Group items tagged

One significant concern that pilots have about cockpit auditory warnings is that the signals presently used lack a sense of priority. The relationship between auditory warning sound parameters and perceived urgency is, therefore, an important topic of enquiry in aviation psychology. The present investigation examined the relationship among subjective assessments of urgency, reaction time, and brainwave activity with three auditory warning signals. Subjects performed a tracking task involving automated and manual conditions, and were presented with auditory warnings having various levels of perceived and situational urgency. Subjective assessments revealed that subjects were able to rank warnings on an urgency scale, but rankings were altered after warnings were mapped to a situational urgency scale. Reaction times differed between automated and manual tracking task conditions, and physiological data showed attentional differences in response to perceived and situational warning urgency levels. This study shows that the use of physiological measures sensitive to attention and arousal, in conjunction with behavioural and subjective measures, may lead to the design of auditory warnings that produce a sense of urgency in an operator that matches the urgency of the situation.

What our speech reveals about us

This article discusses the importance of baby babble in language development.

"When a surgeon cut into Henry Molaison's skull to treat him for epilepsy, he inadvertently created the most important brain-research subject of our time - a man who could no longer remember, who taught us everything we know about memory. Six decades later, another daring researcher is cutting into Henry's brain. Another revolution in brain science is about to begin."

Prof. Jeff Zachs: "When they're reading the story, they're building simulations in their head of events that are described by the story... language itself is a powerful form of virtual reality, that there's an important sense in which when we tell each other stories that we can control the perceptional processes that are happening in each other's brains."

"The current, long-standing theory suggests that children learn their first words through a series of associations; they associate words they hear with multiple possible referents in their immediate environment....A small set of psychologists and linguists, including members of the Penn team, have long argued that the sheer number of statistical comparisons necessary to learn words this way is simply beyond the capabilities of human memory.... rich interactions with children-and patience-are more important than abstract picture books and drilling."

"Few students are as lucky as Chris Bail [...] When I was about 11 or so, a group of kids threw stones at me, and that stuck in my head. That was just a big, big experience for me, and I guess I'm really lucky to have that because I know kids that are writing about, like, concerts they went to and stuff like that.'' I am disturbed greatly. What does not kill us will only make us stronger... Scary thought: Students trying to get into college will take extremes for more interesting topics to write about. What if it happens? Pressure. It exists. But don't let it RULE or RUIN your life.

I find it quite sad that students will go to the extremes and seek something that they think admissions officers will find intriguing rather than it coming from their gut and what is important to them. In my opinion the best advice I could give to someone writing their college essay is, be yourself. Don't try to be someone you're not.

"And though they seem to have more collaborators than ever before, from cooperative English teachers to new Web sites that offer successful essays for sale, the competition seems tougher than ever, now that so many early applicants have whittled the number of available slots." To me the college application is sounding more and more deceptive. By the time you take that raw essay written by purely yourself and it goes through multiple English teachers and websites, and other peers, it goes from your writing to like your teacher's writing. I feel that after all of the processes it goes through, all the people who review it, the finished product really doesn't show the college who YOU are.

I think the starting off small (like the questions and fill in the blanks during class) is the best way to find a deep and meaningful topic because it opens your mind to think freely and as you narrow your topic, you'll find a topic that really means something to you. Also, the "Going Beyond Cliché", I think that's going to be hard for me because I'm so used to trying to write the typical 5 paragraph papers that are set up as guidelines during school with topic sentence and 3 supporting details. So, trying to find my own outline might make things a little more difficult for me.

While reading this article, I realized i had already looked past one of the most important factors while choosing my own topic to write about. Before reading the article, I was simply searching for a memory of a time that shaped me into the person I am today, or an instance that would impress a college admissions officer, showing them im the type of student that would fit in perfectly at their school. Then in reading the article, i came across: "What do you think college admissions officers are looking for when they read student essays." Even though this may seem like an obvious task, sometimes, it is easy to get caught up in making yourself look good, and completely forget that you're writing must be interesting enough to stand out to an admissions officer more than others. I don't know if my thought process is easy to understand from an outsider's point of view, but this article showed me that it is important to remember that you're writing to not just impress an audience, but also to show them the real 'you'!

This article is especially helpful because it gives easy to read bullet points to make sure people don't fall into the cliché trap. It's easy to write about something that would be commonly seen in college essays, such as a time someone volunteered at some homeless shelter and they say they're grateful for not being homeless. This article says you should go into more depth other than concluding with a cliché concept.

"The results are bad news for universalists: "most observed functional dependencies between traits are lineage-specific rather than universal tendencies," according to the authors. [...] If universal features can't account for what we observe, what can? Common descent. "Cultural evolution is the primary factor that determines linguistic structure, with the current state of a linguistic system shaping and constraining future states." It's important to emphasize that this study looked at a specific language feature (word order)."

