Independent Judgment Research Articles

Religion, Authenticity, and Clinical Ethics Consultation.

A clinical ethics consultant (CEC) may, at times, be called upon to make independent substantive moral judgments and then offer justifications for those judgments. A CEC does not act unprofessionally by utilizing background beliefs that are religious in nature to justify those judgments. It is important, however, for a CEC to make such judgments authentically and, when asked, to offer up one's reasons for why one believes the judgment is true in a transparent fashion.

Screening for technical flaws in multiple-choice items. A generalizability study.

Construction errors in multiple-choice items are quite prevalent and constitute threats to test validity of multiple-choice tests. Currently very little research on the usefulness of systematic item screening by local review committees before test administration seem to exist. The aim of this study was therefore to examine validity and feasibility aspects of review committee screening for item flaws. We examined the reliability of item reviewers’ independent judgments of the presence/absence of item flaws with a generalizability study design and found only moderate reliability using five reviewers. Statistical analyses of actual exam scores could be a more efficient way of identifying flaws and improving average item discrimination of tests in local contexts. The question of validity of human judgments of item flaws is important - not just for sufficiently sound quality assurance procedures of tests in local test contexts - but also for the global research on item flaws.

Escaping unintended collusion in MBA programmes in China

The purpose of this article is to examine the problem of possible but unintended collusion between business schools and their Master of Business Administration (MBA) students, specifically as it relates to the recent need to promote ethical behaviour in business practice in a global context. The focal point of the article is on the relationship between MBA programmes and candidates in the context of guanxi in modern business and political environments. The article revisits the concept of guanxi philosophically and connects it to social responsibility and moral obligation in business education. The authors contend that guanxi may have been interpreted too loosely as networking, thus fostering an approach that ignores the important moral dimensions of the concept. The more philosophical approach, which includes such concepts as moral obligation, is recommended to safeguard the integrity of recruiting, student–teacher development, and the coursework of MBA programmes in the People’s Republic of China. In considering the practical implications, the article covers the re-examination of guanxi as a moral concept, the judicious application of caution when considering applicants based on their work experience, the use of free and independent academic judgment when questionable decisions and behaviours occur, and the open discussion of ethical decision-making in course activities.

Quorums enable optimal pooling of independent judgements in biological systems.

This article has been through an editorial process in which the authors decide how to respond to the issues raised during peer review. The Reviewing Editor's assessment is that all the issues have been addressed (see decision letter).

How to induce resistance to the misinformation effect? Characteristics of positive feedback in the reinforced self-affirmation procedure

ABSTRACTThe memory misinformation effect consists in the inclusion in witness testimonies of information from sources other than the given event. In the present article, research which aims to make people resistant to misinformation is presented. It is based on reinforced self-affirmation (RSA), a method designed to enhance participants’ self-confidence and therefore make them more willing to rely on their own memories instead of external sources. RSA includes self-affirmation and positive feedback. In the present research, the efficacy of various kinds of positive feedback was explored. The results of Experiment 1 suggested that positive feedback relating to memory (MemRSA) is effective in reducing the misinformation effect, while positive feedback relating to general cognitive ability is not. In Experiment 2, the superiority of MemRSA over inefficient feedback relating to attention was demonstrated. In Experiment 3, MemRSA was again effective, and more effective than inducing convictions about the independence of judgements, but this also reduced the misinformation effect. The results are discussed from the perspective of witnesses who remember the correct information yet rely on external sources due to a lack of confidence in t aforementioned heir memories.

Inducing resistance to the misinformation effect by means of reinforced self-affirmation: The importance of positive feedback.

The misinformation effect is one of the major threats for the quality of witness testimony. It involves including of information that is inconsistent with the course of an event, and which originates from sources other than the event itself, into a witness's report of the event. In the present article research is presented aiming at reducing the tendency to rely on misinformation. After viewing a video clip, participants received a post-event narrative describing the events in the film which in the misled group included some incorrect information about the clip. They were then administered reinforced self-affirmation (RSA), a technique aiming at boosting self-confidence in order to increase the tendency to rely on own memory instead of external cues. This technique consists of self-affirmation by means of writing down one’s greatest achievements in life and manipulated positive feedback. Feedback about memory, perception and independence of judgements was analyzed. All types of feedback effectively reduced the misinformation effect. Mediation analyzes confirmed that RSA operates via increased self-confidence or self-independence.

