Symbol Production Research Articles

Comparing the complexity of written and molecular symbolic systems

Symbolic systems (SSs) are uniquely products of living systems, such that symbolism and life may be inextricably intertwined phenomena. Within a given SS, there is a range of symbol complexity over which signaling is functionally optimized. This range exists relative to a complex and potentially infinitely large background of latent, unused symbol space. Understanding how symbol sets sample this latent space is relevant to diverse fields including biochemistry and linguistics.We quantitatively explored the graphic complexity of two biosemiotic systems: genetically encoded amino acids (GEAAs) and written language. Molecular and graphical notions of complexity are highly correlated for GEAAs and written language. Symbol sets are generally neither minimally nor maximally complex relative to their latent spaces, but exist across an objectively definable distribution, with the GEAAs having especially low complexity. The selection pressures guiding these disparate systems are explicable by symbol production and disambiguation efficiency. These selection pressures may be universal, offer a quantifiable metric for comparison, and suggest that all life in the Universe may discover optimal symbol set complexity distributions with respect to their latent spaces. If so, the “complexity” of individual components of SSs may not be as strong a biomarker as symbol set complexity distribution.

Political Socialization in a Changing Society: A Crisis of Value Orientations or Asynchronization of National Memories?

The article examines qualitative changes in the socio-cultural parameters of intergenerational communication that impact social cohesion and civic identification in contemporary society. Diversification of symbol production and an increase in the number of agents of political communications, a greater heterogeneity of political ideologies, and modes of political representation shape political processes. To adequately address these changes, one needs new theoretical models of political socialization. Such models would examine youth political incorporation as a particular form of communication predicated on the spatial and temporal design of political events within national communities. The focus on generational differences in the interpretation of political events helps explain youth positioning vis-à-vis older generations. In this case, political socialization goes beyond the processes of the younger generation’s adaptation to institutions and value-normative regimes of the “adult” society. It is a communicative process of establishing generational political expectations. Analysis of the legitimating profiles of national memory—those that include competing symbolic representations of images of the future and the past, typologies of the heroic, concepts of guilt and responsibility—is crucial to studying the political socialization of the younger generation. The authors emphasize the significance of both a theoretical and applied analysis of symbolic structures of political memory and the role of iconic power in understanding intergenerational continuity and change. Drawing on the methods of cultural sociology, the authors outline novel theoretical approaches to studying youth political socialization in today’s society.

Comparison of Preschooler Verbal and Graphic Symbol Production Across Different Syntactic Structures.

The present study focuses on the impact of graphic symbols used in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) on clause construction. It is not yet well-understood to what extent communication produced via graphic symbols differs from verbal production. This study attempts shed light on the impact of the graphic symbol modality on message construction beyond individual differences, language knowledge, and language-specific patterns by providing a direct comparison between children’s verbal and graphic symbol production. Nineteen typically developing Hebrew-speaking children aged 4–5 years were presented with 16 short videos of actions and were asked to express what they saw verbally and by choosing among graphic symbols displayed on an iPad communication board. The 570 clauses produced by the children were coded and analyzed. A significant difference was found in favor of verbal speech across different syntactic structures in terms of utilization of the target lexicon, syntactic complexity, and expected target word order. These results are consistent with the existing literature for English. Implications for AAC practices are discussed, highlighting the notion that using graphic symbols to represent spoken language may not reflect actual linguistic knowledge and that adequate, explicit instruction is necessary for graphic representation of more complex linguistic structures.

