1,720,958 research outputs found
Immersive vs desktop virtual reality in game based learning
No full textVirtual environments are recognized as more effective than other digital approaches for the acquisition of several abilities. This is because the brain recognizes the virtual world as real and this facilitates the transfer of the newly acquired skills to the real world. In this paper, we present a game that has been designed and developed with the aim of teaching spatial orientation abilities to teenagers with mild intellectual impairments. In particular, the game focuses on the training of two basic skills: Perspective taking and mental rotation. Perspective taking refers to the ability of imagining how the world looks like from another person's point of view, while mental rotation is the ability to mentally represent and manipulate physical objects in one's mind. The game, which takes place in a virtual environment, shows the player a scene with some objects on the table. The player has to choose among four provided alternatives, the one that shows how the scene would look like from a different side of the table. The game was first developed to be used with either a desktop pc monitor or an interactive touch table. In this case, a virtual world is represented, but the player is not completely immersed in it, he just looks at the scene from outside. A second version of the same game has then been developed using a Head Mounted Display (HMD), which makes the player feel immersed in the virtual environment, where he can freely move around just as if it was real. In this paper, we discuss both advantages and disadvantages of the immersive Virtual Reality (VR) compared to the desktop VR. In fact, on the one hand, having the possibility to "dive" into the virtual world allows the player to: Better build a mental model of the scene and the involved objects by freely moving around the table and examining the objects from all the possible perspectives; Manage by himself the amount of help needed: It is always possible, at any time of the game, to move to the other side of the table and see what the scene looks like. Increase his involvement in the game by exploring the virtual world as he pleases. Have a better learning transfer thanks to the similarities between the virtual and the real worlds. On the other hand, using a HMD can be tiring and cause sickness to some players. Furthermore, the presence of a complete environment in which to move and explore, can draw the attention away from the main task of the game and therefore influence learning negatively. Experiments are planned to verify the foreseen advantages and disadvantages involving young adults with mild intellective disabilities
Emotive concept-nouns and motor responses: Attraction or repulsion?
No full textTwo experiments investigate whether the triadic interaction between objects, ourselves and other agents modulates the motor system activation during language comprehension. Participants were presented with a sentence formed by a descriptive part referring to an emotional connoted object (positive, negative) and an action part composed of an imperative verb implying a motion toward the self or toward another person (e.g., “The object is nice/ugly. Bring it toward yourself/Give it to another person”). Participants judged whether each sentence made sense by moving the mouse toward or away from their body. Results show that the direction of the performed movement is influenced by the direction of the motion implied by the sentence and by the stimuli valence. More crucially, stimulus valence had a different impact depending on the relational context described by the sentence (action involving another agent or just oneself). Implications of the results for theories of social cognition are discussed.
Apps for intervention in executive functions in young children: A pilot study
No full textRecently, researchers have increasingly shown interest in studying executive functions (EFs) starting from a young age, in particular focusing on interventions in both educational and clinical contexts. Today's children's interest in digital tools is very high allowing for the introduction of new methods of assessment and training. However, there are only a few studies focused on technology-based interventions promoting or assessing EFs in young children. For this reason, a kit of four games for the assessment and training of working memory, inhibition, shifting, and updating in pre-schoolers was developed in the form of apps. The developed prototypes underwent a first test involving some teachers and clinicians who filled an online questionnaire. Data analysis showed that both teachers and clinicians gave a positive and homogeneous evaluation, showing that the apps can be considered useful for the assessment and training of EFs in both educational and clinical contexts
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
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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