Information Cues Research Articles

How explicit instruction improves phonological awareness and perception of L2 sound contrasts in younger and older adults

Abstract Despite the importance of conscious awareness in second language acquisition theories, little is known about how L2 speech perception can be improved by explicit phonetic instruction. This study examined the relationship between phonological awareness and perception in Dutch younger and older adult L2 listeners, focusing on English contrasts of two types: a familiar contrast in an unfamiliar position (word-final /t/-/d/) and an unfamiliar contrast (/æ/-/ε/). Awareness was assessed with a task in which written minimal pairs and homophone pairs had to be judged as sounding the same or different. Perception was assessed with a two-alternative forced-choice identification task with auditorily presented words from minimal pairs. We investigated whether listeners’ awareness and perception improved after a video-based explicit instruction that oriented their attention to one of these contrasts, and we tested whether including information about the phonetic cue of vowel duration increased learning. Awareness and perception of each contrast were shown to be moderately correlated at the study’s outset. Furthermore, awareness and perception for each contrast generally improved more after the instruction drawing attention to that contrast. However, the effectiveness of explicit phonetic instruction varied depending on the combination of the contrast, cue information, and listener age group.

Conspecific neighbors and kinship influence egg cannibalism in the green lacewing, Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens)

BackgroundChrysoperla carnea (Stephens) (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae) is an illustrious predator that performs cannibalism upon facing small and defenseless conspecifics. Eating preference of C. carnea larvae was investigated between conspecific and host (Sitotroga cerealella) eggs. Early instars of C. carnea express significant preference toward conspecific eggs over host eggs. Experiments were carried out to examine the role of conspecific neighbors in execution of cannibalistic decision. These cannibalistic behaviors of larvae were also investigated through locomotion bioassays using the video tracking software ANY-maze®.ResultsLarvae commit low egg cannibalism when alone but express higher cannibalism in the presence of conspecific larvae in the neighborhood. The role of relatedness in egg cannibalism was investigated when larvae were offered a choice between conspecific eggs from related and unrelated parents. Larvae did a discrimination between eggs of their own parents and those of other parents.ConclusionBehavioral bioassays showed attraction toward conspecific eggs and the eggs of unrelated parents. This study emphasizes the significance of informational and descriptive cues that modulate the cannibalistic expression in C. carnea.

CEOs as corporate ambassadors: deciphering leadership communication via Twitter

PurposeThis study aims to analyze the ways in which chief executive officers (CEOs) communicate via Twitter and help develop guidelines for effective tweeting strategies that can leverage Twitter in leadership communication.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct a large-scale content analysis of more than 65,000 tweets by 338 CEOs.FindingsThe authors propose a model that categorizes differences in CEO tweets along six independent dimensions: content professionalism, language professionalism, emotional valence, emotion activation, interactional efforts and information cues. The authors also develop coding schemes and measurement scales for each dimension.Originality/valueThis study provides a multi-dimensional paradigm as well as useful tools for future research on corporate leadership communication on social media.

Microscale characterisation of the time-dependent mechanical behaviour of brain white matter

Brain mechanics is a topic of deep interest because of the significant role of mechanical cues in both brain function and form. Specifically, capturing the heterogeneous and anisotropic behaviour of cerebral white matter (WM) is extremely challenging and yet the data on WM at a spatial resolution relevant to tissue components are sparse. To investigate the time-dependent mechanical behaviour of WM, and its dependence on local microstructural features when subjected to small deformations, we conducted atomic force microscopy (AFM) stress relaxation experiments on corpus callosum (CC), corona radiata (CR) and fornix (FO) of fresh ovine brain. Our experimental results show a dependency of the tissue mechanical response on axons orientation, with e.g. the stiffness of perpendicular and parallel samples is different in all three regions of WM whereas the relaxation behaviour is different for the CC and FO regions.An inverse modelling approach was adopted to extract Prony series parameters of the tissue components, i.e. axons and extra cellular matrix with its accessory cells, from experimental data. Using a bottom-up approach, we developed analytical and FEA estimates that are in good agreement with our experimental results.Our systematic characterisation of sheep brain WM using a combination of AFM experiments and micromechanical models provide a significant contribution for predicting localised time-dependent mechanics of brain tissue. This information can lead to more accurate computational simulations, therefore aiding the development of surgical robotic solutions for drug delivery and accurate tissue mimics, as well as the determination of criteria for tissue injury and predict brain development and disease progression.

