Search results for: task validity

Authors: Yasmeen Bassas, Sandra Kuebler, Allen Riddell

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Native language identification is one of the growing subfields in natural language processing (NLP). The task of native language identification (NLI) is mainly concerned with predicting the native language of an author’s writing in a second language. In this paper, we investigate the performance of two types of features; content-based features vs. content independent features, when they are evaluated on a different corpus (using social media data “Reddit”). In this NLI task, the predefined models are trained on one corpus (TOEFL), and then the trained models are evaluated on different data using an external corpus (Reddit). Three classifiers are used in this task; the baseline, linear SVM, and logistic regression. Results show that content-based features are more accurate and robust than content independent ones when tested within the corpus and across corpus.

Keywords: NLI, NLP, content-based features, content independent features, social media corpus, ML

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Authors: Alena Kulikova, Leonid Parmaksiz, Ekaterina Orel

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Social and emotional skills are considered by modern researchers as predictors of a person's success both in specific areas of activity and in the life of a person as a whole. The popularity of this scientific direction ensures the emergence of a large number of practices aimed at developing and evaluating socio-emotional skills. Assessment of social and emotional development is carried out at the national level, as well as at the level of individual regions and institutions. Despite the fact that many of the already existing social and emotional skills assessment tools are quite convenient and reliable, there are now more and more new technologies and task formats which improve the basic characteristics of the tools. Thus, the goal of the current study is to develop a tool for assessing social and emotional skills such as emotion recognition, emotion regulation, empathy and a culture of self-care. To develop a tool assessing social and emotional skills, Rasch-Gutman scenario-based approach was used. This approach has shown its reliability and merit for measuring various complex constructs: parental involvement; teacher practices that support cultural diversity and equity; willingness to participate in the life of the community after psychiatric rehabilitation; educational motivation and others. To assess emotion recognition, we used a situational judgment task based on OCC (Ortony, Clore, and Collins) emotions theory. The main advantage of these two approaches compare to classical Likert scales is that it reduces social desirability in answers. A field test to check the psychometric properties of the developed instrument was conducted. The instrument was developed for the presidential autonomous non-profit organization “Russia - Land of Opportunity” for nationwide soft skills assessment among higher education students. The sample for the field test consisted of 500 people, students aged from 18 to 25 (mean = 20; standard deviation 1.8), 71% female. 67% of students are only studying and are not currently working and 500 employed adults aged from 26 to 65 (mean = 42.5; SD 9), 57% female. Analysis of the psychometric characteristics of the scales was carried out using the methods of IRT (Item Response Theory). A one-parameter rating scale model RSM (Rating scale model) and Graded Response model (GRM) of the modern testing theory were applied. GRM is a polyatomic extension of the dichotomous two-parameter model of modern testing theory (2PL) based on the cumulative logit function for modeling the probability of a correct answer. The validity of the developed scales was assessed using correlation analysis and MTMM (multitrait-multimethod matrix). The developed instrument showed good psychometric quality and can be used by HR specialists or educational management. The detailed results of a psychometric study of the quality of the instrument, including the functioning of the tasks of each scale, will be presented. Also, the results of the validity study by MTMM analysis will be discussed.

Keywords: social and emotional skills, psychometrics, MTMM, IRT

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Authors: Svetlana Strinyuk, Viacheslav Lanin

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Academic English has become lingua franca for international scientific community which stimulates universities to introduce English for Specific Purposes (EAP) courses into curriculum. Teaching L2 EAP students might be fulfilled with corpus technologies and digital stylistics. A special software developed to reach the manifold task of teaching, assessing and researching academic writing of L2 students on basis of digital stylistics and multidimensional analysis was created. A set of annotations (style markers) – grammar, lexical and syntactic features most significant of academic writing was built. Contrastive comparison of two corpora “model corpus”, subject domain limited papers published by competent writers in leading academic journals, and “students’ corpus”, subject domain limited papers written by last year students allows to receive data about the features of academic writing underused or overused by L2 EAP student. Both corpora are tagged with a special software created in GATE Developer. Style markers within the framework of research might be replaced depending on the relevance and validity of the result which is achieved from research corpora. Thus, selecting relevant (high frequency) style markers and excluding less relevant, i.e. less frequent annotations, high validity of the model is achieved. Software allows to compare the data received from processing model corpus to students’ corpus and get reports which can be used in teaching and assessment. The less deviation from the model corpus students demonstrates in their writing the higher is academic writing skill acquisition. The research showed that several style markers (hedging devices) were underused by L2 EAP students whereas lexical linking devices were used excessively. A special software implemented into teaching of EAP courses serves as a successful visual aid, makes assessment more valid; it is indicative of the degree of writing skill acquisition, and provides data for further research.

