Individual Readers Research Articles

What eye tracking can tell us about how radiologists use automated breast ultrasound.

Purpose: Automated breast ultrasound (ABUS) presents three-dimensional (3D) representations of the breast in the form of stacks of coronal and transverse plane images. ABUS is especially useful for the assessment of dense breasts. Here, we present the first eye tracking data showing how radiologists search and evaluate ABUS cases. Approach: Twelve readers evaluated single-breast cases in 20-min sessions. Positive findings were present in 56% of the evaluated cases. Eye position and the currently visible coronal and transverse slice were tracked, allowing for reconstruction of 3D "scanpaths." Results: Individual readers had consistent search strategies. Most readers had strategies that involved examination of all available images. Overall accuracy was 0.74 (sensitivity = 0.66 and specificity = 0.84). The 20 false negative errors across all readers can be classified using Kundel's (1978) taxonomy: 17 are "decision" errors (readers found the target but misclassified it as normal or benign). There was one recognition error and two "search" errors. This is an unusually high proportion of decision errors. Readers spent essentially the same proportion of time viewing coronal and transverse images, regardless of whether the case was positive or negative, correct or incorrect. Readers tended to use a "scanner" strategy when viewing coronal images and a "driller" strategy when viewing transverse images. Conclusions: These results suggest that ABUS errors are more likely to be errors of interpretation than of search. Further research could determine if readers' exploration of all images is useful or if, in some negative cases, search of transverse images is redundant following a search of coronal images.

Le livre technique avant le XXe siècle: À l'échelle du monde [Technical books before the 1900s: On a global scale] ed. by Liliane Hilaire-Pérez et al.

Reviewed by: Le livre technique avant le XXe siècle: À l'échelle du monde [Technical books before the 1900s: On a global scale] ed. by Liliane Hilaire-Pérez et al. Emmanuelle Chapron (bio) Le livre technique avant le XXe siècle: À l'échelle du monde [Technical books before the 1900s: On a global scale] Edited by Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Valérie Nègre, Delphine Spicq, and Koen Vermeir, with the collaboration of Konstantinos Chatzis. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2017. Pp. 502. This collective volume tackles what is undeniably a blind spot in the history of books: the history of the technical book, which is studied much less than scientific books. The thirty-two contributions do not offer a synthesis but a set of insights into a long-term and global history (including the Chinese and Japanese perspectives as a counterpoint to Europe). If we already have studies on certain types of works, such as dance treatises, language manuals, and marine books, interestingly, this volume takes an inclusive approach, embracing a production heterogeneous in its forms, aims, and audiences. The absence of a rigid structure—thematic, chronological, or spatial—within the five broadly titled sections allows comparisons between the subjects, often from different historiographic fields, and reveals three compelling themes. The first is the importance of political factors in the development of the technical book, such as territorial control and the stimulation of technological innovation (by the Dutch government in the seventeenth century and the French Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in the nineteenth century). Many contributions highlight the links between the print output and [End Page 904] technical schools founded around the same time. Other authors show how the formalization of technical knowledge through books contributed to the visibility and professionalization of trading communities. This process is evidenced in both institutionalized (Académie Royale de Danse in Paris, founded in 1661) and noninstitutionalized (dance and language teachers in Italy and Northern Europe) contexts. The second theme is the "reductive art" issue. Writing an account of bodily movements, for example those of a dancer, presupposed the existence of appropriate discursive and visual technologies, whether these were invented for the purpose or borrowed from other fields of knowledge. The three contributions on dance exemplify this quest for technicality via vocabulary, symbol, image, and viewpoint. The different forms of image insertion in technical books will be of interest to all book historians. Many contributions underline the constant tension between the temptation to elevate technical activity to the same ranking as the arts and sciences through the abstraction and formalization of knowledge (ornamental arts, archaeology), and the affirmation of a dimension that cannot be reduced to codification, such as experience in the field (artillery) and creative genius (choreography). The third theme concerns technical books' uses and readers. The authors show how public authorities encouraged the production and use of widely accessible textbooks in the nineteenth century, for example to promote sericulture in Japan and modernize agriculture in Spain. Publishers created and expanded the technical books market to a broader nonspecialist audience through "product innovations." For example, in eighteenthcentury Paris, Jombert published books on artillery that could easily be carried around in the field; and a century later, Cramer published guides and almanacs for colonists settling in the Pittsburgh area. Reissues are an indicator of a successful publishing strategy, which sometimes involved transforming a text's status over a long period, as in the case of the Bâtiment des recettes (Palace of recipes) between the 1500s and 1700s. "Technology entrepreneurs," as they were aptly called by editors, converted secrets into commercial inventions and the accompanying written documentation familiarized a wider public with technical expressions. The gap between the texts' intellectual claims and the sometimes barely literate target audience raises the question of transmission modes, which were not necessarily direct. Some authors have taken up the challenge of identifying individual readers, for instance through the ex libris on the Vignole books used by journeymen in the building trade from the Renaissance onward. Beyond the material traces, stains, and wear and tear, which prove their "operationalization," the specific uses of these technical works remain complicated to grasp. Future research should focus on this point...

