Listing Task Research Articles

Fostering Learners’ Critical Thinking (CT) Skills in English Communication I： Development of a CT Skills List and Core Performance Tasks

Fostering Learners’ Critical Thinking<b> (CT) </b>Skills in English Communication I： Development of a CT Skills List and Core Performance Tasks

Factors influencing local ecological knowledge of forage resources: Ethnobotanical evidence from West Africa's savannas

Recording local ecological knowledge (LEK) is a useful approach to understanding interactions of the complex social-ecological systems. In spite of the recent growing interest in LEK studies on the effects of climate and land use changes, livestock mobility decisions and other aspects of agro-pastoral systems, LEK on forage plants has still been vastly under-documented in the West African savannas. Using a study area ranging from northern Ghana to central Burkina Faso, we thus aimed at exploring how aridity and socio-demographic factors drive the distributional patterns of forage-related LEK among its holders. With stratified random sampling, we elicited LEK among 450 informants in 15 villages (seven in Ghana and eight in Burkina Faso) via free list tasks coupled with ethnobotanical walks and direct field observations. We performed generalized linear mixed-effects models (aridity- and ethnicity-based models) and robust model selection procedures. Our findings revealed that LEK for woody and herbaceous forage plants was strongly influenced by the ethnicity-based model, while aridity-based model performed better for LEK on overall forage resources and crop-related forage plants. We also found that climatic aridity had negative effect on the forage-related LEK across gender and age groups, while agro- and floristic diversity had positive effect on the body of LEK. About 135 species belonging to 95 genera and 52 families were cited. Our findings shed more light on how ethnicity and environmental harshness can markedly shape the body of LEK in the face of global climate change. Better understanding of such a place-based knowledge system is relevant for sustainable forage plants utilization and livestock production.

Bermudian English: An acoustic analysis of vowel properties with implications for sociophonetic variation

Bermudian English is a variety of interest due to its distinctiveness from most varieties of British and American English, but to date, few studies have documented the properties of the dialect's vocalic system (Ayers 1933). This study provides an initial description of the vowel systems of Bermudian English speakers, especially as compared to the systems of speakers of Mainstream U.S. English (MUSE). The study was conducted with seven native Bermudian speakers between the ages of 18 and 21. Subjects participated in a word list task as well as a picture task to elicit naturalistic speech. Results of regression analyses comparing F1, F2, and F3 values of Bermudian speakers with formant values of Mainstream U.S. English speakers from Hillenbrand (1995). indicate that Bermudian speakers differ from MUSE speakers in several striking ways. Bermudian speakers produce significantly fronter /u/ and /o/, and lower /i/ than MUSE speakers. Bermudian speakers also show a near complete merger of /ɛ/ and /ae/, though speakers also show some variation between productions in the word list vs. picture tasks, indicating a potential casual/careful distinction. Male Bermduian speakers also show a merger of /iɹ/ and /ɛɹ/ which is a stigmatized production according to speakers, though this does not occur for female speakers. The differences between casual/careful speech in front vowels and the gender differences in the production of prerhotic vowels provide valuable directions for future sociolinguistic and phonetic work on the variety.

ON SOCIOPHONETIC COMPETENCE

The data from this study investigate phrase-final vowel devoicing in Metropolitan French among L1 and L2 speakers, in terms of number of times a speaker devoices a phrase-final high vowel and percentage of the vowel that is devoiced. The goal is to assess whether experienced L2 speakers use style-based variation in response to the same factors as native speakers. Results from a set of role playing and word list tasks revealed that L2 devoicing rates matched those of the natives, but were conditioned by different factors in each group. The duration of L2 speaker devoicing, however, was found not to match native levels. Notable differences emerged in response to shifts in style: L1 speakers showed higher rates and enhanced degrees of devoicing in pragmatic contexts that favored either slower or more formal speech, while L2 speakers responded very little to pragmatic shifts within role plays, instead responding more pronouncedly to different tasks.

