Negative Items Research Articles

Adverbial Agreement: Phi Features, Nominalizations, and Fragment Answers

We investigate adverbial agreement in Sandəmarkesə (S. Marco in Lamis, Apulia) proposing phase-bound, local agreement relations, reducible to coordination, as in past and absolute participial constructions, suggesting a copulaless analysis where arguments are subjects in a small clause. With disjunct nominals with matching φ-features, the adverb agrees separately with each part in the set, otherwise resulting in ‘non-agreeing’ forms, which we test also with negative polarity items (niʃun-, ‘nobody’ and nentə, ‘nothing’). With fragment answers, the negation scopes over adverbs agreeing with the two proposed topics: matching of the φ-features of both nouns values the negative operator with the same features. In fronted adverbs, agreement occurs when the question contains overt coordinated arguments, elements continuing a chain, and if coordinated arguments have matching φ-features. In agreement in topical contexts with fronted adverbs, agreement occurs with the aboutness-shift topic closely preceding them, rather than with the embedded direct object.

한국어 장형부정 형태소 ‘아니’의 통사적 고찰

The goal of this paper is to present evidence that the long-form negative marker ani in Korean functions as a head of the functional projection NegP. The evidence mainly comes from the following two facts. First, a negative polarity item(NPI) serves as a blocker for the focus marker in sentences of long-form negation, so any element preceding an NPI cannot be focused. Second, a subject-object asymmetry arises in NPI-licensing when an NPI is contained in coordinate structures of long-form negation, the fact of which can only be explained by assuming the headness of the negator ani.

Psycho-emotional stress and its impact on the intestine before and after artificial abortion

This study explores the psycho-emotional stress and related intestinal symptoms among women of fertile age who underwent an artificial abortion, utilizing a well-defined point-based questionnaire for stress levels and the revised version of the questionnaire for healthcare professionals to evaluate intestinal symptoms. The cohort consisted of 400 participants, with stress levels categorized as low (0–30 points), medium (31–70 points), or high (71+ points) according to the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS). Further, perceived helplessness and perceived self-efficacy were evaluated via negative and positive PSS items, respectively. Findings indicated that most (65.5 %) women experienced high, and 27.5 % — medium stress before an abortion. Notably, pre-abortion stress levels were generally higher compared to those after an abortion. Concurrently, the frequency of bowel symptoms declined after an abortion. A significant relationship was found between pre-abortion bowel symptoms and higher post-abortion PSS scores, and an increase in the perceived helplessness subgroup (p = 0.051, R2 = 0.156; p = 0.029, R2 = 0.138, respectively). Furthermore, higher perceived helplessness scores were linked with increased pre-abortion intestinal symptoms (p = 0.043, R2 = 0.341). The study, however, found no significant correlations between bowel symptoms and the perceived self-efficacy subgroup. These results suggest an association between pre-abortion psychological factors (lower self-efficacy and higher stress levels) and the incidence of intestinal symptoms, thus shedding light on the intersection of psychological and physical well-being in reproductive health contexts. Further research is needed to explore these mechanisms and develop effective support strategies.

Absence of Clausal Islands in Shupamem

Decades-long research on islands has led to the conclusion that island constraints are candidates for language universals. A recent surge in research on islandhood in African languages has revealed some would-be island configurations that are transparent for A¯- dependency formation. In this article, we show that in Shupamem, all clausal configurations expected to have the status of opaque island domains fail to block the formation of long-distance A¯- dependencies involving object ex situ focus. In support of the claim that A¯- movement has occurred in such cases, we rely on evidence from three wh- movement diagnostics (weak crossover effects, reconstruction phenomena and quantifier float). Furthermore, we show that non-movement dependencies across purported island boundaries in the language are also possible through the licensing of “island”-internal negative concord items by external non-local negators. We conclude that clausal island effects fail to materialize in Shupamem ex situ focus constructions and negative concord item-licensing domains. Based on an exploratory typological survey of islands in African languages, we indicate a trend toward varying degrees of island permeability in the area, concluding that while Shupamem is not an isolated example, it features one of the most permissive grammars known to date in this respect.