Readers accurately monitor their incidental word learning success during silent reading

College-age adults who are skilled at reading use sentence context and morphemic information to learn definitions for new words they encounter in print (e.g., Tong et al., 2014). Often, the definitions that adult readers are learning are for word forms that already exist in their mental lexicon (Hulme et al., 2019). Readers demonstrate discrepancies between confidence in what they are retaining during reading and what they actually recall after reading (e.g., Sperling et al., 2004). Thus, metacognitive awareness is undoubtedly important for vocabulary learning. Few studies have investigated the role of metacognition in adults' word learning during reading. In the current study, we examined readers' metacognitive awareness and learning for novel compound pseudowords. Participants read sentences containing semantically opaque or transparent novel compound words in informative sentence contexts. Reading times were recorded, and readers judged how well they derived and would remember the novel words' correct definitions. After reading, participants took a surprise vocabulary test. Sentences containing opaque novel compounds were difficult, indicated by longer reading times. Participants were also less confident in their abilities deriving definitions for opaque than transparent words, and were less accurate on the vocabulary test for opaque words. Participants judged making an inference to define opaque compounds as more difficult than for transparent compounds, suggesting awareness of word learning difficulty. Overall, metacognitive judgments were mostly accurate. However, individual readers' accuracy varied greatly. These results provide a start to understanding how incidental vocabulary learning, and monitoring for this, proceeds in skilled (college-level) adults.

Journal article access: Free, open, and subscription

Journal article access: Free, open, and subscription

Individualized and Generalized Learner Models for Predicting Missed Hepatic Metastases.

The diagnostic performance of radiologist readers exhibits substantial variation that cannot be explained by CT acquisition protocol differences. Studying reader detectability from CT images may help identify why certain types of lesions are missed by multiple or specific readers. Ten subspecialized abdominal radiologists marked all suspected metastases in a multi-reader-multi-case study of 102 deidentified contrast-enhanced CT liver scans at multiple radiation dose levels. A reference reader marked ground truth metastatic and benign lesions with the aid of histopathology or tumor progression on later scans. Multi-slice image patches and 3D radiomic features were extracted from the CT images. We trained deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) to predict whether an average (generalized) or individual radiologist reader would detect or miss a specific metastasis from an image patch containing it. The individualized CNN showed higher performance with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.82 compared to a generalized one (AUC = 0.78) in predicting reader-specific detectability. Random forests were used to build the respective versions from radiomic features. Both the individualized (AUC = 0.64) and generalized (AUC = 0.59) predictors from radiomic features showed limited ability to differentiate detected from missed lesions. This shows that CNN can identify and learn automated features that are better predictors of reader detectability of lesions than radiomic features. Individualized prediction of difficult lesions may allow targeted training of idiosyncratic weaknesses but requires substantial training data for each reader.

