Understanding Of Ambiguity Research Articles

A cross-sectional survey of the effect on emerging adults living with a depressed parent.

A parent who is depressed is physically present, but may be psychologically absent, or different to their children. Changes in the parent-child relationship, feelings of loss, and increased stress can occur for the child. These factors can impair psychosocial well-being throughout the child's upbringing, and the effects might impact that child the most in their transition to adulthood. The aim of this exploratory study was to examine factors experienced while growing up with a depressed parent that might contribute to the current psychosocial well-being of emerging adults (individuals between the ages of 18 and 25) using ambiguous loss theory as a theoretical lens. A cross-sectional, correlational design with multiple regression analysis was used to examine relationships between emerging adults' (n = 120) perceptions of retrospective duration and understanding of parent's depression, caregiving, stress, social support, hope, and boundary ambiguity and current psychosocial well-being. Experiencing hope, stress, and then the length of parent's depression during their upbringing were the most predictive variables for emerging adult psychosocial well-being. Findings from this study will help mental health professionals better understand factors contributing to outcomes for this population. The knowledge to be gained is important for developing or refining age and developmentally appropriate interventions aimed at improving outcomes of adult children of depressed parents.

Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music ed. by Diane Pecknold (review)

Reviewed by: Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music ed. by Diane Pecknold Barbara A. Baker Hidden in the Mix: The African American Presence in Country Music. Edited by Diane Pecknold. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013. 392 pp. $27.95. ISBN 978–0–8223–5163–4. Diane Pecknold’s edited collection acknowledges an African American presence in country music that goes beyond a matter of influence or aesthetic borrowing by arguing that “African American performers and audience members . . . not only lent their blues sensibilities and chord progressions to white country musicians,” they created and perpetuated old-time and country American music over the course of the twentieth century (1). Pecknold’s title, Hidden in the Mix, is slightly misleading since the essays most often reveal the complexity of an American musical complexion and imply that African American old-time and country music is worthy of study beyond its relationship to country music generally. The essays, although not arranged chronologically and uneven in tone and substance, make up a highly readable volume that should appeal to scholars of American culture, identity, music, and history. Taken in sum, they advance the aesthetic statements of Alabama intellectual [End Page 418] Albert Murray, who articulated a similar thesis in The Omni–Americans (New York, 1970): “American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite.” American country music, as illustrated by Hidden in the Mix, is a composite churned from a highly American process that amalgamates race, class, and (to a lesser extent) gender. The myth of whiteness associated with American country music is a matter of racially politicized genres and marketing. The point is best illustrated by Pecknold’s excellent piece on Ray Charles, “Making Country Modern: The Legacy of Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.” Charles released the landmark album in 1962, when racialized genre conventions left no context in which its highly amalgamated genius could be interpreted or embraced, since record companies often intentionally reinforced commercial and vernacular divergences among consumers. The amalgamating process inherent in aural production had often been purposefully concealed. The Genius of Soul had long been re-appropriating so-called white interpretations of black styles and exercising the “shared roots and continuous exchange between musics;” he had always “understood popular music as a process of natural cross-racial exchange” (85). That aural cross-fertilization occurred frequently in country music, which is to say, southern music, has everything to do with proximity. As Michael Awkward points out in his discussion of Al Green, country constitutes a space in which “historically divided peoples, whose cultures and bloody interaction have come to define a region, can come together productively” (202). The point is underscored in Adam Gasgow’s treatment of Cowboy Troy’s “transracial aesthetics.” Cowboy Troy’s flagrant mixing of “black” rap and “white” country music demands “that we understand both musical traditions as already amalgamated” (238). Gasgow interprets “I Play Chicken with the Train” as “a creolized history” of “frontier brag-talk” and “urban rap braggadocio” owing to the influence of “African praise-song, . . . blackface minstrelsy,” and western frontier life before Emancipation calling to mind Constance Rourke’s configuration of the American national character (238). [End Page 419] Particularly interesting is Barbara Ching’s “If Only They Could Read between the Lines: Alice Randall and the Integration of Country Music,” the only essay that explores African American women in country music. Ching explicates Randall’s elision of fiction and lyric, the extensive influence she has had, and a surprising subtext that explores the relationship of country music to the black female understanding of racial ambiguity. Also interesting as a history of race and marketing is the final essay in the collection, David Sanjek’s “What’s Syd Got to Do with It?: King Records, Henry Glover, and the Complex Achievement of Crossover.” Sanjeck allows the founder of King records, Sydney Nathan, to speak for himself as a Jew who welcomed African Americans to his company. Primarily a salesman, he recognized the talents of Henry Glover in assisting him in selling the products of a musical melting pot that was stoked largely by the phenomenon of recorded music...

