Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of ostensive-referential communication in action understanding during infancy and early childhood

This thesis investigates how the presence of communicative signals such as direct gaze and infant-directed speech might help infants and young children to under- stand, anticipate, and segment actions. For this, the thesis draws upon a range of methodologies, such as electroencephalography (Chapter 2), eye tracking, pupil dilation (both Chapter 3), and behavioural research (Chapter 4). Chapter 2 and 3 both investigate whether the presence of communicative signals, such as infant directed speech and direct gaze, increase infants’ under- standing of actions as meaningful. The ERP experiments on 9-month-old infants reported in Chapter 2 found limited evidence that the presence of communica- tive signals enhances the N400 response, a correlate of semantic understanding. Furthermore, there is limited evidence of a complex response taking into account the presence of communication and action congruency in the Pb component in the second experiment, in which referential signals were added and the structure of the presentation was changed. Meanwhile, Chapter 3 found no evidence that communicative signals enhance anticipatory looking in 7-month-old children. Chapter 2 and 3 also investigate the possibility that communication enhances arousal. However, neither the Nc component reported in Chapter 2, nor the Pupillary Light Reflex investigated in Chapter 3 provided evidence in support of this hypothesis.
Autonomous Trajectory Generation for Deterministic Artificial Intelligence

Machine learning or statistical artificial intelligence examines averages in data to codify the best approach to make decisions based on the data, and the method notoriously requires large amounts of training data (statistically relevant amounts). On the other hand, data produced by systems that obey physical laws can use those laws as the deterministic structure for artificial intelligence, greatly reducing the requirement for large amounts of data to achieve high-precision performance. This article examines aspects of deterministic artificial intelligence comprised of self-awareness utilizing auto-trajectory generation followed by change-detection and identification, and then online learning. After the self-awareness algorithm is introduced, several auto-trajectory implementations are compared. Furthermore, learning methods are compared emphasizing recursive least squares and extended least squares learning compared to classical proportional-integral-derivate feedback implementations. Novel learning improvements realized 23.4% decreased mean error, and 34.0% decreased standard deviation compared to the standard recursive least squares optimal estimator error while max error decreased 33.0%. Four autonomous trajectory generation techniques were shown to produce accuracies form 10-4 to 10-9 with various computational burdens, providing a menu of implementation options.
Impact of Canadian Armed Forces Veterans’ Mental Health Problems on the Family During the Military to Civilian Transition

Abstract Military to civilian transition can significantly affect veterans’ lives. This study aimed to increase understanding of how veteran mental health problems impact the family during the transition to civilian life. We used a sequential multiple qualitative design. Twenty-six family members of veterans with mental health problems completed individual interviews and 9 participated in 3 focus groups. Veteran’s mental health problem(s) created multifaceted and pervasive changes in family structure, roles, and routines, and these changes created negative mental health and well-being impacts for family members. Transition may compound stressors related to mental health, with significant consequences for family systems.
Performing under challenge: The differing effects of ability and normative performance goals.

The effects of ability performance goals, normative performance goals, and mastery goals on anxiety, interest, and performance were examined in a series of experiments. Challenging problem-solving tasks that would demonstrate the effects of each performance goal more clearly were designed. Groups of early adolescents (Study 1) and college students in Korea (Studies 2 and 3) participated in similar experiments to strengthen the generalizability of the findings. Across the 3 studies, students assigned to the ability-goal condition exhibited significantly higher anxiety and lower interest compared with those in the normative- and mastery-goal conditions, except that the anxiety between the 2 performance-goal conditions did not differ after experiencing failure in Study 3. The ability-goal students persisted for significantly less time than did those in the other 2 conditions (Study 1) and demonstrated significantly lower challenge appraisal and weaker reengagement intention compared with those in the normative-goal condition (Study 2). The effects of achievement goals on problem-solving performance varied across the studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Motor performance of children and adolescents with cerebral palsy during the execution of computer tasks with different peripherals