Global Longitudinal Strain Analysis of the Single Right Ventricle: Leveling the Playing Field

All available echocardiographic methods to assess single systemic right ventricular systolic function have limitations. Subjective grading is prone to bias and varies among readers. Quantitative methods that require significant manual input, such as fractional area change (FAC), are often not reproducible. The aim of this study was to determine whether global longitudinal strain (GLS) is more reproducible than FAC and subjective grading in patients with systemic right ventricle among individual readers and across different levels of experience. Clinically indicated echocardiograms from 40 patients with functional systemic right ventricles were assessed by five readers with varying reading experience: one sonographer, one cardiology fellow, and three attending cardiologists at different career stages. All readers were blinded to patient data and other reader responses. Each reader reviewed the same images for subjective grade (on a scale ranging from 1 [normal] to 8 [severely depressed]), right ventricular end-diastolic and end-systolic area measurements, and longitudinal strain analysis. A repeat analysis was performed under identical conditions after ≥2weeks on all 40 patients. Inter- and intrareader reproducibility was assessed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Correlations between responses were assessed using Spearman's correlation coefficient. The subjective method had fair to good reproducibility (ICC=0.7; interquartile range [IQR], 0.60-0.72), while the FAC method was poor (ICC=0.46; IQR, 0.39-0.51) among readers. Reproducibility for GLS was excellent (ICC=0.88; IQR, 0.88-0.89). Intrareader reproducibility was excellent by subjective grading (ICC=0.85; IQR, 0.73-0.88), poor by FAC (ICC=0.63; IQR, 0.35-0.66), and excellent by GLS (ICC=0.93; IQR, 0.88-0.96). Attending-level readers were more consistent with their subjective grading, while all readers were excellent with GLS. GLS is more reproducible than conventional methods at assessing systemic right ventricular systolic function among readers with different levels of experience. For most readers it was more consistent than their own subjective grades of right ventricular function. Laboratories staffed by multiple readers are likely to be more consistent in grading systemic right ventricular systolic function using GLS.

Reducing Acquisition Time of Diffusion Weighted MR Imaging of the Rectum with Simultaneous Multi-Slice Acquisition: A Reader Study

To assess the acquisition time and image quality of simultaneous multislice-accelerated diffusion-weighted imaging (SMS-DWI) versus conventional DWI (C-DWI) of the rectum. In patients scheduled for a magnetic resonance imaging of the rectum, both SMS-DWI and C-DWI were performed on a 3T whole body magnetic resonance scanner. Image quality of the DWI sequences was reviewed by two independent radiologists who were blinded to the method of imaging using a five-point Likert scale: (score ranging from 1 (non-diagnostic) to 5 (excellent). The mean scores of SMS-DWI versus C-DWI were compared for the individual readers using a nonparametric test (Wilcoxon signed ranks). The SMS-DWI protocol acquisition time was 4:08 min vs. 7:24 min per patient, which led to a reduction of 44.1% for the C-DWI protocol, both excluding time for sequence specific adjustments (shimming). No statistical differences between the conventional-, and SMS- diffusion weighted images were seen for both readers. Mean overall image quality of the SMS-DWI TRACE images was 3.5 (SD: 1.3) and 3.3 (SD: 1.0) for reader 1 and reader 2, respectively. Mean overall image quality of the C-DWI TRACE images was 3.4 (SD: 1.3) and 3.2 (SD: 1.1) for reader 1 and reader 2, respectively. Optimized SMS-DWI compared to C-DWI in imaging of the rectum showed similar image quality while a significant acquisition time reduction was achieved.

Computational Models of Readers' Apperceptive Mass.

Recent progress in machine-learning-based distributed semantic models (DSMs) offers new ways to simulate the apperceptive mass (AM; Kintsch, 1980) of reader groups or individual readers and to predict their performance in reading-related tasks. The AM integrates the mental lexicon with world knowledge, as for example, acquired via reading books. Following pioneering work by Denhière and Lemaire (2004), here, we computed DSMs based on a representative corpus of German children and youth literature (Jacobs et al., 2020) as null models of the part of the AM that represents distributional semantic input, for readers of different reading ages (grades 1–2, 3–4, and 5–6). After a series of DSM quality tests, we evaluated the performance of these models quantitatively in various tasks to simulate the different reader groups' hypothetical semantic and syntactic skills. In a final study, we compared the models' performance with that of human adult and children readers in two rating tasks. Overall, the results show that with increasing reading age performance in practically all tasks becomes better. The approach taken in these studies reveals the limits of DSMs for simulating human AM and their potential for applications in scientific studies of literature, research in education, or developmental science.

