语言标记性研究的回顾与思考

标记理论对母语和目的语差异研究、二语教学等方面均有启示作用。本文试图探讨标记性差异在语言学各层面的表现,标记性确立的标准及其在二语习得中的启示;对虚拟语气等标记性特征的研究表明在二语习得中标记性差异能够更好地解释和预测学习者的困难。     

投入量假设在网络阅读环境下对词汇附带习得的影响

在网络环境下,投入量大的阅读任务比投入量小的阅读任务更能促进词汇附带习得。“投入量”指数大的阅读任务对学习者词汇知识的保持效果更好,而在同等“投入量”指数时,网络环境下的阅读过程的词汇附带习得效果优于传统阅读模式。网络环境下的词汇习得认知心理环境框架和双码理论可有效弥补传统阅读中词汇附带习得的不足之处。     

环境规制对我国造纸业技术创新影响的研究

近年来,伴随造纸业快速发展过程中的环境问题已经引起社会的广泛关注。波特假说认为恰当设计的环境规制可以激发被规制企业的技术创新,进而在环境规制不断加强的同时提高产业的国际竞争力。本文运用理论分析与实证研究相结合的方法,就环境规制对我国造纸产业技术创新的影响进行了深入探讨。结果表明,环境规制对造纸产业技术创新的刺激达到了初期的效果;要想更好地发挥环境规制对造纸产业技术创新的刺激作用,仍然需要一个政策调整与产业适应的过程。     

情状体假说与过去时教学的思考

国内学生学习英语过去时,会出现"知易用难"的情况:识记语法规则不难,然而在语言应用,尤其是即时交际中,容易出现在过去时语境中误用现在时的情况。情状体假说(Aspect Hypothesis)从动词本身的含义角度阐释这一现象,指出一些动词的过去时较易掌握,另一些动词的过去时则较难掌握,其难易程度由动词本身的情状体决定。对两组不同阶段(初级和较高级)的英语学习者的抽样分析验证了情状体假说。在英语教学中,如能依据过去时习得的自然规律安排教学内容,或向学生介绍情状体假说,提醒其过去时学习的难点,可期取得更好的教学效果。     

How can perceived consistency in marketing communications influence customer–brand relationship outcomes?

This paper examines the impact of perceived consistency in marketing communications on customer–brand relationship outcomes. The perception of consistent message and image through different marketing communication tools is one of the basic principles of the integrated marketing communications (IMC) approach. Although literature suggests that IMC might have an influence on customer–brand relationship outcomes, empirical evidence that supports this assumption is still weak and inconclusive. Three main brand relationship outcomes are established for the purpose of the study, i.e. trust, commitment, and loyalty. The relationships between perceived communication consistency and brand outcomes are examined in a hospitality context on a sample of 452 respondents who had to evaluate fast-food brands. Structural Equation Modelling was employed as the main technique for data analysis using Partial Least Squares (PLS). Results reveal that communication consistency has a strong direct impact on brand trust and brand loyalty. Although its influence on affective brand commitment is found to be positive, it is not statistically significant. The interrelationship between three brand relationship outcomes is also corroborated. The study contributes to our understanding of the role of IMC in the relationship marketing paradigm and provides deeper insights into the impact of communication consistency on different relationship outcomes with fast-food brands.     

What are you calling intuitive? Subject heterogeneity as a driver of response times in an impunity game

Studies on the intuitive or deliberate nature of human actions often use time constraints for identification, assuming that constrained individuals fall back to intuitive behavior. This identification strategy disregards individual heterogeneity and self-priming, i.e. the behavioral rule that subjects can form during the instructions phase, and then apply irrespective of the time constraint. We use respondent data from an impunity game as an example of how subject heterogeneity can drive results. 24 respondents face 240 more or less unfair allocation proposals out of a small or large pie and can accept or reject the offer. Upon rejection respondents burn their own money, but not the proposer’s. Respondents decisions are communicated to the proposer. On average, emotional rejections take longer than deliberate acceptances. Including individual heterogeneity, though, we find that subjects who mostly accept (reject) take more time to reject (accept). Faster decisions are the ones conforming with the modal early reaction. We attribute this finding to heterogeneity in self-priming. Since self-priming is orthogonal to time constraints, it has the capacity to invalidate their use in the identification of dual decision modes.     

A Well-Rounded Curriculum in Statistics

Reprinted by special permission of “The Iron Age”, this article describes how the statistical method used in control of product quality can be used as a technique for the control of accidents. Preliminary studies of this new approach indicate that it will aid materially in reducing accident rates, the authors declare.     

Penalized Independence Rule for Testing High-Dimensional Hypotheses

We consider a challenging problem of testing any possible association between a response variable and a set of predictors, when the dimensionality of predictors is much greater than the number of observations. In the context of generalized linear models, a new approach is proposed for testing against high-dimensional alternatives. Our method uses soft-thresholding to suppress stochastic noise and applies the independence rule to borrow strength across the predictors. Moreover, the method can provide a ranked predictor list and automatically select “important” features to retain in the test statistic. We compare the performance of this method with some competing approaches via real data and simulation studies, demonstrating that our method maintains relatively higher power against a wide family of alternatives.     

Nonstationarity and Level Shifts With an Application to Purchasing Power Parity

This study considers testing for a unit root in a time series characterized by a structural change in its mean. The analysis is in the spirit of Perron (1990a), who showed that the existence of such a shift in a stationary time series biases the usual tests for a unit root toward nonrejection. The approach is, however, different given that we suppose the date of the change to be unknown. The statistic of interest is then the minimal t statistic over all possible breakpoints in regressions similar to those proposed by Perron (1990a). Other related statistics are also discussed. We derive and tabulate the asymptotic distributions of interest. Most of the emphasis, however, is given to the tabulation of finite-sample critical values using simulation experiments. Particular attention is given to the effect, on the finite-sample critical values, of various procedures to select the appropriate order of the estimated autoregressions. We apply the tests to analyze the issue of purchasing power parity between the United States and the United Kingdom and also between the United States and Finland, whose real exchange rates are characterized by apparent shifts in level when using particular price indexes.