Unfamiliar Events Research Articles

Narrative Writing as Reflective Practice: Its Therapeutic Relevance

Reflection refers to an activity or process in which our lived experience is recalled, considered, and critically evaluated. Reflective practice is an increasingly accepted methodology for professional development. Such practice develops an ability of continuous learning while creatively applying current and past experiences along with reasoning to unfamiliar events as they occur. Reflective practice helps doctors to maintain their professional competence on existing knowledge, attitude and behavior. Narrative writing, in this regard, is one of the several ways of reflective practice in which practitioners regularly write reflections about their situation, thought, and action. The reflective practice, also known as ‘Narrative medicine’, has been widely used in medical field. Such practice of narrative medicine can lead to produce more ‘humane’ doctors who can improve the treatment satisfaction in both, the doctors and patients. Hence, narrative writings can improve the treatment and increase the professional competence of the doctors.

Senior Lecturers’ Learning Mechanisms During Emergency Remote Teaching at Binus University

The research aimed to identify senior lecturers’ experiences with online teaching during ERT (Emergency Remote Teaching). The ominous Covid-19 forced tertiary education institutions in Indonesia to employ ERT, both synchronous and asynchronous online teaching, from March 2020. Not all existing lecturers were professionally ready for this change, specifically senior lecturers who had been teaching for more than 25 years. These senior lecturers entered into unfamiliar territory as they had been experiencing the drastic transition to ERT. This transition could be viewed as a learning process as they went through certain learning mechanisms. The qualitative method was used to examine the learning mechanisms of senior lecturers who have been teaching during this ERT. This method was appropriate, as it allowed an understanding of lecturers’ experience in their professional growth. This case study examined five senior lecturers who have been teaching English as a Foreign Language at the university level for more than 25 years. Data analysis followed the procedures developed by Braun and Clarke. The research finds that each lecturer experiences learning mechanisms, including identification, coordination, reflection, and transformation. During the identification, they learn to understand the needs to adapt, adopt, and change. They also experience different kinds of unfamiliar events that have to be faced. They adapt to the unfamiliar situation during the phase of coordination through reading, joining webinars (web seminars), and mentoring during the coordination. Each of them reflects on the process of shifting boundaries of their competencies or knowledge from previously teaching offline to online. The last learning mechanism is the transformation that leads to profound changes after experiencing disruptions in the current workflow. Those multiple disruptions shape them in facing ERT.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Which Firms Won? Which Lost?

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) slashed corporations' median effective tax rates from 31.7% to 20.8%. Nevertheless, 15% of firms experienced an increase. One fifth of firms recorded nonrecurring tax costs or benefits exceeding 3% of total assets. Proxies that existing studies employ to assess the TCJA's impacts account for just half of actual impacts. Stock prices impounded those proxies during the legislative process. Total impacts were impounded the following year, once firms published their financials. These results indicate that investors find it hard to predict even large and immediate changes to company cash flows due to unfamiliar events.

Schema and deviation effects in remembering repeated unfamiliar stories

In today's globalized world, we frequently encounter unfamiliar events that we may have difficulty comprehending - and in turn remembering - due to a lack of appropriate schemata. This research investigated schema effects in a situation where participants established a complex new schema for an unfamiliar type of story through exposure to four variations. We found that immediate recall increased across subsequent stories and that distortions occurred less frequently - participants built on the emerging schema and gradually established representations of parts of the story that were initially transformed. In recall with delays increasing up to 1month, quantitative measures indicated forgetting while distortions increased. The second focus of this research was on content and order deviation effects on recall. The content deviation, in contrast with previous repeated-event research, was not remembered well and was associated with lower recall; the order deviation had a similar (but expected) effect. We discuss discrepancies between results of this study and previous literature, which had focused on schemata for familiar events, in relation to stages of schema development: it seems that in unfamiliar repeated events, a complex new schema is in the early stages of formation, where the lack of attentional resources limits active processing of deviations.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Which Firms Won? Which Lost?

