Unrelated Concepts Research Articles

Research note: exploring the association of work attitudes among Indian police officers

ABSTRACT Job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment are important work attitudes. Several past studies on police work attitudes have treated the three work attitudes as unrelated concepts. The current study examined the association between these three work attitudes, and it also proposed a path model where job involvement is related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment and job satisfaction is associated with organizational commitment. Further, this study examined two different types of bonds to the organization: continuance commitment (i.e. bonding to the organization to protect investments in the organization) and affective commitment (i.e. bonding to the organization because of positive treatment). Using data from a survey of 827 police officers working in the Haryana State of India, the path model was supported. Job involvement had associations with higher job satisfaction and affective commitment and an association with lower continuance commitment. Job satisfaction had a relationship with lower continuance commitment and a relationship with higher affective commitment.

Creative Thinking Skills at Public Senior High School 1 Belitang Oku Timur Regency South Sumatra

This study aims to measure the level of creative thinking skills among tenth-grade students at Public Senior High School 1 Belitang. Creative thinking skill is the ability to think in new, original, and flexible ways. It involves generating innovative ideas, solving problems in unique ways, and making connections between seemingly unrelated concepts. This skill is essential for adapting to new situations and fostering innovation across various disciplines. Creative thinking is one of the essential skills for the 21st century. This research employed a quantitative descriptive method with data collection through questionnaires and interviews. A total of 96 students participated in completing the questionnaires, and interviews were conducted with 3 biology teachers. The results showed that students' average creative thinking skills were in the medium category, with a percentage of 70%. Interviews with teachers revealed that although teaching media such as PowerPoint and student worksheets were used, creative thinking skills were not explicitly taught or assessed. These findings highlight the importance of developing more innovative teaching methods and using technology and multimedia to enhance students’ creative thinking skills.

The core of division: Examining how essentialist views of the U.S. underlie right‐wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and nationalism

AbstractWe propose that political polarization stems in part from differing conceptions of one's nation. Four studies tested the hypothesis that national essentialism – conceiving one's nation as possessing an inherent, unchanging essence – underlies three political ideologies: right‐wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and nationalism. Study 1 (n = 263) provides correlational evidence that essentialist thinking about the U.S. positively predicted all three ideological variables, as well as support for conservative policies regarding religion, taxes, the environment, and immigration. Converging experiments show that prompting participants to think about the U.S.’s essence increased support for RWA and nationalism, but not SDO. Study 2 (n = 164) compared an essentialist to a non‐essentialist framing of the U.S., while Study 3 (n = 150) compared essentialist framings of the U.S. to an unrelated concept (music). Parallel mediation analyses show that support for RWA and nationalism mediated the relationship between primed national essentialism and support for conservative policy positions. Study 4 (n = 174) directly replicated Study 2 and went further to test mediators, showing that perceptions of intergroup threat mediated the effect of national essentialism on RWA, while national identification mediated the effect of national essentialism on nationalism. Data and materials are publicly available at: (https://osf.io/srvxk/?view_only=d803fbf4c59c4b7e912f5a345ddb09b9)

Metaphor and Symbolism: possiblity of iconic theology

In language and literature, metaphors and symbolism are both used to communicate complex ideas and emotions that are more than what is seen on the surface. Metaphors create connections between seemingly unrelated concepts, while as well as how they can be used to analyse theological contexts and apply them to society. The term “metaphor” comes from the ancient Greek word metapherein, where meta means “beyond,” and pherein means “to transfer” or “to carry over.” Essentially, a metaphor is a linguistic process by which one thing is “transferred” or “carried over” to another thing. This means that one thing is described as another to reveal certain characteristics of the first thing. Aristotle explicitly defined it in Poetics as “using a word that signifies one thing to refer to another; this word then becomes a metaphorical word.” Metaphor is not just a linguistic process but also a fundamental way of thinking about and understanding things.

