Symbolic Level Research Articles

Boxing up death: The use of symbolic-material devices to address gestational and perinatal mourning in hospitals and families in Catalonia (Spain)

One of the strategies used by Spanish hospitals to address gestational and perinatal mourning is the “memory box.” This box contains various elements that refer to the child who has died and seeks to help parents to move through the mourning process. This secular strategy has its historical roots in a popular ritual practice that has fallen into disuse called the “velorio del angelito” (the angel’s wake). The purpose of this article is to analyze the role that the memory box plays in addressing mourning associated with perinatal or gestational death for affected families, highlighting how it aligns with and represents a departure from the angel’s wake. Using a qualitative methodology that includes the analysis of hospital protocols-guidelines, interviews with key informants and a literature review, the authors demonstrate the similarities and differences that each one of these practices configures at the symbolic, material and social levels.

The impact of point symbol similarity on visual search on maps

ABSTRACT The study presented in this paper investigates the impact of the similarity level of cartographic point symbols on visual search performance. Specifically, we explore the application of an algorithm for quantitatively assessing symbols’ shape similarity, and apply the results of such automated analysis in a simple target search task on a map with distractors of varying similarity levels. Our primary hypothesis posits that the more similar the target symbol and distractors, the more challenging the visual search becomes in terms of search efficiency and eye metric performance. In a controlled laboratory experiment utilizing eye-tracking device, 33 participants were recruited, and 60 map stimuli were tested with each participant. The results confirmed the hypothesis assumptions. However, symbols based on a round shape were consistently the easiest to find at every similarity level. Eye movement analysis revealed differences in absolute pupil size between male and female participants, possibly associated with cognitive load, although without affecting search time performance. Interestingly, scan-path speed decreased with an increasing level of similarity between the target symbol and distractors. The practical implication of this study lies in the potential development of tools to assist map designers in selecting symbols with low similarity, thereby ensuring improved map readability.

SYMBOLIC CONNOTATIONS AS AN INPUT TO THE DESIGN OF THE ADVERTISING POSTER

The research dealt with the background of the research, the research problem, the importance of the research, the research objectives, the research hypotheses, the research limits, the research methodology, and the research terms. The first chapter dealt with the visual perception of shapes, the symbolic semantic formulation of the shape, the formulation of visually created shapes, the visual perception of shapes, the physiology of shape perception, the visual formulation, and the structural composition of the visual message, including the representative level, the abstract level, and the symbolic level, the semantic properties of images. The second chapter included the semantic meaning of shapes, the stages of the emergence of semantics, and the types of semantic meanings, which represent the basic cognitive meaning, the additional or secondary meaning, the stylistic meaning, the psychological meaning, and the suggestive meaning. Forms of meaning change include the specialization of meaning, generalization, and transfer of meaning. The third chapter dealt with the research experience, the intellectual aspect of the experience, the technical aspect of the experience, and the technical analysis of the results of the experience. The fourth chapter dealt with the results, recommendations, and references.

Weaving the past into the future

Silk played a crucial role in driving progress in Europe, particularly along the network of production and market centres along the Western Silk Road. The silk trade not only facilitated the exchange of ideas and innovations but also had a huge impact on the economic, technical, functional, cultural, and symbolic levels. However, silk heritage has become critically endangered, despite the existence of many specialised European museums dedicated to its preservation. These museums often lack the resources and capacity to utilise state-of-the-art digital technology. The objective of this paper is twofold: to introduce SILKNOW, an interdisciplinary project funded by the H2020 Program of the European Union to preserve and promote the heritage of silk textiles, and to present the project results which were possible thanks to digital humanities.

Revisiting Empathy, Motivational Systems, and a Theory of Cure

ABSTRACT Lichtenberg’s chapter on “Empathy, Motivational Systems, and a Theory of Cure” was a brilliant effort to integrate his new paradigm of multimotivational systems with Kohut’s empathic approach to psychotherapy. Lichtenberg shows how the clinical dialogue with patients can be monitored by using empathic perception to track shifts in motivational systems. At any given moment, a particular motivational system may become dominant. Successfully identifying the dominant motivation through empathic perception creates in patients a feeling of being understood without judgment. This ambience of safety allows for a shift that activates an exploratory motivation with patients and a spirit of inquiry. An observational platform is created where experience from the past with attachment figures and interaction in the here and now in therapy can be explored from new perspectives. Recent research in psychotherapy that uses monitoring the clinical dialogue with patients by tracking shifts in motivational systems supports the view of its positive effects. Lichtenberg’s “theory of cure” is based on the premise that an empathic perception that monitors shifts in motivational systems will mobilize intrinsic self-righting capacities in patients. I note that there is controversy about what mutative factors in psychotherapy are most important: building an ambience of safety and trust or creating new insights into personal and internal conflicts through the use of language and symbolic representations. Both factors are crucial for positive changes in psychotherapy, and their importance will vary from patient to patient and from one patient–therapist relation to another. I note that Wilma Bucci’s multiple code theory that sees experience coded at subsymbolic and verbal symbolic levels supports this view. I close by proposing that we can build on Lichtenberg’s multimotivational system by adding a trans-survival need to give meaning to our lives.