Keywords: corpus technologies in EAP teaching, multidimensional analysis, GATE Developer, corpus stylistics

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Authors: Elham Azimzadeh, Hamidollah Hassanlouei, Hadi Nobari, Georgian Badicu, Jorge Pérez-Gómez, Luca Paolo Ardigò

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Children with cerebral palsy (CP) have weak physical abilities and their limitations may have an effect on performing everyday motor activities. One of the most important and common debilitating factors in CP is the malfunction in the upper extremities to perform motor skills and there is strong evidence that task-specific training may lead to improve general upper limb function among this population. However, augmented feedback enhances the acquisition and learning of a motor task. Practice conditions may alter the difficulty, e.g., the reduced frequency of PG could be more challenging for this population to learn a motor task. So, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of physical guidance (PG) on learning a tracking task in children with cerebral palsy (CP). Twenty-five independently ambulant children with spastic hemiplegic CP aged 7-15 years were assigned randomly to five groups. After the pre-test, experimental groups participated in an intervention for eight sessions, 12 trials during each session. The 0% PG group received no PG; the 25% PG group received PG for three trials; the 50% PG group received PG for six trials; the 75% PG group received PG for nine trials; and the 100% PG group, received PG for all 12 trials. PG consisted of placing the experimenter's hand around the children's hand, guiding them to stay on track and complete the task. Learning was inferred by acquisition and delayed retention tests. The tests involved two blocks of 12 trials of the tracking task without any PG being performed by all participants. They were asked to make the movement as accurate as possible (i.e., fewer errors) and the number of total touches (errors) in 24 trials was calculated as the scores of the tests. The results showed that the higher frequency of PG led to more accurate performance during the practice phase. However, the group that received 75% PG had significantly better performance compared to the other groups in the retention phase. It is concluded that the optimal frequency of PG played a critical role in learning a tracking task in children with CP and likely this population may benefit from an optimal level of PG to get the appropriate amount of information confirming the challenge point framework (CPF), which state that too much or too little information will retard learning a motor skill. Therefore, an optimum level of PG may help these children to identify appropriate patterns of motor skill using extrinsic information they receive through PG and improve learning by activating the intrinsic feedback mechanisms.

Keywords: cerebral palsy, challenge point framework, motor learning, physical guidance, tracking task

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Authors: Premjit K. Sanjram, Gagan Jakhotiya, Apoorv Goyal, Shanu Shukla

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In psychological research, laboratory experiments often face the trade-off issue between experimental control and mundane realism. With the advent of Immersive Virtual Environment Technology (IVET), this issue seems to be at bay. However there is a growing challenge within the IVET itself to design and develop system or software that captures the psychological phenomenon of everyday lives. One such phenomena that is of growing interest is ‘media-multitasking’ To aid laboratory researches in media-multitasking this paper introduces Query Task Modulator (QTM), a computerized experimentation system to study media-multitasking behavior in a controlled laboratory environment. The system provides a computerized platform in conducting an experiment for experimenters to study media-multitasking in which participants will be involved in a query task. The system has Instant Messaging, E-mail, and Voice Call features. The answers to queries are provided on the left hand side information panel where participants have to search for it and feed the information in the respective communication media blocks as fast as possible. On the whole the system will collect multitasking behavioral data. To analyze performance there is a separate output table that records the reaction times and responses of the participants individually. Information panel and all the media blocks will appear on a single window in order to ensure multi-modality feature in media-multitasking and equal emphasis on all the tasks (thus avoiding prioritization to a particular task). The paper discusses the development of QTM in the light of current techniques of studying media-multitasking.

Keywords: experimentation system, human performance, media-multitasking, query-task

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Authors: Dilruba Showkat, Cindy Grimm

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As robots become more ubiquitous, it is significant for us to understand how different groups of people respond to possible ways of interacting with the robot. In this study, we focused on gender differences while users were tele-operating a humanoid robot that was physically co-located with them. We investigated three factors during the human-robot interaction (1) information processing strategy (2) self-efficacy and (3) tinkering or exploratory behavior. The experimental results show that the information on how to use the robot was processed comprehensively by the female participants whereas males processed them selectively (p < 0.001). Males were more confident when using the robot than females (p = 0.0002). Males tinkered more with the robot than females (p = 0.0021). We found that tinkering was positively correlated (p = 0.0068) with task success and negatively correlated (p = 0.0032) with task completion time. Tinkering might have resulted in greater task success and lower task completion time for males. Findings from this research can be used for making design decisions for robots and open new research directions. Our results show the importance of accounting for gender differences when developing interfaces for interacting with robots and open new research directions.

Keywords: humanoid robots, tele-operation, gender differences, human-robot interaction

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Authors: Teboho J. Mosikari, Johannes T. Tsoku, Diteboho L. Xaba

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The increase of capital mobility across emerging economies has become an interesting topic for many economic policy makers. The current study tests the validity of Feldstein–Horioka puzzle for 5 BRICS countries. The sample period of the study runs from 2001 to 2014. The study uses the following parameter estimates well known as the Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS), and Dynamic OLS (DOLS). The results of the study show that investment and savings are cointegrated in the long run. The parameters estimated using FMOLS and DOLS are 0.85 and 0.74, respectively. These results imply that policy makers within BRICS countries have to consider flexible monetary and fiscal policy instruments to influence the mobility of capital with the bloc.

