Sample records for character

  1. Postprocessing for character recognition using pattern features and linguistic information

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yoshikawa, Takatoshi; Okamoto, Masayosi; Horii, Hiroshi

    1993-04-01

    We propose a new method of post-processing for character recognition using pattern features and linguistic information. This method corrects errors in the recognition of handwritten Japanese sentences containing Kanji characters. This post-process method is characterized by having two types of character recognition. Improving the accuracy of the character recognition rate of Japanese characters is made difficult by the large number of characters, and the existence of characters with similar patterns. Therefore, it is not practical for a character recognition system to recognize all characters in detail. First, this post-processing method generates a candidate character table by recognizing the simplest features of characters. Then, it selects words corresponding to the character from the candidate character table by referring to a word and grammar dictionary before selecting suitable words. If the correct character is included in the candidate character table, this process can correct an error, however, if the character is not included, it cannot correct an error. Therefore, if this method can presume a character does not exist in a candidate character table by using linguistic information (word and grammar dictionary). It then can verify a presumed character by character recognition using complex features. When this method is applied to an online character recognition system, the accuracy of character recognition improves 93.5% to 94.7%. This proved to be the case when it was used for the editorials of a Japanese newspaper (Asahi Shinbun).

  2. C-CAT: a computer software used to analyze and select Chinese characters and character components for psychological research.

    PubMed

    Lo, Ming; Hue, Chih-Wei

    2008-11-01

    The Character-Component Analysis Toolkit (C-CAT) software was designed to assist researchers in constructing experimental materials using traditional Chinese characters. The software package contains two sets of character stocks: one suitable for research using literate adults as subjects and one suitable for research using schoolchildren as subjects. The software can identify linguistic properties, such as the number of strokes contained, the character-component pronunciation regularity, and the arrangement of character components within a character. Moreover, it can compute a character's linguistic frequency, neighborhood size, and phonetic validity with respect to a user-selected character stock. It can also search the selected character stock for similar characters or for character components with user-specified linguistic properties.

  3. Post processing for offline Chinese handwritten character string recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, YanWei; Ding, XiaoQing; Liu, ChangSong

    2012-01-01

    Offline Chinese handwritten character string recognition is one of the most important research fields in pattern recognition. Due to the free writing style, large variability in character shapes and different geometric characteristics, Chinese handwritten character string recognition is a challenging problem to deal with. However, among the current methods over-segmentation and merging method which integrates geometric information, character recognition information and contextual information, shows a promising result. It is found experimentally that a large part of errors are segmentation error and mainly occur around non-Chinese characters. In a Chinese character string, there are not only wide characters namely Chinese characters, but also narrow characters like digits and letters of the alphabet. The segmentation error is mainly caused by uniform geometric model imposed on all segmented candidate characters. To solve this problem, post processing is employed to improve recognition accuracy of narrow characters. On one hand, multi-geometric models are established for wide characters and narrow characters respectively. Under multi-geometric models narrow characters are not prone to be merged. On the other hand, top rank recognition results of candidate paths are integrated to boost final recognition of narrow characters. The post processing method is investigated on two datasets, in total 1405 handwritten address strings. The wide character recognition accuracy has been improved lightly and narrow character recognition accuracy has been increased up by 10.41% and 10.03% respectively. It indicates that the post processing method is effective to improve recognition accuracy of narrow characters.

  4. Character trees from transcriptome data: Origin and individuation of morphological characters and the so-called "species signal".

    PubMed

    Musser, Jacob M; Wagner, Günter P

    2015-11-01

    We elaborate a framework for investigating the evolutionary history of morphological characters. We argue that morphological character trees generated by phylogenetic analysis of transcriptomes provide a useful tool for identifying causal gene expression differences underlying the development and evolution of morphological characters. They also enable rigorous testing of different models of morphological character evolution and origination, including the hypothesis that characters originate via divergence of repeated ancestral characters. Finally, morphological character trees provide evidence that character transcriptomes undergo concerted evolution. We argue that concerted evolution of transcriptomes can explain the so-called "species signal" found in several recent comparative transcriptome studies. The species signal is the phenomenon that transcriptomes cluster by species rather than character type, even though the characters are older than the respective species. We suggest the species signal is a natural consequence of concerted gene expression evolution resulting from mutations that alter gene regulatory network interactions shared by the characters under comparison. Thus, character trees generated from transcriptomes allow us to investigate the variational independence, or individuation, of morphological characters at the level of genetic programs. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  5. A Developmental Study of Chinese Children's Word and Character Reading.

    PubMed

    Li, Tong; Wang, Ying; Tong, Xiuhong; McBride, Catherine

    2017-02-01

    To investigate the relationship between Chinese children's character and word reading, 62 third and 50 fifth grade children in Hong Kong were asked to read single characters and words that were comprised of these characters. Results showed that words helped children to recognize characters for both grades of children. Compared to older children, younger children's character reading was more likely to rely on the word that the character appeared in as a component; younger children made more errors in confusing the correct character with words related to it. Younger children's greater rate of meaning-related errors also underscored the role of the word in their character learning. This study confirmed the important role of words in children's character learning, and provided evidence for a developmental pattern of character and word reading in Chinese.

  6. Skipping of Chinese characters does not rely on word-based processing.

    PubMed

    Lin, Nan; Angele, Bernhard; Hua, Huimin; Shen, Wei; Zhou, Junyi; Li, Xingshan

    2018-02-01

    Previous eye-movement studies have indicated that people tend to skip extremely high-frequency words in sentence reading, such as "the" in English and "/de" in Chinese. Two alternative hypotheses have been proposed to explain how this frequent skipping happens in Chinese reading: one assumes that skipping happens when the preview has been fully identified at the word level (word-based skipping); the other assumes that skipping happens whenever the preview character is easy to identify regardless of whether lexical processing has been completed or not (character-based skipping). Using the gaze-contingent display change paradigm, we examined the two hypotheses by substituting the preview of the third character of a four-character Chinese word with the high-frequency Chinese character "/de", which should disrupt the ongoing word-level processing. The character-based skipping hypothesis predicts that this manipulation will enhance the skipping probability of the target character (i.e., the third character of the target word), because the character "/de" has much higher character frequency than the original character. The word-based skipping hypothesis instead predicts a reduction of the skipping probability of the target character because the presence of the character "/de" is lexically infelicitous at word level. The results supported the character-based skipping hypothesis, indicating that in Chinese reading the decision of skipping a character can be made before integrating it into a word.

  7. Use a rabbit or a rhino to sell a carrot? The effect of character-product congruence on children's liking of healthy foods.

    PubMed

    de Droog, Simone M; Buijzen, Moniek; Valkenburg, Patti M

    2012-01-01

    This study investigated whether unfamiliar characters are as effective as familiar characters in stimulating children's affective responses toward healthy foods. In particular, the authors investigated whether an unfamiliar character which is congruent with a product can be as effective as a familiar character. The authors tested 2 types of character-product congruence: conceptual congruence (on the basis of a familiar link), and perceptual congruence (on the basis of color similarity). In a repeated measures design, 166 children (4-6 years old) were exposed to a picture of a carrot combined randomly with 5 different types of character: an (incongruent) familiar character and four unfamiliar characters varying in character-product congruence (i.e., both conceptually and perceptually congruent, conceptual only, perceptual only, and incongruent). The authors measured children's automatic affective responses toward these character-product combinations using a time-constrained task, and elaborate affective responses using a nonconstrained task. Results revealed that the conceptually congruent unfamiliar characters were just as effective as the familiar character in increasing children's automatic affective responses. However, the familiar character triggered the most positive elaborate affective responses. Results are explained in light of processing fluency and parasocial relationship theories.

  8. Integrating Character Education Model With Spiral System In Chemistry Subject

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hartutik; Rusdarti; Sumaryanto; Supartono

    2017-04-01

    Integrating character education is the responsibility of all subject teachers including chemistry teacher. The integration of character education is just administrative requirements so that the character changes are not measurable. The research objective 1) describing the actual conditions giving character education, 2) mapping the character integration of chemistry syllabus with a spiral system, and 3) producing syllabus and guide system integrating character education in chemistry lessons. Of the eighteen value character, each character is mapped to the material chemistry value concepts of class X and repeated the system in class XI and class XII. Spiral system integration means integrating the character values of chemistry subjects in steps from class X to XII repeatedly at different depth levels. Besides developing the syllabus, also made the integration of characters in a learning guide. This research was designed with research and development [3] with the scope of 20 chemistry teachers in Semarang. The focus of the activities is the existence of the current character study, mapping the character values in the syllabus, and assessment of the integration guides of character education. The validity test of Syllabus and Lesson Plans by experts in FGD. The data were taken with questionnaire and interviews, then processed by descriptive analysis. The result shows 1) The factual condition, in general, the teachers designed learning one-time face-to-face with the integration of more than four characters so that behaviour changes and depth of character is poorly controlled, 2) Mapping each character values focused in the syllabus. Meaning, on one or two basic competence in four or five times, face to face, enough integrated with the value of one character. In this way, there are more noticeable changes in students behaviour. Guidance is needed to facilitate the integration of character education for teachers integrating systems. Product syllabus and guidelines validated by experts and the syllabus results averaging 4.37; guidebooks integrating character education in chemistry learning 4.36 with a maximum score of 5. Thus the device is declared valid. Through focus group discussions, each expert gave input for the improvement of learning modules of character education.

  9. Computer-Mediated Materials for Chinese Character Learning.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hsu, Hui-Mei; Gao, Liwei

    2002-01-01

    Reviews four sets of computer-mediated materials for Chinese character learning. These include the following: Write Chinese, Chinese Characters Primer, Animated Chinese Characters, and USC Chinese Character Page. (Author/VWL)

  10. [Revision to origin of northern Artemisia argyi in Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao gangmu)].

    PubMed

    Huang, Lu-qi; Qiu, Le

    2014-12-01

    The origin of northern Artemisia argyi recorded in Compendium of Materia Medica(Bencao gangmu) is Fudao(Chinese characters) in Tangyin county, While there is only Fudao(Chinese characters) instead of Fudao(Chinese characters). Whether indeed Fudao(Chinese characters) is Fudao(Chinese characters)? By reviewing the genuine evolution of A. argyi, doing textual research on Fudao(Chinese characters) and combing with field survey data of national census of Chinese Materia Medica resources, this paper concluded that the word Fudao(Chinese characters) firstly emerged in Figure Canon of Chinese Materia Medica(Bencao tujing) of Susong in Song dynasty and was applied in later generations, but the implication was not clear, then emerged both Tangyin and Fudao(Chinese characters) in Compendium of Materia Medica(Bencao gangmu). The place Fudao(Chinese characters) is one of the graves of Bianque, that existed from Shang and Zhou dynasty and never changed until now, the A. argyi of Tangyin was famous from the grave of Bianque in Fudao(Chinese characters), which could infer that Lishizhen considered Fudao (Chinese characters) was Fudao(Chinese characters) indeed, and the origin of northern A. argyi was Fudao(Chinese characters) in Tangyin county.

  11. Item-specific and generalization effects on brain activation when learning Chinese characters

    PubMed Central

    Deng, Yuan; Booth, James R.; Chou, Tai-Li; Ding, Guo-Sheng; Peng, Dan-Ling

    2009-01-01

    Neural changes related to learning of the meaning of Chinese characters in English speakers were examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We examined item specific learning effects for trained characters, but also the generalization of semantic knowledge to novel transfer characters that shared a semantic radical (part of a character that gives a clue to word meaning, e.g. water for lake) with trained characters. Behavioral results show that acquired semantic knowledge improves performance for both trained and transfer characters. Neuroimaging results show that the left fusiform gyrus plays a central role in the visual processing of orthographic information in characters. The left superior parietal cortex seems to play a crucial role in learning the visual–spatial aspects of the characters because it shows learning related decreases for trained characters, is correlated with behavioral improvement from early to late in learning for the trained characters, and is correlated with better long-term retention for the transfer characters. The inferior frontal gyrus seems to be associated with the efficiency of retrieving and manipulating semantic representations because there are learning related decreases for trained characters and this decrease is correlated with greater behavioral improvement from early to late in learning. PMID:18514678

  12. Is There a Vertical Component to Saccade Targeting in Chinese Reading?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zang, Chuanli; Meng, Hongxia; Liang, Feifei; Bai, Xuejun; Yan, Guoli

    2013-01-01

    In this study, we examined whether Chinese character structure influenced readers' saccadic targeting in Chinese reading. Readers' eye movements were recorded when they read single sentences containing one-character or two-character target words. Both the one-character words and the two constituent characters of two-character words either had a…

  13. Character, Social-Emotional, and Academic Outcomes among Underachieving Elementary School Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Grier, Leslie K.

    2012-01-01

    One purpose of this research was to examine the psychometric properties of a character assessment scale (the Character Assessment for School Age Children; CASAC) based on 6 pillars of character (Josephson Institute, 2009). Many youth development and character education programs utilize some, if not all, of the pillars of character explicitly or…

  14. How familiar characters influence children's judgments about information and products.

    PubMed

    Danovitch, Judith H; Mills, Candice M

    2014-12-01

    Children are exposed to advertisements and products that incorporate familiar characters, such as Dora the Explorer and Bob the Builder, virtually from birth. How does the presence of these characters influence children's judgments about information and products? Three experiments (N=125) explored how 4-year-olds evaluate messages from familiar characters and how their trust in a familiar character's testimony relates to their product preferences. Children endorsed objective and subjective claims made by a familiar character more often than those made by a perceptually similar but unfamiliar character even in situations where they had evidence that the familiar character was unreliable. Children also preferred low-quality products bearing a familiar character's image over high-quality products without a character image up to 74% of the time (whereas control groups preferred the low-quality products less than 6% of the time when they did not include a character image). These findings suggest that young children are powerfully influenced by familiar characters encountered in the media, leaving them vulnerable to advertising messages and clouding their judgments about products. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  15. When Homoplasy Is Not Homoplasy: Dissecting Trait Evolution by Contrasting Composite and Reductive Coding.

    PubMed

    Torres-Montúfar, Alejandro; Borsch, Thomas; Ochoterena, Helga

    2018-05-01

    The conceptualization and coding of characters is a difficult issue in phylogenetic systematics, no matter which inference method is used when reconstructing phylogenetic trees or if the characters are just mapped onto a specific tree. Complex characters are groups of features that can be divided into simpler hierarchical characters (reductive coding), although the implied hierarchical relational information may change depending on the type of coding (composite vs. reductive). Up to now, there is no common agreement to either code characters as complex or simple. Phylogeneticists have discussed which coding method is best but have not incorporated the heuristic process of reciprocal illumination to evaluate the coding. Composite coding allows to test whether 1) several characters were linked resulting in a structure described as a complex character or trait or 2) independently evolving characters resulted in the configuration incorrectly interpreted as a complex character. We propose that complex characters or character states should be decomposed iteratively into simpler characters when the original homology hypothesis is not corroborated by a phylogenetic analysis, and the character or character state is retrieved as homoplastic. We tested this approach using the case of fruit types within subfamily Cinchonoideae (Rubiaceae). The iterative reductive coding of characters associated with drupes allowed us to unthread fruit evolution within Cinchonoideae. Our results show that drupes and berries are not homologous. As a consequence, a more precise ontology for the Cinchonoideae drupes is required.

  16. Talking about a black man: the influence of defendant and character witness race on jurors' use of character evidence.

    PubMed

    Maeder, Evelyn M; Hunt, Jennifer S

    2011-01-01

    To determine whether anti-Black bias influences mock jurors' use of character evidence (i.e., information about a defendant's personality), this study manipulated the race (Black, White) of the defendant and character witness and the type of character evidence presented in a fictitious criminal trial. Two hundred six predominantly White participants read a trial transcript, then made verdicts and trial judgments. Results confirm previous findings that positive character evidence has a limited impact on jurors' judgments, but negative character evidence is misused to evaluate the defendant's guilt. However, participants were more influenced by character evidence that was inconsistent with racial stereotypes. Specifically, positive character evidence had a stronger effect for Black defendants, whereas negative rebuttal evidence had a stronger influence for White defendants. The race of the character witness did not affect judgments. Thus, defendant race may provide a framework that influences how mock jurors process character evidence. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  17. Performance Values: Why They Matter and What Schools Can Do to Foster Their Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Character Education Partnership, 2008

    2008-01-01

    This position paper sets forth an expanded view of character and character education that recognizes the importance of performance character (needed for best work) as well as moral character (needed for ethical behavior). While core ethical values remain foundational in a life of character, character education must also develop students'…

  18. The case for character displacement in plants

    PubMed Central

    Beans, Carolyn M

    2014-01-01

    The evidence for character displacement as a widespread response to competition is now building. This progress is largely the result of the establishment of rigorous criteria for demonstrating character displacement in the animal literature. There are, however, relatively few well-supported examples of character displacement in plants. This review explores the potential for character displacement in plants by addressing the following questions: (1) Why aren't examples of character displacement in plants more common? (2) What are the requirements for character displacement to occur and how do plant populations meet those requirements? (3) What are the criteria for testing the pattern and process of character displacement and what methods can and have been used to address these criteria in the plant literature? (4) What are some additional approaches for studying character displacement in plants? While more research is needed, the few plant systems in which character displacement hypotheses have been rigorously tested suggest that character displacement may play a role in shaping plant communities. Plants are especially amenable to character displacement studies because of the experimental ease with which they can be used in common gardens, selection analyses, and breeding designs. A deeper investigation of character displacement in plants is critical for a more complete understanding of the ecological and evolutionary processes that permit the coexistence of plant species. PMID:24683467

  19. Cultivating characters (moral value) through internalization strategy in science classroom

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ibrahim, M.; Abadi

    2018-01-01

    It is still in a crucial debate that characters play an important learning outcome to be realized by design. So far, most people think that characters were reached as nurturance effect with the assumption that students who are knowledgeable and skillful will have good characters automatically. Lately, obtained evidence that this assumption is not true. Characters should be taught deliberately or by design. This study was designed to culture elementary school students’ characters through science classroom. The teaching-learning process was conducted to facilitate and bridge the students from the known (concrete images: Science phenomena) to the unknown (abstract ideas: characters: care, and tolerance. Characters were observed five weeks before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed from observation of 24 students in internalization strategy-based courses. Qualitative and quantitative data suggested that the internalization strategy that use of science phenomena to represent abstract ideas (characters) in science classroom positively cultivating characters.

  20. Writing affects the brain network of reading in Chinese: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

    PubMed

    Cao, Fan; Vu, Marianne; Chan, Derek Ho Lung; Lawrence, Jason M; Harris, Lindsay N; Guan, Qun; Xu, Yi; Perfetti, Charles A

    2013-07-01

    We examined the hypothesis that learning to write Chinese characters influences the brain's reading network for characters. Students from a college Chinese class learned 30 characters in a character-writing condition and 30 characters in a pinyin-writing condition. After learning, functional magnetic resonance imaging collected during passive viewing showed different networks for reading Chinese characters and English words, suggesting accommodation to the demands of the new writing system through short-term learning. Beyond these expected differences, we found specific effects of character writing in greater activation (relative to pinyin writing) in bilateral superior parietal lobules and bilateral lingual gyri in both a lexical decision and an implicit writing task. These findings suggest that character writing establishes a higher quality representation of the visual-spatial structure of the character and its orthography. We found a greater involvement of bilateral sensori-motor cortex (SMC) for character-writing trained characters than pinyin-writing trained characters in the lexical decision task, suggesting that learning by doing invokes greater interaction with sensori-motor information during character recognition. Furthermore, we found a correlation of recognition accuracy with activation in right superior parietal lobule, right lingual gyrus, and left SMC, suggesting that these areas support the facilitative effect character writing has on reading. Finally, consistent with previous behavioral studies, we found character-writing training facilitates connections with semantics by producing greater activation in bilateral middle temporal gyri, whereas pinyin-writing training facilitates connections with phonology by producing greater activation in right inferior frontal gyrus. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  1. Chinese Readers Can Perceive a Word Even When It's Composed of Noncontiguous Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ma, Guojie; Pollatsek, Alexander; Li, Yugang; Li, Xingshan

    2017-01-01

    This study explored whether readers could recognize a word composed of noncontiguous characters (a "cross-character word") in Chinese reading. All 3 experiments employed Chinese 4-character strings ABCD, where both AB and CD were 2-character words. In the cross-character word condition, AC was a word but in the control condition, AC was…

  2. Visual Similarity of Words Alone Can Modulate Hemispheric Lateralization in Visual Word Recognition: Evidence from Modeling Chinese Character Recognition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hsiao, Janet H.; Cheung, Kit

    2016-01-01

    In Chinese orthography, the most common character structure consists of a semantic radical on the left and a phonetic radical on the right (SP characters); the minority, opposite arrangement also exists (PS characters). Recent studies showed that SP character processing is more left hemisphere (LH) lateralized than PS character processing.…

  3. Acquisition of Chinese characters: the effects of character properties and individual differences among second language learners

    PubMed Central

    Kuo, Li-Jen; Kim, Tae-Jin; Yang, Xinyuan; Li, Huiwen; Liu, Yan; Wang, Haixia; Hyun Park, Jeong; Li, Ying

    2015-01-01

    In light of the dramatic growth of Chinese learners worldwide and a need for cross-linguistic research on Chinese literacy development, this study drew upon theories of visual complexity effect (Su and Samuels, 2010) and dual-coding processing (Sadoski and Paivio, 2013) and investigated (a) the effects of character properties (i.e., visual complexity and radical presence) on character acquisition and (b) the relationship between individual learner differences in radical awareness and character acquisition. Participants included adolescent English-speaking beginning learners of Chinese in the U.S. Following Kuo et al. (2014), a novel character acquisition task was used to investigate the process of acquiring the meaning of new characters. Results showed that (a) characters with radicals and with less visual complexity were easier to acquire than characters without radicals and with greater visual complexity; and (b) individual differences in radical awareness were associated with the acquisition of all types of characters, but the association was more pronounced with the acquisition of characters with radicals. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed. PMID:26379562

  4. A Chinese Character Teaching System Using Structure Theory and Morphing Technology

    PubMed Central

    Sun, Linjia; Liu, Min; Hu, Jiajia; Liang, Xiaohui

    2014-01-01

    This paper proposes a Chinese character teaching system by using the Chinese character structure theory and the 2D contour morphing technology. This system, including the offline phase and the online phase, automatically generates animation for the same Chinese character from different writing stages to intuitively show the evolution of shape and topology in the process of Chinese characters teaching. The offline phase builds the component models database for the same script and the components correspondence database for different scripts. Given two or several different scripts of the same Chinese character, the online phase firstly divides the Chinese characters into components by using the process of Chinese character parsing, and then generates the evolution animation by using the process of Chinese character morphing. Finally, two writing stages of Chinese characters, i.e., seal script and clerical script, are used in experiment to show the ability of the system. The result of the user experience study shows that the system can successfully guide students to improve the learning of Chinese characters. And the users agree that the system is interesting and can motivate them to learn. PMID:24978171

  5. [Landscape character assessment framework in rural area: A case study in Qiaokou, Chang-sha, China].

    PubMed

    Zhang, Qian; Liu, Wen-ping; Yu, Zhen-rong

    2015-05-01

    Based on the concept and methods of landscape character assessment (LCA) in England, this paper applied a complete process of landscape character assessment with a case study in Qiaokou Town, which is located in a typical southern paddy fields area in Changsha City. We drew the landscape character map of Qiaokou Town through desk classification and field survey, identified and compared the key characters of each character area, and proposed suggestions on the improvement and stewardship of landscape characters. The results showed that Qiaokou could be divided into 2 landscape character types and 7 landscape character areas with the main differences in cropland and vegetation pattern as well as aesthetic characters. The case study indicated that LCA could be a critical tool to identify the characteristics in rural area, and provide helpful guidance to protect, restore and maintain the unique culture and characters of rural landscape, which is useful for targeted rural landscape development. In the future, we suggested that the assessment on the effects of landscape construction measures on the ecosystem services should be incorporated in LCA research as well.

  6. Inversion effect in the visual processing of Chinese character: an fMRI study.

    PubMed

    Zhao, Jizheng; Liu, Jiangang; Li, Jun; Liang, Jimin; Feng, Lu; Ai, Lin; Tian, Jie

    2010-07-05

    Chinese people engage long-term processing of characters. It has been demonstrated that the presented orientation affects the perception of several types of stimuli when people have possessed expertise with them, e.g. face, body, and scene. However, the influence of inversion on the neural mechanism of Chinese character processing has not been sufficiently discussed. In the present study, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment is performed to examine the effect of inversion on Chinese character processing, which employs Chinese character, face and house as stimuli. The region of interest analysis demonstrates inversion leads to neural response increases for Chinese character in left fusiform character-preferential area, bilateral fusiform object-preferential area and bilateral occipital object-preferential area, and such inversion-caused changes in the response pattern of characters processing are highly similar to those of faces processing but quiet different from those of houses processing. Whole brain analysis reveals the upright characters recruit several language regions for phonology and semantic processing, however, the inverted characters activated extensive regions related to the visual information processing. Our findings reveal a shift from the character-preferential processing route to the generic object processing steam within visual cortex when the characters are inverted, and suggest that different mechanisms may underlie the upright and the inverted Chinese character, respectively. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. Head capsule characters in the Hymenoptera and their phylogenetic implications

    PubMed Central

    Vilhelmsen, Lars

    2011-01-01

    Abstract The head capsule of a taxon sample of three outgroup and 86 ingroup taxa is examined for characters of possible phylogenetic significance within Hymenoptera. 21 morphological characters are illustrated and scored, and their character evolution explored by mapping them onto a phylogeny recently produced from a large morphological data set. Many of the characters are informative and display unambiguous changes. Most of the character support demonstrated is supportive at the superfamily or family level. In contrast, only few characters corroborate deeper nodes in the phylogeny of Hymenoptera. PMID:22259288

  8. Character Decomposition and Transposition Processes in Chinese Compound Words Modulates Attentional Blink.

    PubMed

    Cao, Hongwen; Gao, Min; Yan, Hongmei

    2016-01-01

    The attentional blink (AB) is the phenomenon in which the identification of the second of two targets (T2) is attenuated if it is presented less than 500 ms after the first target (T1). Although the AB is eliminated in canonical word conditions, it remains unclear whether the character order in compound words affects the magnitude of the AB. Morpheme decomposition and transposition of Chinese two-character compound words can provide an effective means to examine AB priming and to assess combinations of the component representations inherent to visual word identification. In the present study, we examined the processing of consecutive targets in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm using Chinese two-character compound words in which the two characters were transposed to form meaningful words or meaningless combinations (reversible, transposed, or canonical words). We found that when two Chinese characters that form a compound word, regardless of their order, are presented in an RSVP sequence, the likelihood of an AB for the second character is greatly reduced or eliminated compared to when the two characters constitute separate words rather than a compound word. Moreover, the order of the report for the two characters is more likely to be reversed when the normal order of the two characters in a compound word is reversed, especially when the interval between the presentation of the two characters is extremely short. These findings are more consistent with the cognitive strategy hypothesis than the resource-limited hypothesis during character decomposition and transposition of Chinese two-character compound words. These results suggest that compound characters are perceived as a unit, rather than two separate words. The data further suggest that readers could easily understand the text with character transpositions in compound words during Chinese reading.

  9. The Influence of Brand Equity Characters on Children's Food Preferences and Choices.

    PubMed

    McGale, Lauren Sophie; Halford, Jason Christian Grovenor; Harrold, Joanne Alison; Boyland, Emma Jane

    2016-10-01

    To assess the influence of brand equity characters displayed on food packaging on children's food preferences and choices, 2 studies were conducted. Brand equity characters are developed specifically to represent a particular brand or product. Despite existing literature suggesting that promotional characters influence children's food choices, to date, no research has assessed the influence of brand equity characters specifically. We recruited 209 children 4-8 years of age from schools and childcare centers in the UK. In a mixed-measures design, the children were asked to rate their taste preferences and preferred snack choice for 3 matched food pairs, presented either with or without a brand equity character displayed on packaging. Study 1 addressed congruent food-character associations and study 2 addressed incongruent associations. Participants were also asked to rate their recognition and liking of characters used. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests and χ(2) analyses were used where appropriate. Children were significantly more likely to show a preference for foods with a brand equity character displayed on the packaging compared with a matched food without a brand equity character, for both congruent and incongruent food-character associations. The presence of a brand equity character also significantly influenced the children's within-pair preferences, within-pair choices, and overall snack choice (congruent associations only). Displaying brand equity characters promotes unhealthy food choices in children. The findings are consistent with those of studies exploring other types of promotional characters. In the context of a childhood obesity epidemic, the use of brand equity characters in the promotion of foods high in fat, salt, and sugar to children should be restricted. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. Visual capability to receive character information. Part I: How many characters can we recognize at a glance?

    PubMed

    Fukuda, T

    1992-01-01

    A study was made on the capability to receive character information and the factors restricting it. The study showed that the capability indicated by the memory span was limited by the average number of characters for words that are made up of individual characters, and calculated in terms of information quantity, there was no difference among the individual characters. The differences in memory span, depending on the size of the pattern presented, was negligible. The difference in the way characters were arranged produced the difference in memory span saturation. This phenomenon is explained by the nature of the lateral interference effect working among the adjacent characters.

  11. Differences in the Portrayal of Health Risk Behaviors by Black and White Characters in Popular Films.

    PubMed

    Ellithorpe, Morgan E; Bleakley, Amy; Hennessy, Michael; Weitz, Ilana; Jamieson, Patrick; Khurana, Atika

    2017-06-01

    Adolescent exposure to risk in film has been associated with behavior. We coded Black and White character involvement in sex, violence, alcohol use, and tobacco use, and combinations of those behaviors in popular mainstream and Black-oriented films (film n = 63, character n = 426). Health risk portrayals were common, with the majority of characters portraying at least one. Black characters were more likely than Whites to portray sex and alcohol use, while White characters were more likely to portray violence. Within-segment combinations of sex and alcohol were more prevalent for Black characters, while violence and alcohol were more prevalent for Whites. Throughout a film, Black characters were more likely than White characters to portray sex and alcohol, sex and tobacco, and alcohol and tobacco. Risky behaviors are prevalent, but types portrayed differ between Black and White characters. This may have implications for health disparities in Black and White adolescents.

  12. Differences in the Portrayal of Health Risk Behaviors by Black and White Characters in Popular Films

    PubMed Central

    ELLITHORPE, MORGAN E.; BLEAKLEY, AMY; HENNESSY, MICHAEL; WEITZ, ILANA; JAMIESON, PATRICK; KHURANA, ATIKA

    2017-01-01

    Adolescent exposure to risk in film has been associated with behavior. We coded Black and White character involvement in sex, violence, alcohol use, and tobacco use, and combinations of those behaviors in popular mainstream and Black-oriented films (film n = 63, character n = 426). Health risk portrayals were common, with the majority of characters portraying at least one. Black characters were more likely than Whites to portray sex and alcohol use, while White characters were more likely to portray violence. Within-segment combinations of sex and alcohol were more prevalent for Black characters, while violence and alcohol were more prevalent for Whites. Throughout a film, Black characters were more likely than White characters to portray sex and alcohol, sex and tobacco, and alcohol and tobacco. Risky behaviors are prevalent, but types portrayed differ between Black and White characters. This may have implications for health disparities in Black and White adolescents. PMID:28481166

  13. Robust keyword retrieval method for OCRed text

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fujii, Yusaku; Takebe, Hiroaki; Tanaka, Hiroshi; Hotta, Yoshinobu

    2011-01-01

    Document management systems have become important because of the growing popularity of electronic filing of documents and scanning of books, magazines, manuals, etc., through a scanner or a digital camera, for storage or reading on a PC or an electronic book. Text information acquired by optical character recognition (OCR) is usually added to the electronic documents for document retrieval. Since texts generated by OCR generally include character recognition errors, robust retrieval methods have been introduced to overcome this problem. In this paper, we propose a retrieval method that is robust against both character segmentation and recognition errors. In the proposed method, the insertion of noise characters and dropping of characters in the keyword retrieval enables robustness against character segmentation errors, and character substitution in the keyword of the recognition candidate for each character in OCR or any other character enables robustness against character recognition errors. The recall rate of the proposed method was 15% higher than that of the conventional method. However, the precision rate was 64% lower.

  14. Rank-frequency relation for Chinese characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Deng, Weibing; Allahverdyan, Armen E.; Li, Bo; Wang, Qiuping A.

    2014-02-01

    We show that the Zipf's law for Chinese characters perfectly holds for sufficiently short texts (few thousand different characters). The scenario of its validity is similar to the Zipf's law for words in short English texts. For long Chinese texts (or for mixtures of short Chinese texts), rank-frequency relations for Chinese characters display a two-layer, hierarchic structure that combines a Zipfian power-law regime for frequent characters (first layer) with an exponential-like regime for less frequent characters (second layer). For these two layers we provide different (though related) theoretical descriptions that include the range of low-frequency characters (hapax legomena). We suggest that this hierarchic structure of the rank-frequency relation connects to semantic features of Chinese characters (number of different meanings and homographies). The comparative analysis of rank-frequency relations for Chinese characters versus English words illustrates the extent to which the characters play for Chinese writers the same role as the words for those writing within alphabetical systems.

  15. Validity of the growth model of the 'computerized visual perception assessment tool for Chinese characters structures'.

    PubMed

    Wu, Huey-Min; Li, Cheng-Hsaun; Kuo, Bor-Chen; Yang, Yu-Mao; Lin, Chin-Kai; Wan, Wei-Hsiang

    2017-08-01

    Morphological awareness is the foundation for the important developmental skills involved with vocabulary, as well as understanding the meaning of words, orthographic knowledge, reading, and writing. Visual perception of space and radicals in two-dimensional positions of Chinese characters' morphology is very important in identifying Chinese characters. The important predictive variables of special and visual perception in Chinese characters identification were investigated in the growth model in this research. The assessment tool is the "Computerized Visual Perception Assessment Tool for Chinese Characters Structures" developed by this study. There are two constructs, basic stroke and character structure. In the basic stroke, there are three subtests of one, two, and more than three strokes. In the character structure, there are three subtests of single-component character, horizontal-compound character, and vertical-compound character. This study used purposive sampling. In the first year, 551 children 4-6 years old participated in the study and were monitored for one year. In the second year, 388 children remained in the study and the successful follow-up rate was 70.4%. This study used a two-wave cross-lagged panel design to validate the growth model of the basic stroke and the character structure. There was significant correlation of the basic stroke and the character structure at different time points. The abilities in the basic stroke and in the character structure steadily developed over time for preschool children. Children's knowledge of the basic stroke effectively predicted their knowledge of the basic stroke and the character structure. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Character Interviews Help Bring Literature to Life.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Swindall, Vickie; Cantrell, R. Jeffrey

    1999-01-01

    Describes "Character Interviews," a class activity that guides children, especially reluctant readers, to the meaning of a story through a thoughtful understanding of character as they consider a character's emotions and motives, to respond to a question as that character would. Describes the interview process. Offers sample interviews…

  17. Character Education/Formation in Catholic Schools (K-12).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Marine, Robert A.

    Noting that character formation within Catholic education has undergone several changes over the last 10 years, this paper examines character education and character formation as they are currently implemented in Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Section 1 of the paper considers the definition of character, and traces the development of…

  18. Building Character through Literacy with Children's Literature

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Almerico, Gina M.

    2014-01-01

    Character education is described as curriculum specifically developed to teach children about the quality and traits of good character. One means in which children can learn about good character is through the pages of high quality children's literature. In this study, the author defines the characteristics of an effective character development…

  19. Degraded character recognition based on gradient pattern

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Babu, D. R. Ramesh; Ravishankar, M.; Kumar, Manish; Wadera, Kevin; Raj, Aakash

    2010-02-01

    Degraded character recognition is a challenging problem in the field of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The performance of an optical character recognition depends upon printed quality of the input documents. Many OCRs have been designed which correctly identifies the fine printed documents. But, very few reported work has been found on the recognition of the degraded documents. The efficiency of the OCRs system decreases if the input image is degraded. In this paper, a novel approach based on gradient pattern for recognizing degraded printed character is proposed. The approach makes use of gradient pattern of an individual character for recognition. Experiments were conducted on character image that is either digitally written or a degraded character extracted from historical documents and the results are found to be satisfactory.

  20. The Involvement of Occipital and Inferior Frontal Cortex in the Phonological Learning of Chinese Characters

    PubMed Central

    Deng, Yuan; Chou, Tai-li; Ding, Guo-sheng; Peng, Dan-ling; Booth, James R.

    2016-01-01

    Neural changes related to the learning of the pronunciation of Chinese characters in English speakers were examined using fMRI. We examined the item-specific learning effects for trained characters and the generalization of phonetic knowledge to novel transfer characters that shared a phonetic radical (part of a character that gives a clue to the whole character’s pronunciation) with trained characters. Behavioral results showed that shared phonetic information improved performance for transfer characters. Neuroimaging results for trained characters over learning found increased activation in the right lingual gyrus, and greater activation enhancement in the left inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann’s area 44) was correlated with higher accuracy improvement. Moreover, greater activation for transfer characters in these two regions at the late stage of training was correlated with better knowledge of the phonetic radical in a delayed recall test. The current study suggests that the right lingual gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus are crucial for the learning of Chinese characters and the generalization of that knowledge to novel characters. Left inferior frontal gyrus is likely involved in phonological segmentation, whereas right lingual gyrus may subserve processing visual–orthographic information. PMID:20807053

  1. Neural basis of hierarchical visual form processing of Japanese Kanji characters.

    PubMed

    Higuchi, Hiroki; Moriguchi, Yoshiya; Murakami, Hiroki; Katsunuma, Ruri; Mishima, Kazuo; Uno, Akira

    2015-12-01

    We investigated the neural processing of reading Japanese Kanji characters, which involves unique hierarchical visual processing, including the recognition of visual components specific to Kanji, such as "radicals." We performed functional MRI to measure brain activity in response to hierarchical visual stimuli containing (1) real Kanji characters (complete structure with semantic information), (2) pseudo Kanji characters (subcomponents without complete character structure), (3) artificial characters (character fragments), and (4) checkerboard (simple photic stimuli). As we expected, the peaks of the activation in response to different stimulus types were aligned within the left occipitotemporal visual region along the posterior-anterior axis in order of the structural complexity of the stimuli, from fragments (3) to complete characters (1). Moreover, only the real Kanji characters produced functional connectivity between the left inferotemporal area and the language area (left inferior frontal triangularis), while pseudo Kanji characters induced connectivity between the left inferotemporal area and the bilateral cerebellum and left putamen. Visual processing of Japanese Kanji takes place in the left occipitotemporal cortex, with a clear hierarchy within the region such that the neural activation differentiates the elements in Kanji characters' fragments, subcomponents, and semantics, with different patterns of connectivity to remote regions among the elements.