Democracy Revised: Democratic Imaginary and Emerging Autocracy in Post-Soviet Russia

Contemporary autocracies often maintain a connection with democracy. They do not entirely dismantle the democratic structures established within unfinished modernization projects. Instead, they emerge as “electoral autocracies” and manipulate the concept of democracy offering alternative interpretations and meanings to further their illiberal agenda. The paper delves into the revision of democracy and how the democratic imaginary is utilized in the context of emerging autocracy in post-Soviet Russia. While the post-Soviet Russian autocracy adjusted democratic institutions for its own objectives, it also intended to appropriate the concept of democracy at the semantic and symbolic levels. The rise of Putin’s autocracy is characterized by the radicalization of cultural-civilizational particularism endorsing anti-democratic illiberal arguments. Through this adaptable hermeneutic framework, the Russian authorities tend to relativize the concept of democracy, criticizing, and dismissing the relevance of liberal democracy. Simultaneously, they articulate a distinct “sovereign” version of democracy and claim that non-liberal regimes are legitimate forms of political modernity. The autocratic political discourse on democracy is intrinsically non-democratic, as the lack of intellectual autonomy, control, and closure of discourse constrain the scope of meaning. The resulting heteronomous conception of democracy presents a static and ahistorical society predestined to (re)produce a single pro-authoritarian cultural-political pattern.

Toward a Methodology for the Verification and Validation of AI-Based Systems

<div>Verification and validation (V&V) is the cornerstone of safety in the automotive industry. The V&V process ensures that every component in a vehicle functions according to its specifications. Automated driving functionality poses considerable challenges to the V&V process, especially when data-driven AI components are present in the system. The aim of this work is to outline a methodology for V&V of AI-based systems. The backbone of this methodology is bridging the semantic gap between the symbolic level at which the operational design domain and requirements are typically specified, and the sub-symbolic, statistical level at which data-driven AI components function. This is accomplished by combining a probabilistic model of the operational design domain and an FMEA of AI with a fitness-for-purpose model of the system itself. The fitness-for-purpose model allows for reasoning about the behavior of the system in its environment, which we argue is essential to determine whether the system meets its requirements. While this work only provides an outline of such a methodology, we point out future research directions toward a full methodology for the V&V of AI-based systems.</div>

Enhancing Conceptual Understanding of Buffer Solutions with an Intertextual E-Book Prototype

<p>The intertextual-based e-book prototype helps students understand buffer solutions by connecting the three levels of chemical representation: macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic. This connection allows students to visualize chemical phenomena from simple to complex. The study aims to enhance students' conceptual understanding using this e-book prototype. The research and development (R&D) method followed five stages: research and information gathering, product development planning, initial product development, limited trials, and initial product revision. This process yielded a highly validated e-book prototype that promotes innovation. The validation results showed high feasibility in substance (85.71%), instructional methods (90.90%), and language (100%). Experts deemed the e-book prototype highly effective in improving conceptual understanding through its intertextual approach. Pretest and posttest assessments of 30 students indicated improved conceptual understanding after using the e-book. Initially, students demonstrated macroscopic and symbolic level abilities without associating the three levels of representation. After using the e-book, they could connect these levels, enhancing their understanding and conceptual understanding. The N_Gain scores for pretest and posttest assessments were 0.48 for the high category, 0.45 for the medium category, and 0.44 for the low category, showing moderate improvement. The t-test results (Sig. (2-tailed) = 0.000 < 0.05) confirmed the effectiveness of the e-Book. Teacher and student responses averaged 90% and 85.5%, respectively, indicating that the intertextual-based e-book on buffer solutions is highly suitable as a self-learning resource to improve conceptual understanding.</p>

Student Translations of the Symbolic Level of Chemistry

The aim of the study was to explore students’ own translation of the symbolic level of a chemical reaction, including the information provided with the use of coefficients, indices, and signs, as well as the preservation of atoms. Students were asked to translate the symbolic level of the combustion of methane with the use of clay modelling. The students had to make active choices regarding the size, shape, two- or three-dimensional structure, and the number of atoms in the molecules included in the reaction using modelling clay. The analysis followed the three levels of analysis as presented by Hedegaard. The results highlight the variations in students’ answers and show the importance of investigating unrestricted translations of the symbolic level of chemistry. Including clay modelling in the educational process is helpful for both educators and students, as it fosters comprehension of underlying processes and enhances awareness of substance structure and atom redistribution across various substances.