Medicinal plants at Rio Jauaperi, Brazilian Amazon: Ethnobotanical survey and environmental conservation

Study backgroundThe Amazon basin is a mosaic of different environments. Flooded riparian and upland forests play a significant role for the establishment of human settlements. Riparian communities in the Amazon have evolved depending on the use of plants applied for therapeutic purposes, thus developing important knowledge about their management and preparation. Aim of the studyThis paper describes and analyzes the use and management of medicinal plants in order to establish links to environmental conservation. The categorization of habitats of occurrence and categories of diseases were held in five riparian communities at Rio Jauaperi, in the border between Roraima and Amazonas states in Brazil. The study sight is poorly investigated in terms of scientific research. Materials and methodsQuantitative and qualitative ethnobotanical field inquiries and analytical methods including observations, individual and focus group discussions, individual interviews, preference ranking by free listing tasks, guided tours and community mapping were applied. Sutrop's cognitive salience index was applied in order to check the most important ethnospecies and diseases. The survey was conducted from February to December 2012. ResultsA total of 62 informants were interviewed, resulting in 119 botanical species documented. The most salient medicinal species are usually wide distributed and recognized transculturally. Arboreal habit was the most important corresponding to 47% of total species used. The most frequent accessed environments were terra-firme (upland forest), vargeado (flooded forest), poultry (regenerating forest) and restinga (seasonally flooded forest) which together provides 59% of the total medicinal plant species. Exotic species played a secondary role with only 20% of the total. Thirty seven percent of the species were cultivated. Plants at homegardens are usually associated with children's or women's disease. Xixuaú is the community with improved ability to environmental preservation using more forestry species. The most worrying disease was malaria. Biomedical assistance is precarious in the region and many diseases and healing rituals are culturally built. ConclusionsEthnobotanical surveys of medicinal plants can indicate the level of biodiversity conservation and human health by integrating social and ecological analytical elements. Considering a predominance of management for subsistence, the higher richness of native medicinal species availability indicates that biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge are better preserved. The methods applied here might contribute for the decision-making process regarding conservation public policies and medical assistance in remote areas of the Amazon basin.

The salience and severity of relationship problems among low-income couples.

Developing programs to support low-income married couples requires an accurate understanding of the challenges they face. To address this question, we assessed the salience and severity of relationship problems by asking 862 Black, White, and Latino newlywed spouses (N = 431 couples) living in low-income neighborhoods to (a) free list their 3 biggest sources of disagreement in the marriage, and (b) rate the severity of the problems appearing on a standard relationship problem inventory. Comparing the 2 sources of information revealed that, although relational problems (e.g., communication and moods) were rated as severe on the inventory, challenges external to the relationship (e.g., children) were more salient in the free listing task. The pattern of results is robust across couples of varying race/ethnicity, parental status, and income levels. We conclude that efforts to strengthen marriages among low-income couples may be more effective if they address not only relational problems, but also couples' external stresses by providing assistance with child care, finances, or job training.

Check all that apply and free listing to describe the sensory characteristics of low sodium dry fermented sausages: Comparison with trained panel

The urgent need for sodium reduction in meat products to enable healthy food choices has led food industry to search for more dynamic and fast methodological approaches to assess the sensory characteristics of their products. In the present study, dry fermented sausages with reduction in NaCl, replaced by KCl, CaCl2, and a blend of KCl and CaCl2 were evaluated for their sensory properties using a check all that apply questionnaire (CATA) and a free listing task. The results were compared with those of a trained panel using quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA). The absence of concordance was observed between the CATA and free listing towards the two bidimensional sensory maps and configuration of the samples in comparison to QDA. However, free listing was able to generate a similar and resumed vocabulary when compared to QDA. Our findings suggest the potential of free listing as sensory descriptive methodology in the development of reformulated food products with respect to sodium reduction.

