Symbolic Representation Research Articles

Scaffolding Fifth Graders’ Learning with a Digital Multi-Representation Applet: Design Research on Focusing Multiplicative Structures with Dynamic Dot Arrays

AbstractDigital multi-representation applets offer promising opportunities for promoting students’ conceptual understanding by dynamically converting graphical and symbolic representations and for promoting discoveries and justifications of mathematical properties. However, learning effects of open-ended multi-representation applets seem to depend on targeted scaffolds for students’ processes of conversions, treatments, and conversions of treatments. While these design challenges have come to be well-understood for dynamic geometry and functions, more design research is needed for multi-representation applets for multiplicative reasoning. We report on a design research study in Grade 5 in which the multi-representation applet of a dynamic dot array was integrated into a digital teaching–learning environment with sequenced tasks and more targeted scaffolds. The qualitative analysis of 30 students’ processes revealed multiple potentials of the dynamic array to (a) connect static representations by articulating the underlying multiplicative unit structures (conversions), (b) describe systematic variations (coordinated treatments), (c) explain systematic variations in representations by articulating unit structures (conversions of variations), (d) discover multiplicative commutativity (treatments), and (e) go towards justifying multiplicative commutativity by restructuring the array and its unit structures (conversions of treatments). Design experiment Cycle 1 revealed that all potentials were partially addressed by some students. To enable students to exploit more of these multiple potentials, attention scaffolds and language scaffolds were integrated. In Cycle 2, more potentials were exploited while still leaving room for improvements. In total, the study shows how design research can contribute to embed multi-representation applets into teaching–learning environments with well-sequenced tasks and targeted scaffolds.

Utilising sandplay therapy to support children with intellectual disabilities and complex mental health needs in China’s child welfare institutions: a case study

Sandplay therapy (SPT) has demonstrated significant effectiveness for children with intellectual disabilities, autism, and other challenges. This case study explores its impact on emotional regulation, sexual psychology, and behavior in orphaned children with significant functional limitations residing in Chinese welfare institutions. Utilizing Jungian psychology, the child’s development was assessed through 26 SPT sessions and four interviews with simulated family members. The findings showed improvements in emotional functioning, self-care capabilities, and the management of sexual energy and emotions. Furthermore, interpersonal relationships within the simulated family improved, thereby achieving the counseling goals. SPT, with its focus on the unconscious and symbolic representation, offers unique advantages in addressing the emotional and behavioral challenges experienced by children with severe functional impairments in welfare environments.

NeuSyRE: Neuro-symbolic visual understanding and reasoning framework based on scene graph enrichment

Exploring the potential of neuro-symbolic hybrid approaches offers promising avenues for seamless high-level understanding and reasoning about visual scenes. Scene Graph Generation (SGG) is a symbolic image representation approach based on deep neural networks (DNN) that involves predicting objects, their attributes, and pairwise visual relationships in images to create scene graphs, which are utilized in downstream visual reasoning. The crowdsourced training datasets used in SGG are highly imbalanced, which results in biased SGG results. The vast number of possible triplets makes it challenging to collect sufficient training samples for every visual concept or relationship. To address these challenges, we propose augmenting the typical data-driven SGG approach with common sense knowledge to enhance the expressiveness and autonomy of visual understanding and reasoning. We present a loosely-coupled neuro-symbolic visual understanding and reasoning framework that employs a DNN-based pipeline for object detection and multi-modal pairwise relationship prediction for scene graph generation and leverages common sense knowledge in heterogenous knowledge graphs to enrich scene graphs for improved downstream reasoning. A comprehensive evaluation is performed on multiple standard datasets, including Visual Genome and Microsoft COCO, in which the proposed approach outperformed the state-of-the-art SGG methods in terms of relationship recall scores, i.e. Recall@K and mean Recall@K, as well as the state-of-the-art scene graph-based image captioning methods in terms of SPICE and CIDEr scores with comparable BLEU, ROGUE and METEOR scores. As a result of enrichment, the qualitative results showed improved expressiveness of scene graphs, resulting in more intuitive and meaningful caption generation using scene graphs. Our results validate the effectiveness of enriching scene graphs with common sense knowledge using heterogeneous knowledge graphs. This work provides a baseline for future research in knowledge-enhanced visual understanding and reasoning. The source code is available at https://github.com/jaleedkhan/neusire.