Visual-motor contingency during symbol production contributes to short-term changes in the functional connectivity during symbol perception and long-term gains in symbol recognition

Letter production relies on a tight coupling between motor movements and visual feedback—each stroke of the letter is visually experienced as it is produced. Experience with letter production leads to increases in functional connectivity, a measure of neural communication, among visual and motor brain systems and leads to gains in letter recognition in preliterate children. We hypothesized that the contingency between the motor and visual experiences of the written form during production would result in both effects. Twenty literate adults were trained on four sets of novel symbols over the course of one week. Each symbol set was trained through one of four training conditions: drawing with ink, drawing without ink, watching a handwritten symbol unfold as if being drawn, and watching a static handwritten symbol. Contingency of motor and visual experiences occurred in the drawing with ink condition. The motor and visual experiences were rendered non-contingent in each of the other three conditions by controlling for visual or motor experience. Participants were presented with the trained symbols during fMRI scanning at three time points: one pre-training, one post-training, and one after a week-long no-training delay. Recognition was tested after each training session and after the third scan. We found that the contingency between visual and motor experiences during production changed the pattern of functional connectivity among visual, motor, and auditory neural communities and resulted in better recognition performance at post-training than at pre-training. Recognition gains were maintained after the no-training delay, but the functional connections observed immediately after training returned to their pre-training baselines. Our results suggest that behaviors that couple sensory and motor systems result in temporary changes in neural communication during perception that may not directly support changes in recognition.

Ecological validity of experimental set-up affects parietal involvement during letter production

Studies of symbol production using fMRI often use techniques that introduce an artificial pairing between motor production and visual perception. These techniques allow participants to see their own output by recording their pen trajectories using a touchscreen-only tablet and displaying these productions on a mirror placed above their head. We recently developed an MR-safe writing tablet with video display that allows participants to see their own hand and their own productions while producing symbols in real time on the surface where they are producing them—allowing for more ecologically valid fMRI studies of production. We conducted a study to determine whether the participation of posterior parietal cortex during symbol production was affected by the pairing of motor production and visual feedback associated with the two types of tablets. We performed ROI analyses in intraparietal sulcus while adult participants produced letters to dictation using either a touchscreen-only tablet (no visual guidance of the hand) (n = 14) or using a touchscreen-and-video-display tablet (visual guidance of the hand) (n = 14). We found that left posterior intraparietal sulcus was more active during production with the touchscreen-only tablet than during production with the touchscreen-and-video-display tablet. These results suggest that posterior parietal involvement during production tasks is associated with the somewhat artificial visual-motor pairing that is introduced by the techniques used in some studies of symbol production.

Türkiye'de Yaratıcı Emek

In recent years, the political and academic discourse focusing on the economic potential of creative cultural industries is raising. The idea of creative culture industries which focuses on creativity and symbol production instead of material production presented as a source of prosperity for developing countries. It is claimed that individuals are set free from the routine working life by creative work, which offer flexible and independent work opportunities. At first glance, this change, which is considered to liberate the industrial revolution from the control measures, contains insecurities that burden the responsibility of learning and employment to the individual. The creative labor debate at the center of the creative economy involves the development of an individual's talent set on the one hand and the critique of these risks on the other. This study examines whether the sector dynamics in Turkey developed creative labour by means of online survey method and qualitative analysis. At the same time, aims to reveal the extent of the characteristics in the international literature. The similarities and differences with international literature have been discussed on subjective experiences related to precarious working conditions in Turkey.

Visual–motor symbol production facilitates letter recognition in young children

Previous research has suggested that handwriting letters may be an important exerciser to facilitate early letter understanding. Experimental studies to date, however, have not investigated whether this effect is general to any visual–motor experience or specific to handwriting letters. In the present work, we addressed this issue by testing letter knowledge using three measures in preschool children before and after a school-based intervention. Participants were divided into four training groups (letter-writing, digit-writing, letter-viewing, digit-viewing) that either wrote letters or digits or viewed letters or digits, twice a week for 6 weeks. We hypothesized that the visual–motor experience of handwriting letters or digits would improve letter knowledge more than viewing experience and that this effect would not be specific to training with letters. Our results demonstrated that the writing groups improved in letter recognition—one component of letter knowledge—significantly more than the viewing groups. The letter-writing group did not improve significantly more than the digit-writing group. These results suggest that visual–motor practice with any symbol could lead to increases in letter recognition. We interpret this novel finding as suggesting that any handwriting will increase letter recognition in part because it facilitates gains in visual–motor coordination.

