1,720,962 research outputs found
Reading comprehension and understanding idiomatic expressions: A developmental study
No full textThe aim of the present study was to investigate idiom comprehension in school-age Italian children with different reading comprehension skills. According to our hypothesis, the level of a child ́s text comprehension skills should predict his/her ability to understand idiomatic meanings. Idiom comprehension in fact requires children to go beyond a simple word-by-word comprehension strategy and to integrate figurative meaning into contextual information. In a preliminary phase, we used a standardized battery of tests (Cornoldi & Colpo.. 1998) to assess the ability of second graders and fourth graders to comprehend written texts. Three groups were identified at each age level: good, medium, and poor comprehenders. Children were then presented with familiar idiomatic expressions which also have a literal meaning (e.g., break the ice). Idioms were embedded in short stories: in Experiment 1 only the idiomatic interpretation was contextually appropriate, in Experiment 2 a literal reading of the string was also plausible in the context. A multiple-choice task was used in both experiments: children were asked to choose one answer among three corresponding to: (a) the idiomatic meaning; (b) the literal meaning; and (c) an interpretation contextually appropriate but not connected with the idiomatic or literal meaning of the idiom string. The results of both experiments showed that the ability to understand a text indeed predicted children ́s understanding of idioms in context. To verify whether possible improvements in children ́s comprehension skills might produce an increase in figurative language understanding, Experiment 3 was carried out. A group of poor comprehenders who participated in Experiments 1 and 2 was tested eight months later. The results of Experiment 3 showed that children whose general comprehension skills improved their performance on an idiom comprehension test
To break the embarrassment: Text comprehension skills and figurative competence in skilled and less-skilled text comprehenders
No full textThe aim of the present study was to investigate children's ability to complete idiom fragments embedded in stories. Previous studies found that children's and preadolescents' ability to comprehend a text was related to their ability to understand an idiomatic expression (Cain, Oakhill, & Lemmon, 2005; Levorato, Nesi, & Cacciari, 2004; Nippold, Moran, & Schwarz, 2001). Comprehension and production processes share a vast amount of conceptual and lexical knowledge. Hence, we hypothesized that children's text reading comprehension skills also might be related to their ability to produce nonliteral completions. Skilled and less-skilled text comprehenders (age range from 7.4 to 10.3) were presented with short stories that ended with an idiomatic fragment (e.g., Paul broke the... for the idiom break the ice) and-were asked to complete the story. The children's completions were coded as Literal, Idiomatic, or Figurative as in previous studies (Levorato & Cacciari, 1992, 1995). The results showed that children's ability to understand a text was related to their ability to complete idiomatic fragments figuratively. Less-skilled comprehenders provided more literal completions than skilled comprehenders who, in turn, provided more idiomatic completions
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Flower Longevity and Ethylene Production in Different Development Stages and Treatments in Lilium
No full textThe cut lily flowers may be considered on the edge between sensitive and insensitive to ethylene. The effect of ethylene inhibitors did not always increase the vase life of these cut flowers and the effect of treatments is variable with cultivars. The aim of this work was to investigate the ethylene production and the flower longevity of Asiatic lily (cv. Elite and Prato) during natural senescence (attached flowers) or on cut stems (with or without storage at 4°C). The flower longevity did not change very much (only 1 day) in the different treatments. Blasting or incomplete opening of apical buds was observed only in cut inflorescences. Ethylene production was very low and slightly increased during senescence. No climacteric peak and no significant differences between attached and detached flowers were observed. Pistils produced higher levels of ethylene during the first developmental stage, when the bud was still closed, and lower level during development. The lowest value of ethylene production was observed when the flowers were fully opened
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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