Phase response constrained symbol‐level waveform design for dual‐functional radar‐communication systems

AbstractIn this letter, a novel algorithm is proposed to design symbol‐level waveform for dual‐functional radar‐communication (DFRC) systems with low range sidelobe. Different from current schemes design waveform at the block level, a phase response constraint is introduced at the symbol level to provide an additional degree of freedom to decrease the range sidelobe in the pulse compression procedure, which is highly desired in radar systems. In particular, the phase response at the target direction is constrained to be similar to the given reference phase, and the matching error between the designed beampattern and the desired one is minimized subject to the constant modulus constraint. Furthermore, to guarantee the quality of service for communication, constructive interference is exploited at the symbol level for each communication user. An alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm is also proposed to solve the resulting nonconvex optimization problem with tractable subproblems solved sufficiently by the manifold optimization and standard quadratic problem. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.

Национальная специфика и классовое искусство: от многообразия к унитаризму

The article highlights one of the key moments in the formation of the North Caucasian peoples’ national literature in the process of their integration into the USSR’s shared cultural space. The author notes that, despite the unity of the socio-social and economic systems of the region, the proximity of their cultures, the systems of verbal creativity of the mountain peoples had their own specific features, manifested not only at the general philosophical and conceptual levels but also in the models of apperception themselves. On the examples of poetic texts by K. Khetagurova, B. Pacheva, K. Mechieva, the essence of the reflex transformation process is considered in sufficient detail and, convincingly, its specific techniques and mechanisms are determined. The departure from the plastic “textured” sensation leads to an organic understanding of ideological and respon-sible symbolism, anticipating the flourishing of national poetry within the boundaries of ethnical-ly authentic apperceptive models. The latter, in turn, received a complete and perfect expression, as in the work of K.Kuliyev, as well as in the poems of his followers, who developed sensitive, materialized ideas on a new, symbolic level of their interpretations.

Designing information systems for business administration through human and computer interaction

AI is increasingly incorporated into business operations; it appears in every aspect of life. However, a strategy that can integrate human and machine interaction is required for long-term implementation. To identify characteristics that can enhance domain operations and interpersonal interactions. To elucidate these obstacles and underscore specific pivotal decisional considerations that necessitate resolution before the effective collaboration of cognitive machines and humans in delivering authentic financial services. This article utilizes the published framework to analyze a case study in retail banking to identify the necessary cognitive abilities, individually and collectively. Each of these capabilities provides usage examples and demonstrates how they comprise a unified deliberative architecture for human-robot interaction. Customer service is an area where this design could be advantageous. Experimental evidence indicates that explicit knowledge management at the geometric and symbolic levels facilitates the incorporation of human-level semantics into the deliberative system of the robot, thereby enhancing the quality and authenticity of human-robot interactions.

Interference Exploitation in IRS-Aided Heterogeneous Networks: Joint Symbol Level Precoding and Reflecting Design

Interference Exploitation in IRS-Aided Heterogeneous Networks: Joint Symbol Level Precoding and Reflecting Design

Shaped-Charge Architecture for Neuro-Symbolic Systems

In spite of the great progress of large language models (LLMs) in recent years, there is a popular belief that their limitations need to be addressed “from outside”, by building hybrid neurosymbolic systems which add robustness, explainability, perplexity and verification done at a symbolic level. We propose shape-charged learning in the form of Meta-learning/DNN - kNN that enables the above features by integrating LMM with explainable nearest neighbor learning (kNN) to form the object-level, having deductive reasoning-based metalevel control learning processes, performing validation and correction of predictions in a way that is more interpretable by humans.

An Analysis of Ways to Optimize Teacher-student Relationship in Ideological and Political Wisdom Classroom Teaching in Senior High School

Wisdom classroom based on big data technology breaks the traditional dichotomous teacher-student relationship, and it is necessary to re-explore the teacher-student relationship in the context of wisdom classroom. In view of the current teacher-student relationship problems in smart classroom teaching at the data, technology and virtual levels, the whole process and scene teaching combining in-class and extra-class, online and offline, virtual and reality are constructed from the three levels of intermediary symbols, interactive ways and knowledge concepts of teachers and students, and the relationship between teachers and students in smart classroom teaching is reconstructed through data empowering. In order to promote the high school ideological and political teaching practice into a democratic cooperation, spiritual communication behavior, and effectively improve the effectiveness of high school ideological and political teaching.