Rethinking Susceptibility: Examining the Cognitive and Emotional Processing of Other-Directed Persuasive Fear Appeal Messages

This article examines the message processing of men in response to an other-directed persuasive fear appeal regarding sexual assault against women. A sample of men read a persuasive message and completed attitude, intention, and mood assessments, and a paired message recall and thought/feeling listing task. One week later they again completed attitude and intention assessments. Results indicated that men experienced fear for the women they care about, primarily recalled threatening message information, and were motivated to speak with women regarding the protective message recommendations.

Influence of Context on Motives Underlying Food Choice

AbstractContext can be regarded as the situational and temporal conditions in which food choice occurs. Although context has a large effect on consumer perception and choice of food products, it has been mostly overlooked in research exploring the determinants of consumers' food choice. The aims of the present work were to study the influence of purchase and consumption context on motives underlying food choice and to evaluate if gender and age modulate this effect. One hundred and ninety‐five consumers from Montevideo (Uruguay) participated in an online survey. They were asked to complete a free‐listing task about all the things they take into account when selecting foods in four contexts: purchase, lunch, snacking and dinner. Consumer responses were qualitatively analyzed and grouped into categories and their cognitive salience was determined. Categories were grouped into 10 dimensions: price, health/nutrition, perceived quality, freshness, sensory characteristics, hedonics, convenience, context, variety and satiety. Context had a strong influence on the motives underlying consumer food choices. The dimensions with the highest cognitive salience in the purchase context were price, perceived quality and freshness, while convenience and variety were the most relevant dimensions for the consumption contexts. The effect of context on the salience of the elicited categories was not markedly affected by gender and age.Practical ApplicationsSeveral of the most salient motives responsible for food choices elicited by consumers in the free listing task of the present study are not included in the Food Choice Questionnaire. This suggests the need to revisit this instrument to include factors that have been overlooked, such as brand, satiety and variety. Besides, the fact that context had a large influence on the salience of the elicited categories indicates that asking consumers about the motives that determine their choices in a general context can lead to misleading results. Thus, specific contexts should be considered when studying consumers' motives underlying food choices.

The basic color terms of Mandarin Chinese

In this paper the theory of the evolution of basic color terms introduced by Berlin &amp; Kay is applied to Mandarin Chinese. The data was collected using the fieldwork methods, color list and color-naming tasks. The rainbow order of colors does not affect the list task results. The results, i.e. basic color terms, are calculated according to the procedure in Davies &amp; Corbett. There are nine basic color terms in Mandarin. Ranked according to the cognitive salience criterion they are the following:hóng‘red’,huáng‘yellow’,lu‘green’,lán‘blue’,hēi‘black’,bái‘white’,zǐ‘purple’,fěn‘pink’, andhuī‘gray’. Of the fully developed set of BCTs only the terms for ‘brown’ and ‘orange’ are absent. There are no real gender differences for the BCTs. Mandarin is a Stage VII basic color vocabulary language. The absence of the Stage VI term for ‘brown’ is explained using the wild-card theory. As a result Mandarin is not a counter-example to the theory of basic color terms. We suggest that the termchéng‘orange’ is the next candidate for basic status in Mandarin. There are two competing terms for basic ‘brown’zōngandhè. If one competing term for ‘brown’ (with high probability the termzōng) becomes basic, Mandarin Chinese will have a full set (eleven) of basic color terms.