Foreign investors and stealth trading: An examination of price movements in developing markets

We investigate whether foreign investors have better information than domestic investors. We are motivated by (1) the controversy over the performance of foreign versus domestic investors and (2) market dynamics that require investors to adapt constantly. Using 123 positive and 81 negative news items from the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), we find that foreign investors account for larger price movements before news announcements, suggesting that foreign investors tend to have better information than domestic investors. The result is robust, even after including the total trading volume, total number of transactions, and trading size. Further investigation reveals that foreign investors' small trades account for the largest price movements. Initiated trades account for larger price movements. Domestic investors have more foreign advantages than foreign investors. We also find that the foreign advantage disappears during non-event periods. Our results contrast with previous findings showing that domestic investors have better information than foreign investors. Our findings suggest that investor behavior is dynamic; investors adjust to their environment, which may lead to changes in their performance.

Improving top-[formula omitted] recommendations using batch approximation for weighted pair-wise loss

In collaborative filtering, matrix factorization and collaborative metric learning are challenged by situations where non-preferred items may appear so close to a user in the feature embedding space that they lead to degrading the recommendation performance. We call such items ‘potential impostor’ risks. Addressing the issues with ‘potential impostor’ is important because it can result in inefficient learning and poor feature extraction. To achieve this, we propose a novel loss function formulation designed to enhance learning efficiency by actively identifying and addressing impostors, leveraging item associations and learning the distribution of negative items. This approach is crucial for models to differentiate between positive and negative items effectively, even when they are closely aligned in the feature space. Here, a loss function is generally an objective optimization function that is defined based on user–item interaction data, through either implicit or explicit feedback. The loss function essentially decides how well a recommendation algorithm performs. In this paper, we introduce and define the concept of ‘potential impostor’, highlighting its impact on learned representation quality and algorithmic efficiency. We tackle the limitations of non-metric methods, like the Weighted Approximate Rank Pairwise Loss (WARP) method, which struggles to capture item–item similarities, by using a ‘similarity propagation’ strategy with a new loss term. Similarly, we address fixed margin inefficiencies in Weighted Collaborative Metric Learning (WCML), through density distribution approximation. This moves potential impostors away from the margin for more robust learning. Additionally, we propose a large-scale batch approximation algorithm for increased detection of impostors, coupled with an active learning strategy for improved top-N recommendation performance. Our extensive empirical analysis across five major and diverse datasets demonstrates the effectiveness and feasibility of our methods, compared to existing techniques with respect to improving AUC, reducing impostor rate, and increasing the average distance metrics. More specifically, our evaluation shows that our two proposed methods outperform the existing state-of-the-art techniques, with an improvement of AUC by 3.5% and 3.7%, NDCG by 1.0% and 9.1% and HR by 1.3% and 3.6%, respectively. Similarly, the impostor rate is decreased by 35% and 18%, and their average distance is increased by 33% and 37%, respectively.

Systematic testing of three Language Models reveals low language accuracy, absence of response stability, and a yes-response bias.

Humans are universally good in providing stable and accurate judgments about what forms part of their language and what not. Large Language Models (LMs) are claimed to possess human-like language abilities; hence, they are expected to emulate this behavior by providing both stable and accurate answers, when asked whether a string of words complies with or deviates from their next-word predictions. This work tests whether stability and accuracy are showcased by GPT-3/text-davinci-002, GPT-3/text-davinci-003, and ChatGPT, using a series of judgment tasks that tap on 8 linguistic phenomena: plural attraction, anaphora, center embedding, comparatives, intrusive resumption, negative polarity items, order of adjectives, and order of adverbs. For every phenomenon, 10 sentences (5 grammatical and 5 ungrammatical) are tested, each randomly repeated 10 times, totaling 800 elicited judgments per LM (total n = 2,400). Our results reveal variable above-chance accuracy in the grammatical condition, below-chance accuracy in the ungrammatical condition, a significant instability of answers across phenomena, and a yes-response bias for all the tested LMs. Furthermore, we found no evidence that repetition aids the Models to converge on a processing strategy that culminates in stable answers, either accurate or inaccurate. We demonstrate that the LMs' performance in identifying (un)grammatical word patterns is in stark contrast to what is observed in humans (n = 80, tested on the same tasks) and argue that adopting LMs as theories of human language is not motivated at their current stage of development.

Dimensions of variation in sentence comprehension: a case study on understating negative polarity items in German

Dimensions of variation in sentence comprehension: a case study on understating negative polarity items in German

Multimodality and skewness in emotion time series.

