Learners' mindsets have received much attention in psychology and education research, but only recently have foreign/second language acquisition (SLA) researchers begun to study these beliefs. ...Mindsets refer to lay people's beliefs about whether human attributes (e.g., intelligence, personality, language aptitude) are essential, pre-determined traits (fixed mindsets) or malleable propensities can be cultivated (growth mindsets). To encourage more SLA investigations on mindsets, we review existing studies of mindsets in language education to summarize current knowledge and to identify research gaps. We specifically address five questions: (1) What are people's mindsets about language learning ability? (2) How are mindsets linked to other motivational factors? (3) How do contexts influence language mindsets? (4) Do growth-mindset interventions contribute to more adaptive learning, and if so, how? (5) How can educators support students' growth mindset? We highlight that mindsets are systematically associated with various motivational factors in a meaning-making system that guides learners' emotional responses and behavioural acts across different situations. We discuss avenues for future work on whether, why, how, when, for whom, and to what extent mindsets impact different educationally relevant outcomes, including persistence, resilience, and achievement. Understanding these complex questions are important for informing effective education and advancing motivation research in SLA.
•A priming experiment tested the impact of mindsets on second language motivation.•Path analysis assessed the effect of mindsets on goal orientations and responses to failure.•An incremental mindset ...predicted learning goals, which predicted adaptive responses.•Low competence predicted performance-avoidance goals and less adaptive responses.•High competence and an entity mindset predicted performance-approach goals and less adaptive responses.
This study examined how priming an entity language theory (i.e., the belief that language intelligence is fixed) or an incremental language theory (i.e., the belief that language intelligence can be improved) can orient language learners' goals and, in turn, influence their reactions in failure situations and their intention to continue learning the language. University-level students in language courses (N = 150) were randomly assigned to two conditions, in which one or the other language mindset was primed. The results showed that in the incremental condition, learners more strongly endorsed learning goals regardless of their perceived language competence, and in turn reported more mastery-oriented responses in failure situations and stronger intention to continue learning the target language. In contrast, in the entity condition, learners who perceived themselves having strong language skills endorsed performance-approach goals and in turn reported more helpless-oriented responses and fear of failure. The implications for language learning inside and outside the classroom are discussed, including possible strategies that language educators can use to promote incremental theories to support their students' motivation and resilience in failure situations.
Recent research conceptualizes language mindsets as a 'lens' through which learners view language challenges as either deficits of aptitude (i.e. entity beliefs) or opportunities to improve (i.e. ...incremental beliefs). Extending this meaning-system approach in an intercultural context, we proposed that language mindsets influence migrants' experience of intercultural interaction and cultural adaptation through language-based rejection sensitivity (RS) (i.e. the tendency to anxiously expect rejection from native speakers due to a lack of language proficiency). Two studies of 292 English-as-a-second-language speakers in Canada demonstrated that those who held or were primed with entity beliefs (vs. incremental beliefs) reported stronger language-based RS, which in turn predicted more intergroup anxiety towards members of the target language community, less perceived connectedness with the host country, and worse cross-cultural adaptation. These effects persisted after controlling for perceived language competence and length of residence, thereby highlighting the unique importance of language mindsets in predicting intercultural communication and cross-cultural adaptation. Migrants' settlement programmes that promote incremental beliefs may thereby lessen concern about social rejection and reduce their anxiety when using a second language.
Ensemble studies of red-giant stars with exquisite asteroseismic (
Kepler
), spectroscopic (APOGEE), and astrometric (
Gaia
) constraints offer a novel opportunity to recast and address long-standing ...questions concerning the evolution of stars and of the Galaxy. Here, we infer masses and ages for nearly 5400 giants with available
Kepler
light curves and APOGEE spectra using the code
PARAM
, and discuss some of the systematics that may affect the accuracy of the inferred stellar properties. We then present patterns in mass, evolutionary state, age, chemical abundance, and orbital parameters that we deem robust against the systematic uncertainties explored. First, we look at age-chemical-abundances (Fe/H and
α
/Fe) relations. We find a dearth of young, metal-rich (Fe/H > 0.2) stars, and the existence of a significant population of old (8−9 Gyr), low-
α
/Fe, super-solar metallicity stars, reminiscent of the age and metallicity of the well-studied open cluster NGC 6791. The age-chemo-kinematic properties of these stars indicate that efficient radial migration happens in the thin disc. We find that ages and masses of the nearly 400
α
-element-rich red-giant-branch (RGB) stars in our sample are compatible with those of an old (∼11 Gyr), nearly coeval, chemical-thick disc population. Using a statistical model, we show that the width of the observed age distribution is dominated by the random uncertainties on age, and that the spread of the inferred intrinsic age distribution is such that 95% of the population was born within ∼1.5 Gyr. Moreover, we find a difference in the vertical velocity dispersion between low- and high-α/Fe populations. This discontinuity, together with the chemical one in the α/Fe versus Fe/H diagram, and with the inferred age distributions, not only confirms the different chemo-dynamical histories of the chemical-thick and thin discs, but it is also suggestive of a halt in the star formation (quenching) after the formation of the chemical-thick disc. We then exploit the almost coeval
α
-rich population to gain insight into processes that may have altered the mass of a star along its evolution, which are key to improving the mapping of the current, observed, stellar mass to the initial mass and thus to the age. Comparing the mass distribution of stars on the lower RGB (
R
< 11
R
⊙
) with those in the red clump (RC), we find evidence for a mean integrated RGB mass loss ⟨Δ
M
⟩ = 0.10 ± 0.02
M
⊙
. Finally, we find that the occurrence of massive (
M
≳ 1.1
M
⊙
)
α
-rich stars is of the order of 5% on the RGB, and significantly higher in the RC, supporting the scenario in which most of these stars had undergone an interaction with a companion.