PRODUKSI SIMBOL DALAM SAMPUL BUKU SASTRA TERBITAN GRAMEDIA

As the design and printing technology develops rapidly, the covers’ design of literary books on store develops as well. The covers tell not only title, writer’s name, and publisher, but also show textual symbols such as subtitle, phrases describing title, phrases describing writer, book category, quotes of the content, other writer’s comment, and more. Those additional texts make the cover look full. Gramedia is one of the publishers which keeps putting only title and writer’s name on the book covers without adding up more additional texts mentioned above. Instead, the publisher put the additional texts on the back cover. This article aims at explaining why Gramedia keeps the design of book covers that way. This article applies method of Bourdieu’s theory on literary sociology. The result shows that Gramedia applies a strategy of symbolic capital exchange among the writers whose works published by Gramedia. The symbolic capital exchange is used indirectly to increase the literary books’ sale. Gramedia takes a subtle way of the strategy to keep the symbolic capital of the books and their writers affiliated with the publisher. Gradually the publisher gathers more symbolic capital that consequently increase its economic capital. Keywords: symbol production, Gramedia, literary books’ covers, literary sociology, Bordieu.

基于SVG的WebGIS点符号库的设计与实现

通过分析目前矢量符号库的优缺点，对SVG矢量点符号库的符号制作，上传与存储，检索、抽稀与显示到地图进行了详细讨论，并结合WebGIS平台软件ECNUGIS的制图应用，为Web端矢量符号库的设计与实现提供了新的思路和方法。 Through analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the current vector symbol database, the symbol production, upload and storage, retrieval, extraction and display of SVG vector point symbol database are discussed in detail. The new idea and method are given in the design and imple-mentation of vector symbol database for Web, which has been used in mapping application of WebGIS platform—ECNUGIS with good practical effects.

A Cross-Species Study of Gesture and Its Role in Symbolic Development: Implications for the Gestural Theory of Language Evolution

Using a naturalistic video database, we examined whether gestures scaffold the symbolic development of a language-enculturated chimpanzee, a language-enculturated bonobo, and a human child during the second year of life. These three species constitute a complete clade: species possessing a common immediate ancestor. A basic finding was the functional and formal similarity of many gestures between chimpanzee, bonobo, and human child. The child’s symbols were spoken words; the apes’ symbols were lexigrams – non-iconic visual signifiers. A developmental pattern in which gestural representation of a referent preceded symbolic representation of the same referent appeared in all three species (but was statistically significant only for the child). Nonetheless, across species, the ratio of symbol to gesture increased significantly with age. But even though their symbol production increased, the apes continued to communicate more frequently by gesture than by symbol. In contrast, by 15–18 months of age, the child used symbols more frequently than gestures. This ontogenetic sequence from gesture to symbol, present across the clade but more pronounced in child than ape, provides support for the role of gesture in language evolution. In all three species, the overwhelming majority of gestures were communicative (i.e., paired with eye contact, vocalization, and/or persistence). However, vocalization was rare for the apes, but accompanied the majority of the child’s communicative gestures. This species difference suggests the co-evolution of speech and gesture after the evolutionary divergence of the hominid line. Multimodal expressions of communicative intent (e.g., vocalization plus persistence) were normative for the child, but less common for the apes. This species difference suggests that multimodal expression of communicative intent was also strengthened after hominids diverged from apes.