Children’s learning from others: Conformity to unconventional counting

The current study investigated whether children’s conformity to a majority testimony influenced their willingness to revise their own erroneous counting knowledge. The content of the testimonies focused on conventional rules of counting, by means of pseudoerrors (i.e., unconventional counts) occurring during a detection task. In this work measurements were taken at two different time points. At time 1 children aged 5 to 7 years (N = 88) first made independent judgments on the correctness of unconventional counting procedures presented by means of a computerized detection task. Subsequently, they watched a video in which four teachers (unanimous majority) or three (non-unanimous majority) made correct claims about the counts and children had to decide whether the informants were right or not, and justify their answers. Our participants conformed significantly more when the correct testimony was provided by a unanimous majority than by a non-unanimous majority. In addition, in two of the three pseudoerrors presented, there was no difference in the children’s tendency to conform to unconventional counts as age increased. At time 2, which was taken to test whether the effect of the testimony was maintained over time, the responses of the 32 children (16 from each age group) who had endorsed the claims of the unanimous majority at time 1 revealed that teachers’ testimonies only had a lasting influence on elementary school children’s understanding of conventional counting rules.

The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge ed. by Dirk Jongkind and Peter J. Williams

Reviewed by: The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge ed. by Dirk Jongkind and Peter J. Williams Peter R. Rodgers dirk jongkind and peter j. williams (eds.), The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017). Pp. 526. $27.16. The publication of a new critical edition of the Greek New Testament is a welcome event, and this is especially the case with the much-anticipated edition produced by Tyndale House in Cambridge, England. The editors, Dirk Jongkind and Peter J. Williams (together with Peter M. Head and Patrick James) are to be congratulated for this elegantly printed, beautifully bound, and reasonably priced edition. The impetus for this fresh edition was the concern of the editors and their colleagues to give a fresh presentation of the critical edition of the important nineteenth-century scholar Samuel Prideaux Tregelles. That edition was produced in 1870 and influenced the work of B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort. But Tregelles's work was eclipsed by the 1881 edition of Westcott and Hort, which quickly became the standard for scholars. Tregelles's independence of judgment and his concern to present the earliest obtainable text on the basis of the available evidence had led J. and W. to begin with his printed text and to revise where necessary. They state in the introduction that their revision has ended up being more thoroughgoing than they had expected, "such that it is now a completely new edition" (p. 506). The editors have followed Tregelles's "strong reliance on the testimony of documents and on the principle of proven antiquity" (pp. 505-6). They note their reliance on new evidence that has come to light, especially on papyri, since the nineteenth century. In light of this insistence, some of their textual choices are surprising. In particular, their choice to print μονογενὴς υἱός in John 1:18 seems strange. Not only have they departed from Tregelles's text, which read μονογενὴς θεός, but they have made this choice despite the strong documentary evidence for the latter that has come to light in the last century (66, 75). Readers will need to wait for the promised commentary on the Tyndale House Greek New Testament for an explanation of this surprising choice. Jongkind and Williams have worked to produce an uncluttered edition. They have sought to present "the Greek text with as little interruption as possible" (p. 515). This concern has led to a minimal apparatus, which cites only Greek manuscripts (listed on pp. 518-23) and includes neither versions nor patristic evidence. In some cases, however, such evidence is critical for making textual judgments. Such a place is Heb 2:9, where patristic evidence helps to tip the scales toward χωρὶς θεοῦ, the reading they did not choose to print in the text but which is increasingly attractive to editors and commentators. In addition, the editors have avoided scholarly signs such as brackets and dashes. They have given special attention to matters of orthography, order of books, paragraphs, breathings, accents, and punctuation following the earliest documentary evidence. But they have not marked perceived citations by special typeface. While they follow Tregelles in this particular matter, at least Tregelles noted OT citations in the outer margins, whereas the Tyndale House Edition does not follow his practice. This seems to be a feature all the more needed, given the robust and growing interest in biblical intertextuality and its potential importance for textual decisions. Perhaps the second edition, which this important resource deserves, will include this valuable feature and might even improve on the information offered by NA28. In making textual judgments, the editors state their concern to take into account recent work on scribal tendencies in the transmission of the text. They especially note the phenomenon [End Page 336] of assimilation, and they write that "the lengthening of the text by harmonization is partly offset by occasional omission of small words and non-essential phrases" (p. 506). This latter phenomenon is perhaps the most striking instance of scribal tendencies that has come to light in modern study. James Ronald Royse, in his landmark study Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri (NTTSD 36; Leiden: Brill, 2007) has demonstrated that...