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) slashed corporations’ median effective tax rates from 31.7% to 20.8%. Nevertheless, 15% of firms experienced an increase. One fifth of firms recorded nonrecurring tax costs or benefits exceeding 3% of total assets. Proxies that existing studies employ to assess the TCJA’s impacts account for just half of actual impacts. Stock prices impounded those proxies during the legislative process. Total impacts were impounded the following year, once firms published their financials. These results indicate that investors find it hard to predict even large and immediate changes to company cash flows due to unfamiliar events.

Simulation, false memories, and the planning of future events.

Three experiments investigated the relationship between future thinking and false memories. In Experiment 1, participants remembered familiar events (e.g., a holiday) from their past, imagined planning the same events in the future, or took part in a control condition in which they visualized typical events. They then rated a series of schema-related and schema-unrelated nouns for how likely they were to be encountered within those events. In a surprise recognition test, participants in the future condition falsely recognized more schema-related items than participants in the past and control conditions. No reliable effects of rating condition were observed in correct recognition. Experiment 2 found the same pattern when participants imagined unfamiliar events (e.g., taking part in a bank robbery) from past or future perspectives. Participants in Experiment 3 remembered a past or imagined a future holiday and were then instructed to generate items that someone might take on a holiday. Participants in the future condition generated more nonstudied items and fewer studied items relative to participants in the past condition. The findings of Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that simulating future events enhances the activation of related items that gives rise to false memories. The findings of Experiment 3 suggest that these activation processes play an adaptive role in guiding the planning of future events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Perspectives on two temperamental biases

This paper describes the contribution of two infant temperamental biases to variation in behaviour and biology over the first 18 years in a sample of middle-class Caucasian children. One bias, called high reactive, is defined by frequent display of limb activity and crying in four-month-old infants to unexpected or unfamiliar events. The other, called low reactive, is defined by the opposite pair of behaviours to the same incentives. High reactive infants are likely to display cautious, avoidant responses and signs of an excitable amygdala to unexpected experiences. Low reactives are characterized by a sociable, emotionally spontaneous profile to the same experiences and a minimally excitable amygdala. However, each bias is a better predictor of the future traits that are unlikely to develop than the ones that do. The final pattern of traits is a function of the person's temperaments, life history, and current circumstances.This article is part of the theme issue 'Diverse perspectives on diversity: multi-disciplinary approaches to taxonomies of individual differences'.

Multimodal Cue Competition in Adults’ Novel Verb Generalization

In addition to identifying the referents of novel words, language learners also have to learn to generalize newly acquired words to the appropriate range of referents. Here we ask: what is the relative importance of visual, auditory, and linguistic information in influencing how adult learners generalize newly acquired verbs to novel contexts? In our study, participants learned two novel verbs associated with distinct auditory, visual, and linguistic cues. Then they labeled unfamiliar events in which each cue was either presented in isolation or placed in conflict with other cues. Participants’ production of the verb associated with each cue when in conflict with other cues was assessed relative to their baseline tendency to produce the verb associated with each cue presented in isolation. Findings show that visual cues dominate over linguistic and auditory cues in influencing participants’ verb extension patterns. In contrast, participants are rarely influenced by auditory or linguistic cues when they are placed in conflict with the other cue types. Our findings suggest that any account of word learning needs to factor in the dynamics of how multimodal cues interact to drive attention during word extension.

Effects of prospective thinking on intertemporal choice: The role of familiarity.

