The Subtitle Effect: How Subtitle-Facilitated Perceptual Learning Can Make Subtitles (Seem) Less Necessary

In television and film production, speakers whose accents are judged difficult to understand are often subtitled, but viewers may question such judgments if they later perceive the subtitles as unnecessary. Such doubts can be ill founded, however. We report two experiments showing that the presence of bimodal subtitles (subtitles in the same language as the audio) on a given video clip can make subtitles seem less necessary for that clip and can improve comprehension of a second, unsubtitled clip of the same speaker. This, we argue, is because bimodal subtitles provide alternate access to the lexical information in the audio, thus facilitating perceptual learning of the subtitled speaker’s accent. This perceptual learning, through which listeners adjust their sound–phoneme mappings to accommodate the unfamiliar phoneme realizations underlying the speaker’s accent, can quickly make subtitles less necessary, potentially creating the illusion that they were never necessary—a phenomenon we call the “subtitle effect.”     

Children's algorithms as schemes

Arithmetical knowledge is viewed as simply the coordinated schemes of actions and operations the child has constructed at a particular point in time. A fundamental distinction is drawn between operative and figurative schemes in the context of additive schemes. Numerical extension, an operative scheme, is distinguished from intuitive extension, a figurative scheme. The basis of the distinction resides in (1) the anticipatory nature of the schemes, (2) the adaptability of the schemes, and (3) the nature of the concepts which serve as a basis for what triggers the schemes. This fundamental distinction is crucial in the mathematical instruction of the child for the child necessarily has to construct his or her own mathematical reality even if that reality eventually becomes compatible with the reality of the social group in which the child has to operate.     

Occupations of Indonesian graduates

Despite a considerable increase in the number of graduates in Indonesia, they still remain a minute fraction of the labour force. The majority are in the professional, administrative, and clerical occupations, and employed by the state mostly in a civilian, some in a military, capacity. Ever larger numbers of the available graduates have been moving into state employment. The occupations mentioned are also the most highly paid, with the administrative far ahead of the professional and clerical.The largest group of graduates had qualified in law, the social sciences, arts and sciences; the next largest in teaching. Health, agriculture, and the technological subjects of engineering and communications had attracted only a relatively small proportion.Not more than half of the graduates were in occupations for which their studies were specifically relevant, and holders of the Bachelor (Sarjana Muda) degree were less likely than Masters (Sarjana) to be so employed. The largest proportion of graduates in related occupations had qualified in teaching and health, while the smallest had studied law, the social sciences, arts, and sciences, a few more the vocational subjects of agriculture and engineering. Selection for senior positions appears as important as training for specific occupations.Teaching and health were also the two subjects with the highest proportion of graduates among the professionals. However, they were not particularly well represented among the better-paid administratives. Here, graduates in agriculture, engineering and the law, the social sciences, arts and sciences were much better favoured.Some occupations show a certain concentration of graduates in specific subjects; in particular, half of the graduates in the professional group were trained as teachers. However, no occupation is the preserve of any one subject.There were more Bachelor than Master graduates in all groups except the professional and administrative, where the reverse was the case. One may conclude that both these groups gave a certain preference to Masters, and were in turn the targets of those so qualified.     

融合教育在香港的持续发展——兼论特殊学校的角色转变

融合教育的推行 ,静静地改变着香港学校教育的生态。融合教育是西方发达国家的教育产物 ,通过国际组织的策动而扩散。它是一个建基於人权和平等观念 ,强调尊重差异的教育发展方案 ,但也是一种知易行难的办学手段。本文试图理顺融合教育的基本观念 ,认识它的运作元素和讨论它的实践问题。藉着回顾一些国际和本地的研究发现和发展经验 ,作者还希望为融合教育的持续发展提供意见在天赋的“异”中求人的“同” ,是融合教育需要不断面对的挑战     

Evaluating morality and achievement

This study focuses on age-related changes in moral and achievement judgments as they may be modified by sociocultural factors. In this study 1,485 male and female Iranian children/students of diverse social background and ranging in age from 4–18 served as subjects. Following a previously established procedure, subjects were asked to evaluate (reward/punish) the moral and achievement behavior of a story protagonist under conditions which varied systematically in terms of the protagonist's ability to perform a moral or achievement act, his/her good Intentions and the Outcome. A response surface analysis was employed in identifying the separate and interactive affects of social, cultural, and cognitive developmental factors. Age-related patterns were subject to important modifications by sociocultural variables, especially in the case of moral judgments. It is of special interest that in this still fairly traditional Islamic society, sex of subject appeared as a major modifying variable.