Designing Translingual Pedagogies: Exploring Pedagogical Translation through a Classroom Teaching Experiment

This study examined how middle-grades language arts teachers learned to integrate a small-group collaborative translation activity into their teaching practice. We discuss what we call pedagogical translation as an emergent social practice, in which translation routines that are familiar to multilingual students may be leveraged toward instructional goals in a mainstream language arts class. The data were drawn from a classroom teaching experiment iteration of a larger design-based research study, whose goal is to create a fully developed instructional protocol useful to all teachers in linguistically diverse language arts classrooms, but especially teachers with limited or emerging proficiencies in languages other than English. We position pedagogical translation as a paradigm case of translingual pedagogy—instructional approaches designed to leverage the full range of emerging bilinguals’ linguistic resources—and we focus our analysis on the agentive participation of teachers as they integrate new translingual routines into their instructional practice. Using a conjecture mapping procedure, we describe the evolution of an instructional theory for how pedagogical translation can be leveraged toward literacy learning objectives. We present qualitative narratives describing how participating teachers made locally situated design choices that meshed new routines with existing instructional practice, documenting trajectories of teacher participation as agentive designers of translingual pedagogy.     

Perceptual Learning of Tooling Affordances of a Jointed Object via Dynamic Touch

We investigated whether perceptual learning via dynamic touch can facilitate the discovery of tooling affordances. Twelve blindfolded participants manipulated two structurally identical aluminum objects consisting of a blade and a shaft; one object was seven and a half times heavier than and twice as large as the other object. Flexions/extensions at two joints in the shaft changed the configuration and functionality of each object. A rigid shaft (one of four possible configurations) rendered each object a functional hoe. The number of changes in the configuration produced prior to determining that the grasped object had been rendered a functional hoe greatly exceeded the number of possible configurations and declined with experience, whereas the rate of change in configuration increased with experience. Inertial properties specifically support perception via dynamic touch and explained the observed differences in actions with the two objects. These findings demonstrate that perceptual learning via dynamic touch can facilitate the discovery of tooling affordances.     

The link between social interactions and trust recovery in customer–business relationships

Trust plays a crucial role in interpersonal relationships, including customer–company relationships, where the customer expects that a company will behave predictably in any particular situation. Companies do not always fulfill customers' expectations and thereby breach the trust relationship. To avoid negative consequences of this trust violation, companies may issue a formal apology as one possible path to regaining customer trust. In the same way, a previous social interaction, which can increase the customer's levels of oxytocin, can help to recover trust after service failures. In this study, three experiments were conducted as follows: the first manipulating a simulated social interaction with images; the second manipulating a physical social interaction, (i.e., a hug); and the third with exogenous oxytocin administration. The results showed that both physical interaction, (i.e., a hug) and simulated social interaction, (i.e., images of people interacting with each other) had a positive effect on customer trust recovery and provided support for oxytocin release as the underlying mechanism in this process. This research contributes to understanding of the link between social interactions and trust by elucidating the effects of both simulated and physical interactions on trust recovery.     

On the learnability of frequent and infrequent word orders: An artificial language learning study

Most languages have a basic or "canonical" word order, which determines the relative positions of the subject (S), the verb (V), and the object (O) in a typical declarative sentence. The frequency of occurrence of the six possible word orders among world languages is not distributed uniformly. While SVO and SOV represent around 85% of world languages, orders like VSO (9%) or OSV (0.5%) are much less frequent or extremely rare. One possible explanation for this asymmetry is that biological and cognitive constraints for structured sequence processing make some word orders easier to be processed than others. Therefore, the high frequency of these word orders would be related to their higher learnability. The aim of the present study was to compare the learnability of different word orders between groups of adult subjects. Four artificial languages with different word orders were trained: two frequent (SVO, SOV) and two infrequent (VSO, OSV). In a test stage, subjects were asked to discriminate between new correct sentences and syntax or semantic violations. Higher performance rates and faster responses were observed for more frequent word orders. The results support the hypothesis that more frequent word orders are more easily learned.     

Congruence of the Marital Relationship During Transition to Parenthood: A Study with Couples Who Conceived Spontaneously or Through Assisted Reproductive Technologies

In this study we examined the congruence between partners’ perceptions of their marital relationship during the transition to parenthood and the effect of depression during pregnancy on couples’ congruence during the early postpartum period. Thirty-one couples who conceived spontaneously, along with thirty-five who conceived through assisted reproductive technologies (ART), provided data on their marital relationship and depression at their 24th pregnancy week and four months after the partum. All couples reported a decrease in marital congruence. Couples who conceived through ART reported lower marital congruence. For these subjects, women’s depression was associated with lower congruence. Interventions that focus on strengthening the marital relationship across the transition to parenthood should assess and promote couples’ congruence.     