Inhibitory processes in visual perception: A bilingual advantage

Bilingual inhibitory control advantages are well established. An open question is whether inhibitory superiority also extends to visual perceptual phenomena that involve inhibitory processes. This research used ambiguous figures to assess inhibitory bilingual superiority in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old mono- and bilingual children (N=141). Findings show that bilinguals across all ages are superior in inhibiting a prevalent interpretation of an ambiguous figure to perceive the alternative interpretation. In contrast, mono- and bilinguals revealed no differences in understanding that an ambiguous figure can have two distinct referents. Together, these results suggest that early bilingual inhibitory control superiority is also evident in visual perception. Bilinguals’ conceptual understanding of figure ambiguity is comparable to that of their monolingual peers.

From their ‘own’ to ‘both’ interpretations: children’s understanding of ambiguity / De ‘su’ interpretación a ‘ambas’: la comprensión de la ambigüedad en los niños

The present study aimed to analyse whether young children’s failure in succeeding ambiguity tasks is related to a bias in favour of maintaining their initial interpretation or one in favour of showing conformity to the interpretation of another person. Two experiments were conducted with ambiguous figures and ambiguous sentences. After giving their own interpretation of the stimulus, children of different ages (from 3–8 years of age) were confronted with the alternative interpretation. In general, the results of the two experiments found an accentuated ‘own’ bias, meaning that young children usually persisted in their own interpretation and did not show conformity to the ‘other’ interpretation. Only after the second grade were children able to understand that both interpretations (their own and the alternative) were equally valid for the same stimulus. The results also revealed that the ability to show informed reversal does not necessarily imply the ability to overcome the ‘own’ interpretation bias and, consequently, does not require the achievement of a real understanding of ambiguity. The present study showed an age-related development of ambiguity understanding, from an egocentric interpretation to the acceptance of two interpretations as equally valid.

The problem with knowledge ambiguity

This paper proposes a new conceptualisation of the construct of knowledge ambiguity. This new conceptualisation is essential because (1) past researchers have tended to narrowly define and operationalise knowledge ambiguity in terms of causal ambiguity or tacitness and (2) the prevalent non-comprehensive conceptualisation constrains our ability to overcome the problem of knowledge ambiguity. Knowledge ambiguity has been identified as a major obstacle to effective knowledge transfer and to the implementation of overall knowledge management systems. The new conceptualisation proposes that knowledge ambiguity is composed of two types of ambiguity: component ambiguity and causal ambiguity. Component ambiguity is uncertainty about knowledge content, whereas causal ambiguity is uncertainty about how to use the knowledge. This re-conceptualisation is supported by previous studies on knowledge characteristics, absorptive capacity and cognitive learning. In this paper, theoretical propositions are developed to demonstrate the compatibility of the new conceptualisation with the current understanding of these concepts. The present paper not only advances our understanding of knowledge ambiguity, it also points towards solutions for overcoming the problems associated with knowledge ambiguity. Different measures are required to overcome problems created by component ambiguity vs. causal ambiguity. This paper’s re-conceptualisation of knowledge ambiguity makes it easier to theorise about and operationalise the concept. It aligns the definition of knowledge ambiguity with current definitions of related constructs such as absorptive ambiguity and cognitive learning that are used in the broader knowledge transfer and knowledge management literatures.

A Survey on Ambiguity within the Framework of TG Grammar in College English Teaching

Ambiguity is one of the common phenomenons of any human language, especially for Chinese students to master. Within the framework of TG grammar, the article tries to analyze the structural ambiguity, by comparison with the traditional grammar and structural approach. D- structure and S-structure and X-bar theory are introduced to explain the production and understanding of ambiguity.