Tradition and imagination in the creation of a new monastic model in contemporary Hispanic America

From an anthropological and historical perspective, and focusing mainly on the Argentinean situation, this article analyses Catholic male monasticism in Hispanic America, with the particular objective of evaluating the crisis, religious change and monastic imagination identified in contemporary Benedictine communities. It is argued that imagination, as a process of symbol production, has been intrinsically related to the practice of a new monastic spirituality; it has in fact been the force behind the appearance of religious experiences ideologically anchored in early Christian traditions. Empirical data on the Benedictine Order in Argentina suggests that at least three models of consecrated life can be identified in twentieth century Hispanic America, namely, the ministerial model, the social model and the patristic model. Research leads to the conclusion that these paradigms emerged through processes of imagination applied to the reinvention of tradition – creatively but, also, conservatively – in a global context in which both the monastic institution and society face changing demands.

Ideologia e dominação no Brasil (1974-1989): um estudo sobre a Escola Superior de Guerra

Este artigo analisa as formas de produção simbólica efetuadas na Escola Superior de Guerra (ESG) e suas relações com o quadro de dominação assimétrico entre civis e militares no Brasil. A hipótese que o orienta o trabalho é de que a ESG constitui-se num lócus de produção de formas simbólicas de tipo ideológica, ou seja, de que os sentidos mobilizados por esta instituição no período em análise, no quadro da transição para a democracia no Brasil (1974/1989), serviram naquelas circunstâncias sócio-históricas específicas para sustentar relações de dominação assimétricas duráveis entre civis e militares, cristalizando desta forma o seu caráter ideológico. Para tanto, utilizamos a proposta teórico-metodológica de Thompson (1995) em sua Hermenêutica de Profundidade (HP), aliada à análise de conteúdo de Bardin (1977).

Innovation and diversity in cultural sociology. Notes on Peterson and Berger's classic article

This article appeared in the following publication: Dowd, Timothy J. 2007. “Innovation and Diversity in Cultural Sociology: Notes on Peterson and Berger’s Classic Article.” Sociologica: Italian Journal of Sociology Online 1 (1). Abstract This essay claims that the publication of “Cycles in Symbol Production: The Case of Popular Music” in 1975 proved to be an important moment, as this innovative article would later stimulate intellectual diversity in the sociology of culture. I support this claim by first offering a detailed overview of this article, showing how it brought together important themes of organizational adaptation, genre trajectory, and product diversity. I then offer examples of how subsequent research has addressed these themes, both in terms of supporting and extending the original arguments made in this classic article.

The Effect of Aided Language Modeling on Symbol Comprehension and Production in 2 Preschoolers With Autism

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of an instructional procedure called aided language modeling (ALM) on symbol comprehension and expression in 2 preschool children with autism who used few words functionally. ALM consists of engaging the child in interactive play activities and providing models of use of augmentative and alternative communication symbols during play. A multiple-baseline design across sets of symbol vocabulary was used with 2 children who had autism. Four vocabulary items were taught in each of 3 legs of the design, for each child. Both participants demonstrated increased symbol comprehension and elicited symbol production. In addition, both participants demonstrated that symbol comprehension and symbol production could be maintained. For both children, performance on symbol production lagged behind rate of responses on symbol comprehension. The current research presents preliminary evidence that a modeling intervention may be effective in increasing symbol comprehension and production, and may be an appropriate intervention strategy for some preschoolers with autism. Future research should continue to investigate this strategy and its effects on functional communication.

Cycles in Symbol Production Research: Foundations, Applications, and Future Directions

Peterson and Berger's article “Cycles in Symbol Production: The Case of Popular Music” is a “seminal” article in the field of popular music studies and has been the basis and impetus for several other research studies over the past 30 years. This paper reviews work relating to the cycles in symbol production concept to investigate the relationship between market concentration, musical diversity, and musical innovation. It is argued that, while empirical support exists for such a relationship, the methods and measures previously used to determine market concentration levels may no longer be adequate for future investigation of the recorded music industry. The paper concludes by suggesting future directions for cycles of symbol production research.

The impact of aided language stimulation on symbol comprehension and production in children with moderate cognitive disabilities.