Imagining future events while performing an intertemporal choice task can attenuate the devaluation of future rewards. Here, we investigated whether this effect and its neural basis depend on the degree of personal prior experience associated with the simulated future scenarios. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was combined with a modified intertemporal choice task in which the delayed options were either purely monetary, or linked with a social event. Subject-specific events differed regarding familiarity, that is, meeting a close, familiar person or a celebrity in a café. In line with recent hypotheses on episodic construction, the simulation of future familiar and unfamiliar events equally attenuated delay discounting behavior in comparison with the control condition and both were imagined with similar richness. Imaging data, however, indicate that these results rely on differential neural activation patterns. The hippocampus was particularly involved in the simulation of unfamiliar future scenarios, probably reflecting enhanced construction processes when personal experience with similar past events is lacking. Consequently, functional coupling of the hippocampus with neural valuation signals in the anterior cingulate cortex predicted the subjective value only of rewards offered in the unfamiliar context. In contrast, valuation of rewards in a familiar context was predicted by activation in key nodes of emotional and autobiographical memory retrieval and dynamically modulated by frontal-striatal connectivity. The present data emphasize that the mechanisms underlying neural valuation of prospective rewards largely depend on the pre-experience with the context in which they are offered.

Discursive Leadership: Harmonious and Discordant Framing-to-Sensemaking Outcomes

Changes in the business world come from many different unfamiliar organizational events, including mergers and acquisitions, leadership takeovers or company-wide expansion. When these unfamiliar organizational events occur, employees feeling the negative effects (e.g. confusion, anger, anxiety) often need to make sense of the event in a way that is meaningful (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2007). Whatever the cause of change, leadership must take a proactive role in managing the meaning of organizational events in a way that makes sense for employees. Using framing (Fairhurst, 2010), sensegiving (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991) and sensemaking (Weick, 1995), this study explores the successful and unsuccessful framing attempts of small business leaders to manage the meaning of organizational events for employees during a turning point in the organizations development. Data for this study were collected via 27 in-depth interviews, ethnographic participant observation data collection and through archival data collection. Leaders’ attempts to frame fell into two categories: harmonious framing-to-sensemaking endeavours; and discordant framing-to-sensemaking endeavours.

Simple visual cues of event boundaries

A stream of sensory information is organized into discrete temporal units through event segmentation. On the basis of several studies measuring participants' explicit decisions about event boundaries, some theorists suggest that this segmentation is induced by increased unpredictability. Since this approach cannot describe the segmentation of unfamiliar events, we assumed that event segmentation might be perceptually driven. We hypothesized that when a new event-relevant object is represented, it triggers event segmentation. In addition to explicit decisions, we measured memory performance, since it has previously been found to be a strong indicator of event segmentation. We presented simple videos to the participants in which geometric objects were flashing consecutively while an unpredictable change occurred. In the New Object condition flashing objects were replaced, while in the Same Object condition one non-kind-relevant feature of the objects was changed. In Experiment 1 the participants' task was to press a button when they detected a meaningful change in the stimuli. In line with the predictability-based theories, we found that both changes triggered the detection of an event boundary. To contrast our hypothesis with the predictions of earlier theories, in Experiments 2 and 3 memory accuracy was measured using the stimuli of Experiment 1. We only found a significant change in memory accuracy in the New Object condition, which suggests that the appearance of an event-relevant object can induce segmentation on its own, and indicates that the explicit-decisions methodology might lead to the improper conclusion that event segmentation is solely based on predictability.

Positioning the reader: the effect of narrative point-of-view and familiarity of experience on situation model construction

abstractPrevious research suggests that situation model construction may be influenced by a reader’s ability to embody the first-person perspective of the protagonist, including character emotions, during online comprehension. This study examined the effect of narrative point-of-view and readers’ own prior personal experience on reading engagement and comprehension. Participants read eighty short story passages on a computer screen, each describing either a familiar or an unfamiliar event. Stories were written in the first or third person, and either featured or did not feature a shift in protagonist emotions in the last sentence of the text. The results indicated that the use of third-person narrative point-of-view had an overall effect on reading engagement and enhanced readers’ ability to monitor changing character emotions. First-person narrative point-of-view, however, promoted protagonist empathy when participants read about unfamiliar events. The results also provide support for the conclusion that readers were more engaged with the story and constructed more effective situation models when they had prior personal experience of story events.