Describes the importance of Rhetoric in persuasion and why rhetoric is important in language.

This emphasizes how important it is to minimize miscommunications and the importance of speaking a common language. Miscommunications can have fatal consequences in fields such as aviation.

There are many ways that what you do with your body can translate into a language to show what you are feeling. Words are not neccesary for others to know the type of person you are. By reading actions, people can know if you are fit for a job or your characteristics.

Body language is extremely important when in a leadership position. You may not think what you're doing with your head or hands is important, but studies show that everything from a head tilt, to walking on stage gives people a certain impression. For people to see you as a good leader, you need to be confident and aware of your actions. If you are on stage talking to a bunch of people, and you are playing with your hair or touching your neck, people pick up on this and make the assumption that you are nervous. It may not be intentional but subconsciously they think you are intimated even though a leader should be calm and controlled. This article explores other ways leaders and speakers can use body language to more powerfully convey their point.

Recent studies may reveal that the advantages of bilingualism arise with any combination of language varieties that differ enough to challenge the brain. They could be dialects of the same language, two related languages such as Italian and Spanish, or as diverse as English and Mandarin Chinese. Systematically switching between any two forms of language, even quite similar ones, seems to provide the mind with the extra stimulation that leads to higher cognitive performance. What our research suggests - contrary to some widely held beliefs - is that, when it comes to language, plurality is an advantage and in this respect dialects are under-recognised and undervalued. This kind of research can make people appreciate there is an advantage to bi-dialectalism - and this may be important when we think about our identity, how we educate children and the importance of language learning.

As a human being, you are constantly talking to yourself, having an inner monologue with yourself. It's called self-talk. Self-talk is an internal dialogue that can affect your confidence and self-esteem. One kind of this is positive self-talk, a personal (mental) conversation with a positive mental attitude towards your life and yourself.

Word "edges" are important for language acquisition. Children start to learn the sound of words by remembering the first and last syllables. A new study sheds light on the information the infant brain uses during language acquisition and the format in which it stores words in its memory. Infants start to learn words very early, during the first months of life, and to do so they have to memorise their sounds and associate them with meanings. The study by Silvia Benavides-Varela (now at the IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo in Venice, but at SISSA at the time the study was performed) and Jacques Mehler, neuroscientist at SISSA, revealed the format in which infants remember their first words. In particular, the two scientists saw that infants aged about seven months accurately encode the sound and position of the first and last syllable, whereas they have difficulty retaining the order of syllables in the middle.

Scientists are reporting in the journal Science that they have identified specialized brain cells that help us understand what a speaker really means. These cells do this by keeping track of changes in the pitch of the voice. "We found that there were groups of neurons that were specialized and dedicated just for the processing of pitch," says Dr. Eddie Chang, a professor of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. Chang says these neurons allow the brain to detect "the melody of speech," or intonation, while other specialized brain cells identify vowels and consonants. "Intonation is about how we say things," Chang says. "It's important because we can change the meaning, even - without actually changing the words themselves." The identification of specialized cells that track intonation shows just how much importance the human brain assigns to hearing, says Nina Kraus, a neurobiologist who runs the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University. "Processing sound is one of the most complex jobs that we ask our brain to do," Kraus says. And it's a skill that some brains learn better than others, she says. Apparently, musicians, according to a study conducted by Kraus, are better than non-musicians at recognizing the subtle tonal changes found in Mandarin Chinese. On the other hand, recognizing intonation is a skill that's often impaired in people with autism, Kraus says. "A typically developing child will process those pitch contours very precisely," Kraus says. "But some kids on the autism spectrum don't. They understand the words you are saying, but they are not understanding how you mean it." The new study suggests that may be because the brain cells that usually keep track of pitch aren't working the way they should.

This article explains key principles and strategies for how to learn languages. It talks about the important elements: comprehensible input (understanding), comprehensible output (producing), and review/feedback (identifying and correcting errors). It mentions the need for balance and avoiding putting too much effort on one skill. It also talks about the importance of embracing mistakes, being comfortable with not knowing certain things, and creating low-stakes practices to become more comfortable with errors. It talks about motivation in learning and the drive for people's desire to learn the language. It includes a lot of psychology in it too.

Outlines the importance of early children's language development. It highlights the importance of the four main components to early language development: Phonology, Semantics, Grammar and Pragmatics. This article shows the critical period of first 5 years in development as this is the time that baby's nerve connections are being made and those for speech/communication need to be built early on so that they're inherent to learning.

This article discusses the different theories on what influences language development: Nature or Nurture? Is language bound to develop from genetics, or is language dependent on environment?