Identifying motives underlying wine purchase decisions: Results from an exploratory free listing task with Burgundy wine consumers

To better understand consumer decision making processes while purchasing wine it is important to identify which attributes consumers actually rely on and how they perceive and weight them in order to reach a final decision. The aims of the present work were to identify motives underlying wine purchase decisions and to identify consumer segments with different drivers of wine purchase. One hundred and twenty seven Burgundy wine consumers were asked to complete a free listing task. Relevance of each category of elicited terms was estimated by Smith's and Cognitive saliency indices. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed on individual Smith's saliency indices.In the free listing task, respondents listed an average of 5.6 terms, the minimum number per participant being 2 and the maximum 11. The four categories with the highest saliency indices were Price, Production region, Wine type and Production year. Two consumer segments with different motives underlying their wine purchase decisions were identified. Cluster 1, mainly composed of young consumers, elicited Price, Production region, Food and wine pairing and Consumption context as the most salient motives, while Cluster 2, composed of older consumers, mentioned Production region, Price, Grape variety and Wine type as the most salient ones.

Revisiting the limits of language: The odor lexicon of Maniq

It is widely believed that human languages cannot encode odors. While this is true for English, and other related languages, data from some non-Western languages challenge this view. Maniq, a language spoken by a small population of nomadic hunter–gatherers in southern Thailand, is such a language. It has a lexicon of over a dozen terms dedicated to smell. We examined the semantics of these smell terms in 3 experiments (exemplar listing, similarity judgment and off-line rating). The exemplar listing task confirmed that Maniq smell terms have complex meanings encoding smell qualities. Analyses of the similarity data revealed that the odor lexicon is coherently structured by two dimensions. The underlying dimensions are pleasantness and dangerousness, as verified by the off-line rating study. Ethnographic data illustrate that smell terms have detailed semantics tapping into broader cultural constructs. Contrary to the widespread view that languages cannot encode odors, the Maniq data show odor can be a coherent semantic domain, thus shedding new light on the limits of language.

An acoustic study of the Mary-merry-marry vowels in the Mid-Atlantic United States

This paper examines the acoustic properties of a subset of American English vowels before /r/--specifically, the mid and low front vowels in the MARY, MERRY, and MARRY classes. While the dialectal variation associated with the MARY, MERRY, and MARRY classes is well known in the sociolinguistics literature, the precise phonetic nature of these vowels has not been well studied. Many scholars [e.g., Labov et al. (2006)] transcribe the vowels as /eɪ/, /ɛ/, and /æ/, respectively, but these labels are largely impressionistic. The present study samples five speakers from the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States who maintain a three-way distinction between MARY, MERRY, and MARRY. The speakers' productions of MARY, MERRY, and MARRY vowels in both sentence and word list tasks were analyzed in Praat, and the resultant formant values were submitted to one-way ANOVAs, followed by pairwise comparisons (Tukey's HSD). The primary finding of this study is that the MARY vowel is acoustically closest to a tense (raised and fronted) variant of /æ/, similar to that which appears before nasals in many American English dialects. Contrary to previous descriptions, the MARY vowel shows little overlap with /eɪ/, suggesting that the conventional transcription should be revised.

Challenges Faced by Former Child Soldiers in the Aftermath of War in Uganda

Warfare takes a profound toll of all layers of society, creating multiple and multilevel challenges that impinge on the psychosocial well-being of affected individuals. This study aims to assess the scope and salience of challenges confronting former child soldiers and at identifying additional challenges they face compared to non-recruited young people in war-affected northern Uganda. The study was carried out with a stratified random sample of northern Ugandan adolescents (n = 1,008), of whom a third had formerly been recruited (n = 330). The mixed-method comparison design consisted of a constrained free listing task to determine the challenges; a free sorting task to categorize them into clusters; and statistical analysis of their prevalence among formerly recruited youth and of how they compare with those of nonrecruited youth. Altogether, 237 challenges were identified and clustered into 15 categories, showing that formerly recruited participants mainly identified "emotional" and "training and skills"-related challenges. Compared with nonrecruited counterparts, they reported significantly more "emotional" and fewer "social and relational" challenges, with the exception of stigmatization. Overall, there was similarity between the challenges reported by both groups. The challenges confronting formerly recruited youths reach well beyond the effects of direct war exposure and emerge mainly from multiple influence spheres surrounding them. These challenges are largely shared in common with nonrecruited youths. This multidimensional and collective character of challenges calls for comprehensive psychosocial interventions through which healing the psychological wounds of war is complemented by mending the war-affected surroundings at all levels and in all life areas.

