Whereas some researchers claim that the holistic processing of the right hemisphere is essential for contextual integration in language pragmatics (Myers, 2001, Myers, 2005), results of other studies point to involvement of executive processes of the frontal lobes (McDonald & Pearce, 1998; Bernicot & Dardier, 2001). This study examined the role of frontal lobes in language pragmatics by testing performance of young adults and older adults on selected standardized pragmatic inferences called 'implicitures'. Implicitures were first presented free-standing and then embedded in contexts that either supported (enabling contexts) or cancelled (cancelling contexts) their preferred meaning. First, implicitures were examined using behavioral reaction time measures in young adults. The second part of the project addressed the question about involvement of frontal lobes in language pragmatics by testing older adults with varying degrees of frontal function on processing of implicitures. Finally, event-related potential responses to implicitures with and without context in young adults were explored. Results revealed a strong relationship between frontal lobes and performance on implicitures in canceling contexts in older adults. There was no significant effect for free-standing implicitures and implicitures presented in enabling contexts. In addition, an N400 was observed to free-standing implicitures, but implicitures in context elicited a negative component in the later 400 ms window at the anterior sites. These results indicate that frontal lobes are important for pragmatic processing requiring integration of linguistic context with an utterance for the correct interpretation. Consequences of our findings for models of impliciture processing and accounts of neural architecture underlying language pragmatics are considered.

The search engine has become one of the most popular tools used on the Internet. Most of the existing search engines locate information based on queries consisting of a small number of keywords provided by the users. Although those search engines can query their databases and retrieve documents in a timely manner, the quality of the results is often unsatisfactory. This problem, based on previous studies and our observation, is partially due to the lack of semantic interpretation of a search request, as well as the user's incapability to precisely express their information need in a short query. In this research, we propose a conceptual framework that classifies various types of context in a Web search environment and present a new semantics-based approach that disambiguates user queries by analyzing the "relationship" context associated with query concepts.Our multi-methodological research approach includes: (i) building a context framework by categorizing different types of context; (ii) proposing a search mechanism that discovers and utilizes semantic relationships among query terms; (iii) demonstrating the practical implications of our proposed model using a proof-of-concept prototype system; and (iv) evaluating the usefulness of "relationship" context through an experimental study. From a technical perspective, our approach integrates ideas from semantic network, ontology, and information retrieval techniques. The experimental study conducted in the medical domain shows that our approach is effective and outperforms an existing popular search engine on search tasks consisting of key semantic relationships.

This study focused on the comprehension and cognitive processing of texts in biology by 36 graduate science students for whom Chinese was their first (L1) and English their second language (L2). The students in the study were from two disciplines: one in biology, and the other in engineering. These groups were subdivided into less proficient L2 (i.e., low-intermediate to intermediate) and more proficient L2 group (i.e., high-intermediate to high). From the perspective of a stratified model, the study examined L1 and L2 comprehension of general biology texts. Specifically, it investigated the effects of readers' domain-specific knowledge and language proficiency on various levels of discourse processing. It also examined two methodological issues: the effects of language of recall on processing of semantic and syntactic information from the L2 texts and the validity of using self-rating of text difficulty or content familiarity to index background knowledge. / Domain-specific knowledge was found to affect every aspect of comprehension of semantic information that was assessed in the study for both the L1 and the L2 texts. It also affected efficiency of processing for the L2 texts. Language proficiency, on the other hand, consistently affected lower-level processing. However, it appeared to have few concomitant effects on processing of semantic information. These results were consistent with predictions from stratified models of discourse comprehension in which processing of syntactic and semantic information are viewed as being both multilevel and modular. The results of the study also suggest the importance of investigating background knowledge in content-specific terms. Although the science students generally were comparable both in their knowledge of science text structures and in their patterns of comprehension of different types of semantic information, this comparability did not result in comparable comprehension. Rather, comprehension depended heavily on domain-specific knowledge. / With reference to linguistic distance, the results of this study suggest that caution is needed in applying conclusions drawn from studies of speakers of languages of the same Indo-European family to speakers of languages of greater linguistic distance such as Chinese and English. The lack of production effects observed in this study may be due to differential processing of syntactic information as well as differential processing strategies that many readers reported to have used with different language conditions. Finally, the general discrepancy between perceived text difficulty vs. comprehension and efficiency of processing as assessed by the objective measures suggests caution in using self-rating of text difficulty or content familiarity to index background knowledge.

For the first time ever, there are four (soon to be five) generations of nurses working side‐by‐side in the workplace. Within the generational cohorts there are differences in age as well as dissimilarity in education, ethnicity, and work values. We examined the complex linkages between diversity among nursing workgroups, professional burnout and the mediating effects of conflict (relationship and task). Diversity was defined as the degree of relative difference or dissimilarity between an individual and other workgroup members on demographic attributes (age, education and ethnicity) and work values. Data were collected from a population‐based sample of 600 nurses (80% response rate) employed by two hospitals in British Columbia. Using latent variable modelling, the findings from this study show the importance of differences in work values in creating conflict, which in turn leads to burnout. To a lesser extent, differences in education also predicted nurses’ displaying a negative and distant attitude as well as having a reduced sense of personal accomplishment. Addressing work stressors associated with diversity is an important step in the management of the healthcare workplace, the development of a healthy workforce, and the retention of nurses (organizational and professional). Interventions are needed to effectively manage diverse workplaces and to nurture teamwork; these strategies are crucial to improving the workplace environment, the quality of nurses’ worklife, and possibly patient care.