Organizational Goal Ambiguity and Job Satisfaction in the Public Sector

Goal ambiguity in the public sector has received much research attention by many prominent scholars, due to its theoretical and practical importance. This study aims to promote a better understanding of organizational goal ambiguity and a more robust and comprehensive model of job satisfaction in the public sector. It measures the most recently developed dimensions of organizational goal ambiguity. These include three objective measures— target ambiguity, timeline ambiguity, and priority ambiguity—from the Program Assessment Rating Tool and one subjective measure—mission comprehension ambiguity—from the 2005 Merit Principles Survey. This article then links these goal ambiguity measures to a single-item measure for job satisfaction of U.S. federal government employees, considering a host of statistically significant control variables, including intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors and organizations’ structural characteristics. The results of a hierarchical generalized linear model demonstrate that goal ambiguity dimensions related to mission comprehension, target, timeline, and priority are negatively associated with job satisfaction of public employees. This research is expected to contribute to the improvement of goal ambiguity and job satisfaction theories and to suggest practical ways to improve job satisfaction among employees of public organizations.

The Impact of Causal Ambiguity on Competitive Advantage and Rent Appropriation

We seek to develop the conceptual and practical understanding of causal ambiguity. Specifically we extend current thinking by setting out three types of causal ambiguity, based on whether firm resources are perceived to display linkage and/or characteristic ambiguity, and by examining for each type the impact of causal ambiguity on the sustainability of competitive advantage and on rent appropriation. We highlight the difficulties decision‐makers face when they perceive ambiguity and finally we explore some implications of ambiguity with respect to resource‐creation processes.

Time and Ambiguity: Reassessing Merleau-Ponty on Sartrean Freedom

Time and Ambiguity:Reassessing Merleau-Ponty on Sartrean Freedom William Wilkerson (bio) Merleau-Ponty disagreed with Sartre about freedom, from the Phenomenology of Perception to his last manuscripts, published as The Visible and the Invisible. Even their more famous political dispute was, in Beauvoir's words, a "carbon copy" of this ontological dispute.1 Despite the visibility of this link between politics and metaphysics, discussions of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre rarely see another important link between their conflict over freedom and their conflict over fundamental ontology. This essay explains that link. At the risk of spoiling the suspense, let me state its thesis at the outset: the disagreement over freedom springs from a disagreement about the nature of temporality, and beneath that, about the proper place and understanding of ambiguity in human existence. In fact, these latter disagreements are the fundamental ones; the disagreement over freedom is only their consequence. 1. Sartrean Freedom Merleau-Ponty obviously never lived to see the changes Sartre's theories underwent in The Critique of Dialectical Reason, and although he discusses some of Sartre's political writings (most notably in Adventures of the Dialectic), from the Phenomenology to The Visible and the Invisible, his criticisms of freedom generally focus on the ontology of Being and Nothingness. This limits his critique, and Beauvoir rightly took Merleau-Ponty to task for ignoring Saint Genet and other texts Sartre wrote after Being and Nothingness.2 While Sartre's The Communists and Peace, a central target of Merleau-Ponty's Adventures of the Dialectic, is not philosophical like Being and Nothingness, Merleau-Ponty does ignore its tendency to move in the direction [End Page 207] of The Critique of Dialectical Reason and develop a more ambiguous concept of freedom. Merleau-Ponty thus interprets Sartre's attempts in the early 1950s to understand a complex social formation like the revolutionary proletariat through the ontological lens of Being and Nothingness. As a consequence, Merleau-Ponty rightly sees that such an ontology will not do the work Sartre requires of it in these later works, but wrongly assumes that Sartre is working with the same ontology.3 Beauvoir does not help the situation by largely defending The Communists and Peace with passages from Being and Nothingness. Nor does Sartre really aid his case by writing to Merleau-Ponty, in a letter dating from the time of the controversy, that despite changes necessary to the ideas of Being and Nothingness, "all the theses of Being and Nothingness seem to me just as true [in 1953] as in 1943."4 In light of these facts, and because Merleau-Ponty's criticisms of Sartrean freedom are directed almost exclusively at the ontology of Being and Nothingness, I will mostly focus on Being and Nothingness. I also remain with this text because I do not intend to defend Sartre, and any decent defense of Sartre will have to do more than merely mention the later works like Saint Genet and The Communists and Peace. (Indeed, I do not intend to defend Merleau-Ponty either, but in the interest of honesty, my sympathies do lie with him.) As it happens, simply understanding Sartre's theory of freedom, even within the confines of Being and Nothingness, is no easy task. This may be because Sartre has two concepts of freedom at work in this text.5 The primary freedom, the one that Sartre says we have in all places and at all times, the one that is our nature without being a nature, Sartre calls "freedom of choice" or original choice. The literature on Sartre often calls it "ontological freedom." Second to this freedom, Sartre describes a practical or situated freedom and calls it "freedom of obtaining."6 The former, [End Page 208] ontological freedom, is our nihilating opening onto the world that produces time, differentiation, and sense. Dagfinn Føllesdal assimilates this freedom to Husserlian Sinngebung, the act by which there is meaning for a consciousness. Whether this characterization goes too far can be debated, but certainly Sartre thinks that the character and differentiation of our world arrives through our questioning and disclosing consciousness. However, Sartre certainly does not think that we simply make up the world...

