Impact of question-answering tasks on search processes and reading comprehension

This study examined the effect of (a) high- and low-level questions and (b) reading the text before the questions asked on performance, delayed text recall, and deep text comprehension, as well as on specific text-inspection patterns. Participants were 37 undergraduate students who answered either high- or low-level questions using the software Read&Answer to read and answer questions on the computer screen. Additionally, half of the sample read first a text and then answered the questions (reading-first condition), whereas the other half answered the questions without having read the text in advance (no-reading-first condition). All participants had the text available to search for the answer. Results indicated that high-level questions facilitated deep comprehension but not immediate performance or delayed recall of text, independently of the reading condition, and that high- and low-level questions differentially affected text-inspection patterns.     

Gender Verifications in Sport: From an East/West Antagonism to a North/South Antagonism

This paper aims to analyze gender verifications in sport from a socio-historical approach. These medical controls intended to keep men from competing in women's international competitions. Some female athletes are put through a masculinization trial, because of morphologies and performances judged as too masculine. Facing these athletes who disrupt the representation of a binary construction between the male sex and the female sex, sports institutions attempt to maintain a sexual bi-categorization. More precisely, this paper will present the ‘symbolic’ suppression of tests since 2000. Thereafter, authorities only rely on an aesthetic and visual assessment of female bodies and no longer use tests in a systematic and obligatory fashion. This reveals the moving boundary subjectively plotted between the masculine and the feminine, which become all the more blurred when the ‘race and class markers’ interfere with the ‘sex markers’.     

Intentional thought dynamics during exercise performed until volitional exhaustion

Using a non-linear approach, intentional dynamics of thoughts were examined during constant cycling performed until volitional exhaustion. Participants (n = 12) completed two sessions at 80% W_max. Their (1) intrinsic thought dynamics (i.e., no-imposed thoughts condition) and (2) intentional thought dynamics (i.e., imposed task-unrelated thoughts condition; TUT) were recorded and then classified into four categories: internal and external TUT (TUT-I, TUT-E) and external and internal task-related thoughts (TRT-E, TRT-I). The probability estimates for maintaining each thought category stable, the rate of switching from one category to another, and the entropy dynamics along the testing procedure were assessed and compared through time phase. Friedman ANOVA tests revealed a significant effect of effort increase on thought contents only in the imposed TUT test. While TUT-I probabilities decreased significantly (P < .001) as effort increased, TRT-I probabilities increased (P < .05). Moreover, the entropy to the entire thought dynamics increased at the outset of task performance and decreased upon approaching volitional exhaustion (P < .001). As time spent in constant effort increased, and volitional exhaustion approached, task relatedness (TUT, TRT), direction (internal, external), and entropy of thought contents changed unintentionally providing further evidence for a nonlinear dynamics of attention focus.     

Suprasegmental Phonology Development and Reading Acquisition: A Longitudinal Study

Previous studies implicate suprasegmental phonology in reading acquisition. However, little is known about how suprasegmental sensitivity develops or how it contributes to reading. Here, 130 Spanish primary-school children participated in this 2-year longitudinal study. Nonlinguistic rhythm, lexical-stress sensitivity and metrical-stress sensitivity, along with phonological awareness, vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, and reading aloud, were assessed on five occasions. Results suggest that prosody abilities have different developmental trajectories and that prosody explains unique variance in reading beyond that explained by other factors. There was some evidence that the contribution of each prosody skill occurred at different phases in reading development. Nonlinguistic rhythm, lexical-stress sensitivity, and metrical-stress sensitivity assessed at the end of kindergarten, the start of Grade 1, and the end of Grade 1, respectively, predicted reading performance 6 months later. Nevertheless, sample size and reliability temper the conclusions that can be made. The implications of prosody skills for literacy development are discussed.     

Knocking on employment’s door: internships and job attainment

Higher Education - Undergraduate internships have gained popularity among students, universities, governments and firms since the creation of the European Higher Education Area. However, empirical...     

Hooligans,Casuals, Independents: Decivilisation or Rationalisation of the Activity?

If there is one phenomenon which highlights the lack of role distance of certain sport actors, it is obviously hooliganism. In the mid-1980s, Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning became interested in the role played by modern sports in the ‘civilising process’ and, analysing the violence of sport crowds, introduced a culturalist interpretation of the actions. They were considered to be the work of members of the ‘rough working class’, who were less advanced in the ‘civilising process’ and had still not achieved sufficient self-control. In these groups, characterised by social functioning in the form of a segmentary bond, violence was thought to be a traditional way of resolving conflicts, a significant aspect and essential part of their ethos. This is an over-determined interpretation of the violence of sports crowds which naturalises and socialises this violence. This vision poses a problem, that of the negation of any logic on the part of the actors involved. This viewpoint leads us to consider violence as a social product and a ‘practical accomplishment’, the result of the way in which supporters interpret and live in the world that surrounds them, and, as such, it is the individual and collective motives and purposes that should be investigated.     

Granite desalination using electromigration. Influence of type of granite and saline contaminant

We describe the results of electromigration desalination of two soluble salt-contaminated Galician granites. The efficacy of electromigration, which had not been previously applied to granite, was assessed for two types of granite contaminated with a 20% NaCl solution and seawater. Desalination effectiveness was evaluated as follows: (1) analysis of anode and cathode ion content during testing; (2) analysis of ions at different distances from the electrodes after testing; (3) pH assessment of the stone surfaces; and (4) evaluation of colour changes. Results were very satisfactory; by the end of testing, chloride was reduced by almost 100% in both the NaCl and seawater contaminated samples. Sulfate reduction was also significant, despite this ion's lower mobility. The granite pH values remained close to neutral and colour changes were minimal. The difference in effectiveness of the process for the two types of stone was associated with their dissimilar pore structure.