Sensemaking and the Chemtrail Conspiracy on the Internet: Insights from Believers and Ex-believers

How do people come to believe conspiracy theories, and what role does the internet play in this process as a socio-technical system? We explore these questions by examining online participants in the "chemtrails" conspiracy, the idea that visible condensation trails behind airliners are deliberately sprayed for nefarious purposes. We apply Weick's theory of sensemaking to examine the role of people's frames (beliefs and worldviews), as well as the socio-technical contexts (social interactions and technological affordances) for processing informational cues about the conspiracy. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with thirteen believers and seven ex-believers, we find that many people become curious about chemtrails after consuming rich online media, and they later find welcoming online communities to support shared beliefs and worldviews. We discuss how the socio-technical context of the internet may inadvertently trap people in a perpetual state of ambiguity that becomes reinforced through a collective sensemaking process. In addition, we show how the conspiracy offers a way for believers to express their dissatisfaction with authority, enjoy a sense of community, and find some entertainment along the way. Finally, we discuss how people's frames and the various socio-technical contexts of the internet are important in the sensemaking of debunking evidence, and how such factors may function in the rejection of conspiratorial beliefs.

Unique patterns of hearing loss and cognition in older adults' neural responses to cues for speech recognition difficulty.

Older adults with hearing loss experience significant difficulties understanding speech in noise, perhaps due in part to limited benefit from supporting executive functions that enable the use of environmental cues signaling changes in listening conditions. Here we examined the degree to which 41 older adults (60.56-86.25years) exhibited cortical responses to informative listening difficulty cues that communicated the listening difficulty for each trial compared to neutral cues that were uninformative of listening difficulty. Word recognition was significantly higher for informative compared to uninformative cues in a + 10dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) condition, and response latencies were significantly shorter for informative cues in the + 10dB SNR and the more-challenging + 2dB SNR conditions. Informative cues were associated with elevated blood oxygenation level-dependent contrast in visual and parietal cortex. A cue-SNR interaction effect was observed in the cingulo-opercular (CO) network, such that activity only differed between SNR conditions when an informative cue was presented. That is, participants used the informative cues to prepare for changes in listening difficulty from one trial to the next. This cue-SNR interaction effect was driven by older adults with more low-frequency hearing loss and was not observed for those with more high-frequency hearing loss, poorer set-shifting task performance, and lower frontal operculum gray matter volume. These results suggest that proactive strategies for engaging CO adaptive control may be important for older adults with high-frequency hearing loss to optimize speech recognition in changing and challenging listening conditions.

Reverse mortgages and aircraft parts: The arcane referendum and the limits of citizen competence

Whether from a sincere belief in the ability of the body politic to arrive at optimal decisions, or in an instrumental attempt to generate legitimacy for policy choices, a large number of jurisdictions use the referendum to settle political questions. This practice relies on assumptions about voter interest and competence that merit empirical testing. We conduct a series of survey experiments that leverage variation in wording from a set of arcane ballot provisions from elections in Texas. We find that (1) voters are largely confused about the meaning of such ballot provisions; (2) efforts to improve the wording of such provisions and educate voters has minimal impact on their comprehension; (3) voters are easily persuaded to change their vote when given the chance; and (4) voters rely heavily on default answers (especially “yes”) in casting their votes. On the whole, the evidence suggests that narrow referendum questions that lack clear ideological or informational cues overwhelm the limits of citizen competence, and are thus likely to result in unstable and unreliable decisions.