  2. Movie character smoking and adolescent smoking: who matters more, good guys or bad guys?

    PubMed

    Tanski, Susanne E; Stoolmiller, Mike; Dal Cin, Sonya; Worth, Keilah; Gibson, Jennifer; Sargent, James D

    2009-07-01

    To assess the association between smoking onset and exposure to movie smoking according to character type. A longitudinal, random-digit-dial telephone survey of 6522 US adolescents was performed with movie exposure assessed at 4 time points over 24 months. Adolescents were asked whether they had seen a random subsample of recently released movies, for which we identified smoking by major characters and type of portrayal (divided into negative, positive, and mixed/neutral categories). Multivariate hazard regression analysis was used to assess the independent effects of these exposures on the odds of trying smoking. By the 24-month follow-up survey, 15.9% of baseline never-smokers had tried smoking. Within the sample of movies, 3848 major characters were identified, of whom 69% were male. Smokers represented 22.8% of 518 negative characters, 13.7% of 2486 positive characters, and 21.1% of 844 mixed/neutral characters. Analysis of the crude relationship showed that episodes of negative character smoking exposure had the strongest influence on smoking initiation. However, because most characters were portrayed as positive, exposure to this category was greatest. When the full population effect of each exposure was modeled, each type of character smoking independently affected smoking onset. There was an interaction between negative character smoking and sensation-seeking with stronger response for adolescents lower in sensation-seeking. Character smoking predicts adolescent smoking initiation regardless of character type, which demonstrates the importance of limiting exposure to all movie smoking. Negative character portrayals of smoking have stronger impact on low risk-taking adolescents, undercutting the argument that greater exposure is a marker for adolescent risk-taking behavior.

  3. Movie Character Smoking and Adolescent Smoking: Who Matters More, Good Guys or Bad Guys?

    PubMed Central

    Tanski, Susanne E.; Stoolmiller, Mike; Cin, Sonya Dal; Worth, Keilah; Gibson, Jennifer; Sargent, James D.

    2009-01-01

    Objective To assess the association between smoking onset and exposure to movie smoking according to character type. Methods A longitudinal, random-digit-dial telephone survey of 6522 US adolescents was performed with movie exposure assessed at 4 time points over 24 months. Adolescents were asked whether they had seen a random subsample of recently released movies, for which we identified smoking by major characters and type of portrayal (divided into negative, positive, and mixed/neutral categories). Multivariate hazard regression analysis was used to assess the independent effects of these exposures on the odds of trying smoking. Results By the 24-month follow-up survey, 15.9% of baseline never-smokers had tried smoking. Within the sample of movies, 3848 major characters were identified, of whom 69% were male. Smokers represented 22.8% of 518 negative characters, 13.7% of 2486 positive characters, and 21.1% of 844 mixed/neutral characters. Analysis of the crude relationship showed that episodes of negative character smoking exposure had the strongest influence on smoking initiation. However, because most characters were portrayed as positive, exposure to this category was greatest. When the full population effect of each exposure was modeled, each type of character smoking independently affected smoking onset. There was an interaction between negative character smoking and sensation-seeking with stronger response for adolescents lower in sensation-seeking. Conclusions Character smoking predicts adolescent smoking initiation regardless of character type, which demonstrates the importance of limiting exposure to all movie smoking. Negative character portrayals of smoking have stronger impact on low risk-taking adolescents, undercutting the argument that greater exposure is a marker for adolescent risk-taking behavior. PMID:19564293

  4. Handwritten character recognition using background analysis

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tascini, Guido; Puliti, Paolo; Zingaretti, Primo

    1993-04-01

    The paper describes a low-cost handwritten character recognizer. It is constituted by three modules: the `acquisition' module, the `binarization' module, and the `core' module. The core module can be logically partitioned into six steps: character dilation, character circumscription, region and `profile' analysis, `cut' analysis, decision tree descent, and result validation. Firstly, it reduces the resolution of the binarized regions and detects the minimum rectangle (MR) which encloses the character; the MR partitions the background into regions that surround the character or are enclosed by it, and allows it to define features as `profiles' and `cuts;' a `profile' is the set of vertical or horizontal minimum distances between a side of the MR and the character itself; a `cut' is a vertical or horizontal image segment delimited by the MR. Then, the core module classifies the character by descending along the decision tree on the basis of the analysis of regions around the character, in particular of the `profiles' and `cuts,' and without using context information. Finally, it recognizes the character or reactivates the core module by analyzing validation test results. The recognizer is largely insensible to character discontinuity and is able to detect Arabic numerals and English alphabet capital letters. The recognition rate of a 32 X 32 pixel character is of about 97% after the first iteration, and of over 98% after the second iteration.

  5. Lexical processing of Chinese sub-character components: Semantic activation of phonetic radicals as revealed by the Stroop effect.

    PubMed

    Yeh, Su-Ling; Chou, Wei-Lun; Ho, Pokuan

    2017-11-17

    Most Chinese characters are compounds consisting of a semantic radical indicating semantic category and a phonetic radical cuing the pronunciation of the character. Controversy surrounds whether radicals also go through the same lexical processing as characters and, critically, whether phonetic radicals involve semantic activation since they can also be characters when standing alone. Here we examined these issues using the Stroop task whereby participants responded to the ink color of the character. The key finding was that Stroop effects were found when the character itself had a meaning unrelated to color, but contained a color name phonetic radical (e.g., "guess", with the phonetic radical "cyan", on the right) or had a meaning associated with color (e.g., "pity", with the phonetic radical "blood" on the right which has a meaning related to "red"). Such Stroop effects from the phonetic radical within a character unrelated to color support that Chinese character recognition involves decomposition of characters into their constituent radicals; with each of their meanings including phonetic radicals activated independently, even though it would inevitably interfere with that of the whole character. Compared with the morphological decomposition in English whereby the semantics of the morphemes are not necessarily activated, the unavoidable semantic activation of phonetic radicals represents a unique feature in Chinese character processing.

  6. An Historical Analysis of Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Watz, Michael

    2011-01-01

    What is termed "character education" in today's world has been called many things throughout the history of education in this country. Character education has been both a formal and informal part of schools. Much of character education in the United States can be closely tied in its roots to the education of character in Europe, which…

  7. Most Likely to Succeed: Seeking Self-Knowledge in the Company of Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gardoqui, Kate Ehrenfeld

    2012-01-01

    In this article, the author describes several innovative activities for engaging students in studies of literary characters: voting on superlatives for characters, creating characters' Facebook profiles, and composing creative dialogs in which characters from different works meet each other. The author points out that it is this self-knowledge…

  8. Technical guide for monitoring selected conditions related to wilderness character

    Treesearch

    Peter Landres; Steve Boutcher; Liese Dean; Troy Hall; Tamara Blett; Terry Carlson; Ann Mebane; Carol Hardy; Susan Rinehart; Linda Merigliano; David N. Cole; Andy Leach; Pam Wright; Deb Bumpus

    2009-01-01

    The purpose of monitoring wilderness character is to improve wilderness stewardship by providing managers a tool to assess how selected actions and conditions related to wilderness character are changing over time. Wilderness character monitoring provides information to help answer two key questions about wilderness character and wilderness stewardship: 1. How is...

  9. Constructing Stylish Characters on Computer Graphics Systems.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goldman, Gary S.

    1980-01-01

    Computer graphics systems typically produce a single, machine-like character font. At most, these systems enable the user to (1) alter the aspect ratio (height-to-width ratio) of the characters, (2) specify a transformation matrix to slant the characters, and (3) define a virtual pen table to change the lineweight of the plotted characters.…

  10. Meeting Characters in Caldecotts: What Does This Mean for Today's Readers?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Koss, Melanie D.; Martinez, Miriam; Johnson, Nancy J.

    2016-01-01

    We examined representations of main characters in Caldecott Award winner and honor books over the past 25 years. Each book containing a human main character was coded for the following features: culture/ethnicity, gender, age, place where character lives, time period in which the character lives, disability, religion, socioeconomic status, and…

  11. Character Counts: Don't Leave Home without It!

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Orrs Elementary School in Griffin-Spalding County, Georgia, was selected as a 2010 National School of Character by the Character Education Partnership (CEP) and was honored at the National Forum of Character Education awards ceremony in San Francisco, California. According to Principal Dexter Martin, character education is more than a phrase or a…

  12. A Study of Character among Collegiate Athletes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Heupel, Jill D.

    2017-01-01

    The idea that sport builds character has been around for a long time. However, sports may not build the type of character once thought. Character of athletes was defined based on differing views held by sport scholars, coaches, athletes, and sport enthusiast. Sport scholars tend to view character of athletes from a moral perspective. Coaches,…

  13. Linking Character Education and Global Understanding through Children's Picture Books

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Helterbran, Valeri R.

    2009-01-01

    Character education has been part of the educational and societal landscape for millennia. Through consensus, school communities teach and model traits that influence the character and moral development of children. Children learn character traits from others--both good and bad--whether that is intended or not. To avoid leaving character education…

  14. Text Extraction from Scene Images by Character Appearance and Structure Modeling

    PubMed Central

    Yi, Chucai; Tian, Yingli

    2012-01-01

    In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to detect text information from natural scene images. Scene text classification and detection are still open research topics. Our proposed algorithm is able to model both character appearance and structure to generate representative and discriminative text descriptors. The contributions of this paper include three aspects: 1) a new character appearance model by a structure correlation algorithm which extracts discriminative appearance features from detected interest points of character samples; 2) a new text descriptor based on structons and correlatons, which model character structure by structure differences among character samples and structure component co-occurrence; and 3) a new text region localization method by combining color decomposition, character contour refinement, and string line alignment to localize character candidates and refine detected text regions. We perform three groups of experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm, including text classification, text detection, and character identification. The evaluation results on benchmark datasets demonstrate that our algorithm achieves the state-of-the-art performance on scene text classification and detection, and significantly outperforms the existing algorithms for character identification. PMID:23316111

  15. Character education in perspective of chemistry pre-service teacher

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Merdekawati, Krisna

    2017-12-01

    As one of the pre-service teacher education programs, Chemistry Education Department Islamic University of Indonesia (UII) is committed to providing quality education. It is an education that can produce competent and characteristic chemistry pre-service teacher. The focus of research is to describe the perception of students as a potential teacher of chemistry on character education and achievement of character education. The research instruments include questionnaires and observation sheets. Research data show that students have understood the importance of character education and committed to organizing character education later in schools. Students have understood the ways in which character education can be used. The students stated that Chemistry Education Department has tried to equip students with character education. The observation result shows that students generally have character as a pre-service teacher.

  16. Convergent and divergent patterns of morphological differentiation provide more evidence for reproductive character displacement in a wood cricket Gryllus fultoni (Orthoptera: Gryllidae)

    PubMed Central

    Jang, Yikweon; Won, Yong-Jin; Choe, Jae Chun

    2009-01-01

    Background In ecological character displacement, traits involved in reproductive isolation may not evolve in arbitrary directions when changes in these traits are by-products of adaptation to an ecological niche. In reproductive character displacement, however, selection acts directly on reproductive characters to enhance the degree of reproductive isolation between sympatric populations. Thus, the direction of change in reproductive characters may be arbitrary in relation to changes in other morphological characters. We characterized both tegminal characters and characters indicative of body size in sympatric and allopatric populations of Gryllus fultoni, a species displaying character displacement in its calling song characters in areas of sympatry with G. vernalis populations, to infer the nature and direction of selection acting on reproductive and morphological characters in sympatry. Results Except for mirror area, the number of teeth in a file, and ovipositor length of G. fultoni, all male and female morphological characters in G. fultoni and G. vernalis exhibited a uniform tendency to decrease in size with increasing latitude. There was no significant variation in female morphological characters between sympatric and allopatric G. fultoni populations. However, males of sympatric and allopatric G. fultoni populations significantly differed in head width, hind femur length, and mirror area even after controlling for clinal factors. Head width and hind femur length of G. fultoni were more similar to those of G. vernalis in sympatric populations than in allopatric populations, resulting in morphological convergence of G. fultoni and G. vernalis in sympatry. However, the mirror area of G. fultoni displayed the divergent pattern in relation to the sympatric G. vernalis populations. Conclusion Divergence-enhancing selection may be acting on mirror area as well as calling song characters, whereas local adaptation or clinal effects may explain variation in other morphological characters in sympatric populations of G. fultoni. This study also suggests that structures and behaviors that directly enhance reproductive isolation may evolve together, independently of other morphological traits. PMID:19183503

  17. Convergent and divergent patterns of morphological differentiation provide more evidence for reproductive character displacement in a wood cricket Gryllus fultoni (Orthoptera: Gryllidae).

    PubMed

    Jang, Yikweon; Won, Yong-Jin; Choe, Jae Chun

    2009-02-01

    In ecological character displacement, traits involved in reproductive isolation may not evolve in arbitrary directions when changes in these traits are by-products of adaptation to an ecological niche. In reproductive character displacement, however, selection acts directly on reproductive characters to enhance the degree of reproductive isolation between sympatric populations. Thus, the direction of change in reproductive characters may be arbitrary in relation to changes in other morphological characters. We characterized both tegminal characters and characters indicative of body size in sympatric and allopatric populations of Gryllus fultoni, a species displaying character displacement in its calling song characters in areas of sympatry with G. vernalis populations, to infer the nature and direction of selection acting on reproductive and morphological characters in sympatry. Except for mirror area, the number of teeth in a file, and ovipositor length of G. fultoni, all male and female morphological characters in G. fultoni and G. vernalis exhibited a uniform tendency to decrease in size with increasing latitude. There was no significant variation in female morphological characters between sympatric and allopatric G. fultoni populations. However, males of sympatric and allopatric G. fultoni populations significantly differed in head width, hind femur length, and mirror area even after controlling for clinal factors. Head width and hind femur length of G. fultoni were more similar to those of G. vernalis in sympatric populations than in allopatric populations, resulting in morphological convergence of G. fultoni and G. vernalis in sympatry. However, the mirror area of G. fultoni displayed the divergent pattern in relation to the sympatric G. vernalis populations. Divergence-enhancing selection may be acting on mirror area as well as calling song characters, whereas local adaptation or clinal effects may explain variation in other morphological characters in sympatric populations of G. fultoni. This study also suggests that structures and behaviors that directly enhance reproductive isolation may evolve together, independently of other morphological traits.

  18. Optical character recognition based on nonredundant correlation measurements.

    PubMed

    Braunecker, B; Hauck, R; Lohmann, A W

    1979-08-15

    The essence of character recognition is a comparison between the unknown character and a set of reference patterns. Usually, these reference patterns are all possible characters themselves, the whole alphabet in the case of letter characters. Obviously, N analog measurements are highly redundant, since only K = log(2)N binary decisions are enough to identify one out of N characters. Therefore, we devised K reference patterns accordingly. These patterns, called principal components, are found by digital image processing, but used in an optical analog computer. We will explain the concept of principal components, and we will describe experiments with several optical character recognition systems, based on this concept.

  19. Electrophysiological evidence of sublexical phonological access in character processing by L2 Chinese learners of L1 alphabetic scripts.

    PubMed

    Yum, Yen Na; Law, Sam-Po; Mo, Kwan Nok; Lau, Dustin; Su, I-Fan; Shum, Mark S K

    2016-04-01

    While Chinese character reading relies more on addressed phonology relative to alphabetic scripts, skilled Chinese readers also access sublexical phonological units during recognition of phonograms. However, sublexical orthography-to-phonology mapping has not been found among beginning second language (L2) Chinese learners. This study investigated character reading in more advanced Chinese learners whose native writing system is alphabetic. Phonological regularity and consistency were examined in behavioral responses and event-related potentials (ERPs) in lexical decision and delayed naming tasks. Participants were 18 native English speakers who acquired written Chinese after age 5 years and reached grade 4 Chinese reading level. Behaviorally, regular characters were named more accurately than irregular characters, but consistency had no effect. Similar to native Chinese readers, regularity effects emerged early with regular characters eliciting a greater N170 than irregular characters. Regular characters also elicited greater frontal P200 and smaller N400 than irregular characters in phonograms of low consistency. Additionally, regular-consistent characters and irregular-inconsistent characters had more negative amplitudes than irregular-consistent characters in the N400 and LPC time windows. The overall pattern of brain activities revealed distinct regularity and consistency effects in both tasks. Although orthographic neighbors are activated in character processing of L2 Chinese readers, the timing of their impact seems delayed compared with native Chinese readers. The time courses of regularity and consistency effects across ERP components suggest both assimilation and accommodation of the reading network in learning to read a typologically distinct second orthographic system.

  20. A menagerie of promotional characters: promoting food to children through food packaging.

    PubMed

    Hebden, Lana; King, Lesley; Kelly, Bridget; Chapman, Kathy; Innes-Hughes, Christine

    2011-01-01

    To determine the extent to which (1) promotional characters are used on food packaging for healthful and less-healthful food and (2) different companies use this persuasive marketing strategy. Cross-sectional supermarket audit of all food and beverages featuring promotional characters on the packaging. Three Australian supermarket chains. Frequency of observed products, package size, nutritional composition. Frequencies and bivariate analyses was conducted. Nutritional composition (healthful vs less healthful) was analyzed by character type and company type, that is, whether the company was signed to the Australian Food and Grocery Council Responsible Marketing to Children Initiative (RMCI) signatory. Products featuring promotional characters on packaging (n = 352) were predominantly less-healthful food and beverages (70%). [corrected]. Nutritional composition varied significantly by character type, with 69% of products with sportspersons, celebrities, or movie tie-ins being healthful, compared with 38% of licensed and 16% [corrected] of company-owned characters. Only 13 of the 75 companies using characters on packaging were RMCI signatory. Promotional characters are largely used on food packaging to promote less-healthful food to children. Most of these characters are company-owned characters that are not subject to any form of regulation in Australia. Further efforts to limit this form of marketing to children are required. Copyright © 2011 Society for Nutrition Education. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. The influence of media characters on children's food choices.

    PubMed

    Kotler, Jennifer A; Schiffman, Jennifer M; Hanson, Katherine G

    2012-01-01

    Two experiments were conducted to assess the role of media characters in influencing children's food choices; the first focused on children's self-reported preference, whereas the second focused on actual choice. The results of the experiments suggest that popular characters can make a difference in encouraging children to select one food over another. In the first experiment, children were more likely to indicate a preference for one food over another when one was associated with characters that they liked and with whom they were familiar. This effect was particularly strong when a sugary or salty snack branded by a favored character was competing with a healthier option branded by an unknown character or no character. Alternatively, when children were asked to choose between a healthy food and a sugary or salty snack, branding of the healthy food with a favored character did not significantly change appeal of that healthy snack. However, when foods within the same category (i.e., 2 vegetables, 2 fruits, or 2 grains) were asked to compete against each other, character branding strongly influenced children's food choice. Findings from the second experiment suggest that children are more willing to try more pieces of a healthy food if a favored character, in comparison with an unknown character, is promoting that food.

  2. [Difficulty of young children of understanding emotion dissimulation].

    PubMed

    Perron, Mélanie; Gosselin, Pierre

    2009-12-01

    The authors investigated the understanding of emotion dissimulation in school-age children. Sixty participants were read short stories in which a main character expressed an emotion or hid an emotion from other characters. The participants were asked to identify the emotion felt by the main characters and to indicate the facial expressions they would display. Then they were asked what emotions the main characters felt while they were displaying these expressions, and what the beliefs of the other story characters would be as to the emotion felt by the main characters. The results revealed that children from 5 to 6 years of age have a partial understanding of emotion dissimulation. They were accurate in finding the emotion felt by the main characters when questioned the first time. They were also accurate in choosing the expressions the main characters would display to hide their emotions. However, they were often inaccurate as to the felt emotions of the main characters when questioned the second time. Compared with 9- and 10-year-olds, the younger children had more difficulty understanding the simultaneous character of felt and displayed emotions. Five- and 6-year-olds were also less accurate than the older children when asked to indicate the beliefs of the other characters in stories where felt emotions were hidden. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

  3. Character Strengths and Intellectual and Developmental Disability: A Strengths-Based Approach from Positive Psychology

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Niemiec, Ryan M.; Shogren, Karrie A.; Wehmeyer, Michael L.

    2017-01-01

    There has been limited focus in the disability field on assessing and intervening to promote strengths of character. However, character strengths have received significant attention in the broader field of positive psychology. This paper provides an overview of the growing science of character strengths and explores why and how character strengths…

  4. Do Sports Build or Reveal Character?--An Exploratory Study at One Service Academy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Doty, Joseph P.; Lumpkin, Angela

    2010-01-01

    Whether participating in sports builds character and if character can be measured continues to be a debated, though important, topic. Almost daily we read or hear about athletes displaying poor character. Most research shows that as the level of sport competition increases, the level of character decreases. However, participating in sports, at any…

  5. "Invitations" to Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Milliren, Al; Messer, Mitchell H.

    2009-01-01

    If we are to help children develop character, we have to go beyond offering a character education class once or twice each month. We actually have to validate character when we see it or hear about it happening. Through the use of a new strategy called "focused invitations," counselors and teachers can focus on the 36 core components of character.…

  6. A Missing Piece of the Contemporary Character Education Puzzle: The Individualisation of Moral Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chen, Yi-Lin

    2013-01-01

    The different sorts of virtuous people who display various virtues to a remarkable degree have brought the issue of individualisation of moral character to the forefront. It signals a more personal dimension of character development which is notoriously ignored in the current discourse on character education. The case is made that since in…

  7. A Developmental Study of Chinese Children's Word and Character Reading

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Li, Tong; Wang, Ying; Tong, Xiuhong; McBride, Catherine

    2017-01-01

    To investigate the relationship between Chinese children's character and word reading, 62 third and 50 fifth grade children in Hong Kong were asked to read single characters and words that were comprised of these characters. Results showed that words helped children to recognize characters for both grades of children. Compared to older children,…

  8. Character order processing in Chinese reading.

    PubMed

    Gu, Junjuan; Li, Xingshan; Liversedge, Simon P

    2015-02-01

    We explored how character order information is encoded in isolated word processing or Chinese sentence reading in 2 experiments using a masked priming paradigm and a gaze-contingent display-change paradigm. The results showed that response latencies in the lexical decision task and reading times on the target word region were longer in the unrelated condition (the prime or the preview was unrelated with the target word) than the transposed-character condition (the prime or the preview was a transposition of the 2 characters of the target word), which were respectively longer than in the identity condition (the prime or preview was identical to the target word). These results show that character order is encoded at an early stage of processing in Chinese reading, but character position encoding was not strict. We also found that character order encoding was similar for single-morpheme and multiple-morpheme words, suggesting that morphemic status does not affect character order encoding. The current results represent an early contribution to our understanding of character order encoding during Chinese reading.

  9. Emphasizing the only character: emphasis, attention and contrast.

    PubMed

    Chen, Lijing; Yang, Yufang

    2015-03-01

    In conversations, pragmatic information such as emphasis is important for identifying the speaker's/writer's intention. The present research examines the cognitive processes involved in emphasis processing. Participants read short discourses that introduced one or two character(s), with the character being emphasized or non-emphasized in subsequent texts. Eye movements showed that: (1) early processing of the emphasized word was facilitated, which may have been due to increased attention allocation, whereas (2) late integration of the emphasized character was inhibited when the discourse involved only this character. These results indicate that it is necessary to include other characters as contrastive characters to facilitate the integration of an emphasized character, and support the existence of a relationship between Emphasis and Contrast computation. Taken together, our findings indicate that both attention allocation and contrast computation are involved in emphasis processing, and support the incremental nature of sentence processing and the importance of contrast in discourse comprehension. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  10. EEG character identification using stimulus sequences designed to maximize mimimal hamming distance.

    PubMed

    Fukami, Tadanori; Shimada, Takamasa; Forney, Elliott; Anderson, Charles W

    2012-01-01

    In this study, we have improved upon the P300 speller Brain-Computer Interface paradigm by introducing a new character encoding method. Our concept in detection of the intended character is not based on a classification of target and nontarget responses, but based on an identifaction of the character which maximize the difference between P300 amplitudes in target and nontarget stimuli. Each bit included in the code corresponds to flashing character, '1', and non-flashing, '0'. Here, the codes were constructed in order to maximize the minimum hamming distance between the characters. Electroencephalography was used to identify the characters using a waveform calculated by adding and subtracting the response of the target and non-target stimulus according the codes respectively. This stimulus presentation method was applied to a 3×3 character matrix, and the results were compared with that of a conventional P300 speller of the same size. Our method reduced the time until the correct character was obtained by 24%.

  11. Visual Similarity of Words Alone Can Modulate Hemispheric Lateralization in Visual Word Recognition: Evidence From Modeling Chinese Character Recognition.

    PubMed

    Hsiao, Janet H; Cheung, Kit

    2016-03-01

    In Chinese orthography, the most common character structure consists of a semantic radical on the left and a phonetic radical on the right (SP characters); the minority, opposite arrangement also exists (PS characters). Recent studies showed that SP character processing is more left hemisphere (LH) lateralized than PS character processing. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether this is due to phonetic radical position or character type frequency. Through computational modeling with artificial lexicons, in which we implement a theory of hemispheric asymmetry in perception but do not assume phonological processing being LH lateralized, we show that the difference in character type frequency alone is sufficient to exhibit the effect that the dominant type has a stronger LH lateralization than the minority type. This effect is due to higher visual similarity among characters in the dominant type than the minority type, demonstrating the modulation of visual similarity of words on hemispheric lateralization. Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

  12. Parafoveal preview benefit in unspaced and spaced Chinese reading.

    PubMed

    Cui, Lei; Drieghe, Denis; Bai, Xuejun; Yan, Guoli; Liversedge, Simon P

    2014-01-01

    In an eye movement experiment during reading, we compared parafoveal preview benefit during the reading of Chinese sentences either in the familiar, unspaced format or with spaces inserted between the words. Single-character words or the first of a two-character word were either presented normally or were replaced by a pseudocharacter in the preview. Results indicate that word spacing increased the parafoveal preview benefit but only for the one-character target words. We hypothesized that the incorrect preview of the first character of the two-character word prevented parafoveal processing of the ensuing character(s), effectively nullifying any benefits from the spacing. Our results suggest that word boundary demarcation allows for more precise focusing of attention.

  13. A Japanese logographic character frequency list for cognitive science research.

    PubMed

    Chikamatsu, N; Yokoyama, S; Nozaki, H; Long, E; Fukuda, S

    2000-08-01

    This paper describes a Japanese logographic character (kanji) frequency list, which is based on an analysis of the largest recently available corpus of Japanese words and characters. This corpus comprised a full year of morning and evening editions of a major newspaper, containing more than 23 million kanji characters and more than 4,000 different kanji characters. This paper lists the 3,000 most frequent kanji characters, as well as an analysis of kanji usage and correlations between the present list and previous Japanese frequency lists. The authors believe that the present list will help researchers more accurately and efficiently control the selection of kanji characters in cognitive science research and interpret related psycholinguistic data.

  14. Hidden Markov models for character recognition.

    PubMed

    Vlontzos, J A; Kung, S Y

    1992-01-01

    A hierarchical system for character recognition with hidden Markov model knowledge sources which solve both the context sensitivity problem and the character instantiation problem is presented. The system achieves 97-99% accuracy using a two-level architecture and has been implemented using a systolic array, thus permitting real-time (1 ms per character) multifont and multisize printed character recognition as well as handwriting recognition.

  15. The Involvement of Occipital and Inferior Frontal Cortex in the Phonological Learning of Chinese Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Deng, Yuan; Chou, Tai-li; Ding, Guo-sheng; Peng, Dan-ling; Booth, James R.

    2011-01-01

    Neural changes related to the learning of the pronunciation of Chinese characters in English speakers were examined using fMRI. We examined the item-specific learning effects for trained characters and the generalization of phonetic knowledge to novel transfer characters that shared a phonetic radical (part of a character that gives a clue to the…

  16. The Effect of Realistic Appearance of Virtual Characters in Immersive Environments - Does the Character's Personality Play a Role?

    PubMed

    Zibrek, Katja; Kokkinara, Elena; Mcdonnell, Rachel

    2018-04-01

    Virtual characters that appear almost photo-realistic have been shown to induce negative responses from viewers in traditional media, such as film and video games. This effect, described as the uncanny valley, is the reason why realism is often avoided when the aim is to create an appealing virtual character. In Virtual Reality, there have been few attempts to investigate this phenomenon and the implications of rendering virtual characters with high levels of realism on user enjoyment. In this paper, we conducted a large-scale experiment on over one thousand members of the public in order to gather information on how virtual characters are perceived in interactive virtual reality games. We were particularly interested in whether different render styles (realistic, cartoon, etc.) would directly influence appeal, or if a character's personality was the most important indicator of appeal. We used a number of perceptual metrics such as subjective ratings, proximity, and attribution bias in order to test our hypothesis. Our main result shows that affinity towards virtual characters is a complex interaction between the character's appearance and personality, and that realism is in fact a positive choice for virtual characters in virtual reality.

  17. Recognition of handwritten similar Chinese characters by self-growing probabilistic decision-based neural network.

    PubMed

    Fu, H C; Xu, Y Y; Chang, H Y

    1999-12-01

    Recognition of similar (confusion) characters is a difficult problem in optical character recognition (OCR). In this paper, we introduce a neural network solution that is capable of modeling minor differences among similar characters, and is robust to various personal handwriting styles. The Self-growing Probabilistic Decision-based Neural Network (SPDNN) is a probabilistic type neural network, which adopts a hierarchical network structure with nonlinear basis functions and a competitive credit-assignment scheme. Based on the SPDNN model, we have constructed a three-stage recognition system. First, a coarse classifier determines a character to be input to one of the pre-defined subclasses partitioned from a large character set, such as Chinese mixed with alphanumerics. Then a character recognizer determines the input image which best matches the reference character in the subclass. Lastly, the third module is a similar character recognizer, which can further enhance the recognition accuracy among similar or confusing characters. The prototype system has demonstrated a successful application of SPDNN to similar handwritten Chinese recognition for the public database CCL/HCCR1 (5401 characters x200 samples). Regarding performance, experiments on the CCL/HCCR1 database produced 90.12% recognition accuracy with no rejection, and 94.11% accuracy with 6.7% rejection, respectively. This recognition accuracy represents about 4% improvement on the previously announced performance. As to processing speed, processing before recognition (including image preprocessing, segmentation, and feature extraction) requires about one second for an A4 size character image, and recognition consumes approximately 0.27 second per character on a Pentium-100 based personal computer, without use of any hardware accelerator or co-processor.

  18. A tripartite taxonomy of character: Evidence for intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intellectual competencies in children

    PubMed Central

    Park, Daeun; Tsukayama, Eli; Goodwin, Geoffrey P.; Patrick, Sarah; Duckworth, Angela L.

    2017-01-01

    Other than cognitive ability, what competencies should schools promote in children? How are they organized, and to what extent do they predict consequential outcomes? Separate theoretical traditions have suggested interpersonal, intrapersonal, and intellectual dimensions, reflecting how children relate to other people, manage their own goals and impulses, and engage with ideas, respectively. However, very little work has examined character empirically. In the current investigation, we partnered with middle schools that had previously identified character strengths relevant in their communities. Across three longitudinal, prospective studies, we examined the factor structure of character, associations with intelligence and Big Five personality traits, and predictive validity for consequential outcomes like peer relations, class participation, and report card grades. In Study 1, teachers rated their students on behaviors exemplifying character strengths as they played out in students’ daily lives. Exploratory factor analyses yielded a three-factor structure consisting of interpersonal (interpersonal self-control, gratitude, social intelligence), intellectual (zest, curiosity), and intrapersonal (academic self-control, grit) factors of character. In Study 2, children rated their own behavior and completed a test of cognitive ability. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the same three-factor structure, and these factors were only weakly associated with cognitive ability. In Study 3, teachers provided character ratings; in parallel, students completed measures of character as well as Big Five personality factors. As expected, intellectual, interpersonal, and intrapersonal character factors related to Big Five openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, respectively. Across studies, positive peer relations were most consistently predicted by interpersonal character, class participation by intellectual character, and report card grades by intrapersonal character. Collectively, our findings support a tripartite taxonomy of character in the school context. PMID:29051684

  19. A tripartite taxonomy of character: Evidence for intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intellectual competencies in children.

    PubMed

    Park, Daeun; Tsukayama, Eli; Goodwin, Geoffrey P; Patrick, Sarah; Duckworth, Angela L

    2017-01-01

    Other than cognitive ability, what competencies should schools promote in children? How are they organized, and to what extent do they predict consequential outcomes? Separate theoretical traditions have suggested interpersonal, intrapersonal, and intellectual dimensions, reflecting how children relate to other people, manage their own goals and impulses, and engage with ideas, respectively. However, very little work has examined character empirically. In the current investigation, we partnered with middle schools that had previously identified character strengths relevant in their communities. Across three longitudinal, prospective studies, we examined the factor structure of character, associations with intelligence and Big Five personality traits, and predictive validity for consequential outcomes like peer relations, class participation, and report card grades. In Study 1, teachers rated their students on behaviors exemplifying character strengths as they played out in students' daily lives. Exploratory factor analyses yielded a three-factor structure consisting of interpersonal (interpersonal self-control, gratitude, social intelligence), intellectual (zest, curiosity), and intrapersonal (academic self-control, grit) factors of character. In Study 2, children rated their own behavior and completed a test of cognitive ability. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the same three-factor structure, and these factors were only weakly associated with cognitive ability. In Study 3, teachers provided character ratings; in parallel, students completed measures of character as well as Big Five personality factors. As expected, intellectual, interpersonal, and intrapersonal character factors related to Big Five openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, respectively. Across studies, positive peer relations were most consistently predicted by interpersonal character, class participation by intellectual character, and report card grades by intrapersonal character. Collectively, our findings support a tripartite taxonomy of character in the school context.

  20. Influence of Cartoon Media Characters on Children's Attention to and Preference for Food and Beverage Products.

    PubMed

    Ogle, Andrew D; Graham, Dan J; Lucas-Thompson, Rachel G; Roberto, Christina A

    2017-02-01

    Over-consuming unhealthful foods and beverages contributes to pediatric obesity and associated diseases. Food marketing influences children's food preferences, choices, and intake. To examine whether adding licensed media characters to healthful food/beverage packages increases children's attention to and preference for these products. We hypothesized that children prefer less- (vs more-) healthful foods, and pay greater attention to and preferentially select products with (vs without) media characters regardless of nutritional quality. We also hypothesized that children prefer more-healthful products when characters are present over less-healthful products without characters. On a computer, participants viewed food/beverage pairs of more-healthful and less-healthful versions of similar products. The same products were shown with and without licensed characters on the packaging. An eye-tracking camera monitored participant gaze, and participants chose which product they preferred from each of 60 pairs. Six- to 9-year-old children (n=149; mean age=7.36, standard deviation=1.12) recruited from the Twin Cities, MN, area in 2012-2013. Visual attention and product choice. Attention to products was compared using paired-samples t tests, and product choice was analyzed with single-sample t tests. Analyses of variance were conducted to test for interaction effects of specific characters and child sex and age. Children paid more attention to products with characters and preferred less-healthful products. Contrary to our prediction, children chose products without characters approximately 62% of the time. Children's choices significantly differed based on age, sex, and the specific cartoon character displayed, with characters in this study being preferred by younger boys. Results suggest that putting licensed media characters on more-healthful food/beverage products might not encourage all children to make healthier food choices, but could increase selection of healthy foods among some, particularly younger children, boys, and those who like the featured character(s). Effective use likely requires careful demographic targeting. Copyright © 2017 Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Mathematical morphology-based shape feature analysis for Chinese character recognition systems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Pai, Tun-Wen; Shyu, Keh-Hwa; Chen, Ling-Fan; Tai, Gwo-Chin

    1995-04-01

    This paper proposes an efficient technique of shape feature extraction based on the application of mathematical morphology theory. A new shape complexity index for preclassification of machine printed Chinese Character Recognition (CCR) is also proposed. For characters represented in different fonts/sizes or in a low resolution environment, a more stable local feature such as shape structure is preferred for character recognition. Morphological valley extraction filters are applied to extract the protrusive strokes from four sides of an input Chinese character. The number of extracted local strokes reflects the shape complexity of each side. These shape features of characters are encoded as corresponding shape complexity indices. Based on the shape complexity index, data base is able to be classified into 16 groups prior to recognition procedures. The performance of associating with shape feature analysis reclaims several characters from misrecognized character sets and results in an average of 3.3% improvement of recognition rate from an existing recognition system. In addition to enhance the recognition performance, the extracted stroke information can be further analyzed and classified its own stroke type. Therefore, the combination of extracted strokes from each side provides a means for data base clustering based on radical or subword components. It is one of the best solutions for recognizing high complexity characters such as Chinese characters which are divided into more than 200 different categories and consist more than 13,000 characters.

  2. Flying to Neverland: How readers tacitly judge norms during comprehension.

    PubMed

    Foy, Jeffrey E; Gerrig, Richard J

    2014-11-01

    As readers gain experience with specific narrative worlds, they accumulate information that allows them to experience events as normal or unusual within those worlds. In this article, we contrast two accounts for how readers access information about specific narrative worlds to make tacit judgments of normalcy. We conducted two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants read stories about an ordinary character (e.g., a police officer in Boston) or a familiar fantastic character (e.g., Superman). Each story described a realistic event (e.g., the character being killed by bullets) or a fantastic event (e.g., bullets bouncing off the character's chest). Participants were faster to read events that were consistent with their prior knowledge about the story world. In Experiments 2a and 2b, participants read stories about familiar fantastic characters, unfamiliar fantastic characters (e.g., a Kryptonian named Dev-em), and unfamiliar ordinary characters. In Experiment 2a, participants were equally fast to read about the familiar and unfamiliar fantastic characters experiencing fantastic events, both of which were read faster than the unfamiliar ordinary characters sentences. In Experiment 2b, participants were fastest to read about unfamiliar ordinary characters experiencing realistic events and were equally slow for familiar and unfamiliar fantastic characters. Our experiments provide evidence that readers routinely use inductive reasoning to go beyond their prior knowledge when reading fictional narratives, affecting whether they experience events as normal or unusual.

  3. The effect of character contextual diversity on eye movements in Chinese sentence reading.

    PubMed

    Chen, Qingrong; Zhao, Guoxia; Huang, Xin; Yang, Yiming; Tanenhaus, Michael K

    2017-12-01

    Chen, Huang, et al. (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2017) found that when reading two-character Chinese words embedded in sentence contexts, contextual diversity (CD), a measure of the proportion of texts in which a word appears, affected fixation times to words. When CD is controlled, however, frequency did not affect reading times. Two experiments used the same experimental designs to examine whether there are frequency effects of the first character of two-character words when CD is controlled. In Experiment 1, yoked triples of characters from a control group, a group matched for character CD that is lower in frequency, and a group matched in frequency with the control group, but higher in character CD, were rotated through the same sentence frame. In Experiment 2 each character from a larger set was embedded in a separate sentence frame, allowing for a larger difference in log frequency compared to Experiment 1 (0.8 and 0.4, respectively). In both experiments, early and later eye movement measures were significantly shorter for characters with higher CD than for characters with lower CD, with no effects of character frequency. These results place constraints on models of visual word recognition and suggest ways in which Chinese can be used to tease apart the nature of context effects in word recognition and language processing in general.