The ability to measure emotional states in daily life using mobile devices has led to a surge of exciting new research on the temporal evolution of emotions. However, much of the potential of these data still remains untapped. In this paper, we reanalyze emotion measurements from seven openly available experience sampling methodology studies with a total of 835 individuals to systematically investigate the modality (unimodal, bimodal, and more than two modes) and skewness of within-person emotion measurements. We show that both multimodality and skewness are highly prevalent. In addition, we quantify the heterogeneity across items, individuals, and measurement designs. Our analysis reveals that multimodality is more likely in studies using an analog slider scale than in studies using a Likert scale; negatively valenced items are consistently more skewed than positive valenced items; and longer time series show a higher degree of modality in positive and a higher skew in negative items. We end by discussing the implications of our results for theorizing, measurement, and time series modeling. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

On the history of NPIs and Negative Concord

AbstractThis article aims to better understand how Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) come into existence and how they change over time. It argues that an expression can become an NPI if its semantics makes it pragmatically useful in negative or downward entailing contexts, often because the meaning leads to pragmatic strength, but sometimes because its semantics leads to pragmatic attenuation. Special attention is given to two patterns involving pragmatic strength that can emerge historically: Negative Concord (NC) and what I call NPI Dualization. Both patterns, I argue, involve a pairing between an NPI that has an existential-like or low scalar semantics with a homophonous but semantically different expression with a freer distribution; the homophone is semantically negative in Negative Concord but semantically universal in NPI Dualization. The article argues that pragmatic strength plays an important role in the history of NPIs, both in their origin and in NPI Dualization, but is not directly relevant for their licensing synchronically. Instead, it argues for a return to the view that NPIs are lexically marked by a semantically meaningless distributional feature that needs to be valued syntactically. On a conceptual level, the article argues that historical shifts may be matters of likelihood.

Data on self-esteem among adolescents in India.

A person's total perception of his or her value or worth is referred to as self-esteem. It may serve as a proxy for how much a person "values, approves of, appreciates, prizes, or likes [him or herself]". The study's major goals were to assess adolescents' levels of self-esteem and examine the impact assertiveness training had on those adolescents' self-esteem. The research design selected for the study was pre-experimental one group pre-test and post-test research design". Anon-probability convenience sampling technique was used to obtain a sample of 60 adolescents who fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was the study's primary instrument, a 10-item questionnaire that a person fills out and scores on a 0-3 scale, containing both positive and negative items, is used to measure one's degree of self-esteem. In this case, questions 2, 5, 6, 8, and 9 had lower scores than questions 1,3,4,7 and 10. The Likert scale looks like this: Strongly disagree, strongly agree, agree, and disagree. The mean Self-Esteem score prior to the test was 11.33 with a standard deviation of 1.28, whereas the mean Self-Esteem score after the test was 21.16 with a standard deviation of 1.94. The mean difference of 9.83 is significant at 0.001 levels. The 't' value of 33.4 was higher than the table value. This study provides evidence of adolescents' self-esteem has been improved through assertiveness training.

Managing the “Downside” of Downsizing: Firms' Impression Offsetting around Downsizing Announcements

AbstractPast studies indicate that investors perceive workforce downsizing negatively, as evidenced by negative short‐term stock returns around downsizing announcements. Impression management theory suggests that downsizing firms thus attempt to offset investors’ negative impressions by issuing positive news around downsizing announcements, and that firms’ impression offsetting can attenuate investors’ negative response. In this study, we test these theoretical predictions but also unpack why and how impression offsetting positively biases investor perceptions. Prior work theorized that impression offsetting is effective because it dilutes investors’ attention and compels them to average positive and negative news items in their minds but did not clarify whether both causal mechanisms are operative, and which one is more powerful. We posit that impression offsetting influences investor response primarily by forcing them to mentally average positive and negative news. Further, our study provides a more nuanced understanding of investors’ mental averaging process. While prior work assumed that all types of positive news are received equally by investors, we argue that positive financial news offsets investors’ negative impressions more effectively than positive operational or social news. The empirical analysis of nearly 1500 downsizing announcements by the largest, public US firms between 2001 and 2020 mainly supports our theoretical reasoning.

