under 3 years. A retrospective epidemiological investigation on acute cannabinoid intoxication was conducted on children under 3 years, recruited between 2016 and 2020. All patients were tested for urine drug screening suspecting poisoning as reason for Emergency Department (ED) admission. Thirteen of forty-eight patients tested (27%) were positive for Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Ingestion was the route of intoxication in all of them. Only in five cases the possible accidental intake of cannabinoids was promptly declared. Twelve children accessed on ED due to a neurological symptomatology not attributable to known causes in the medical history. Differential diagnosis for abuse drugs exposure in young children is broad: the urine drug screening plays a central role for confirmation of the diagnostic suspicion and identification of the specific substance. A positive result combined with a history of potential access to cannabis could prevent unnecessary, invasive, expensive procedures. When identified, the management is predominantly supportive. In this article, we want to emphasize the importance of always considering drug intoxication in children with acute neurological symptoms especially in cases of ambiguous familiar or social context. Further studies will be needed to better characterize the alarm bells for intoxication and to identify a strategy for the prevention of unintentional cannabinoid intoxication.

Meat safety legislation and its opportunities and hurdles for innovative approaches: A review.

Albert Einstein has been quoted "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them". Innovations are necessary to meet future challenges regarding sustainability, animal welfare, slaughter hygiene, meat safety and quality, not at least for optimal balance between these dimensions. The red meat safety legislation texts from Europe, New Zealand, USA, and global guidelines, were analysed for normative formulations ("how it is or should be done") that may create non-intentional hurdles to innovation and new technology. Detailed descriptions of slaughtering techniques and meat processes may hinder innovative processing from being investigated and implemented. The identified problematic normative phrases typically either conserve conventional technologies or organisation of the work, prescribe solutions where no established method, objective criteria or limits exits, or put forward visions impossible to obtain. The Codex Alimentarius was found to have less normative formulations and more functional demands ("what to achieve") than the national and regional regulations. European, New Zealand's and US' legislation share many similarities and challenges, and they all reflect the prevailing processing methods. Consequences are briefly commented, and alternative objective functional demands suggested. Normative legislation texts provide familiar context easier to understand, but also make legislation voluminous. This review underlines the mutual dependency between risk-based legislation and conditional flexibility, and between functional demands and control activities targeted on measurable objective criteria. The legislation does not have to be either or. Objective normative phrases in legislation can function as a least common multiple if alternative methods are allowed on condition that they fulfil objective criteria. Context and practical advice should mainly come from textbooks, consultants, white papers and in Food Business Operator's own guidelines, among others.

How compliance with web accessibility standards shapes the experiences of users with and without disabilities

Benefits for all user groups is one of the most prominent motivations to provide accessible information and services on the web. Designing digital technologies in a more inclusive manner for users with sensory, motor, or cognitive impairments enhances their overall quality. In practice, work on web accessibility often relies on complying with standards. But whether standards lead to improved usability and a satisfying user experience for all user groups is controversial. The present study aims at deepening our understanding of how compliance with web accessibility standards shapes the experiences of both users with and without disabilities. In a randomised controlled experiment, 66 participants with visual impairments and 65 participants without visual impairments solved tasks on an online shop built with either low (NA) or high (AA) conformance to web accessibility standards. The results show no statistically significant effects on outcomes related to usability and user experience. However, analysis of open-ended answers suggests that participants with visual impairments reported more positive experiences, and participants without visual impairments fewer negative experiences while using the online shop conformant to web accessibility standards. We therefore recommend adopting a more differentiated perspective on what can be achieved through compliance with web accessibility standards and emphasise that conformance-based approaches should be complemented with user-centred and participatory design methods. Further, since most participants reported being experienced users and an online shop is often a familiar context, more research in other settings is required.

Contextual diversity during word learning through reading benefits generalisation of learned meanings to new contexts.

From mid-childhood onwards, most new words are learned through reading. The precise meaning of many words depends upon the linguistic context in which they are encountered, which readers use to infer the appropriate interpretation. However, it is unclear what features of these linguistic contexts best support learning of new word meanings. We investigated whether learning words in contextually diverse sentences benefits word form and meaning learning in adults (n = 239). Participants learned meanings for 8 pseudowords through reading 10 sentences about each. Four pseudowords were learned in a diverse condition (10 sentences on different topics) and four were learned in a non-diverse condition (10 sentences on the same topic). An old-new decision post-test indicated that diversity did not influence word form learning. In a second post-test, participants chose which trained pseudoword completed a sentence from either an unfamiliar, untrained context, or a familiar, trained context. For familiar contexts, accuracy was higher for pseudowords learned in the non-diverse condition, but for unfamiliar contexts, accuracy was higher for pseudowords learned in the diverse condition. These results suggest that diverse contexts may promote development of flexible, decontextualised meaning representations that are easier to generalise to new contexts. Conversely, non-diverse contexts may favour extraction of context-bound representations that are more easily used in the same context.