  4. Replaying evolutionary transitions from the dental fossil record

    PubMed Central

    Harjunmaa, Enni; Seidel, Kerstin; Häkkinen, Teemu; Renvoisé, Elodie; Corfe, Ian J.; Kallonen, Aki; Zhang, Zhao-Qun; Evans, Alistair R.; Mikkola, Marja L.; Salazar-Ciudad, Isaac; Klein, Ophir D.; Jernvall, Jukka

    2014-01-01

    The evolutionary relationships of extinct species are ascertained primarily through the analysis of morphological characters. Character inter-dependencies can have a substantial effect on evolutionary interpretations, but the developmental underpinnings of character inter-dependence remain obscure because experiments frequently do not provide detailed resolution of morphological characters. Here we show experimentally and computationally how gradual modification of development differentially affects characters in the mouse dentition. We found that intermediate phenotypes could be produced by gradually adding ectodysplasin A (EDA) protein in culture to tooth explants carrying a null mutation in the tooth-patterning gene Eda. By identifying development-based character interdependencies, we show how to predict morphological patterns of teeth among mammalian species. Finally, in vivo inhibition of sonic hedgehog signalling in Eda null teeth enabled us to reproduce characters deep in the rodent ancestry. Taken together, evolutionarily informative transitions can be experimentally reproduced, thereby providing development-based expectations for character state transitions used in evolutionary studies. PMID:25079326

  5. On the information content of discrete phylogenetic characters.

    PubMed

    Bordewich, Magnus; Deutschmann, Ina Maria; Fischer, Mareike; Kasbohm, Elisa; Semple, Charles; Steel, Mike

    2017-12-16

    Phylogenetic inference aims to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of different species based on genetic (or other) data. Discrete characters are a particular type of data, which contain information on how the species should be grouped together. However, it has long been known that some characters contain more information than others. For instance, a character that assigns the same state to each species groups all of them together and so provides no insight into the relationships of the species considered. At the other extreme, a character that assigns a different state to each species also conveys no phylogenetic signal. In this manuscript, we study a natural combinatorial measure of the information content of an individual character and analyse properties of characters that provide the maximum phylogenetic information, particularly, the number of states such a character uses and how the different states have to be distributed among the species or taxa of the phylogenetic tree.

  6. Consciousness and abilities of dream characters observed during lucid dreaming.

    PubMed

    Tholey, P

    1989-04-01

    A description of several phenomenological experiments is given. These were done to investigate of which cognitive accomplishments dream characters are capable in lucid dreams. Nine male experienced lucid dreamers participated as subjects. They were directed to set different tasks to dream characters they met while lucid dreaming. Dream characters were asked to draw or write, to name unknown words, to find rhyme words, to make verses, and to solve arithmetic problems. Part of the dream characters actually agreed to perform the tasks and were successful, although the arithmetic accomplishments were poor. From the phenomenological findings, nothing contradicts the assumption that dream characters have consciousness in a specific sense. Herefrom the conclusion was drawn, that in lucid dream therapy communication with dream characters should be handled as if they were rational beings. Finally, several possibilities of assessing the question, whether dream characters possess consciousness, can be examined with the aid of psychophysiological experiments.

  7. Visual Field Differences in Visual Word Recognition Can Emerge Purely from Perceptual Learning: Evidence from Modeling Chinese Character Pronunciation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hsiao, Janet Hui-wen

    2011-01-01

    In Chinese orthography, a dominant character structure exists in which a semantic radical appears on the left and a phonetic radical on the right (SP characters); a minority opposite arrangement also exists (PS characters). As the number of phonetic radical types is much greater than semantic radical types, in SP characters the information is…

  8. 29 CFR 18.404 - Character evidence not admissible to prove conduct; exceptions; other crimes.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ...; exceptions; other crimes. 18.404 Section 18.404 Labor Office of the Secretary of Labor RULES OF PRACTICE AND... crimes. (a) Character evidence generally. Evidence of a person's character or a trait of character is not... evidence of the character of a witness, as provided in §§ 18.607, 18.608, and 18.609. (b) Other crimes...

  9. A comparison study between MLP and convolutional neural network models for character recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ben Driss, S.; Soua, M.; Kachouri, R.; Akil, M.

    2017-05-01

    Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems have been designed to operate on text contained in scanned documents and images. They include text detection and character recognition in which characters are described then classified. In the classification step, characters are identified according to their features or template descriptions. Then, a given classifier is employed to identify characters. In this context, we have proposed the unified character descriptor (UCD) to represent characters based on their features. Then, matching was employed to ensure the classification. This recognition scheme performs a good OCR Accuracy on homogeneous scanned documents, however it cannot discriminate characters with high font variation and distortion.3 To improve recognition, classifiers based on neural networks can be used. The multilayer perceptron (MLP) ensures high recognition accuracy when performing a robust training. Moreover, the convolutional neural network (CNN), is gaining nowadays a lot of popularity for its high performance. Furthermore, both CNN and MLP may suffer from the large amount of computation in the training phase. In this paper, we establish a comparison between MLP and CNN. We provide MLP with the UCD descriptor and the appropriate network configuration. For CNN, we employ the convolutional network designed for handwritten and machine-printed character recognition (Lenet-5) and we adapt it to support 62 classes, including both digits and characters. In addition, GPU parallelization is studied to speed up both of MLP and CNN classifiers. Based on our experimentations, we demonstrate that the used real-time CNN is 2x more relevant than MLP when classifying characters.

  10. Character Apps for Children's Snacks: Effects of Character Awareness on Snack Selection and Consumption Patterns

    PubMed Central

    Cotto, Caroline E.; Calvert, Sandra L.

    2018-01-01

    Abstract Objective: Media characters are used to market snacks that are typically of poor nutritional value, which has been linked to childhood obesity. This study examines whether children's snack selections and consumption patterns are influenced by an app depicting a popular children's media character, as well as the role that children's awareness of the character plays. The results can increase our understanding of how to encourage healthier snack selection and consumption in newer game-based marketing venues, such as apps. Materials and Methods: Four- and 5-year-old children (N = 132) played a bowling game on an iPad with no character or with a character holding either healthier or unhealthy snacks. After app-play, children selected and consumed healthier or unhealthy snacks. Children's awareness of the character was measured by children's verbalizations of the character's name during or after app-play. Results: An ordered logistic regression found no significant effect of treatment conditions compared with the control group. Within treatment conditions, awareness of the character led to selection and consumption of more healthy snacks in the healthier condition (odds ratio β = 10.340, P = 0.008), and of unhealthy snacks in the unhealthy condition (odds ratio β = 0.228, P = 0.033), but children were unaware that the character influenced their decisions. Conclusions: Results suggest that young children will choose and consume healthier, not just unhealthy, products when they are aware that a popular character in an app is associated with the snack, potentially leading to healthier eating patterns. PMID:29297713

  11. Character Apps for Children's Snacks: Effects of Character Awareness on Snack Selection and Consumption Patterns.

    PubMed

    Putnam, Marisa M; Cotto, Caroline E; Calvert, Sandra L

    2018-04-01

    Media characters are used to market snacks that are typically of poor nutritional value, which has been linked to childhood obesity. This study examines whether children's snack selections and consumption patterns are influenced by an app depicting a popular children's media character, as well as the role that children's awareness of the character plays. The results can increase our understanding of how to encourage healthier snack selection and consumption in newer game-based marketing venues, such as apps. Four- and 5-year-old children (N = 132) played a bowling game on an iPad with no character or with a character holding either healthier or unhealthy snacks. After app-play, children selected and consumed healthier or unhealthy snacks. Children's awareness of the character was measured by children's verbalizations of the character's name during or after app-play. An ordered logistic regression found no significant effect of treatment conditions compared with the control group. Within treatment conditions, awareness of the character led to selection and consumption of more healthy snacks in the healthier condition (odds ratio β = 10.340, P = 0.008), and of unhealthy snacks in the unhealthy condition (odds ratio β = 0.228, P = 0.033), but children were unaware that the character influenced their decisions. Results suggest that young children will choose and consume healthier, not just unhealthy, products when they are aware that a popular character in an app is associated with the snack, potentially leading to healthier eating patterns.

  12. College students' perceptions of individuals with anorexia and bulimia nervosa.

    PubMed

    Wingfield, Natalie; Kelly, Nichole; Serdar, Kasey; Shivy, Victoria A; Mazzeo, Suzanne E

    2011-05-01

    Eating disorders (EDs) are highly stigmatized conditions. This study explored factors hypothesized to influence this stigmatization including ethnicity, gender, ED subtype, and proposed etiology. Undergraduates (N = 235) read scenarios depicting fictional characters varying on ethnicity, gender ED subtype, and etiology. Participants reported perceptions of each character, and completed the EAT-26 and the Level-of-Contact scale. Characters with BN were viewed as more responsible for their ED and more self-destructive than those with AN, who were viewed as more self-controlled. Characters with a sociocultural etiology were rated as most likely to recover. Characters with a biological etiology were viewed as more likeable than characters with an ambiguous etiology. Characters in the ambiguous group were viewed as more self-destructive, more responsible for their ED, and less self-controlled. Differences in participants' perceptions of the characters also emerged when examining ethnicity and gender. Finally, participants' own ED symptoms and their level of contact with EDs were associated with viewing characters as more similar and self-controlled. Findings highlight the need for increased education about ED etiology and course. Copyright © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  13. Research on Chinese characters display of airborne MFD based on GL studio

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Zhile; Dong, Junyu; Hu, Wenting; Cui, Yipeng

    2018-04-01

    GL Studio cannot display Chinese characters during developing the airborne MFD, this paper propose a method of establishing a Chinese character font with GB2312 encoding, establish the font table and the display unit of Chinese characters based on GL Studio. Abstract the storage and display data model of Chinese characters, parse the GB encoding of the corresponding Chinese characters that MFD received, find the coordinates of the Chinese characters in the font table, establish the dynamic control model and the dynamic display model of Chinese characters based on the display unit of Chinese characters. In GL Studio and VC ++.NET environment, this model has been successfully applied to develop the airborne MFD in a variety of mission simulators. This method has successfully solved the problem that GL Studio software cannot develop MFD software of Chinese domestic aircraft and can also be used for other professional airborne MFD development tools such as IDATA. It has been proved by experiments that this is a fast effective scalable and reconfigurable method of developing both actual equipment and simulators.

  14. The Development of Character Education Model Based on Strengthening Social Capital for Students of State Islamic University (UIN) Sunan Kalijaga

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sumarni, Sri M.; Dardiri, Achmad; Zuchdi, Darmiyati

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of the study is to find out the concept of character education model that is appropriate for students to build character of students of UIN Sunan Kalijaga and also to find out the teaching materials design of character education based on social capital to build character of students of UIN Sunan Kalijaga. This research is motivated by…

  15. Document Form and Character Recognition using SVM

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Park, Sang-Sung; Shin, Young-Geun; Jung, Won-Kyo; Ahn, Dong-Kyu; Jang, Dong-Sik

    2009-08-01

    Because of development of computer and information communication, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) has been developing. There is OCR (Optical Character Recognition) of Pattern recognition technology for EDI. OCR contributed to changing many manual in the past into automation. But for the more perfect database of document, much manual is needed for excluding unnecessary recognition. To resolve this problem, we propose document form based character recognition method in this study. Proposed method is divided into document form recognition part and character recognition part. Especially, in character recognition, change character into binarization by using SVM algorithm and extract more correct feature value.

  16. Iterative cross section sequence graph for handwritten character segmentation.

    PubMed

    Dawoud, Amer

    2007-08-01

    The iterative cross section sequence graph (ICSSG) is an algorithm for handwritten character segmentation. It expands the cross section sequence graph concept by applying it iteratively at equally spaced thresholds. The iterative thresholding reduces the effect of information loss associated with image binarization. ICSSG preserves the characters' skeletal structure by preventing the interference of pixels that causes flooding of adjacent characters' segments. Improving the structural quality of the characters' skeleton facilitates better feature extraction and classification, which improves the overall performance of optical character recognition (OCR). Experimental results showed significant improvements in OCR recognition rates compared to other well-established segmentation algorithms.

  17. Group discriminatory power of handwritten characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tomai, Catalin I.; Kshirsagar, Devika M.; Srihari, Sargur N.

    2003-12-01

    Using handwritten characters we address two questions (i) what is the group identification performance of different alphabets (upper and lower case) and (ii) what are the best characters for the verification task (same writer/different writer discrimination) knowing demographic information about the writer such as ethnicity, age or sex. The Bhattacharya distance is used to rank different characters by their group discriminatory power and the k-nn classifier to measure the individual performance of characters for group identification. Given the tasks of identifying the correct gender/age/ethnicity or handedness, the accumulated performance of characters varies between 65% and 85%.

  18. The esthetic preference of Chinese typefaces--an event-related potential study.

    PubMed

    Li, Rui; Qin, Ruilin; Zhang, Junsong; Wu, Junjie; Zhou, Changle

    2015-02-19

    Emotional stimuli such as pictures, logos, geometric shapes, etc can evoke human esthetic preference from previous neuroesthetic studies. Chinese characters can be considered as emotional stimuli as they have an important property: typeface. Intuitively, the emotional meaning of Chinese characters can cause esthetic preference. However, whether a typeface can cause esthetic preference or not from an empirical perspective is still unknown. To address this issue, participants׳ event-related potential (ERP) waves are recorded while they are presented a series of Chinese characters in different typefaces. Participants are asked to distinguish specific target from the others. Afterwards, from the Chinese characters presented in this task, participants are asked individually to select the characters they like the most and dislike the most. By recording the ERP responses (a response of implicit preference to Chinese characters themselves) during the experiment to different typefaces of Chinese characters, we find a significant difference between disliked and all characters in the frontal-central area in the 200-300 ms window after the stimulus׳ onset. In the 400-600 ms window, after the stimulus׳ onset, a significant bias for disliked characters emerges in frontal, central, parietal and occipital areas. Our results suggest that people could make a rapid, implicit esthetic preference for the typefaces of Chinese characters. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  19. Character complexity and redundancy in writing systems over human history.

    PubMed

    Changizi, Mark A; Shimojo, Shinsuke

    2005-02-07

    A writing system is a visual notation system wherein a repertoire of marks, or strokes, is used to build a repertoire of characters. Are there any commonalities across writing systems concerning the rules governing how strokes combine into characters; commonalities that might help us identify selection pressures on the development of written language? In an effort to answer this question we examined how strokes combine to make characters in more than 100 writing systems over human history, ranging from about 10 to 200 characters,and including numerals, abjads, abugidas, alphabets and syllabaries from five major taxa: Ancient Near-Eastern, European, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Southeast Asian. We discovered underlying similarities in two fundamental respects. (i) The number of strokes per characters is approximately three, independent of the number of characters in the writing system; numeral systems are the exception, having on average only two strokes per character. (ii) Characters are ca. 50% redundant, independent of writing system size; intuitively, this means that acharacter's identity can be determined even when half of its strokes are removed. Because writing systems are under selective pressure to have characters that are easy for the visual system to recognize and for the motor system to write, these fundamental commonalities may be a fingerprint of mechanisms underlying the visuo-motor system.

  20. Character complexity and redundancy in writing systems over human history

    PubMed Central

    Changizi, Mark A.; Shimojo, Shinsuke

    2005-01-01

    A writing system is a visual notation system wherein a repertoire of marks, or strokes, is used to build a repertoire of characters. Are there any commonalities across writing systems concerning the rules governing how strokes combine into characters; commonalities that might help us identify selection pressures on the development of written language? In an effort to answer this question we examined how strokes combine to make characters in more than 100 writing systems over human history, ranging from about 10 to 200 characters, and including numerals, abjads, abugidas, alphabets and syllabaries from five major taxa: Ancient Near-Eastern, European, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Southeast Asian. We discovered underlying similarities in two fundamental respects.The number of strokes per characters is approximately three, independent of the number of characters in the writing system; numeral systems are the exception, having on average only two strokes per character.Characters are ca. 50% redundant, independent of writing system size; intuitively, this means that a character’s identity can be determined even when half of its strokes are removed.Because writing systems are under selective pressure to have characters that are easy for the visual system to recognize and for the motor system to write, these fundamental commonalities may be a fingerprint of mechanisms underlying the visuo–motor system. PMID:15705551

  1. Effects of flicker rate, complexity, and color combinations of Chinese characters and backgrounds on visual search performance with varying flicker types.

    PubMed

    Huang, Kuo-Chen; Lin, Rung-Tai; Wu, Chih-Fu

    2011-08-01

    This study investigated the effects of number of strokes in Chinese characters, flicker rate, flicker type, and character/background color combination on search performance. 37 participants ages 14 to 18 years were randomly assigned to each flicker-type condition. The search field contained 36 characters arranged in a 6 x 6 matrix. Participants were asked to search for the target characters among the surrounding distractors and count how many target characters were displayed in the search array. Analysis indicated that the character/background color combination significantly affected search times. The color combinations of white/purple and white/green yielded search times greater than those for black/white and black/yellow combinations. A significant effect for flicker type on search time was also identified. Rotating characters facilitated search time, compared with twinkling ones. The number of strokes and the flicker rates also had positive effects on search performances. For flicker rate, the search accuracy for 0.5 Hz was greater than that for 1.0 Hz, and the latter was also greater than that for 2.0 Hz. Results are applicable to web advertisement designs containing dynamic characters, in terms of how to best capture readers' attention by various means of dynamic character presentation.

  2. Impact of Animated Spokes-Characters in Print Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising: An Elaboration Likelihood Model Approach.

    PubMed

    Bhutada, Nilesh S; Rollins, Brent L; Perri, Matthew

    2017-04-01

    A randomized, posttest-only online survey study of adult U.S. consumers determined the advertising effectiveness (attitude toward ad, brand, company, spokes-characters, attention paid to the ad, drug inquiry intention, and perceived product risk) of animated spokes-characters in print direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs and the moderating effects of consumers' involvement. Consumers' responses (n = 490) were recorded for animated versus nonanimated (human) spokes-characters in a fictitious DTC ad. Guided by the elaboration likelihood model, data were analyzed using a 2 (spokes-character type: animated/human) × 2 (involvement: high/low) factorial multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). The MANCOVA indicated significant main effects of spokes-character type and involvement on the dependent variables after controlling for covariate effects. Of the several ad effectiveness variables, consumers only differed on their attitude toward the spokes-characters between the two spokes-character types (specifically, more favorable attitudes toward the human spokes-character). Apart from perceived product risk, high-involvement consumers reacted more favorably to the remaining ad effectiveness variables compared to the low-involvement consumers, and exhibited significantly stronger drug inquiry intentions during their next doctor visit. Further, the moderating effect of consumers' involvement was not observed (nonsignificant interaction effect between spokes-character type and involvement).

  3. Integrity and virtue: The forming of good character

    PubMed Central

    Mitchell, Louise A.

    2015-01-01

    Moral character is formed by one's actions. The habits, actions, and emotional responses of the person of good character all are united and directed toward the moral and the good. Because human beings are body/soul unities, actions of the body are actions of the self, that is, human beings are self-possessing, self-governing, and self-determining. In order to be of good character, one must know the good, act in morally good ways, and be disposed and inclined toward the good through the development of virtues. Character and action are intertwined so intimately that one's professional duties, or even what is perceived by others as one's duties, cannot override one's conscience without negatively affecting (and changing) one's character. For the physician to be of good character, it is vital that he or she follow his or her conscience in all things: in private life and also in his or her profession, i.e., in the treatment of patients. Lay summary: Character cannot be separated from the person. To be of good character means that one’s habits, actions, and emotional responses all are united and directed toward the moral and the good. In this, public actions cannot be separated from private actions. Both sets of actions affect one’s character. For example, a physician believes use of contraceptives to be immoral yet prescribes them in the office because he or she feels a duty to provide what the patient asks for, or a pharmacist who believes abortion to be immoral fills prescriptions for the abortifacient RU-486. These public acts affect one’s character even if one’s private belief is the opposite of the action. They leave traces on one’s character. Not only do actions reflect the goodness or badness of one’s character, one’s actions also change one’s character. The more one does an immoral action or recommends an immoral action for others, the more it becomes part of one’s character to be the type of person who condones that immoral action. In order to be of good character one must not only know and desire the good, one must also pursue it in both private and public actions. Virtue is an aid in this; it is the act of good character. Growing in the virtues, especially prudence (knowing what to seek and what to avoid) forms good character. What is at stake is the integrity of the person. The physician who believes that use of contraception is immoral must also act in ways that display that belief and avoid actions that promote contraception use by his or her patients. PMID:25999613

  4. The Inversion Effect for Chinese Characters is Modulated by Radical Organization.

    PubMed

    Luo, Canhuang; Chen, Wei; Zhang, Ye

    2017-06-01

    In studies of visual object recognition, strong inversion effects accompany the acquisition of expertise and imply the involvement of configural processing. Chinese literacy results in sensitivity to the orthography of Chinese characters. While there is some evidence that this orthographic sensitivity results in an inversion effect, and thus involves configural processing, that processing might depend on exact orthographic properties. Chinese character recognition is believed to involve a hierarchical process, involving at least two lower levels of representation: strokes and radicals. Radicals are grouped into characters according to certain types of structure, i.e. left-right structure, top-bottom structure, or simple characters with only one radical by itself. These types of radical structures vary in both familiarity, and in hierarchical level (compound versus simple characters). In this study, we investigate whether the hierarchical-level or familiarity of radical-structure has an impact on the magnitude of the inversion effect. Participants were asked to do a matching task on pairs of either upright or inverted characters with all the types of structure. Inversion effects were measured based on both reaction time and response sensitivity. While an inversion effect was observed in all 3 conditions, the magnitude of the inversion effect varied with radical structure, being significantly larger for the most familiar type of structure: characters consisting of 2 radicals organized from left to right. These findings indicate that character recognition involves extraction of configural structure as well as radical processing which play different roles in the processing of compound characters and simple characters.

  5. The depressive character.

    PubMed

    Kahn, E

    1975-01-01

    The depressive character is characterized by perpetual and unsuccessful efforts to maintain self-esteem and to avoid a sense of helplessness. Such individuals suffer from chronic depression which may or may not be masked, but which permeates their character. Although the condition is among the commonest seen in many of our clinics and practices, it remains without a generally accepted diagnostic form. It is suggested that the essential, clinical, dynamic, and structural features of the depressive character are: (1) consistently low self-esteem and a sense of helplessness, dependent object relations and chronic guilt; (2) self-directed aggression and masochism are frequent but not invariable; (3) extensive use of the mechanism of denial is as common as the previously described obsessional defenses seen in patients subject to psychotic depression; (4) often the depressive character suffers from intense oral envy; (5) depressive character traits may help to ward off any of the basic anxieties, namely, object loss, loss of love, castration anxiety, and superego anxiety (guilt) (6) the depressive character may be similar to a number of related disorders, namely, the obsessional character, hysterical characters with a large oral component, and depressive borderline states; (7) sensitivity to loss, sadness, and fragility of self-esteem makes the depressive character especially vulnerable to regression into overt depression; (8) the persistence of oral incorporative mechanisms, ambivalent, dependent object relations, ego versus superego tension with depressive affect, and sensitivity to loss are characteristic of the ego of the depressive character.

  6. BanglaLekha-Isolated: A multi-purpose comprehensive dataset of Handwritten Bangla Isolated characters.

    PubMed

    Biswas, Mithun; Islam, Rafiqul; Shom, Gautam Kumar; Shopon, Md; Mohammed, Nabeel; Momen, Sifat; Abedin, Anowarul

    2017-06-01

    BanglaLekha-Isolated, a Bangla handwritten isolated character dataset is presented in this article. This dataset contains 84 different characters comprising of 50 Bangla basic characters, 10 Bangla numerals and 24 selected compound characters. 2000 handwriting samples for each of the 84 characters were collected, digitized and pre-processed. After discarding mistakes and scribbles, 1,66,105 handwritten character images were included in the final dataset. The dataset also includes labels indicating the age and the gender of the subjects from whom the samples were collected. This dataset could be used not only for optical handwriting recognition research but also to explore the influence of gender and age on handwriting. The dataset is publicly available at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/hf6sf8zrkc/2.

  7. Building innovative and creative character through mathematics

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Suyitno, Hardi; Suyitno, Amin

    2018-03-01

    21st century is predicted as the century with rapid development in all aspects of life. People require creative and innovative character to exist. Specifically, mathematics has been given to students from the kindergarten until the middle school. Thus, building character through mathematics should begin since the early age. The problem is how to build creative and innovative character through mathematics education? The goal expected from this question is to build innovative and creative characters to face the challenges of the 21st century. This article discusses the values of mathematics, the values in mathematics education, innovative and creative character, and the integration of these values in teaching mathematics that support the innovative and creative character building, and applying the values in structurely programmed, measurable, and applicable learning activities.

  8. Gender differences and the effect of contextual features on game enjoyment and responses.

    PubMed

    Lin, Shu-Fang

    2010-10-01

    This article explores the effect of gender and contextual features on emotional reactions, identification toward game characters, and game enjoyment. Two aspects of contextual features are specifically examined: the moral justification of game characters and violence. An experiment was conducted by allowing participants to play either a morally justified character of a non-violent game, a morally justified character of a violent game, or a morally unjustified character of a violent game. The results show that participants felt less guilty and identified with the characters more when playing the morally justified characters of the non-violent game. Furthermore, males and females demonstrate different patterns of enjoyment to different contextual features of video games. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

  9. Text String Detection from Natural Scenes by Structure-based Partition and Grouping

    PubMed Central

    Yi, Chucai; Tian, YingLi

    2012-01-01

    Text information in natural scene images serves as important clues for many image-based applications such as scene understanding, content-based image retrieval, assistive navigation, and automatic geocoding. However, locating text from complex background with multiple colors is a challenging task. In this paper, we explore a new framework to detect text strings with arbitrary orientations in complex natural scene images. Our proposed framework of text string detection consists of two steps: 1) Image partition to find text character candidates based on local gradient features and color uniformity of character components. 2) Character candidate grouping to detect text strings based on joint structural features of text characters in each text string such as character size differences, distances between neighboring characters, and character alignment. By assuming that a text string has at least three characters, we propose two algorithms of text string detection: 1) adjacent character grouping method, and 2) text line grouping method. The adjacent character grouping method calculates the sibling groups of each character candidate as string segments and then merges the intersecting sibling groups into text string. The text line grouping method performs Hough transform to fit text line among the centroids of text candidates. Each fitted text line describes the orientation of a potential text string. The detected text string is presented by a rectangle region covering all characters whose centroids are cascaded in its text line. To improve efficiency and accuracy, our algorithms are carried out in multi-scales. The proposed methods outperform the state-of-the-art results on the public Robust Reading Dataset which contains text only in horizontal orientation. Furthermore, the effectiveness of our methods to detect text strings with arbitrary orientations is evaluated on the Oriented Scene Text Dataset collected by ourselves containing text strings in non-horizontal orientations. PMID:21411405

  10. Clusters of landscape characters as a way of communication in characterisation: A study from side, Turkey.

    PubMed

    Atik, Meryem; Işıklı, Rabia Canay; Ortaçeşme, Veli

    2016-11-01

    Landscape is the natural and cultural features of the environment. Characters are distinct recognisable patterns in the landscape that were comprised as a result of human and nature interactions. Landscape characters demonstrate precise features and values that exist in the current environment and provide information for those who use, manage, live in, benefit from and enjoy the landscape. The aim of this study was to interpret landscape characters with a common set of terminology and to evaluate clusters of characters and so to discuss how they can be used as a communicative tool in characterisation in the case of Side District in Turkish Mediterranean. Number of 35 landscape characters were analysed as variables with aesthetic, cultural, value, perceptual and natural features so to communicate between characters and landscapes. The study results demonstrated that clusters of landscape characters were divided into 3 character groups; mainly cultural, mainly cultural and a joint cluster of aesthetic, and perceptual and value aspects while spatial composition of landscape character groups was named and mapped as natural, rural, historical, urban and buffer. Aesthetic features were the most prominent elements as they combined in all sub-clusters giving the evidence that landscape is a visual construct. However, landscape characters which can be either outstanding or ordinary and their clusters provide exchange of information about relationship between man and nature, natural and cultural, objective and subjective for planners and managers, for public and professionals. Landscape characters become a body of message which ultimately offers a framework for planners and decision makers for both maintenance and protection of landscapes. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  11. Text string detection from natural scenes by structure-based partition and grouping.

    PubMed

    Yi, Chucai; Tian, YingLi

    2011-09-01

    Text information in natural scene images serves as important clues for many image-based applications such as scene understanding, content-based image retrieval, assistive navigation, and automatic geocoding. However, locating text from a complex background with multiple colors is a challenging task. In this paper, we explore a new framework to detect text strings with arbitrary orientations in complex natural scene images. Our proposed framework of text string detection consists of two steps: 1) image partition to find text character candidates based on local gradient features and color uniformity of character components and 2) character candidate grouping to detect text strings based on joint structural features of text characters in each text string such as character size differences, distances between neighboring characters, and character alignment. By assuming that a text string has at least three characters, we propose two algorithms of text string detection: 1) adjacent character grouping method and 2) text line grouping method. The adjacent character grouping method calculates the sibling groups of each character candidate as string segments and then merges the intersecting sibling groups into text string. The text line grouping method performs Hough transform to fit text line among the centroids of text candidates. Each fitted text line describes the orientation of a potential text string. The detected text string is presented by a rectangle region covering all characters whose centroids are cascaded in its text line. To improve efficiency and accuracy, our algorithms are carried out in multi-scales. The proposed methods outperform the state-of-the-art results on the public Robust Reading Dataset, which contains text only in horizontal orientation. Furthermore, the effectiveness of our methods to detect text strings with arbitrary orientations is evaluated on the Oriented Scene Text Dataset collected by ourselves containing text strings in nonhorizontal orientations.

  12. Open-shell characters and second hyperpolarizabilities of one-dimensional graphene nanoflakes composed of trigonal graphene units.

    PubMed

    Yoneda, Kyohei; Nakano, Masayoshi; Fukui, Hitoshi; Minami, Takuya; Shigeta, Yasuteru; Kubo, Takashi; Botek, Edith; Champagne, Benoît

    2011-06-20

    The impact of topology on the open-shell characters and the second hyperpolarizabilities (γ) has been addressed for one-dimensional graphene nanoflakes (GNFs) composed of the smallest trigonal graphene (phenalenyl) units. The main results are: 1) These GNFs show not only diradical but also multiradical characters when increasing the number of linked units. 2) GNFs composed of an equivalent number of units can exhibit a wide range of open-shell characters-from nearly closed-shell to pure multiradical characters-depending on the linking pattern of the trigonal units. 3) This wide variation in open-shell characters is explained by their resonance structures and/or by their (HOMO-i)-(LUMO+i) gaps deduced from the orbital correlations. 4) The change in the linking structure of the units can effectively control their open-shell characters as well as their γ values, of which the longitudinal components are significantly enhanced for the singlet GNFs having intermediate open-shell characters. 5) Singlet alternately linked (AL) systems present intermediate multiradical characters even in the case of a large number of units, which creates a significant enhancement of γ with increasing the size, whereas nonalternately linked (NAL) systems, which present pure multiradical characters, possess much smaller γ values. Finally 6) by switching from the singlet to the highest spin states, the γ values of NAL systems hardly change, whereas those of AL systems exhibit large reductions. These fascinating structure-property relationships between the topology of the GNFs, their open-shell characters, and their γ values not only deepen the understanding of open-shell characters of GNFs but aim also at stimulating further design studies to achieve giant NLO responses based on open-shell graphene-like materials. Copyright © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  13. The proximate unit in Chinese handwritten character production

    PubMed Central

    Chen, Jenn-Yeu; Cherng, Rong-Ju

    2013-01-01

    In spoken word production, a proximate unit is the first phonological unit at the sublexical level that is selectable for production (O'Seaghdha et al., 2010). The present study investigated whether the proximate unit in Chinese handwritten character production is the stroke, the radical, or something in between. A written version of the form preparation task was adopted. Chinese participants learned sets of two-character words, later were cued with the first character of each word, and had to write down the second character (the target). Response times were measured from the onset of a cue character to the onset of a written response. In Experiment 1, the target characters within a block shared (homogeneous) or did not share (heterogeneous) the first stroke. In Experiment 2, the first two strokes were shared in the homogeneous blocks. Response times in the homogeneous blocks and in the heterogeneous blocks were comparable in both experiments (Experiment 1: 687 vs. 684 ms, Experiment 2: 717 vs. 716). In Experiment 3 and 4, the target characters within a block shared or did not share the first radical. Response times in the homogeneous blocks were significantly faster than those in the heterogeneous blocks (Experiment 3: 685 vs. 704, Experiment 4: 594 vs. 650). In Experiment 5 and 6, the shared component was a Gestalt-like form that is more than a stroke, constitutes a portion of the target character, can be a stand-alone character itself, can be a radical of another character but is not a radical of the target character (e.g., ± in , , , ; called a logographeme). Response times in the homogeneous blocks were significantly faster than those in the heterogeneous blocks (Experiment 5: 576 vs. 625, Experiment 6: 586 vs. 620). These results suggest a model of Chinese handwritten character production in which the stroke is not a functional unit, the radical plays the role of a morpheme, and the logographeme is the proximate unit. PMID:23950752

  14. Recognizing characters of ancient manuscripts

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Diem, Markus; Sablatnig, Robert

    2010-02-01

    Considering printed Latin text, the main issues of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems are solved. However, for degraded handwritten document images, basic preprocessing steps such as binarization, gain poor results with state-of-the-art methods. In this paper ancient Slavonic manuscripts from the 11th century are investigated. In order to minimize the consequences of false character segmentation, a binarization-free approach based on local descriptors is proposed. Additionally local information allows the recognition of partially visible or washed out characters. The proposed algorithm consists of two steps: character classification and character localization. Initially Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) features are extracted which are subsequently classified using Support Vector Machines (SVM). Afterwards, the interest points are clustered according to their spatial information. Thereby, characters are localized and finally recognized based on a weighted voting scheme of pre-classified local descriptors. Preliminary results show that the proposed system can handle highly degraded manuscript images with background clutter (e.g. stains, tears) and faded out characters.

  15. Recognizing Chinese characters in digital ink from non-native language writers using hierarchical models

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bai, Hao; Zhang, Xi-wen

    2017-06-01

    While Chinese is learned as a second language, its characters are taught step by step from their strokes to components, radicals to components, and their complex relations. Chinese Characters in digital ink from non-native language writers are deformed seriously, thus the global recognition approaches are poorer. So a progressive approach from bottom to top is presented based on hierarchical models. Hierarchical information includes strokes and hierarchical components. Each Chinese character is modeled as a hierarchical tree. Strokes in one Chinese characters in digital ink are classified with Hidden Markov Models and concatenated to the stroke symbol sequence. And then the structure of components in one ink character is extracted. According to the extraction result and the stroke symbol sequence, candidate characters are traversed and scored. Finally, the recognition candidate results are listed by descending. The method of this paper is validated by testing 19815 copies of the handwriting Chinese characters written by foreign students.

  16. Kannada character recognition system using neural network

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kumar, Suresh D. S.; Kamalapuram, Srinivasa K.; Kumar, Ajay B. R.

    2013-03-01

    Handwriting recognition has been one of the active and challenging research areas in the field of pattern recognition. It has numerous applications which include, reading aid for blind, bank cheques and conversion of any hand written document into structural text form. As there is no sufficient number of works on Indian language character recognition especially Kannada script among 15 major scripts in India. In this paper an attempt is made to recognize handwritten Kannada characters using Feed Forward neural networks. A handwritten Kannada character is resized into 20x30 Pixel. The resized character is used for training the neural network. Once the training process is completed the same character is given as input to the neural network with different set of neurons in hidden layer and their recognition accuracy rate for different Kannada characters has been calculated and compared. The results show that the proposed system yields good recognition accuracy rates comparable to that of other handwritten character recognition systems.

  17. The role of character-based knowledge in online narrative comprehension: evidence from eye movements and ERPs.

    PubMed

    Filik, Ruth; Leuthold, Hartmut

    2013-04-19

    Little is known about the on-line evaluation of information relating to well-known story characters during text comprehension. For example, it is not clear in how much detail readers represent character-based information, and the time course over which this information is utilized during on-line language comprehension. We describe an event-related potential (ERP) study (Experiment 1) and an eye-tracking study (Experiment 2) investigating whether, and when, readers utilize their prior knowledge of a character in processing event information. Participants read materials in which an event was described that either did or did not fit with the character's typical behavior. ERPs elicited by the critical word revealed an N400 effect when the action described did not fit with the character's typical behavior. Results from early eye movement measures supported these findings, and later measures suggested that such violations were more easily accommodated for well-known fictional characters than real-world characters. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  18. Holistic neural coding of Chinese character forms in bilateral ventral visual system.

    PubMed

    Mo, Ce; Yu, Mengxia; Seger, Carol; Mo, Lei

    2015-02-01

    How are Chinese characters recognized and represented in the brain of skilled readers? Functional MRI fast adaptation technique was used to address this question. We found that neural adaptation effects were limited to identical characters in bilateral ventral visual system while no activation reduction was observed for partially overlapping characters regardless of the spatial location of the shared sub-character components, suggesting highly selective neuronal tuning to whole characters. The consistent neural profile across the entire ventral visual cortex indicates that Chinese characters are represented as mutually distinctive wholes rather than combinations of sub-character components, which presents a salient contrast to the left-lateralized, simple-to-complex neural representations of alphabetic words. Our findings thus revealed the cultural modulation effect on both local neuronal activity patterns and functional anatomical regions associated with written symbol recognition. Moreover, the cross-language discrepancy in written symbol recognition mechanism might stem from the language-specific early-stage learning experience. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  19. A method for inferring the rate of evolution of homologous characters that can potentially improve phylogenetic inference, resolve deep divergence and correct systematic biases.

    PubMed

    Cummins, Carla A; McInerney, James O

    2011-12-01

    Current phylogenetic methods attempt to account for evolutionary rate variation across characters in a matrix. This is generally achieved by the use of sophisticated evolutionary models, combined with dense sampling of large numbers of characters. However, systematic biases and superimposed substitutions make this task very difficult. Model adequacy can sometimes be achieved at the cost of adding large numbers of free parameters, with each parameter being optimized according to some criterion, resulting in increased computation times and large variances in the model estimates. In this study, we develop a simple approach that estimates the relative evolutionary rate of each homologous character. The method that we describe uses the similarity between characters as a proxy for evolutionary rate. In this article, we work on the premise that if the character-state distribution of a homologous character is similar to many other characters, then this character is likely to be relatively slowly evolving. If the character-state distribution of a homologous character is not similar to many or any of the rest of the characters in a data set, then it is likely to be the result of rapid evolution. We show that in some test cases, at least, the premise can hold and the inferences are robust. Importantly, the method does not use a "starting tree" to make the inference and therefore is tree independent. We demonstrate that this approach can work as well as a maximum likelihood (ML) approach, though the ML method needs to have a known phylogeny, or at least a very good estimate of that phylogeny. We then demonstrate some uses for this method of analysis, including the improvement in phylogeny reconstruction for both deep-level and recent relationships and overcoming systematic biases such as base composition bias. Furthermore, we compare this approach to two well-established methods for reweighting or removing characters. These other methods are tree-based and we show that they can be systematically biased. We feel this method can be useful for phylogeny reconstruction, understanding evolutionary rate variation, and for understanding selection variation on different characters.

  20. Influence of Cartoon Media Characters on Children’s Attention to and Preference for Food and Beverage Products

    PubMed Central

    Ogle, Andrew D.; Graham, Dan J.; Lucas-Thompson, Rachel G.; Roberto, Christina A.