Communication between domestic dogs and humans: effects of shelter housing upon the gaze to the human

It is widely known that gaze plays an essential role in communicative interactions. Domestic dogs tend to look at the human face in situations of conflict and uncertainty. This study compares the gaze of shelter and pet dogs during acquisition and extinction phases in a situation involving a reward in sight but out of reach. Even though no significant differences between the groups were recorded during acquisition, gaze duration decreased in both groups during extinction, with shelter dogs showing a significant shorter duration. This could be related to their different living conditions and to the fact that through their ordinary everyday interactions, pet dogs have more opportunities to learn to persist in their communicative responses when they do not get what they want. These results highlight the relevance of learning experiences during ontogeny, which would therefore modulate communicative responses.     

Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale: A psychometric study in a Portuguese sample

BackgroundThe Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS, Brazelton &; Nugent, 1995) is an instrument conceived to observe the neonatal neurobehavior. Data analysis is usually performed by organizing items into groups. The most widely used data reduction for the NBAS was developed by Lester, Als, and Brazelton (1982).ObjectiveExamine the psychometric properties of the NBAS items in a sample of 213 Portuguese infants.MethodThe NBAS was performed in the first week of infant life (3 days ± 2) and in the seventh week of life (52 days ± 5).ResultsPrincipal component analyses yielded a solution of four components explaining 55.13% of total variance. Construct validity was supported by better neurobehavioral performance of 7-week-old infants compared with 1-week-old infants.ConclusionChanges in the NBAS structure for the Portuguese sample are suggested compared to Lester factors in order to reach better internal consistency of the scale.     

Atypical categorization in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder process many perceptual and social events differently from typically developing children, suggesting that they may also form and recognize categories differently. We used a dot pattern categorization task and prototype comparison modeling to compare categorical processing in children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder and matched typical controls. We were interested in whether there were differences in how children with autism use average similarity information about a category to make decisions. During testing, the group with autism spectrum disorder endorsed prototypes less and was seemingly less sensitive to differences between to-be-categorized items and the prototype. The findings suggest that individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder are less likely to use overall average similarity when forming categories or making categorical decisions. Such differences in category formation and use may negatively impact processing of socially relevant information, such as facial expressions. A supplemental appendix for this article may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Acute stress or systemic insulin injection increases flunitrazepam sensitive-GABAA receptor density in synaptosomes of chick forebrain: Modulation by systemic epinephrine

Interactions between acute stress and systemic insulin and epinephrine on GABAA receptor density in the forebrain were studied. Here, 10 day-old chicks were intraperitoneally injected with insulin, epinephrine or vehicle and then immediately stressed by partial water immersion for 15 min and killed by decapitation. Non-stressed controls were similarly injected, then returned to their rearing boxes for 15 min and then killed. Forebrains were dissected and GABAA receptor density was measured ex vivo in synaptosomes by 3[H]-flunitrazepam binding assay. In non-stressed chicks, insulin at 1.25, 2.50 and 5.00 IU/kg of body weight (non-hypoglycemic doses) increased Bmax by 33, 53 and 44% compared to saline, respectively. A similar increase of 41% was observed in receptor density after stress. However, the insulin effect was not additive to the stress-induced increase suggesting that both effects occur through similar mechanisms. In contrast, epinephrine, at 0.25 and 0.5 mg/kg did not induce any changes in Bmax in non-stressed chicks. Nevertheless, after stress these doses increased the receptor density by about 13 and 27%, respectively. Similarly, the same epinephrine doses co-administered with insulin (2.50 IU/kg), increased the receptor density by about 20% compared to insulin alone. These results suggest that systemic epinephrine, perhaps by evoking central norepinephrine release, modulates the increase in forebrain GABAA receptor binding induced by both insulin and stress.     

Comparison of force, power, and striking efficiency for a Kung Fu strike performed by novice and experienced practitioners: preliminary analysis

This paper presents a comparison of force, power, and efficiency values calculated from Kung Fu Yau-Man palm strikes, when performed by 7 experienced and 6 novice men. They performed 5 palm strikes to a freestanding basketball, recorded by high-speed camera at 1000 Hz. Nonparametric comparisons and correlations showed experienced practitioners presented larger values of mean muscle force, mean impact force, mean muscle power, mean impact power, and mean striking efficiency, as is noted in evidence obtained for other martial arts. Also, an interesting result was that for experienced Kung Fu practitioners, muscle power was linearly correlated with impact power (p = .98) but not for the novice practitioners (p = .46).