Portfolios and practices for lifelong learning in ultrasound education

Introduction The focus of most ultrasound programs is to produce clinically competent sonographers who attain the requisite psychomotor skills, recognition of sonographic anatomy and pathology, and clinical reasoning for accurate diagnosis. University education directed towards these ends however, can leave the ‘learning to learn’ skills, and longer-term learning, under-appreciated. Education should provide students with opportunities to ‘sustain effective learning now and in the future’. One strategy used extensively in health and medical education to equip students with lifelong learning skills is Portfolio assessment. Portfolios have long been suggested as a logical bridge between university study and continuing professional education. Methods Thirty-three sonography students at a metropolitan Australian university volunteered over three consecutive years, to participate in educational design research targeting a Portfolio tool. The tool was re-designed to foster longer-term learning by adding specific learning skills to existing professional competencies. Five interventions were included: independent learning, judgement, reflection, self-assessment and self-demonstration of competence. Data was gathered from focus groups, individual in-depth interviews and thematic analysis of participant portfolios. An iterative approach to participant feedback was employed, such that improvements were implemented as each data collection was analysed. Data was also gathered from four sonographers in repeat interviews after one year of qualified practice. Results The major themes identified from the learning skills added to the Portfolio were the benefits of continuous engagement, gains in confidence from demonstrating success, and the value of portfolios as an evidential base of achievement. The evidence base took various forms including interesting case collections or film libraries, used as both aide-memoires for ultrasound appearances of pathology and for teaching peers. Academics came to understand the criticality of portfolio induction, the necessity of scaffolding support for each of the learning skills, and strategies to make the assessment sustainable. Additionally, important workplace ‘doings’ were identified from the data, which adhered to the notion of a learning ‘practice’, suggesting valuable learning takes place in everyday working social interactions, which could receive greater recognition in student assessment tasks. Conclusion This research clearly identified that Portfolio assessment which encouraged skills of longer term learning proved valuable to both students and faculty. The Portfolio increased participants’ confidence, clinical judgement and independent learning, extending into qualified practice. Academics gained useful insights into scaffolding, Portfolio learning and practice theory. Importantly, this research showed that the design and development of portfolios benefit from iterative approaches using participant feedback for ongoing improvement.

ETHICAL VIEWS OF TOTALITARIANISM IN HANNAH ARENDT’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

The article analyzes the ethical studies of Hannah Arendt on the origin of totalitarianism. The author considers the conditions for the formation of a “total state” and the role in these processes of both society as a whole and an individual. Based on the works of Hannah Arendt, the author analyzes the features of the totalitarian transformations of the individual and society, as well as their interaction with the regime at different stages of the functioning of the “total state”. According to Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is a system of mass terror, which is a phenomenon of the twentieth century. Totalitarianism is realized in the conditions of the destruction of political space and human interaction. It is the result of the alienation of a person from political life, that is, the “atomization” of society against the background of a deformation of basic ethical standards and established ideas about morality in general. Considering the problem of the emergence of totalitarianism, Arendt turns to the anthropological plane, where she explores the way in which violence enters the public sphere, and politics turns into an instrument for achieving certain goals and serving private interests. Hannah Arendt also analyzes the phenomenon of the “banality of evil,” which lies at the base of the so-called “respectable society”. Such a society easily becomes a weapon of totalitarianism along with “grassroots executors of orders”, as the example of Adolf Eichmann demonstrates. Hannah Arendt believes that the actions of such “executors of orders” should always be assessed as the actions of a person, and not just a “social tool”, from which responsibility for crimes is thus removed. Hannah Arendt identifies various areas of ethical (namely, areas of individual and public morality), where there is a division into personal and political responsibility, and also studies the problems of preventing a possible repetition of totalitarianism. The “means” for such prevention, according to Hannah Arendt, are on an ethical plane. This is, firstly, the possibility of independent judgment and critical thinking, which create personal principles. And secondly, the presence of a public sphere, which provides the possibility of free action in a common social space. This is what actualizes moral issues and ensures the formation of moral principles.