Symbolic Representation of Young Children in Science: Insights into Preschoolers’ Drawings of Change of State of Matter

Research in early childhood education acknowledges the multimodal nature of learning, and the need to equip young learners with the abilities to encounter future communication and learning challenges is imperative. Drawing can play a crucial role in children’s learning in general and contribute to science learning in particular. In this paper, we study the drawings that young children (aged 4–6) produce during a teaching intervention about the change of state of matter. The research adopts a sociocultural perspective, considering drawing as a mediating tool to support children’s meaning-making and learning process. The objective is to understand better the type of drawing situations that can be proposed to young children in science and the scaffold these drawing tasks might provide to support meaning-making in science. Results show that children use iconic as well as symbolic modes of representation depending on the situation and that the resources available can have an impact on how children use different symbols.

Symbolic-functional representation inference for gate-level power estimation

We propose SyfriPow, a method for estimating the vectorless average power consumption of gate-level circuits using sparse symbolic matrix inference. SyfriPow employs a probability-based approach, utilizing signal and transition probability to assess power consumption across various nodes. We present a symbolic representation probabilistic model for reasoning signal and transition probability through polynomial-based symbolic inference, incorporating a polynomial approximation strategy for spatial correlations and functional mapping for quick secondary computation. The model is sparsified with GPU accelerated polynomial sparse arithmetic engine, achieving sparse symbolic inference and sparse functional mapping which are implemented on Pytorch. Experiments demonstrate that SyfriPow achieves node-level probabilistic accuracy and significantly improves power accuracy compared to industrial software and academic algorithms, with an average power error of less than 4%. SFM efficiently analyzes large-scale circuits, processing up to 250k nodes in 100 s. SyfriPow can also function as an independent logic prediction engine, surpassing state-of-the-art algorithms in accuracy and speed.

Politics without Presence? The Symbolic Representation of Trans People in Germany and the Netherlands

Abstract Historically, trans people have been excluded from politics. Despite political under representation, trans interests increasingly appear on the political agenda in the Netherlands and Germany. In 2021, trans women were elected to the Dutch and German parliaments for the first time. However, increased trans visibility is accompanied by backlash and transphobia. The political representation of trans people does not follow a familiar pattern from elected descriptive representatives to increased substantive representation of interests. What mechanisms shape the political representation of trans people? We argue that symbolic representation shapes possibilities for descriptive and substantive representation of trans people. The analysis of symbolic representation of transpeople draws on a combination of 1) qualitative text analysis of Dutch and German parliamentary documents, research reports, and trans activists’ publications and 2) in-depth interviews with trans andcisgender representatives, candidates, and activists. The findings demonstrate how political spaces are not only gendered, but also cisgendered and heteronormative.

Depiction of Woman in Heer Waris Shah

In every folktale characters hold a significant place because they are not confined to describing or fantasizing the love relations but they reflect the collective social behaviors of the concerned society. Waris Shah portrays Punjabi culture in his classic Heer Ranjha and elaborates on the internal social system and every character of the tale represents the core realities of society. The present study is to highlight the intellectual, symbolic, social, and cultural representation of female characters in Heer Waris Shah.

SIMBOL MASKULINITAS DALAM ORNAMEN BUDAYA BUGIS DI FILM TARUNG SARUNG: ANTARA TRADISI DAN MODERNITAS

The film Tarung Sarung is a cinematic work that highlights the richness of Bugis culture in Makassar, Indonesia. This film depicts the masculinity of Bugis men through characters and settings that highlight the attributes of courage, strength and honor. The main character in this film is depicted as an ordinary young man from the city who develops over the course of the story into a warrior skilled in martial arts. This research aims to analyze the symbols of masculinity in Bugis cultural ornaments in the film Tarung Sarung and find out the meaning of the symbols of masculinity represented. This research uses a descriptive qualitative approach with Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic analysis method. This research identifies and analyzes the meaning of symbols of masculinity represented in Bugis cultural ornaments in the film Tarung Sarung. The research results show that the symbols of masculinity in the film Tarung Sarung are closely related to the cultural and social values that are highly upheld by the Bugis community. These symbols emphasize the role of men in various aspects of life, from the family to the wider community. Strength, resilience, leadership, authority, wisdom, and discipline are central themes in this representation, showing that masculinity in Bugis culture is closely related to the ability to protect, defend, lead, and maintain cultural values. This research provides several suggestions for developing further studies by exploring the representation of symbols of masculinity in other cultures, combining various analytical methods for a more comprehensive understanding, and examining audience acceptance of representations of masculinity in films.