What-Where-When Attention Network for video-based person re-identification

Video-based person re-identification plays a critical role in intelligent video surveillance by learning temporal correlations from consecutive video frames. Most existing methods aim to solve the challenging variations of pose, occlusion, backgrounds and so on by using attention mechanism. They almost all draw attention to the occlusion and learn occlusion-invariant video representations by abandoning the occluded area or frames, while the other areas in these frames contain sufficient spatial information and temporal cues. To overcome these drawbacks, this paper proposes a comprehensive attention mechanism covering what, where, and when to pay attention in the discriminative spatial-temporal feature learning, namely What-Where-When Attention Network (W3AN). Concretely, W3AN designs a spatial attention module to focus on pedestrian identity and obvious attributes by the importance estimating layer (What and Where), and a temporal attention module to calculate the frame-level importance (when), which is embedded into a graph attention network to exploit temporal attention features rather than computing weighted average feature for video frames like existing methods. Moreover, the experiments on three widely-recognized datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed W3AN model and the discussion of major modules elaborates the contributions of this paper.

TeleParallax: Low-Motion-Blur Stereoscopic System With Correct Interpupillary Distance for 3D Head Rotations

Binocular parallax provides cues for depth information when a scene is viewed with both eyes. In visual telepresence systems, stereo cameras are commonly used to simulate human eyes. However, motion blur occurs when these cameras are rotated quickly. The use of omnidirectional cameras can reduce the motion blur, but does not provide the correct interpupillary distance (IPD) when viewers tilt or turn their heads sideways. We propose a method called TeleParallax, in which two omnidirectional cameras are separated by the IPD and the direction of the lenses are kept constant in world coordinates by robotic arms during three-dimensional head rotations. TeleParallax can suppress the increase in image buffering during head rotations because each camera can capture an omnidirectional image with the lens direction fixed. We conducted three user studies to evaluate the perceptual effect of head tilt, eye asynchrony, and delays in IPD correction for a particular rotation. The results indicate that TeleParallax can provide depth perception that is independent of the head movement with less visual discomfort. Although the results show that the users were sensitive to the asynchrony between their eyes and to camera motion during IPDs, they retained the feeling of depth perception within interocular delays of 70 ms and motion velocity of 75°/s. These results imply that TeleParallax has remarkable potential for visual telepresence systems.

How customer-driven and vendor-driven information cues shape a travel app user behaviour?

Purpose This study aims to apply the stimulus-organism-response framework to uncover the underlying mechanism by which the perceived helpfulness of online customer reviews (OCRs) drives behavioural intentions in mobile travel app commerce. Also, the current study explores how vendor-driven perceived usefulness of a product and its attributes influence the mediated relationship between perceived helpfulness of OCRs (OCRs helpfulness) and behavioural intentions. Design/methodology/approach The online survey (n = 151) was used to collect the data. The authors used structural equation modelling and the bias-corrected bootstrap method to test the proposed conceptual model for mediation and moderated-mediation effect. Findings Findings indicate that the perceived OCRs helpfulness has an indirect positive effect, via trust and attitude, on travel app downloading intention. Moreover, results suggest that the presence of vendor cues (vendor-generated informational content about a travel app) does not significantly moderate the mediating effect of perceived OCRs helpfulness on travel app downloading intention. Originality/value The present study reinforces the applicability of the warranting principle in the context of travel app commerce by exploring the relative effectiveness of customer-generated and vendor-generated informational content in influencing travel app downloading intention.

When the Chinese guy becomes the female IT specialist Liu – a conceptualization of reputational shifts in international assignments