MASTER IN PERSONALISTIC EDUCATION

The subject of the article is a personalistic education and placing the teacher-educator in the role of a master. In personalistic education, emphasis is placed on assisting the student in becoming a full person by opening him to the values of truth, goodness and beauty. It was assumed that this upbringing leads to self-education, and is car-ried out through dialogue and authenticity, and thus it can be effectively carried out only in cooperation: family, school and religious community, understood as guarantor and carrier of absolute values. Implemented at the school level, it should help the student gain a personal insight into the world of higher values and teach him to make the fundamental value of his own choices. As a result, it was found that the teacher is a teacher-educator who enjoys spiritual and intellectual authority, directs his activities to form the whole person, and his goal is to enable the student to formulate independent judgments about reality. The master is a teacher who, having an un-common level of knowledge and extensive experience in a given field, is able to develop it in others, fascinate as a personal model, inspire, arouse the passion of seeking truth, growing in goodness and love of beauty; give direction to the student's search and discreetly control, and finally enjoy the fruits of working together with him.

Theoretical Foundations of Modern Museums Educational Activity

The purpose of the study is to analyze the significance of educational activities as the leading direction of the modern museum; to identify the main theoretical achievements of the twentieth century, which laid the foundation for the development of modern educational museum practices; explore the technology of edutainment as a tool for the effective adaptation of museum information for people with different levels of education and cultural training. Research methods are based on the general scientific principle of objectivity, as well as structural-functional and analytical methods. Scientific novelty. The main theoretical achievements that laid the foundation for the development of educational museum practices of the 20th century are systematized and summarized; the use of edutainment technologies in the educational activities of modern museums is explored. Conclusions. It was determined that the theoretical and practical basis for the development of modern educational museum practices was laid during the twentieth century. It is proved that by implementing the recreational-educational function of the museum, the following tasks can be solved: the formation of a value relation to objective reality, the development of associative perception, figurative thinking, the ability for independent judgments, creative activity and self-analysis.

Prospects of Using Foreign Language Texts of Literary Works in Teaching English at the University

At the present stage of the development of society, the need for the transition of the education system to a whole new level has become especially topical. Expanding cooperation with other states and strengthening of external links, the integration of all spheres of life makes foreign languages necessary in real human activities. This significantly changes the status of a foreign language, requiring the training of highly qualified specialists able to navigate the modern world. The relevance of the study is that foreign language literary works contain a significant explicitly and implicitly expressed culturological potential that foreign language teachers can use in the process of teaching a foreign language to students. The purpose of this paper is the analysis of the possibilities of using the cultural potential of works of foreign fiction to expand the language competence of students a significant part of whom will integrate themselves into the world scientific community in the near future. The paper shows that skills’ development of cross-cultural communication, as well as the language competence of students are the part of the process of reading authentic artistic texts, so that they simultaneously begin to understand the possible difference between their native culture and other cultures, acquire the ability to overcome sociocultural differences taking into account some cultural and regional-specific features of different countries and mastering the common factors of text construction, its functions, and realizing its main lexical-thematic line. At the same time, reading teaching should be carried out taking into account the complexity of the selected texts and simultaneously teaching the recording of the reading, the fulfillment of various creative tasks for inducing independent conclusions and judgments.

Engagement Partner Attributes and Audit Quality: Does the Partner’s Ownership Stake Matter?

We investigate the association between audit quality and some unique attributes of the engagement audit partners in the Turkish audit market during the period 2008-2014. We specifically examine the impact of the engagement partners’ ownership stakes in their audit firms, their busyness and in-house tenure in their current firms, and whether the impact is different for the “top guys” with the largest % ownership in the firm, on the probability of restatements, qualified opinions, going concern qualifications, and less egregious and less direct earnings management type audit failures such as the use of discretionary accruals. The results show that ownership % plays a role in independent audit judgments and increases the audit quality. We contribute to audit firm partnership and audit quality literature by introducing the engagement partner’s ownership stake in his firm as a comprehensive proxy for the auditor’s supply of audit quality. This variable could also be helpful in many emerging markets where audit fees data are not publicly disclosed. The study also sheds some light on whether the accounting and auditing reforms that took place in 2012 improved audit quality in Turkey. Our study may be of interest to researchers, regulators and client and audit firms all over the world.