Unfixed Seasonal Partition Based on Symbolic Aggregate Approximation for Forecasting Solar Power Generation Using Deep Learning

Solar energy is an important alternative energy source, and it is essential to forecast solar power generation for efficient power management. Due to the seasonal characteristics of weather features, seasonal data partition strategies help develop prediction models that perform better in extreme weather-related situations. Most existing studies rely on fixed season partitions, such as meteorological and astronomical, where the start and end dates are specific. However, even if the countries are in the same Northern or Southern Hemisphere, seasonal changes can occur due to abnormal climates such as global warming. Therefore, we propose a novel unfixed seasonal data partition based on Symbolic Aggregate Approximation (SAX) to forecast solar power generation. Here, symbolic representations generated by SAX are used to select seasonal features and obtain seasonal criteria. We then employ two-layer stacked LSTM and combine predictions from various seasonal features and partitions through ensemble methods. The datasets used in the experiments are from real-world solar panel plants such as in Gyeongju, South Korea; and in California, USA. The results of the experiments show that the proposed methods perform better than non-partitioned or fixed-partitioned solar power generation forecasts. They outperform them by 2.2% to 3.5%; and 1.6% to 6.5% in the Gyeongju and California datasets, respectively.

From spontaneous focusing on numerosity to mathematics achievement: The mediating role of non-symbolic number processing and mapping between symbolic and non-symbolic representations of number

Young children who readily demonstrate a self-initiated orientation, or spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON), perform better in mathematics in later years. To further our understanding of the mechanisms behind this relation, the present longitudinal study with 150 Chinese preschoolers examined the potential mediating role of non-symbolic number processing and mapping between symbolic and non-symbolic representations of number. Mediation analysis indicates two independent pathways leading from SFON to math achievement—namely the non-symbolic number processing pathway and the number mapping pathway—providing a more comprehensive model to explain the predictability of SFON on children’s math achievement. Our findings indicate that children with a stronger tendency to focus on the cardinal information of the environment are better at processing set sizes as well as mapping non-symbolic quantity information onto numbers, leading to better math achievement.

Characteristics of Qinghai Traditional Painting Art-Literature Analysis

Qinghai’s traditional painting art, influenced by its diverse ethnic cultures and religious practices, is a unique fusion of Tibetan, Han, and Mongolian elements. Originating from ancient rock art, Qinghai painting has evolved into a complex system characterized by realism, symbolic representation, and vibrant colors. Tibetan Buddhism plays a significant role in shaping the themes and styles of Qinghai’s art, particularly in Thangka and mural paintings. These art forms, rich in religious symbolism, are not only visual representations of spiritual teachings but also educational tools that pass down cultural and moral values. Among Qinghai’s artistic traditions, Datong farmers' paintings stand out for their simplicity, vibrant colors, and strong connection to rural life, using expressive brushwork to depict local customs and daily activities. Meanwhile, Qinghai Thangka is notable for its symmetrical compositions, vivid colors, and intricate details, often portraying Buddhist deities in a harmonious and layered structure. Despite modernization challenges, Qinghai’s painting art continues to innovate while preserving its cultural heritage, with modern artists blending traditional techniques with contemporary elements to keep the tradition alive. This study explores the characteristics, cultural significance, and future of Qinghai traditional painting art, emphasizing its role in cultural identity and artistic development.