    2017-01-01

    Background Over-consuming unhealthful foods and beverages contributes to pediatric obesity and associated diseases. Food marketing influences children’s food preferences, choices, and intake. Objective To examine whether adding licensed media characters to healthful food/beverage packages increases children’s attention to and preference for these products. We hypothesized that children prefer less- (vs more-) healthful foods, and pay greater attention to and preferentially select products with (vs without) media characters regardless of nutritional quality. We also hypothesized that children prefer more-healthful products when characters are present over less-healthful products without characters. Design On a computer, participants viewed food/beverage pairs of more-healthful and less-healthful versions of similar products. The same products were shown with and without licensed characters on the packaging. An eye-tracking camera monitored participant gaze, and participants chose which product they preferred from each of 60 pairs. Participants/setting Six- to 9-year-old children (n=149; mean age=7.36, standard deviation=1.12) recruited from the Twin Cities, MN, area in 2012–2013. Main outcome measures Visual attention and product choice. Statistical analyses performed Attention to products was compared using paired-samples t tests, and product choice was analyzed with single-sample t tests. Analyses of variance were conducted to test for interaction effects of specific characters and child sex and age. Results Children paid more attention to products with characters and preferred less-healthful products. Contrary to our prediction, children chose products without characters approximately 62% of the time. Children’s choices significantly differed based on age, sex, and the specific cartoon character displayed, with characters in this study being preferred by younger boys. Conclusions Results suggest that putting licensed media characters on more-healthful food/beverage products might not encourage all children to make healthier food choices, but could increase selection of healthy foods among some, particularly younger children, boys, and those who like the featured character(s). Effective use likely requires careful demographic targeting. PMID:27793520

  1. List of Standards to Accompany Manual of Documentation Practices Applicable to Defence-Aerospace Scientific and Technical Information (Liste des Normes a Placer en Annexe au Manuel Concernant les Techniques Documentaires Applicables a l’Information Scientifique et Technique de la Defense et du Secteur Aerospatial)

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1990-10-01

    CHARACTERS ISO 0233 1984 DOCUMENTATION - TRANSLITERATION OF ARABIC CHARACTERS INTO LATIN CHARACTERS ISO 0259 1954 DOCUMENTATION - TRANSLITERATION OF HEBREW...TRANSLITERATION OF ARABIC CHARACTERS IN LATIN CHARACTERS SF I 46-DUO 1N64 TRANSLITERATION - TRANSLITERATION OF HEBREW IN LATIN CHARACTERS . 46-010...LANGUAGE CODES (ANNIE: AUT.ORITY SYMSOLS DIN 31 634 CONVERSION OF THE GREEN ALUBABET DIN 31 635 CONVERSION OF THE ARABIC ALPHABET DIN 31 635 CONVERSION OF

  2. Modeling the Chinese language as an evolving network

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liang, Wei; Shi, Yuming; Huang, Qiuling

    2014-01-01

    The evolution of Chinese language has three main features: the total number of characters is gradually increasing, new words are generated in the existing characters, and some old words are no longer used in daily-life language. Based on the features, we propose an evolving language network model. Finally, we use this model to simulate the character co-occurrence networks (nodes are characters, and two characters are connected by an edge if they are adjacent to each other) constructed from essays in 11 different periods of China, and find that characters that appear with high frequency in old words are likely to be reused when new words are formed.

  3. VARIABILITY AND CHARACTER ASSOCIATION IN ROSE COLOURED LEADWORT (PLUMBAGO ROSEA Linn.)

    PubMed Central

    Kurian, Alice; Anitha, C.A.; Nybe, E.V.

    2001-01-01

    Forty five plumbago rosea accessions collected from different parts of Kerala state were evaluated for variability in morphological and yield related characters and plumbagin content. Highly significant variation was evident for all the characters studied except leaf size indicating wide variability in the accessions. Accessions PR 25 and PR 31 appear to be promising with respect to root yield and high plumbagin content. Character association revelated significant and positive correlation of all the characters except leaf size with yield. Hence, selection of high yielding types could easily be done based on visual characters expressing more vegetative growth but with reduced leaf size. PMID:22557037

  4. Young peoples' stigmatizing attitudes and beliefs about anorexia nervosa and muscle dysmorphia.

    PubMed

    Griffiths, Scott; Mond, Jonathan M; Murray, Stuart B; Touyz, Stephen

    2014-03-01

    The nature and extent of stigma toward individuals with anorexia nervosa and muscle dysmorphia remains underexplored. This study investigated attitudes and beliefs likely to be conducive to stigmatization of individuals with these conditions. Male and female undergraduate students (n = 361) read one of four vignettes describing a fictional male or female character with anorexia nervosa or muscle dysmorphia, after which they responded to a series of questions addressing potentially stigmatizing attitudes and beliefs toward each character. Characters with anorexia nervosa were more stigmatized than characters with muscle dysmorphia, female characters were more stigmatized than male characters, and male participants were more stigmatizing than female participants. A large effect of character diagnosis on masculinity was observed, such that characters with anorexia nervosa were perceived as less masculine than characters with muscle dysmorphia, and this effect was more pronounced among male participants. However, no significant corresponding effects were observed for femininity. Females with anorexia nervosa may be particularly susceptible to stigmatization, especially by males. Anorexia nervosa and muscle dysmorphia are perceived as "female" and "male" disorders respectively, in line with societal gender role expectations, and this stigmatization is tied more strongly to perceptions of sufferers' masculinity than femininity. Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  5. Who was that masked man? Conjoint representations of intrinsic motions with actor appearance.

    PubMed

    Kersten, Alan W; Earles, Julie L; Negri, Leehe

    2018-09-01

    Motion plays an important role in recognising animate creatures. This research supports a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motions in their relationship to identifying information about the characters performing the motions. Participants viewed events involving costumed human characters. Intrinsic motions involved relative movements of a character's body parts, whereas extrinsic motions involved movements with respect to external landmarks. Participants were later tested for recognition of the motions and who had performed them. The critical test items involved familiar characters performing motions that had previously been performed by other characters. Participants falsely recognised extrinsic conjunction items, in which characters followed the paths of other characters, more often than intrinsic conjunction items, in which characters moved in the manner of other characters. In contrast, participants falsely recognised new extrinsic motions less often than new intrinsic motions, suggesting that they remembered extrinsic motions but had difficulty remembering who had performed them. Modelling of receiver operating characteristics indicated that participants discriminated old items from intrinsic conjunction items via familiarity, consistent with conjoint representations of intrinsic motion and identity information. In contrast, participants used recollection to distinguish old items from extrinsic conjunction items, consistent with separate but associated representations of extrinsic motion and identity information.

  6. [Eye movement study in multiple object search process].

    PubMed

    Xu, Zhaofang; Liu, Zhongqi; Wang, Xingwei; Zhang, Xin

    2017-04-01

    The aim of this study is to investigate the search time regulation of objectives and eye movement behavior characteristics in the multi-objective visual search. The experimental task was accomplished with computer programming and presented characters on a 24 inch computer display. The subjects were asked to search three targets among the characters. Three target characters in the same group were of high similarity degree while those in different groups of target characters and distraction characters were in different similarity degrees. We recorded the search time and eye movement data through the whole experiment. It could be seen from the eye movement data that the quantity of fixation points was large when the target characters and distraction characters were similar. There were three kinds of visual search patterns for the subjects including parallel search, serial search, and parallel-serial search. In addition, the last pattern had the best search performance among the three search patterns, that is, the subjects who used parallel-serial search pattern spent shorter time finding the target. The order that the targets presented were able to affect the search performance significantly; and the similarity degree between target characters and distraction characters could also affect the search performance.

  7. Chinese character recognition based on Gabor feature extraction and CNN

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Xiong, Yudian; Lu, Tongwei; Jiang, Yongyuan

    2018-03-01

    As an important application in the field of text line recognition and office automation, Chinese character recognition has become an important subject of pattern recognition. However, due to the large number of Chinese characters and the complexity of its structure, there is a great difficulty in the Chinese character recognition. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a method of printed Chinese character recognition based on Gabor feature extraction and Convolution Neural Network(CNN). The main steps are preprocessing, feature extraction, training classification. First, the gray-scale Chinese character image is binarized and normalized to reduce the redundancy of the image data. Second, each image is convoluted with Gabor filter with different orientations, and the feature map of the eight orientations of Chinese characters is extracted. Third, the feature map through Gabor filters and the original image are convoluted with learning kernels, and the results of the convolution is the input of pooling layer. Finally, the feature vector is used to classify and recognition. In addition, the generalization capacity of the network is improved by Dropout technology. The experimental results show that this method can effectively extract the characteristics of Chinese characters and recognize Chinese characters.

  8. The time-course of lexical activation in Japanese morphographic word recognition: evidence for a character-driven processing model.

    PubMed

    Miwa, Koji; Libben, Gary; Dijkstra, Ton; Baayen, Harald

    2014-01-01

    This lexical decision study with eye tracking of Japanese two-kanji-character words investigated the order in which a whole two-character word and its morphographic constituents are activated in the course of lexical access, the relative contributions of the left and the right characters in lexical decision, the depth to which semantic radicals are processed, and how nonlinguistic factors affect lexical processes. Mixed-effects regression analyses of response times and subgaze durations (i.e., first-pass fixation time spent on each of the two characters) revealed joint contributions of morphographic units at all levels of the linguistic structure with the magnitude and the direction of the lexical effects modulated by readers' locus of attention in a left-to-right preferred processing path. During the early time frame, character effects were larger in magnitude and more robust than radical and whole-word effects, regardless of the font size and the type of nonwords. Extending previous radical-based and character-based models, we propose a task/decision-sensitive character-driven processing model with a level-skipping assumption: Connections from the feature level bypass the lower radical level and link up directly to the higher character level.

  9. The influence of familiar characters and other appealing images on young children's preference for low-quality objects.

    PubMed

    Danovitch, Judith H; Mills, Candice M

    2017-09-01

    This study examines the factors underlying young children's preference for products bearing a familiar character's image. Three-year-olds (N = 92) chose between low-quality objects with images on or near the objects and high-quality objects without images. Children showed stronger preferences for damaged objects bearing images of a preferred familiar character than for objects bearing images of a preferred colour star, and they showed weak preferences for damaged objects with the character near, but not on, the object. The results suggest that children's preference for low-quality products bearing character images is driven by prior exposure to characters, and not only by the act of identifying a favourite. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Children are exposed to characters in the media and on products such as clothing and school supplies. Products featuring familiar characters appeal to preschool children, even if they are of low quality. What does this study add? Three-year-olds prefer damaged objects with an image of a favourite character over plain undamaged objects. Children's preference is not solely a function of having identified a favourite image or of attentional cues. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

  10. Robust recognition of degraded machine-printed characters using complementary similarity measure and error-correction learning

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hagita, Norihiro; Sawaki, Minako

    1995-03-01

    Most conventional methods in character recognition extract geometrical features such as stroke direction, connectivity of strokes, etc., and compare them with reference patterns in a stored dictionary. Unfortunately, geometrical features are easily degraded by blurs, stains and the graphical background designs used in Japanese newspaper headlines. This noise must be removed before recognition commences, but no preprocessing method is completely accurate. This paper proposes a method for recognizing degraded characters and characters printed on graphical background designs. This method is based on the binary image feature method and uses binary images as features. A new similarity measure, called the complementary similarity measure, is used as a discriminant function. It compares the similarity and dissimilarity of binary patterns with reference dictionary patterns. Experiments are conducted using the standard character database ETL-2 which consists of machine-printed Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, alphanumeric, an special characters. The results show that this method is much more robust against noise than the conventional geometrical feature method. It also achieves high recognition rates of over 92% for characters with textured foregrounds, over 98% for characters with textured backgrounds, over 98% for outline fonts, and over 99% for reverse contrast characters.

  11. Exploring Good Character and Citizenship in England

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Arthur, James; Harrison, Tom

    2012-01-01

    Citizenship, character and the virtues that constitute both are increasingly concerns of public policy in the UK. This article understands character to encompass the morally valuable, reason-response and education part of personality, and understands virtues as states of character concerned with praiseworthy feelings and conduct in specific…

  12. The Effects of Exposure Time, Pressure and Cold on Hand Skin Temperature and Manual Performance When Wearing Three-Fingered Neoprene Gloves

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2008-04-01

    summarised below. Grip strength was measured using a hand grip dynamometer. Tactile sensitivity was measured using modified (enlarged) Braille ...characters. Subjects had to sense and identify the Braille characters by touch using a visual display of Braille characters as a reference source... Braille characters were presented on a board in 4 rows, with each row having progressively smaller character size and spacing. Tactile sensitivity score

  13. Good initialization model with constrained body structure for scene text recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhu, Anna; Wang, Guoyou; Dong, Yangbo

    2016-09-01

    Scene text recognition has gained significant attention in the computer vision community. Character detection and recognition are the promise of text recognition and affect the overall performance to a large extent. We proposed a good initialization model for scene character recognition from cropped text regions. We use constrained character's body structures with deformable part-based models to detect and recognize characters in various backgrounds. The character's body structures are achieved by an unsupervised discriminative clustering approach followed by a statistical model and a self-build minimum spanning tree model. Our method utilizes part appearance and location information, and combines character detection and recognition in cropped text region together. The evaluation results on the benchmark datasets demonstrate that our proposed scheme outperforms the state-of-the-art methods both on scene character recognition and word recognition aspects.

  14. Pals in power armor: attribution of human-like emotions to video game characters in an ingroup/outgroup situation.

    PubMed

    Besmann, Anna; Rios, Kimberly

    2012-08-01

    Previous research has demonstrated the tendency for humans to anthropomorphize computers-that is, to react to computers as social actors, despite knowing that the computers are mere machines. In the present research, we examined the attribution of both primary (non-uniquely human) and secondary (human-like) emotions to ingroup (teammate) and outgroup (opponent) computer-controlled characters in a video game. We found that participants perceived the teammate character as experiencing more secondary emotions than the opponent character, but that they perceived the teammate and opponent character as experiencing equal levels of primary emotions. Thus, participants anthropomorphized the ingroup character to a greater extent than the outgroup character. These results imply that computers' "emotions" are treated with a similar ingroup/outgroup social regard as the emotions of actual humans.

  15. Effect of pattern complexity on the visual span for Chinese and alphabet characters

    PubMed Central

    Wang, Hui; He, Xuanzi; Legge, Gordon E.

    2014-01-01

    The visual span for reading is the number of letters that can be recognized without moving the eyes and is hypothesized to impose a sensory limitation on reading speed. Factors affecting the size of the visual span have been studied using alphabet letters. There may be common constraints applying to recognition of other scripts. The aim of this study was to extend the concept of the visual span to Chinese characters and to examine the effect of the greater complexity of these characters. We measured visual spans for Chinese characters and alphabet letters in the central vision of bilingual subjects. Perimetric complexity was used as a metric to quantify the pattern complexity of binary character images. The visual span tests were conducted with four sets of stimuli differing in complexity—lowercase alphabet letters and three groups of Chinese characters. We found that the size of visual spans decreased with increasing complexity, ranging from 10.5 characters for alphabet letters to 4.5 characters for the most complex Chinese characters studied. A decomposition analysis revealed that crowding was the dominant factor limiting the size of the visual span, and the amount of crowding increased with complexity. Errors in the spatial arrangement of characters (mislocations) had a secondary effect. We conclude that pattern complexity has a major effect on the size of the visual span, mediated in large part by crowding. Measuring the visual span for Chinese characters is likely to have high relevance to understanding visual constraints on Chinese reading performance. PMID:24993020

  16. Portrayals of character smoking and drinking in Argentine-, Mexican- and US-produced films.

    PubMed

    Kollath-Cattano, Christy; Abad-Vivero, Erika N; Mejia, Raul; Perez-Hernandez, Rosaura; Sargent, James D; Thrasher, James F

    2016-09-01

    The aim of this study was to assess film character portrayals of tobacco and alcohol use in US and nationally-produced films that were popular in Argentina and Mexico from 2004-2012. We performed a content analysis of these films (n=82 Argentine, 91 Mexican, and 908 US films, respectively). Chi-squares and t-tests were used to compare characteristics of characters who smoked or drank by country of movie production. Then data from all countries were pooled, and generalized estimating equation (GEE) models were used to determine independent correlates of character smoking or drinking. There were 480 major characters for Argentine-, 364 for Mexican-, and 4962 for US-produced films. Smoking prevalence among movie characters was similar to population smoking prevalence in Mexico (21%) and Argentina (26%), but about half in the US (11%), where movie product placements are restricted. Movie smoking declined over the period in all three countries. Movie alcohol prevalence was 40-50% across all countries and did not change with time. Demographic predictors of character smoking included: being male, 18 and older, having negative character valence. Movie smoking was not associated with lower SES. Predictors of character drinking included: being age 18 and older and positive character valence. Smoking and drinking predicted each other, illicit drug use, and higher scores for other risk behaviors. This suggests that policy development in Mexico and Argentina may be necessary to reduce the amount of character tobacco and alcohol use in films. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. The Importance of Character Development: An Interview with Ron Kinnamon.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kinnamon, Ron

    2003-01-01

    Building good character in today's youth is an adult issue because children learn values from adults. Adults must demonstrate the core values: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. Camps have developed expertise in character development and can provide leadership in the community in character education.…

  18. Research on Russian National Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Na, Zhuo

    2008-01-01

    The special geographical location Russia lies in creates the unique character of the Russian nation. Based on the dual nature of the Russian national character, the Russian geographical environment and the analysis of its social structure, this text tries to explore the reasons of the dual nature of Russian national character.

  19. WWC Evidence Review Protocol for Character Education Interventions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    What Works Clearinghouse, 2014

    2014-01-01

    Character education is an inclusive concept regarding all aspects of how families, schools, and related social institutions support the positive character development of children and adults. "Character" in this context refers to the moral and ethical qualities of persons as well as the demonstration of those qualities in their emotional…

  20. Bring Character Education into Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Agboola, Alex; Tsai, Kaun Chen

    2012-01-01

    Character education is a growing discipline with the deliberate attempt to optimize students' ethical behavior. The outcome of character education has always been encouraging, solidly, and continually preparing the leaders of tomorrow. The promotion of character education should not just a leap service but has an action plan for practice. In order…

  1. Promoting Character Development through Coach Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Power, F. Clark; Seroczynski, A. D.

    2015-01-01

    Can youth sports build character? Research suggests that the answer to this question leads to 2 further questions: (1) can youth sport coaches be effectively prepared to become character educators, and (2) can character education take place in today's competitive youth sport environment? (Bredemeier & Shields, 2006; Power, 2015; Power &…

  2. CEP's Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lickona, Tom; Schaps, Eric; Lewis, Catherine

    2007-01-01

    There is no single script for effective character education, but there are some important basic principles. This document presents eleven principles that schools and other groups can use to plan a character education effort and to evaluate available character education programs: (1) Promotes core ethical values and supportive performance values as…

  3. School-Based Character Education in the United States

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith, Brian H.

    2013-01-01

    Character education has been a part of schooling in the United States since the early years of its public education system. Starting with a religious emphasis on moral development, character education eventually transformed into more secular approaches, like the values clarification model, character word-of-the-month approach, performance…

  4. Character: A Multifaceted Developmental System

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nucci, Larry

    2017-01-01

    Character is a developmental system embedded within the self-system. This Relational Developmental Systems (RDS) view is in juxtaposition with virtue theory and accounts of character in terms of moral identity. The character system includes 4 components 3 of which: basic moral cognition (as described within domain theory); other regarding; and…

  5. Promoting Character Development through Teaching Wrestling in Physical Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Destani, Fitni; Hannon, James C.; Podlog, Leslie; Brusseau, Timothy A.

    2014-01-01

    Character development has become an important component of physical education that contributes directly to the affective learning domain. However, teaching character development can be challenging. The purpose of this article is to suggest that character development be promoted through the teaching of wrestling, due to the unique moral development…

  6. Radical Sensitivity Is the Key to Understanding Chinese Character Acquisition in Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tong, Xiuhong; Tong, Xiuli; McBride, Catherine

    2017-01-01

    This study investigated Chinese children's development of sensitivity to positional (orthographic), phonological, and semantic cues of radicals in encoding novel Chinese characters. A newly designed picture-novel character mapping task, along with nonverbal reasoning ability, vocabulary, and Chinese character recognition were administered to 198…

  7. Characters as Guides to Meaning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Roser, Nancy; Martinez, Miriam; Fuhrken, Charles; McDonnold, Kathleen

    2007-01-01

    Characters in children's books can help to guide readers through stories, contributing to deepened understandings of plot and themes. The authors discuss why characters become vivid and lasting in readers' minds, the ways in which students are often asked to think about characters in classroom literature study, and how students' understanding of…

  8. Identification of Matra Region and Overlapping Characters for OCR of Printed Bengali Scripts

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Goswami, Subhra Sundar

    One of the important reasons for poor recognition rate in optical character recognition (OCR) system is the error in character segmentation. In case of Bangla scripts, the errors occur due to several reasons, which include incorrect detection of matra (headline), over-segmentation and under-segmentation. We have proposed a robust method for detecting the headline region. Existence of overlapping characters (in under-segmented parts) in scanned printed documents is a major problem in designing an effective character segmentation procedure for OCR systems. In this paper, a predictive algorithm is developed for effectively identifying overlapping characters and then selecting the cut-borders for segmentation. Our method can be successfully used in achieving high recognition result.

  9. Effect of Character-Audience Similarity on the Perceived Effectiveness of Anti-Smoking PSAs via Engagement

    PubMed Central

    Kim, Minji; Shi, Rui; Cappella, Joseph N.

    2016-01-01

    This study assesses the impact of character-audience similarity, a core aspect of tailored communication, on evaluation of anti-smoking public service announcements (PSAs). Smoker and persuader characters are distinguished to explore their different roles in message effectiveness. Daily adult smokers (n = 1,160) were exposed to four video PSAs randomly selected from a larger pool. Similarity scores were determined from matching in demographic (age, gender, race) and motivational factors (quitting status) between the audience and the PSA’s characters. Results show that PSAs featuring distinctive smoker and/or persuader characters yielded significantly higher message engagement and perceived effectiveness (PE) than PSAs without characters. Given the presence of characters, smoker-audience similarity was positively associated with the engagement, which in turn enhanced PE. Persuader-audience similarity failed to predict increases in either engagement or PE. PMID:26891148

  10. Using brand characters to promote young children's liking of and purchase requests for fruit.

    PubMed

    de Droog, Simone M; Valkenburg, Patti M; Buijzen, Moniek

    2011-01-01

    The aim of this experiment was to investigate whether brand characters can enhance children's liking of and purchase request intent for fruit compared to candy. The authors assigned 216 preschool students between the ages of 4 and 6 years to 9 experimental conditions in which they were presented with a healthy snack (chopped bananas) and an unhealthy snack (banana candy). The packages of these snacks portrayed a familiar character (i.e., Dora from Dora the Explorer or SpongeBob from SpongeBob SquarePants), an unfamiliar character, or no character (control group). The authors' results showed that brand characters can increase children's liking of and purchase request intent for fruit up to a level similar to candy. However, the effects on liking and purchase request intent did not differ between familiar and unfamiliar characters. These results may be helpful for future marketing campaigns to promote children's consumption of healthy foods.

  11. Phylogenetic Trees and Networks Reduce to Phylogenies on Binary States: Does It Furnish an Explanation to the Robustness of Phylogenetic Trees against Lateral Transfers.

    PubMed

    Thuillard, Marc; Fraix-Burnet, Didier

    2015-01-01

    This article presents an innovative approach to phylogenies based on the reduction of multistate characters to binary-state characters. We show that the reduction to binary characters' approach can be applied to both character- and distance-based phylogenies and provides a unifying framework to explain simply and intuitively the similarities and differences between distance- and character-based phylogenies. Building on these results, this article gives a possible explanation on why phylogenetic trees obtained from a distance matrix or a set of characters are often quite reasonable despite lateral transfers of genetic material between taxa. In the presence of lateral transfers, outer planar networks furnish a better description of evolution than phylogenetic trees. We present a polynomial-time reconstruction algorithm for perfect outer planar networks with a fixed number of states, characters, and lateral transfers.

  12. Character feature integration of Chinese calligraphy and font

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Shi, Cao; Xiao, Jianguo; Jia, Wenhua; Xu, Canhui

    2013-01-01

    A framework is proposed in this paper to effectively generate a new hybrid character type by means of integrating local contour feature of Chinese calligraphy with structural feature of font in computer system. To explore traditional art manifestation of calligraphy, multi-directional spatial filter is applied for local contour feature extraction. Then the contour of character image is divided into sub-images. The sub-images in the identical position from various characters are estimated by Gaussian distribution. According to its probability distribution, the dilation operator and erosion operator are designed to adjust the boundary of font image. And then new Chinese character images are generated which possess both contour feature of artistical calligraphy and elaborate structural feature of font. Experimental results demonstrate the new characters are visually acceptable, and the proposed framework is an effective and efficient strategy to automatically generate the new hybrid character of calligraphy and font.

  13. "I'm attached, and I'm a good guy/gal!": how character attachment influences pro- and anti-social motivations to play massively multiplayer online role-playing games.

    PubMed

    Bowman, Nicholas David; Schultheiss, Daniel; Schumann, Christina

    2012-03-01

    One's feelings of intimacy and connectedness with distal, fictional media characters are referred to as parasocial interactions. Video games have challenged this concept, as the distance between game players and characters is greatly reduced, if not completely removed, in virtual environments. Games encourage the internalization and psychological merging of a player's and a character's mind, a multidimensional concept known as character attachment (CA). Data from our study suggest that dimensions of CA are useful in understanding both pro- and anti-social gaming motivations. Pro-social gamers feel a greater sense of control over their characters, while anti-social gamers are more likely to suspend their disbelief of the game environment and not take responsibility for their virtual actions. Pro-social gaming was more prevalent in older gamers, and younger male game characters were motivated by anti-social reasons.

  14. Homosexuality in TV situation comedies: characters and verbal comments.

    PubMed

    Fouts, Gregory; Inch, Rebecca

    2005-01-01

    A content analysis was conducted on 22 television situation comedies in order to determine the incidence of homosexual characters, their demographics (sex, age and race/ethnicity), and whether they verbally comment about sexual orientation. One episode of each program appearing in early October 2000 was video recorded and analyzed for its contents by trained coders. Only 2% of the 125 central characters were homosexual; thus, homosexuality is significantly under-represented in programs that adolescents and young adults watch compared to actual prevalence rates of homosexuality in North America (10-13%). All the homosexual characters were male and in the 20-35-year-old age group; this indicates that homosexual adolescent viewers have no peer role models with whom to identify. Homosexual characters made significantly more comments about sexual orientation than heterosexual characters. This suggests that television writers/producers present sexual orientation as a significant theme in the lives of homosexual characters.

  15. Lessons in Character Impact Evaluation. Final Report. NCEE 2012-4004

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hanson, Thomas; Dietsch, Barbara; Zheng, Hong

    2012-01-01

    Character education has become one of the fastest growing reform movements in K-12 education today, partially in response to unacceptable levels of student misbehavior and inadequate endorsement of good character values (Williams 2000). Between 1993 and 2009, 36 states passed laws mandating or recommending some aspect of character education in…

  16. 19 CFR 10.121 - Visual or auditory materials of an educational, scientific, or cultural character.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-04-01

    ... educational, scientific, or cultural character. (a) Where photographic film and other articles described in... the articles are visual or auditory materials of an educational, scientific, or cultural character..., scientific, or cultural character. 10.121 Section 10.121 Customs Duties U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION...

  17. The Character to Seek Justice: Showing Fairness to Diverse Visions of Character Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Glanzer, Perry L.

    1998-01-01

    Alfie Kohn's article in the February 1997 "Kappan," which questioned the world views informing character education, was disappointing. His criticisms of habit formation were misdirected, and he failed to reconcile the various world views held by parents and children. Character, like other human endeavors, requires vigorous training in…

  18. Rapid Naming Speed and Chinese Character Recognition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Liao, Chen-Huei; Georgiou, George K.; Parrila, Rauno

    2008-01-01

    We examined the relationship between rapid naming speed (RAN) and Chinese character recognition accuracy and fluency. Sixty-three grade 2 and 54 grade 4 Taiwanese children were administered four RAN tasks (colors, digits, Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao, characters), and two character recognition tasks. RAN tasks accounted for more reading variance in grade 4 than…

  19. Character Education by Design: A Blueprint for Successful District and School Initiatives

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maryland State Department of Education, 2007

    2007-01-01

    Designed for district- and school-level character education committees, "Character Education by Design: A Blueprint for Successful District and School Initiatives" is a how-to guide for developing an effective character education initiative, one that will not only enhance the climate of the school and social behavior of the students, but…

  20. Educating Moral People: A Caring Alternative to Character Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Noddings, Nel

    An alternative to character education is care ethics. The ethics of care can be seen as fundamentally relational, not individual-agent-based in the way of virtue ethics, and the ethics of care is more indirect than character education. After an introductory chapter that outlines the similarities and differences between character education and care…

  1. Physical Education Teachers' Views about Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tutkun, Erkut; Görgüt, Ilyas; Erdemir, Ibrahim

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to find out the views of teachers of physical education about how they define character education, whether they think national education curriculum and the curriculum of private schools are suitable for character education and whether they think character education can be applied in physical education lessons. Case…

  2. Direct Measures of Character Mislocalizations with Masked/Unmasked Exposures.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chastain, Garvin; And Others

    Butler (1980) compared errors representing intrusions and mislocalizations on 3x3 letter displays under pattern-mask versus no-mask conditions and found that pattern masking increased character mislocalization errors (naming a character in the display but not in the target position as being the target) over intrusion errors (naming a character not…

  3. The Re-Emergence of Character Education in British Education Policy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Arthur, James

    2005-01-01

    Character education is a specific approach to morals or values education, which is consistently linked with citizenship education. But how is it possible for a heterogeneous society that disagrees about basic values to reach a consensus on what constitutes character education? This article explores how character education has returned to the…

  4. The Effects of Privileging Moral or Performance Character Development in Urban Adolescents

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Seider, Scott; Novick, Sarah; Gomez, Jessica

    2013-01-01

    This study compared the effects of emphasizing moral character development or performance character development at three high-performing, high-poverty urban middle schools. Performance character consists of the qualities that allow individuals to regulate their thoughts and actions in ways that support achievement in a particular endeavor. Moral…

  5. Character Education with Resident Assistants: A Model for Developing Character on College Campuses

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Healea, Christopher Daryl

    2005-01-01

    Character education in higher education is a challenging enterprise. There are concerns regarding academic freedom, debates about the role of the university, and criticisms of purported indoctrination. Character education initiatives in the past have often erred by neglecting what is known about individual human development, at one extreme, or by…

  6. 19 CFR 10.121 - Visual or auditory materials of an educational, scientific, or cultural character.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-04-01

    ... educational, scientific, or cultural character. (a) Where photographic film and other articles described in... the articles are visual or auditory materials of an educational, scientific, or cultural character..., scientific, or cultural character. 10.121 Section 10.121 Customs Duties U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION...

  7. Shaping the Future through Character Education. Colorado State Conference on Character Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Colorado State Dept. of Education, Denver.

    With the decline in morality and values, character education is gaining considerable momentum. Public opinion polls show growing support for teaching it in schools. Evidence indicates that character education programs change the school culture for the better, allowing students to feel safe to concentrate on learning. In Colorado, character…

  8. Neural Strategies for Reading Japanese and Chinese Sentences: A Cross-Linguistic fMRI Study of Character-Decoding and Morphosyntax

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Huang, Koongliang; Itoh, Kosuke; Kwee, Ingrid L.; Nakada, Tsutomu

    2012-01-01

    Japanese and Chinese share virtually identical morphographic characters invented in ancient China. Whereas modern Chinese retained the original morphographic functionality of these characters (hanzi), modern Japanese utilizes these characters (kanji) as complex syllabograms. This divergence provides a unique opportunity to systematically…

  9. Korea's Attempts to Eliminate Chinese Characters and the Implications for Romanizing Chinese.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hannas, William C.

    1995-01-01

    Examines Korea's experience with abandoning Chinese characters for an all-phonetic script. Despite efforts to replace characters with "all-hangul" in South Korea, reform opponents reinstated Chinese characters. In North Korea, a similar reform was also rescinded. Certain "linguistic" problems need to be solved for the reform to…

  10. Character Education: Controversy and Consensus. Controversial Issues in Education Series.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lockwood, Anne Turnbaugh

    This book draws on conversations with six individuals, each of whom offers a distinct approach to character education and speaks to the problems and the practical side of designing, implementing, and evaluating character education. The text opens with an overview of character education, exploring what it is, moral dilemmas, goals, and criticisms.…

  11. Once Upon a Time: A Grimm Approach to Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bryan, Laura

    2005-01-01

    Many school districts have implemented "packaged" programs designed to teach character education. Millions of dollars have been spent on these programs, yet society continues to produce more "characters" than students "with character." This article describes a shift from the "programmatic" mindset to a solution that is not packaged or purchased.…

  12. Internalization of Character Traits by Those Who Teach Character Counts!

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harms, Kristyn; Fritz, Susan

    2001-01-01

    Cooperative extension personnel (n=53) completed a Web-based survey analyzing the impact of the Character Counts! program on extension, their personal lives, and society. Results demonstrated that extension educators and assistants were more likely to make ethical decisions as a result of teaching Character Counts! The need for increased…

  13. Character Education of the Most Developed Countries in ASEAN

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Istiningsih

    2016-01-01

    Character education into an international issue, especially in developing countries. More specifically in Indonesia, character education is a major issue in the 2012's to the present. What kind of education that may build character? To be able to answer this question, we need a broad and deep research. Research simpler related to character…

  14. Item-Specific and Generalization Effects on Brain Activation when Learning Chinese Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Deng, Yuan; Booth, James R.; Chou, Tai-Li; Ding, Guo-Sheng; Peng, Dan-Ling

    2008-01-01

    Neural changes related to learning of the meaning of Chinese characters in English speakers were examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We examined item specific learning effects for trained characters, but also the generalization of semantic knowledge to novel transfer characters that shared a semantic radical (part of a…

  15. Re-Emphasizing Character Education in Early Childhood Programs: Korean Children's Experiences

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Guang-Lea

    2013-01-01

    Character education efforts are influenced by the cultures in which they are implemented. This article describes the character education provided to children in Korea, both in school and at home. The author explores how the Korean early childhood education system strives to ensure positive character development among children. These discussions…

  16. Influence of licensed characters on children's taste and snack preferences.

    PubMed

    Roberto, Christina A; Baik, Jenny; Harris, Jennifer L; Brownell, Kelly D

    2010-07-01

    The goal was to study how popular licensed cartoon characters appearing on food packaging affect young children's taste and snack preferences. Forty 4- to 6-year-old children tasted 3 pairs of identical foods (graham crackers, gummy fruit snacks, and carrots) presented in packages either with or without a popular cartoon character. Children tasted both food items in each pair and indicated whether the 2 foods tasted the same or one tasted better. Children then selected which of the food items they would prefer to eat for a snack. Children significantly preferred the taste of foods that had popular cartoon characters on the packaging, compared with the same foods without characters. The majority of children selected the food sample with a licensed character on it for their snack, but the effects were weaker for carrots than for gummy fruit snacks and graham crackers. Branding food packages with licensed characters substantially influences young children's taste preferences and snack selection and does so most strongly for energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods. These findings suggest that the use of licensed characters to advertise junk food to children should be restricted.

  17. Character Decomposition and Transposition Processes of Chinese Compound Words in Rapid Serial Visual Presentation.

    PubMed

    Cao, Hong-Wen; Yang, Ke-Yu; Yan, Hong-Mei

    2017-01-01

    Character order information is encoded at the initial stage of Chinese word processing, however, its time course remains underspecified. In this study, we assess the exact time course of the character decomposition and transposition processes of two-character Chinese compound words (canonical, transposed, or reversible words) compared with pseudowords using dual-target rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of stimuli appearing at 30 ms per character with no inter-stimulus interval. The results indicate that Chinese readers can identify words with character transpositions in rapid succession; however, a transposition cost is involved in identifying transposed words compared to canonical words. In RSVP reading, character order of words is more likely to be reversed during the period from 30 to 180 ms for canonical and reversible words, but the period from 30 to 240 ms for transposed words. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that the holistic representation of the base word is activated, however, the order of the two constituent characters is not strictly processed during the very early stage of visual word processing.

  18. Relative expertise affects N170 during selective attention to superimposed face-character images.

    PubMed

    Ip, Chengteng; Wang, Hailing; Fu, Shimin

    2017-07-01

    It remains unclear whether the N170 of ERPs reflects domain-specific or domain-general visual object processing. In this study, we used superimposed images of a face and a Chinese character such that participants' relative expertise for the two object types was either similar (Experiment 1 and 2) or different (Experiment 3). Experiment 1 showed that N170 amplitude was larger when participants attended to the character instead of the face of a face-character combination. This result was unchanged in Experiment 2, in which task difficulty was selectively increased for the face component of the combined stimuli. Experiment 3 showed that, although this N170 enhancement for attending to characters relative to faces persisted for false characters with recognizable parts, it disappeared for unrecognizable characters. Therefore, N170 amplitude was significantly greater for Chinese characters than for faces presented within a combined image, independent of the relative task difficulty. This result strongly calls N170 face selectivity into question, demonstrating that, contrary to the expectations established by a domain-specific account, N170 is modulated by expertise. © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

  19. Superman vs. BAD man? The effects of empathy and game character in violent video games.

    PubMed

    Happ, Christian; Melzer, André; Steffgen, Georges

    2013-10-01

    Recent findings indicate that events in video games, as well as players' perceptions of game characters, moderate well-established video game effects. This includes the level of identification with game characters, and players' interpretation of whether or not the actions of the characters are conceived as moral. In the present study, it was tested whether manipulating empathy for well-known game characters influences video game effects in a violent beat-'em-up game. As was expected, playing the comic hero Superman led to more prosocial behavior (i.e., returning a lost letter) than playing the evil villain Joker. A similar positive effect was observed for inducing game characters as warm and empathic before playing. Compared to a neutral text, participants in the empathy text condition judged the violence in the game as less justified, irrespective of game character. When looking at hostile perception, an interaction was found between empathy and game character. For Superman, empathy led participants to interpret neutral faces as less aggressive. When playing the evil Joker, however, empathy even increased hostile perception. This is in line with previous findings that empathy may not be positive per se. In fact, it may backfire depending on the interaction of game characters and the empathy players feel for them.

  20. Landscape Character of Pongkor Mining Ecotourism Area

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kusumoarto, A.; Gunawan, A.; Machfud; Hikmat, A.

