The goal of this study was to investigate whether on-topic visual cues can serve as aids for the maintenance of discourse coherence and informativeness in autobiographical narratives of persons with ...Alzheimer's disease (AD).
The experiment consisted of three randomized conversation conditions: one without prompts, showing a blank computer screen; an on-topic condition, showing a picture and a sentence about the conversation; and an off-topic condition, showing a picture and a sentence which were unrelated to the conversation. Speech was recorded while visual attention was examined using eye tracking to measure how long participants looked at cues and the face of the listener.
Results suggest that interventions using visual cues in the form of images and written information are useful to improve discourse informativeness in AD.
This study demonstrated the potential of using images and short written messages as means of compensating for the cognitive deficits which underlie uninformative discourse in AD. Future studies should further investigate the efficacy of language interventions based in the use of these compensation strategies for AD patients and their family members and friends.
Internet and the related information and communications technologies (the ICTs) are profoundly shaping economic transactions of all kinds. They are also expected to open up entrepreneurial ...opportunities and reduce the competitive advantage of large firms, thus making room for small and young firms. The EU policy makers have already started to introduce policy initiatives for better use of ICT into the actions to support entrepreneurship, such as promoting digital entrepreneurship. At the moment, however, we have scarce empirical evidence about the impact of ICT on entrepreneurial activity. Our study provides such evidence, by investigating the relationship between ICT use and startup rates, using longitudinal industry level data for Slovenia. The results of the regression analysis show that entry rates are higher in industries that are characterized by higher ICT use, thus providing support to the government policy efforts.
Despite the need for qualified personnel in the field of information technology (IT), women are under represented. Recruiting has been difficult and those women entering the profession often leave. ...Gender schema theory adds to the explanation of behaviors and attitudes in the workplace that may adversely impact women in technology. We surveyed members of Systers, an online forum for women in technology, to examine gender schemas of IT women to see if there is a significant difference between them and the general public. Our findings suggest that there is a significant difference in the gender-schemas of women in technology and the gender-schemas of the general population. A subsequent sample of male IT students and men in the general public also indicated a significant difference in gender schemas of these two groups. Implications of these differences and future research in this area are discussed.
Rationale: Adolescents today use social media applications extensively and research demonstrates that peers in social media settings can influence adolescents regarding their food intake. These newly ...emerged channels also offer unique possibilities to observe adolescents’ dietary communication.
Objective: This study aimed to explore how adolescents communicate food images in a widely used social media image-sharing application, Instagram.
Methods: To find adolescent Instagram users we searched for images appended with the hashtag #14år (Swedish for “14 years”). The hashtag had been applied to 3479 images as of March 2014. However, as users change their privacy settings, delete their accounts, or change their user names, 1358 images were not retrievable. Users sometimes also applied the hashtag to several images, and we excluded accounts that we judged did not belong to adolescents (based on written and visual profile information); 1001 unique Instagram users’ photo streams were thus eligible for analysis. Content analysis was used to identify food items and categorize these based on types of food and how the food items were presented.
Results: Most of the adolescent users (85 %) shared images containing food items. A majority of the images (67.7%) depicted foods high in calories but low in nutrients. Almost half of these images were arranged as a still life with food brand names clearly exposed. Many of these images were influenced by major food marketing campaigns. Fruits and vegetables only occurred in 21.8% of all images. This food group was frequently portrayed zoomed in with focus solely on the food, with a hashtag or caption expressing palatability. These images were often presented in the style of a cook book.
Conclusions: Food was presented in varied ways. Adolescents themselves produced images copying food advertisements. This has clear health promotion implications since it becomes more challenging to monitor and tackle exposure to marketing of unhealthy foods to young people in these popular online networks because images are part of a lifestyle that the young people want to promote. Shared images contain personal recommendations, which mean that they may have a more powerful effect than commercial food advertising.
Acknowledgements: This study was supported by grants from Formas - The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (grant number 259-2012-38). We would also like to affirm our respect for Instagram users and their publically shared images which made it possible for us to conduct this research.