L’Ottocento di Luigi Valeriano e Pompeo Pozzi Due generazioni di un negozio milanese d’arte

The sequence of events in the lives of Luigi Valeriano Pozzi and Pompeo Pozzi, intertwined as father and son, provides a glimpse into the world of art publishing of XIX Century Milan. Their shop in Galleria De Cristoforis is the starting point for a reassessment of the careers of two well known makers: the aim is to shed light on their familiar and urban context, in search of the roots of their professions. While Luigi Valeriano was a respected business owner, although a former clandestine printer in the French and Austrian city, Pompeo’s career started instead in a less adventurous juncture, in Brera; however, soon came the year 1848, and few months later his newly found appreciation for art photography.

Health literacy in higher education students: findings from a Portuguese study

Abstract Background Health literacy (HL) concerns the knowledge and competences of people to meet the complex demands of health in modern society. It is essential for health promotion, disease prevention and healthcare. Young adults can perform a very important role in taking a more active role in managing and protect their health, so this study aimed to identify the HL levels in the population of higher education students, according to the European Health Literacy Survey (HLS-EU-PT) and to evaluate its association with social and academic determinants. Methods A quantitative, observational, and cross-sectional study was carried out based on an online survey disseminated in Portuguese universities. Data were analysed using binary logistic regression, adjusted for age, income, parents’ education, gender, and chronic disease report. Results In total, 4801 students were surveyed, 76% female. Of those, 44% revealed a problematic or inadequate level of HL. Those students with higher income levels (OR (95% CI), OR = 4.5 (3.4; 5.9) and whose parents had higher education levels (OR = 1.3(1.1; 1.5) had higher odds of achieving sufficient or excellent levels of HL, even after adjusting for confounders. In what concerns academic determinants, data revealed that HL tends to be sufficient or excellent among those students from health-related courses (OR = 2.0 (1.6; 2.5). In the subgroup of students from non-health-related courses, it was found that HL levels do not differ in 1st year and last year's students. However, in students from health-related courses, data revealed that a last yeaŕs students had higher odds of having sufficient or excellent HL levels compared to a 1st-year student (OR = 1.7 (1.4; 2.2). Conclusions This study reveals low HL levels and addresses that socioeconomic and familiar context are determinants of HL in higher education students. Future intervention studies are needed, focused on these determinants so that adequate levels of HL are achieved in higher education students. Key messages

Children with profound intellectual disabilities metod of communication in family environments in familiar situational contexts part I

The first part of this article presents the characteristics of communication in children with profound intellectual disabilities with an adult in a family environment in a familiar situational context during dressing and undressing activities. The second part of the article focuses on dressing and undressing activities in a new situational context. In the conducted research, a qualitative research orientation was applied using the method of observation and the technique of observing samples of events. Recordings of routine daily activities dressing and undressing, eating, playing were analyzed. The observed data were recorded in the authors Sheet for Observation, Analysis and Interpretation of Communicative Behavior in a Communicative Situation. The analysis of the research material was carried out according to the planned stages: (1) analysis of the collected recordings description of the situational context, recording of the childs and adults communicative behavior; (2) analysis of the childs communicative behavior identification of non-verbal and verbal communicative behavior according to the communicative channels of children with profound intellectual disabilities (breathing, body signals, facial expression, eye expression, gesture, body position/posture, speech); (3) interpretation of observed communicative behaviors assigning characteristics to communicativebehaviors (effectiveness and appropriateness) and attempting to assign meaning to them (identifying childrens behaviors that may indicate attempts to initiate, sustain or interrupt interactions). Selected fragments of communicative situations were also analyzed. Based on these, the factors determining the effectiveness and appropriateness of the method of communication used by children with profound intellectual disabilities were inferred. This study is of cognitive and practical value. It complements the existing knowledge in the literature on the topic and can also contribute to introducing practical solutions to support the development of the communication process of children with profound intellectual disabilities.