ATTITUDES OF SECONDARY STUDENTS' GUARDIANS TOWARD PRIVATE TUITION

Balanced development of various human qualities is possible only through proper education. Like various basic needs, education is now considered a basic need. Every parent wants to give high-quality education to their children, but due to professional reasons or lack of time parents fail to give proper guidance to their children. So nowadays parents are becoming dependent on private tuition to give proper education to their children. Secondary-level courses are long and difficult and therefore require consistent supervision. Parents are willing to give private tuition to their children to provide them with consistent guidance and extra support in their educational careers. The study aims to find out the differences in attitudes towards private tuition according to the educational qualifications of parents and to find out the nature of the attitude of guardians considering differing test items. A descriptive survey method was used in this study. The purposive sampling method was used for data collection. For data collection, 56 parents were selected from two districts. Only those parents selected as the sample, whose children study in secondary school. A self-made questionnaire was developed for data collection, and standardized by the expert. The scale was developed using Likerts method of summarization to assign a five-point rating to each item. The questionnaire used for data collection consisted of 47 items including positive and negative items. In this study, the percentage of opinions of the respondents on each item is shown by the graphical presentation. Finally, after analyzing the data it was found that parents have a positive attitude towards private tuition. Guardians with lower educational qualifications expressed more positive views on private tuition. So here it can be said that parents are largely dependent on private tuition for their childs education. KEYWORDS: Attitude, Private Tuition, Secondary School Students Guardians.

Influence of Participant Perceptions of Adherence-Related Interactions with Study/Study Team on Drug Levels: HPTN069 Analysis of Self-Reported Adherence Experiences While on Study

Adherence to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) study drug is critical for safety, tolerability, and efficacy trials, and may be affected by how adherence is communicated by the study staff to trial participants. Increasingly, clinical trials investigating PrEP are creating and implementing ‘participant-centered’ approaches that discuss potential non-adherence neutrally (without negative judgement) and support efforts to adhere versus insisting on perfect adherence. In the HPTN069/ACTG A5305 study, we evaluated participant experiences of potentially negative adherence-related interactions with study teams using ten items to characterize the frequency of such experiences. We related these individual items and a combined set of seven negative experience items (total negative experience score) to drug concentrations (detectable or consistent with daily-dosing). The exploratory analyses used logistic regression for each experience item on the full sample and disaggregated by sex. Several experiences were related to drug detection and to daily-dosing, although more so for participants identifying as men than women. Total negative experience scores associated with not having detection drug concentrations for the full sample, and remained significant even when controlling for sex, age, and race. Daily dosing was associated with total negative experience score for men in the sample. Additional investigations into adherence-related interactions with study teams that are most problematic or helpful in general and uniquely for men and women are warranted.

Bilateral anterior corona radiata microstructure organisation relates to impaired social cognition in schizophrenia

ObjectiveThe Corona Radiata (CR) is a large white matter tract in the brain comprising of the anterior CR (aCR), superior CR (sCR), and posterior CR (pCR), which have associations with cognition, self-regulation, and, in schizophrenia, positive symptom severity. This study tested the hypothesis that the microstructural organisation of the aCR, as measured by Fractional Anisotropy (FA) using Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), would relate to poorer social cognitive outcomes and higher positive symptom severity for people with schizophrenia, when compared to healthy participants. We further hypothesised that increased positive symptoms would relate to poorer social cognitive outcomes. MethodsData were derived from n = 178 healthy participants (41 % females; 36.11 ± 12.36 years) and 58 people with schizophrenia (30 % females; 42.4 ± 11.1 years). The Positive and Negative Symptom Severity Scale measured clinical symptom severity. Social Cognition was measured using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) Total Score, as well as the Positive, Neutral, and Negative stimuli valence. The ENIGMA-DTI protocol tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) was used. ResultsThere was a significant difference in FA for the CR, in individuals with schizophrenia compared to healthy participants. On stratification, both the aCR and pCR were significantly different between groups, with patients showing reduced white matter tract microstructural organisation. Significant negative correlations were observed between positive symptomatology and reduced microstructural organisation of the aCR. Performance for RMET negative valence items was significantly correlated bilaterally with the aCR, but not the sCR or pCR, and no relationship to positive symptoms was observed. ConclusionsThese data highlight specific and significant microstructural white-matter differences for people with schizophrenia, which relates to positive clinical symptomology and poorer performance on social cognition stimuli. While reduced FA is associated with higher positive symptomatology in schizophrenia, this study shows the specific associated with anterior frontal white matter tracts and reduced social cognitive performance. The aCR may have a specific role to play in frontal-disconnection syndromes, psychosis, and social cognitive profile within schizophrenia, though further research requires more sensitive, specific, and detailed consideration of social cognition outcomes.