The Value of Literature, Today and Tomorrow

While reports of the death of literature are greatly exaggerated, reports of the decline of Aestheticism, New Criticism, and the printed word are not. Literature as a critique of society is alive today, but to survive tomorrow in any form it will need to engage environmental, climate, and pandemic public health issues. Without such engagement, there will be no civilization, and, thus, no literature. Literature can survive now, but to thrive, essays in literary criticism may have to not only (i) continue to discuss canonical and (ii) minority writing but also (iii) partner with cultural studies and/or (iv) expand the definition of literature to include “the best stories”, (v) especially multimedia stories. Critics would also be well advised to (vi) balance abstraction and theory with close, detailed readings of literature. Editors might encourage new essays demonstrating that (vii) unity in literature is compatible with the celebration of diversity, that explore (viii) the relationship of literature and science in general, and (ix) the integration of unity in literature with the search for unified theory in science. Finally, editors might encourage new essays on less trendy topics such as (x) literature focused on feelings and/or (xi) how literature helps individual readers make radical changes in their lives.

Getting to the Root of US Healthcare Injustices through Morrison’s Root Workers

Although a number of scholars have tackled the figure of the Black folk-healer in Toni Morrison’s novels, the character deserves greater attention in the present moment for the insights she provides into two contemporary catastrophes: the coronavirus pandemic and the structural racism that precipitates rampant violence against brown-skinned people in the United States. Beginning with M’Dear, the elderly woman who is brought in to treat Cholly’s Aunt Jimmy in The Bluest Eye (1970), I survey descriptions of several root workers, hoodoo practitioners, and midwives in Morrison’s fiction, including Ajax’s mother in Sula (1973) and Milkman’s aunt Pilate in Song of Solomon (1977). Morrison’s portraits of these women and their communities capture the endurance of African folk customs, the undervalued knowledge of aged members of society, and a sense of Black women’s strength beyond that of the physical, laboring, or hypersexual body. The fictional experiences of Morrison’s healers also alert readers to the very real injustices that have historically impeded the successes of African Americans—and continue to hamper them, as has been exposed during the COVID-19 crisis and public outrages over police brutality. These injustices include inequities in lifelong earning potential, education, housing, and access to healthcare. Paying closer attention to the Nobel Laureate’s root-working women makes her novels more than simply “transformative” and “empowering” for individual readers; analyzing these figures allows one to unearth important critiques of medical bias and other forms of discrimination against marginalized members of society—disparities that must be dismantled in the push for social change.

ТЕПЕРЬ МЫ ЗНАЕМ ИЗ КАКОГО ВЗДОРА: О ЧТЕНИИ И СОЦИОЛОГИИ

In his introduction to the archival cluster of essays on children’s reading practices, Serguei Oushakine provides a brief review of important late Soviet attempts to devise a conceptually innovative and methodologically robust sociology of reading and literature. Associated with the State Library named after V. Lenin, a group of social scientists approached literature as an institution whose main aim was to articulate and popularize the basic features of the individual and group identity. Staying away from psychological explanations, these researchers foregrounded instead the specifically literary dimension of reading: unlike many other artistic and expressive forms, literature is capable of thematizing — that is, organizing in a coherent narrative — abstract values, unclear assumptions, and background orientations. Approaching literature phenomenologically, morphologically, and functionally, these scholars significantly modified the dominant understanding of reading, seeing it as a process of modeling the reader’s perception of themselves, their human and non-human environment. This late soviet approach to literature and reading, then, is used to frame the archival essays collected in the cluster. Surprisingly, many of them appear to follow the logic crystallized in the 1970s-1980s. There were some dramatic differences, too. Earlier works on children’s reading practices tended to preoccupy themselves with phenomenological aspects of reading, its moral and developmental consequences; the sociological studies that emerged in the late 1920s, exhibited a very different trend: collecting large data about thematic interests of different demographic categories of readers became the goal in itself. As a result, reading as a social practice became radically “depopulated”: individual readers were overshadowed by statistical groups, and reading practices were replaced by readers’ library requests. The sociology of reading, in other words, was quickly equated with collecting and organizing various data. It was precisely the hegemony of this positivist approach that would be challenged in the 1970s.