The era of detailed asteroseismic analyses opened by space missions such as CoRoT and Kepler has highlighted the need for stellar models devoid of numerical inaccuracies, in order to be able to ...diagnose which physical aspects are being ignored or poorly treated in standard stellar modeling. We tackle here the important problem of fixing convective zone boundaries in the frame of the local mixing length theory. First we show that the only correct way to locate a convective zone boundary is to find, at each iteration step, through interpolations or extrapolations from points within the convective zone, the mass where the radiative luminosity is equal to the total luminosity. We then discuss two misuses of the boundary condition and the ways they affect stellar modeling and stellar evolution. The first consists in applying the neutrality condition for convective instability on the radiative side of the convective boundary. The second way of misusing the boundary condition comes from the process of fixing the convective boundary through the search for a change of sign of a possibly discontinuous function. We show that these misuses can lead to completely wrong estimates of convective core sizes with important consequences for the following evolutionary phases. We point out the advantages of using a double mesh point at each convective zone boundary. The specific problem of a convective shell is discussed and some remarks concerning overshooting are given.
Social exclusion can exacerbate newcomers’ language difficulties and undermine their social integration. We examined whether language mindsets induce mixed attitudes towards migrants with limited ...proficiency in the target language, and indirectly affect willingness to interact with migrants and attitudes toward migrants’ language education. Across two pre-registered experiments (N = 531) conducted in Canada, we found that people who were primed with fixed (vs. growth or control) mindsets tended to believe migrants have less potential to improve their English, but were less likely to blame them for their lack of improvement (“not their fault if they can't improve”), suggesting fixed mindsets contribute to mixed attitudes toward migrants. Furthermore, perceived linguistic potential was negatively and blame was positively correlated with contact avoidance and opposition to publicly funded language education for newcomers. These effects held after controlling for political orientations and perceived fluency of the target speaker, suggesting that language mindsets contribute to language judgments that could impact migrants’ acculturation experiences.
The IACOB project Godart, M; Simon-Diaz, S; Herrero, A ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
01/2017, Volume:
597
Journal Article, Web Resource
Peer reviewed
Open access
Context. Asteroseismology is a powerful tool to access the internal structure of stars. Apart from the important impact of theoretical developments, progress in this field has been commonly ...associated with the analysis of time-resolved observations. Recently, the so-called macroturbulent broadening has been proposed as a complementary and less expensive way - in terms of observational time - to investigate pulsations in massive stars. Aims. We assess to what extent this ubiquitous non-rotational broadening component which shapes the line profiles of O stars and B supergiants is a spectroscopic signature of pulsation modes driven by a heat mechanism. Methods. We compute stellar main-sequence and post-main-sequence models from 3 to 70 M sub(middot in circle) with the ATON stellar evolution code, and determine the instability domains for heat-driven modes for degrees scriptl=1-20 using the adiabatic and non-adiabatic codes LOSC and MAD. We use the observational material compiled in the framework of the IACOB project to investigate possible correlations between the single snapshot line-broadening properties of a sample of approximate260 O and B-type stars and their location inside or outside the various predicted instability domains. Results. We present an homogeneous prediction for the non-radial instability domains of massive stars for degree scriptl up to 20. We provide a global picture of what to expect from an observational point of view in terms of the frequency range of excited modes, and we investigate the behavior of the instabilities with respect to stellar evolution and the degree of the mode. Furthermore, our pulsational stability analysis, once compared to the empirical results, indicates that stellar oscillations originated by a heat mechanism cannot explain alone the occurrence of the large non-rotational line-broadening component commonly detected in the O star and B supergiant domain.
Uncertainties on central mixing in main-sequence (MS) and core He-burning (He-B) phases affect key predictions of stellar evolution such as late evolutionary phases, chemical enrichment, ages, etc. ...We propose a test of the extension of extra-mixing in two relevant evolutionary phases based on period spacing ( Delta P) of solar-like oscillating giants. From stellar models and their corresponding adiabatic frequencies (respectively, computed with ATON and LOSC codes), we provide the first predictions of the observable Delta P for stars in the red giant branch and in the red clump (RC). We find (1) a clear correlation between Delta P and the mass of the helium core (M sub(He)); the latter in intermediate-mass stars depends on the MS overshooting, and hence it can be used to set constraints on extra-mixing during MS when coupled with chemical composition; and (2) a linear dependence of the average value of the asymptotic period spacing (left angle bracket Delta Pright angle bracketa) on the size of the convective core during the He-B phase. A first comparison with the inferred asymptotic period spacing for Kepler RC stars also suggests the need for extra-mixing during this phase, as evinced from other observational facts.
γ Doradus stars pulsate with high-order gravity modes having typical frequencies which can be comparable to or higher than their rotation frequencies. Therefore, rotation has a non-negligible effect ...on their oscillation properties. To explore the rotation-pulsation coupling in γ Dor stars, we perform a non-adiabatic study including the traditional approximation of rotation on a grid of spherical stellar models covering the mass range 1.4 < M
* < 2.1 M. This approximation allows us to treat the effect of the Coriolis force on the frequencies and the stability of high-order g modes.
The effect of the Coriolis force depends on the kind of mode considered (prograde sectoral or not) and increases with their periods. As a consequence, we first find that the period spacing between modes is no longer periodically oscillating around a constant value. Secondly, we show that the frequency gap (5-15 cycles day−1) arising from stable modes between γ Dor-type high-order g modes and δ Scuti-type modes can be easily filled by g-mode frequencies shifted to higher values by the rotation. Thirdly, we analyse the combined effect of diffusive mixing and the Coriolis force on the period spacings. And finally, we predict a slight broadening of the γ Dor instability strip.
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