PurposeInternational assignments rely on interactions between host country nationals (HCNs) and an international assignee (IA). These interactions are significantly determined by the reputation that the IA holds among HCNs. However, reputation has only scarcely been addressed in extant mobility research, and there is a lack of understanding about how the reputation of an IA shifts among HCNs during the course of an assignment. The purpose of this paper is to understand the development of an individual's reputation as well as the interactions between an IA and HCNs in the context of international assignments.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that builds upon the central idea in extant research of individual reputation as a social construction and draws on sensemaking theory to develop its conceptual model.FindingsAs extant research argues for both a temporal and dynamic dimension of reputation, the authors introduce time and reputational richness as central model elements. Furthermore, the conceptual model proposes reputational events as the principal triggers for reputational shifts. Reputational events reveal quantitatively and qualitatively new informational cues about the IA to HCNs, who then use these cues to incrementally construct the IA's reputation in sensemaking processes. In addition, contextual factors of reputational shifts, namely accelerators and amplifiers, are discussed. The authors argue that these contextual factors may affect both the timing and the strength of reputational shifts.Originality/valueThe study introduces a novel conceptual model and contributes to the understanding of individual reputation development as well as the interactions between an IA and HCNs in international assignments.

Does Prosocial Impact Reduce Performance Data Gaming? The Role of Data Visualizations and Expert-Novice Differences

While research has documented the framing effects of performance data on decision-making, little is known about the impact of data visualizations on performance gaming. We propose that performance information portraying prosocial impact reduces gaming if the information is episodic and visualizes benefits for clients in need. We also theorize about expert-novice differences and suggest that performance information is less influential among experts. We conduct an experiment with samples of citizens (novices) and school leaders (experts) in which subjects must decide whether they are willing to omit poorly performing students when calculating school-wide performance scores. We find that school leaders game less than citizens, and that the former are less responsive to episodic information cues than the latter. However, information becomes more influential if it can capture school leaders’ attention and if leaders have little work experience. More broadly, our findings suggest being cautious with generalizations across groups of data users.

Dissociable contributions of phasic dopamine activity to reward and prediction.

Sensory cues that precede reward acquire predictive (expected value) and incentive (drive reward-seeking action) properties. Mesolimbic dopamine neurons' responses to sensory cues correlate with both expected value and reward-seeking action. This has led to the proposal that phasic dopamine responses may be sufficient to inform value-based decisions, elicit actions, and/or induce motivational states; however, causal tests are incomplete. Here, we show that direct dopamine neuron stimulation, both calibrated to physiological and greater intensities, at the time of reward can be sufficient to induce and maintain reward seeking (reinforcing) although replacement of a cue with stimulation is insufficient to induce reward seeking or act as an informative cue. Stimulation of descending cortical inputs, one synapse upstream, are sufficient for reinforcement and cues to future reward. Thus, physiological activation of mesolimbic dopamine neurons can be sufficient for reinforcing properties of reward without being sufficient for the predictive and incentive properties of cues.

Tell me more and make me feel proud: the role of eco-labels and informational cues on consumers' food perceptions

PurposeThe objective of the present research is to identify the impact of food-related and packaging-related eco-labels on consumers' perceptions of food quality and safety when an ecological claim, which explains the eco-label meaning, is provided.Design/methodology/approachOne survey (N = 472) plus one experimental lab study were used to test the hypotheses drawn from the elaboration likelihood model. The research employed a 2 (eco-label: MSC vs FSC) × 2 (ecological claim: present vs absent) between-subjects design plus a control condition (i.e. absence of eco-label).FindingsWhen the ecological claim is absent, only food-related eco-labels were found to generate a higher food evaluation. However, when the ecological claim is present, both eco-label types (i.e. food-related and packaging-related) increased food perceptions of quality and safety because of higher feelings of pride.Originality/valueFrom a theoretical perspective, this research identifies both food- and packaging-related eco-labels as extrinsic cues able to affect consumers' perception of food quality and safety. Moreover, the findings of this study present practical implications for package design and health policymaking.