Telling a Better Story: How to Talk about God in a Skeptical Age by Joshua D. Chatraw

Reviewed by: Telling a Better Story: How to Talk about God in a Skeptical Age by Joshua D. Chatraw Mary Sue Dehmlow Dreier Telling a Better Story: How to Talk about God in a Skeptical Age. By Joshua D. Chatraw. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Reflective, 2020. 228 pp. Joshua Chatraw presents an approach to apologetics shaped by patient listening to the stories of secular people in order to enter into authentic dialogue with them about God. He contrasts this with more familiar "building block" apologetics that logically leverage abstract ideas to make a rational case for the gospel. His goal is to help readers become better gospel storytellers within today's late modern cultural milieu of skepticism where familiar ways of sharing the gospel do not make sense within current scripts and shifting plausibility structures. [End Page 106] Citing famous Christian storytellers like C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Chatraw argues that the Christian story is deeply ingrained in our human "storying nature." He further asserts that the gospel, embedded in the unbeliever's own metanarratives, "better" addresses the fears, anxieties, and yearnings of people today than the secular narratives that bombard us every day. This book is divided into three parts, in which Chatraw provides an interpretation of today's secular culture (Part I), aptly identifies and discusses five cultural assumptions about Christianity (Part II), and helpfully addresses prevalent objections to the Christian story (Part III). The lens he employs is an "inside out" apologetic. He suggests we move from "inside" peoples' own secular stories and "out" to the Christian narrative that is both connected to and distinct from those stories. I particularly appreciate Chatraw's insistence on humble and sensitive listening to the stories of those around us for pathways to substantial conversations about God. He frames "inside out" apologetics as an incarnational "apologetics of love" (170) in which we come alongside others and step into the stories that shape their imaginations. "The goal is to embody the truth and beauty of the gospel—the ultimate aim of any truly Christian apologetics" (21). Chatraw's refreshing approach to apologetics winsomely weaves together Scripture and an eclectic cast of conversation partners for each chapter—classical and contemporary theologians, storytellers, fictional characters, musicians, poets, etc. With short, readable chapters, this book would be accessible to individual readers as well as a variety of lay audiences. It encourages and equips Christians to engage in conversations about God within the challenges of today's daunting secularism. Coming out of a Baptist background (both his MDiv and his PhD are from Baptist seminaries) and serving in non-denominational Christian outreach, Chatraw suggests throughout the book that this "inside out" approach to unbelievers might invite them to "try on" the gospel. The notion of "trying on" the gospel signals the decision theology that implicitly undergirds the book and is explicitly addressed, albeit briefly, in his appeal for a decision for Jesus in the Conclusion. The proclaimed Word of God as the means of grace and [End Page 107] the activity of the Holy Spirit calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying are mostly absent from the book. In order fruitfully to engage this book, Lutherans will have to simultaneously address our skeptical age as well as decision theology. These could be important and empowering missional discussions. This book could therefore be productively used by such groups as congregational evangelism committees, outreach teams, and small study groups in which Lutheran leaders are prepared to address both its cultural and theological issues for the sake of enhancing participation in God's mission. Mary Sue Dehmlow Dreier St. Paul, Minnesota Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

Urban Literacy Leadership: Examining One Principal’s Vision and Practice

School leadership research offers prescriptions for strong instructional and culturally relevant leadership for diverse and urban adolescent populations, yet little evidence describes how school principals impact adolescents’ in-school reading experiences. This qualitative inquiry sought to understand how one urban secondary principal perceived and enacted his role in a school’s effort to teach reading. It also investigated how staff and students perceived his actions. Framed by sociocultural perspectives of reading and a distributed leadership perspective, data analysis revealed that the principal made time and nurtured relationships to grow teacher capacity, support and participate in independent reading, and attend to individual readers and teachers. This study affirms the importance of context in shaping urban adolescents’ reading experiences and raises implications for the urban school principal’s role in their literacy instruction.