Negation in Contact: French and Occitan

AbstractDevelopment of negative markers along the lines of the well‐known Jespersen's Cycle occurred in a wide number of languages. This article investigates the possibility of contact playing a role in such developments in Lengadocian Occitan. The evolution of negation in Lengadocian Occitan followed two main lines. It first developed a postverbal negative marker ges, until increased contact with French from the fifteenth century onwards meant that the language initially adopted the two main postverbal negative markers of French pas and point, in the form of their cognates pas and ponch. In the early modern period (fifteenth to eighteenth century), prolonged contact with French was a key factor in the ultimate selection of pas as the sole postverbal marker. But the pace of grammaticalisation of this marker in Occitan was quicker and went further than in French, in that from the eighteenth century pas is often the sole negative marker, and that it starts early on to appear together with negative polarity items. This means that when the preverbal negative marker disappears, negative concord is maintained, contrary to modern spoken French.

Psychometric validation of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) among family caregivers of people with schizophrenia in China

BackgroundThe 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) is a widely used measure of perceived stress that has been validated in various populations, yet with inconsistent results on its factor structure. The...

Scale Development Study on Match Analysis

Match analysis is a method used to evaluate and improve teams' game understanding, tactical structure, and individual-based player performances. Today, with match analysis methods, coaches can make detailed analyzes of both their own teams, rival teams and individual athletes. This present study aims to develop a scale for match analysis. Within the scope of this objective, an item pool consisting of 51 items was created by the researchers, and a 47-item scale was drafted by excluding 4 items in line with expert opinions. Explanatory and confirmatory factor analyses, internal consistency analysis and test-retest reliability methods were used for statistical purposes. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, a measurement structure was obtained consisting of 4 sub-scales and a total of 22 items. The fit indices of the scale were evaluated within the relevant reference range. The reliability of the scale was examined by test-retest method and internal consistency analysis. As a result, the stability coefficient of the scale was calculated as 0.792 and the Cronbach Alpha internal consistency coefficient as 0.911. Internal consistency analysis results showed that the items had high reliability. The current scale has a 7-point Likert-type rating. There are negative items in the scale. In this context, these items should be reversed when scoring. It was concluded that the scale developed is a reliable and valid measurement tool.

Assessing vaccine hesitancy and health literacy using a new Italian vaccine confidence index and a modified Italian medical term recognition test: A cross-sectional survey on Italian parents

ABSTRACT The decline in children’s vaccination coverage and the resurgence of preventable infectious diseases draw attention to parents’ vaccine hesitancy. Our study introduces two validated tools to independently assess vaccine hesitancy and health literacy among parents with school-age children. We developed a Vaccine Confidence Index (VCI) from 10 Likert items, exploring their relationships through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. We modified the IMETER (Italian medical term recognition test) to measure health literacy. We assessed the internal consistency of the modified IMETER and the 10 Likert items using Cronbach’s alpha test (α) and McDonald’s omega total coefficient (ω) with good results (ω = 0.92, α = 0.90; ω = 0.87, α = 0.82 respectively). We used these tools within a questionnaire conducted on 743 parents recruited from pediatric clinic waiting rooms in Italy, collecting demographic data, information sources on vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases knowledge. The VCI resulting from factor analyses consisted of six items on a ten-point Likert scale, reflecting the ratio of positive to negative items. The survey revealed significant variations in the VCI according to individual features such as education, use of social networks, or Health institutions as sources of information. Multivariate logistic regression identified an association between vaccine intention and the VCI. Health literacy was functional for 91.2% of participants, but knowledge about vaccine-preventable diseases was generally low. The VCI showed no significant association with health literacy and vaccine-preventable diseases knowledge. The VCI and the modified IMETER effectively assess vaccination attitude and health literacy, offering valuable public health tools for tailoring vaccination campaigns to hesitant population subgroups.

SAD CULTURE: AN ANALYSIS OF THE US’ MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES AS EXPRESSED IN SOCIAL MEDIA

The exponential growth of social media has resulted in the establishment of significant communities, trends, and phenomena. Amidst these phenomena is the sad culture, where social media users comfortably express their mental concerns. This study is conducted to have a profound conclusion on Sad Culture as a phenomenon, using social influence theory to determine its cause of emergence. In addition, the meaning of the terminologies is discussed using appraisal theory. This study implements qualitative and content analysis research design. It is implemented by gathering the data from @mytherapistsays Instagram page and performing an in-depth content analysis. Upon conducting the research, it is concluded that Sad Culture is a type of cyberculture. It is formed due to the rapid development of ICT–social media in particular–and the rising number of mental illnesses in the US. It started as a trend, then grew massive due to conformity, a term under social influence theory defined as an act where the majority influences others to perform what is believed to be the norm. In @mytherapistsays Instagram account, ten appraisal items are found, comprising 10% positive and 90% negative items.