Keywords: Feldstein and Horioka puzzle, saving and investment, panel models, BRICS countries

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Authors: Neşe Alkan

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Purpose: The point that applied/clinical psychology, which is the practice and research discipline of the mental health field, has reached today can be summarized as the necessity of handling the psychological well-being of people from multiple perspectives and the goal of moving it to a higher level. Clients' subjective assessment of their own condition and wellbeing is an integral part of evidence-based interventions. There is a need for tools through which clients can evaluate the effectiveness of the psychotherapy/intervention performed with them and their contribution to the wellbeing and wellbeing of this process in a valid and reliable manner. The aim of this research is to meet this need, to test the reliability and validity of the index in Turkish, and explore its usability in the practices of both researchers and psychotherapists. Method: A total of 213 adults aged between 18-54, 69.5% working and 29.5% university students, were included in the study. Along with their demographic information, the participants were administered a set of scales: wellbeing, life satisfaction, spiritual satisfaction, shopping addiction, and loneliness, namely via an online platform. The construct validity of the wellbeing scale was tested with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, convergent and discriminant validity were tested with two-way full and partial correlation analyses and, measurement invariance was tested with one-way analysis of variance. Results: Factor analyzes showed that the scale consisted of six dimensions as it is in its original structure. The internal consistency of the scale was found to be Cronbach α = .82. Two-way correlation analyzes revealed that the wellbeing scale total score was positively correlated with general life satisfaction (r = .62) and spiritual satisfaction (r = .29), as expected. It was negatively correlated with loneliness (r = -.51) and shopping addiction (r = -.15). While the scale score did not vary by gender, previous illness, or nicotine addiction, it was found that the total wellbeing scale scores of the participants who had used antidepressant medication during the past year were lower than those who did not use antidepressant medication (F(1,204) = 7.713, p = .005). Conclusion: It has been concluded that the 12-item wellbeing scale consisting of six dimensions can be used in research and health sciences practices as a valid and reliable measurement tool. Further research which examines the reliability and validity of the scale in different widely used languages such as Spanish and Chinese is recommended.

Keywords: wellbeing, intervention effectiveness, reliability and validity, effectiveness

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Authors: Yi-Hsiu Lai

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The present study aimed to elucidate the lexical-semantic processing for Chinese as second language (CSL) learners. Twenty L1 speakers of Chinese and twenty CSL learners in Taiwan participated in a picture naming task and a category fluency task. Based on their Chinese proficiency levels, these CSL learners were further divided into two sub-groups: ten CSL learners of elementary Chinese proficiency level and ten CSL learners of intermediate Chinese proficiency level. Instruments for the naming task were sixty black-and-white pictures: thirty-five object pictures and twenty-five action pictures. Object pictures were divided into two categories: living objects and non-living objects. Action pictures were composed of two categories: action verbs and process verbs. As in the naming task, the category fluency task consisted of two semantic categories – objects (i.e., living and non-living objects) and actions (i.e., action and process verbs). Participants were asked to report as many items within a category as possible in one minute. Oral productions were tape-recorded and transcribed for further analysis. Both error types and error frequency were calculated. Statistical analysis was further conducted to examine these error types and frequency made by CSL learners. Additionally, category effects, pictorial effects and L2 proficiency were discussed. Findings in the present study helped characterize the lexical-semantic process of Chinese naming in CSL learners of different Chinese proficiency levels and made contributions to Chinese vocabulary teaching and learning in the future.

Keywords: lexical-semantic processing, Mandarin Chinese, naming, category effects

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Authors: Mikel Alonso López

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In order to begin the process of studying the task of making consumer decisions, the main decision models must be analyzed. The objective of this task is to see if there is a presence of emotions in those models, and analyze how authors that have created them consider their impact in consumer choices. In this paper, the most important models of consumer behavior are analysed. This review is useful to consider an unproblematic background knowledge in the literature. The order that has been established for this study is chronological.

Keywords: consumer behaviour, emotions, decision making, consumer psychology

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Authors: Jessica Hemberg, Mikaela Miller

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Unreasonable workload and work-related stress can reduce nurse leaders’ job satisfaction and productivity and can increase absence and burnout. Nurse leaders’ workload in public healthcare settings is relatively unresearched. The aim of this study was to investigate nurse leaders’ perceptions of workload and task distribution with relation to leading work tasks in public healthcare. A qualitative explorative design was used. The data material consisted of texts from interviews with nurse leaders in public healthcare (N=8). The method was inspired by content analysis. The COREQ checklist was used. Informed consent was sought from the participants regarding study participation and the storage and handling of data for research purposes. Six main themes were found: Increased and unreasonable workload, Length of work experience as nurse leader affects perception of workload, Number of staff and staff characteristics affect perception of workload, Versatile and flexible task distribution, Working overtime as a way of managing high workload, and Insufficient time for leadership mission. The workload for nurse leaders in a public healthcare setting was perceived to be unreasonable. Common measures for managing high workload included working overtime, delegating work tasks and organizing more staff resources in the form of additional staff. How nurse leaders perceive their workload was linked to both the number of staff and staff characteristics. These should both be considered equally important when determining staff levels and measuring nurse leaders’ workload. Future research should focus on investigating workload and task distribution from nurses’ perspectives.

Keywords: nurse leaders, workload, task distribution, public healthcare, qualitative

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Authors: Liliana Villavicencio, Yohn Garcia, Pallavi Singh, Luis Fernando Cruz, Wilfrido Moreno