Tell me more and make me feel proud: the role of eco-labels and informational cues on consumers' food perceptions

The objective of the present research is to identify the impact of food-related and packaging-related eco-labels on consumers' perceptions of food quality and safety when an ecological claim, which explains the eco-label meaning, is provided.,One survey (N = 472) plus one experimental lab study were used to test the hypotheses drawn from the elaboration likelihood model. The research employed a 2 (eco-label: MSC vs FSC) × 2 (ecological claim: present vs absent) between-subjects design plus a control condition (i.e. absence of eco-label).,When the ecological claim is absent, only food-related eco-labels were found to generate a higher food evaluation. However, when the ecological claim is present, both eco-label types (i.e. food-related and packaging-related) increased food perceptions of quality and safety because of higher feelings of pride.,From a theoretical perspective, this research identifies both food- and packaging-related eco-labels as extrinsic cues able to affect consumers' perception of food quality and safety. Moreover, the findings of this study present practical implications for package design and health policymaking.

Do Not Tell Me More; You Are Honest: A Preconceived Honesty Bias.

According to the previous literature, only a few papers found better accuracy than a chance to detect dishonesty, even when more information and verbal cues (VCs) improve precision in detecting dishonesty. A new classification of dishonesty profiles has recently been published, allowing us to study if this low success rate happens for all people or if some people have higher predictive ability. This paper aims to examine if (dis)honest people can detect better/worse (un)ethical behavior of others. With this in mind, we designed one experiment using videos from one of the most popular TV shows in the UK where contestants make a (dis)honesty decision upon gaining or sharing a certain amount of money. Our participants from an online MTurk sample (N = 1,582) had to determine under different conditions whether the contestants would act in an (dis)honest way. Three significant results emerged from these two experiments. First, accuracy in detecting (dis)honesty is not different than chance, but submaximizers (compared to maximizers) and radical dishonest people (compare to non-radicals) are better at detecting honesty, while there is no difference in detecting dishonesty. Second, more information and VCs improve precision in detecting dishonesty, but honesty is better detected using only non-verbal cues (NVCs). Finally, a preconceived honesty bias improves specificity (honesty detection accuracy) and worsens sensitivity (dishonesty detection accuracy).

Unidirectional information-interaction network for person re-identification

Person re-identification (re-ID) is the task of matching the same individuals across multiple cameras, and its performance is greatly influenced by background clutter. Most re-ID methods remove background clutter using hard manners, such as the use of segmentation algorithms. However, the hard manner may damage the structure information and smoothness of original images. In this work, we propose a unidirectional information-interaction network (UI2N) that consists of a global stream (G-Stream) and a background-graying stream (BGg-Stream). The G-Stream and BGg-Stream carry out unidirectional information interaction such that their features are complementary. We further propose a soft manner with the UI2N to weaken background clutter by background-graying. The soft manner can help the UI2N filter out background interference and retain some informative background cues. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms many state-of-the-art approaches in the challenging Market-1501, DukeMTMC-reID, and CUHK03-NP datasets.

A Study on the Influencing Mechanisms of Motivational Appeals on Financing Performance in Poverty Alleviation Crowdfunding

Poverty alleviation crowdfunding is a new way to achieve the targeted poverty alleviation under the “Internet +” context. Existing studies fail to disclose how the motivational appeals contained in the entrepreneurial narratives of poverty alleviation crowdfunding have impacts on their financing performance. Relying upon the cognitive evaluation theory, this paper puts forward a research model that depicts how motivational appeals influence financing performance. The research model is examined by the 640 actual poverty alleviation crowdfunding projects from the JD crowdfunding platform, revealing which motivational appeal is more helpful in impressing the backers and how to improve the project financing performance. This paper thus answers the following two research questions: (1) What motivational appeals are contained in entrepreneurial narratives? (2) How do these appeals have impacts on financing performance?The conclusions are offered as follows: Both the internal and external motivational appeals have various impacts on financing performance. More specifically, both altruistic appeals and reward appeals positively contribute to financing performance, social appeals have a negative impact, and risk disclosure has no significant effect. The results indicate that when participating in the pro-social projects such as poverty alleviation crowdfunding, backers have more complex motivations: They have the altruistic motivations to help others and the need to acquire material rewards; overall, they do not have many concerns on risks, and they do not leverage poverty alleviation crowdfunding projects for their social needs.The implications are that: First, the crowdfunders of poverty alleviation projects should focus on arousing backers’ altruistic motivations rather than their social motivations. They also should put an emphasis on rewards rather than risk disclosure. Second, platform providers and relevant government agencies should guide and train crowdfunders to use appropriate languages to publicize their poverty alleviation crowdfunding projects.The future directions are offered as follows: First, future studies can deepen and improve the results of this study by collecting other types of crowdfunding projects and by conducting more empirical tests based on the large sample data set. Second, they can also deeply analyze the reasons for the success or failure of crowdfunding projects (such as the sponsor’s passion). Emotional changes have a deep impact on people, and thus, emotional reactions may directly affect the individual’s attitude, leading to emotion-driven behavior. Therefore, emotion is an important mediating variable between crowdfunding projects and financing performance. Future research can try to analyze how crowdfunding projects arouse backers’ emotion to lead to the success of the project.This paper makes the following contributions: First, based on the cognitive evaluation theory, it not only provides a more complete explanatory framework for the participating behavior of poverty alleviation crowdfunding projects, but also deepens the application of this theory in this field. Second, with the computer-aided text analysis method, it points out the close relationship between entrepreneurial narratives and financing performance, which not only expands the entrepreneurial narrative research to the field of crowdfunding, but also makes a good complement to the extant research that focuses on information cues.

