1,720,965 research outputs found
The memory skills of musicians and nonmusicians
Full text linkMusicians seem to have superior abilities than those of nonmusicians, that are not just music-related but that extend to classic auditory and even cognitive tasks, in particular memory tasks. However, concerning memory, results tend to vary depending on the memory system investigated (i.e., long-term, short-term, working memory) and on the category of stimuli that are presented (e.g., verbal, visuospatial).
The present research project investigated the memory skills of musicians and nonmusicians, with the final goal of clarifying which (if there are some) characteristics of musicians are linked to better memory skills and if this advantage is general or depends on specific tasks or content of the tasks.
Study 1 investigated the literature on memory skills of musicians and nonmusicians through a meta-analysis. Three meta-analysis were conducted separately for long-term memory, short-term memory, and working memory. The effect of moderators was also tested; defined as the type of stimuli presented in the memory task (i.e., verbal, visuospatial, and tonal). The three meta-analyses revealed a medium effect-size in working memory and short-term memory (i.e., there is a moderate difference between musicians and nonmusicians) with effect of moderators. The advantage of musicians was larger for tonal and verbal stimuli and smaller for visual ones. In long term memory the effect-size was small, with no effect of moderators.
Study 2 aimed to understand if the advantage found in verbal working memory depended on the modality in which the task was delivered (i.e., stimuli presented auditorily or stimuli presented visually). 18 musicians and 18 nonmusicians performed a digit span task that was presented aurally, visually, or audiovisually. The task was performed with or without a concurrent task (i.e., articulatory suppression). Results showed that musicians had significantly larger spans than nonmusicians regardless of the sensory modality and the concurrent task. Secondary analyses showed that the advantage was more evident when the digits were delivered auditorily and audiovisually.
Study 3 aimed to investigate the individual differences among musicians. In particular, the goal was to understand whether the type of music training (classic vs self-taught) could influence the advantage of musicians over nonmusicians in verbal working memory skills, always taking into account the modality of presentation of the verbal stimuli (i.e., visual vs auditory). 102 young adults participated to the study: 33 reader musicians (i.e., that could read music notation), 33 nonreader musicians (i.e., self-taught, that could not read music notation), and 36 nonmusicians A digit span forward and backward was presented in three different modalities, alike study 2. Results showed that reader musicians, nonreader musicians and nonmusicians performed equally well in the digit span forward. However, the group interacted with the modality, revealing that reader musicians performed better than nonmusicians in the audiovisual presentation of digits. No other difference was found. In the backward digit span no difference among groups was found.
Study 4 aimed to understand whether the superiority of musicians in short-term memory extends to auditory and visual stimuli that are not verbal and not musical. 36 young adults participated to the study, 24 nonmusicians and 12 professional musicians. A verbal memory task was also included as control measure. In the short-term memory tasks, two sequences of elements were presented, with a short delay in between. The participant had to judge whether the second sequence was the same or different from the first. The types of stimuli composing the sequences where the following: verbal stimuli (i.e., syllables, presented either visually and auditorily); visual contour stimuli (i.e., luminance variations); auditory contour stimuli (i.e., loudness variations); visual nocontour stimuli (i.e., kanji ideograms); auditory nocontour stimuli (i.e., pink noises). Results showed that musicians outperformed nonmusicians in the short-term memory task with the auditory contour and nocontour stimuli, and with the visual contour stimuli
Prestazioni delle caldaie a condensazione. Misure sperimentali per il riscaldamento centralizzato
No full textMisure sperimentali per il riscaldamento
centralizzato. Il presente lavoro valuta le prestazioni di un impianto di riscaldamento centralizzato che opera con terminali a radiatore.
Lo schema idraulico adottato consente un funzionamento del sistema che da un lato ottimizza la resa dei corpi scaldanti e dall’altro minimizza la temperatura di ritorno in caldaia, requisito fondamentale per un buon funzionamento di quest’ultima
Erratum: Correction: Musicians have better memory than nonmusicians: A meta-analysis (PloS one (2017) 12 10 (e0186773))
No full text[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186773.]
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
Misure sperimentali delle prestazioni di caldaie a condensazione per il riscaldamento centralizzato
No full textThe condensing boiler technology has been known for at least two decades and its energy saving potential is nowadays acknowledged. Taking advantage from the additional heat recovered from the condensation of the water vapour contained in the exhaust flow, condensing boilers achieve, during test operations, efficiencies up to 108% on the LHV of natural gas.
However, the yearly global performance of such boilers strongly depends on the type of heating system installed downstream. Due to the operating temperature ranges of the device, the radiant floor seems to be the most suitable heating system for such boilers.
The present study evaluates the experimental data collected from a centralised plant, coupled to radiator and fan coil heating systems, over two years of operation. Although these medium/high temperature devices are not expected to fit at best to the condensing boiler, the yearly average performance reaches very high values
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
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