The role of problem context familiarity in modelling first-order ordinary differential equations

Based on the unpredictable effect of context familiarity when students solve real-world problems, this work aims to analyse how certain contexts can be used by pre-service mathematics teachers in the representation and real-world verification of a first-order mathematical model in the classroom in the subject of Ordinary Differential Equations. Specifically, this paper reports a classroom experience in which pre-service mathematics teachers compared the solution of a first-order ordinary differential equations (ODE) with a real-world experimental model. Using documentary records (i.e., students´ hand-written solutions and field notes) and a questionnaire on students´ perceptions on this classroom experience, qualitative results indicated that the pre-service mathematics teachers’ familiarity with an authentic context was a fundamental factor they chose a real-world model to represent the solution of a first-order ODE. Our analysis of the results highlights the importance of integrating familiar real-world contexts for pre-service mathematics teachers to model a first-order ODE, which is one of the fundamental principles of STEM disciplines.

A Familiar Book in a (Un)Familiar Context: A Comparative Qualitative Study on Bible Usage of Indonesian Congregations in the Netherlands

Abstract After Indonesia’s war of independence, a flow of migration was triggered to the Netherlands, the former colonizer. Some of the Christians who migrated to the Netherlands founded their own congregations in Dutch society. The present article regards how these Indonesian congregations shaped their use of the Bible, in light of their community formation under the influence of migration, through a heuristic comparison with the results of research conducted by Foppen et al. on Bible readers in the Netherlands at large. The empirical study of three Indonesian congregations shows that one of the key elements of the Bible usage of ordinary readers in the three respective congregations is that they view the Bible as a guide to life. They further appreciate the polyphony of biblical texts, since it enables contextual theologies. Further results regard preferred language, Bible translation, and digitalization.

Language variation in a shifting community: Different patterns of noun incorporation in Modern Chukchi

Research questions: This study asks whether an interface phenomenon such as noun incorporation (NI) displays meaningful socially conditioned variation in the endangered polysynthetic language, Chukchi, by investigating whether speakers of all levels of experience or proficiency make use of NI in a consistent, rule-governed way. Design and methodology: This study compares production data from small groups of speakers of a moribund language. Study tasks include a controlled production task in which speakers are asked to construct sentences using provided lexical items. The lexical items were conditioned so as to trigger NI in certain stimuli (on the basis of verbal valency and argument animacy). Data and analysis: The production data was transcribed and coded for the occurrence and structural type of NI (compounding vs. syntactic incorporation). The results were compared across three groups of speakers: conservative older speakers, younger attriting speakers, and new speakers. Findings/conclusions: NI frequency and productivity clearly differ among the three groups. CSs use incorporation frequently and productively in the expected contexts, while ASs use productive incorporation only in familiar contexts, followed by NSs who make little to no use of incorporation. All speaker groups display knowledge of the appropriate circumstances in which to use incorporation. Originality: This study makes use of a novel experimental methodology in studying several under-researched areas: variation in traditional Chukchi, shift-induced variation in a polysynthetic language, and NI as a locus of variation. Significance/implications: This study contributes to our understanding of the behavior of non-normative speakers of endangered languages and demonstrates that they play a role in language preservation. The study shows that the diffuse nature of the Chukchi speech community is different from comparatively well-studied shift settings (especially in the North American and European contexts) in its lack of a community of use or practice, which presents unique challenges in language maintenance.

Aversive Contexts Reduce Activity in the Ventral Subiculum- BNST Pathway

Many anxiety disorders can be characterized by abnormalities in detecting and learning about threats, and the inability to reduce fear responses in non-threatening environments. PTSD may be the most representative of context processing pathology, as intrusive memories are experienced in “safe” contexts. The ventral subiculum (vSUB), the main output of the ventral hippocampus, encodes environmental cues and is critical for context processing. The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) contributes to anxiety-like behaviors as well as context fear conditioning. Given the important roles of the BNST and the vSUB in these anxiety and fear-related behaviors, and the anatomical connections between the two brain regions, the major aims of this study were to characterize the anatomy and function of the vSUB–BNST pathway. First, using the retrograde tracer cholera toxin, we mapped the topographical arrangement of the vSUB–BNST pathway. Dual retrograde tracing experiments revealed neurons projecting to the BNST and those projecting to the basolateral amygdala are distinct populations. Second, we assessed whether activity in this pathway, as indexed by FOS immunohistochemistry, was modulated by context fear conditioning. Our data reveal less activation of the vSUB–BNST pathway in both males and females in aversive contexts and the greatest activation when animals explored a neutral familiar context. In addition, the vSUB of females contained fewer GABAergic neurons compared to males. These findings suggest that the vSUB–BNST pathway is involved in eliciting appropriate responses to contexts.