Single-neuron representation of nonsymbolic and symbolic number zero in the human medial temporal lobe

The number zero holds a special status among numbers, indispensable for developing a comprehensive number theory.1,2,3,4 Despite its importance in mathematics, the neuronal foundation of zero in the human brain is unknown. We conducted single-neuron recordings in neurosurgical patients5,6,7 while they made judgments involving nonsymbolic number representations (dot numerosity), including the empty set, and symbolic numbers (Arabic numerals), including numeral zero. Neurons showed responsiveness to either the empty set or numeral zero, but not both. Neuronal activity to zero in both nonsymbolic and symbolic formats exhibited a numerical distance effect, indicating that zero representations are integrated together with countable numerosities and positive integers at the low end of the number line.8,9 A boundary in neuronal coding existed between the nonsymbolic empty set and small numerosities, correlating with the relative difficulty in discriminating numerosity zero behaviorally. Conversely, no such boundary was found for symbolic zero activity, suggesting that symbolic representations integrate zero with other numerals along the number line, reconciling its outlier role. The status of zero as a special nonsymbolic numerical quantity is reflected in the activity of neurons in the human brain, which seems to serve as a scaffold for more advanced representations of zero as a symbolic number.

The uncomfortable truths of adaptive reuse: faith-to-faith conversion of religious heritage buildings in conflict environments

ABSTRACT Despite being regarded as a sustainable conservation strategy for safeguarding the material fabric of disused built heritage, adaptive reuse is an ethically problematic practice when considering faith-to-faith conversions of defunct religious buildings in politically complex environments. This paper aims to explore the scope of the spatial transformations and symbolic representations involved in such conversions, as well as their ramifications on the pre-existing memory and identity of the place. Theoretical explorations are illustrated with empirical data from fieldwork on church-to-mosque conversions in northern Cyprus. The paper argues that faith-to-faith adaptive heritage reuse undoubtedly aids in the protection of the architectural fabric of disused structures from ruination and preserves their original architectural expressions. However, the practice becomes contentious when former users continue to claim rights to the religious site, as the theological principles and power politics shaping the conversion can potentially ignore their religious values and material culture. But more importantly, when sacred and secular merges and nationalist representations emerge on the religious heritage sites, it radically transforms the identity and pre-existing memory of the landscape, aggravating the tension regarding the former and current users’ rights to these sites.

Exploring mental representation of visual emoji symbols through human similarity judgments

Exploring mental representation of visual emoji symbols through human similarity judgments

Analysis of the Challenges and Dilemmas in the Categorization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

This paper discusses the limitations associated with the basic classification of human rights into several categories. The topic of whether international trends have an impact on the State's view of the significance of implementing rights through the acceptance of individual complaint procedures is a complex one. Starting with an acknowledgment of the infinite extent of the issue, this paper displays a belief in the fallacious conceptions of differences in human rights. It investigates and assesses the institutional contribution to the advancement of human rights through a chronological analysis of historical processes that give rise to changes in the 20th century. To address this particular distinction, this paper looks to the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Program of Action and the new Optional Protocol for validation and endorsement. By highlighting many similarities in the language and nature of State responsibilities, it challenges the reader to consider whether non-justiciability provides a basis in the first place. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the function of dispute resolution mechanisms during the implementation phase. From a practical standpoint, it compels the reader to contemplate if the committee procedures outlined in international conventions serve just as symbolic representations of non-cooperation by States or are put into effect. This paper ultimately presents the reader with some thought-provoking material in the shape of the dichotomy between enforcement and justiciability.

Language Learning form an Intercultural Perspective

Due to the highly globalized nature of communication and the increasing acknowledgement of the role of one’s social context in language learning, the intercultural dimension has increasingly been included in the EFL agenda. Nevertheless, the exploration of one’s own culture and local context still requires closer attention. Hence, this qualitative action-research study examines how ninth graders conceptualized their own culture and reflected upon their local cultural symbols and practices after the implementation of a pedagogic proposal based on an intercultural view of language teaching. Data were collected through surveys and class workshops. Thematic analysis was applied. Findings suggest that the students identified with Afro- Colombian culture and its symbolic representations. Furthermore, they discussed the meaning of Afro Culture and its diverse components. Similarly, some activities such as poster design, dancing performances, and oral presentations stood out as amongst the most useful to promote intercultural skills.