The Global Dialogics of the <i>New Age</i>

The London-based weekly the New Age, edited by A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922, was known for promoting spirited debates on politics, literature, and the arts. Scholars have been attentive to what Ann Ardis terms the magazine’s ‘unusual commitment to […] Bakhtinian dialogics in the public sphere’, but less so to the role that the letters column played in facilitating these often contentious, often transnational debates. This essay argues that the letters column functioned as a forum for linking not only individual readers and contributors from around the world, but also wider discursive and periodical communities. A case study of global dialogics, the essay focuses on an eleven-month debate that unfolded in New Age correspondence concerning the so-called black peril — the purported epidemic of black men attempting to rape white women in South Africa, which historians today regard as a moral panic fuelled by a desire to reinforce white supremacy. The flames of the panic were stoked by the Umtali case of 1910, in which Lord Gladstone commuted the death sentence of an Umtali native convicted of attempted rape to life imprisonment. This decision sparked mass protests and petitions among the white community in South Africa and a heated discussion about race and racism that reverberated throughout the empire, including in the columns of the New Age. The letters column served as an international forum, drawing in white settlers from Johannesburg, Crisis editor and NAACP founder W. E. B. Du Bois, Sudanese-Egyptian writer Dusé Mohamed Ali, and British suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, among others. This essay examines the gendered and racial politics of this debate and how it was shaped by its specific periodical context and by the national and ideological contexts of its interlocutors.

Teaching Korean as a Foreign Language: Theories and Practices

Teaching Korean as a Foreign Language: Theories and Practices

Artifact reduction of coaxial needles in magnetic resonance imaging-guided abdominal interventions at 1.5 T: a phantom study

Needle artifacts pose a major limitation for MRI-guided interventions, as they impact the visually perceived needle size and needle-to-target-distance. The objective of this agar liver phantom study was to establish an experimental basis to understand and reduce needle artifact formation during MRI-guided abdominal interventions. Using a vendor-specific prototype fluoroscopic T1-weighted gradient echo sequence with real-time multiplanar acquisition at 1.5 T, the influence of 6 parameters (flip angle, bandwidth, matrix, slice thickness, read-out direction, intervention angle relative to B0) on artifact formation of 4 different coaxial MR-compatible coaxial needles (Nitinol, 16G–22G) was investigated. As one parameter was modified, the others remained constant. For each individual parameter variation, 2 independent and blinded readers rated artifact diameters at 2 predefined positions (15 mm distance from the perceived needle tip and at 50% of the needle length). Differences between the experimental subgroups were assessed by Bonferroni-corrected non-parametric tests. Correlations between continuous variables were expressed by the Bravais–Pearson coefficient and interrater reliability was quantified using the intraclass classification coefficient. Needle artifact size increased gradually with increasing flip angles (p = 0.002) as well as increasing intervention angles (p < 0.001). Artifact diameters differed significantly between the chosen matrix sizes (p = 0.002) while modifying bandwidth, readout direction, and slice thickness showed no significant differences. Interrater reliability was high (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.776–0.910). To minimize needle artifacts in MRI-guided abdominal interventions while maintaining optimal visibility of the coaxial needle, we suggest medium-range flip angles and low intervention angles relative to B0.

Using Machine Learning Methods Incorporating Individual Reader Annotations to Classify Paediatric Chest Radiographs in Epidemiological Studies