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Psychophysiological adaptive automation is a concept that combines human physiological data and computer algorithms to create personalized interfaces and experiences for users. This approach aims to enhance human learning by adapting to individual needs and preferences and optimizing the interaction between humans and machines. According to neurosciences, the working memory demand during the student learning process is modified when the student is learning a new subject or topic, managing and/or fulfilling a specific task goal. A sudden increase in working memory demand modifies the level of students’ attention, engagement, and cognitive load. The proposed psychophysiological adaptive automation system will adapt the task requirements to optimize cognitive load, the process output variable, by monitoring the student's brain activity. Cognitive load changes according to the student’s previous knowledge, the type of task, the difficulty level of the task, and the overall psychophysiological state of the student. Scaling the measured cognitive load as low, medium, or high; the system will assign a task difficulty level to the next task according to the ratio between the previous-task difficulty level and student stress. For instance, if a student becomes stressed or overwhelmed during a particular task, the system detects this through signal measurements such as brain waves, heart rate variability, or any other psychophysiological variables analyzed to adjust the task difficulty level. The control of engagement and stress are considered internal variables for the hypermedia system which selects between three different types of instructional material. This work assesses the feasibility of a fuzzy controller to track a student's physiological responses and adjust the learning content and pace accordingly. Using an industrial automation approach, the proposed fuzzy logic controller is based on linguistic rules that complement the instrumentation of the system to monitor and control the delivery of instructional material to the students. From the test results, it can be proved that the implemented fuzzy controller can satisfactorily regulate the delivery of academic content based on the working memory demand without compromising students’ health. This work has a potential application in the instructional design of virtual reality environments for training and education.

Keywords: fuzzy logic controller, hypermedia control system, personalized education, psychophysiological adaptive automation

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Authors: Florian Pfeffel, Valentin Nickolai, Christian Louis Kühner

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Digitalization has disrupted the traditional workplace environment by allowing many employees to work from anywhere at any time. This trend of working from home was further accelerated due to the COVID-19 crisis, which forced companies to rethink their workplace models. While in many companies, this shift happened out of pure necessity; many employees were left more satisfied with their job due to the opportunity to work from home. This study focuses on employees’ job satisfaction in the service sector in dependence on the different work models, which are defined as a “work from home” model, the traditional “work in office” model, and a hybrid model. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), these three work models have been analyzed based on 13 influencing factors on job satisfaction that have been further summarized in the three groups “classic influencing factors”, “influencing factors changed by remote working”, and “new remote working influencing factors”. Based on the influencing factors on job satisfaction, a survey has been conducted with n = 684 employees in the service sector. Cronbach’s alpha of the individual constructs was shown to be suitable. Furthermore, the construct validity of the constructs was confirmed by face validity, content validity, convergent validity (AVE > 0.5: CR > 0.7), and discriminant validity. Additionally, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed the model fit for the investigated sample (CMIN/DF: 2.567; CFI: 0.927; RMSEA: 0.048). The SEM-analysis has shown that the most significant influencing factor on job satisfaction is “identification with the work” with β = 0.540, followed by “Appreciation” (β = 0.151), “Compensation” (β = 0.124), “Work-Life-Balance” (β = 0.116), and “Communication and Exchange of Information” (β = 0.105). While the significance of each factor can vary depending on the work model, the SEM-analysis shows that the identification with the work is the most significant factor in all three work models and, in the case of the traditional office work model, it is the only significant influencing factor. The study shows that employees who work entirely remotely or have a hybrid work model are significantly more satisfied with their job, with a job satisfaction score of 5.0 respectively on a scale from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 7 (very satisfied), than employees do not have the option to work from home with a score of 4.6. This comes as a result of the lower identification with the work in the model without any remote working. Furthermore, the responses indicate that it is important to consider the individual preferences of each employee when it comes to the work model to achieve overall higher job satisfaction. Thus, it can be argued that companies can profit off of more motivation and higher productivity by considering the individual work model preferences, therefore, increasing the identification with the respective work.

Keywords: home-office, identification with work, job satisfaction, new work, remote work, structural equation modeling

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Authors: Moulana Mohammed

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Topic models are widely used in building clusters of documents for more than a decade, yet problems occurring in choosing optimal number of topics. The main problem is the lack of a stable metric of the quality of topics obtained during the construction of topic models. The authors analyzed from previous works, most of the models used in determining the number of topics are non-parametric and quality of topics determined by using perplexity and coherence measures and concluded that they are not applicable in solving this problem. In this paper, we used the parametric method, which is an extension of the traditional topic model with visual access tendency for visualization of the number of topics (clusters) to complement clustering and to choose optimal number of topics based on results of cluster validity indices. Developed hybrid topic models are demonstrated with different Twitter datasets on various topics in obtaining the optimal number of topics and in measuring the quality of clusters. The experimental results showed that the Visual Non-negative Matrix Factorization (VNMF) topic model performs well in determining the optimal number of topics with interactive visualization and in performance measure of the quality of clusters with validity indices.

Keywords: interactive visualization, visual mon-negative matrix factorization model, optimal number of topics, cluster validity indices, Twitter data clustering

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Authors: Maha ALjohani, James Blustein

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Communicating users' needs, goals and problems help designers and developers overcome challenges faced by end users. Personas are used to represent end users’ needs. In our research, creating personas allowed the following questions to be answered: Who are the potential user groups? What do they want to achieve by using the service? What are the problems that users face? What should the service provide to them? To develop realistic personas, we conducted a focus group discussion with undergraduate and graduate students and also interviewed a university librarian. The personas were created to help evaluating the Institutional Repository that is based on the DSpace system. The profiles helped to communicate users' needs, abilities, tasks, and problems, and the task scenarios used in the heuristic evaluation were based on these personas. Four personas resulted of a focus group discussion with undergraduate and graduate students and from interviewing a university librarian. We then used these personas to create focused task-scenarios for a heuristic evaluation on the system interface to ensure that it met users' needs, goals, problems and desires. In this paper, we present the process that we used to create the personas that led to devise the task scenarios used in the heuristic evaluation as a follow up study of the DSpace university repository.