The NEXUS Portal provides an in-depth profile of the research and achievements of NEXUS on a quarterly basis. This special issue is dedicated to knowledge exchange.

Informacijos amžiuje įvairūs tyrimo metodai generuoja milžiniškus kiekius duomenų, tačiau naudojant tik neapdorotus duomenis sunku atskleisti tiriamų objektų prigimtį, išsiaiškinti pagrindinę, kartais paslėptą struktūrą. Naudingai informacijai, o vėliau ir žinioms iš duomenų išgauti paprastai naudojami informacijos suformavimo (Information Retrieval) ir duomenų išgavimo (Data Mining) būdai. Panašumo tarp įvairių esybių nustatymas čia vaidina bene svarbiausią vaidmenį. Egzistuoja daugybė objektų tarpusavio panašumo nustatymo modelių ir teorijų, bet dauguma jų vienaip ar kitaip remiasi tam tikru objektų požymių tarpusavio palyginimu. Jau kurį laiką kalbama apie tai, kad dviejų esybių tarpusavio panašumas yra įtakojamas ne tik tų esybių požymių, bet ir konteksto, kuriame jie pasireiškia. Vadinasi dviejų esybių tarpusavio panašumas priklausomai nuo konteksto gali skirtis. Darbe aptariama kontekstinio panašumo svarba, esami konteksto apibrėžimai ir keli kontekstinį panašumą vertinantys matai. Išnagrinėjus literatūros šaltinius bus pristatytas kontekstinio panašumo formavimo būdas, kurio veikimas tiriamas naudojant dirbtinius ir realius duomenis. / Similarity is one of the most important aspects in the area of information retrieval and data mining. A new trend in similarity judgment assumes that similarity between two objects can not be expressed as a fixed value and depends on the context in which the similarity is measured. However no formal definition of context has yet been specified. In this thesis a new formal context definition is proposed and a method to measure contextual similarity is developed. The main idea behind this method is to extract context information from distinct groups of data. This method is tested with synthetic and real-world data sets comparing context similarity measure with distance based similarity. Results indicate that taking the similarity into account may cause significant changes in object similarity. This work shows the importance of context when measuring similarity.

In this textual analysis I have examined the book Att följa Jesus by Ulf Ekman and information from Word of Life's official website. The aim of this study is to see how a religious leader is shaping the identity of the groups members after a certain pattern that differs from the surrounding, secular society. The research focus  of this essay includes several aspects:  how a culture is formed in a religious minority in contrast to the prevailing cultural context; how the material can be explained by Paul Pruyser’s theory on the psychological worlds; how what Ulf Ekman writes about distinguishing themselves from the environment differs from how other religious minority groups distinguish their identity;  and,  how the psychological world, expected behavior, and context of Word of Life can be structured by Valerie DeMarinis’ model of assessment. I have placed Word of Life in a realistic illusionistic world developed from Paul Pruyser’s theory of psychological worlds. I have also used Valerie DeMarinis’ orientation model for meaning making systems for placing Word of Life in its cultural context. The investigation revealed that the group is a religious minority in Sweden. After this, I compared Word of Life with other religious minority groups. I chose to focus on Jewish identity in the American South and in Copenhagen, which showed that the individuals who were interviewed who felt that their Jewish  identities were under attack became defensive. Ekman, however, ordered his members to be inclusive but theologically conservative and to seek a counterculture existence. I placed the steps of ‘belonging’  into DeMarinis’ assessment model, which showed how the psychological world is leading up to the achievement of the expected behavior, and how the surrounding cultural context affects the model.

Meaningful semantic context has been shown to improve comprehension of spoken sentences by young and old adults, especially in difficult listening conditions. Whether older adults benefit differently than younger adults is a topic of some controversy. I asked young (14 participants, 18-25) and older adults (20 participants, 60-75) to report entire sentences which contained either a coherent or anomalous global semantic context (e.g. coherent: “Her new skirt was made of denim”, anomalous: “Her good slope was done in carrot”). Sentences were mixed with signal-correlated noise, at 10 signal-to-noise ratios (-6 to +2 dB and clear speech). Percentage scores were converted to rationalized arcsine units and subjected to a repeated-measures ANOVA; slopes from psychometric functions fitted to the transformed data were also analyzed. Cognitive and hearing threshold differences were considered as factors influencing results. Finally, individual variability in the use of context was explored. Comprehension by both groups benefited from meaningful context, without a clear difference in the overall amount of benefit obtained. Cognitive factors did not appear to influence the results, although differences in hearing thresholds likely contributed to the consistent performance decrement for older adults. Individuals varied greatly in their use of context, a possible explanation for inconsistent results in studies comparing context use by young and older people. fMRI was then used to look at neural activity associated with deriving benefit from meaningful context. Whole-brain EPI data were acquired from young (16 participants, 19-26) adults using a sparse imaging design. Participants heard coherent and anomalous sentences in the scanner, and were asked to report what they heard on half of the trials. Individual’s word-report data obtained in the scanner were used to model intelligibility in the analysis and results were compared to an analysis conducted using intelligibility estimates based on group data from another study. In addition to bilateral temporal activity associated with increasing intelligibility, I observe a large left inferior-frontal region in which BOLD signal correlated more strongly with highly intelligible anomalous compared to highly intelligible coherent prose, presumably reflecting challenged semantic integration and supporting Hagoort’s (2005) model of semantic unification. / Thesis (Master, Neuroscience Studies) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-18 23:01:40.979

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