The relation between reactivity at 4 months and Behavioral Inhibition in the second year: Replication Across Three Independent Samples.

This paper examines the predictive relations between two infant temperamental biases assessed at 4 months and inhibited behavior during the first two years of life in three independent samples from two research laboratories. Although each sample used slightly different criteria for classifying infants, the results across samples were consistent. Infants of both genders who displayed high levels of motor activity and distress to unfamiliar events were more inhibited at 14 months of age. By 24 months there were significant sex differences: boys identified as high reactive were more inhibited than high reactive girls.

Effect of distracter preexposure on the reset of an internal clock

Interruptions and unfamiliar events (distracters) during a timed signal disrupt (delay) timing in humans and other animals. We hypothesized that repeated exposure to a stimulus may reduce its subsequent time-disrupting properties. To test this hypothesis rats were trained in a reversed peak-interval (RPI) procedure, in which dark timing trials were separated by illuminated inter-trial intervals. Rats were then repeatedly exposed to an auditory stimulus (noise) in either dark (DARK group), or illuminated chambers (LIGHT group); control rats were not exposed to the noise (NOVEL group). Afterwards, the time-resetting properties of the noise were tested by presenting it unexpectedly during the (dark) RPI trials. The noise reset timing in NOVEL rats, but stopped timing in DARK rats, suggesting that preexposure reduces the time-resetting effects of distracters. However, in LIGHT rats, the noise stopped timing when the presented early in the RPI trial, but reset when presented late, suggesting that exposure to noise was only partly effective in overriding other relevant variables, such as distracter location. These results suggest that the effect of distracter preexposure on the reset of an internal clock depends on complex associative and temporal interactions which require further investigations.This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Associative and Temporal Learning.

Ordinary and Extraordinary Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand: A Teacher Educator's Autoethnographic Account of the Struggle to Be Bicultural

This article explores the use of autoethnography to investigate and exemplify work as a Pākehā (read European) teacher educator working with undergraduate physical education students in the context of the indigenous Māori culture in Aotearoa New Zealand. To show the author's world and understanding of it, she brings the reader into contact with familiar or unfamiliar events via excerpts from ‘snapshot’ stories, written using writing as a method of inquiry — ‘snapshots' because each story captures a few images and informs from the standpoint of a close-up photograph. Moving back and forth from the character of researcher to the character of participant, the author's intent is to disclose how her participation in the coursework activities she designed for an undergraduate physical education degree, have challenged her cultural identity and ways of knowing. While some might take issue with the topics or dismiss them as subjective, the research shows how autoethnographic dialogue, with and through the author, can highlight cultural, educational and sociological agendas that may have remained hidden from view.

Evaluación de la relación entre la inhibición conductual y las aptitudes académicas en Educación Infantil. Resultados preliminares

Assessment of the connection between behavioral inhibition and academic aptitudes in early childhood education. Preliminary results. Behavioral inhibition refers to a temperamental tendency of reacting that people exhibit when confronted with novel people, situations or unfamiliar events. Recent studies have shown the relationship of this trend with disorders in psychological and social development. On the other hand, empirical studies have exposed the influence of multiple variables on academic performance. In this sense, this research examines the relationship between behavioral inhibition and four academic skills (oral verbal, written verbal, numerical and rote) in kindergarten students. We hypothesize a negative impact of high levels of behavioral inhibition in them.A total of 79 children from three childhood education courses have participated. Their teachers completed a questionnaire of behavioral inhibition and other about academic skills. The results of univariate analysis show significant results in three of the skills measured: verbal oral, verbal written and rote. In all three cases, mean scores are higher in the group with low level of inhibition respect to the group with mean level in inhibition. The results are consistent with the hypothesis, although it should consider the limitations of the study previously to evaluate psychoeducational implications.

Time-sharing in rats: effect of distracter intensity and discriminability.