    2017-10-01

    Pongkor Mining Ecotourism Area has a diverse landscape character as a potential landscape resources for the development of ecotourism destination. This area is part of the Mount of Botol Resort, Halimun Salak National Park (HSNP). This area also has a fairly high biodiversity. This study aims to identify and analysis the category of landscape character in the Pongkor Mining Ecotourism Area for the development of ecotourism destination. This study used a descriptive approach through field surveys and interviews, was carried out through two steps : 1) identify the landscape character, and 2) analysis of the landscape character. The results showed that in areas set aside for ecotourism destination in Pongkor Mining, landscape character category scattered forests, tailing ponds, river, plain, and the built environment. The Category of landscape character most dominant scattered in the area is forest, here is the river, plain, tailing ponds, the built environment, and plain. The landscape character in a natural environment most preferred for ecotourism activities. The landscape character that spread in the natural environment and the built environment is a potential that must be protected and modified such as elimination of incongruous element, accentuation of natural form, alteration of the natural form, intensification and enhanced visual quality intensively to be developed as a ecotourism destination area.

  1. Common constraints limit Korean and English character recognition in peripheral vision.

    PubMed

    He, Yingchen; Kwon, MiYoung; Legge, Gordon E

    2018-01-01

    The visual span refers to the number of adjacent characters that can be recognized in a single glance. It is viewed as a sensory bottleneck in reading for both normal and clinical populations. In peripheral vision, the visual span for English characters can be enlarged after training with a letter-recognition task. Here, we examined the transfer of training from Korean to English characters for a group of bilingual Korean native speakers. In the pre- and posttests, we measured visual spans for Korean characters and English letters. Training (1.5 hours × 4 days) consisted of repetitive visual-span measurements for Korean trigrams (strings of three characters). Our training enlarged the visual spans for Korean single characters and trigrams, and the benefit transferred to untrained English symbols. The improvement was largely due to a reduction of within-character and between-character crowding in Korean recognition, as well as between-letter crowding in English recognition. We also found a negative correlation between the size of the visual span and the average pattern complexity of the symbol set. Together, our results showed that the visual span is limited by common sensory (crowding) and physical (pattern complexity) factors regardless of the language script, providing evidence that the visual span reflects a universal bottleneck for text recognition.

  2. Common constraints limit Korean and English character recognition in peripheral vision

    PubMed Central

    He, Yingchen; Kwon, MiYoung; Legge, Gordon E.

    2018-01-01

    The visual span refers to the number of adjacent characters that can be recognized in a single glance. It is viewed as a sensory bottleneck in reading for both normal and clinical populations. In peripheral vision, the visual span for English characters can be enlarged after training with a letter-recognition task. Here, we examined the transfer of training from Korean to English characters for a group of bilingual Korean native speakers. In the pre- and posttests, we measured visual spans for Korean characters and English letters. Training (1.5 hours × 4 days) consisted of repetitive visual-span measurements for Korean trigrams (strings of three characters). Our training enlarged the visual spans for Korean single characters and trigrams, and the benefit transferred to untrained English symbols. The improvement was largely due to a reduction of within-character and between-character crowding in Korean recognition, as well as between-letter crowding in English recognition. We also found a negative correlation between the size of the visual span and the average pattern complexity of the symbol set. Together, our results showed that the visual span is limited by common sensory (crowding) and physical (pattern complexity) factors regardless of the language script, providing evidence that the visual span reflects a universal bottleneck for text recognition. PMID:29327041

  3. Dissociable neural systems supporting knowledge about human character and appearance in ourselves and others.

    PubMed

    Moran, Joseph M; Lee, Su Mei; Gabrieli, John D E

    2011-09-01

    Functional neuroimaging has identified a neural system comprising posterior cingulate (pCC) and medial prefrontal (mPFC) cortices that appears to mediate self-referential thought. It is unclear whether the two components of this system mediate similar or different psychological processes, and how specific this system is for self relative to others. In an fMRI study, we compared brain responses for evaluation of character (e.g., honest) versus appearance (e.g., svelte) for oneself, one's mother (a close other), and President Bush (a distant other). There was a double dissociation between dorsal mPFC, which was more engaged for character than appearance judgments, and pCC, which was more engaged for appearance than character judgments. A ventral region of mPFC was engaged for judgments involving one's own character and appearance, and one's mother's character, but not her appearance. A follow-up behavioral study indicated that participants rate their own character and appearance, and their mother's character, but not her appearance, as important in their self-concept. This suggests that ventral mPFC activation reflects its role in processing information relevant to the self, but not limited to the self. Thus, specific neural systems mediate specific aspects of thinking about character and appearance in oneself and in others.

  4. Visual field differences in visual word recognition can emerge purely from perceptual learning: evidence from modeling Chinese character pronunciation.

    PubMed

    Hsiao, Janet Hui-Wen

    2011-11-01

    In Chinese orthography, a dominant character structure exists in which a semantic radical appears on the left and a phonetic radical on the right (SP characters); a minority opposite arrangement also exists (PS characters). As the number of phonetic radical types is much greater than semantic radical types, in SP characters the information is skewed to the right, whereas in PS characters it is skewed to the left. Through training a computational model for SP and PS character recognition that takes into account of the locations in which the characters appear in the visual field during learning, but does not assume any fundamental hemispheric processing difference, we show that visual field differences can emerge as a consequence of the fundamental structural differences in information between SP and PS characters, as opposed to the fundamental processing differences between the two hemispheres. This modeling result is also consistent with behavioral naming performance. This work provides strong evidence that perceptual learning, i.e., the information structure of word stimuli to which the readers have long been exposed, is one of the factors that accounts for hemispheric asymmetry effects in visual word recognition. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. Smoking and The Simpsons.

    PubMed

    Eslick, Guy D; Eslick, Marielle G

    2009-06-01

    To determine the frequency of smoking on The Simpsons television show, and the relationship with the sex and age groups of characters shown smoking, and with positive, negative and neutral connotations associated with instances of smoking. Content analysis (performed from January to October 2008) of instances of smoking that appeared in the first 18 seasons of The Simpsons television show, which aired from 1989 to 2007. Frequency, impact (positive, negative, neutral) of instances of smoking; and frequency associated with age (child or adolescent versus adult characters), sex and types of characters on the show. There were 795 instances of smoking in the 400 episodes observed. Most (498; 63%) involved male characters. Only 8% of instances of smoking (63) involved child or adolescent characters. Just over a third of instances of smoking (275; 35%) reflected smoking in a negative way, compared with the majority, which reflected smoking in a neutral way (504; 63%) and the minority, which reflected smoking in a positive way (16; 2%). Child and adolescent characters were much more likely to be involved in instances of smoking reflected in a negative way compared with adult characters (odds ratio, 44.93; 95% CI, 16.15-172.18). There are a large number of instances of smoking in The Simpsons television show. Child and adolescent characters are much more likely to be portrayed in instances of smoking reflected in a negative way than adult characters. Viewing The Simpsons characters smoking may prompt children to consider smoking at an early age.

  6. Vehicle license plate recognition based on geometry restraints and multi-feature decision

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wu, Jianwei; Wang, Zongyue

    2005-10-01

    Vehicle license plate (VLP) recognition is of great importance to many traffic applications. Though researchers have paid much attention to VLP recognition there has not been a fully operational VLP recognition system yet for many reasons. This paper discusses a valid and practical method for vehicle license plate recognition based on geometry restraints and multi-feature decision including statistical and structural features. In general, the VLP recognition includes the following steps: the location of VLP, character segmentation, and character recognition. This paper discusses the three steps in detail. The characters of VLP are always declining caused by many factors, which makes it more difficult to recognize the characters of VLP, therefore geometry restraints such as the general ratio of length and width, the adjacent edges being perpendicular are used for incline correction. Image Moment has been proved to be invariant to translation, rotation and scaling therefore image moment is used as one feature for character recognition. Stroke is the basic element for writing and hence taking it as a feature is helpful to character recognition. Finally we take the image moment, the strokes and the numbers of each stroke for each character image and some other structural features and statistical features as the multi-feature to match each character image with sample character images so that each character image can be recognized by BP neural net. The proposed method combines statistical and structural features for VLP recognition, and the result shows its validity and efficiency.

  7. Influence of a Character-Based App on Children's Learning of Nutritional Information: Should Apps Be Served with a Side of Media Characters?

    PubMed Central

    Richmond, Elana M.; Brunick, Kaitlin L.; Wright, Charlotte A.; Calvert, Sandra L.

    2018-01-01

    Abstract Objective: Childhood obesity is a health issue in the United States, associated with marketing practices in which media characters are often used to sell unhealthy products. This study examined exposure to a socially contingent touch-screen gaming app, which replied immediately, reliably, and accurately to children's actions. Children's recall of nutritional content and their liking of the character were assessed. Materials and Methods: Four- and five-year-old children (N = 114) received no-exposure, single-exposure, or repeated-exposure to a character-based iPad app rewarding healthy and penalizing unhealthy behaviors. Children reported how much they liked the character and recalled healthy and unhealthy items from the app. An ordinary least squares regression was conducted on how much children liked the character by condition. Poisson regressions were conducted on the number of items recalled by condition alone, and in an interacted model of treatment condition by liking the character. Results: Children liked the character more in the repeated app-exposure condition than in the control group (P = 0.018). Children in the repeated and single app-exposure conditions recalled more healthy (P < 0.001) and unhealthy (P < 0.001) items than the control group. Within treatment conditions, liking the character increased recall of healthy items in the single app-exposure compared to the repeated app-exposure condition (P = 0.005). Conclusions: Results revealed that repeated exposure increased children's learning of nutritional information and liking of the character. The results contribute to our understanding of how to deliver effective nutrition information to young children in a new venue, a gaming app. PMID:29364706

  8. Influence of a Character-Based App on Children's Learning of Nutritional Information: Should Apps Be Served with a Side of Media Characters?

    PubMed

    Putnam, Marisa M; Richmond, Elana M; Brunick, Kaitlin L; Wright, Charlotte A; Calvert, Sandra L

    2018-04-01

    Childhood obesity is a health issue in the United States, associated with marketing practices in which media characters are often used to sell unhealthy products. This study examined exposure to a socially contingent touch-screen gaming app, which replied immediately, reliably, and accurately to children's actions. Children's recall of nutritional content and their liking of the character were assessed. Four- and five-year-old children (N = 114) received no-exposure, single-exposure, or repeated-exposure to a character-based iPad app rewarding healthy and penalizing unhealthy behaviors. Children reported how much they liked the character and recalled healthy and unhealthy items from the app. An ordinary least squares regression was conducted on how much children liked the character by condition. Poisson regressions were conducted on the number of items recalled by condition alone, and in an interacted model of treatment condition by liking the character. Children liked the character more in the repeated app-exposure condition than in the control group (P = 0.018). Children in the repeated and single app-exposure conditions recalled more healthy (P < 0.001) and unhealthy (P < 0.001) items than the control group. Within treatment conditions, liking the character increased recall of healthy items in the single app-exposure compared to the repeated app-exposure condition (P = 0.005). Results revealed that repeated exposure increased children's learning of nutritional information and liking of the character. The results contribute to our understanding of how to deliver effective nutrition information to young children in a new venue, a gaming app.

  9. Queering Chapter Books with LGBT Characters for Young Readers: Recognizing and Complicating Representations of Homonormativity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hermann-Wilmarth, Jill M.; Ryan, Caitlin L.

    2016-01-01

    In this paper, we consider the limited chapter book options with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) characters available for upper elementary readers. While these texts all include one or more LGBT character(s), the overall representations of LGBT people and issues highlight particular normative identities and silence others. We are…

  10. Using Stroke Removal to Investigate Chinese Character Identification during Reading: Evidence from Eye Movements

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yan, Guoli; Bai, Xuejun; Zang, Chuanli; Bian, Qian; Cui, Lei; Qi, Wei; Rayner, Keith; Liversedge, Simon P.

    2012-01-01

    We explored the effect of stroke removal from Chinese characters on eye movements during reading to examine the role of stroke encoding in character identification. Experimental sentences were comprised of characters with different proportions of strokes removed (15, 30, and 50%), and different types of strokes removed (beginning, ending, and…

  11. Exploring Associations of Character Profiles and Out-Of-School Time Activities among Children and Adolescents

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shubert, Jennifer; Metzger, Aaron; Wray-Lake, Laura; Syvertsen, Amy K.

    2016-01-01

    Conceptualizing character from a relational developmental systems metatheory, this study utilizes a person- oriented approach to examine profiles of character strengths in children and adolescents. Using Q sort methodology, 90 youth (Mage = 13.0, 51% female) sorted 12 character strengths based on how much each strength represented them. Using Q…

  12. Character Issues: Reality Character Problems and Solutions through Education in Indonesia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Saidek, Abdul Rahim; Islami, Raisul; Abdoludin

    2016-01-01

    Weak character education raises the problem of corruption, a fight between students, free sex, drugs and rape/abortion indicate that the issue of character education of the nation must be improved and the concern of all parties, the nation's leaders, law enforcement officers, educators, religious leaders, groups and other etc. There are two…

  13. It's Unanimous: "Effective Character Education Is Not Quick or Superficial, and It Begins with Caring Relationships"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sojourner, Russ

    2014-01-01

    Russ Sojourner is the Schools of Character Director for the Character Education Partnership (CEP) in Washington, DC. In this article he begins by saying that Daniel Lapsley and Charles Murray's articles presented in this issue of "Journal of Character Education" are clearly concerned about the compelling (and daunting) challenges facing…

  14. The Effects of Talking-Head with Various Realism Levels on Students' Emotions in Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mohamad Ali, Ahmad Zamzuri; Hamdan, Mohd Najib

    2017-01-01

    The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of various realistic levels of talking-head on students' emotions in pronunciation learning. Four talking-head characters with varying levels of realism were developed and tested: a nonrealistic three-dimensional character, a realistic three-dimensional character, a two-dimensional character, and…

  15. Applying Adult Learning Theory through a Character Analysis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baskas, Richard S.

    2011-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to analyze the behavior of a character, Celie, in a movie, 'The Color Purple," through the lens of two adult learning theorists to determine the relationships the character has with each theory. The development and portrayal of characters in movies can be explained and understood by the analysis of adult learning…

  16. Presentation Factors in the Learning of Chinese Characters: The Order and Position of Hanyu Pinyin and English Translations

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chung, Kevin K. H.

    2007-01-01

    The influence of different instructional presentations upon meaning and pronunciation acquisition in character learning was examined. High school students learned to identify a series of characters in terms of their associated pinyin and English translation prompts. Acquisition was shown to proceed more rapidly when the Chinese character was…

  17. 12 CFR 333.2 - Change in general character of business.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 12 Banks and Banking 4 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Change in general character of business. 333.2... GENERAL POLICY EXTENSION OF CORPORATE POWERS Regulations § 333.2 Change in general character of business... permit any change to be made in the general character or type of business exercised by it after the...

  18. The Trouble with Moral Citizens: A Response to "Moral-Character Development for Teacher Education" by Daniel Lapsley and Ryan Woodbury

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Westheimer, Joel

    2016-01-01

    In "Moral-Character Development for Teacher Education," Daniel Lapsley and Ryan Woodbury argue that teacher education licensure and accreditation standards largely ignore matters of values, character, and morality. "The moral-character formation of children," they note, "is the instructional objective that dare not speak…

  19. Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports' Relationship to the Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Weston, Alana

    2017-01-01

    Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an intervention-based, character education program that is being implemented in many schools nation-wide. It is important to know the extent to which PBIS reflects the principles of an effective character education program because PBIS is a widely used behavior modification character education…

  20. Mapping wilderness character in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

    Treesearch

    James Tricker; Ann Schwaller; Teresa Hanson; Elizabeth Mejicano; Peter Landres

    2017-01-01

    A GIS-based approach was used to depict how threats to wilderness character vary in extent and magnitude across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Based on the interagency strategy to monitor wilderness character, Keeping It Wild: An Interagency Strategy for Monitoring Wilderness Character Across the National Wilderness Preservation System (Landres et al. 2008a...

  1. The Integration of Character Values in the Teaching of Economics: A Case of Selected High Schools in Banjarmasin

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hadi, Rizali

    2015-01-01

    Character education is currently an international issue and schools are deeply involved in its dissemination. In Indonesia, teachers have been introduced to various methods and techniques of how to integrate character values with subject-matter content during teaching-learning processes. Since teaching character values together with subject matter…

  2. Character Education in Content Courses: Self-Scoring as a Means for Developing Honesty in Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Djiwandono, Patrisius Istiarto

    2016-01-01

    As character education is gaining currency, some institutions have started to incorporate character education into its instructional practices. However, this is not an easy task. Limited hours of contact and teachers' insufficient know-how of teaching and evaluating students' characters have hampered the efforts. This paper reports a small effort…

  3. Picture This Character: Using Imagery To Teach a Japanese Syllabary.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Thompson, Joyce D.; Wakefield, John F.

    This study examined the effectiveness of imagery to teach native English speakers to associate hiragana characters (a Japanese script) with the spoken Japanese syllables that the characters represent. Twenty-one adults in a psychology of learning class for teachers were taught to picture a hiragana character in such a way as to establish an…

  4. Putting Characters First in a Middle School Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sass-Henke, Amanda

    2012-01-01

    One of the most important aspects of developing a close, personal relationship with literary characters is "relevancy." Readers have to find something to connect with in characters to care about them, and for that connection to take place, stories and their characters have to be relevant in the eyes of an adolescent to the point where they can…

  5. Improved Characters and Student Learning Outcomes through Development of Character Education Based General Physics Learning Model

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Derlina; Sabani; Mihardi, Satria

    2015-01-01

    Education Research in Indonesia has begun to lead to the development of character education and is no longer fixated on the outcomes of cognitive learning. This study purposed to produce character education based general physics learning model (CEBGP Learning Model) and with valid, effective and practical peripheral devices to improve character…

  6. Schools of Character: Reclaiming America's Values for Tomorrow's Workforce. The 1998 Ninth Annual "Business Week" Awards for Instructional Innovation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McGraw-Hill Companies, New York, NY. Educational and Professional Publishing Group.

    This booklet profiles 10 schools that have successfully integrated character education into the lives of their students. The Character Education Partnership (CEP), in its "Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education," has articulated the kinds of efforts that its members believe have proven successful in helping young people…

  7. Character Education in Print: Content Analysis of Character Education in Introduction to Education Textbooks

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Protz, Babette Marisa

    2013-01-01

    Albert Einstein is credited with saying that the most important component of education is the development of students' character. While debate exists as to the delivery of character education in the public schools, it must be recognized that not all students have a support system outside of the schoolhouse. Consequently, when character…

  8. Complex root networks of Chinese characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Po-Han; Chen, Jia-Ling; Wang, Po-Cheng; Chi, Ting-Ting; Xiao, Zhi-Ren; Jhang, Zih-Jian; Yeh, Yeong-Nan; Chen, Yih-Yuh; Hu, Chin-Kun

    There are several sets of Chinese characters still available today, including Oracle Bone Inscriptions (OBI) in Shang Dynasty, Chu characters (CC) used in Chu of Warring State Period, Small Seal Script in dictionary Shuowen Jiezi (SJ) in Eastern Han Dynasty, and Kangxi Dictionary (KD) in Qing Dynasty. Such as Chinese characters were all constructed via combinations of meaningful patterns, called roots. Our studies for the complex networks of all roots indicate that the roots of the characters in OBI, CC, SJ and KD have characteristics of small world networks and scale-free networks.

  9. Identifying With a Stereotype: The Divergent Effects of Exposure to Homosexual Television Characters.

    PubMed

    McLaughlin, Bryan; Rodriguez, Nathian S

    2017-01-01

    Scholars examining homosexual television characters have typically come to one of two conclusions: either exposure to homosexual characters can lead to increased acceptance, or homosexual characters serve to reaffirm negative stereotypes. We seek to bridge these two bodies of research by introducing the concept of stereotyped identification-the idea that cognitively and emotionally identifying with fictional characters can increase acceptance of minorities, while reinforcing implicit stereotypes about how they look, act, and talk. Results from our national survey (N = 972) offer support for this hypothesis.

  10. A Method of Character Detection and Segmentation for Highway Guide Signs

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Xu, Jiawei; Zhang, Chongyang

    2018-01-01

    In this paper, a method of character detection and segmentation for highway signs in China is proposed. It consists of four steps. Firstly, the highway sign area is detectedby colour and geometric features, andthe possible character region is obtained by multi-level projection strategy. Secondly, pseudo target character region is removed by local binary patterns (LBP) feature. Thirdly, convolutional neural network (CNN)is used to classify target regions. Finally, adaptive projection strategies are used to segment characters strings. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method achieves new state-of-the-art results.

  11. Modelling rate distributions using character compatibility: implications for morphological evolution among fossil invertebrates.

    PubMed

    Wagner, Peter J

    2012-02-23

    Rate distributions are important considerations when testing hypotheses about morphological evolution or phylogeny. They also have implications about general processes underlying character evolution. Molecular systematists often assume that rates are Poisson processes with gamma distributions. However, morphological change is the product of multiple probabilistic processes and should theoretically be affected by hierarchical integration of characters. Both factors predict lognormal rate distributions. Here, a simple inverse modelling approach assesses the best single-rate, gamma and lognormal models given observed character compatibility for 115 invertebrate groups. Tests reject the single-rate model for nearly all cases. Moreover, the lognormal outperforms the gamma for character change rates and (especially) state derivation rates. The latter in particular is consistent with integration affecting morphological character evolution.

  12. Character context: a shape descriptor for Arabic handwriting recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mudhsh, Mohammed; Almodfer, Rolla; Duan, Pengfei; Xiong, Shengwu

    2017-11-01

    In the handwriting recognition field, designing good descriptors are substantial to obtain rich information of the data. However, the handwriting recognition research of a good descriptor is still an open issue due to unlimited variation in human handwriting. We introduce a "character context descriptor" that efficiently dealt with the structural characteristics of Arabic handwritten characters. First, the character image is smoothed and normalized, then the character context descriptor of 32 feature bins is built based on the proposed "distance function." Finally, a multilayer perceptron with regularization is used as a classifier. On experimentation with a handwritten Arabic characters database, the proposed method achieved a state-of-the-art performance with recognition rate equal to 98.93% and 99.06% for the 66 and 24 classes, respectively.

  13. Word boundaries affect visual attention in Chinese reading.

    PubMed

    Li, Xingshan; Ma, Guojie

    2012-01-01

    In two experiments, we explored attention deployment during the reading of Chinese words using a probe detection task. In both experiments, Chinese readers saw four simplified Chinese characters briefly, and then a probe was presented at one of the character positions. The four characters constituted either one word or two words of two characters each. Reaction time was shorter when the probe was at the character 2 position than the character 3 position in the two-word condition, but not in the one-word condition. In Experiment 2, there were more trials and the materials were more carefully controlled, and the results replicated that of Experiment 1. These results suggest that word boundary information affects attentional deployment in Chinese reading.

  14. Playing MMORPGs: connections between addiction and identifying with a character.

    PubMed

    Smahel, David; Blinka, Lukas; Ledabyl, Ondrej

    2008-12-01

    Addiction to online role-playing games is one of the most discussed aspects of recent cyberpsychology, mainly for its potentially negative impact on the social lives of young people. In our study, we focus on some aspects of youth and adolescent addiction to MMORPGs. We investigated connections between players and their game characters and examined if, and in what ways, player relationship to their character affected potential addiction. Players attitude to their characters seems to play a specific role, since players who tend to be addicted view their characters as being superior and more often wish to be like their characters in their real lives. Our research also confirmed that younger players are generally more prone to addiction.

  15. Character Education in School Settings

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wright, Hanford D.; And Others

    1973-01-01

    Describes how various teachers in public and parochial schools have used CRP (Character Research Project Curriculum) materials to insert positive character training into their particular class situations. (DS)

  16. Comparing the minimum spatial-frequency content for recognizing Chinese and alphabet characters

    PubMed Central

    Wang, Hui; Legge, Gordon E.

    2018-01-01

    Visual blur is a common problem that causes difficulty in pattern recognition for normally sighted people under degraded viewing conditions (e.g., near the acuity limit, when defocused, or in fog) and also for people with impaired vision. For reliable identification, the spatial frequency content of an object needs to extend up to or exceed a minimum value in units of cycles per object, referred to as the critical spatial frequency. In this study, we investigated the critical spatial frequency for alphabet and Chinese characters, and examined the effect of pattern complexity. The stimuli were divided into seven categories based on their perimetric complexity, including the lowercase and uppercase alphabet letters, and five groups of Chinese characters. We found that the critical spatial frequency significantly increased with complexity, from 1.01 cycles per character for the simplest group to 2.00 cycles per character for the most complex group of Chinese characters. A second goal of the study was to test a space-bandwidth invariance hypothesis that would represent a tradeoff between the critical spatial frequency and the number of adjacent patterns that can be recognized at one time. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the critical spatial frequencies in cycles per character from the current study and visual-span sizes in number of characters (measured by Wang, He, & Legge, 2014) for sets of characters with different complexities. For the character size (1.2°) we used in the study, we found an invariant product of approximately 10 cycles, which may represent a capacity limitation on visual pattern recognition. PMID:29297056

  17. Costly punishment and cooperation in the evolutionary snowdrift game

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Xu, C.; Ji, M.; Yap, Yee Jiun; Zheng, Da-Fang; Hui, P. M.

    2011-05-01

    The role of punishments in promoting cooperation is an important issue. We incorporate costly punishments into the snowdrift game (SG) by introducing a third punishing (P) character, and study the effects. The punishers, who carry basically a cooperative (C) character, are willing to pay a cost α so as to punish a non-cooperative (D) opponent by β. Depending on the initial fractions of the characters, α, β, and the cost-to-benefit ratio r in the SG, the three-character system evolves into a steady state consisting either only of C and P characters or only of C and D characters, in a well-mixed population. The former situation represents an enhancement in cooperation relative to the SG, while the latter is similar to the SG. The dynamics in approaching these different steady states are found to be different. Analytically, the key features in the dynamics and the steady states observed in simulations are captured by a set of differential equations. The sensitivity to the initial distribution of characters is studied by depicting the flow in a phase portrait and analyzing the nature of fixed points. The analysis also shows the role of P-character agents in preventing a system from invasion by D-character agents. Starting from a population consisting only of C and P agents, a D-character agent intended to invade the system cannot survive when the initial fraction of P agents is greater than r/β. Our model, defined intentionally as a simulation algorithm, can be readily generalized to incorporate many interesting effects, such as those in a networked population.

  18. Sampling diverse characters improves phylogenies: Craniodental and postcranial characters of vertebrates often imply different trees.

    PubMed

    Mounce, Ross C P; Sansom, Robert; Wills, Matthew A

    2016-03-01

    Morphological cladograms of vertebrates are often inferred from greater numbers of characters describing the skull and teeth than from postcranial characters. This is either because the skull is believed to yield characters with a stronger phylogenetic signal (i.e., contain less homoplasy), because morphological variation therein is more readily atomized, or because craniodental material is more widely available (particularly in the palaeontological case). An analysis of 85 vertebrate datasets published between 2000 and 2013 confirms that craniodental characters are significantly more numerous than postcranial characters, but finds no evidence that levels of homoplasy differ in the two partitions. However, a new partition test, based on tree-to-tree distances (as measured by the Robinson Foulds metric) rather than tree length, reveals that relationships inferred from the partitions are significantly different about one time in three, much more often than expected. Such differences may reflect divergent selective pressures in different body regions, resulting in different localized patterns of homoplasy. Most systematists attempt to sample characters broadly across body regions, but this is not always possible. We conclude that trees inferred largely from either craniodental or postcranial characters in isolation may differ significantly from those that would result from a more holistic approach. We urge the latter. © 2016 The Author(s). Evolution © 2016 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

  19. The Influence of Chinese Character Handwriting Diagnosis and Remedial Instruction System on Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hsiao, Hsien-Sheng; Chang, Cheng-Sian; Chen, Chiao-Jia; Wu, Chia-Hou; Lin, Chien-Yu

    2015-01-01

    This study designed and developed a Chinese character handwriting diagnosis and remedial instruction (CHDRI) system to improve Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners' ability to write Chinese characters. The CFL learners were given two tests based on the CHDRI system. One test focused on Chinese character handwriting to diagnose the CFL…

  20. Automatic Online Educational Game Content Creation by Identifying Similar Chinese Characters with Radical Extraction and Graph Matching Algorithms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lai, Jason Kwong-Hung; Leung, Howard; Hu, Zhi-Hui; Tang, Jeff K. T.; Xu, Yun

    2010-01-01

    One of the difficulties in learning Chinese characters is distinguishing similar characters. This can cause misunderstanding and miscommunication in daily life. Thus, it is important for students learning the Chinese language to be able to distinguish similar characters and understand their proper usage. In this paper, the authors propose a game…

  1. A Review of Virtual Character's Emotion Model

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Zhen

    2008-11-01

    Emotional virtual characters are essential to digital entertainment, an emotion is related to virtual environment and a virtual character's inner variables, emotion model of virtual character is a hot topic in many fields, domain knowledge is very important for modeling emotion, and the current research of emotion expression in the world was also summarized, and some new research directions of emotion model are presented.

  2. The Role of Radical Awareness in Chinese-As-A-Second-Language Learners' Chinese Character Reading Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wong, Yu Ka

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, the role of radical awareness in Chinese character reading development among young Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) learners is evaluated in terms of a structural property of the writing system: the distribution of elementary, one-radical (i.e. one-element) simple characters as against majority, multi-radical compound characters.…

  3. Introducing OVAL Writing: A New Approach to Chinese Character Retention for Secondary Non-Chinese-Speaking Background Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ren, Guanxin

    2004-01-01

    One of the difficulties secondary non-Chinese-speaking background (NCSB) learners are facing is to remember the characters learned in order to recall them when necessary. The traditional way of teaching secondary NCSB learners to remember Chinese characters is through mere repetition, e.g. writing out each single character by following its stroke…

  4. "It Could Affect You as a Person, Character-Wise": Promoting Character Development and Preventing Sexual Violence at West Point

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Arbeit, Miriam R.

    2017-01-01

    The United States Military Academy at West Point develops cadets into "leaders of character" who will become Army officers. This focus on character presents an opportunity for the prevention of sexual violence through an emphasis on military values. Using constructivist grounded theory, this study examined how cadets experience their own…

  5. Neural system applied on an invariant industrial character recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lecoeuche, Stephane; Deguillemont, Denis; Dubus, Jean-Paul

    1997-04-01

    Besides the variety of fonts, character recognition systems for the industrial world are confronted with specific problems like: the variety of support (metal, wood, paper, ceramics . . .) as well as the variety of marking (printing, engraving, . . .) and conditions of lighting. We present a system that is able to solve a part of this problem. It implements a collaboration between two neural networks. The first network specialized in vision allows the system to extract the character from an image. Besides this capability, we have equipped our system with characteristics allowing it to obtain an invariant model from the presented character. Thus, whatever the position, the size and the orientation of the character during the capture are, the model presented to the input of the second network will be identical. The second network, thanks to a learning phase, permits us to obtain a character recognition system independent of the type of fonts used. Furthermore, its capabilities of generalization permit us to recognize degraded and/or distorted characters. A feedback loop between the two networks permits the first one to modify the quality of vision.The cooperation between these two networks allows us to recognize characters whatever the support and the marking.

  6. Methods for Presenting Braille Characters on a Mobile Device with a Touchscreen and Tactile Feedback.

    PubMed

    Rantala, J; Raisamo, R; Lylykangas, J; Surakka, V; Raisamo, J; Salminen, K; Pakkanen, T; Hippula, A

    2009-01-01

    Three novel interaction methods were designed for reading six-dot Braille characters from the touchscreen of a mobile device. A prototype device with a piezoelectric actuator embedded under the touchscreen was used to create tactile feedback. The three interaction methods, scan, sweep, and rhythm, enabled users to read Braille characters one at a time either by exploring the characters dot by dot or by sensing a rhythmic pattern presented on the screen. The methods were tested with five blind Braille readers as a proof of concept. The results of the first experiment showed that all three methods can be used to convey information as the participants could accurately (91-97 percent) recognize individual characters. In the second experiment the presentation rate of the most efficient and preferred method, the rhythm, was varied. A mean recognition accuracy of 70 percent was found when the speed of presenting a single character was nearly doubled from the first experiment. The results showed that temporal tactile feedback and Braille coding can be used to transmit single-character information while further studies are still needed to evaluate the presentation of serial information, i.e., multiple Braille characters.

  7. Perceived bitterness character of beer in relation to hop variety and the impact of hop aroma.

    PubMed

    Oladokun, Olayide; James, Sue; Cowley, Trevor; Dehrmann, Frieda; Smart, Katherine; Hort, Joanne; Cook, David

    2017-09-01

    The impact of hop variety and hop aroma on perceived beer bitterness intensity and character was investigated using analytical and sensory methods. Beers made from malt extract were hopped with 3 distinctive hop varieties (Hersbrucker, East Kent Goldings, Zeus) to achieve equi-bitter levels. A trained sensory panel determined the bitterness character profile of each singly-hopped beer using a novel lexicon. Results showed different bitterness character profiles for each beer, with hop aroma also found to change the hop variety-derived bitterness character profiles of the beer. Rank-rating evaluations further showed the significant effect of hop aroma on selected key bitterness character attributes, by increasing perceived harsh and lingering bitterness, astringency, and bitterness intensity via cross-modal flavour interactions. This study advances understanding of the complexity of beer bitterness perception by demonstrating that hop variety selection and hop aroma both impact significantly on the perceived intensity and character of this key sensory attribute. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Development and Evolution of Character Displacement

    PubMed Central

    Pfennig, David W.; Pfennig, Karin S.

    2012-01-01

    Character displacement occurs when competition for either resources or successful reproduction imposes divergent selection on interacting species, causing divergence in traits associated with resource use or reproduction. Here, we describe how character displacement can be mediated either by genetically canalized changes (i.e., changes that reflect allelic or genotype frequency changes) or by phenotypic plasticity. We also discuss how these two mechanisms influence the tempo of character displacement. Specifically, we suggest that, under some conditions, character displacement mediated by phenotypic plasticity might occur more rapidly than that mediated by genetically canalized changes. Finally, we describe how these two mechanisms may act together and determine character displacement’s mode, such that it proceeds through an initial phase in which trait divergence is environmentally induced to a later phase in which divergence becomes genetically canalized. This plasticity-first hypothesis predicts that character displacement should be generally mediated by ancestral plasticity and that it will arise similarly in multiple, independently evolving populations. We conclude by highlighting future directions for research that would test these predictions. PMID:22257002

  9. Effect of refractive error on temperament and character properties.

    PubMed

    Kalkan Akcay, Emine; Canan, Fatih; Simavli, Huseyin; Dal, Derya; Yalniz, Hacer; Ugurlu, Nagihan; Gecici, Omer; Cagil, Nurullah

    2015-01-01

    To determine the effect of refractive error on temperament and character properties using Cloninger's psychobiological model of personality. Using the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), the temperament and character profiles of 41 participants with refractive errors (17 with myopia, 12 with hyperopia, and 12 with myopic astigmatism) were compared to those of 30 healthy control participants. Here, temperament comprised the traits of novelty seeking, harm-avoidance, and reward dependence, while character comprised traits of self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence. Participants with refractive error showed significantly lower scores on purposefulness, cooperativeness, empathy, helpfulness, and compassion (P<0.05, P<0.01, P<0.05, P<0.05, and P<0.01, respectively). Refractive error might have a negative influence on some character traits, and different types of refractive error might have different temperament and character properties. These personality traits may be implicated in the onset and/or perpetuation of refractive errors and may be a productive focus for psychotherapy.

  10. Brain Activity while Reading Sentences with Kanji Characters Expressing Emotions

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yuasa, Masahide; Saito, Keiichi; Mukawa, Naoki

    In this paper, we describe the brain activity associated with kanji characters expressing emotion, which are places at the end of a sentence. Japanese people use a special kanji character in brackets at the end of sentences in text messages such as those sent through e-mail and messenger tools. Such kanji characters plays a role to expresses the sender's emotion (such as fun, laughter, sadness, tears), like emoticons. It is a very simple and effective way to convey the senders' emotions and his/her thoughts to the receiver. In this research, we investigate the effects of emotional kanji characters by using an fMRI study. The experimental results show that both the right and left inferior frontal gyrus, which have been implicated on verbal and nonverbal information, were activated. We found that we detect a sentence with an emotional kanji character as the verbal and nonverval information, and a sentence with emotional kanji characters enrich communication between the sender and the reciever.

  11. The SU(r)2 string functions as q-diagrams

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Genish, Arel; Gepner, Doron

    2016-06-01

    A generalized Roger Ramanujan (GRR) type expression for the characters of A-type parafermions has been a long standing puzzle dating back to conjectures made regarding some of the characters in the 90s. Not long ago we have put forward such GRR type identities describing any of the level two ADE-type generalized parafermions characters at any rank. These characters are the string functions of simply laced Lie algebras at level two, as such, they are also of mathematical interest. In our last joint paper we presented the complete derivation for the D-type generalized parafermions characters identities. Here we generalize our previous discussion and prove the GRR type expressions for the characters of A-type generalized parafermions. To prove the A-type GRR conjecture we study further the q-diagrams, introduced in our last joint paper, and examine the diagrammatic interpretations of known identities among them Slater identities for the characters of the first minimal model, which is the Ising model, and the Bailey lemma.

  12. Documentation for the machine-readable character coded version of the SKYMAP catalogue

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Warren, W. H., Jr.

    1981-01-01

    The SKYMAP catalogue is a compilation of astronomical data prepared primarily for purposes of attitude guidance for satellites. In addition to the SKYMAP Master Catalogue data base, a software package of data base management and utility programs is available. The tape version of the SKYMAP Catalogue, as received by the Astronomical Data Center (ADC), contains logical records consisting of a combination of binary and EBCDIC data. Certain character coded data in each record are redundant in that the same data are present in binary form. In order to facilitate wider use of all SKYMAP data by the astronomical community, a formatted (character) version was prepared by eliminating all redundant character data and converting all binary data to character form. The character version of the catalogue is described. The document is intended to fully describe the formatted tape so that users can process the data problems and guess work; it should be distributed with any character version of the catalogue.

  13. Synesthetic colors are elicited by sound quality in Japanese synesthetes.

    PubMed

    Asano, Michiko; Yokosawa, Kazuhiko

    2011-12-01

    Determinants of synesthetic color choice for Japanese phonetic characters were studied in six Japanese synesthetes. The study used Hiragana and Katakana characters, which represent the same set of syllables although their visual forms are dissimilar. From a palette of 138 colors, synesthetes selected a color corresponding to each character. Results revealed that synesthetic color choices for Hiragana characters and those for their Katakana counterparts were remarkably consistent, indicating that color selection depended on character-related sounds and not visual form. This Hiragana-Katakana invariance cannot be regarded as the same phenomenon as letter case invariance, usually reported for English grapheme-color synesthesia, because Hiragana and Katakana characters have different identities whereas upper and lower case letters have the same identity. This involvement of phonology suggests that cross-activation between an inducer (i.e., letter/character) brain region and that of the concurrent (i.e., color) area in grapheme-color synesthesia is mediated by higher order cortical processing areas. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. It's a word: early electrophysiological response to the character likeness of pictographs.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Mingxia; Jiang, Ting; Mei, Leilei; Yang, Hongmin; Chen, Chuansheng; Xue, Gui; Dong, Qi

    2011-07-01

    Using unfamiliar and meaningless pictographs that varied in their degree of similarity to Chinese characters, the current study tested whether the early electrophysiological response was modulated by character likeness. We measured P100 and N170 while 20 native Chinese speakers were viewing Chinese characters, drawings of objects, and pictographs. Comparisons across the three categories of stimuli showed that pictographs elicited a smaller N170 amplitude than did Chinese characters and a stronger N170 amplitude than did objects, but did not differ in the P100 amplitude from the other two categories. Within the category of pictographs, stimuli with a higher degree of character likeness elicited larger N170 amplitudes and shorter N170 peak latencies, and this effect was again not observed in P100. These results suggest that N170 is sensitive to visual stimuli's character likeness even though they are unfamiliar pictographs with no meanings or sounds. Copyright © 2010 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

  15. Virtual muscularity: a content analysis of male video game characters.

    PubMed

    Martins, Nicole; Williams, Dmitri C; Ratan, Rabindra A; Harrison, Kristen

    2011-01-01

    The 150 top-selling video games were content analyzed to study representations of male bodies. Human males in the games were captured via screenshot and body parts measured. These measurements were then compared to anthropometric data drawn from a representative sample of 1120 North American men. Characters at high levels of photorealism were larger than the average American male, but these characters did not mirror the V-shaped ideal found in mainstream media. Characters at low levels of photorealism were also larger than the average American male, but these characters were so much larger that they appeared cartoonish. Idealized male characters were more likely to be found in games for children than in games for adults. Implications for cultivation theory are discussed. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Modelling rate distributions using character compatibility: implications for morphological evolution among fossil invertebrates

    PubMed Central

    Wagner, Peter J.