CRITICAL THINKING AND TEACHING STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE LITERARY TEXT

The development of students’ critical thinking skills is a paramount issue of modern education globally. Notwithstanding there is no accord among the philosophers, psychologists and educators as to transferability and teachability of critical thinking skills. Our approach to this issue is twofold. In order to become independent thinkers, students should be equipped with critical thinking inventory as well as have advanced practical skills of its application. This article is an attempt to look at the problem of teaching the stylistic analysis of the literary text from the perspective of critical thinking. We discuss how by the critical reading of a literary work and applying a polycritical methodology to its analysis students enhance the high-order thinking skills – analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The present paper illustrates some before, during and after reading classroom strategies that can be utilized to encourage students to dig deeper and “read between the lines” in order to decode the message of the author, effectively interpret it and use it as a vantage point for constructing intermedial connections, self-reflection and interpretation of the real world. Progressive educators create the learning environment where freedom of thought and the dissent are equally accepted and fostered. The anchoring potential of critical thinking as a mediator between the fictional and real world and as a booster of the students’ abilities to evaluate, make an independent judgment and solve problems is viewed by us as a leverage on rote learning and copy-paste mentality as well as an instrument of establishing democratic values in education.

GuessTheKarma

Popularity systems, like Twitter retweets, Reddit upvotes, and Pinterest pins have the potential to guide people toward posts that others liked. That, however, creates a feedback loop that reduces their informativeness: items marked as more popular get more attention, so that additional upvotes and retweets may simply reflect the increased attention and not independent information about the fraction of people that like the items. How much information remains? For example, how confident can we be that more people prefer item A to item B if item A had hundreds of upvotes on Reddit and item B had only a few? We investigate using an Internet game called GuessTheKarma that collects independent preference judgments (N=20,674) for 400 pairs of images, approximately 50 per pair. Unlike the rating systems that dominate social media services, GuessTheKarma is devoid of social and ranking effects that influence ratings. Overall, Reddit scores were not very good predictors of the true population preferences for items as measured by GuessTheKarma: the image with higher score was preferred by a majority of independent raters only 68% of the time. However, when one image had a low score and the other was one of the highest scoring in its subreddit, the higher scoring image was preferred nearly 90% of the time by the majority of independent raters. Similarly, Imgur view counts for the images were poor predictors except when there were orders of magnitude differences between the pairs. We conclude that popularity systems marked by feedback loops may convey a strong signal about population preferences, but only when comparing items that received vastly different popularity scores.

New Method for Predicting Production Boosts Accuracy for Carbonate Reservoirs

This article, written by Special Publications Editor Adam Wilson, contains highlights of paper SPE 190868, “A New Method for Economic Prediction of Carbonate Reservoirs Based on Expert Library and Small Database,” by Wenbin Chen, SPE, Hanqiao Jiang, and Junjian Li, China University of Petroleum; Shan Jiang, PetroChina; and Hanxu Yang, SPE, and Yan Qiao, China University of Petroleum, prepared for the 2018 EAGE Annual Conference and Exhibition/SPE Europec, Copenhagen, Denmark, 11–14 June. The paper has not been peer reviewed. The widely developed karst caves and fractures in carbonate reservoirs result in strong spatial heterogeneity. Consequently, the parameters obtained from cores and numerical simulation are limited in their ability to reflect the production possibility of the entire reservoir. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a new method of economic prediction on the basis of expert library and oilfield databases. The method takes into account geological factors and the effect of production factors on the economic prediction. Introduction The key parameters used for the economic prediction of a carbonate reservoir include well spacing, oil production, and annual decline rate. These parameters are mainly from core experiments in the laboratory or from the numerical simulation of wells, but caves and fractures are dispersed throughout the carbonate reservoir. This heterogeneity means the properties of a carbonate reservoir can be very different in different regions. Consequently, the commonly used parameters are limited in their ability to represent the whole reservoir, which leads to high risk in economic prediction. The method proposed in this paper combines the Delphi method, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), the moving least-squares (MLS) method, and future net present value (FNPV) to create the DATMF method in an attempt to overcome these shortcomings. Through classical mathematics methods, the DATMF method combines expert library and oilfield databases to predict the economy of carbonate reservoirs. This prediction method reduces the size of the required database greatly, and its calculation process is based on professional geology theory and reservoir engineering. In addition, the DATMF economic prediction method can be applied directly to the stage of geological exploration, which removes the barrier between geologists and reservoir engineers and simplifies the procedure of economic prediction. DATMF Work Flow Delphi Method. The Delphi method is a management strategy for dealing with complex task problems. Here, it aims to quantify experience and ensure the reliability of results in theory. After experts learn the purpose and background of research, they compare the effect of factors of the same level. Two factors are compared each time. After repeated inquiry and feedback, the experts finally reach an agreement of opinion and a final expert judgment matrix is established and expressed as Matrix A. Because of the independent judgment environment, the objectivity of the Delphi method is strong and reliable.