Is Citation Count a Legitimate Indicator of Scientific Impact? A Case Study of Upper (1974) “The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of Writer’s Block” and Its Derivatives

The work by Upper (1974) was a blank paper. Multiple replication studies were published. This work examined the number of citations received by these papers, and manually checked the citing papers to determine why they made the citations. The Dimensions literature database was queried with the search string: (unsuccessful treatment writer’s block). The search yielded 14 articles, two of which were irrelevant and excluded. The 12 papers remained after screening included the original study by Upper (1974), nine replication studies, one review, and one meta-analysis. The original work received 43 citations, but related works had fewer than 10 citations each. One fourth of citations of Upper (1974) were being satiric on “nothing” or “precise” from papers dealing with unrelated concepts, and five citations were deemed erroneous/digressed. One citation was made to acknowledge the reviewer’s comments to Upper (1974), which did not involve Upper’s own ideas. This work exposed a scenario where there were limitations of using citation count as the only metric to gauge scientific impact of journal articles.

A foundation model enhanced approach for generative design in combinational creativity

In creativity theory, combining two unrelated concepts into a novel idea is a common means of enhancing creativity. Designers can integrate the Additive concept into the Base concept to inspire and facilitate creative tasks. However, conceiving high-quality combinational ideas poses a challenge that combinational creativity itself demands the consideration of conceptual reasoning and synthesis. We propose an AI foundation model enhanced approach for supporting combinational creativity. This approach derives combinational embodiments, and assists humans in verbalising and externalising combinational ideas. Our experimental study demonstrates that the generated combinational ideas by the approach obtained highest scores compared to those ideas generated without an AI foundation model or combinational strategy. We built a combinational creativity tool called CombinatorX based on this approach to generate ideas. In a study with the comparison of an existing combinational creativity tool and Internet search, we validated that our approach improves the effectiveness of combinational idea generation, enables a reduction in labour force, and facilitates the refinement of combinational ideation.

Public Approval of the Supreme Court and Its Implications for Legitimacy

In examining public evaluations of governing institutions, are job approval and legitimacy related? This question has dominated scholarship on Supreme Court legitimacy for decades. Conventional wisdom suggests that specific support (e.g., job approval) and diffuse support (e.g., legitimacy) are independent. Specific support captures short-term orientations based on policy alignment with the Court. Legitimacy is a long-term perspective reflecting more fundamental support for the Court as a governing institution. We challenge the paradigm that job approval and legitimacy are largely unrelated concepts. Specifically, we employ a variety of statistical techniques and panel data to show that changes in legitimacy are a direct effect of changes in public approval. Salient decisions and Court vacancies directly shape approval and indirectly shape legitimacy through their effects on approval. Longitudinal analysis confirms that changes in job approval precede and predict changes in legitimacy. These results suggest that the Court needs public approval, and its public approval is rooted in outcome-oriented perceptions of its decisions and membership. Further, sustained low levels of approval will eventually erode legitimacy and limit the Court's influence over policy. Thus, like the outwardly political executive and legislative branches, it is important for the Court to build political capital through job approval.

Not All Instances Contribute Equally: Instance-Adaptive Class Representation Learning for Few-Shot Visual Recognition.

Few-shot visual recognition refers to recognize novel visual concepts from a few labeled instances. Many few-shot visual recognition methods adopt the metric-based meta-learning paradigm by comparing the query representation with class representations to predict the category of query instance. However, the current metric-based methods generally treat all instances equally and consequently often obtain biased class representation, considering not all instances are equally significant when summarizing the instance-level representations for the class-level representation. For example, some instances may contain unrepresentative information, such as too much background and information of unrelated concepts, which skew the results. To address the above issues, we propose a novel metric-based meta-learning framework termed instance-adaptive class representation learning network (ICRL-Net) for few-shot visual recognition. Specifically, we develop an adaptive instance revaluing network (AIRN) with the capability to address the biased representation issue when generating the class representation, by learning and assigning adaptive weights for different instances according to their relative significance in the support set of corresponding class. In addition, we design an improved bilinear instance representation and incorporate two novel structural losses, i.e., intraclass instance clustering loss and interclass representation distinguishing loss, to further regulate the instance revaluation process and refine the class representation. We conduct extensive experiments on four commonly adopted few-shot benchmarks: miniImageNet, tieredImageNet, CIFAR-FS, and FC100 datasets. The experimental results compared with the state-of-the-art approaches demonstrate the superiority of our ICRL-Net.