Keywords: heuristic evaluation, institutional repositories, user experience, human computer interaction, user profiles, personas, task scenarios, heuristics

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Authors: Qing Wu, Fei-Yan Li, Heng-Chang Zhang

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Multitask learning support vector machines (SVMs) have recently attracted increasing research attention. Given several related tasks, the single-task learning methods trains each task separately and ignore the inner cross-relationship among tasks. However, multitask learning can capture the correlation information among tasks and achieve better performance by training all tasks simultaneously. In addition, the asymmetric squared loss function can better improve the generalization ability of the models on the most asymmetric distributed data. In this paper, we first make two assumptions on the relatedness among tasks and propose two multitask learning proximal support vector machine algorithms, named MTL-a-PSVM and EMTL-a-PSVM, respectively. MTL-a-PSVM seeks a trade-off between the maximum expectile distance for each task model and the closeness of each task model to the general model. As an extension of the MTL-a-PSVM, EMTL-a-PSVM can select appropriate kernel functions for shared information and private information. Besides, two corresponding special cases named MTL-PSVM and EMTLPSVM are proposed by analyzing the asymmetric squared loss function, which can be easily implemented by solving linear systems. Experimental analysis of three classification datasets demonstrates the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed multitask learning algorithms.

Keywords: multitask learning, asymmetric squared loss, EMTL-a-PSVM, classification

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Authors: Hui Wei, Zheng Dong

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Object recognition has long been a challenging task in computer vision. Yet the human brain, with the ability to rapidly and accurately recognize visual stimuli, manages this task effortlessly. In the past decades, advances in neuroscience have revealed some neural mechanisms underlying visual processing. In this paper, we present a novel model inspired by the visual pathway in primate brains. This multi-layer neural network model imitates the hierarchical convergent processing mechanism in the visual pathway. We show that local image features generated by this model exhibit robust discrimination and even better generalization ability compared with some existing image descriptors. We also demonstrate the application of this model in an object recognition task on image data sets. The result provides strong support for the potential of this model.

Keywords: biological model, feature extraction, multi-layer neural network, object recognition

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Authors: Yun-Ru Tsai, Jo-Hui Lin

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The cultural interactions between tourists and destination communities have received increased attention. Tourists play an important role in constructing a rewarding intercultural experience and cultural understanding. Cultural literacy is the ability for tourists to negotiate different cultures, this research aimed to develop a measurement of Tourist Cultural Literacy (TCL), the result provides a theoretical framework to assess how tourists interact with different cultural destinations. A pilot qualitative research was conducted in order to generate the initial items. In this study, the procedure of developing the TCL scale was divided into two parts. First, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted, a 25-item TCL scale was developed and six factors were identified: cultural sensitivity, appreciation of the culture, respect for the culture, knowledge of the culture, participate in the culture, and empathy for the culture. Second, confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling were employed, the six-factor model was verified, and was proven to have good fit, reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and criterion-related validity. The study provides managerial implications for tourist management and education, the popularization of TCL might increase the respect and understanding between tourists and local societies as well as decrease the cultural shocks and negative social-cultural impacts derived from tourism activities, thereby reducing the maintenance cost of management and allowing tourists to obtain a better cultural experience. Future research suggestions are also provided.

Keywords: cultural literacy, cultural tourism, scale development, tourism contact

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Authors: Baqir Rezai, Leila Heydarinasab, Rasol Roshan, Mohammad Ghulami

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Introduction: The resilience process is one of the controversial and important subjects for child and youth immigrants throughout the world. Positive adaptation to the environment is a consequence of resilience which can affect the quality of life and physical and mental health among immigrants. Objective: A total of 714 Afghan young immigrants (14 to 18-years-old) who live in Iran for more than three years were entered into the study. A random sampling method was applied to obtain data. The study samples were divided into two groups (N1 =360 and N2=354) for exploratory and confirmation analysis. Exploratory factorial analysis was applied to confirm the construct validity of CYRM-28. Results: The results showed that this scale has useful validity content, and the study samples include three factors of individuals, context, and relational in child and youth resilience measure-28. However, from a total of 28 main items, only 15 items could identify these factors. Discussion: The resilience process among young immigrants is mainly explained by individuals, social and cultural conditions. For instance, young immigrants search the resilience process in conditions that caused their immigration. In this context, some questions about the content of security and personal promotion in society could identify three main factors.

Keywords: CYRM-28, factorial analysis, resilience, Afghan young immigrants

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Authors: M. K. Benhaoua, A. K. Singh, A. E. H. Benyamina, A. Kumar, P. Boulet

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In this paper, we propose a new packing strategy to find free resources for run-time mapping of application tasks on NoC-based Heterogeneous MPSoCs. The proposed strategy minimizes the task mapping time in addition to placing the communicating tasks close to each other. To evaluate our approach, a comparative study is carried out. Experiments show that our strategy provides better results when compared to latest dynamic mapping strategies reported in the literature.