    2012-01-01

    Rate distributions are important considerations when testing hypotheses about morphological evolution or phylogeny. They also have implications about general processes underlying character evolution. Molecular systematists often assume that rates are Poisson processes with gamma distributions. However, morphological change is the product of multiple probabilistic processes and should theoretically be affected by hierarchical integration of characters. Both factors predict lognormal rate distributions. Here, a simple inverse modelling approach assesses the best single-rate, gamma and lognormal models given observed character compatibility for 115 invertebrate groups. Tests reject the single-rate model for nearly all cases. Moreover, the lognormal outperforms the gamma for character change rates and (especially) state derivation rates. The latter in particular is consistent with integration affecting morphological character evolution. PMID:21795266

  17. A Simple Compression Scheme Based on ASCII Value Differencing

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tommy; Siregar, Rosyidah; Lubis, Imran; Marwan E, Andi; Mahmud H, Amir; Harahap, Mawaddah

    2018-04-01

    ASCII characters have a different code representation where each character has a different numeric value between the characters to each other. The characters is usually used as a text message communication has the representation of a numeric code to each other or have a small difference. The value of the difference can be used as a substitution of the characters so it will generate a new message with a size that is a little more. This paper discusses the utilization value of the difference of characters ASCII in a message to a much simpler substitution by using a dynamic-sized window in order to obtain the difference from ASCII value contained on the window as the basis in determining the bit substitution on the file compression results.

  18. Character strengths, social anxiety, and physiological stress reactivity.

    PubMed

    Li, Tingting; Duan, Wenjie; Guo, Pengfei

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, the effects of character strengths on the physiological reactivity to social anxiety induced by the Trier Social Stress Task were reported. On the basis of their scores in the Chinese Virtues Questionnaire, 30 college students were assigned to either high- ( n  = 15) or low-character-strength ( n  = 15) groups. Their psychological stress and physiological data across three laboratory stages (namely, baseline, stress exposure, and post-stress) were collected. Results indicated that individuals with high character strengths exhibited rapid cardiovascular recovery from baseline to post-stress even if high- and low-character-strength groups showed similar patterns of cardiovascular arousal in response to the stress at baseline and stress exposure. These results prove that character strengths are stress-defense factors that allow for psychological and physiological adaptation to stress.

  19. Teaching receptive naming of Chinese characters to children with autism by incorporating echolalia.

    PubMed

    Leung, J P; Wu, K I

    1997-01-01

    The facilitative effect of incorporating echolalia on teaching receptive naming of Chinese characters to children with autism was assessed. In Experiment 1, echoing the requested character name prior to the receptive naming task facilitated matching a character to its name. In addition, task performance was consistently maintained only when echolalia preceded the receptive manual response. Positive results from generalization tests suggested that learned responses occurred across various novel conditions. In Experiment 2, we examined the relation between task difficulty and speed of acquisition. All 3 participants achieved 100% correct responding in training, but learning less discriminable characters took more trials than learning more discriminable characters. These results provide support for incorporating echolalia as an educational tool within language instruction for some children with autism.

  20. Teaching receptive naming of Chinese characters to children with autism by incorporating echolalia.

    PubMed Central

    Leung, J P; Wu, K I

    1997-01-01

    The facilitative effect of incorporating echolalia on teaching receptive naming of Chinese characters to children with autism was assessed. In Experiment 1, echoing the requested character name prior to the receptive naming task facilitated matching a character to its name. In addition, task performance was consistently maintained only when echolalia preceded the receptive manual response. Positive results from generalization tests suggested that learned responses occurred across various novel conditions. In Experiment 2, we examined the relation between task difficulty and speed of acquisition. All 3 participants achieved 100% correct responding in training, but learning less discriminable characters took more trials than learning more discriminable characters. These results provide support for incorporating echolalia as an educational tool within language instruction for some children with autism. PMID:9157099

  1. The development and discussion of computerized visual perception assessment tool for Chinese characters structures - Concurrent estimation of the overall ability and the domain ability in item response theory approach.

    PubMed

    Wu, Huey-Min; Lin, Chin-Kai; Yang, Yu-Mao; Kuo, Bor-Chen

    2014-11-12

    Visual perception is the fundamental skill required for a child to recognize words, and to read and write. There was no visual perception assessment tool developed for preschool children based on Chinese characters in Taiwan. The purposes were to develop the computerized visual perception assessment tool for Chinese Characters Structures and to explore the psychometrical characteristic of assessment tool. This study adopted purposive sampling. The study evaluated 551 kindergarten-age children (293 boys, 258 girls) ranging from 46 to 81 months of age. The test instrument used in this study consisted of three subtests and 58 items, including tests of basic strokes, single-component characters, and compound characters. Based on the results of model fit analysis, the higher-order item response theory was used to estimate the performance in visual perception, basic strokes, single-component characters, and compound characters simultaneously. Analyses of variance were used to detect significant difference in age groups and gender groups. The difficulty of identifying items in a visual perception test ranged from -2 to 1. The visual perception ability of 4- to 6-year-old children ranged from -1.66 to 2.19. Gender did not have significant effects on performance. However, there were significant differences among the different age groups. The performance of 6-year-olds was better than that of 5-year-olds, which was better than that of 4-year-olds. This study obtained detailed diagnostic scores by using a higher-order item response theory model to understand the visual perception of basic strokes, single-component characters, and compound characters. Further statistical analysis showed that, for basic strokes and compound characters, girls performed better than did boys; there also were differences within each age group. For single-component characters, there was no difference in performance between boys and girls. However, again the performance of 6-year-olds was better than that of 4-year-olds, but there were no statistical differences between the performance of 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds. Results of tests with basic strokes, single-component characters and compound characters tests had good reliability and validity. Therefore, it can be apply to diagnose the problem of visual perception at preschool. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. A cognitive network for oracle bone characters related to animals

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Dress, Andreas; Grünewald, Stefan; Zeng, Zhenbing

    2016-01-01

    In this paper, we present an analysis of oracle bone characters for animals from a “cognitive” point of view. After some general remarks on oracle-bone characters presented in Sec. 1 and a short outline of the paper in Sec. 2, we collect various oracle-bone characters for animals from published resources in Sec. 3. In the next section, we begin analyzing a group of 60 ancient animal characters from www.zdic.net, a highly acclaimed internet dictionary of Chinese characters that is strictly based on historical sources, and introduce five categories of specific features regarding their (graphical) structure that will be used in Sec. 5 to associate corresponding feature vectors to these characters. In Sec. 6, these feature vectors will be used to investigate their dissimilarity in terms of a family of parameterized distance measures. And in the last section, we apply the SplitsTree method as encoded in the NeighborNet algorithms to construct a corresponding family of dissimilarity-based networks with the intention of elucidating how the ancient Chinese might have perceived the “animal world” in the late bronze age and to demonstrate that these pictographs reflect an intuitive understanding of this world and its inherent structure that predates its classification in the oldest surviving Chinese encyclopedia from approximately the third century BC, the Er Ya, as well as similar classification systems in the West by one to two millennia. We also present an English dictionary of 70 oracle bone characters for animals in Appendix A. In Appendix B, we list various variants of animal characters that were published in the Jia Gu Wen Bian (cf. 甲骨文编, A Complete Collection of Oracle Bone Characters, edited by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, published by the Zhonghua Book Company in 1965). We recall the frequencies of the 521 most frequent oracle bone characters in Appendix C as reported in [T. Chen, Yin-Shang Jiaguwen Zixing Xitong Zai Yanjiu, (The Structural System of Oracle Inscriptions) (Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, Shanghai, 2010); Jiaguwen Shiwen Yongzi Pinlü Biao (A Frequency List of Oracle Characters), Center for the Study and Application of Chinese Characters (East China Normal University, Shanghai, 2010), http://www.wenzi.cn/en/default.aspx. And in Appendix D, we list the animals registered in the last five chapters of the Er Ya.

  3. Character Analysis: Up Close and Personal.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McDonough, Carla J.

    1995-01-01

    Describes a class activity which gives students practice in character analysis based on characters' dialog in plays. Offers a version of this activity as applied to Caryl Churchill's play "Top Girls." (SR)

  4. Holistic versus Analytic Processing: Evidence for a Different Approach to Processing of Chinese at the Word and Character Levels in Chinese Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Liu, Phil D.; Chung, Kevin K. H.; McBride-Chang, Catherine; Tong, Xiuhong

    2010-01-01

    Among 30 Hong Kong Chinese fourth graders, sensitivities to character and word constructions were examined in judgment tasks at each level. There were three conditions across both tasks: the real condition, consisting of either actual two-character compound Chinese words or real Chinese compound characters; the reversed condition, with either the…

  5. "I Had to Live, Breathe, and Write My Character": Character Selection and Student Engagement in an Online Role-Play Simulation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rector-Aranda, Amy; Raider-Roth, Miriam; Glaser, Noah; Behrman, Matthew

    2017-01-01

    This study explores the relationship between character selection and student engagement in the Jewish Court of All Time (JCAT), an online and classroom-based role-playing simulation of a current events court case with Jewish historical roots. Analyzing students' responses to three questions posed in an out-of-character JCAT discussion forum, we…

  6. Children's Contemporary Realistic Fiction Portraying Dyslexic Characters: An Examination of the Issues Confronted and the Gender of the Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Altieri, Jennifer L.

    2006-01-01

    Seventy-seven contemporary realistic fiction children's books portraying a dyslexic character were published in the United States between 1993 and 2003. This study examined the texts to determine what types of issues the reading difficulty posed for the character. Texts were analyzed to determine if there was a relationship between the gender of…

  7. The Problem of Character Education and Kohlberg's Moral Education: Critique from Dewey's Moral Deliberation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Liu, Xiangdong

    2014-01-01

    In this article, the author examines Dewey's moral deliberation. Liu argues that Dewey's work will enrich both character education and Kohlberg's moral education. Liu focuses on character education and on Kohlberg's moral education because these are the two dominant approaches. Character education seeks to cultivate good…

  8. Physical Education Teachers' Attitudes towards Teaching Character Education and Their Attitudes towards the Character Development of Their Fourth and/or Fifth Grade Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Denaro, Edward Joseph

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of elementary school physical education teachers towards teaching character education related to the variables respect, honesty, fairness and self-discipline and to examine their attitudes towards the character development of their fourth and/or fifth grade students related to the variables…

  9. Microbial phenomics information extractor (MicroPIE): a natural language processing tool for the automated acquisition of prokaryotic phenotypic characters from text sources.

    PubMed

    Mao, Jin; Moore, Lisa R; Blank, Carrine E; Wu, Elvis Hsin-Hui; Ackerman, Marcia; Ranade, Sonali; Cui, Hong

    2016-12-13

    The large-scale analysis of phenomic data (i.e., full phenotypic traits of an organism, such as shape, metabolic substrates, and growth conditions) in microbial bioinformatics has been hampered by the lack of tools to rapidly and accurately extract phenotypic data from existing legacy text in the field of microbiology. To quickly obtain knowledge on the distribution and evolution of microbial traits, an information extraction system needed to be developed to extract phenotypic characters from large numbers of taxonomic descriptions so they can be used as input to existing phylogenetic analysis software packages. We report the development and evaluation of Microbial Phenomics Information Extractor (MicroPIE, version 0.1.0). MicroPIE is a natural language processing application that uses a robust supervised classification algorithm (Support Vector Machine) to identify characters from sentences in prokaryotic taxonomic descriptions, followed by a combination of algorithms applying linguistic rules with groups of known terms to extract characters as well as character states. The input to MicroPIE is a set of taxonomic descriptions (clean text). The output is a taxon-by-character matrix-with taxa in the rows and a set of 42 pre-defined characters (e.g., optimum growth temperature) in the columns. The performance of MicroPIE was evaluated against a gold standard matrix and another student-made matrix. Results show that, compared to the gold standard, MicroPIE extracted 21 characters (50%) with a Relaxed F1 score > 0.80 and 16 characters (38%) with Relaxed F1 scores ranging between 0.50 and 0.80. Inclusion of a character prediction component (SVM) improved the overall performance of MicroPIE, notably the precision. Evaluated against the same gold standard, MicroPIE performed significantly better than the undergraduate students. MicroPIE is a promising new tool for the rapid and efficient extraction of phenotypic character information from prokaryotic taxonomic descriptions. However, further development, including incorporation of ontologies, will be necessary to improve the performance of the extraction for some character types.

  10. Character Recognition Using Genetically Trained Neural Networks

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Diniz, C.; Stantz, K.M.; Trahan, M.W.

    1998-10-01

    Computationally intelligent recognition of characters and symbols addresses a wide range of applications including foreign language translation and chemical formula identification. The combination of intelligent learning and optimization algorithms with layered neural structures offers powerful techniques for character recognition. These techniques were originally developed by Sandia National Laboratories for pattern and spectral analysis; however, their ability to optimize vast amounts of data make them ideal for character recognition. An adaptation of the Neural Network Designer soflsvare allows the user to create a neural network (NN_) trained by a genetic algorithm (GA) that correctly identifies multiple distinct characters. The initial successfidmore » recognition of standard capital letters can be expanded to include chemical and mathematical symbols and alphabets of foreign languages, especially Arabic and Chinese. The FIN model constructed for this project uses a three layer feed-forward architecture. To facilitate the input of characters and symbols, a graphic user interface (GUI) has been developed to convert the traditional representation of each character or symbol to a bitmap. The 8 x 8 bitmap representations used for these tests are mapped onto the input nodes of the feed-forward neural network (FFNN) in a one-to-one correspondence. The input nodes feed forward into a hidden layer, and the hidden layer feeds into five output nodes correlated to possible character outcomes. During the training period the GA optimizes the weights of the NN until it can successfully recognize distinct characters. Systematic deviations from the base design test the network's range of applicability. Increasing capacity, the number of letters to be recognized, requires a nonlinear increase in the number of hidden layer neurodes. Optimal character recognition performance necessitates a minimum threshold for the number of cases when genetically training the net. And, the amount of noise significantly degrades character recognition efficiency, some of which can be overcome by adding noise during training and optimizing the form of the network's activation fimction.« less

  11. Sample data processing in an additive and reproducible taxonomic workflow by using character data persistently linked to preserved individual specimens

    PubMed Central

    Kilian, Norbert; Henning, Tilo; Plitzner, Patrick; Müller, Andreas; Güntsch, Anton; Stöver, Ben C.; Müller, Kai F.; Berendsohn, Walter G.; Borsch, Thomas

    2015-01-01

    We present the model and implementation of a workflow that blazes a trail in systematic biology for the re-usability of character data (data on any kind of characters of pheno- and genotypes of organisms) and their additivity from specimen to taxon level. We take into account that any taxon characterization is based on a limited set of sampled individuals and characters, and that consequently any new individual and any new character may affect the recognition of biological entities and/or the subsequent delimitation and characterization of a taxon. Taxon concepts thus frequently change during the knowledge generation process in systematic biology. Structured character data are therefore not only needed for the knowledge generation process but also for easily adapting characterizations of taxa. We aim to facilitate the construction and reproducibility of taxon characterizations from structured character data of changing sample sets by establishing a stable and unambiguous association between each sampled individual and the data processed from it. Our workflow implementation uses the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy Platform, a comprehensive taxonomic data management and publication environment to: (i) establish a reproducible connection between sampled individuals and all samples derived from them; (ii) stably link sample-based character data with the metadata of the respective samples; (iii) record and store structured specimen-based character data in formats allowing data exchange; (iv) reversibly assign sample metadata and character datasets to taxa in an editable classification and display them and (v) organize data exchange via standard exchange formats and enable the link between the character datasets and samples in research collections, ensuring high visibility and instant re-usability of the data. The workflow implemented will contribute to organizing the interface between phylogenetic analysis and revisionary taxonomic or monographic work. Database URL: http://campanula.e-taxonomy.net/ PMID:26424081

  12. Effects of licensed characters on children's taste and snack preferences in Guatemala, a low/middle income country.

    PubMed

    Letona, P; Chacon, V; Roberto, C; Barnoya, J

    2014-11-01

    Marketing of high-energy, low-nutrient foods is one of the contributing factors to the obesity-promoting environment. Licensed characters are typically used to market these foods to children because they increase brand recognition and sales, and data suggest that they affect the taste and snack preferences of children in high-income countries, but it has not yet been explored in low/middle income countries (LMICs). We sought to examine how licensed characters on food packaging influence children's taste and snack preferences in Guatemala, a LMIC. One hundred twenty-one children (mean ± s.d. age, 7.4 ± 1.9 years) from four (two preschool and two elementary) public schools in Guatemala tasted three food types: potato chips, crackers and carrots. Each was presented in two identical packages, except that one had a licensed character and the other did not. Children tasted the foods (six total) in each package and answered whether they tasted the same or one tasted better. Snack preference was also evaluated. Children were significantly (P<0.001) more likely to prefer the taste of the foods inside the package with the licensed character compared with the one with no character (mean ± s.d., 0.24 ± 0.54). Most (66%) chose the food in the package with the character for a snack. Younger children (P < 0.001) were more likely to prefer the taste of the food inside the package with the character. Licensed characters on food packaging influence Guatemalan children's taste and snack preferences. Given that these characters are typically used to promote high-energy, low-nutrient foods, their influence could contribute toward overconsumption of these foods and consequently increased risk of obesity in Guatemalan children. Therefore, public health advocates, in Guatemala and elsewhere, might explore restricting the use of licensed characters on food packaging as a public health strategy.

  13. Handprinted Forms and Characters

    National Institute of Standards and Technology Data Gateway

    NIST Handprinted Forms and Characters (Web, free access)   NIST Special Database 19 contains NIST's entire corpus of training materials for handprinted document and character recognition. It supersedes NIST Special Databases 3 and 7.

  14. A Few Funny Characters.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zingher, Gary

    2002-01-01

    Describes funny characters in children's books and films, including humorous children, adults, and animal characters. Considers younger children and middle grade and older children and suggests library media center activities for various age groups. (LRW)

  15. Effects of Word Width and Word Length on Optimal Character Size for Reading of Horizontally Scrolling Japanese Words

    PubMed Central

    Teramoto, Wataru; Nakazaki, Takuyuki; Sekiyama, Kaoru; Mori, Shuji

    2016-01-01

    The present study investigated, whether word width and length affect the optimal character size for reading of horizontally scrolling Japanese words, using reading speed as a measure. In Experiment 1, three Japanese words, each consisting of four Hiragana characters, sequentially scrolled on a display screen from right to left. Participants, all Japanese native speakers, were instructed to read the words aloud as accurately as possible, irrespective of their order within the sequence. To quantitatively measure their reading performance, we used rapid serial visual presentation paradigm, where the scrolling rate was increased until the participants began to make mistakes. Thus, the highest scrolling rate at which the participants’ performance exceeded 88.9% correct rate was calculated for each character size (0.3°, 0.6°, 1.0°, and 3.0°) and scroll window size (5 or 10 character spaces). Results showed that the reading performance was highest in the range of 0.6° to 1.0°, irrespective of the scroll window size. Experiment 2 investigated whether the optimal character size observed in Experiment 1 was applicable for any word width and word length (i.e., the number of characters in a word). Results showed that reading speeds were slower for longer than shorter words and the word width of 3.6° was optimal among the word lengths tested (three, four, and six character words). Considering that character size varied depending on word width and word length in the present study, this means that the optimal character size can be changed by word width and word length in scrolling Japanese words. PMID:26909052

  16. Effects of Word Width and Word Length on Optimal Character Size for Reading of Horizontally Scrolling Japanese Words.

    PubMed

    Teramoto, Wataru; Nakazaki, Takuyuki; Sekiyama, Kaoru; Mori, Shuji

    2016-01-01

    The present study investigated, whether word width and length affect the optimal character size for reading of horizontally scrolling Japanese words, using reading speed as a measure. In Experiment 1, three Japanese words, each consisting of four Hiragana characters, sequentially scrolled on a display screen from right to left. Participants, all Japanese native speakers, were instructed to read the words aloud as accurately as possible, irrespective of their order within the sequence. To quantitatively measure their reading performance, we used rapid serial visual presentation paradigm, where the scrolling rate was increased until the participants began to make mistakes. Thus, the highest scrolling rate at which the participants' performance exceeded 88.9% correct rate was calculated for each character size (0.3°, 0.6°, 1.0°, and 3.0°) and scroll window size (5 or 10 character spaces). Results showed that the reading performance was highest in the range of 0.6° to 1.0°, irrespective of the scroll window size. Experiment 2 investigated whether the optimal character size observed in Experiment 1 was applicable for any word width and word length (i.e., the number of characters in a word). Results showed that reading speeds were slower for longer than shorter words and the word width of 3.6° was optimal among the word lengths tested (three, four, and six character words). Considering that character size varied depending on word width and word length in the present study, this means that the optimal character size can be changed by word width and word length in scrolling Japanese words.

  17. Character strengths, social anxiety, and physiological stress reactivity

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, the effects of character strengths on the physiological reactivity to social anxiety induced by the Trier Social Stress Task were reported. On the basis of their scores in the Chinese Virtues Questionnaire, 30 college students were assigned to either high- (n = 15) or low-character-strength (n = 15) groups. Their psychological stress and physiological data across three laboratory stages (namely, baseline, stress exposure, and post-stress) were collected. Results indicated that individuals with high character strengths exhibited rapid cardiovascular recovery from baseline to post-stress even if high- and low-character-strength groups showed similar patterns of cardiovascular arousal in response to the stress at baseline and stress exposure. These results prove that character strengths are stress-defense factors that allow for psychological and physiological adaptation to stress. PMID:28584721

  18. Automatic Content Creation for Games to Train Students Distinguishing Similar Chinese Characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lai, Kwong-Hung; Leung, Howard; Tang, Jeff K. T.

    In learning Chinese, many students often have the problem of mixing up similar characters. This can cause misunderstanding and miscommunication in daily life. It is thus important for students learning the Chinese language to be able to distinguish similar characters and understand their proper usage. In this paper, we propose a game style framework in which the game content in identifying similar Chinese characters in idioms and words is created automatically. Our prior work on analyzing students’ Chinese handwriting can be applied in the similarity measure of Chinese characters. We extend this work by adding the component of radical extraction to speed up the search process. Experimental results show that the proposed method is more accurate and faster in finding more similar Chinese characters compared with the baseline method without considering the radical information.

  19. Lack of visual field asymmetries for spatial cueing in reading parafoveal Chinese characters.

    PubMed

    Luo, Chunming; Dell'Acqua, Roberto; Proctor, Robert W; Li, Xingshan

    2015-12-01

    In two experiments, we investigated whether visual field (VF) asymmetries of spatial cueing are involved in reading parafoveal Chinese characters. These characters are different from linearly arranged alphabetic words in that they are logograms that are confined to a constant, square-shaped area and are composed of only a few radicals. We observed a cueing effect, but it did not vary with the VF in which the Chinese character was presented, regardless of whether the cue validity (the ratio of validly to invalidly cued targets) was 1:1 or 7:3. These results suggest that VF asymmetries of spatial cueing do not affect the reading of parafoveal Chinese characters, contrary to the reading of alphabetic words. The mechanisms of spatial attention in reading parafoveal English-like words and Chinese characters are discussed.

  20. Cytochrome P450 2D6 polymorphism and character traits.

    PubMed

    Suzuki, Eiji; Kitao, Yoshie; Ono, Yutaka; Iijima, Yoshimi; Inada, Toshiya

    2003-06-01

    It has been suggested that cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) is involved in dopamine metabolism within the brain. The dopamine system is suggested to play a role in determining normal character. The purpose of this study was to examine whether character traits are dependent on cytochrome P450 2D6 activity. We investigated the association between temperament and CYP2D6 gene polymorphism. The subjects were all Japanese and the polymorphism genotyped in the present study was CYP2D6*10. Character traits were assessed using the Temperament and Character Inventory. There was no overall or specific association between personality traits and the CYP2D6*10 allele and genotype frequencies. The present results do not support the hypothesis that CYP2D6 activity affects temperament and character.

  1. Representations of deaf characters in children's picture books.

    PubMed

    Golos, Debbie B; Moses, Annie M

    2011-01-01

    Picture books can influence how children perceive people of different backgrounds, including people with disabilities whose cultures differ from their own. Researchers have examined the portrayal of multicultural characters with disabilities in children's literature. However, few have specifically considered the portrayal of deaf characters, despite increased inclusion of deaf characters in children's literature over the past two decades. The present study analyzed the portrayal of deaf characters in picture books for children ages 4-8 years. A content analysis of 20 children's picture books was conducted in which the books were analyzed for messages linked to pathological and cultural categories. Results indicated that these books did not portray Deaf characters from a cultural perspective but, rather, highlighted aspects of deafness as a medical condition, one that requires fixing and that perpetuates stereotypes of deafness as a disability.

  2. Character combinations, convergence and diversification in ectoparasitic arthropods.

    PubMed

    Poulin, Robert

    2009-08-01

    Different lineages of organisms diversify over time at different rates, in part as a consequence of the characteristics of the species in these lineages. Certain suites of traits possessed by species within a clade may determine rates of diversification, with some particular combinations of characters acting synergistically to either limit or promote diversification; the most successful combinations may also emerge repeatedly in different clades via convergent evolution. Here, the association between species characters and diversification is investigated amongst 21 independent lineages of arthropods ectoparasitic on vertebrate hosts. Using nine characters (each with two to four states) that capture general life history strategy, transmission mode and host-parasite interaction, each lineage was described by the set of character states it possesses. The results show, firstly, that most possible pair-wise combinations of character states have been adopted at least once, sometimes several times independently by different lineages; thus, ectoparasitic arthropods have explored most of the life history character space available to them. Secondly, lineages possessing commonly observed combinations of character states are not necessarily the ones that have experienced the highest rates of diversification (measured as a clade's species-per-genus ratio). Thirdly, some specific traits are associated with higher rates of diversification. Using more than one host per generation, laying eggs away from the host and intermediate levels of fecundity are features that appear to have promoted diversification. These findings indicate that particular species characters may be evolutionary drivers of diversity, whose effects could also apply in other taxa.

  3. Pre-orthographic character string processing and parietal cortex: a role for visual attention in reading?

    PubMed

    Lobier, Muriel; Peyrin, Carole; Le Bas, Jean-François; Valdois, Sylviane

    2012-07-01

    The visual front-end of reading is most often associated with orthographic processing. The left ventral occipito-temporal cortex seems to be preferentially tuned for letter string and word processing. In contrast, little is known of the mechanisms responsible for pre-orthographic processing: the processing of character strings regardless of character type. While the superior parietal lobule has been shown to be involved in multiple letter processing, further data is necessary to extend these results to non-letter characters. The purpose of this study is to identify the neural correlates of pre-orthographic character string processing independently of character type. Fourteen skilled adult readers carried out multiple and single element visual categorization tasks with alphanumeric (AN) and non-alphanumeric (nAN) characters under fMRI. The role of parietal cortex in multiple element processing was further probed with a priori defined anatomical regions of interest (ROIs). Participants activated posterior parietal cortex more strongly for multiple than single element processing. ROI analyses showed that bilateral SPL/BA7 was more strongly activated for multiple than single element processing, regardless of character type. In contrast, no multiple element specific activity was found in inferior parietal lobules. These results suggests that parietal mechanisms are involved in pre-orthographic character string processing. We argue that in general, attentional mechanisms are involved in visual word recognition, as an early step of word visual analysis. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  4. Different roles of the posterior inferior frontal gyrus in Chinese character form judgment differences between literate and illiterate individuals.

    PubMed

    Wu, Jinglong; Wang, Bin; Yan, Tianyi; Li, Xiujun; Bao, Xuexiang; Guo, Qiyong

    2012-01-11

    In the present study, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the different roles of the posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pIFG) in Chinese character form judgment between literate and illiterate subjects. Using event-related fMRI, 24 healthy right-handed Chinese subjects (12 literates and 12 illiterates) were asked to perform Chinese character and figure form judgment tasks. The blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) differences in pIFG were examined with general linear modeling (GLM). We found differences in reaction times and accuracy between subjects as they performed these tasks. These behavioral differences reflect the different cognitive demands of character form judgment for literate and illiterate individuals. The results showed differences in the BOLD response patterns in the pIFG between the two discrimination tasks and the two subject groups. A comparison of the character and figure tasks showed that literate and illiterate subjects had similar BOLD responses in the inferior frontal gyrus. However, differences in behavioral performance suggest that the pIFG plays a different role in Chinese character form judgment for each subject group. In literate subjects, the left pIFG mediated access to phonology in achieving Chinese character form judgment, whereas the right pIFG participated in the processing of the orthography of Chinese characters. In illiterate subjects, the bilateral frontal gyrus participated in the visual-spatial processing of Chinese characters to achieve form judgment. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  5. Assessing Leaders’ Character. Character and Leadership: A Theoretical Integration of Two Emerging Concepts. Implications for Research and Teaching

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2011-11-01

    Walumbwa, F. O., Avolio, B. J., Gardner, W. L., Wernsing, T. S., & Peterson, S. J. (2008). Authentic leadership : Development and validation of a theory ...AFRL-AFOSR-UK-TR-2011-0053 Assessing Leader’s Character Character and Leadership : A Theoretical Integration... Leadership and Communication Studies Casern Birmensdorf, Switzerland 8903 EOARD GRANT 10-3099 November 2011 Final Report for 14 September

  6. Character Education Connections for School, Home and Community: A Guide for Integrating Character Education. Grades Pre-K through 12. 2nd Edition.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stirling, Diane

    This character education guide, for grades Pre-K through 12, presents field-generated, field-tested ideas for integrating character education with daily learning. The ideas are varied in design, scope, and developmental levels and range from half-hour lessons to school-wide events to year-long courses. Each unit (50 in all) is built on particular…

  7. Character Education Connections for School, Home and Community: A Guide for Integrating Character Education. Grades Pre-K through 12. Revised 2002. Third Edition.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stirling, Diane

    This character-education guide, for grades Pre-K through 12, presents field-generated, field-tested ideas for integrating character education with daily learning. The ideas are varied in design, scope, and developmental levels, and range from half-hour lessons to schoolwide events to year-long courses. Each unit (50 in all) is built on particular…

  8. In- and Out-of-Character: The Digital Literacy Practices and Emergent Information Worlds of Active Role-Players in a New Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hollister, Jonathan M.

    2016-01-01

    This dissertation explores and describes the in-character and out-of-character information worlds and digital literacy practices of role-players, those that create and enact their characters' or avatars' stories, both within and outside of WildStar, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) (Carbine Studios, 2015). Utilizing Jaeger…

  9. Kyushu Neuro Psychiatry (Selected Articles),

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1983-04-22

    to left and vertical lines from bottom to top. (Note: it is possible to write Japanese either vertically or horizontally.) But it was possible to read...five words in phonetic characters ( hiragana ) and in Chinese characters (kanji). 3) Copying short and long sentences: short sentences of forteen...was conducted on Day 3 and Day 6. The subjects were asked to write the five hiragana (phonetic, cursive characters) and kanji (Chinese characters

  10. Similarities and Differences of Preferred Traits in Character Education Programs by Ethnicity and Class According to Parents, Faculty/Staff, and Students at Two Middle Schools in California

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Boen, Jennifer

    2010-01-01

    This study provides two perspectives on the various character traits provided by character education programs by comparing the voices of minority and lower-lower middle class stakeholders with those of upper middle class stakeholders. The literature on the values and virtues based approaches to moral development and character education were…

  11. Electrooculography-based continuous eye-writing recognition system for efficient assistive communication systems

    PubMed Central

    Shinozaki, Takahiro

    2018-01-01

    Human-computer interface systems whose input is based on eye movements can serve as a means of communication for patients with locked-in syndrome. Eye-writing is one such system; users can input characters by moving their eyes to follow the lines of the strokes corresponding to characters. Although this input method makes it easy for patients to get started because of their familiarity with handwriting, existing eye-writing systems suffer from slow input rates because they require a pause between input characters to simplify the automatic recognition process. In this paper, we propose a continuous eye-writing recognition system that achieves a rapid input rate because it accepts characters eye-written continuously, with no pauses. For recognition purposes, the proposed system first detects eye movements using electrooculography (EOG), and then a hidden Markov model (HMM) is applied to model the EOG signals and recognize the eye-written characters. Additionally, this paper investigates an EOG adaptation that uses a deep neural network (DNN)-based HMM. Experiments with six participants showed an average input speed of 27.9 character/min using Japanese Katakana as the input target characters. A Katakana character-recognition error rate of only 5.0% was achieved using 13.8 minutes of adaptation data. PMID:29425248

  12. The effects of social anxiety on interpersonal evaluations of warmth and dominance.

    PubMed

    Rodebaugh, Thomas L; Bielak, Tatiana; Vidovic, Vanja; Moscovitch, David A

    2016-03-01

    Social anxiety disorder is associated with interpersonal dysfunction, but it is not clear why people with the disorder feel unsatisfied with their relationships. One possibility is that higher social anxiety could lead to changes in sensitivity to interpersonal traits. We examined whether social anxiety moderates the types of interpersonal evaluations people make regarding warmth and dominance. We developed vignettes in which central characters systematically varied in dominance and warmth and asked two samples of participants (undergraduate students, n=176, and online workers, n=403) to rate their willingness to interact with, and the social desirability of, these characters. Participants in general reported stronger desire to interact with warmer and less dominant characters, and rated warmer and more dominant characters as being more socially desirable. People with higher social anxiety exhibited greater tolerance for colder and more submissive characters on both rated dimensions. The perceived similarity of the characters accounted for the bulk of these effects. Participants indicated a higher desire to interact with characters more similar to themselves, and people with higher social anxiety were more likely to rate submissive and cold characters as being like themselves. The results have implications for clinical interventions for social anxiety disorder. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Influence of food companies' brand mascots and entertainment companies' cartoon media characters on children's diet and health: a systematic review and research needs

    PubMed Central

    Kraak, V I; Story, M

    2015-01-01

    Reducing the extent and persuasive power of marketing unhealthy foods to children worldwide are important obesity prevention goals. Research is limited to understand how brand mascots and cartoon media characters influence children's diet. We conducted a systematic review of five electronic databases (2000–2014) to identify experimental studies that measured how food companies' mascots and entertainment companies' media characters influence up to 12 diet-related cognitive, behavioural and health outcomes for children under 12 years. Eleven studies met the inclusion criteria. Studies used 21 unique popular media characters, but no brand mascots. Results suggest that cartoon media character branding can positively increase children's fruit or vegetable intake compared with no character branding. However, familiar media character branding is a more powerful influence on children's food preferences, choices and intake, especially for energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods (e.g. cookies, candy or chocolate) compared with fruits or vegetables. Future research should use a theoretically grounded conceptual model and larger and more diverse samples across settings to produce stronger findings for mediating and moderating factors. Future research can be used to inform the deliberations of policymakers, practitioners and advocates regarding how media character marketing should be used to support healthy food environments for children. PMID:25516352

  14. The Interaction between Central and Peripheral Processing in Chinese Handwritten Production: Evidence from the Effect of Lexicality and Radical Complexity

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Qingfang; Feng, Chen

    2017-01-01

    The interaction between central and peripheral processing in written word production remains controversial. This study aims to investigate whether the effects of radical complexity and lexicality in central processing cascade into peripheral processing in Chinese written word production. The participants were asked to write characters and non-characters (lexicality) with different radical complexity (few- and many-strokes). The findings indicated that regardless of the lexicality, the writing latencies were longer for characters with higher complexity (the many-strokes condition) than for characters with lower complexity (the few-strokes condition). The participants slowed down their writing execution at the radicals' boundary strokes, which indicated a radical boundary effect in peripheral processing. Interestingly, the lexicality and the radical complexity affected the pattern of shift velocity and writing velocity during the execution of writing. Lexical processing cascades into peripheral processing but only at the beginning of Chinese characters. In contrast, the radical complexity influenced the execution of handwriting movement throughout the entire character, and the pattern of the effect interacted with the character frequency. These results suggest that the processes of the lexicality and the radical complexity function during the execution of handwritten word production, which suggests that central processing cascades over peripheral processing during Chinese characters handwriting. PMID:28348536

  15. National Character Does Not Reflect Mean Personality Trait Levels in 49 Cultures

    PubMed Central

    Abdel-Khalek, A. M.; Ádám, N.; Adamovová, L.; Ahn, C.-k.; Ahn, H.-n.; Alansari, B. M.; Alcalay, L.; Allik, J.; Angleitner, A.; Avia, A.; Ayearst, L. E.; Barbaranelli, C.; Beer, A.; Borg-Cunen, M. A.; Bratko, D.; Brunner-Sciarra, M.; Budzinski, L.; Camart, N.; Dahourou, D.; De Fruyt, F.; de Lima, M. P.; del Pilar, G. E. H.; Diener, E.; Falzon, R.; Fernando, K.; Ficková, E.; Fischer, R.; Flores-Mendoza, C.; Ghayur, M. A.; Gülgöz, S.; Hagberg, B.; Halberstadt, J.; Halim, M. S.; Hřebíčková, M.; Humrichouse, J.; Jensen, H. H.; Jocic, D. D.; Jónsson, F. H.; Khoury, B.; Klinkosz, W.; Knežević, G.; Lauri, M. A.; Leibovich, N.; Martin, T. A.; Marušić, I.; Mastor, K. A.; Matsumoto, D.; McRorie, M.; Meshcheriakov, B.; Mortensen, E. L.; Munyae, M.; Nagy, J.; Nakazato, K.; Nansubuga, F.; Oishi, S.; Ojedokun, A. O.; Ostendorf, F.; Paulhus, D. L.; Pelevin, S.; Petot, J.-M.; Podobnik, N.; Porrata, J. L.; Pramila, V. S.; Prentice, G.; Realo, A.; Reátegui, N.; Rolland, J.-P.; Rossier, J.; Ruch, W.; Rus, V. S.; Sánchez-Bernardos, M. L.; Schmidt, V.; Sciculna-Calleja, S.; Sekowski, A.; Shakespeare-Finch, J.; Shimonaka, Y.; Simonetti, F.; Sineshaw, T.; Siuta, J.; Smith, P. B.; Trapnell, P. D.; Trobst, K. K.; Wang, L.; Yik, M.; Zupančič, A.

