Purpose – This study aims to use sensing technology to observe the learning status of learners in a teaching and learning environment. In a general instruction environment, teachers often encounter some teaching problems. These are frequently related to the fact that the teacher cannot clearly know the learning status of students, such as their degree of learning concentration and capacity to absorb knowledge. In order to deal with this situation, this study uses a learning concentration detection system (LCDS), combining sensor technology and an artificial intelligence method, to better understand the learning concentration of students in a learning environment. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed system uses sensing technology to collect information about the learning behavior of the students, analyzes their concentration levels, and applies an artificial intelligence method to combine this information for use by the teacher. This system includes a pressure detection sensor and facial detection sensor to detect facial expressions, eye activities and body movements. The system utilizes an artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm to optimize the system performance to help teachers immediately understand the degree of concentration and learning status of their students. Based on this, instructors can give appropriate guidance to several unfocused students at the same time. Findings – The fitness value and computation time were used to evaluate the LCDS. Comparing the results of the proposed ABC algorithm with those from the random search method, the algorithm was found to obtain better solutions. The experimental results demonstrate that the ABC algorithm can quickly obtain near optimal solutions within a reasonable time. Originality/value – A learning concentration detection method of integrating context-aware technologies and an ABC algorithm is presented in this paper. Using this learning concentration detection method, teachers can keep abreast of their students' learning status in a teaching environment and thus provide more appropriate instruction.
Electron microscopic studies of chordae tendineae of the mitral valve were carried out in 17 patients who underwent mitral valve replacement due to a spontaneously isolated rupture of chordae tendineae. The normal chordae, used as the control group, were obtained at autopsy from 5 patients who died from extracardiac causes and were compared with the ruptured chordae. In all patients with chordal rupture, scanning electron microscopy showed perforations of the chordae tendineae, with extensive desquamation and disruption of the endothelial cells and wide-spread destruction of the collagen fiber bundles in the central collagenous core. These pathological findings were not observed in the normal chordae from the control group. Transmission electron microscopy showed that the ruptured chordae were characterized by heterogeneous collagen fibrils with intrinsic structural alterations and disorganization in fibril arrangement. There was a wide variation in the diameters of collagen fibrils which always showed abnormal morphology, with abnormally large, peculiarly shaped fibrils. Apparent loss and/or a disordered arrangement of the typical periodicity of the fibrils were frequently observed. In addition, various degrees of degenerative changes of collagen tissue were often present. These abnormalities were never seen in the fibrils of the normal chordae, and were observed consistently in both the fibrils of the ruptured chordae and in the macroscopically intact chordae in the group with spontaneous rupture of chordae tendineae. These results suggest that a defective organization of collagen into fibrils and fibers, associated with secondary degeneration of collagen within the central collagenous core of the chordae tendineae, are important pathogenetic mechanisms for spontaneously isolated ruptures of chordae tendineae.
Abstract The present research factorially examined the effects of homophone density, visual frequency, and phonological frequency (defined here as the cumulative frequency of homophone mates) in Chinese visual word recognition. Stimuli were compound characters matched in semantic and phonetic radical neighbourhood density and in average visual frequency of orthographic neighbours. In contrast to a previous study with Chinese by Ziegler, Tan, Perry, and Montant (2000), no facilitative effect of phonological frequency was observed. Unlike previous findings with English readers of inhibitory effects of homophones, a facilitative effect of homophone density – restricted to low visual frequency words – was obtained for Chinese in both lexical decision (Exp. 1) and naming (Exp. 2), similar to Ziegler et al. (2000). Our results suggest that, when there is less possibility of sublexical competition between similar spellings, homophone density effects are facilitatory. This outcome supports theoretical positions regarding the mental representation of homophones that assume a single representation for homophones at the phonological word form level. Keywords: Homophone densityPhonological frequencyChinese word recognitionUniversal phonology principleCross-linguistic approach Acknowledgements This research was supported by a Graduate Stipendiary Research Fellowship awarded to Hsin-Chin Chen by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M. A preliminary report was presented at the 2004 International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, University of Windsor, Canada. We especially thank Ju-Hui Yu, Hsuan-Yi Lee, and Si-Cyun Yang for their help in conducting the experiments. We are grateful to J. Ziegler and anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Notes 1Many Chinese characters are formed by combining different radicals. For example, the character (pronounced as /shiang4/, where the number denotes the tone, and means oak), is produced by combining a semantic radical (pronounced as /mu4/, and means wood), and a phonetic radical (pronounced as /shiang4/, and means elephant).
Facebook is currently the most popular social networking site, and it has been used in a number of collaborative learning applications. In a collaborative learning environment, an adaptive learning companion could help learners understand the learning content and share knowledge, as well as increase creativity and facilitate the beneficial effects of collaborative learning. In this study, a learning companion recommendation system (LCRS) is developed on Facebook, which supports mobile collaborative learning. The system collects friends' profile data automatically according to their learning needs, such as interests and professional abilities. Moreover, the technology acceptance model and partial least squares regression are used to investigate learners' acceptance of the LCRS for learning activities
The influence of second language proficiency and length of formal training in interpretation on simultaneous interpreting (SI) performance and working memory was examined in Mandarin–English student interpreters with one year ( n = 11) or two years of formal training in interpretation ( n = 9) and in 16 Mandarin–English untrained bilingual controls. SI performance was significantly better in Year 2 than in Year 1 student interpreters, and in Year 1 interpreters relative to bilingual controls. SI performance was also better in advanced L2 users and in high-memory span individuals, whether trained or not in SI. Both Year 1 and Year 2 students outperformed bilingual controls in L1 and L2 reading span. Although Year 2 students tended to show higher working memory span than Year 1 students, the difference was not significant. Finally, working memory span was higher in individuals with greater L2 proficiency. It is concluded that differences in language proficiency may underlie observed differences in both interpreting performance and working memory and that language processing skills (rather than working memory) may be enhanced by formal training in interpreting.
Accompanied with the reliable facilitation effect of semantic (instead of homophonic) priming on character recognition and naming found in previous research, it was also observed that priming with orthographically similar characters inhibits recognition and naming of targets. The first two experiments manipulated prime character frequency, orthographic similarity, and SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony) in lexical decision and naming tasks. In the lexical decision task, the target characters which were preceded by an unmasked, orthographically similar prime of higher frequency were responded to slower than their dissimilar pair controls with SOAs of 50 ms and 500 ms. A similar inhibition effect was also observed in the naming task. When the SOA duration was extended to 1000 ms in Experiment 2, a significant inhibition effect was observed not only under conditions with primes of higher frequency but also with primes of lower frequency. In Experiment 3, pseudo-character primes were included. It was found that pseudo-character primes obtained no effect upon target recognition while manifesting a small inhibition effect on target naming under the prime exposure duration of 500 ms. In Experiment 4, an additional prime condition of free radicals in isolation was included. It was found in Experiment 4 that with the SOA of 50 ms or 500 ms, the embedded right component radical in isolation facilitated the recognition of the target character embedding it, while not exerting any effect on character naming.
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