Assessing lateral thinking: validity, reliability, and universality using a novel verbal test

Lateral thinking, a key component of creative thinking, is crucial in problem-solving, scientific discovery, and everyday life. However, its assessment remains challenging due to its elusive nature. This study proposes and validates a novel verbal test to objectively measure lateral thinking. The test, consisting of triads of words with subtle associations, requires subjects to find commonalities between seemingly unrelated concepts. The study involves three groups: two student groups and one engineering group. Statistical analysis reveals that the test demonstrates validity, reliability, and representativeness. Notably, the probability distribution of the measured parameter shows low deviations from the normal law, suggesting that lateral thinking, like general intelligence, is a relatively universal personality trait. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of lateral thinking and provides a validated tool for its assessment, promoting creativity in education and various other fields.

Validity in the Next Era of Assessment: Consequences, Social Impact, and Equity.

Validity has long held a venerated place in education, leading some authors to refer to it as the "sine qua non" or "cardinal virtue" of assessment. And yet, validity has not held a fixed meaning; rather it has shifted in its definition and scope over time. In this Eye Opener, the authors explore if and how current conceptualizations of validity fit a next era of assessment that prioritizes patient care and learner equity. They posit that health profession education's conceptualization of validity will change in three related but distinct ways. First, consequences of assessment decisions will play a central role in validity arguments. Second, validity evidence regarding impacts of assessment on patients and society will be prioritized. Third, equity will be seen as part of validity rather than an unrelated concept. The authors argue that health professions education has the agency to change its ideology around validity, and to align with values that predominate the next era of assessment such as high-quality care and equity for learners and patients.

Assessing the Psychometric Validity of the Epistaxis Severity Score: Internal Consistency and Test-Retest Reliability.

The Epistaxis Severity Score (ESS) is the gold-standard patient-reported outcome measure for evaluating nosebleed severity in patients with hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT). To date, the ESS has been assessed only for content validity and concurrent validity. We evaluate the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the ESS. After receiving institutional review board approval, we sent an online survey battery, including the ESS survey, to 305 (39% male) English-speaking HHT patients ≥18 years old at a single center. Of those, 140 (46%) patients completed the battery, and 110/140 (79%) reported epistaxis. Cronbach's alpha and correlation analyses were used to evaluate internal consistency. For the test-retest reliability evaluation, we recruited 69 HHT patients during HHT clinic to complete 2 self-administered ESS surveys 2 weeks apart. Participants also completed a modified Clinical Global Impression-Improvement scale with readministration of the ESS survey. We calculated the intraclass correlation coefficient in a 2-way mixed model with absolute agreement. The ESS survey demonstrated low internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.495), suggesting that it measured multiple unrelated concepts. Factor analysis revealed 3 latent factors with moderate intercorrelation, suggesting the presence of 3 related but distinct constructs underlying the ESS. However, the ESS demonstrated excellent test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.955; 95% CI, 0.91-0.98). Although the ESS demonstrates high test-retest reliability, it may not adequately assess different dimensions of nosebleed severity. Additional correlated survey questions and sub-scores may be needed to increase internal consistency to accurately measure each component of epistaxis severity. It is necessary to acknowledge epistaxis severity from different dimensions and to consider evaluating individual ESS items separately for a comprehensive understanding.

The Effect of Drawing Microbiology Concepts on Short-Term Retention Before and After Interrupted Learning.

Throughout the preclinical education curriculum, medical students learn numerous concepts that must be retained and added to over time. Previous studies have shown that utilizing drawing leads to improved retention of concepts. However, limited studies have investigated the use of drawing at the medical school level. The goal of this study was to utilize mechanism-based drawing aimed at presenting conceptual material rather than strict memorization before and after interrupted learning. Participants were randomly assigned to a drawing group or a text-only group and both groups received text #1 that explained a microbiology concept. The groups were instructed to read the text, but only the drawing group received a drawing prompt. The groups then completed post-test #1. During part #2 of the study, the groups were instructed to read text #2 with no drawing prompt. The two groups were instructed to complete post-test #2 which covered topics from text #1 and #2. p<0.05 was considered significant. The drawing group performed significantly better on post-test #1 compared to the text-only group. There were no significant differences on overall performance on post-test #2. However, the drawing group performed significantly better on questions related to the material covered in text #1 on post-test #2. Results presented here demonstrate that students who draw perform significantly better when assessed on complex microbiology concepts, even after interrupted by the introduction of an unrelated concept. A future study should investigate the effectiveness of drawing after interruption by learning on long-term retention and performance.