Keywords: heterogeneous MPSoCs, NoC, dynamic mapping, routing

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Authors: Z. M. T. Lim, W. Q. Yow

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Diversity in individual problem-solving approaches, culture and nationality have been shown to have positive effects on collaborative creative processes in organizational and scholastic settings. For example, diverse graduate and organizational teams consisting of members with both structured and unstructured problem-solving styles were found to have more creative ideas on a collaborative idea generation task than teams that comprised solely of members with either structured or unstructured problem-solving styles. However, being different may not always provide benefits to the collaborative creative process. In particular, speaking different languages may hinder mutual engagement through impaired communication and thus collaboration. Instead, sharing similar languages may have facilitative effects on mutual engagement in collaborative tasks. However, no studies have explored the relations between language diversity and adults’ collaborative creative problem solving. Sixty-four Singaporean English-speaking bilingual undergraduates were paired up into similar or dissimilar language pairs based on the second language they spoke (e.g., for similar language pairs, both participants spoke English-Mandarin; for dissimilar language pairs, one participant spoke English-Mandarin and the other spoke English-Korean). Each participant completed the Ravens Progressive Matrices Task individually. Next, they worked in pairs to complete a collaborative divergent thinking task where they used mind-mapping techniques to brainstorm ideas on a given problem together (e.g., how to keep insects out of the house). Lastly, the pairs worked on a collaborative insight problem-solving task (Triangle of Coins puzzle) where they needed to flip a triangle of ten coins around by moving only three coins. Pairs who had prior knowledge of the Triangle of Coins puzzle were asked to complete an equivalent Matchstick task instead, where they needed to make seven squares by moving only two matchsticks based on a given array of matchsticks. Results showed that, after controlling for intelligence, similar language pairs completed the collaborative insight problem-solving task faster than dissimilar language pairs. Intelligence also moderated these relations. Among adults of lower intelligence, similar language pairs solved the insight problem-solving task faster than dissimilar language pairs. These differences in speed were not found in adults with higher intelligence. No differences were found in the number of ideas generated in the collaborative divergent thinking task between similar language and dissimilar language pairs. In conclusion, sharing similar languages seem to enrich collaborative creative processes. These effects were especially pertinent to pairs with lower intelligence. This provides guidelines for the formation of groups based on shared languages in collaborative creative processes. However, the positive effects of shared languages appear to be limited to the insight problem-solving task and not the divergent thinking task. This could be due to the facilitative effects of other factors of diversity as found in previous literature. Background diversity, for example, may have a larger facilitative effect on the divergent thinking task as compared to the insight problem-solving task due to the varied experiences individuals bring to the task. In conclusion, this study contributes to the understanding of the effects of language diversity in collaborative creative processes and challenges the general positive effects that diversity has on these processes.

Keywords: bilingualism, diversity, creativity, collaboration

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Authors: Kwan Hee Han

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External environment of enterprise is rapidly changing majorly by global competition, cost reduction pressures, and new technology. In these situations, production scheduling function plays a critical role to meet customer requirements and to attain the goal of operational efficiency. It deals with short-term decision making in the production process of the whole supply chain. The major task of production scheduling is to seek a balance between customer orders and limited resources. In manufacturing companies, this task is so difficult because it should efficiently utilize resource capacity under the careful consideration of many interacting constraints. At present, many computerized software solutions have been utilized in many enterprises to generate a realistic production schedule to overcome the complexity of schedule generation. However, most production scheduling systems do not provide sufficient information about the validity of the generated schedule except limited statistics. Process mining only recently emerged as a sub-discipline of both data mining and business process management. Process mining techniques enable the useful analysis of a wide variety of processes such as process discovery, conformance checking, and bottleneck analysis. In this study, the performance of generated production schedule is evaluated by mining event log data of production scheduling software system by using the process mining techniques since every software system generates event logs for the further use such as security investigation, auditing and error bugging. An application of process mining approach is proposed for the validation of the goodness of production schedule generated by scheduling software systems in this study. By using process mining techniques, major evaluation criteria such as utilization of workstation, existence of bottleneck workstations, critical process route patterns, and work load balance of each machine over time are measured, and finally, the goodness of production schedule is evaluated. By using the proposed process mining approach for evaluating the performance of generated production schedule, the quality of production schedule of manufacturing enterprises can be improved.

Keywords: data mining, event log, process mining, production scheduling

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Authors: Aisling Davies, Ciara Greene

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Over the past decade the phenomenon of mind-wandering in cognitive tasks has attracted widespread scientific attention. Research indicates that mind-wandering occurrences can be detected through behavioural responses in the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) and several studies have attributed a specific pattern of responding around an error in this task to an observable effect of a mind-wandering state. SART behavioural responses are also widely accepted as indices of sustained attention and of general attention lapses. However, evidence suggests that these same patterns of responding may be attributable to other factors associated with more focused states and that it may also be possible to distinguish the two states within the same task. To use behavioural responses in the SART to study mind-wandering, it is essential to establish both the SART parameters that would increase the likelihood of errors due to mind-wandering, and exactly what type of responses are indicative of mind-wandering, neither of which have yet been determined. The aims of this study were to compare different versions of the SART to establish which task would induce the most mind-wandering episodes and to determine whether mind-wandering related errors can be distinguished from errors during periods of focus, by behavioural responses in the SART. To achieve these objectives, 25 Participants completed four modified versions of the SART that differed from the classic paradigm in several ways so to capture more instances of mind-wandering. The duration that trials were presented for was increased proportionately across each of the four versions of the task; Standard, Medium Slow, Slow, and Very Slow and participants intermittently responded to thought probes assessing their level of focus and degree of mind-wandering throughout. Error rates, reaction times and variability in reaction times decreased in proportion to the decrease in trial duration rate and the proportion of mind-wandering related errors increased, until the Very Slow condition where the extra decrease in duration no longer had an effect. Distinct reaction time patterns around an error, dependent on level of focus (high/low) and level of mind-wandering (high/low) were also observed indicating four separate attention states occurring within the SART. This study establishes the optimal duration of trial presentation for inducing mind-wandering in the SART, provides evidence supporting the idea that different attention states can be observed within the SART and highlights the importance of addressing other factors contributing to behavioural responses when studying mind-wandering during this task. A notable finding in relation to the standard SART, was that while more errors were observed in this version of the task, most of these errors were during periods of focus, raising significant questions about our current understanding of mind-wandering and associated failures of attention.