Shaping User Experience in Virtual Reality: A study with special reference to Natyashastra

This article presents a study regarding how Natyashastra’s fundamental principles of storytelling, emotional resonance, and cultural context structure the creation and reception of Virtual Reality (VR) content. Through an attentive examination of a specific VR activity featured in the Prime Minister Museum in Delhi—a helicopter ride showcasing India’s modern infrastructure—the paper explains how Natyashastra’s influence infuses the narrative structure, emotional engagement strategies, and symbolic representations within the VR experience. By exploring the interaction between ancient cultural frameworks and cutting-edge technology, this research underlines the significance of integrating cultural heritage and traditional storytelling techniques into VR design to enhance user experience, emotional connection, and cultural resonance. Through this article, the importance of incorporating cultural frameworks like Natyashastra into VR design to improve user engagement and enrich the virtual experience has been highlighted.

A survey on temporal knowledge graph embedding: Models and applications

Knowledge graph embedding (KGE), as a pivotal technology in artificial intelligence, plays a significant role in enhancing the logical reasoning and management efficiency of downstream tasks in knowledge graphs (KGs). It maps the intricate structure of a KG to a continuous vector space. Conventional KGE techniques primarily focus on representing static data within a KG. However, in the real world, facts frequently change over time, as exemplified by evolving social relationships and news events. The effective utilization of embedding technologies to represent KGs that integrate temporal data has gained significant scholarly interest. This paper comprehensively reviews the existing methods for learning KG representations that incorporate temporal data. It offers a highly intuitive perspective by categorizing temporal KGE (TKGE) methods into seven main classes based on dynamic evolution models and extensions of static KGE. The review covers various aspects of TKGE, including the background, problem definition, symbolic representation, training process, commonly used datasets, evaluation schemes, and relevant research. Furthermore, detailed descriptions of related embedding models are provided, followed by an introduction to typical downstream tasks in temporal KG scenarios. Finally, the paper concludes by summarizing the challenges faced in TKGE and outlining future research directions.

Characterization of Chronotypes Using the Symbolic Aggregate apprXimation (SAX) on Actigraphy Data.

In this study, we discuss an efficient approach to characterizing chronotypes using Symbolic Aggregate approXimation (SAX) on actigraphy data. Actigraphy, a non-invasive monitoring of human rest/activity cycles, provides valuable insights into sleep-wake behaviors and circadian rhythms. However, the high dimensionality of actigraphy data poses significant challenges in storage, processing, and analysis. To address these challenges, we applied the SAX algorithm to transform continuous time-series actigraphy data into a symbolic representation, enabling dimensionality reduction while preserving essential patterns. We analyzed actigraphy data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database, covering over 10,000 individuals, and used unsupervised clustering to identify distinct chronotype patterns. The SAX transformation facilitated the application of machine learning techniques, revealing five chronotype clusters characterized by differences in activity onset, resolution, and intensity. Age distribution analysis showed biases towards specific age groups within the clusters, highlighting the relationship between age and chronotype. Key findings include age-related Chronotype variations with younger individuals exhibiting delayed chronotypes with significant differences in sleep onset (SOT) and wake time (WT) compared to older adults, suggesting a phase delay in sleep patterns as age decreases and activity transition dynamics where clusters showed distinct patterns in winding up and winding down periods, providing insights into the dynamics of activity transitions. This study demonstrates the efficiency and effectiveness of SAX in processing large-scale actigraphy data, enabling robust chronotype characterization that can inform personalized healthcare and public health initiatives. Further exploration of SAX integration with other biometric measures could deepen our understanding of human circadian biology and its impact on health and behavior.

The Role of New Instruments in the Musical Works of Composers/Sound Artists in Indonesia

ABSTRACT Since the 1980s, Indonesian sound artists/composers have been creating new instruments as part of their compositional work. Some of them invented new instruments to expand the tradition, while others used their new instruments to address current political issues in their communities. This phenomenon prompted me to investigate and analyse their works, which led to two conclusions. First, some sound artists/composers create new musical instruments to expand traditions, introduce new contexts and create their desired sound worlds. Second, the new musical instruments they create also act as visual art, serving as symbolic representations of society's problems.