Developmental differences in children’s generation of knowledge-based inferences

ABSTRACT We examined knowledge-based inference in 6-, 8- and 10-year-olds. Participants listened to texts where the number of clues for an inference was manipulated and then judged whether single-word probes (target inference, competing inference, literal word from the text and an unrelated concept) were related to the story. Accuracy and response times were analyzed with mixed-effects models. Inference accuracy was higher with three clues, and older children responded to the inference more accurately and quickly than younger children. The inference and literal probes were compared: 10-year-olds responded more accurately and quickly to the inference; however, 6-year-olds were more accurate for the literal. We propose that by 10-years of age, children are able to activate knowledge-based inferences while listening to text. All age groups had some inhibition difficulty, with less accurate and slower responses for the competing inference than the unrelated concept. Inference instruction should be sensitive to developmental differences in inferential processing.

N400 event-related brain potential index of semantic processing and two-year clinical outcomes in persons at high risk for psychosis: A longitudinal study.

The N400 event-related brain potential (ERP) semantic priming effect reflects greater activation of contextually related versus unrelated concepts in long-term semantic memory. Deficits in this measure have been found in persons with schizophrenia and those at clinical high risk (CHR) for this disorder. In CHR patients, we previously found that these deficits predict poorer social functional outcomes after 1 year. In the present study, we tested whether these deficits predicted greater psychosis-spectrum symptom severity and functional impairment over 2 years. We measured N400 semantic priming effects at baseline in CHR patients (n = 47) who viewed prime words each followed by a related/unrelated target word at stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 300 or 750 ms. We measured psychosis-spectrum symptoms using the Structured Interview for Prodromal Symptoms and role and social functioning with the Global Functioning: Role and Social scales, at baseline, 1 (n = 29) and 2 years (n = 25). There was a significant interaction between the N400 semantic priming effect at the 300-ms SOA and time on GF:Role scores, indicating that, contrary to expectations, smaller baseline N400 semantic priming effects were associated with more improvement in role functioning from baseline to Year 1, but baseline N400 priming effects did not predict role functioning at Year 2. N400 priming effects were not significantly associated with different trajectories in psychosis-spectrum symptoms or social functioning. Thus, CHR patients' N400 semantic priming effects did not predict clinical outcomes over 2 years, suggesting that this ERP measure may have greater value as a state or short-term prognostic neurophysiological biomarker.

Emergence of Covid-19 as a Novel Concept Shifts Existing Semantic Spaces.

Conceptual knowledge is dynamic, fluid, and flexible, changing as a function of contextual factors at multiple scales. The Covid-19 pandemic can be considered a large-scale, global context that has fundamentally altered most people's experiences with the world. It has also introduced a new concept, COVID (or COVID-19), into our collective knowledgebase. What are the implications of this introduction for how existing conceptual knowledge is structured? Our collective emotional and social experiences with the world have been profoundly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and experience-based perspectives on concept representation suggest that emotional and social experiences are critical components of conceptual knowledge. Such changes in collective experience should, then, have downstream consequences on knowledge of emotion- and social-related concepts. Using a naturally occurring dataset derived from the social media platform Twitter, we show that semantic spaces for concepts related to our emotional experiences with Covid-19 (i.e., emotional concepts like FEAR)-but not for unrelated concepts (i.e., animals like CAT)-show quantifiable shifts as a function of the emergence of COVID-19 as a concept and its associated emotional and social experiences, shifts which persist 6 months after the onset of the pandemic. The findings support a dynamic view of conceptual knowledge wherein shared experiences affect conceptual structure.

Perceived lack of control promotes creativity

Perceived lack of control promotes creativity

Effects of association interventions on students' creative thinking, aptitude, empathy, and design scheme in a STEAM course: considering remote and close association.