Tempting food words activate eating simulations

This study shows that tempting food words activate simulations of eating the food, including simulations of the taste and texture of the food, simulations of eating situations, and simulations of hedonic enjoyment. In a feature listing task, participants generated features that are typically true of four tempting foods (e.g., chips) and four neutral foods (e.g., rice). The resulting features were coded as features of eating simulations if they referred to the taste, texture, and temperature of the food (e.g., “crunchy”; “sticky”), to situations of eating the food (e.g., “movie”; “good for Wok dishes”), and to the hedonic experience when eating the food (e.g., “tasty”). Based on the grounded cognition perspective, it was predicted that tempting foods are more likely to be represented in terms of actually eating them, so that participants would list more features referring to eating simulations for tempting than for neutral foods. Confirming this hypothesis, results showed that eating simulation features constituted 53% of the features for tempting food, and 26% of the features for neutral food. Visual features, in contrast, were mentioned more often for neutral foods (45%) than for tempting foods (19%). Exploratory analyses revealed that the proportion of eating simulation features for tempting foods was positively correlated with perceived attractiveness of the foods, and negatively with participants’ dieting concerns, suggesting that eating simulations may depend on individuals’ goals with regard to eating. These findings are discussed with regard to their implications for understanding the processes guiding eating behavior, and for interventions designed to reduce the consumption of attractive, unhealthy food.

How sadness and happiness influence ethnic stereotyping

Incidental affective states tend to influence stereotyping in counterintuitive way: experimentally induced happiness leads to more stereotyping while experimentally induced sadness leads to less stereotyping. It was therefore predicted that happy subjects would a. would make more stereotype-consistent errors in memory task; b. attribute more stereotypical features to a specific ethnic group, and c. be less sensitive to ethnic discrimination in comparison to sad subjects. In a sample of 90 high school students from Belgrade, Serbia, differently valenced affects were successfully induced using 'autobiographic recollection' procedure. Experiment 1 showed that happy and sad subjects did not differ in the number of stereotype consistent errors in memory task. In experiment 2, however, happy subjects in comparison to sad subjects attributed more stereotypic traits to a non-stereotypical exemplar of a national category and expected him to behave more stereotypically in the future. Additionally, in thought listing task, happy subjects recorded more irrelevant and less story-focused thoughts in comparison to sad subjects. Finally, in Experiment 3 (N=66) sad subjects demonstrated more sensitivity to ethnic discrimination in comparison to happy subjects. These findings are discussed in terms of the impact of emotional experience on social information-processing strategies.

The Case for Testing Memory With Both Stories and Word Lists Prior to DBS Surgery for Parkinson's Disease

Patients seeking deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery for Parkinson's disease (PD) typically undergo neuropsychological assessment to determine candidacy for surgery, with poor memory performance interpreted as a contraindication. Patients with PD may exhibit worse memory for word lists than for stories due to the lack of inherent organization in a list of unrelated words. Unfortunately, word list and story tasks are typically developed from different normative datasets, and the existence of a memory performance discrepancy in PD has been challenged. We compared recall of stories and word lists in 35 non-demented PD candidates for DBS. We administered commonly used neuropsychological measures of word list and story memory (Hopkins Verbal Learning Test, Logical Memory), along with a second word list task that was co-normed with the story task. Age-corrected scores were higher for the story task than for both word list tasks. Compared to story recall, word list recall correlated more consistently with motor severity and composite measures of processing speed, working memory, and executive functioning. These results support the classic view of fronto-subcortical contributions to memory in PD and suggest that executive deficits may influence word list recall more than story recall. We recommend a multi-componential memory battery in the neuropsychological assessment of DBS candidates to characterize both mesial temporal and frontal-executive memory processes. One should not rely solely on a word list task because patients exhibiting poor memory for word lists may perform better with stories and therefore deserve an interdisciplinary discussion for DBS surgery.