    2009-01-01

    Most people hold beliefs about personality characteristics typical of members of their own and others' cultures. These perceptions of national character may be generalizations from personal experience, stereotypes with a “kernel of truth,” or inaccurate stereotypes. We obtained national character ratings (N = 3,989) from 49 cultures and compared them to the average personality scores of culture members assessed by observer ratings and self-reports. National character ratings were reliable, but did not converge with assessed traits (Mdn r = .04). Perceptions of national character thus appear to be unfounded stereotypes that may serve the function of maintaining a national identity. PMID:16210536

  16. [Impact of interactivity on identification with characters in fiction].

    PubMed

    Soto-Sanfiel, María T; Aymerich-Franch, Laura; Ribes Guàrdia, Francesc Xavier

    2010-11-01

    The effect of interactivity on identification with characters in audiovisual fiction was observed. 310 participants were asked to watch a film in one of these two conditions: 1) interactive (they selected the plot), and 2) non-interactive (they consumed the fiction in a conventional way). After watching the movie, they completed a questionnaire with the EDI scale of identification and empathy with characters, created by Igartua and Paez. The capacity to intervene in the configuration of the plot (interactivity) affected identification with characters. The results provide data about the psychology of media and interactivity in communication and allow us to understand the processes of empathy and identification with characters.

  17. The Effectiveness of Full Day School System for Students’ Character Building

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Benawa, A.; Peter, R.; Makmun, S.

    2018-01-01

    The study aims to put forward that full day school which was delivered in Marsudirini Elementary School in Bogor is effective for students’ character building. The study focused on the implementation of full day school system. The qualitative-based research method applied in the study is characteristic evaluation involving non-participant observation, interview, and documentation analysis. The result of this study concludes that the full day school system is significantly effective in education system for elementary students’ character building. The full day school system embraced the entire relevant processes based on the character building standard. The synergy of comprehensive components in instructional process at full day school has influenced the building of the students’ character effectively and efficiently. The relationship emerged between instructional development process in full day school system and the character building of the students. By developing instructional process through systemic and systematic process in full day school system, the support of stakeholders (leaders, human resources, students, parents’ role) and other components (learning resources, facilities, budget) provides a potent and expeditious contribution for character building among the students eventually.

  18. [Comments on Nigel Wiseman's "A Practical Sictionary of Chinese Medicine"--on Wiseman' s literal translation].

    PubMed

    Xie, Zhu-fan; Liu, Gan-zhong; Lu, Wei-bo; Fang, Tingyu; Zhang, Qingrong; Wang, Tai; Wang, Kui

    2005-10-01

    Comments were made on the word-for-word literal translation method used by Mr. Nigel Wiseman in A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine. He believes that only literal translation can reflect Chinese medical concepts accurately. The so-called "word-for-word" translation is actually "English-word-for-Chinese-character" translation. First, he made a list of Single Characters with English Equivalents, and then he replaced each character of Chinese medical terms with the assigned English equivalent. Many English terms thus produced are confusing. The defect of the word-for-word literal translation stems from the erroneous idea that the single character constitutes the basic element of meaning corresponding to the notion of "word" in English, and the meaning of a disyllabic or polysyllabic Chinese word is simply the addition of the meanings of the two or more characters. Another big mistake is the negligence of the polysemy of Chinese characters. One or two English equivalents can by no means cover all the various meanings of a polysemous character as a monosyllabic word. Various examples were cited from this dictionary to illustrate the mistakes.

  19. Leaders and elites: portrayals of smoking in popular films.

    PubMed

    Dozier, D M; Lauzen, M M; Day, C A; Payne, S M; Tafoya, M R

    2005-02-01

    To study frequency and traits of characters that smoke in films and to document on-screen consequences of tobacco use. This study conducted a content analysis of the top 100 grossing films in 2002, with a total global gross of 12.4 billion US dollars. Three outcome measures were frequency of smoking incidents, traits of characters who smoke, and consequences of tobacco use. 6% of characters smoked in 453 incidents, including 3% of children. In 92% of incidences, smoking had no consequences. The most frequent consequence was a verbal reprimand. Although tobacco is a leading cause of preventable deaths globally, only 0.4% of tobacco incidences resulted in death. No deaths were caused by disease. Characters who smoked tended to be major characters playing leadership roles. They tended to be from privileged elites: male, white, and mature. Films portray characters that smoke as leaders from privileged elites, making smoking more attractive to audience members. Because 99.6% of characters suffer no life threatening consequences from smoking on screen, smokers seem invincible, belying tobacco's role as a leading cause of preventable deaths.

  20. Social network analysis of character interaction in the Stargate and Star Trek television series

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tan, Melody Shi Ai; Ujum, Ephrance Abu; Ratnavelu, Kuru

    This paper undertakes a social network analysis of two science fiction television series, Stargate and Star Trek. Television series convey stories in the form of character interaction, which can be represented as “character networks”. We connect each pair of characters that exchanged spoken dialogue in any given scene demarcated in the television series transcripts. These networks are then used to characterize the overall structure and topology of each series. We find that the character networks of both series have similar structure and topology to that found in previous work on mythological and fictional networks. The character networks exhibit the small-world effects but found no significant support for power-law. Since the progression of an episode depends to a large extent on the interaction between each of its characters, the underlying network structure tells us something about the complexity of that episode’s storyline. We assessed the complexity using techniques from spectral graph theory. We found that the episode networks are structured either as (1) closed networks, (2) those containing bottlenecks that connect otherwise disconnected clusters or (3) a mixture of both.

  1. Empirical evaluation of the uncanny valley hypothesis fails to confirm the predicted effect of motion.

    PubMed

    Piwek, Lukasz; McKay, Lawrie S; Pollick, Frank E

    2014-03-01

    The uncanny valley hypothesis states that the acceptability of an artificial character will not increase linearly in relation to its likeness to human form. Instead, after an initial rise in acceptability there will be a pronounced decrease when the character is similar, but not identical to human form (Mori, 1970/2012). Moreover, it has been claimed but never directly tested that movement would accentuate this dip and make moving characters less acceptable. We used a number of full-body animated computer characters along with a parametrically defined motion set to examine the effect of motion quality on the uncanny valley. We found that improving the motion quality systematically improved the acceptability of the characters. In particular, the character classified in the deepest location of the uncanny valley became more acceptable when it was animated. Our results showed that although an uncanny valley was found for static characters, the deepening of the valley with motion, originally predicted by Mori (1970/2012), was not obtained. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. The optimization of headmaster's role in actualizing character education at vocational private high school

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wahyono, Irawan; Widodo, Joko; Sumaryanto, Totok

    2018-03-01

    Nowadays many parties strive for intensity increase and character education implementation quality in formal education institutions. Those demands are based on the developed social phenomena which is the juvenile delinquency, such as mass brawl and other moral decadence cases. Character education can be given in school, but it requires cooperation of all school residents to realize. One of which is headmaster's role for character education in school. The problem of this research is about how headmaster optimizes his role in realizing character education in school. The purpose of this research is to describe and analyze headmaster's optimization role to realize character education in vocational high school (SMK). This research uses qualitative descriptive. Data are collected by interview and documentation then analyzed by using data triangulation. The result of this research shows that headmaster must do his role as an educator, manager, administrator, supervisor, leader, entrepreneur and climate creator. By maximizing his role, character education can be started and will be very useful for students after they graduate and continue to work.

  3. Eye movement control in reading unspaced text: the case of the Japanese script.

    PubMed

    Kajii, N; Nazir, T A; Osaka, N

    2001-09-01

    The present study examines the landing-site distributions of the eyes during natural reading of Japanese script: a script that mixes three different writing systems (Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana) and that misses regular spacing between words. The results show a clear preference of the eyes to land at the beginning rather than the center of the word. In addition, it was found that the eyes land on Kanji characters more frequently than on Hiragana or Katakana characters. Further analysis for two- and three-character words indicated that the eye's landing-site distribution differs depending on type of the characters in the word: the eyes prefer to land at the word beginning only when the initial character of the word is a Kanji character. For pure Hiragana words, the proportion of initial fixations did not differ between character positions. Thus, as already indicated by Kambe (National Institute of Japanese Language Report 85 (1986) 29), the visual distinctiveness of the three Japanese scripts plays a role in guiding eye movements in reading Japanese.

  4. Contribution of finger tracing to the recognition of Chinese characters.

    PubMed

    Yim-Ng, Y Y; Varley, R; Andrade, J

    2000-01-01

    Finger tracing is a simulation of the act of writing without the use of pen and paper. It is claimed to help in the processing of Chinese characters, possibly by providing additional motor coding. In this study, blindfolded subjects were equally good at identifying Chinese characters and novel visual stimuli through passive movements made with the index finger of the preferred hand and those made with the last finger of that hand. This suggests that finger tracing provides a relatively high level of coding specific to individual characters, but non-specific to motor effectors. Beginning each stroke from the same location, i.e. removing spatial information, impaired recognition of the familiar characters and the novel nonsense figures. Passively tracing the strokes in a random sequence also impaired recognition of the characters. These results therefore suggest that the beneficial effect of finger tracing on writing or recall of Chinese characters is mediated by sequence and spatial information embedded in the motor movements, and that proprioceptive channel may play a part in mediating visuo-spatial information. Finger tracing may be a useful strategy for remediation of Chinese language impairments.

  5. Research in Practice: Character Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lasley, Thomas J.; And Others

    1996-01-01

    Three articles explore character education from different perspectives: "Teaching Students to See Beyond Themselves" (Lasley, Biddle); "An Effective Character Education Model for a Diverse Student Population" (Cline, Necochea); and "Teaching as Modeling: The Impact of Teacher Behaviors upon Student Character…

  6. Handwritten recognition of Tamil vowels using deep learning

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ram Prashanth, N.; Siddarth, B.; Ganesh, Anirudh; Naveen Kumar, Vaegae

    2017-11-01

    We come across a large volume of handwritten texts in our daily lives and handwritten character recognition has long been an important area of research in pattern recognition. The complexity of the task varies among different languages and it so happens largely due to the similarity between characters, distinct shapes and number of characters which are all language-specific properties. There have been numerous works on character recognition of English alphabets and with laudable success, but regional languages have not been dealt with very frequently and with similar accuracies. In this paper, we explored the performance of Deep Belief Networks in the classification of Handwritten Tamil vowels, and conclusively compared the results obtained. The proposed method has shown satisfactory recognition accuracy in light of difficulties faced with regional languages such as similarity between characters and minute nuances that differentiate them. We can further extend this to all the Tamil characters.

  7. Emotion and the humors: scoring and classifying major characters from Shakespeare's comedies on the basis of their language.

    PubMed

    Whissell, Cynthia

    2010-06-01

    The theory of humors, which was the prevalent theory of affect in Shakespeare's day, was used to explain both states (moods, emotions) and traits (personalities). This article reports humoral scores appropriate to the major characters of Shakespeare's comedies. The Dictionary of Affect in Language was used to score all words (N = 180,243) spoken by 105 major characters in 13 comedies in terms of their emotional undertones. These were translated into humoral scores. Translation was possible because emotional undertones, humor, and personality (e.g., Eysenck's model) are defined by various axes in the same two-dimensional space. Humoral scores differed for different types of characters, e.g., Shakespeare's lovers used more Sanguine language and his clowns more Melancholy language than other characters. A study of Kate and Petruchio from The Taming of the Shrew demonstrated state-like changes in humor for characters as the play unfolded.

  8. Religious Study of Katoba Tradition and Its Function in Character Building of Muna Society

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hardin, Hardin; Hermina, Sitti

    2018-05-01

    This research aims at studying the function of Katoba tradition to the character-building of the society of Muna ethnics. The research was conducted in Kecamatan Lawa, West Muna District. This research includes descriptive-qualitative research. Data collection techniques used are observation, interview, record, and documentation. The object of this study is the speech or advice in the katoba tradition related to character education. From the research results found that the ethnic Muna community has a tradition of katoba in shaping the character of society. The value of the character in question is the formation of respectful values of honour, the value of character and ethical values in the person of the child who has been tried. It expected that this article will be able to inspire and guide people to have a good personality, to behave and to behave wisely to their family and social environment.

  9. Improving social competence through character education.

    PubMed

    Cheung, Chau-kiu; Lee, Tak-yan

    2010-08-01

    Character education is supposed to meet early adolescents' need (i.e., eighth and ninth graders) for strengthening social competence. Moreover, adolescents' engagement in character education is integral to their learning from the education. The engagement and deficit in social competence are therefore plausible conditions for the effectiveness of character education in promoting social competence. Based on a quasi-experimental design, this study focuses on the prediction of social competence of 920 ninth graders in secondary schools of Hong Kong, China. To reduce bias from the selection process of the study and the character education program, the study adjusts for the propensity of enrolling in the program throughout the analysis. The results of the analysis show the contribution of the character education program to social competence. Moreover, engagement in the program and prior lower social competence are the adolescent's characteristics that are responsible for the contribution. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. Segmentation of touching handwritten Japanese characters using the graph theory method

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Suwa, Misako

    2000-12-01

    Projection analysis methods have been widely used to segment Japanese character strings. However, if adjacent characters have overhanging strokes or a touching point doesn't correspond to the histogram minimum, the methods are prone to result in errors. In contrast, non-projection analysis methods being proposed for use on numerals or alphabet characters cannot be simply applied for Japanese characters because of the differences in the structure of the characters. Based on the oversegmenting strategy, a new pre-segmentation method is presented in this paper: touching patterns are represented as graphs and touching strokes are regarded as the elements of proper edge cutsets. By using the graph theoretical technique, the cutset martrix is calculated. Then, by applying pruning rules, potential touching strokes are determined and the patterns are over segmented. Moreover, this algorithm was confirmed to be valid for touching patterns with overhanging strokes and doubly connected patterns in simulations.

  11. Design and development of an ancient Chinese document recognition system

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Peng, Liangrui; Xiu, Pingping; Ding, Xiaoqing

    2003-12-01

    The digitization of ancient Chinese documents presents new challenges to OCR (Optical Character Recognition) research field due to the large character set of ancient Chinese characters, variant font types, and versatile document layout styles, as these documents are historical reflections to the thousands of years of Chinese civilization. After analyzing the general characteristics of ancient Chinese documents, we present a solution for recognition of ancient Chinese documents with regular font-types and layout-styles. Based on the previous work on multilingual OCR in TH-OCR system, we focus on the design and development of two key technologies which include character recognition and page segmentation. Experimental results show that the developed character recognition kernel of 19,635 Chinese characters outperforms our original traditional Chinese recognition kernel; Benchmarked test on printed ancient Chinese books proves that the proposed system is effective for regular ancient Chinese documents.

  12. A study of the utility of convergent characters for phylogeny reconstruction: do ecomorphological characters track evolutionary history in Anolis lizards?

    PubMed

    Poe, Steven

    2005-01-01

    The reconstruction of phylogeny requires homologous similarities across species. Characters that have been shown to evolve quickly or convergently in some species are often considered to be poor phylogenetic markers. Here I evaluate the phylogenetic utility of a set of morphological characters that are correlated with ecology and have been shown to evolve convergently in Anolis lizards in the Greater Antilles. Results of randomization tests suggest that these "ecomorph" characters are adequate phylogenetic markers, both for Anolis in general and for the Greater Antillean species for which ecomorphological convergence was originally documented. Explanations for this result include the presence of ecomorphologically similar species within evolutionary radiations within islands, some monophyly of ecomorphs across islands, and the existence of several species that defy ecomorphological characterization but share phylogenetic similarity in some ecomorph characters.

  13. Synesthetic colors for Japanese late acquired graphemes.

    PubMed

    Asano, Michiko; Yokosawa, Kazuhiko

    2012-06-01

    Determinants of synesthetic color choice for the Japanese logographic script, Kanji, were studied. The study investigated how synesthetic colors for Kanji characters, which are usually acquired later in life than other types of graphemes in Japanese language (phonetic characters called Hiragana and Katakana, and Arabic digits), are influenced by linguistic properties such as phonology, orthography, and meaning. Of central interest was a hypothesized generalization process from synesthetic colors for graphemes, learned prior to acquisition of Kanji, to Kanji characters learned later. Results revealed that color choices for Kanji characters depend on meaning and phonological information. Some results suggested that colors are generalized from Hiragana characters and Arabic digits to Kanji characters via phonology and meaning, respectively. Little influence of orthographic information was observed. The findings and approach of this study contributes to a clarification of the mechanism underlying grapheme-color synesthesia, especially in terms of its relationship to normal language processing. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. The dark cube: dark and light character profiles.

    PubMed

    Garcia, Danilo; Rosenberg, Patricia

    2016-01-01

    Background. Research addressing distinctions and similarities between people's malevolent character traits (i.e., the Dark Triad: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) has detected inconsistent linear associations to temperament traits. Additionally, these dark traits seem to have a common core expressed as uncooperativeness. Hence, some researchers suggest that the dark traits are best represented as one global construct (i.e., the unification argument) rather than as ternary construct (i.e., the uniqueness argument). We put forward the dark cube (cf. Cloninger's character cube) comprising eight dark profiles that can be used to compare individuals who differ in one dark character trait while holding the other two constant. Our aim was to investigate in which circumstances individuals who are high in each one of the dark character traits differ in Cloninger's "light" character traits: self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence. We also investigated if people's dark character profiles were associated to their light character profiles. Method. A total of 997 participants recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) responded to the Short Dark Triad and the Short Character Inventory. Participants were allocated to eight different dark profiles and eight light profiles based on their scores in each of the traits and any possible combination of high and low scores. We used three-way interaction regression analyses and t-tests to investigate differences in light character traits between individuals with different dark profiles. As a second step, we compared the individuals' dark profile with her/his character profile using an exact cell-wise analysis conducted in the ROPstat software (http://www.ropstat.com). Results. Individuals who expressed high levels of Machiavellianism and those who expressed high levels of psychopathy also expressed low self-directedness and low cooperativeness. Individuals with high levels of narcissism, in contrast, scored high in self-directedness. Moreover, individuals with a profile low in the dark traits were more likely to end up with a profile high in cooperativeness. The opposite was true for those individuals with a profile high in the dark traits. The rest of the cross-comparisons revealed some of the characteristics of human personality as a non-linear complex dynamic system. Conclusions. Our study suggests that individuals who are high in Machiavellianism and psychopathy share a unified non-agentic and uncooperative character (i.e., irresponsible, low in self-control, unempathetic, unhelpful, untolerant), while individuals high in narcissism have a more unique character configuration expressed as high agency and, when the other dark traits are high, highly spiritual but uncooperative. In other words, based on differences in their associations to the light side of character, the Dark Triad seems to be a dyad rather than a triad.

  15. The dark cube: dark and light character profiles

    PubMed Central

    2016-01-01

    Background. Research addressing distinctions and similarities between people’s malevolent character traits (i.e., the Dark Triad: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) has detected inconsistent linear associations to temperament traits. Additionally, these dark traits seem to have a common core expressed as uncooperativeness. Hence, some researchers suggest that the dark traits are best represented as one global construct (i.e., the unification argument) rather than as ternary construct (i.e., the uniqueness argument). We put forward the dark cube (cf. Cloninger’s character cube) comprising eight dark profiles that can be used to compare individuals who differ in one dark character trait while holding the other two constant. Our aim was to investigate in which circumstances individuals who are high in each one of the dark character traits differ in Cloninger’s “light” character traits: self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence. We also investigated if people’s dark character profiles were associated to their light character profiles. Method. A total of 997 participants recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) responded to the Short Dark Triad and the Short Character Inventory. Participants were allocated to eight different dark profiles and eight light profiles based on their scores in each of the traits and any possible combination of high and low scores. We used three-way interaction regression analyses and t-tests to investigate differences in light character traits between individuals with different dark profiles. As a second step, we compared the individuals’ dark profile with her/his character profile using an exact cell-wise analysis conducted in the ROPstat software (http://www.ropstat.com). Results. Individuals who expressed high levels of Machiavellianism and those who expressed high levels of psychopathy also expressed low self-directedness and low cooperativeness. Individuals with high levels of narcissism, in contrast, scored high in self-directedness. Moreover, individuals with a profile low in the dark traits were more likely to end up with a profile high in cooperativeness. The opposite was true for those individuals with a profile high in the dark traits. The rest of the cross-comparisons revealed some of the characteristics of human personality as a non-linear complex dynamic system. Conclusions. Our study suggests that individuals who are high in Machiavellianism and psychopathy share a unified non-agentic and uncooperative character (i.e., irresponsible, low in self-control, unempathetic, unhelpful, untolerant), while individuals high in narcissism have a more unique character configuration expressed as high agency and, when the other dark traits are high, highly spiritual but uncooperative. In other words, based on differences in their associations to the light side of character, the Dark Triad seems to be a dyad rather than a triad. PMID:26966650

  16. Prevalence of smoking among major movie characters: 1996–2004

    PubMed Central

    Worth, Keilah A; Cin, Sonya Dal; Sargent, James D

    2006-01-01

    Background Reports of a relationship between watching smoking in movies and smoking among adolescents have prompted greater scrutiny of smoking in movies by the public health community. Objective To assess the smoking prevalence among adult and adolescent movie characters, examine trends in smoking in movies over time, and compare the data with actual smoking prevalence among US adults and adolescents. Design and methods Smoking status of all major human adolescent and adult movie characters in the top 100 box office hits from 1996 to 2004 (900 movies) was assessed, and smoking prevalence was examined by Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating and year of release. Results The movies contained 5944 major characters, of whom 4911 were adults and 466 were adolescents. Among adult movie characters, the overall smoking prevalence was 20.6%; smoking was more common in men than in women (22.6% v 16.1%, respectively, p<0.001), and was related to MPAA rating category (26.9% for movies rated R (restricted, people aged <17 years require accompanying adult), 17.9% for PG‐13 (parents strongly cautioned that some material might be inappropriate for children) and 10.4% for G/PG (general audiences, all ages; parental guidance suggested for children), p<0.001). In 1996, the smoking prevalence for major adult movie characters (25.7%) was similar to that in the actual US population (24.7%). Smoking prevalence among adult movie characters declined to 18.4% in 2004 (p for trend <0.001), slightly below that for the US population for that year (20.9%). Examination of trends by MPAA rating showed that the downward trend in smoking among adult movie characters was statistically significant in movies rated G/PG and R, but not in those rated PG‐13. A downward trend over time was also found for smoking among adolescent movie characters. There was no smoking among adult characters in 43.3% of the movies; however, in 39% of the movies, smoking prevalence among adult characters was higher than that in the US adult population in the year of release. Conclusions Smoking prevalence among major adolescent and adult movie characters is declining, with the downward trend among adult characters weakest for PG‐13‐rated movies. Although many movies depict no adult smoking, more than one third depict smoking as more prevalent than that among US adults at the time of release. PMID:17130372

  17. Violent film characters' portrayal of alcohol, sex, and tobacco-related behaviors.

    PubMed

    Bleakley, Amy; Romer, Daniel; Jamieson, Patrick E

    2014-01-01

    To determine the extent to which movies popular with adolescents feature characters who jointly engage in violence and other risk behaviors. We hypothesized that violent characters engage in other risk behaviors equally often in films rated appropriate for children over 12 (PG-13) and Restricted (R)-rated films. Content analysis of a sample of top-grossing movies from 1985 to 2010 (n = 390). We coded movies for the presence of at least 1 main character who was involved in violence and either sex, tobacco, or alcohol use within a 5-minute movie segment and throughout a film. Approximately 90% of the movies contained a segment with a main character involved in violence, and ~77% of the films had the same character engaging in at least 1 other risk behavior. A violent character was portrayed most often partaking in alcohol-related and sexual behaviors. G and PG movies had less co-occurrence than PG-13 or R-rated movies, but there was no statistical difference between PG-13 and R-rated movies with regards to violence co-occurring with other risk behaviors. These trends did not vary over time. Popular films that contain violent characters also show those characters engaging in other risk behaviors. Similar rates of co-occurrence between PG-13 and R-rated films suggest that the Motion Picture Association of America ratings system is not sensitive to the joint portrayal of violence and alcohol, sex, and tobacco-related risk behaviors. The on-screen clustering of violence with other risk behaviors is cause for concern and worthy of additional research.

  18. Color pattern evolution in Vanessa butterflies (Nymphalidae: Nymphalini): non-eyespot characters.

    PubMed

    Abbasi, Roohollah; Marcus, Jeffrey M

    2015-01-01

    A phylogenetic approach was used to study color pattern evolution in Vanessa butterflies. Twenty-four color pattern elements from the Nymphalid ground plan were identified on the dorsal and ventral surfaces of the fore- and hind wings. Eyespot characters were excluded and will be examined elsewhere. The evolution of each character was traced over a Bayesian phylogeny of Vanessa reconstructed from 7750 DNA base pairs from 10 genes. Generally, the correspondence between character states on the same surface of the two wings is stronger on the ventral side compared to the dorsal side. The evolution of character states on both sides of a wing correspond with each other in most extant species, but the correspondence between dorsal and ventral character states is much stronger in the forewing than in the hindwing. The dorsal hindwing of many species of Vanessa is covered with an extended Basal Symmetry System and the Discalis I pattern element is highly variable between species, making this wing surface dissimilar to the other wing surfaces. The Basal Symmetry System and Discalis I may contribute to behavioral thermoregulation in Vanessa. Overall, interspecific directional character state evolution of non-eyespot color patterns is relatively rare in Vanessa, with a majority of color pattern elements showing non-variable, non-directional, or ambiguous character state evolution. The ease with which the development of color patterns can be modified, including character state reversals, has likely made important contributions to the production of color pattern diversity in Vanessa and other butterfly groups. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  19. "A Midsummer Night's Dream": Two Approaches. II: Comic Strip Characters Produce Shakespeare.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Skorepa, Carl

    1994-01-01

    Describes a high school production of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which matched cartoon and comic strip characters with the Shakespearean characters, resulting in a visually stimulating performance that successfully engaged students. (SR)

  20. Improving personality/character traits in individuals with alcohol dependence: the influence of mindfulness-oriented meditation.

    PubMed

    Crescentini, Cristiano; Matiz, Alessio; Fabbro, Franco

    2015-01-01

    The study of personality is critical to enhance current knowledge of the psychological characteristics of alcohol dependence. Recent evidence shows that mindfulness-oriented meditation positively influences healthy individuals' character. Here, it was assessed whether 8-week mindfulness-oriented meditation promotes similar changes in a group of alcohol-dependent individuals. A control group with alcohol dependence was also tested. Mindfulness-oriented meditation participants showed an increase in the character scores of the temperament and character inventory together with reduced risks of relapse. These longitudinal data highlight the importance of assessing personality in alcohol-dependent individuals and support the utility of therapeutic interventions for alcohol dependence aimed at enhancing individuals' character.

  1. Recognition of Similar Shaped Handwritten Marathi Characters Using Artificial Neural Network

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jane, Archana P.; Pund, Mukesh A.

    2012-03-01

    The growing need have handwritten Marathi character recognition in Indian offices such as passport, railways etc has made it vital area of a research. Similar shape characters are more prone to misclassification. In this paper a novel method is provided to recognize handwritten Marathi characters based on their features extraction and adaptive smoothing technique. Feature selections methods avoid unnecessary patterns in an image whereas adaptive smoothing technique form smooth shape of charecters.Combination of both these approaches leads to the better results. Previous study shows that, no one technique achieves 100% accuracy in handwritten character recognition area. This approach of combining both adaptive smoothing & feature extraction gives better results (approximately 75-100) and expected outcomes.

  2. BACS: The Brussels Artificial Character Sets for studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

    PubMed

    Vidal, Camille; Content, Alain; Chetail, Fabienne

    2017-12-01

    Written symbols such as letters have been used extensively in cognitive psychology, whether to understand their contributions to written word recognition or to examine the processes involved in other mental functions. Sometimes, however, researchers want to manipulate letters while removing their associated characteristics. A powerful solution to do so is to use new characters, devised to be highly similar to letters, but without the associated sound or name. Given the growing use of artificial characters in experimental paradigms, the aim of the present study was to make available the Brussels Artificial Character Sets (BACS): two full, strictly controlled, and portable sets of artificial characters for a broad range of experimental situations.

  3. Configurable Semi-Autonomic Animated Animal Characters in Interactive Virtual Reality Applications

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2012-03-01

    animal characters that can behave with a high degree of realism. The re- alism can be measured in two aspects. One is behavioral realism, or how real the...representations of animal characters in our training applications. This study is focused on animal behavior and animation for VR applications. A simple...of animal characters in our training applications. One such example is that dogs are used ex- tensively in security and law enforcement environments

  4. DiscML: an R package for estimating evolutionary rates of discrete characters using maximum likelihood.

    PubMed

    Kim, Tane; Hao, Weilong

    2014-09-27

    The study of discrete characters is crucial for the understanding of evolutionary processes. Even though great advances have been made in the analysis of nucleotide sequences, computer programs for non-DNA discrete characters are often dedicated to specific analyses and lack flexibility. Discrete characters often have different transition rate matrices, variable rates among sites and sometimes contain unobservable states. To obtain the ability to accurately estimate a variety of discrete characters, programs with sophisticated methodologies and flexible settings are desired. DiscML performs maximum likelihood estimation for evolutionary rates of discrete characters on a provided phylogeny with the options that correct for unobservable data, rate variations, and unknown prior root probabilities from the empirical data. It gives users options to customize the instantaneous transition rate matrices, or to choose pre-determined matrices from models such as birth-and-death (BD), birth-death-and-innovation (BDI), equal rates (ER), symmetric (SYM), general time-reversible (GTR) and all rates different (ARD). Moreover, we show application examples of DiscML on gene family data and on intron presence/absence data. DiscML was developed as a unified R program for estimating evolutionary rates of discrete characters with no restriction on the number of character states, and with flexibility to use different transition models. DiscML is ideal for the analyses of binary (1s/0s) patterns, multi-gene families, and multistate discrete morphological characteristics.

  5. Improving semi-text-independent method of writer verification using difference vector

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Li, Xin; Ding, Xiaoqing

    2009-01-01

    The semi-text-independent method of writer verification based on the linear framework is a method that can use all characters of two handwritings to discriminate the writers in the condition of knowing the text contents. The handwritings are allowed to just have small numbers of even totally different characters. This fills the vacancy of the classical text-dependent methods and the text-independent methods of writer verification. Moreover, the information, what every character is, is used for the semi-text-independent method in this paper. Two types of standard templates, generated from many writer-unknown handwritten samples and printed samples of each character, are introduced to represent the content information of each character. The difference vectors of the character samples are gotten by subtracting the standard templates from the original feature vectors and used to replace the original vectors in the process of writer verification. By removing a large amount of content information and remaining the style information, the verification accuracy of the semi-text-independent method is improved. On a handwriting database involving 30 writers, when the query handwriting and the reference handwriting are composed of 30 distinct characters respectively, the average equal error rate (EER) of writer verification reaches 9.96%. And when the handwritings contain 50 characters, the average EER falls to 6.34%, which is 23.9% lower than the EER of not using the difference vectors.

  6. Giving dementia a face? The portrayal of older people with dementia in German weekly news magazines between the years 2000 and 2009.

    PubMed

    Kessler, Eva-Marie; Schwender, Clemens

    2012-03-01

    We investigated photographic depictions of older people with dementia in news magazines according to their frequency as well as observable characteristics of the characters. We examined all 2,604 photos appearing in articles identified using the key words "dementia" and "Alzheimer's" published in the 4 major German weekly news magazines between 2000 and 2009. According to the body text and/or the legend, 154 characters with dementia were identified. Trained judges rated the age and gender of each character as well as the emotional expression, physical functioning, physical surroundings, and social context of the characters. Visual representations of characters with dementia linearly increased across time (both in terms of absolute and relative figures). Women were shown more often than men. Young-old and old-old characters were depicted equally often. Characters were mostly depicted as having positive emotions and good functional health. A large majority of characters were shown in individualized contexts and together with social partners. Only 2 social partners displayed negative emotions, and he/she was a "helper" in less than one third of cases. Despite the overall low frequency of photos of older people with dementia, dementia seems to have "acquired a face" across the past decade. Although our analysis revealed a heterogeneous portrayal of older people with dementia, "positive" representations clearly prevailed.

  7. The Processing of Visual and Phonological Configurations of Chinese One- and Two-Character Words in a Priming Task of Semantic Categorization.

    PubMed

    Ma, Bosen; Wang, Xiaoyun; Li, Degao

    2015-01-01

    To separate the contribution of phonological from that of visual-orthographic information in the recognition of a Chinese word that is composed of one or two Chinese characters, we conducted two experiments in a priming task of semantic categorization (PTSC), in which length (one- or two-character words), relation, prime (related or unrelated prime-target pairs), and SOA (47, 87, or 187 ms) were manipulated. The prime was similar to the target in meaning or in visual configuration in Experiment A and in meaning or in pronunciation in Experiment B. The results indicate that the two-character words were similar to the one-character words but were less demanding of cognitive resources than the one-character words in the processing of phonological, visual-orthographic, and semantic information. The phonological primes had a facilitating effect at the SOA of 47 ms but an inhibitory effect at the SOA of 187 ms on the participants' reaction times; the visual-orthographic primes only had an inhibitory influence on the participants' reaction times at the SOA of 187 ms. The visual configuration of a Chinese word of one or two Chinese characters has its own contribution in helping retrieve the word's meanings; similarly, the phonological configuration of a one- or two-character word plays its own role in triggering activations of the word's semantic representations.

  8. Influence of food companies' brand mascots and entertainment companies' cartoon media characters on children's diet and health: a systematic review and research needs.

    PubMed

    Kraak, V I; Story, M

    2015-02-01

    Reducing the extent and persuasive power of marketing unhealthy foods to children worldwide are important obesity prevention goals. Research is limited to understand how brand mascots and cartoon media characters influence children's diet. We conducted a systematic review of five electronic databases (2000-2014) to identify experimental studies that measured how food companies' mascots and entertainment companies' media characters influence up to 12 diet-related cognitive, behavioural and health outcomes for children under 12 years. Eleven studies met the inclusion criteria. Studies used 21 unique popular media characters, but no brand mascots. Results suggest that cartoon media character branding can positively increase children's fruit or vegetable intake compared with no character branding. However, familiar media character branding is a more powerful influence on children's food preferences, choices and intake, especially for energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods (e.g. cookies, candy or chocolate) compared with fruits or vegetables. Future research should use a theoretically grounded conceptual model and larger and more diverse samples across settings to produce stronger findings for mediating and moderating factors. Future research can be used to inform the deliberations of policymakers, practitioners and advocates regarding how media character marketing should be used to support healthy food environments for children. © 2014 The Authors. Obesity Reviews published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of World Obesity.

  9. Character evolution and missing (morphological) data across the core asterids (Gentianidae)

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Character evolution and missing (morphological) data across Asteridae. Premise of the study: Our current understanding of flowering plant phylogeny provides an excellent framework for exploring various aspects of character evolution through comparative analyses. However, attempts to synthesize this ...

  10. Aristotelian versus Virtue Ethical Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Curren, Randall

    2016-01-01

    This article examines some central aspects of Kristján Kristjánsson's book, "Aristotelian Character Education," beginning with the claim that contemporary virtue ethics provides methodological, ontological, epistemological, and moral foundations for Aristotelian character education. It considers three different formulations of what…

  11. 3 CFR 8440 - Proclamation 8440 of October 19, 2009. National Character Counts Week, 2009

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... moment is challenging. During National Character Counts Week, we pay tribute to the men and women who are... are tremendous examples of strong character for us all to follow. Throughout our history, the pursuit...

  12. Portrayal of Physically Handicapped Characters in Adolescent Fiction.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stroud, Janet G.

    1980-01-01

    Reviews the portrayals of handicapped fictional characters for prognosis of the handicap, for effect on the subject and other characters, and for treatment of the disability. Twelve recently published books are examined for their readership interest for young people. (RAA)

  13. Recent language experience influences cross-language activation in bilinguals with different scripts

    PubMed Central

    Li, Chuchu; Wang, Min; Lin, Candise Y

    2017-01-01

    Purpose This study aimed to examine whether the phonological information in the non-target language is activated and its influence on bilingual processing. Approach Using the Stroop paradigm, Mandarin-English bilinguals named the ink color of Chinese characters in English in Experiment 1 and named the Chinese characters in addition to the color naming in English in Experiment 2. Twenty-four participants were recruited in each experiment. In both experiments, the visual stimuli included color characters (e.g. 红, hong2, red), homophones of the color characters (e.g. 洪, hong2, flood), characters that only shared the same syllable segment with the color characters (S+T−, e.g. 轰, hong1, boom), characters that shared the same tone but differed in segments with the color characters (S−T+, e.g. 瓶, ping2, bottle), and neutral characters (e.g. 牵, qian1, leading through). Data and analysis Planned t-tests were conducted in which participants’ naming accuracy rate and naming latency in each phonological condition were compared with the neutral condition. Findings Experiment 1 only showed the classic Stroop effect in the color character condition. In Experiment 2, in addition to the classic Stroop effect, the congruent homophone condition (e.g. 洪in red) showed a significant Stroop interference effect. These results suggested that for bilingual speakers with different scripts, phonological information in the non-target language may not be automatically activated even though the written words in the non-target language were visually presented. However, if the phonological information of the non-target language is activated in advance, it could lead to competition between the two languages, likely at both the phonological and lemma levels. Originality and significance This study is among the first to investigate whether the translation of a word is phonologically encoded in bilinguals using the Stroop paradigm. The findings improve our understanding of the underlying mechanism of bilingual processing. PMID:29056862

  14. Temperament and Character in the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden (CATSS): Comparison to the General Population, and Genetic Structure Analysis

    PubMed Central

    Garcia, Danilo; Lundström, Sebastian; Brändström, Sven; Råstam, Maria; Cloninger, C. Robert; Kerekes, Nóra; Nilsson, Thomas; Anckarsäter, Henrik

    2013-01-01

    Background The Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden (CATSS) is an on-going, large population-based longitudinal twin study. We aimed (1) to investigate the reliability of two different versions (125-items and 238-items) of Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) used in the CATSS and the validity of extracting the short version from the long version, (2) to compare these personality dimensions between twins and adolescents from the general population, and (3) to investigate the genetic structure of Cloninger's model. Method Reliability and correlation analyses were conducted for both TCI versions, 2,714 CATSS-twins were compared to 631 adolescents from the general population, and the genetic structure was investigated through univariate genetic analyses, using a model-fitting approach with structural equation-modeling techniques based on same-sex twin pairs from the CATSS (423 monozygotic and 408 dizygotic pairs). Results The TCI scores from the short and long versions showed comparable reliability coefficients and were strongly correlated. Twins scored about half a standard deviation higher in the character scales. Three of the four temperament dimensions (Novelty Seeking, Harm Avoidance, and Persistence) had strong genetic and non-shared environmental effects, while Reward Dependence and the three character dimensions had moderate genetic effects, and both shared and non-shared environmental effects. Conclusions Twins showed higher scores in character dimensions compared to adolescents from the general population. At least among adolescents there is a shared environmental influence for all of the character dimensions, but only for one of the temperament dimensions (i.e., Reward Dependence). This specific finding regarding the existence of shared environmental factors behind the character dimensions in adolescence, together with earlier findings showing a small shared environmental effects on character among young adults and no shared environmental effects on character among adults, suggest that there is a shift in type of environmental influence from adolescence to adulthood regarding character. PMID:23940581

  15. Text vectorization based on character recognition and character stroke modeling

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fan, Zhigang; Zhou, Bingfeng; Tse, Francis; Mu, Yadong; He, Tao

    2014-03-01

    In this paper, a text vectorization method is proposed using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and character stroke modeling. This is based on the observation that for a particular character, its font glyphs may have different shapes, but often share same stroke structures. Like many other methods, the proposed algorithm contains two procedures, dominant point determination and data fitting. The first one partitions the outlines into segments and second one fits a curve to each segment. In the proposed method, the dominant points are classified as "major" (specifying stroke structures) and "minor" (specifying serif shapes). A set of rules (parameters) are determined offline specifying for each character the number of major and minor dominant points and for each dominant point the detection and fitting parameters (projection directions, boundary conditions and smoothness). For minor points, multiple sets of parameters could be used for different fonts. During operation, OCR is performed and the parameters associated with the recognized character are selected. Both major and minor dominant points are detected as a maximization process as specified by the parameter set. For minor points, an additional step could be performed to test the competing hypothesis and detect degenerated cases.