ABSTRACT Objective: to assess the effectiveness of using different input devices for computer access by children and adolescents with cerebral palsy and to verify the relationship of performance with age and level of motor classification. Methods: the study included 14 children and adolescents with cerebral palsy, aged 6 to 14 years, with Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) and Manual Ability Classification System (MACS) levels from I to V. The participants’ performance was observed during the use of touch screen, conventional mouse and eye tracking mouse in performing specific tasks with softwares Discrete Aiming Task 2.0, Tracking Task 2.0 and Single Switch Performance Test (SSPT) 1.0. The following variables were analyzed: response time, frequency of errors, mean time to activate input devices, relationship between satisfaction with input devices and motor skill level. Results: results indicated significant differences in response time, frequency of errors, and triggering mean time depending on the input device used, and correlation between the motor ability level and satisfaction, using the device, and between the level of manual ability and satisfaction with the mouse. Conclusion: the eye tracking mouse and the touch screen were the most effective devices during the execution of tasks on the computer by study participants.
The Role of Personality in Sexual and Reproductive Health

Strong evidence suggests that sexual behavior and reproductive success can be predicted by personality traits. Here, I review new studies that have contributed to the understanding of these associations and outline potential avenues for further research. Findings show that extraversion is the most important personality trait in sexual behavior (number of lifetime sexual partners, involvement in casual sex, marital infidelity, condom use, male and female sexual dysfunction, sexual coercion, and sexual harassment) and that neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are also associated with these outcomes. Extraversion has emerged as the most important personality trait for fertility in men but appears relatively unimportant for fertility in women. Findings for other personality traits are somewhat mixed, probably because of variations in research design, and further prospective studies are recommended to address potential bidirectional associations. Further research is also needed in adolescent samples, in understudied topic areas (e.g., sexually transmitted infections, biomarkers of fertility), and on personality similarity between sexual partners in samples from both poor and developed nations.
Clinical Practice of Midwifery Graduates During Community Service Placement, Limpopo Province South Africa

Midwifery graduates are placed in health facilities for community service during their first year of practice. The purpose of the study was to explore how midwifery graduates experienced their clinical practice during community service placement in Limpopo province. A qualitative study which is explorative and descriptive in nature was conducted in five selected hospitals. Population comprised of all midwifery graduates who have undergone a comprehensive nursing programme regulated by R425 of 19 February 1985, as amended; working in selected hospitals. Non-probability, purposive sampling method was used to select five graduates working in maternity unit of each selected hospital. Sample comprised of twenty-five participants. In-depth face to face interviews were used to collect data. Findings revealed that graduates experienced differences between theory and practice at different levels. Loss of students’ status, high level of responsibility and inadequate clinical learning opportunities made their transition difficult. In conclusion, graduates felt exposed to two different worlds of midwifery practice resulting in frustration and reality shock. Study recommends that midwifery training programme include opportunities to discuss realities of transition period, to enable graduates to deal with midwifery issues in a real and practical situation. Mentors should help graduates to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Structured support programmes should be offered to alley feelings of fear and insecurity resulting from increased levels of responsibility and accountability graduates are faced with.
Educators’ views on parents’ participation on three different identified levels

Ongoing discussions emphasize parents’ participation as a pivotal element of early childhood education. In this paper, we will discuss the challenges to supporting parents’ participation in Finnish day care centres. The article is based on the qualitative inquiry (2011) about parents’ and staff participation in the metropolitan area day care centres. The participants were 1,588 working teams representing 5,262 employees. The questionnaire was returned by 77.6% of the intended population. The results showed, there were roughly three different respondent groups. Most of them listed different matters in which parents could not participate, but they thought that there were also some areas, in which parents could participate more than they do today. Some of the respondents had a broader view on those issues, and they thought that it is possible to support parents participating in the day care centre. Indeed, some of the respondents thought that if parents came along to the activities in the day care centres, it would complicate and disturb the work of professionals. The different attitudes concerning how educator`s view their selves in relation to the parents become apparent and three different groups were identified: the Professional standpoint, Customer standpoint, and Partnership standpoint.
Exploring the Relationships among Executive Functioning, Behaviour, and Adaptive Skills in Young Children

ii! Acknowledgments . iii! List of Tables . vii! List of Figures . viii! Introduction . 1! Behaviour Problems and EF . 4! Inhibition . 7! Working Memory . 8! Cognitive Flexibility . 9! Sex.9! Adaptive Skills . 10! The Present Study . 11! Methods . 15! Participants . 15! Measures . 15! Procedure . 18! Data Analysis. 19! Results. 20! Research Question #1: Are there differences in the levels of executive functioning and adaptive skills across the four behaviour groups? 20! Research Question #2: To what extent are executive functions predictive of behaviour group membership in children? Do variables such as adaptive skills, sex, or age add to the prediction of group membership? 24! Research Question #3: Does taking a person-oriented view add any additional information when looking at executive functioning and behaviour? 33! Discussion . 35!
Innovation behavior levels and its relation with TIGER-based nursing informatics competencies among critical care nurses

