Identity salience moderates processing of group-relevant information

When an individual is categorized as a member of a group, the individual’s social identity becomes his or her frame for perceiving the world. This research investigates how information can be perceived and processed differently when relevant social identities are salient. In two studies, participants’ individual, student, or American identities were made salient before they read strong or weak arguments in favor of the institution of comprehensive exams at their university in 10 years time. In both studies, student-salient participants analytically processed the message whereas self-salient (Study 1) and American-salient (Study 2) participants failed to agree differentially with strong and weak messages. These data suggest that social-identity salience changes the information that individuals consider relevant, providing clear support for the contention that social identities have a profound impact on the way individuals perceive and interact with the world around them.     

S’engager c’est consentir CE, 7 juin 2018 : no 406207

Information obligation on medical acts during medical examination is on the whole of the examination. The idea of information on each act seems to be swept over. Despite the age of the facts, the implication of the decision can be seen in the Universal national service project.     

Trustworthy media news content retrieval from web using truth content discovery algorithm

Nowadays, the internet plays a major role in online information retrieval. As, we are well aware the web provides information related all the fields like national, lifestyle, movies, shopping, spirituality, sports, entertainment and much more. One cannot assume that the web retrieved information is believable or trustworthy due to multiple answers to the same query. The paper aims to study many research articles which are related to truth information discovery. However, the paper found that there is no proper research to find trustworthiness of news content which is extracted from multiple information sources with minimum misclassification error and retrieval time. To alleviate these issues, the truth content discovery algorithm is proposed to produce trustworthy information with minimal time along with multiple domain news information. The system provides reliable information from a various source of news provider with minimum classification error. The proposed method ranked the news content index based on query matches from extracted information. It minimizes the query retrieval time and classification error. Based on the experimental evaluation, proposed TCD + J48 algorithm produced the best result compared to existing approaches. It minimizes reduces 7.54 ms the query retrieval time (QRT), 5% Error rate (ER) and 0.98 and Mean Normalized Absolute Distance (MNAD).     

“Putin,You Suck”: Affective Sticking Points in the Czech Narrative on “Russian Hybrid Warfare”

Using the case of the Czech narrative on “Russian hybrid warfare” (RHW), this article contributes to the broader question of why narratives succeed. Building on Lacanian psychoanalysis, narrative scholarship, and affect/emotions research in International Relations, we suggest that narrative success is facilitated also by two interrelated factors: embedding in broader cultural contexts and the ability to incorporate and reproduce collectively circulating affects. We develop a methodological framework for encircling unobservable affects within discourse via “sticking points”—linguistic phenomena infused with affective investment. We outline three categories of sticking points—valued signifiers, fantasies, and biographical narratives. Utilizing the approach in our case study, we focus on a narrative based around the notion that Russia waged a “hybrid war” against “the West” and that this should be faced with quasi‐military measures, which was successful in changing the language of Czech national security. We show that this narrative incorporated a range of sticking points, which contributed to its relative success. It utilized valued signifiers, such as “the West,” “the Kremlin,” “agents,” and “occupation,” weaved them together into a fantasy of a threat to the nation's “Western” identity, and intertwined this with the biographical narratives of history as a lens for world politics and East/West geopolitics.     

The precision demands of viewing distance modulate postural coordination and control

There are contrasting views on the role of vision in modifying postural organization (information-driven and postural facilitation) and limited direct tests of the underlying postural mechanisms. Here, we examined whether the distinction between the two views is appropriate given that both are interrelated parts of task constraints modulating postural coordination and control. The study investigated whether changes in the organization of the postural system are a function of the visual precision demands of a task and, in addition, whether such organization could be described as reflecting an intermittent controller. Sixteen participants were instructed to maintain quiet postural stance while fixating a point at different viewing distances (25, 50, 135, 220, 305 cm) or standing with eyes closed. The 25-cm condition showed the lowest standard deviation of the center of pressure (COP) and the highest correlation dimension (CD) in the anterior posterior direction. Analyses revealed that, contrary to the intermittent controller hypothesis, adaptations in the continuous COP and center of mass (COM) coupling characterized the observed changes in CD. The findings show that the natural act of looking to the same feature in the environment as a function of visual viewing distance can lead to quantitative and qualitative changes in the dynamics of posture. This is consistent with the view that postural facilitation and information availability are integrated in the perceptual-motor dynamics.     

