Assessing Critical-Analytical Listening Skills in Math and Engineering Students: An Exploratory Inquiry of How Analytical Listening Skills Can Positively Impact Learning

In this article, the researchers discuss the implementation of the Ferrari, Lynch, and Vogel Listening Test (FLVLT) to two STEM areas: Mathematics and Computer Science. The goal of the present study was to assess the improvement in students’ mastery of critical listening skills and how listening can help students to retain information. After students were introduced to the subject matter, two specifically tailored listening assessment tools were designed. Pretests and posttests were then administered in an introductory algebra (n = 29 students) and a network fundamentals course (n = 13 students). These tests were administered approximately four weeks apart. The data show that the FLVLT model is reliable for judging students’ critical listening skills and curricular knowledge. Furthermore, a 12% and 20% improvement in students’ ability to match the content pattern to a spoken message was found. In addition, a correlational analysis suggested that improvement in critical listening skills helped students’ learning.     

Categorical Representation of Facial Expressions in the Infant Brain

Categorical perception, demonstrated as reduced discrimination of within‐category relative to between‐category differences in stimuli, has been found in a variety of perceptual domains in adults. To examine the development of categorical perception in the domain of facial expression processing, we used behavioral and event‐related potential (ERP) methods to assess discrimination of within‐category (happy‐happy) and between‐category (happy‐sad) differences in facial expressions in 7‐month‐old infants. Data from a visual paired‐comparison test and recordings of attention‐sensitive ERPs showed no discrimination of facial expressions in the within‐category condition, whereas reliable discrimination was observed in the between‐category condition. The results also showed that face‐sensitive ERPs over occipital‐temporal scalp (P400) were attenuated in the within‐category condition relative to the between‐category condition, suggesting a potential neural basis for the reduced within‐category sensitivity. Together, these results suggest that the neural systems underlying categorical representation of facial expressions emerge during the early stages of postnatal development, before acquisition of language.     

High-cost activism and the worker household: Interests,commitment, and the costs of revolutionary activism in a Philippine plantation region

Theory and Society -     

Passing by the Girls? Remittance Allocation for Educational Expenditures and Social Inequality in Nepal’s Households 2003–2004

We examine the utilization of remittances for expenditures associated with development, specifically children's education. We use household-level data from the Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS II, 2003–04) to separate remittance effects from general household income effects to demonstrate the migration–development relationship reflected in child schooling investment. We find that family-household remittances are spent on education of children, but the expenditures are disproportionately for boys' schooling. Only when girls are members of higher-income households do greater schooling expenditures go to them. This gender-discriminating pattern at the household level contrasts with the call for universal and gender-equal education.     

Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System

This is the second essay in a two‐part series exploring the relationships between mental illness, criminal behavior, and the criminal justice system. The number of mentally ill persons in prisons and jails has increased substantially over the last several decades, and there are currently more people with mental illness behind bars than there are in mental hospitals. In this essay, we place these trends within a broader historical context of the social control of mental illness in the United States. We identify how and why mentally ill persons have come to be overrepresented in the criminal justice system and highlight the unique challenges this population poses for police, courts, and correctional facilities. Finally, we review several recent innovations in policy and practice that may help alleviate that burden of criminal justice involvement on mentally ill offenders, as well as the burden of mentally ill offenders on the criminal justice system.     

Shame and Worker Activism: Emotional Dynamics in Face-to-Face Encounters

Shame – a feeling of social inadequacy and (the anticipation of) public humiliation – may inhibit worker activism. This article discusses the role of shame, as an emotion and a behavioral disposition, in face-to-face confrontations between workers and employers, embedded in an authority structure marked by patron-clientage and personal dependency. It explores how shame may function as an obstacle to face-to-face confrontations and claim-making, and how workers and leftwing activists try to overcome this hurdle.

Fostering and Assessing Critical Listening Skills in the Speech Course

In this article we present the results of two listening assessments conducted in spring 2013 and fall 2013. Our primary goal is of a pedagogical nature and is concerned with the design and the testing of a tool that could measure students’ critical listening skill improvement during the span of a semester. A total of N = 370 students participated in two quasi-experimental studies in which we developed a program to foster and measure critical listening skills. Results show that students’ listening skills improved in specific aspects of critical listening at both times. Effects were larger in the second round due to adjustments to both the course curriculum and the assessment tool. Results support the impact of the intervention by modest to high effect sizes and the construct validity of the assessment tool. We consider the improvement that was found in the current study an important beginning and recommend that the practice of listening skills becomes an integral part of the curriculum at the undergraduate level.     

Transformational leadership climate: Performance linkages, mechanisms, and boundary conditions at the organizational level

Transformational leadership (TFL) climate describes the degree to which leaders throughout an organization engage in TFL behaviors. In this study, we investigate performance linkages, mechanisms, and boundary conditions of TFL climate at the organizational level of analysis. In a sample of 158 independent organizations, 18,094 employees provided data on TFL climate, positive affective climate, trust climate, and employees' task performance behavior and organizational citizenship behavior. In addition, human resource managers rated overall employee productivity. Study results yielded a pattern of moderated mediation for overall employee productivity and employees' aggregate task performance behavior, in that an organization's TFL climate was indirectly (through positive affective climate) related with these outcome variables under conditions of high trust climate, but not under conditions of low trust climate. Further, we found an organization's TFL climate to indirectly relate with employees' aggregate organizational citizenship behavior through positive affective climate, largely independent of the level of trust climate.     

The Future Direction of Social Indicator Research

Social Indicators Research -