The Presentation of Avatars in Second Life: Self and Interaction in Social Virtual Spaces

What do interactions in virtual spaces suggest about everyday life in the digital age? How do interactions in virtual spaces shape everyday life in the digital age? Guided by hypermodern theory, I conduct participant observation in the social virtual world Second Life to provide tentative answers to those questions. I suggest that Second Life is both a social psychological playground where participants enjoy individualistic fantasies and a virtual community where they collaborate on collective projects. When people define the virtual as real, it is real in its consequences. Accordingly, social virtual spaces such as Second Life offer sociologists unique opportunities for research, education, intervention, and hence the development of a virtual imagination.     

Increasing the effectiveness of time-use survey with qualitative methods: The analysis of time–space interaction

Time-use surveys have been rich data sources in many countries for a long time. Turkey was among the countries that realized the potential of time-use surveys quite late and completed the first national survey in 2006. Despite its importance for a wide range of issues and applications, the first survey has flaws in design, which reduce its effectiveness and reliability. This is mostly due to disregarding cultural factors while tracking the methodology of European examples. This study aims to propose more appropriate methods of gathering time-use data in the Turkish context through a field survey in Ankara, the capital city. A mixed methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative methods effectively was applied and used to enrich data. The influence of space use was stressed and leisure activities were utilized to exemplify the use and benefits of mixed methods.     

Parents' perceptions of their children in a context of shared political uncertainty

The study describes the differences and similarities between parents’ feelings and their perception of their children’s feelings in a politically uncertain situation. The study focuses on Israeli families living in Judaea and Samaria (the West Bank) during two periods: the Intifada and the post‐Oslo Agreements years during the first phase of the peace process with the Palestinians. The research combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The results show that most of the feelings evoked by the uncertainty are negative emotions, such as fear, anger, hate, the desire for revenge, and avoidance. These emotions are experienced by parents and, according to the parents’ perceptions, by their children as well. In addition to the correlation between parents’ own experiences and their appraisal of their children’s, the children were perceived as having more negative feelings than the parents. Systemic analysis of the results indicates that the children are often a channel for expression of their parents’ emotions. Based on this finding, suggestions are made regarding intervention with children that takes family processes into account. Some direction for applying the findings of this specific study in other contexts of shared political uncertainty, such as Northern Ireland, are suggested.     

Pragmatics of Self- and Other-Reference in Young Children

During the first years of life, children come to understand and talk about a self separate from others. This study examined self- and other-reference and communicative intents expressed by children and parents in dyadic interaction at 14, 20 and 32 months. Research questions included whether children's early use of self- and other-reference pronouns occurred for expression of particular communicative intents, how use changed with age, and whether parent and child pragmatic expressions of self and other were similar. Results showed that children's early explicit reference to self tended to take the form of I rather than me/my/mine, and was used primarily in making statements about their intended actions, in making requests or proposals to their parents and in stating propositions about the world around them. Children during this developmental period were only beginning to refer to the present other with the pronoun you and these instances occurred primarily in making requests or proposals. Despite age-related increases in pronominal forms and intents, a small set of intents continued to provide the context for most self- and other-reference pronouns. In the communicative contexts in which they explicitly refer to self and other, children did not appear to exclusively mirror those which were observed in parental speech.     

外语课堂互动中的修正性反馈：教师信念与课堂教学行为关系研究

运用个案研究法，聚焦于三位英语专业精读课教师的修正性反馈教学信念和课堂行为，结果发现：不同教师所持的教学信念互不相同。他们的课堂教学行为也存在巨大差异；同一教师持有内部相矛盾的信念；由于教学环境和教师所调用的知识类型的不同。同一教师的教学信念和教学行为之间虽具有一定的联系，但二者差异很大。     

A Note on the Lower Bounds on Maximum Number of Clear Two-Factor Interactions for (2 m−p III) and (2 m−p IV) Designs

ABSTRACT

In the reliability analysis of mechanical repairable equipment subjected to reliability deterioration with operating time, two forms of the non-homogeneous Poisson processes, namely the Power-Law (PL) and the Log-Linear (LL) model, have found general acceptance in the literature. Inferential procedures, conditioned on the assumption of the PL or LL model, underestimate the overall uncertainty about a quantity of interest because the PL and LL models can provide different estimates of the quantity of interest, even when both of them adequately fit the observed data. In this paper, a composite estimation procedure, which uses the PL and LL models as competing models, is proposed in the framework of Bayesian statistics, thus allowing the uncertainty involved in model selection to be considered. A model-free approach is then proposed for incorporating technical information on the failure mechanism into the inferential procedure. Such an approach, which is based on two model-free quantities defined irrespectively of the functional form of the failure model, prevents that the prior information on the failure mechanism can improperly introduce prior probabilities on the adequacy of each model to fit the observed data. Finally, numerical applications are provided to illustrate the proposed procedures.     

互动假说的建立及其对二语习得的启示

回顾互动假说理论的提出,阐述其理论来源,并结合国内学者的研究成果说明互动对二语习得的作用,同时指出当前中国外语教育存在的问题,最后有针对性地为我国的外语教学和学习提出一些建议。     

会话语篇的互动机制及其取效行为

动态语篇观认为,语篇是一种有结构、有意图的符号编码和解码的创造活动,语篇的互动性归根结底体现于说者意图和目的的传达与听者对该意图和目的的领悟和反应过程之中.如果把会话语篇看作是一个完整言语行为,那么听者的领悟及反应是取效行为层面上的具体体现.为此,文章根据Austin的言语行为理论,对会话语篇的意向性、互动机制及其取效行为进行了讨论和分析.     

民国时期以爱国为主题的商标广告略论

商标广告的兴起，是民国时期中国社会经济生活中的一件大事。而以爱国为内容的商标广告又是当时的重要特色。无论是政府还是商家，不管是厂矿还是企业，大多以“爱国”、“国货”为题材来做商标广告。这样的主题选择是所处时代特点所使然，用爱国主义来衬托商标广告收到了良好的经济效益；爱国商标广告的广泛传播又为爱国主义思想和行为的发展提供了载体与平台。商标广告与爱国思想相互影响、相互促进。本文重点以天津《大公报》上所刊商标广告为载体，以现有研究和相关理论为基础，简略论述近代商标广告与爱国思想的共生与互动。     

高校网络课堂教学的优化运用

目前,网络课堂在高校得到广泛的普及与发展,使教育教学改革有了新的突破。但随之而来的各种问题也逐渐暴露出来,为了使网络课堂的优越性得到充分发挥。分析了国内高校网络课堂教学的特点、现存问题及其分析,探讨了高校网络教学的设计原则。