Group Self Research Articles

Dynamic Self-assessment: Is it an Effective Task for Pragmatic Development and Metapragmatic Awareness?

This paper aimed to investigate the effects of self-assessment-based instruction on the acquisition of speech acts of suggestion, complaint, and request. Its second aim was to investigate the accuracy of students’ pragmatic rating as measured against teacher rating using WDCT. The participants were 30 university students taking their general English course. In both dynamic self-assessment and comparison groups, each session the teacher taught a conversation containing a speech act and had the students completed a WDCT. The results of the study demonstrated that, despite the self-assessment group's better performance on most of the items in WDCT, their overall score did not significantly exceed that of the comparison group. In addition, the comparison group's self- assessment manifested a higher inter-rate reliability with teacher rating. These findings cast doubt on the effect of dynamic self-assessment as an effective task for pragmatic acquisition and meta pragmatic awareness.

Personal Group-Self and Transpersonal Groupobject

Two usages of the term `group self' are delineated: (1) an individual's `personal group-self' or personal identity as a member of a group; and (2) the `transpersonal group's self' or members' personifications of the group as though it had its own consciousness and personal agency. We do not imply any notion of a `group mind' or `collective consciousness' as objective truth. We refer instead to beliefs about persons by persons. In this constructivist sense, we describe the `groupobject' function of the personified group, outline some common archaic and mature patterns of its expression in therapy groups, and derive some therapeutic implications of our formulation.

Groups to Resolve Conflicts Between Groups: Diplomacy with a Therapeutic Dimension

The “group self,” an individual's self-perception as a member of a group, is distinguished from the “group's self,” a personification of the group as a person with a self. The perceived “group's self” of an opposing other group is often a repository for attributes group members are not ready to recognize in their own “group's self.” Theoretically, the need for an adversarial other to “hold” one's own group's unwanted attributes—and thus to complete one's own “group's self”—contributes, however unconsciously, to the apparent intractability of intergroup disputes. In dealing with these issues, I compare intergroup conflict resolution (ICR) groups with therapy groups, on the one hand, and advocacy groups on the other. All of this sets the stage for a presentation of two ICR projects and their analysis in group-developmental terms.

Determining the three-dimensional fold of a protein from approximate constraints: a simulation study.

We propose a new approach for calculating the three-dimensional (3D) structure of a protein from distance and dihedral angle constraints derived from experimental data. We suggest that such constraints can be obtained from experiments such as tritium planigraphy, chemical or enzymatic cleavage of the polypeptide chain, paramagnetic perturbation of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra, measurement of hydrogen-exchange rates, mutational studies, mass spectrometry, and electron paramagnetic resonance. These can be supplemented with constraints from theoretical prediction of secondary structures and of buried/exposed residues. We report here distance geometry calculations to generate the structures of a test protein Staphylococcal nuclease (STN), and the HIV-1 rev protein (REV) of unknown structure. From the available 3D atomic coordinates of STN, we set up simulated data sets consisting of varying number and quality of constraints, and used our group's Self Correcting Distance Geometry (SECODG) program DIAMOD to generate structures. We could generate the correct tertiary fold from qualitative (approximate) as well as precise distance constraints. The root mean square deviations of backbone atoms from the native structure were in the range of 2.0 A to 8.3 A, depending on the number of constraints used. We could also generate the correct fold starting from a subset of atoms that are on the surface and those that are buried. When we used data sets containing a small fraction of incorrect distance constraints, the SECODG technique was able to detect and correct them. In the case of REV, we used a combination of constraints obtained from mutagenic data and structure predictions. DIAMOD generated helix-loop-helix models, which, after four self-correcting cycles, populated one family exclusively. The features of the energy-minimized model are consistent with the available data on REV-RNA interaction. Our method could thus be an attractive alternative for calculating protein 3D structures, especially in cases where the traditional methods of X-ray crystallography and multidimensional NMR spectroscopy have been unsuccessful.

Leader anxiety during an adventure education residential experience: An exploratory case study

Research in outdoor and adventure activities has frequently focused on participant outcomes but has seldom sought to understand the experiences of the leader. This case study evaluates changes in the anxiety of a leader during an eight day residential experience for 30 Physical Education students, based in the Langdale Valley (English Lake District). A one way analysis of variance revealed significant differences in the self confidence scores of the leader measured using the CSAI-2 for the time prior to the group completing a ridge walk supervised by members of the teaching team, and prior to the group's self contained two day expedition (p=0.048). The data also supports a general trend of higher cognitive and somatic anxiety before the group activities commenced in the morning and last thing at night. Qualitative information in the form of field diary entries supported that increases in anxiety and a reduction in self-confidence were symptomatic of instances where the leader felt that they could not directly influence event outcomes. This study recognises a potential need for leaders to consider the implementation of strategies to manage stress levels during extended residential periods, although further research is required to more fully understand the phenomenon of leader anxiety.

Telling our story: on 'we' literary narratives

In this article I seek to outline some of the distinctive features of the narrative 'we', both as speech position or narrative voice and as a narrated entity, that is, a collectivity defined by a bond of some kind, and engaged in a series of activities. From a linguistic perspective, 'we' does not designate multiple 'I's, but rather an individual 'we'-sayer, together with one or more co-utterers and/or hearers and/or others, all of whom belong to the reference class of this 'we'. Salient properties of literary 'we' narratives of the twentieth-century on the level of narration are as follows: there is precisely one 'we' sayer on the highest level of embedding; the nature of the 'we' group is defined by features belonging to the narrated domain; what the 'we' sayer asserts about his/her group concerns its identity, actions, and states in the narrated domain; the 'we' sayer is not a designated spokesman for the group - he or she speaks about, but not for it- and the literary 'we' narrative is therefore not a group speech act. On the level of the narrated, a discussion of the 'we' as topic entity includes at least the following three dimensions: group actions, especially joint actions; the group's sense of 'we'-ness; the group's self awareness and self image. Literary 'we' narratives are, however, not completely collectivistic. They maintain a balance between individual and group records of action, especially with respect to verbal and mental actions. They consequently include passages in the 'I', 'you', or 'he or she' mode, and the narrator often refers to himself/herself as a distinct, identifiable 'I', not just the impersonal 'we' sayer of official pronouncements. I conclude with some probable reasons for the rarity of literary 'we' narratives.