Background Currently, worldwide nursing experts have been inspiring nurses to pursue innovation in nursing in order to improve nursing outcomes. As a consequence, practicing nurses ought to have the capability to be receptive to the innovation in their practice environment; therefore, a new specialty called ‘nursing informatics’ (NI) has emerged to keep pace with these emerging innovations. Aim The aim of this study was to measure the relationship between innovation behavior levels and TIGER-based NI competencies among critical care nurses. Participants and methods A descriptive correlational design was used in carrying out this study. This study was conducted in a Critical Care Unit at an International Private Hospital in Egypt. The convenience sampling method was used to select 30 participants who met the inclusion criteria to join the study. Data were collected using a three-section questionnaire as follows: (i) demographic data sheet; (ii) Innovation Behavior Questionnaire; and (iii) Nursing Informatics Competency Assessment Tool. Results More than half of the participants had a moderate level of innovation behavior. Moreover, more than one-third of the studied sample rated themselves as competent in NI. In addition, a significant positive relationship was found between innovation behavior and overall NI competency levels as perceived by the participants. Conclusion This study contributes to the identification of informatics competency levels that are pertinent to the role of critical care nurses. Moreover, this study signifies that the innovative behavior of critical care nurses would help in generating proactive approach concerning developing a NI competency level in the future. Recommendation Future studies should relate the demonstrated and perceived NI competency levels in critical care units and other work settings. Moreover, integration of the NI and nursing innovation courses as one of the core courses, and not as an elective, in the nursing curriculum is recommended.
Gender Differences in Mental Health, Institutional Misconduct, and Disciplinary Segregation

Despite a growing body of research on the use of disciplinary segregation within prisons, limited research has examined the role that mental health plays in this context, particularly across gender. This article advances theory and scholarship on disciplinary segregation by examining the role of mental health, violence, and gender. Examining these relationships provides insight into the implications of individual characteristics on in-prison behavior and punishment. Using nationally representative data and logistic regression analyses, this article examines the extent to which mental health history influences disciplinary segregation, if violent misconduct mediates this relationship, and the extent to which gender conditions this relationship. Findings suggest that the measurement of mental health history and violent misconduct are influential in the relationship between mental health history and disciplinary segregation and that gender differences emerge. Implications for theory, research, and policy related to in-prison punishment emerge from the results.
No Economic Catastrophe Bonds

The Financial Crisis of 2008 did much to discredit the idea of securitization. A recent argument has arisen concerning the idea that a senior tranche of a CDO should be treated as a security whose only risk exposure is to a true economic catastrophe, since anything less would be absorbed by the lower seniority tranches. This means that loss given default would be very large and also very systematic, so the highest rated tranches should be priced to pay larger risk premia than comparably rated single name bonds. Blochlinger argues that this line of reasoning is wrong in theory, and empirically, observed yield spreads in the market do not support it either. Not only do the AAA tranches default only under the same extreme conditions as government bonds do, but they also benefit from the diversification within the CDO pool. The article demonstrates that this should make the most senior CDO tranches safer than (less diversified) single name bonds of the same rating. A key point in the proof is to recognize that, within the most senior tranche, the effect of diversification in the CDO pool is different for the average dollar of principal value than for the marginal dollar in that tranche (i.e., at the attachment point). Diversification in the pool increases the average value of the senior-most tranche, even though it lowers the value of the marginal dollar.
Time-Variant Linear Discriminant Analysis Improves Hand Gesture and Finger Movement Decoding for Invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces

