The power of the written word: Comparing word meaning inferencing from auditory and written modalities throughout grade school

Previous research indicates that word learning from auditory contexts may be more effective than written context at least through fourth grade. However, no study has examined contextual differences in word learning in older school-aged children when reading abilities are more developed. Here we examined developmental differences in children’s ability to deduce the meanings of unknown words from the surrounding linguistic context in the auditory and written modalities and sought to identify the most important predictors of success in each modality. A total of 89 children aged 8–15 years were randomly assigned to either read or listen to a narrative that included eight novel words, with five exposures to each novel word. They then completed three posttests to assess word meaning inferencing. Children across all ages performed better in the written modality. Vocabulary was the only significant predictor of success on the word inferencing task. Results indicate support for written stimuli as the most effective modality for novel word meaning deduction. Our findings suggest that the presence of orthographic information facilitates novel word learning even for early, less proficient readers.     

Participants and researchers searching for meaning: Conceptual developments for interpretative phenomenological analysis

ABSTRACT

In this article I offer a theoretical account of interpretative phenomenological analysis’s (IPA’s) position in relation to meaning-making by participant and researcher. In doing this, I draw on a range of theoretical writing on meaning. I then apply these ideas to a series of empirical studies on pain which I have been involved in. The intention, therefore, is for the article to contribute a theoretically informed and empirically grounded extension to the literature on IPA.     

不同适应水平小学生情绪体验评价比较--关于小学生自我调节机制的一项研究

本研究选取发展良好与适应不良的三－－五年级小学生为被试，用问卷形式向他们呈现各种情景，要求被试评价自己对情景的情绪体验。通过比较分析两组被试的情绪评价得分，揭示被试的主观意义特征。被试的反应显示，两组被试之间存在着内部强化机制差异和交往价值取向差异，适应不良学生表现出对负性意义敏感和表达的淡化。     

Language knowledge and event knowledge in language use

This paper examines how semantic knowledge is used in language comprehension and in making judgments about events in the world. We contrast knowledge gleaned from prior language experience (“language knowledge”) and knowledge coming from prior experience with the world (“world knowledge”). In two corpus analyses, we show that previous research linking verb aspect and event representations have confounded language and world knowledge. Then, using carefully chosen stimuli that remove this confound, we performed four experiments that manipulated the degree to which language knowledge or world knowledge should be salient and relevant to performing a task, finding in each case that participants use the type of knowledge most appropriate to the task. These results provide evidence for a highly context-sensitive and interactionist perspective on how semantic knowledge is represented and used during language processing.     

Introduction What aptitudes,values, and behaviors for an already present future?

Abstract

Evolution, in particular demographic growth, and progress in the world of science and technology, has led to deep‐seated transformations on economic, social and political levels. How are we to teach the young to build the 21st century in the most suitable way? What are the values, what are the aptitudes and behaviors which will enable them to flourish as actors on the stage of a changing, complex and uncertain world?     

Search for meaning and responsibility

It is essential to restore the sense of action, if efficiency is not to become an end in itself, leading to selfish behavior and exclusion.

In parallel the notion of responsibility must be taken into account in training, in particular intergenerational responsibility, through the promotion of those links which bind us to the world.     

BIOLOGY: WHAT ONE NEEDS TO KNOW

Abstract. Biology on this planet represents an astonishing experiment in carbon-based chemistry which, over billions of years, has generated billions of species adapted to countless major and minor fluctuations in ecological circumstances. In one sense there is no way to generalize about biology. While biological activities can all be ultimately explained by physical laws (like everything else in the universe), it is the emergent intensely particular properties of organisms that most interest us. This essay represents an attempt to describe some of the more prominent patterns that emerge from the sea of biological particularities, patterns that present many opportunities for religous reflection.     

The Middle Wittgenstein’s Critique of Frege

ABSTRACT

This article aims to analyse Wittgenstein’s 1929–1932 notes concerning Frege’s critique of what is referred to as old formalism in the philosophy of mathematics. Wittgenstein disagreed with Frege’s critique and, in his notes, outlined his own assessment of formalism. First of all, he approvingly foregrounded its mathematics-game comparison and insistence that rules precede the meanings of expressions. In this article, I recount Frege’s critique of formalism and address Wittgenstein’s assessment of it to show that his remarks are not so much a critique of Frege as rather a defence of the formalist anti-metaphysical investment.