The View from here – Teaching ‘Popular’ Nationalism in English

Abstract This essay situates the academic enquiry into the ‘popular’ idea of the nation within the shifting disciplinary contours of English in India. Using the iconic Bharatbala music video ‘Vande Mataram’ (1998) as a case study, it demonstrates how methods of analysis derived from literary studies may be used to engage with the mediated nature of contemporary culture; the classroom experience of ‘reading’ together a popular cultural text reflects as well as instantiates the expansion of ‘English’ at the level of both content and form. The collaborative pedagogic exercise of decoding the ‘signs’ that constitute the audio-visual text through familiar literary terms such as imagery, symbolism, setting and character reveals how the cultural discourse of nationalism – in terms of its historical legacy as well as its current political resonance – can be ‘read’ contextually using disciplinary methods of ‘English’. I argue that the ‘literary’ can no longer be defined only in terms of the nature of the text one brings into the classroom – it is a mode of analysis that can be extended to examining cultural texts in other media formats too, especially if the enterprise of ‘doing’ English in a formal, academic set-up is to be anything more than a reiteration of the value of Anglo-American canonical literature. If the English canon has traditionally been a means of teaching students how to ask fundamental questions about cultural representation, the same aim is now achieved also through the use of texts from other, more familiar and local contexts and media.

The role of working memory in contextual cueing of visual attention

It is usually easier to find objects in familiar contexts that we have seen before. The type of learning that underlies this facilitation, known as contextual cueing, has been understood as an incidental and automatic process given that, among other reasons, it seems to be independent of working memory (WM) resources. This claim has found support in previous research showing that contextual cueing can be acquired latently, while participants perform a demanding WM task. However, previous studies have not always found this pattern of results and, in general, the available evidence is far from conclusive. The aim of the present study was to clarify the role of WM in contextual learning with two large-sample, confirmatory experiments. Our results show a robust contextual cueing effect even when visuospatial working memory resources were recruited by a demanding secondary task.

Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments.

One of the most salient features of life is its capacity to handle novelty and namely to thrive and adapt to new circumstances and changes in both the environment and internal components. An understanding of this capacity is central to several fields: the evolution of form and function, the design of effective strategies for biomedicine, and the creation of novel life forms via chimeric and bioengineering technologies. Here, we review instructive examples of living organisms solving diverse problems and propose competent navigation in arbitrary spaces as an invariant for thinking about the scaling of cognition during evolution. We argue that our innate capacity to recognize agency and intelligence in unfamiliar guises lags far behind our ability to detect it in familiar behavioral contexts. The multi-scale competency of life is essential to adaptive function, potentiating evolution and providing strategies for top-down control (not micromanagement) to address complex disease and injury. We propose an observer-focused viewpoint that is agnostic about scale and implementation, illustrating how evolution pivoted similar strategies to explore and exploit metabolic, transcriptional, morphological, and finally 3D motion spaces. By generalizing the concept of behavior, we gain novel perspectives on evolution, strategies for system-level biomedical interventions, and the construction of bioengineered intelligences. This framework is a first step toward relating to intelligence in highly unfamiliar embodiments, which will be essential for progress in artificial intelligence and regenerative medicine and for thriving in a world increasingly populated by synthetic, bio-robotic, and hybrid beings.

Is threat detection Black and White? Race effects in threat-related perceptual decision-making.

There is a vast literature base indicating that people respond differently to Black and White individuals based on differential perceptions of threat. As facial affect is a fundamental way that individuals communicate their emotional state, studies have examined differences in how Black and White threatening facial expressions are perceived. However, perceptual decisions regarding threatening and neutral stimuli often occur in familiar contexts or in environments where explicit cues indicate the presence or absence of threat. Furthermore, these decisions often occur in "noisy" (i.e., ambiguous) environments where the quality of sensory evidence is poor, requiring us to rely on perceptual "sets" or expectations to interpret such evidence. Therefore, in the present study we used a two-alternative perceptual decision-making task in which participants used threatening and neutral cue-elicited perceptual sets to discriminate between subsequently presented threatening and neutral Black and White faces. Threatening cues led to a greater tendency to decide that both Black and White faces were threatening, as well as faster and greater discriminability between threatening and neutral Black and White faces. However, race-related differences revealed that, following both cue types, discriminability between threatening and neutral Black faces was worse compared to White faces. Therefore, using a paradigm that is ecologically valid, our findings highlight the importance of examining basic aspects of visual perception to understand race-related differences in threat-related perceptual decision-making. Furthermore, these findings emphasize the importance of anticipatory top-down factors when making perceptual decisions about the presence or absence of threat in faces of different races. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).