Improving Translation Quality: A Chinese-English Translation Study on the Profiles of Tourist Attraction in China Based on Cultural Awareness

The bilingual profiles of tourist attraction are used ubiquitously and seen everywhere in China. Whether foreign tourists can have an accurate understanding of and keen interest in a particular tourist attraction hinges directly on the quality of translation. However, various translation studies in this area focus on meaning equivalence of language as a symbol, whose function remains at the level of linguistic symbols’ equivalence transformation. This article is mainly concerned with the profiles of tourist attraction enormously adopted in China and their cultural translation from Chinese to English as well as the improved translation output based on data analysis from the perspective of cultural awareness, in an attempt to explore a cultural translation strategy, namely, liberal translation integrated with cultural awareness. Based on examples personally gathered from Mainland China, it is found that the translation of tourist attraction profiles is mainly studied in a linguistically descriptive way, without enunciating the deep culture beneath the surface of linguistic forms. Through detailed analysis of these examples, the study also shows that using liberal translation integrated with cultural awareness in tourism translation is more explicable and intelligible to foreign tourists. The article concludes that cultural awareness must be considered in the liberal translation of tourist attraction profiles so as to communicate clearer and more accurate meaning to the target audience.

A Study of Grade Eleven Student's Representations of Electricity Through Model-Based Inquiry

The COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close and transition online. The authors are interested in whether students have a higher level of representation after learning via an online learning platform through the Model-Based Inquiry (MBI) method and how they can be supported. This study took place in a school in a western province of Thailand, with thirty-two students studying in grade eleven. The study was conducted in an online classroom, implementing an action research strategy with two action research loops. The first loop consisted of three lessons, followed by another three lessons in the second loop, all aimed at improving the students' representations. To collect data, a representation test was used after both loop one and loop two implementations. The students' representations were then interpreted and grouped into five levels. The quality of each answer was assessed using criteria which included fair, good, and very good categories. The results demonstrated that students' representations were enhanced through model-based inquiry. There was a noticeable improvement in the students' representations from loop 1 to loop 2 of the action research at all three levels, consisting of the macroscopic level, microscopic level, and symbolic level.

A Semiotic Analysis of Social Class Representation in Pakistani Television Commercials

Semiotics interprets that how different signs are used in everyday lives to represent different things. Different verbal and non-verbal signs are used to reflect different ideologies and hidden agendas in the field of advertisements. The meanings and hidden agendas of TV commercials can be analysed in a more appropriate and effective way by considering semiotics as an influential tool of investigation. The enterprises of different domains as semiotics, linguistics and sociocultural studies make the current study as a multidisciplinary study. Media has become one of the most influential and feasible tool in the diffusion and representation of information and ideas in this globalised world with the advancement of science and technology. It encompasses strength and power to present different ideologies and agendas with the help of different verbal and non-verbal signs. The current study aims to analyse the demonstration of social class distinctive patterns in Pakistani television commercials. The study examines the representation of different social classes in the commercials by keeping in view the agendas and ideologies of advertisers. The nature of the study is qualitative. The theory of semiotics proposed by Dyer (1982) in the book advertising as Communication is the basis of the theoretical framework of the study. The commercials of renowned Pakistani television channels are collected as the data of the study. Non probability sampling technique is used to collect the data which comprises only those commercials which reflect social class representation. The analysis of the study highlights that different social classes as upper and lower classes are represented in different spheres of lives at symbolic level in the selected advertisements. The social class presentation in commercials represent the domination and superiority of upper class. The images of both upper and lower classes presented in the commercials support ideological beliefs about how social class biased practices are prevailed in the Pakistani society.

Energy Efficient Symbol Level Precoding Design in a RIS Assisted Communication System

Energy Efficient Symbol Level Precoding Design in a RIS Assisted Communication System

Visual field asymmetries in visual word form identification

Visual performance across the visual fields interacts with visual tasks and visual stimuli, and visual resolution decreases as a function of eccentricity, varying at isoeccentric locations. In this study, we investigated the extent of asymmetry and the rate of change in visual acuity threshold for visual word form (VWF) identification at horizontal and vertical azimuths across the fovea, and at eccentricities of 1°, 2°, 4°, 6° and 8° for 10%, 20%, 40%, and 80% contrast levels, to determine whether and how the eccentricities, meridians, and contrasts modulated the VWF identification acuity threshold. The stimuli were 16 traditional Chinese characters of similar legibility. Participants pressed a key to indicate the character presented, either monocularly or binocularly, at one of 21 randomly selected locations. A staircase procedure was used to determine the threshold, and a multiple linear regression model was used to fit the linear cortical magnification factor (CMF). We found that (1) the asymmetry was most pronounced on the vertical and superior azimuths, (2) the asymmetry between the right and left azimuths was not significant, (3) the CMF was significantly smaller on the vertical azimuth than on the horizontal azimuth, (4) the CMF was smaller on the superior vertical azimuth than on the inferior azimuth, and (5) monocular viewing and low contrast enhanced the CMF difference between azimuths. In conclusion, vertical and horizontal azimuths, location of eccentricity, contrast levels of word symbols, and monocular/binocular viewing have different effects on visual field asymmetry and cortical magnification factors.