Pediatric functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging: tactics for encouraging task compliance

BackgroundNeuroimaging technology has afforded advances in our understanding of normal and pathological brain function and development in children and adolescents. However, noncompliance involving the inability to remain in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner to complete tasks is one common and significant problem. Task noncompliance is an especially significant problem in pediatric functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research because increases in noncompliance produces a greater risk that a study sample will not be representative of the study population.MethodIn this preliminary investigation, we describe the development and application of an approach for increasing the number of fMRI tasks children complete during neuroimaging. Twenty-eight healthy children ages 9-13 years participated. Generalization of the approach was examined in additional fMRI and event-related potential investigations with children at risk for depression, children with anxiety and children with depression (N = 120). Essential features of the approach include a preference assessment for identifying multiple individualized rewards, increasing reinforcement rates during imaging by pairing tasks with chosen rewards and presenting a visual 'road map' listing tasks, rewards and current progress.ResultsOur results showing a higher percentage of fMRI task completion by healthy children provides proof of concept data for the recommended tactics. Additional support was provided by results showing our approach generalized to several additional fMRI and event-related potential investigations and clinical populations.DiscussionWe proposed that some forms of task noncompliance may emerge from less than optimal reward protocols. While our findings may not directly support the effectiveness of the multiple reward compliance protocol, increased attention to how rewards are selected and delivered may aid cooperation with completing fMRI tasksConclusionThe proposed approach contributes to the pediatric neuroimaging literature by providing a useful way to conceptualize and measure task noncompliance and by providing simple cost effective tactics for improving the effectiveness of common reward-based protocols.

Consumers’ texture vocabulary: Results from a free listing study in three Spanish-speaking countries

Considering the great impact of texture on consumers’ liking of several products, it is important for food companies to understand how consumers describe the texture of food products. The aim of the present study was to get an insight on consumers’ texture vocabulary in three different Spanish-speaking countries: Argentina, Spain and Uruguay. A free listing task was carried out in each country with 107–120 consumers. Participants were asked to list all the texture characteristics of food products they knew about. Between 80 and 112 terms were elicited by consumers, comprising mainly words related to texture characteristics of food products. By simultaneously considering frequency of mention and average order of elicited terms, the most familiar texture terms in each country were identified, being the most frequently used texture terms similar. Results from the present work would contribute to a greater knowledge of the vocabulary used by consumers to describe the texture of food products and show the existence of cross-cultural differences in word usage within a same language.

Paradigm leveling in Buenos Aires Spanish sibilants.

Buenos Aires Spanish (BAS) lacks a voicing contrast in fricatives; however, there is an apparent voicing mismatch in its fricative inventory: /f,s,x/ vs /ȝ/. Since the mid‐twentieth century, /ȝ/ has been undergoing a devoicing change to [∫], sensitive to factors such as age, sex, and social class. This study analyzes the devoicing rates of /ȝ/ and compares them to voiceless fricative /s/ in order to investigate the progress of this devoicing change. The data come from word list and sentence reading tasks. Using onset/offset of high frequency energy as a guide for segmentation, the percentage of voicing during frication was measured for tokens of /ȝ/ and /s/. Preliminary results from 16 native BAS speakers (stratified by age, sex, and class) show that 9/16 speakers actually present no significant difference between the percentage of voicing for /s/ and that of /ȝ/, and of the younger speakers only 1/8 exhibits significantly higher voicing rates for /ȝ/. These results suggest that, for most of the younger generation, /ȝ/ has been devoiced to the level of /s/. The previous sensitivity to social factors associated with /ȝ/ seems to be ceding to the phonetic/phonological pressures of paradigm leveling toward a voiceless fricative inventory: /f,s,∫,x/.