The relation between ambiguity understanding and metalinguistic discussion of joking riddles in good and poor comprehenders: Potential for intervention and possible processes of change

This study investigated understanding of language ambiguity as a source of individual differences in children's reading comprehension skill, and the role of peer metalinguistic discussion in fostering comprehension improvement. Twenty-four 7- to 9-year-old children worked in pairs to discuss and resolve ambiguities in joking riddles. Their reading comprehension increased significantly more than a group of 24 no-treatment controls. Analysis of the children's discussions shows that comprehension improvement was associated with increases over training sessions in frequency of metalinguistic comments about the text ambiguities, and in particular with the simultaneous explanation of two meanings. We discuss individual differences in metalinguistic and metacognitive capabilities and their role in the process of comprehension improvement.

Disentangling Interfirm and Intrafirm Causal Ambiguity: A Conceptual Model of Causal Ambiguity and Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Causal ambiguity is a well-established construct in the strategy literature. Theorists have yet to differentiate and fully refine the construct in ways that clearly demonstrate its influence on sustainable competitive advantage. To address this limitation, I develop a theoretical model that partitions causal ambiguity based on firm boundaries and specifies the organizational implications of this distinction. This model deepens our understanding of causal ambiguity and provides guidance about promising avenues for future research.

Children's understanding of ambiguous figures: Which cognitive developments are necessary to experience reversal?

In two experiments involving one hundred and thirty-eight 3- to 5-year-olds we examined the claim that a complex understanding of ambiguity is required to experience reversal of ambiguous stimuli [Gopnik, A., & Rosati, A. (2001). Duck or rabbit? Reversing ambiguous figures and understanding ambiguous representations. Developmental Science, 4, 175–183]. In Experiment 1 a novel Production task measured the ability to acknowledge both interpretations of ambiguous figures. This was as easy as and significantly correlated with a False Belief task, and easier than a Droodle task. We replicated this finding in Experiment 2, and also found that perceiving reversal of ambiguous figures was harder than either the False Belief or Production tasks. In contrast to previous findings, the Reversal and Droodle tasks were not specifically related. We conclude that children only attempt reversal once they can understand the representational relationship between the figure and its two interpretations. The process resulting in reversal however is hard, probably requiring additional developments in executive functioning and imagery abilities.

Women's experiences of abnormal cervical cytology: illness representations, care processes, and outcomes.

We wanted to explore the conceptual representations of illness and experiences with care among women who have learned of an abnormal Papanicolaou (Pap) smear result. The study took place in 2 primary care, family practice clinics serving low-income, multiethnic patients in the Bronx, New York City. We conducted qualitative, semistructured telephone interviews with 17 patients who had recently learned of abnormal findings on a Pap smear. After a preliminary coding phase, the investigators identified 2 important outcomes: distress and dissatisfaction with care, and factors affecting these outcomes. A model was developed on a subset of the data, which was then tested on each transcript with an explicit search for disconfirming cases. A revised coding scheme conforming to the dimensions of the model was used to recode transcripts. Women reported complex, syncretic models of illness that included both biomedical and folk elements. Many concerns, especially nonbiomedical concerns, were not addressed in interactions with physicians. An important source of both distress and dissatisfaction with care was the women's lack of understanding of the inherent ambiguity of Pap smear results. When perceived care needs, which included emotional support as well as information, were not met, distress and dissatisfaction were greatly increased. In this study, patients' illness models and expectations of care were not routinely addressed in their conversations with physicians about abnormal Pap smear results. When physicians can take the time to review patients' illness models carefully, distress and dissatisfaction with care can be reduced considerably.

Psychology as a theoreticalfoundation for health education in nursing: empowerment or social control?