Keywords: attention, mind-wandering, trial duration rate, Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART)

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Authors: J. K. Lee, S. L. Lee

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Due to the improvement in performance of computer hardware and the development of operating systems, a multi-tasking for several programs has become one of the basic functions to computer users. It is natural for computer users to want more functional, convenient, and visual GUI functions (Graphic User Interface). In this paper, a 3D virtual desktop system was proposed to meet users’ requirements for cloud environments such as a virtual desktop function in the Windows environment. The proposed system uses the handles of the windows to hide or restore several windows. It connects the list of task spaces using the circular double linked list to manage the handles. Each handle list is registered in the corresponding task space being executed. The 3D virtual desktop is efficient and flexible in handling the numbers of task spaces and can help users to work under more comfortable environments. Acknowledgment: This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (NRF-2015R1D1A1A01057680).

Keywords: virtual desktop, GUI, cloud, virtualization

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Authors: Celeste Lawson

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Learning to embrace and value teamwork assessment at a university level is critical for students, as graduates enter a real-world working environment where teamwork is likely to occur virtually. Student disdain for teamwork exercises is an area often overlooked or disregarded by academics. This research explored the implementation of an online teamwork assessment approach at a regional Australian university with a significant cohort of Distance Education students. Students had disliked teamwork for three reasons: it was not relevant to their study, the grading was unfair amongst team members, and managing the task was challenging in a virtual environment. Teamwork assessment was modified so that the task was an authentic task that could occur in real-world practice; team selection was based on the task topic rather than randomly; grading was based on the individual’s contribution to the task, and students were provided virtual team management skills as part of a the assessment. In this way, management of the team became an output of the task itself. Data was gathered over three years from student satisfaction surveys, failure rates, attrition figures, and unsolicited student comments. In one unit where this approach was adopted (Advanced Public Relations), student satisfaction increased from 3.6 (out of 5) in 2012 to 4.6 in 2016, with positive comments made about the teamwork approach. The attrition rate for another unit (Public Relations and the Media) reduced from 20.7% in 2012 to 2.2% in 2015. In 2012, criticism of teamwork assessment made up 50% of negative student feedback in Public Relations and the Media. By 2015, following the successful implementation of the teamwork assessment approach, only 12.5% of negative comments on the student satisfaction survey were critical of teamwork, while 33% of positive comments related to a positive teamwork experience. In 2016, students explicitly nominated teamwork as the best part of this unit. The approach is transferable to other disciplines and was adopted by other academics within the institution with similar results.

Keywords: assessment, distance education, teamwork, virtual

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Authors: Maggie Mosher, Adam Carreon, Sean Smith

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A systematic literature review was conducted to explore the evidence base on the use of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and extended reality (XR) to present social skill instruction to school-age students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Specifically, the systematic review focus was on a. the participants and intervention agents using AR, VR, MR, and XR for social skill acquisition b. the social skills taught through these mediums and c. the social validity measures (i.e., goals, procedures, and outcomes) reported in these studies. Forty-one articles met the inclusion criteria. Researchers in six studies taught social skills to students through AR, in 27 studies through non-immersive VR, and in 10 studies through immersive VR. No studies used MR or XR. The primary targeted social skills were relationship skills, emotion recognition, social awareness, cooperation, and executive functioning. An intervention to improve many social skills was implemented by 73% of researchers, 17% taught a single skill, and 10% did not clearly state the targeted skill. The intervention was considered effective in 26 of the 41 studies (63%), not effective in four studies (10%), and 11 studies (27%) reported mixed results. No researchers reported information for all 17 social validity indicators. The social validity indicators reported by researchers ranged from two to 14. Social validity measures on the feelings toward and use of the technology were provided in 22 studies (54%). Findings indicated both AR and VR are promising platforms for providing social skill instruction to students with ASD. Studies utilizing this technology show a number of social validity indicators. However, the limited information provided on the various interventions, participant characteristics, and validity measures, offers insufficient evidence of the impact of these technologies in teaching social skills to students with ASD. Future research should develop a protocol for training treatment agents to assess the role of different variables (i.e., whether agents are customizing content, monitoring student learning, using intervention specific vocabulary in their day to day instruction). Sustainability may be increased by providing training in the technology to both treatment agents and participants. Providing scripts of instruction occurring within the intervention would provide the needed information to determine the primary method of teaching within the intervention. These variables play a role in maintenance and generalization of the social skills. Understanding the type of feedback provided would help researchers determine if students were able to feel rewarded for progressing through the scenarios or if students require rewarding aspects within the intervention (i.e., badges, trophies). AR has the potential to generalize instruction and VR has the potential for providing a practice environment for performance deficits. Combining these two technologies into a mixed reality intervention may provide a more cohesive and effective intervention.