This paper presents understandings of learning in schools where Internet-enabled Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are taken for granted. The context is a full-scale 1:1 tablet ...project in Danish municipality schools where this study bring forward expressions of learning from one class (12-13 year old children) in order to offer interpretations of how the learning is possible to relate to the use of the tablet and the municipality intentions of changing the teaching and learning culture. The aim is a deeper understanding of learning and the learning-tablet relation. The qualitative research involves asking learners to describe learning with the help of their own pictures of learning situations. The learners' expressions of "what learning is" are related to tablet use and municipality intentions of developing teaching and learning. Five themes show how the learners express learning, in coherence with the municipality's intentions. Key learning outcomes are related to this coherence and to the fact that learners use tablets in 55% of all expressed learning.
In contemporary journalism, there is a need for better conceptualizing the changing nature of human actors, nonhuman technological actants, and diverse representations of audiences—and the activities ...of news production, distribution, and interpretation through which actors, actants, and audiences are inter-related. This article explicates each of these elements—the Four A’s—in the context of cross-media news work, a perspective that lends equal emphasis to editorial, business, and technology as key sites for studying the organizational influences shaping journalism. We argue for developing a sociotechnical emphasis for the study of institutional news production: a holistic framework through which to make sense of and conduct research about the full range of actors, actants, and audiences engaged in cross-media news work activities. This emphasis addresses two shortcomings in the journalism studies literature: a relative neglect about (1) the interplay of humans and technology, or manual and computational modes of orientation and operation, and (2) the interplay of editorial, business, and technology in news organizations. This article’s ultimate contribution is a cross-media news work matrix that illustrates the interconnections among the Four A’s and reveals where opportunities remain for empirical study.
Starenje populacije na globalnoj razini zaokuplja pažnju brojnih profesija, a ključni
je razlog povećanje udjela starih osoba. Demografski podatci ukazuju na trend
daljnjega rasta. Postojeće i ...nadolazeće generacije starih pod utjecajem su brojnih
promjena koje imaju neposredni utjecaj na način i kvalitetu njihova života. Ove su
promjene povezane s biološkim i psihološkim čimbenicima događaju u kontekstu
postojećega i promjenjivoga odnosa društva prema starosti i starenju. Mnogim
se promjenama ljudi ne mogu oduprijeti ili ih zaustaviti jer nisu pod utjecajem
njihove volje, ali im se mogu prilagoditi i prema tim promjenama zauzeti stajalište.
Od nadolazećih starih očekuje se da perspektivu tradicionalno ranjive i ovisne
skupine, koristeći sva znanstvena, stručna i tehnološka dostignuća, promijene u
perspektivu aktivnih sudionika koji društvo u kojemu žive mijenjaju i obogaćuju.
Potencijal za prilagodbu, aktivno i uspješno starenje počiva na mogućnostima
cjeloživotnoga učenja. Suvremenim su tehnologijama, a posebno upotrebom IKT-a,
u kombinaciji s potrebama i motivacijom starih moguće prilagodbe u odnosu na
oblik, način, vrijeme i mjesto učenja. Cjeloživotno se učenje dovodi u korelacije s
procjenom subjektivne dobrobiti starih i općenito s kvalitetom života i starenja.
Prerequisites and conditions for forming the Russian infocommunication complex are shown; its current status is examined; and its potential until 2010 is estimated. The focus is on developing a set ...of organizational and economic measures aimed at improving government policies and removing barriers to realizing the available ICC potential.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
V prispevku bomo obravnavali problematiko osipa v programih e-izobraževanja. Zagovorniki e-izobraževanja poudar- jajo več prednosti tega izobraževanja v primerjavi s klasičnim, na primer večjo ...odprtost, raznolikost učnega gradiva, prilagajanje načina in hitrosti učenja ipd. Kljub tem prednostim in naraščanju števila programov ter vključitvi e-izobraževanja v nacionalne strategije po vsem svetu pa se izvajalci e-izobraževanja srečujejo tudi s problematiko osipa. Raziskave namreč kažejo, da je osip v izobraževalnih programih, ki se izvajajo v e-obliki, večji kot v klasičnih programih. Razloge, ki vplivajo na ta osip, pa je treba upoštevati pri načrtovanju in izpeljavi e-izobraževalnih programov.
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