Interruptions (gaps) and unfamiliar events (distracters) during a timed signal delay the timed response of humans and other animals. To explore this phenomenon, we manipulate the intensity of auditory distracters (Experiment 1), and we dissociate the role of distracter intensity, distracter similarity with the intertrial interval, and dissimilarity from the timed auditory signal (Experiment 2). When the intertrial interval and the timed signal were silent, the delay in response after an auditory distracter increased with its intensity: Rats ignored (ran through) a 40-dB distracter, stopped timing during a 75-dB distracter, and reset after a 100-dB distracter. However, when timing was signaled by a 70-dB noise, rats reset both for 40- and 100-dB distracters, stopped for both 55- and 85-dB distracters, and run for the 70-dB distracter. Data are accounted for by a time-sharing model assuming 2 concurrent processes-time accumulation and memory decay controlled by the discriminability of the interrupting event-whose interplay results in a continuum of responses, from run to reset.

A multimodalidade em textos de popularização científica: contribuições para o ensino de ciências para crianças

O crescente uso de imagens nos mais variados contextos torna proeminente a investigação sobre multimodalidade e suas possíveis aplicações à educação. Nesse sentido, optamos por investigar em que medida os textos multimodais de popularização científica são adequados para promover a melhoria do ensino de ciências para crianças. Investigamos a seção 'Ecologia e Meio Ambiente' do sítio Ciência Hoje das Crianças, do Instituto Ciência Hoje. Nos textos analisados, constatamos que as imagens estão permitindo a visualização de conceitos, fenômenos, eventos, elementos e/ou seres não familiares aos alunos, cumprindo, assim, duas funções básicas: a de aproximar o leitor dos conhecimentos científicos expressos verbalmente e a de ilustrar a explicação científica dada por meio da linguagem verbal. Fica evidente, ainda, que a leitura multimodal é demandada como habilidade prévia para que o leitor possa extrair, de forma bem-sucedida, as informações contidas nestes textos.

Communicating uncertainty via probabilities: The case of weather forecasts

Capturing uncertainty through numerical probabilistic statements is orthodoxy in risk science—and most of science and technology. There are a wide range of views on the utility of such statements for risk communication, and they are often seen as being central to the failure to generate common understanding about risks between science and non-scientists. The extent to which probability statements are understood is unclear. If such statements are misunderstood by many, what alternatives might communicate uncertainty better? These questions are examined in the context of daily weather forecasts. The probabilities used in such statements concern daily events experienced by everyone, unlike the extremely small probabilities about unfamiliar events often used in risk communication. If people do not understand weather forecasts, there is little hope that statements about unfamiliar events using unfamiliar language will be understood. Some jurisdictions use numerical probabilistic statements on the likelihood of precipitation, and a variety of qualitative or categorical forecasts are also used. Drawing on a range of sources including public surveys conducted by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the paper examines public understanding of probabilities and public and specialist understanding of verbal categorical forecast terms. The majority of those surveyed have basic understanding about probabilities as used in weather forecasts, but significant groups do not. However, there was limited agreement among forecasters on what the probabilistic statements meant. Similarly, there was limited shared meaning between forecasters and the public on the verbal forecast expression examined.

Is there a role for higher education in preparing nurses?

Nurse education is now almost wholly situated within universities internationally. However, issues such as the necessity of higher education for what is seen as a practical occupation and the question of whether or not nursing is a profession arise. Newman viewed universities as places where training was given but character was also formed and self-awareness was developed through exposure to a wide range of disciplines and this type of education has helped to shape other professions. If nursing fulfills the criteria for a profession then it requires nurses to be properly educated in higher education. Poor media images of nursing, opposition from within and outside of the profession and poor funding for research, especially in the UK, where most nurses still do not enter the register with a degree, mean that the place of nursing in higher education remains on the periphery. Nurses must be competent to practice and higher education is not incompatible with the development of competent practitioners. However, higher education should take competent practitioners to a higher level whereby they become capable: able to respond appropriately in unfamiliar situations and to unfamiliar events. This paper argues for the role of higher education for nurses in terms of developing capability.