Invasive brain-computer interfaces yield remarkable performance in a multitude of applications. For classification experiments, high-gamma bandpower features and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) are commonly used due to simplicity and robustness. However, LDA is inherently static and not suited to account for transient information that is typically present in high-gamma features. To resolve this issue, we here present an extension of LDA to the time-variant feature space. We call this method time-variant linear discriminant analysis (TVLDA). It intrinsically provides a feature reduction stage, which makes external approaches thereto obsolete, such as feature selection techniques or common spatial patterns (CSPs). As well, we propose a time-domain whitening stage which equalizes the pronounced 1/f-shape of the typical brain-wave spectrum. We evaluated our proposed architecture based on recordings from 15 epilepsy patients with temporarily implanted subdural grids, who participated in additional research experiments besides clinical treatment. The experiments featured two different motor tasks involving three high-level gestures and individual finger movement. We used log-transformed bandpower features from the high-gamma band (50–300 Hz, excluding power-line harmonics) for classification. On average, whitening improved the classification performance by about 11%. On whitened data, TVLDA outperformed LDA with feature selection by 11.8%, LDA with CSPs by 13.9%, and regularized LDA with vectorized features by 16.4%. At the same time, TVLDA only required one or two internal features to achieve this. TVLDA provides stable results even if very few trials are available. It is easy to implement, fully automatic and deterministic. Due to its low complexity, TVLDA is suited for real-time brain-computer interfaces. Training is done in less than a second. TVLDA performed particularly well in experiments with data from high-density electrode arrays. For example, the three high-level gestures were correctly identified at a rate of 99% over all subjects. Similarly, the decoding accuracy of individual fingers was 96% on average over all subjects. To our knowledge, these mean accuracies are the highest ever reported for three-class and five-class motor-control BCIs.
Team Production and Esteem: A Dual Selves Model with Belief-Dependent Preferences

We propose a dual selves model to integrate affective responses and belief-dependent emotions into game theory. We apply our model to team production and model a worker as being composed of a rational self, who chooses effort, and an emotional self, who expresses esteem. Similar to psychological game theory, utilities depend on beliefs, but only indirectly. More concretely, emotions affect utilities, and the expression of emotions depends on updated beliefs. Modeling affective responses as actions chosen by the emotional self allows us to apply standard game-theoretic solution concepts. The model reveals that with incomplete information about abilities, workers only choose high effort if esteem is expressed based on interpersonal comparisons and if the preference for esteem is a status preference.
Diffusion of disinformation: How social media users respond to fake news and why

This exploratory study seeks to understand the diffusion of disinformation by examining how social media users respond to fake news and why. Using a mixed-methods approach in an explanatory-sequential design, this study combines results from a national survey involving 2501 respondents with a series of in-depth interviews with 20 participants from the small but economically and technologically advanced nation of Singapore. This study finds that most social media users in Singapore just ignore the fake news posts they come across on social media. They would only offer corrections when the issue is strongly relevant to them and to people with whom they share a strong and close interpersonal relationship.
Athletic Administrators Report of Emergency Action Plan Adoption in Secondary School Athletics: The Influence of Athletic Training Services

This study describes the emergency action plan (EAP) adoption in secondary school athletics reported by athletic administrators in the United States. Utilizing best-practice criteria, a questionnaire assessed athletic administrators’ knowledge and adoption of an EAP in their athletics program. A majority of athletic administrators reported having an EAP; however, the EAP often lacked the necessary components to be compliant with best-practice guidelines. Further, access to an athletic trainer was associated with increased EAP adoption and adopting a venue specific EAP. Athletic administrators should utilize these data to facilitate improved policy adoption and management of athletics programs. Subscribe to JASM
Anticipated vs Experienced Work-Family Conflict: Newcomer Expectations and Early Socialization Outcomes

ANTICIPATED VS EXPERIENCED WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT: NEWCOMER EXPECTATIONS AND EARLY SOCIALIZAITON OUTCOMES Seterra D. Burleson Old Dominion University, 2019 Director: Dr. Debra A. Major Applying met expectations and newcomer socialization theory, congruence and discrepancy between anticipated work-family conflict (AWFC) and experienced WFC were examined in relation to job satisfaction, affective commitment, and turnover intent. It was hypothesized that when AWFC and WFC are in agreement outcomes are more favorable. Further, it was hypothesized that when the discrepancy is such that WFC is higher than AWFC outcomes are more favorable than vice versa. Data were collected from 205 adults, first as graduating seniors in college and again three months after starting their post-graduation jobs. Polynomial regression revealed that congruence between work interference with family (WIF) and anticipated work interference with family (AWIF) was related to increased job satisfaction and affective commitment but not decreased turnover. When WIF was higher than AWIF, job satisfaction and affective commitment are higher than when WIF was lower than AWIF, but this was not the case for turnover intent. Hypotheses regarding family interference with work (AFIW) were not supported. Unexpectedly, men reported higher levels of AWIF and AFIW than women. Findings expand understanding of the nature of relationships between WIF and workrelated outcomes by applying the concept of met expectations. Future research should examine interventions to provide realistic previews regarding expected levels of WIF for individuals prior to entering the organization to determine if job satisfaction and affective commitment can be improved indirectly through the formation of realistic expectations regarding WIF.