Reconciling symbolic and dynamic aspects of language: Toward a dynamic psycholinguistics

The present paper examines natural language as a dynamical system. The oft-expressed view of language as “a static system of symbols” is here seen as an element of a larger system that embraces the mutuality of symbols and dynamics. Following along the lines of the theoretical biologist H.H. Pattee, the relation between symbolic and dynamic aspects of language is expressed within a more general framework that deals with the role of information in biological systems. In this framework, symbols are seen as information-bearing entities that emerge under pressures of communicative needs and that serve as concrete constraints on development and communication. In an attempt to identify relevant dynamic aspects of such a system, one has to take into account events that happen on different time scales: evolutionary language change (i.e., a diachronic aspect), processes of communication (language use) and language acquisition. Acknowledging the role of dynamic processes in shaping and sustaining the structures of natural language calls for a change in methodology. In particular, a purely synchronic analysis of a system of symbols as “meaning-containing entities” is not sufficient to obtain answers to certain recurring problems in linguistics and the philosophy of language. A more encompassing research framework may be the one designed specifically for studying informationally based coupled dynamical systems (coordination dynamics) in which processes of self-organization take place over different time scales.     

Is a Worried Citizen a Good Citizen? Emotions,Political Information Seeking,and Learning via the Internet

In this study we explore the mediating role of emotions in the process of becoming a politically informed citizen. Contrary to previous studies, we expect that anger and anxiety will have much different effects on this process. We suspect the role of anxiety is somewhat unique even among negative emotions as mediator of the causal effect of political threats on information seeking and learning. In addition, we speculate that anxiety should improve the quality of information seeking, not just its quantity. In one experiment, we induce emotions directly and find that while anger, enthusiasm, and anxiety can lead people to claim they will pay attention to the campaign, anger actually depresses total information seeking. In a second experiment, we examine the impact of realistic political threats and find that exposure triggers several emotions but that only anxiety boosts information seeking and learning.     

It's Not Easy Being Green: Minor Party Labels as Heuristic Aids

This paper examines if, when, and to what extent U.S. minor party labels influence individual opinions over a range of political issues. Based on data from an experimental study, we reach three general conclusions. First, as cues, party labels are more likely to influence opinions over complex issues. Second, familiarity with and trust in a party condition cue acceptance. Third, as a whole, minor party labels act as effective cues less consistently than major parties. This finding, we suggest, indicates that there exists some threshold level of familiarity and trust that minor parties must reach in the mass public in order to be effective cues. This research is valuable because it extends current work on party labels as heuristic devices and more general work on cues; our findings are additionally important given recent trends in public opinion data, which indicate that the U.S. public is becoming more accepting of minor parties as permanent features of the political system.     

Emergence of Information Transfer by Inductive Learning

We study a simple game theoretic model of information transfer which we consider to be a baseline model for capturing strategic aspects of epistemological questions. In particular, we focus on the question whether simple learning rules lead to an efficient transfer of information. We find that reinforcement learning, which is based exclusively on payoff experiences, is inadequate to generate efficient networks of information transfer. Fictitious play, the game theoretic counterpart to Carnapian inductive logic and a more sophisticated kind of learning, suffices to produce efficiency in information transfer.     

A Comparative Study on the Information Ethics of Junior High School Students Cognition and Behavior between Taiwan and China: Kaohsiung and Nanjing Regions Used as Examples

A great deal of progress has been made on information ethics. Which portion is not sufficient? That might be the comparison from countries to countries. The purpose of this study was closely examined using the cross-cultural method for comparison. To determine the ethics cognitions and behaviors of the students, a comprehensive survey was distributed. The questionnaire for the study used Mason’s four essential factors in information ethics that included Privacy, Accuracy, Property and Accessibility (PAPA). The samples were comprised of Kaohsiung Taiwan and Nanjing China, junior high school students in 2006. The sample and the survey were obtained from two stages of random sampling that was conducted using an Internet website. Students could read the online questionnaire in the computer laboratory and then send immediate feedback to the website server. The result of the experiment showed the divergence of information ethics in cognition and behavior between Kaohsiung and Nanjing school children. The effects of background and correlation are from cognition and behavior between two regions.