Keywords: autism, augmented reality, social and emotional learning, social skills, virtual reality

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Authors: Hyo Seon Choi, Ju Sun Kim, DY Kim

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Introduction: This study was aimed to evaluate temporo-spatial patterns during the reach and grasp task in hemiplegic stroke patients and to identify movement pattern according to severity of motor impairment. Method: 29 subacute post-stroke patients were enrolled in this study. The temporo-spatial and kinematic data were obtained during reach and grasp task through 3D motion analysis (VICON). The reach and grasp task was composed of four sub-tasks: reach (T1), transport to mouth (T2), transport back to table (T3) and return (T4). The movement time, joint angle and sum of deviation angles from normative data were compared between affected side and unaffected side. They were also compared between two groups (mild to moderate group: 28~66, severe group: 0~27) divided by upper-Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) scale. Result: In affected side, total time and durations of all four tasks were significantly longer than those in unaffected side (p < 0.001). The affected side demonstrated significant larger shoulder abduction, shoulder internal rotation, wrist flexion, wrist pronation, thoracic external rotation and smaller shoulder flexion during reach and grasp task (p < 0.05). The significant differences between mild to moderate group and severe group were observed in total duration, durations of T1, T2, and T3 in reach and grasp task (p < 0.01). The severe group showed significant larger shoulder internal rotation during T2 (p < 0.05) and wrist flexion during T2, T3 (p < 0.05) than mild to moderate group. In range of motion during each task, shoulder abduction-adduction during T2 and T3, shoulder internal-external rotation during T2, elbow flexion-extension during T1 showed significant difference between two groups (p < 0.05). The severe group had significant larger total deviation angles in shoulder internal-external rotation and wrist extension-flexion during reach and grasp task (p < 0.05). Conclusion: This study suggests that post-stroke hemiplegic patients have an unique temporo-spatial and kinematic patterns during reach and grasp task, and the movement pattern may be related to affected upper limb severity. These results may be useful to interpret the motion of upper extremity in stroke patients.

Keywords: Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA), motion analysis, reach and grasp, stroke

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Authors: Lai Yi-Hsiu

Abstract:

The present study addressed the nature of bilingual semantic processing in Mandarin Chinese and Southern Min and examined category effects and age effects. Nineteen bilingual adults of Mandarin Chinese and Southern Min, nine monolingual seniors of Mandarin Chinese, and ten monolingual seniors of Southern Min in Taiwan individually completed two semantic tasks: Picture naming and category fluency tasks. The instruments for the naming task were sixty black-and-white pictures, including thirty-five object pictures and twenty-five action pictures. The category fluency task also consisted of two semantic categories – objects (or nouns) and actions (or verbs). The reaction time for each picture/question was additionally calculated and analyzed. Oral productions in Mandarin Chinese and in Southern Min were compared and discussed to examine the category effects and age effects. The results of the category fluency task indicated that the content of information of these seniors was comparatively deteriorated, and thus they produced a smaller number of semantic-lexical items. Significant group differences were also found in the reaction time results. Category effects were significant for both adults and seniors in the semantic fluency task. The findings of the present study will help characterize the nature of the bilingual semantic processing of adults and seniors, and contribute to the fields of contrastive and corpus linguistics.

Keywords: bilingual semantic processing, aging, Mandarin Chinese, Southern Min

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Authors: Ligia Florio, João Mauricio Castaldelli-Maia

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Background: Food addiction (FA) emerged in the 1990s as a possible contributor to the increasing prevalence of obesity and overweight, in conjunction with changing food environments and mental health conditions. However, FA is not yet listed as one of the disorders in the DSM-5 and/or the ICD-11. Although there are controversies and debates in the literature about the classification and construct of FA, the most common approach to access it is the use of a research tool - the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) - which approximates the concept of FA to the concept diagnosis of dependence on psychoactive substances. There is a need to explore the dimensional phenotypes accessed by YFAS in different population groups for a better understanding and scientific support of FA diagnoses. Methods: The primary objective of this project was to investigate the construct validity of the FA concept by mYFAS 2.0 in individuals who underwent bariatric surgery (n = 100) at the Hospital Estadual Mário Covas since 2011. Statistical analyzes were conducted using the STATA software. In this sense, structural or factor validity was the type of construct validity investigated using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and item response theory (IRT) techniques. Results: EFA showed that the one-dimensional model was the most parsimonious. The IRT showed that all criteria contributed to the latent structure, presenting discrimination values greater than 0.5, with most presenting values greater than 2. Conclusion: This study reinforces a FA dimension in patients who underwent bariatric surgery. Within this dimension, we identified the most severe and discriminating criteria for the diagnosis of FA.

Keywords: obesity, food addiction, bariatric surgery, regain

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Authors: Mohd Yusri Ibrahim

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Although it is known that interpersonal skills are essential for personal development, the debate however continues as to how to measure those skills, especially in youths. This study was conducted to develop a measurement model of interpersonal skills by suggesting three construct namely personal, skills and relationship; six function namely self, perception, listening, conversation, emotion and conflict management; and 30 behaviours as indicators. This cross-sectional survey by questionnaires was applied in east side of peninsula of Malaysia for 150 respondents, and analyzed by structural equation modelling (SEM) by AMOS. The suggested constructs, functions and indicators were consider accepted as measurement elements by observing on regression weight for standard loading, average variance extracted (AVE) for convergent validity, square root of AVE for discriminant validity, composite reliability (CR), and at least three fit indexes for model fitness. Finally, a measurement model of interpersonal skill for youth was successfully developed.

Keywords: interpersonal communication, interpersonal skill, youth, communication skill

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