Over the past decade, aided language stimulation has emerged as a strategy to promote both symbol comprehension and symbol production among individuals who use graphic mode communication systems. During aided language stimulation, an interventionist points to a graphic symbol while simultaneously producing the corresponding spoken word during natural communicative exchanges. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of aided language stimulation on children with moderate cognitive disabilities. Three preschool children with moderate cognitive disabilities who were functionally nonspeaking participated in the investigation. The investigator implemented a multiple-probe design across symbol sets/activities. Elicited probes were used to determine whether the children increased their comprehension and production of graphic symbols. Results indicated that all 3 children displayed increased symbol comprehension and production following the implementation of aided language stimulation.

Action models and verbal descriptions in object representations given through gestures by preschool children.

Previous research suggests that young children have difficulty producing pantomimic gestures with imagined objects for which no substitute objects are presented. They frequently substitute specific body parts to represent the object through gestures involved in the action. This study examined whether adults' verbal descriptions or symbolic action models help to produce an imaginary-object gestural response. 53 children (26 4-yr.-olds, and 27 5-yr.-olds) performed gestural tasks in which they were asked to pretend to use common objects, e.g., "pretend to brush your teeth with a toothbrush." They were then given verbal descriptions or action models to perform those same tasks. Analysis indicated that providing verbal descriptions and action models helps to produce an imaginary-object response in 4- and 5-yr.-old children. Action models proved more effective than verbal descriptions among 4-yr.-old children. Results are discussed indicating that each verbal description and action model could be influenced by different mechanisms underlying preschool children's symbol production.

Ilavar and Lankans, Emerging Identities in a Fragmented Island

This paper starts with a reference to the Vattukottai Resolution in 1976 as indicator of the de facto fragmentation of Ceylon (Lanka) into two peoples, the Ilavar and Lankans. The two concepts are defined. The concept of 'unitary' as separate from 'united' is also analysed. The last section describes the symbol production of the concept of unity. As an alternative to the concept of unity, cooperation is suggested.

Symbolic and Syncretic Cognition Among Schizophrenics and Visual Artists

This study derives from the organismic-developmental approach of Werner (1948), who suggested some interesting comparisons between pathological and creative thinking. Eight schizophrenics, 6 visual artists, and 10 ordinary controls were compared along a series of tasks evoking symbolic cognition (symbol production, proverb comprehension, and symbol representation) and syncretic cognition (synaesthesia, structural eidetic imagery, and absorption), both constructs deriving from Werner's framework. We hypothesized that both the schizophrenics and the visual artists, relative to ordinary controls, should exhibit a high degree of syncretic cognition and confirmed this for 2 of the 3 tasks. We further hypothesized that the schizophrenics, relative to the other groups, should be markedly impaired on tests of symbolic cognition and confirmed this for 2 of the 3 tasks. We further confirmed their impairment on a task of logical reasoning. Although the samples were small and replications are necessary, our findings suggest that assessing the degree of similarity or dissimilarity in performance of these 3 groups enables a productive strategy in the study of cognitive psychopathology.

Do young children use objects as symbols?

Much of young children's symbolic play is heavily scaffolded by adult symbolic action models, which children may imitate, and by adult verbal scripts. The current studies attempted to evaluate 18‐35‐month‐old children's symbolic skills in the absence of such scaffolding. In a study of symbol comprehension, children were tested for their ability to comprehend an adult's use of either a replica object or an associated gesture to communicate which object in an array she wanted. In a study of symbol production, children were given some objects that afforded symbolic manipulations, but without adult symbolic action models or verbal scripts. The results of the two studies converged to suggest that children below 2 years of age have symbolic skills with gestures, but not with objects. It was also found that while children at 26 months were able to use an object as a symbol for another object, they had difficulties when the symbol had another conventional use (e.g. a drinking cup used as a hat). The findings are discussed in terms of DeLoache's dual representation model, and a modification of that model is proposed.