One of the primary goals of STEAM education is to equip students with the capability of creativity to solve problems. Creativity is believed to be closely related to the ability of making remote associations and combining unrelated concepts. This article explored the effects of three kinds of association interventions (i.e., remote association, close association, free association) on students' creative thinking, creative aptitude, empathy, and design scheme. A total of 94 middle school students participated in the study and were assigned to three groups: the experiment group 1 (n = 30) used remote association and experiment group 2 (n = 32) used close association, the control group (n = 32) used free association (brainstorming) to complete the STEAM integration design projects respectively. Creative Thinking Test, Williams Creativity Aptitude Test (WCAT), Basic Empathy Scale (BES), design ideas, and interviews of students become source data for analysis. Results indicated that both remote and close association were effective strategies in promoting creativity in the STEAM course. However, students in the remote association group achieved a significantly higher degree of creative thinking. While students in the close association group significantly outperformed the remote association group on creativity aptitude and quality of design ideas. No significant difference was found among the three association conditions in students' degree of empathy. The findings highlight the different effects of remote and close association for creativity cultivation in STEAM education.

Pre-owned fashion as sustainable consumerism? Opportunities and challenges in the Vietnam market

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify opportunities and challenges for small- to medium-sized pre-owned fashion enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. While recent studies have identified the growth of pre-owned fashion in developed economies, pre-owned clothing remains negatively associated by some consumers with overseas charity donations of second-hand clothes to Vietnam, following the economic upheaval of the 1980s.Design/methodology/approachQualitative data were collected via semi-structured in-depth interviews with founders and/or owners of pre-owned fashion SMEs (n = 5, aged 25–40 years) with physical stores located in Ho Chi Minh City alongside online retail platforms. All interviewees are significant industry and consumer influencers.FindingsYounger Vietnamese consumers are motivated by (1) pre-owned fashion's value for money compared to buying new western branded luxury items and (2) the ability of pre-owned and vintage fashion to allow the wearer to create a unique personal style. While Vietnamese consumers and retailers associate “sustainable fashion” with various, often unrelated concepts, the impact of global and local discourse around sustainable fashion in the last five years has generally supported wider interest in pre-owned fashion.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the relatively modest pool of English-language research on the fashion and textiles industry in Vietnam, a global fast-fashion manufacturing hub. The findings advance understanding of how pre-owned fashion is growing as a high-end niche market despite significant supply chain restrictions as well as a lingering perception of pre-owned fashion as charitable donations.

Metaphors in Political Speeches: Understanding President Duterte’s Discourse

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte's discourse is somehow different from the past presidents that governed the country. Consequently, this made him the most controversial and misunderstood politician for his language. Since metaphors form a significant part of the discourses, this study aims at examining the metaphors used by President Duterte and their possible ideological repercussions to people from different walks of life. The corpora of this study were ten transcripts of his political speeches from the period of his presidential campaign and the early period of his presidency. The identification of metaphorical expressions in ten texts was conducted using a method based on the conceptual metaphor themes listed by Lesz (2011) and were analyzed in the framework of Cognitive Metaphor Theory by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). The analysis showed that there were diverse conceptual metaphors identified in the speeches of the president and the employment in his speeches allows him to create associations between unrelated concepts like people, objects, or ideas. Thus, his audience can use their imaginations in order to integrate their understanding. Moreover, it was found out that the employment of other elements of language was also present. It is therefore recommended to analyze these elements to better understand his identity, ideologies, and role as the country's president as this may fairly address the gap among the conceptual domains of people living in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao

PRIMARY PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ METAPHORICAL PERCEPTIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION

Metaphors are expressions that are frequently used in people's minds to explain concepts with other unrelated concepts and have a personal emphasis on learning. The purpose of this study is to determine and interpret the metaphorical perceptions of primary school pre-service teachers towards environmental pollution. The "phenomenology" research design was used in this study. The study group of this research consists of a total of 372 primary pre-service teachers. Data were collected using semi-structured forms to determine the metaphorical perceptions of primary school pre-service teachers. The pre-service teachers were asked to complete the sentence, "Environmental pollution is like... because....". At the conclusion of multiple comparisons, by the relation degree between environmental pollution and its metaphors, it was determined that significant difference was in favour of the 2nd year between the 2nd and 4th years and in favour of the 3rd year between the 3rd and 4th years. As a result of the research, it was discovered that the majority of the metaphors produced by the pre-service teachers were in the "human" and "harmful/dangerous/uncomfortable situations" categories. Furthermore, the study discovered that as the year level increased, the number of related metaphors about environmental pollution decreased. Keywords: environmental pollution, metaphorical perceptions, primary pre-service teachers