Introduction: Epidemiological studies that involve interpretation of chest radiographs (CXRs) suffer from inter-reader and intra-reader variability. Inter-reader and intra-reader variability hinder comparison of results from different studies or centres, which negatively affects efforts to track the burden of chest diseases or evaluate the efficacy of interventions such as vaccines. This study explores machine learning models that could standardize interpretation of CXR across studies and the utility of incorporating individual reader annotations when training models using CXR data sets annotated by multiple readers. Methods: Convolutional neural networks were used to classify CXRs from seven low to middle-income countries into five categories according to the World Health Organization's standardized methodology for interpreting paediatric CXRs. We compared models trained to predict the final/aggregate classification with models trained to predict how each reader would classify an image and then aggregate predictions for all readers using unweighted mean. Results: Incorporating individual reader's annotations during model training improved classification accuracy by 3.4% (multi-class accuracy 61% vs 59%). Model accuracy was higher for children above 12 months of age (68% vs 58%). The accuracy of the models in different countries ranged between 45% and 71%. Conclusions: Machine learning models can annotate CXRs in epidemiological studies reducing inter-reader and intra-reader variability. In addition, incorporating individual reader annotations can improve the performance of machine learning models trained using CXRs annotated by multiple readers.

Iconographies of ‘Childness’ and the Contemporary British Novel: Book Covers, Discourses, and Cultural Models

Abstract A sizeable segment of the contemporary British fiction market for adult readers consists of novels that focus on children and childhood. In accordance with interdisciplinary Childhood Studies, such texts can be understood as contributions to the social construction of children and childhood, or ‘childness’. Such constructions appear to be in particular demand in this phase of late modernity, when childhood is conceptualized as an antidote to the many uncertainties contemporary post-industrial societies are faced with. While on the level of societies, public constructions of childhood are best understood in terms of a Foucauldian notion of discourse, discourses are not what individual readers and book-buyers actually have in their minds when choosing a title. Rather, this article argues that the cover illustrations of these novels both activate and reinforce cultural models of ‘childness’ that readers have stored as schemata shared with their cultural community. On the basis of this alignment of discourse theory with a concept from cognitive anthropology, the article demonstrates that book covers play a role in maintaining particular conceptions of ‘childness’, and in feeding them back into the minds of the readers. Furthermore, the relevance of the book as a material artefact is once again acknowledged.1

Reader Perceptions and Impact of AI on CT Assessment of Air Trapping.

Quantitative imaging measurements can be facilitated by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, but how they might impact decision-making and be perceived by radiologists remains uncertain. After creation of a dedicated inspiratory-expiratory CT examination and concurrent deployment of a quantitative AI algorithm for assessing air trapping, five cardiothoracic radiologists retrospectively evaluated severity of air trapping on 17 examination studies. Air trapping severity of each lobe was evaluated in three stages: qualitatively (visually); semiquantitatively, allowing manual region-of-interest measurements; and quantitatively, using results from an AI algorithm. Readers were surveyed on each case for their perceptions of the AI algorithm. The algorithm improved interreader agreement (intraclass correlation coefficients: visual, 0.28; semiquantitative, 0.40; quantitative, 0.84; P < .001) and improved correlation with pulmonary function testing (forced expiratory volume in 1 second-to-forced vital capacity ratio) (visual r = -0.26, semiquantitative r = -0.32, quantitative r = -0.44). Readers perceived moderate agreement with the AI algorithm (Likert scale average, 3.7 of 5), a mild impact on their final assessment (average, 2.6), and a neutral perception of overall utility (average, 3.5). Though the AI algorithm objectively improved interreader consistency and correlation with pulmonary function testing, individual readers did not immediately perceive this benefit, revealing a potential barrier to clinical adoption. Keywords: Technology Assessment, Quantification © RSNA, 2021.

The Uncanny Mind

Abstract Among the psychological interpretations of Edgar Allan Poe's “The Black Cat,” trauma theory has yet to make an appearance. However, the confessional nature of the story shifts—via a trauma reading—from an attempt by the narrator to ease his guilt to his attempt to understand what happened to him. “The Black Cat” reveals a man's search to understand how he committed violent acts when trauma and preconceived self-understandings obscure his ability to reconcile his violent actions. The narrator's murder of his wife traumatized him, causing erasures in the timeline and several forms of dissociation. These erasures and dissociations cause an uncanny effect within the story, which show the narrator to be his own doppelganger as well as an instance of the biform. However, these symptoms suggest that the narrator does not have enough critical distance from the events, so telling his tale becomes a form of reliving that does not relieve the confusion he experiences. Ultimately, the narrator's confession does not provide the understanding he hopes for, which places the burden of creating an understanding of the story on the individual reader.