The impact of Australian policy shifts on early childhood teachers’ understandings of intentional teaching

ABSTRACTAustralian Early Childhood teachers face unprecedented times in the sector’s history as they come to terms with the introduction of multiple policies for quality standards and curriculum outcomes. Policy documents explicitly identifying ‘intentional teaching’ and ‘assessment for learning’ are two of a range of inter-related pedagogical approaches promoted in this policy narrative. It has been argued that these changes can discourage independent professional judgement and instead encourage a compliance mindset with respect to prescriptive directives of what and how to teach (Smith and Kovacs. [2011]. “The Impact of Standards-based Reform on Teachers: The Case of ‘No Child Left Behind’.” Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 17 (1): 201–225. doi:10.1080/13540602.2011.539802). In this paper, we draw on research data from interviews and focus groups with EC practitioners and managers to suggest that ‘intentional teaching’ and ‘assessment for learning’ require a foundation of deep knowledge. The nurturing of young children as effective communicators especially in terms of oral language learning is one key area that could be fostered through such a rich, integrated approach to teaching.

The Contingent Wisdom of Dyads: When Discussion Enhances vs. Undermines the Accuracy of Collaborative Judgments

We evaluate the effect of discussion on the accuracy of collaborative judgments. In contrast to prior research, we show that discussion can either aid or impede accuracy relative to the averaging of collaborators’ independent judgments, as a systematic function of task type and interaction process. For estimation tasks with a wide range of potential estimates, discussion aided accuracy by helping participants prevent and eliminate egregious errors. For estimation tasks with a naturally bounded range, discussion following independent estimates performed on par with averaging. Importantly, if participants did not first make independent estimates, discussion greatly harmed accuracy by limiting the range of considered estimates, independent of task type. Our research shows that discussion can be a powerful tool for error reduction, but only when appropriately structured: Decision makers should form independent judgments to consider a wide range of possible answers, and then use discussion to eliminate extremely large errors.Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2823 .This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, judgment and decision making.

Vocal alignment to native and non-native speakers of English.

Research on vocal alignment, the tendency for language users to match another individual's speech productions, suggests that multiple factors contribute to this behavior. Social and motivational goals, aspects of cognitive architecture, and linguistic flexibility may all affect the extent to which vocal alignment occurs, suggesting complex underlying mechanisms. The present study capitalized on the social and linguistic characteristics of Spanish-accented English to examine the relationship among these contributors to vocal alignment. American English-speaking adults participated in a shadowing task. Degree of vocal alignment was assessed by both acoustic measures and independent raters' judgments. Participants aligned to both native English and Spanish-accented productions, despite differences in attitudes to and intelligibility of the different accents. Individual differences in shadowers' vowel dispersion were also related to extent of vocal alignment, with greater dispersion associated with greater alignment. Acoustic measures were related to perceptual assessments of alignment and differed by accent type, suggesting that patterns of alignment may differ across accents. Overall, the current study demonstrates vocal alignment between talkers of differing language backgrounds and highlights the importance of acoustic and linguistic components of alignment behavior.