A Novel Framework for Rapid Detection of Damaged Buildings Using Pre-Event LiDAR Data and Shadow Change Information

After a major earthquake in a dense urban area, the spatial distribution of heavily damaged buildings is indicative of the impact of the event on public safety. Timely assessment of the locations of severely damaged buildings and their damage morphologies using remote sensing approaches is critical for search and rescue actions. Detection of damaged buildings that did not suffer collapse can be highly challenging from aerial or satellite optical imagery, especially those structures with height-reduction or inclination damage and apparently intact roofs. A key information cue can be provided by a comparison of predicted building shadows based on pre-event building models with shadow estimates extracted from post-event imagery. This paper addresses the detection of damaged buildings in dense urban areas using the information of building shadow changes based on shadow simulation, analysis, and image processing in order to improve real-time damage detection and analysis. A novel processing framework for the rapid detection of damaged buildings without collapse is presented, which includes (a) generation of building digital surface models (DSMs) from pre-event LiDAR data, (b) building shadow detection and extraction from imagery, (c) simulation of predicted building shadows utilizing building DSMs, and (d) detection and identification of shadow areas exhibiting significant pre- and post-event differences that can be attributed to building damage. The framework is demonstrated through two simulated case studies. The building damage types considered are those typically observed in earthquake events and include height-reduction, over-turn collapse, and inclination. Total collapse cases are not addressed as these are comparatively easy to be detected using simpler algorithms. Key issues are discussed including the attributes of essential information layers and sources of error influencing the accuracy of building damage detection.

International tourists’ Choices and satisfaction of small restaurants in thailand: the influence of food safety indicators

ABSTRACT Travelers’ increasing concern about restaurant-associated foodborne illness makes food safety very important to destination foodservice operators. While previous research has shed light on the impact of destination different restaurant service quality attributes on tourists’ satisfaction, there is a lack of research identifying the dimensions of food safety indicators driving tourist’s restaurant selection and satisfaction solely. This study aims to fill the gaps by developing a scale measuring 433 international tourists’ perceptions about hygiene standards in Phuket small restaurants. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a four-factor model that influences tourists’ restaurant selection. These factors were: waitstaff’s appearance and personal hygiene, cleanliness of restaurant, toilet hygiene, and food safety information cues. Cleanliness of restaurant and waitstaff’s appearances and personal hygiene were two key factors influencing tourist satisfaction of small restaurants. The significance of restaurant hygiene quality has received less attention in tourism marketing literature, thus this study adds further importance by underlining its implication to the sustainable management of destination restaurants. However, this study suffered from several limitations, for instance, the study’s framework, the inability to generalize the results due to the research scope and context, and the concurrence of data collection with the COVID-19 pandemic which pave the way for future studies.