This article explores the relationship between psychology and health education and illustrates howostensibly ‘neutral’ models and theories of psychology can be used by conflicting health education philosophies and ideologies. We contend both that health education is an intrinsic element of nursing (which, for the purpose of this article, also includes health visiting and midwifery) and that psychology legitimately underpins practice. Our concern in this article is in the potential application of models and theories of health-related behaviour such as the health belief model (Rosenstock et al 1988), the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen 1985) and the stages of change model (ProchaskaDiClemente 1982) to the health education elements of nursing practice without an awareness and scrutiny of their particular ideological standpoint, and contrasting relationships to power, and thus an understanding of the potential ambiguity regarding their role and function.

Where does the end begin? Problems in musico-cognitive modeling

Research with computer systems and musical grammars into improvisation as found in the tabla drumming system of North India has indicated that certain musical “sentences” comprise (a) variable prefixes, and (b) fixed suffixes (or “cadences”) identical with those of their original rhythmic “themes”. It was assumed that the cadence functioned as a kind of target in linear musical space, and yet experiments showed that defining what exactly constituted the cadence was problematic. This paper addresses the problem of the status of cadential patterns, and demonstrates the need for a better understanding and formalization of ambiguity in musico-cognitive processing. It would appear from the discussion that the cadence is not a discrete unit in itself, but just part of an ever-present underlying framework comprising the entire original rhythmic theme. Improvisations (variations), it is suggested, merely break away from and rejoin this framework at important structural points. This endorses the theory of simultaneity. However, the general cognitive implications are still unclear, and further research is required to explore musical ambiguity and the interaction of musical, linguistic, and spatio-motor grammars.

An issue of the next generation of problem-solving environments

This paper discusses the development of a next-generation problem-solving language. The example language discussed represents a shift from a strong (or precise) specification language toward a weak (or imprecise) one. The shift toward a weak language introduces the problem of ambiguity in the specification. A synthesis method that handles the ambiguity for an integrated program specification is the focus of this paper. A more precise understanding of ambiguity is discussed and disambiguating heuristics for the example synthesis environment are presented.

Children's understanding of visual ambiguity

Two stages have been suggested in children's understanding of the mind between ages 4 and 8. The first stage is signalled by success on false belief tasks around age 4 and is thought to indicate an understanding of the mind as ‘representational’. The second stage is signalled by success on ambiguity tasks around age 6–8 and is thought to indicate a new understanding that people ‘interpret’ or ‘process’ perceptual information. The study reported here was carried out with 108 subjects aged 3–6 to determine whether children begin to understand that ambiguous visual cues are an insufficient source of knowledge around age 6 as previous research suggests (e.g. Taylor, 1988), or whether this development occurs around age 4 when they begin to understand related tasks such as false belief. Two differently coloured (unambiguous) and two same coloured (ambiguous) stuffed animals were introduced to a subject and another character. The animals from one pair were then secretly placed in two separate boxes which had a small hole in the centre enabling a viewer to see each animal's colour but not the shape. Almost no 3‐year‐olds, but about half the 4‐year‐olds and most 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds, recognized that the other could identify the unambiguous pair, but not the ambiguous pair. It is argued that an understanding of ambiguity develops around age 4 because it requires an understanding that beliefs may be false, and that there is one stage (at least with respect to these abilities) rather than two.

An Investigation of the Consequences of One Feature of Teacher-Child Talk for Children's Awareness of Ambiguity in Verbal Messages

The aim was to identify features of 5-and 6-year-old children's everyday lives which contribute to their understanding about the requirements of effective verbal communication. An analysis of naturalistic data comparing talk to children at home and at school indicated several features of adultchild talk occurring frequently at school but rarely at home. One such feature was the asking of question sequences intended to elicit a particular answer. The teacher continued to ask questions until that answer was supplied. In an intervention study we investigated whether this use of extended question sequences promoted children's understanding of ambiguity. The results showed that it did. There was also learning during the training itself. This feature of teacher-child talk may promote understanding of ambiguity because it draws children's attention to a distinction they often fail to make: between the speaker's intended meaning and the verbal message used to convey that meaning to a listener.

Children's responses to ambiguous messages and their understanding of ambiguity.

Children's responses to ambiguous messages and their understanding of ambiguity.

Children's responses to ambiguous messages and their understanding of ambiguity.

Children's responses to ambiguous messages and their understanding of ambiguity.