  16. Princesses, Princes, and Superheroes: Children's Gender Cognitions and Fictional Characters.

    PubMed

    Dinella, Lisa M; Claps, Juliana M; Lewandowski, Gary W

    2017-01-01

    The goal of the present study was to identify whether children recognize the gender stereotypes prevalent within the increasingly popular princess, prince, and superhero characters. Interviews with 126 children from the northeast region of the Unites States (3-11 years old) indicated that children recognized the gender-typed personality traits of princesses, princes, and superheroes, with older children holding more gender-typed cognitions about the characters. Children's own-schemas (i.e., beliefs that apply to themselves) and superordinate schemas (i.e., include beliefs about others' preferences and behaviors) for the characters were mostly gender typed and congruent. Older children gender-typed princesses as for girls more than younger children, whereas older children considered superheroes to be for boys and girls more than younger children did. Older children also considered the characters to be for them less, potentially reducing the negative implications of exposure to gender-typed messages associated with the characters. Individual differences exist in children's perceptions of these fictional characters, with children's own androgyny being positively correlated with their perceptions of princesses' androgyny levels. Further, girls were more flexible in their stereotyping of princesses, noting they were "for girls and boys" more. The authors discuss the results' practical and theoretical implications.

  17. Multi-font printed Mongolian document recognition system

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Peng, Liangrui; Liu, Changsong; Ding, Xiaoqing; Wang, Hua; Jin, Jianming

    2009-01-01

    Mongolian is one of the major ethnic languages in China. Large amount of Mongolian printed documents need to be digitized in digital library and various applications. Traditional Mongolian script has unique writing style and multi-font-type variations, which bring challenges to Mongolian OCR research. As traditional Mongolian script has some characteristics, for example, one character may be part of another character, we define the character set for recognition according to the segmented components, and the components are combined into characters by rule-based post-processing module. For character recognition, a method based on visual directional feature and multi-level classifiers is presented. For character segmentation, a scheme is used to find the segmentation point by analyzing the properties of projection and connected components. As Mongolian has different font-types which are categorized into two major groups, the parameter of segmentation is adjusted for each group. A font-type classification method for the two font-type group is introduced. For recognition of Mongolian text mixed with Chinese and English, language identification and relevant character recognition kernels are integrated. Experiments show that the presented methods are effective. The text recognition rate is 96.9% on the test samples from practical documents with multi-font-types and mixed scripts.

  18. Word-level recognition of multifont Arabic text using a feature vector matching approach

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Erlandson, Erik J.; Trenkle, John M.; Vogt, Robert C., III

    1996-03-01

    Many text recognition systems recognize text imagery at the character level and assemble words from the recognized characters. An alternative approach is to recognize text imagery at the word level, without analyzing individual characters. This approach avoids the problem of individual character segmentation, and can overcome local errors in character recognition. A word-level recognition system for machine-printed Arabic text has been implemented. Arabic is a script language, and is therefore difficult to segment at the character level. Character segmentation has been avoided by recognizing text imagery of complete words. The Arabic recognition system computes a vector of image-morphological features on a query word image. This vector is matched against a precomputed database of vectors from a lexicon of Arabic words. Vectors from the database with the highest match score are returned as hypotheses for the unknown image. Several feature vectors may be stored for each word in the database. Database feature vectors generated using multiple fonts and noise models allow the system to be tuned to its input stream. Used in conjunction with database pruning techniques, this Arabic recognition system has obtained promising word recognition rates on low-quality multifont text imagery.

  19. [Comparative analysis of agronomic and qualitative characters in different lines of Dendrobium denneanum].

    PubMed

    He, Tao; Deng, Li; Lin, Yuan; Li, Bo; Yang, Xiaofan; Wang, Fang; Chun, Ze

    2010-08-01

    To provide theoretical basis for breeding good variety of Dendrobium denneanum, agronomic and qualitative characters of 4 different lines and relationships among them were studied. The stem length, stem diameter, leaf length, leaf width, length/ width ratio and leaf area were measured. The single fresh and dry stem was weighed and drying rate was calculated. The contents of polysaccharides and total alkaloids were determined by sulfuric acid-phenol colorimetry and acid-dye colorimetry, respectively. The correlations between characters were analyzed. The results showed that differences in major agronomic characters between four lines were significant. The plant types of dq-1 and dq-2 were higher, dq-3 was medium and dq-4 was lower. The fresh weigh of stem and content of polysaccharides were the highest in dq-2, 7.81 g and 14.33%. While the highest content of total alkaloids and was 0. 486% in dq-3. There were significant correlations between agronomic characters, but these characters had low or non correlations with qualitative characters such as polysaccharides and total alkaloids. It was shown that the content of polysaccharides and total alkaloids were significantly different among 4 lines of D. denneanum, which could be selected for different uses.

  20. Recognition of Telugu characters using neural networks.

    PubMed

    Sukhaswami, M B; Seetharamulu, P; Pujari, A K

    1995-09-01

    The aim of the present work is to recognize printed and handwritten Telugu characters using artificial neural networks (ANNs). Earlier work on recognition of Telugu characters has been done using conventional pattern recognition techniques. We make an initial attempt here of using neural networks for recognition with the aim of improving upon earlier methods which do not perform effectively in the presence of noise and distortion in the characters. The Hopfield model of neural network working as an associative memory is chosen for recognition purposes initially. Due to limitation in the capacity of the Hopfield neural network, we propose a new scheme named here as the Multiple Neural Network Associative Memory (MNNAM). The limitation in storage capacity has been overcome by combining multiple neural networks which work in parallel. It is also demonstrated that the Hopfield network is suitable for recognizing noisy printed characters as well as handwritten characters written by different "hands" in a variety of styles. Detailed experiments have been carried out using several learning strategies and results are reported. It is shown here that satisfactory recognition is possible using the proposed strategy. A detailed preprocessing scheme of the Telugu characters from digitized documents is also described.

  1. Fast title extraction method for business documents

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Katsuyama, Yutaka; Naoi, Satoshi

    1997-04-01

    Conventional electronic document filing systems are inconvenient because the user must specify the keywords in each document for later searches. To solve this problem, automatic keyword extraction methods using natural language processing and character recognition have been developed. However, these methods are slow, especially for japanese documents. To develop a practical electronic document filing system, we focused on the extraction of keyword areas from a document by image processing. Our fast title extraction method can automatically extract titles as keywords from business documents. All character strings are evaluated for similarity by rating points associated with title similarity. We classified these points as four items: character sitting size, position of character strings, relative position among character strings, and string attribution. Finally, the character string that has the highest rating is selected as the title area. The character recognition process is carried out on the selected area. It is fast because this process must recognize a small number of patterns in the restricted area only, and not throughout the entire document. The mean performance of this method is an accuracy of about 91 percent and a 1.8 sec. processing time for an examination of 100 Japanese business documents.

  2. Stasis and convergence characterize morphological evolution in eupolypod II ferns.

    PubMed

    Sundue, Michael A; Rothfels, Carl J

    2014-01-01

    Patterns of morphological evolution at levels above family rank remain underexplored in the ferns. The present study seeks to address this gap through analysis of 79 morphological characters for 81 taxa, including representatives of all ten families of eupolypod II ferns. Recent molecular phylogenetic studies demonstrate that the evolution of the large eupolypod II clade (which includes nearly one-third of extant fern species) features unexpected patterns. The traditional 'athyrioid' ferns are scattered across the phylogeny despite their apparent morphological cohesiveness, and mixed among these seemingly conservative taxa are morphologically dissimilar groups that lack any obvious features uniting them with their relatives. Maximum-likelihood and maximum-parsimony character optimizations are used to determine characters that unite the seemingly disparate groups, and to test whether the polyphyly of the traditional athyrioid ferns is due to evolutionary stasis (symplesiomorphy) or convergent evolution. The major events in eupolypod II character evolution are reviewed, and character and character state concepts are reappraised, as a basis for further inquiries into fern morphology. Characters were scored from the literature, live plants and herbarium specimens, and optimized using maximum-parsimony and maximum-likelihood, onto a highly supported topology derived from maximum-likelihood and Bayesian analysis of molecular data. Phylogenetic signal of characters were tested for using randomization methods and fitdiscrete. The majority of character state changes within the eupolypod II phylogeny occur at the family level or above. Relative branch lengths for the morphological data resemble those from molecular data and fit an ancient rapid radiation model (long branches subtended by very short backbone internodes), with few characters uniting the morphologically disparate clades. The traditional athyrioid ferns were circumscribed based upon a combination of symplesiomorphic and homoplastic characters. Petiole vasculature consisting of two bundles is ancestral for eupolypods II and a synapomorphy for eupolypods II under deltran optimization. Sori restricted to one side of the vein defines the recently recognized clade comprising Rhachidosoraceae through Aspleniaceae, and sori present on both sides of the vein is a synapomorphy for the Athyriaceae sensu stricto. The results indicate that a chromosome base number of x =41 is synapomorphic for all eupolypods, a clade that includes over two-thirds of extant fern species. The integrated approach synthesizes morphological studies with current phylogenetic hypotheses and provides explicit statements of character evolution in the eupolypod II fern families. Strong character support is found for previously recognized clades, whereas few characters support previously unrecognized clades. Sorus position appears to be less complicated than previously hypothesized, and linear sori restricted to one side of the vein support the clade comprising Aspleniaceae, Diplaziopsidaceae, Hemidictyaceae and Rachidosoraceae - a lineage only recently identified. Despite x =41 being a frequent number among extant species, to our knowledge it has not previously been demonstrated as the ancestral state. This is the first synapomorphy proposed for the eupolypod clade, a lineage comprising 67 % of extant fern species. This study provides some of the first hypotheses of character evolution at the family level and above in light of recent phylogenetic results, and promotes further study in an area that remains open for original observation.

  3. Stasis and convergence characterize morphological evolution in eupolypod II ferns

    PubMed Central

    Sundue, Michael A.; Rothfels, Carl J.

    2014-01-01

    Background and Aims Patterns of morphological evolution at levels above family rank remain underexplored in the ferns. The present study seeks to address this gap through analysis of 79 morphological characters for 81 taxa, including representatives of all ten families of eupolypod II ferns. Recent molecular phylogenetic studies demonstrate that the evolution of the large eupolypod II clade (which includes nearly one-third of extant fern species) features unexpected patterns. The traditional ‘athyrioid’ ferns are scattered across the phylogeny despite their apparent morphological cohesiveness, and mixed among these seemingly conservative taxa are morphologically dissimilar groups that lack any obvious features uniting them with their relatives. Maximum-likelihood and maximum-parsimony character optimizations are used to determine characters that unite the seemingly disparate groups, and to test whether the polyphyly of the traditional athyrioid ferns is due to evolutionary stasis (symplesiomorphy) or convergent evolution. The major events in eupolypod II character evolution are reviewed, and character and character state concepts are reappraised, as a basis for further inquiries into fern morphology. Methods Characters were scored from the literature, live plants and herbarium specimens, and optimized using maximum-parsimony and maximum-likelihood, onto a highly supported topology derived from maximum-likelihood and Bayesian analysis of molecular data. Phylogenetic signal of characters were tested for using randomization methods and fitdiscrete. Key Results The majority of character state changes within the eupolypod II phylogeny occur at the family level or above. Relative branch lengths for the morphological data resemble those from molecular data and fit an ancient rapid radiation model (long branches subtended by very short backbone internodes), with few characters uniting the morphologically disparate clades. The traditional athyrioid ferns were circumscribed based upon a combination of symplesiomorphic and homoplastic characters. Petiole vasculature consisting of two bundles is ancestral for eupolypods II and a synapomorphy for eupolypods II under deltran optimization. Sori restricted to one side of the vein defines the recently recognized clade comprising Rhachidosoraceae through Aspleniaceae, and sori present on both sides of the vein is a synapomorphy for the Athyriaceae sensu stricto. The results indicate that a chromosome base number of x =41 is synapomorphic for all eupolypods, a clade that includes over two-thirds of extant fern species. Conclusions The integrated approach synthesizes morphological studies with current phylogenetic hypotheses and provides explicit statements of character evolution in the eupolypod II fern families. Strong character support is found for previously recognized clades, whereas few characters support previously unrecognized clades. Sorus position appears to be less complicated than previously hypothesized, and linear sori restricted to one side of the vein support the clade comprising Aspleniaceae, Diplaziopsidaceae, Hemidictyaceae and Rachidosoraceae – a lineage only recently identified. Despite x =41 being a frequent number among extant species, to our knowledge it has not previously been demonstrated as the ancestral state. This is the first synapomorphy proposed for the eupolypod clade, a lineage comprising 67 % of extant fern species. This study provides some of the first hypotheses of character evolution at the family level and above in light of recent phylogenetic results, and promotes further study in an area that remains open for original observation. PMID:24197753

  4. Systematic review of character development and childhood chronic illness.

    PubMed

    Maslow, Gary R; Hill, Sherika N

    2016-05-08

    To review empirical evidence on character development among youth with chronic illnesses. A systematic literature review was conducted using PubMed and PSYCHINFO from inception until November 2013 to find quantitative studies that measured character strengths among youth with chronic illnesses. Inclusion criteria were limited to English language studies examining constructs of character development among adolescents or young adults aged 13-24 years with a childhood-onset chronic medical condition. A librarian at Duke University Medical Center Library assisted with the development of the mesh search term. Two researchers independently reviewed relevant titles (n = 549), then abstracts (n = 45), and finally manuscripts (n = 3). There is a lack of empirical research on character development and childhood-onset chronic medical conditions. Three studies were identified that used different measures of character based on moral themes. One study examined moral reasoning among deaf adolescents using Kohlberg's Moral Judgement Instrument; another, investigated moral values of adolescent cancer survivors with the Values In Action Classification of Strengths. A third study evaluated moral behavior among young adult survivors of burn injury utilizing the Tennessee Self-Concept, 2(nd) edition. The studies observed that youth with chronic conditions reasoned at less advanced stages and had a lower moral self-concept compared to referent populations, but that they did differ on character virtues and strengths when matched with healthy peers for age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Yet, generalizations could not be drawn regarding character development of youth with chronic medical conditions because the studies were too divergent from each other and biased from study design limitations. Future empirical studies should learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature on character development among youth with chronic medical conditions.

  5. Changing beliefs and behavior through experience-taking.

    PubMed

    Kaufman, Geoff F; Libby, Lisa K

    2012-07-01

    The present research introduces the concept of experience-taking-the imaginative process of spontaneously assuming the identity of a character in a narrative and simulating that character's thoughts, emotions, behaviors, goals, and traits as if they were one's own. Six studies investigated the degree to which particular psychological states and features of narratives cause individuals, without instruction, to engage in experience-taking and investigated how the merger between self and other that occurs during experience-taking produces changes in self-judgments, attitudes, and behavior that align with the character's. Results from Studies 1-3 showed that being in a reduced state of self-concept accessibility while reading a brief fictional work increased-and being in a heightened state of self-concept accessibility decreased-participants' levels of experience-taking and subsequent incorporation of a character's personality trait into their self-concepts. Study 4 revealed that a first-person narrative depicting an ingroup character elicited the highest levels of experience-taking and produced the greatest change in participants' behavior, compared with versions of the narrative written in 3rd-person voice and/or depicting an outgroup protagonist. The final 2 studies demonstrated that whereas revealing a character's outgroup membership as a homosexual or African American early in a narrative inhibited experience-taking, delaying the revelation of the character's outgroup identity until later in the story produced higher levels of experience-taking, lower levels of stereotype application in participants' evaluation of the character, and more favorable attitudes toward the character's group. The implications of these findings in relation to perspective-taking, self-other overlap, and prime-to-behavior effects are discussed. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved

  6. Relationship Between Temperament and Character Traits, Mood, and Medications in Bipolar I Disorder.

    PubMed

    Chavez, Sergio B; Alvarado, Luis A; Gonzalez, Robert

    2016-01-01

    Bipolar I disorder is an illness causing mood shifts that can result in personality and character trait alterations. The relationship between mood and personality and character traits in bipolar I disorder is unclear at this time. We conducted a study from February 2009 to March 2010 that included 42 subjects with bipolar I disorder, which was confirmed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders. Mood was assessed via the Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) and the 30-item Clinician-rated Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (IDS-C). Temperament and character traits were assessed via the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Multivariate analysis was used to test relationships between mood and temperament and character traits with the effects of possible cofactors taken into account (eg, age, gender, medications). We noted a positive correlation between YMRS scores and persistence ( P = .046) and a trend toward positive correlation with novelty seeking ( P = .054). There was a positive correlation between higher IDS-C scores and harm avoidance ( P < .001) and a negative correlation with self-directedness scores ( P < .001). Antipsychotic use was positively correlated with the character trait self-directedness ( P = .008), with a trend toward a positive correlation with reward dependence ( P = .056). Lithium was negatively correlated with reward dependence ( P = .047) and self-transcendence ( P = .028), with a trend toward a negative correlation with novelty seeking ( P = .053). The findings of our study suggest that some personality and character traits may vary according to mood state and medications in patients with bipolar I disorder. Prospective and longitudinal studies are required to fully characterize the relationships between personality and character traits and mood state in bipolar I disorder.

  7. Quantitative genetic studies relating to the domestication of meadowfoam (Limnanthes spp. ) as a new oil crop

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Abuelgasim, E.H.

    1982-01-01

    Meadowfoam (Limnanthes spp.) has recently aroused interest as a promising new source of industrial oil that is a good substitute for sperm whale oil. Fourteen natural populations of Limnanthes, involving two species and five taxonomic varieties, were studied for 12 quantitative characters, during two seasons. The objectives were: to evaluate the potential use of the populations for domestication purposes, study the interrelationships among characters, and to obtain heritability estimates for some of the important characters. A great deal of variability among the populations was observed for all the characters studied. Although no single taxon or population had all the desiredmore » characters combined, nevertheless, three populations of L. douglasii var. nivea and one population of L. douglasii var. sulphurea, gave consistently higher values for seed yield, seed number, plant dry weight, harvest index and fertility index, than L. alba or L. douglasii var. douglasii populations. The nivea group was also the earliest to flower, however, this group together with var. sulphurea population, suffer from severe seed shattering at maturity. In both seasons, seed yield was positively and highly significantly correlated with all of the other characters with the exception of days to the first flower and days to flower, which showed a highly significant negative correlation with seed yield. Stepwise multiple regression and path-coefficient analyses showed that seed number was the most important character in contribution to variation in seed yield; it accounted for over 85% of the variation in seed yield. The four characters: seed number, 100-seed weight, plant dry weight and harvest index, in that order, were the most important characters to be included in a multiple regression equation for determination of seed yield.« less

  8. Limited role of phonology in reading Chinese two-character compounds: evidence from an ERP study.

    PubMed

    Wong, A W-K; Wu, Y; Chen, H-C

    2014-01-03

    This study investigates the role of phonology in reading logographic Chinese. Specifically, whether phonological information is obligatorily activated in reading Chinese two-character compounds was examined using the masked-priming paradigm with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. Twenty-two native Cantonese Chinese speakers participated in a lexical decision experiment. The targets were visually presented Chinese two-character strings and the participants were asked to judge whether the target in each trial was a legitimate compound word in Chinese. Each target was preceded by a briefly presented word prime. The prime and target shared an identical constituent character in the Character-related condition, a syllable in the Syllable-related condition, were semantically related in the Semantic-related condition, and were unrelated (both phonologically and semantically) in the control condition. The prime–target relationship was manipulated to probe the effects of word-form (i.e., character- or syllable-relatedness) and word-semantic relatedness on phonological (as indexed by an N250 ERP component) and semantic (as indexed by an N400 ERP component) processing. Significant and comparable facilitation effects in reaction time, relative to the control, were observed in the Character-related and the Semantic-related conditions. Furthermore, a significant reduction in ERP amplitudes (N250), relative to the control, was obtained in the Character-related condition in the time window of 150-250 ms post target. In addition, attenuation in ERP amplitudes was found in the Semantic-related condition in the window of 250-500 ms (N400). However, no significant results (neither behavioral nor ERP) were found in the Syllable-related condition. These results suggest that phonological activation is not mandatory and the role of phonology is minimal at best in reading Chinese two-character compounds.

  9. Systematic review of character development and childhood chronic illness

    PubMed Central

    Maslow, Gary R; Hill, Sherika N

    2016-01-01

    AIM: To review empirical evidence on character development among youth with chronic illnesses. METHODS: A systematic literature review was conducted using PubMed and PSYCHINFO from inception until November 2013 to find quantitative studies that measured character strengths among youth with chronic illnesses. Inclusion criteria were limited to English language studies examining constructs of character development among adolescents or young adults aged 13-24 years with a childhood-onset chronic medical condition. A librarian at Duke University Medical Center Library assisted with the development of the mesh search term. Two researchers independently reviewed relevant titles (n = 549), then abstracts (n = 45), and finally manuscripts (n = 3). RESULTS: There is a lack of empirical research on character development and childhood-onset chronic medical conditions. Three studies were identified that used different measures of character based on moral themes. One study examined moral reasoning among deaf adolescents using Kohlberg’s Moral Judgement Instrument; another, investigated moral values of adolescent cancer survivors with the Values In Action Classification of Strengths. A third study evaluated moral behavior among young adult survivors of burn injury utilizing the Tennessee Self-Concept, 2nd edition. The studies observed that youth with chronic conditions reasoned at less advanced stages and had a lower moral self-concept compared to referent populations, but that they did differ on character virtues and strengths when matched with healthy peers for age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Yet, generalizations could not be drawn regarding character development of youth with chronic medical conditions because the studies were too divergent from each other and biased from study design limitations. CONCLUSION: Future empirical studies should learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature on character development among youth with chronic medical conditions. PMID:27170931

  10. Human alteration of the rural landscape: Variations in visual perception

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Cloquell-Ballester, Vicente-Agustin, E-mail: cloquell@dpi.upv.es; Carmen Torres-Sibille, Ana del; Cloquell-Ballester, Victor-Andres

    2012-01-15

    The objective of this investigation is to evaluate how visual perception varies as the rural landscape is altered by human interventions of varying character. An experiment is carried out using Semantic Differential Analysis to analyse the effect of the character and the type of the intervention on perception. Interventions are divided into elements of 'permanent industrial character', 'elements of permanent rural character' and 'elements of temporary character', and these categories are sub-divided into smaller groups according to the type of development. To increase the reliability of the results, the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient tool, is applied to validate the semantic spacemore » of the perceptual responses and to determine the number of subjects required for a reliable evaluation of the scenes.« less

  11. The ideal elf: identity exploration in World of Warcraft.

    PubMed

    Bessière, Katherine; Seay, A Fleming; Kiesler, Sara

    2007-08-01

    In this study, we examine the identity exploration possibilities presented by online multiplayer games in which players use graphics tools and character-creation software to construct an avatar, or character. We predicted World of Warcraft players would create their main character more similar to their ideal self than the players themselves were. Our results support this idea; a sample of players rated their character as having more favorable attributes that were more favorable than their own self-rated attributes. This trend was stronger among those with lower psychological well-being, who rated themselves comparatively lower than they rated their character. Our results suggest that the game world allows players the freedom to create successful virtual selves regardless of the constraints of their actual situation.

  12. Text Line Detection from Rectangle Traffic Panels of Natural Scene

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Shiyuan; Huang, Linlin; Hu, Jian

    2018-01-01

    Traffic sign detection and recognition is very important for Intelligent Transportation. Among traffic signs, traffic panel contains rich information. However, due to low resolution and blur in the rectangular traffic panel, it is difficult to extract the character and symbols. In this paper, we propose a coarse-to-fine method to detect the Chinese character on traffic panels from natural scenes. Given a traffic panel Color Quantization is applied to extract candidate regions of Chinese characters. Second, a multi-stage filter based on learning is applied to discard the non-character regions. Third, we aggregate the characters for text lines by Distance Metric Learning method. Experimental results on real traffic images from Baidu Street View demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

  13. Comparative implementation of Handwritten and Machine written Gurmukhi text utilizing appropriate parameters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kaur, Jaswinder; Jagdev, Gagandeep, Dr.

    2018-01-01

    Optical character recognition is concerned with the recognition of optically processed characters. The recognition is done offline after the writing or printing has been completed, unlike online recognition where the computer has to recognize the characters instantly as they are drawn. The performance of character recognition depends upon the quality of scanned documents. The preprocessing steps are used for removing low-frequency background noise and normalizing the intensity of individual scanned documents. Several filters are used for reducing certain image details and enabling an easier or faster evaluation. The primary aim of the research work is to recognize handwritten and machine written characters and differentiate them. The language opted for the research work is Punjabi Gurmukhi and tool utilized is Matlab.

  14. Using video modeling with substitutable loops to teach varied play to children with autism.

    PubMed

    Dupere, Sally; MacDonald, Rebecca P F; Ahearn, William H

    2013-01-01

    Children with autism often engage in repetitive play with little variation in the actions performed or items used. This study examined the use of video modeling with scripted substitutable loops on children's pretend play with trained and untrained characters. Three young children with autism were shown a video model of scripted toy play that included a substitutable loop that allowed various characters to perform the same actions and vocalizations. Three characters were modeled with the substitutable loop during training sessions, and 3 additional characters were present in the video but never modeled. Following video modeling, all the participants incorporated untrained characters into their play, but the extent to which they did so varied. © Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

  15. 47 CFR 10.430 - Character limit.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 47 Telecommunication 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Character limit. 10.430 Section 10.430 Telecommunication FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION GENERAL COMMERCIAL MOBILE ALERT SYSTEM Alert Message Requirements § 10.430 Character limit. A CMAS Alert Message processed by a Participating CMS Provider must not...

  16. A database application for wilderness character monitoring

    Treesearch

    Ashley Adams; Peter Landres; Simon Kingston

    2012-01-01

    The National Park Service (NPS) Wilderness Stewardship Division, in collaboration with the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute and the NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program, developed a database application to facilitate tracking and trend reporting in wilderness character. The Wilderness Character Monitoring Database allows consistent, scientifically based...

  17. Scanners, optical character readers, Cyrillic alphabet and Russian translations

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Johnson, Gordon G.

    1995-01-01

    The writing of code for capture, in a uniform format, of bit maps of words and characters from scanner PICT files is presented. The coding of Dynamic Pattern Matched for the identification of the characters, words and sentences in preparation for translation is discussed.

  18. Character Development in Adolescents.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kessler, Glenn R.; And Others

    1986-01-01

    Explored the effects of a program consisting of communication and counseling skills, assertiveness training and moral dilemmas on the character development of high school students. The results demonstrated that the character development of the students in the experimental treatment group was affected significantly over time by the program.…

  19. Illuminating the Mechanisms of Character Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Farrington, Camille A.

    2017-01-01

    This paper responds to Berkowitz, Bier, and McCauley's description of effective features and practices that support character development by pushing on the question of "how" child and youth environments might "build character." Acknowledging the challenges of drawing on program evaluations and extant studies of character…

  20. Character Education--A Joint Responsibility

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brannon, Diana

    2008-01-01

    Young children's beliefs about what is right and wrong traditionally have been strongly influenced by their families. However, today children often come to school with problematic behaviors and attitudes. Character education has become a necessity. Character education programs have a positive effect on achievement, classroom behaviors, and…

  1. An illustrated guide for characters and terminology used in descriptions of Phlebotominae (Diptera, Psychodidae)

    PubMed Central

    Galati, Eunice A. B.; Galvis-Ovallos, Fredy; Lawyer, Phillip; Léger, Nicole; Depaquit, Jérôme

    2017-01-01

    Phlebotomine (Diptera, Psychodidae, Phlebotominae) taxonomy has been studied extensively, primarily due to the role of these flies as vectors of various parasites, including species of Leishmania, Bartonella and arboviruses that cause diseases in humans and other vertebrates. We present some topics discussed at a round-table on phlebotomine taxonomy held at the Ninth International Symposium on Phlebotomine Sandflies (ISOPS IX) in Reims, France, in June 2016. To date, approximately one thousand phlebotomine species have been described worldwide, although in varying languages and mostly without standardization of characters and terminology. In the interest of standardization, we list the characters that should minimally be considered in the description of new phlebotomine taxa as well as annotated illustrations of several characters. For these characters, multiple illustrations are provided to show some of the variations. The preferred terms for all pertinent characters are listed as well as their synonyms in English, Portuguese, and French. Finally, we offer an updated list of abbreviations to be used for generic and subgeneric names. PMID:28730992

  2. Performance-Driven Hybrid Full-Body Character Control for Navigation and Interaction in Virtual Environments

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mousas, Christos; Anagnostopoulos, Christos-Nikolaos

    2017-06-01

    This paper presents a hybrid character control interface that provides the ability to synthesize in real-time a variety of actions based on the user's performance capture. The proposed methodology enables three different performance interaction modules: the performance animation control that enables the direct mapping of the user's pose to the character, the motion controller that synthesizes the desired motion of the character based on an activity recognition methodology, and the hybrid control that lies within the performance animation and the motion controller. With the methodology presented, the user will have the freedom to interact within the virtual environment, as well as the ability to manipulate the character and to synthesize a variety of actions that cannot be performed directly by him/her, but which the system synthesizes. Therefore, the user is able to interact with the virtual environment in a more sophisticated fashion. This paper presents examples of different scenarios based on the three different full-body character control methodologies.

  3. Leaders and elites: portrayals of smoking in popular films

    PubMed Central

    Dozier, D; Lauzen, M; Day, C; Payne, S; Tafoya, M

    2005-01-01

    Design: This study conducted a content analysis of the top 100 grossing films in 2002, with a total global gross of US$12.4 billion. Outcome measures: Three outcome measures were frequency of smoking incidents, traits of characters who smoke, and consequences of tobacco use. Results: 6% of characters smoked in 453 incidents, including 3% of children. In 92% of incidences, smoking had no consequences. The most frequent consequence was a verbal reprimand. Although tobacco is a leading cause of preventable deaths globally, only 0.4% of tobacco incidences resulted in death. No deaths were caused by disease. Characters who smoked tended to be major characters playing leadership roles. They tended to be from privileged elites: male, white, and mature. Conclusions: Films portray characters that smoke as leaders from privileged elites, making smoking more attractive to audience members. Because 99.6% of characters suffer no life threatening consequences from smoking on screen, smokers seem invincible, belying tobacco's role as a leading cause of preventable deaths. PMID:15735293

  4. Character displacement in the fighting colours of Hetaerina damselflies.

    PubMed

    Anderson, Christopher N; Grether, Gregory F

    2010-12-07

    Aggression between species is a seldom-considered but potentially widespread mechanism of character displacement in secondary sexual characters. Based on previous research showing that similarity in wing coloration directly influences interspecific territorial aggression in Hetaerina damselflies, we predicted that wing coloration would show a pattern of character displacement (divergence in sympatry). A geographical survey of four Hetaerina damselfly species in Mexico and Texas showed evidence for character displacement in both species pairs that regularly occurs sympatrically. Hetaerina titia, a species that typically has large black wing spots and small red wing spots, shifted to having even larger black spots and smaller red wing spots at sites where a congener with large red wing spots is numerically dominant (Hetaerina americana or Hetaerina occisa). Hetaerina americana showed the reverse pattern, shifting towards larger red wing spots where H. titia is numerically dominant. This pattern is consistent with the process of agonistic character displacement, but the ontogenetic basis of the shift remains to be demonstrated.

  5. In the Cumulative Author Index of Vol. 67, No. 1, 1998

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    1998-02-01

    The line of “Gerfried Hilscher” should read “Hilscher, Gerfried”and be moved to the appropriate place for the authors with the first character “H”.The line of “Herwig Michor” should read “Michor, Herwig”and be moved to the appropriate place for the authors with the first character “M”.The line of “Kazuyoshi Yoshimura” should read “Yoshimura, Kazuyoshi” and be moved to the appropriate place for the authors with the first character “Y”.The line of “Koji Kosuge” should read “Kosuge, Koji”and be moved to the appropriate place for the authors with the first character “K”.The line of “Saburo Takahashi” should read “Takahashi, Saburo”and be moved to the appropriate place for the authors with the first character “T”.The line of “Takashi Kiyama” should read “Kiyama, Takashi”and be moved to the appropriate place for the authors with the first character “K”.

  6. Remembering gay/lesbian media characters: can Ellen and Will improve attitudes toward homosexuals?.

    PubMed

    Bonds-Raacke, Jennifer M; Cady, Elizabeth T; Schlegel, Rebecca; Harris, Richard J; Firebaugh, Lindsey

    2007-01-01

    The purpose of the current research was twofold. First, a pilot study was conducted in which participants were asked to recall any memorable gay or lesbian television or film character and complete a survey about their perceptions of the character. Results indicated that over two-thirds of heterosexual participants recalled either Ellen or Will, and evaluative ratings for these characters were generally positive. The second purpose of this research was to examine the priming effects of remembering portrayals of homosexual characters in the media. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to directly assess the effects of thinking about either a positive or negative homosexual character on general heterosexuals' attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. Results indicated that those recalling a positive portrayal later showed a more positive attitude toward gay men than those recalling a negative portrayal, and women had a more positive attitude overall than men toward gay men and lesbians. Such findings illustrate the importance of positive role models in entertainment media as potential primes of social attitudes.

  7. ERPs reveal sub-lexical processing in Chinese character recognition.

    PubMed

    Wu, Yan; Mo, Deyuan; Tsang, Yiu-Kei; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

    2012-04-18

    The present study used ERPs and a lexical decision task to explore the roles of position-general and position-specific radicals and their relative time courses in processing Chinese characters. Two types of radical frequency were manipulated: the number of characters containing a specific radical irrespective of position (i.e., radical frequency or RF) and the number of characters containing a specific radical at a particular position (i.e., position-specific radical frequency or PRF). The PRF effect was found to be associated with P150, P200, and N400, whereas the RF effect was associated with P200. These results suggest that both position-general and position-specific radicals could influence character processing, but the effect of position-specific radicals appeared earlier and lasted longer than that of position-general radicals. These findings are interpreted in terms of the specific orthographic properties of the sub-lexical components of Chinese characters. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Does a parent-administrated early motor intervention influence general movements and movement character at 3months of age in infants born preterm?

    PubMed

    Fjørtoft, Toril; Ustad, Tordis; Follestad, Turid; Kaaresen, Per Ivar; Øberg, Gunn Kristin

    2017-09-01

    Studies of preterm and term-born infants have shown absent fidgety movements and an abnormal movement character to be related to brain lesions and unfavourable neurological outcomes. The present study examines what effect a parent-administered early intervention program applied to preterm infants in a randomised control trial (RCT) between 34 and 36weeks gestational age has on their fidgety movements and overall movement character at three months of age. The study was part of the RCT in an early intervention programme including preterm infants born between 2010 and 2014 at three Norwegian university hospitals. 130 preterm infants participated in the study, with 59 of them in the control group and 71 in the intervention group. Fidgety movements and overall movement character at three months corrected age. No difference was found between the intervention group and the control group in terms of fidgety movements or movement character. Approximately half of the infants in both groups showed an abnormal movement character. No evidence was found in this RCT to suggest that an intervention at 34 to 37weeks gestational age has a significant effect on the fidgety movements or overall movement character of preterm infants. This is in line with the assumption that absent fidgety movements and an abnormal movement character are due to permanent brain injury and are therefore good predictors for later neurological impairments. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. Modeling Pathways of Character Development across the First Three Decades of Life: An Application of Integrative Data Analysis Techniques to Understanding the Development of Hopeful Future Expectations.

    PubMed

    Callina, Kristina Schmid; Johnson, Sara K; Tirrell, Jonathan M; Batanova, Milena; Weiner, Michelle B; Lerner, Richard M

    2017-06-01

    There were two purposes of the present research: first, to add to scholarship about a key character virtue, hopeful future expectations; and second, to demonstrate a recent innovation in longitudinal methodology that may be especially useful in enhancing the understanding of the developmental course of hopeful future expectations and other character virtues that have been the focus of recent scholarship in youth development. Burgeoning interest in character development has led to a proliferation of short-term, longitudinal studies on character. These data sets are sometimes limited in their ability to model character development trajectories due to low power or relatively brief time spans assessed. However, the integrative data analysis approach allows researchers to pool raw data across studies in order to fit one model to an aggregated data set. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the promises and challenges of this new tool for modeling character development. We used data from four studies evaluating youth character strengths in different settings to fit latent growth curve models of hopeful future expectations from participants aged 7 through 26 years. We describe the analytic strategy for pooling the data and modeling the growth curves. Implications for future research are discussed in regard to the advantages of integrative data analysis. Finally, we discuss issues researchers should consider when applying these techniques in their own work.

  10. Chinese Orthographic Decomposition and Logographic Structure

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cheng, Chao-Ming; Lin, Shan-Yuan

    2013-01-01

    "Chinese orthographic decomposition" refers to a sense of uncertainty about the writing of a well-learned Chinese character following a prolonged inspection of the character. This study investigated the decomposition phenomenon in a test situation in which Chinese characters were repeatedly presented in a word context and assessed…

  11. Guiding Principles for Teaching Multicultural Literature

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Louie, Belinda Y.

    2006-01-01

    When using multicultural literature in the classroom, teachers should: (1) Check the text's authenticity; (2) Help learners understand the characters' world; (3) Encourage children to see the world through the characters' perspectives; (4) Identify values underlying the characters' conflict resolution strategies; (5) Relate self to the text and…

  12. Computer-Generated, Three-Dimensional Character Animation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Van Baerle, Susan Lynn

    This master's thesis begins by discussing the differences between 3-D computer animation of solid three-dimensional, or monolithic, objects, and the animation of characters, i.e., collections of movable parts with soft pliable surfaces. Principles from two-dimensional character animation that can be transferred to three-dimensional character…

  13. Character Education: Frill or Foundation?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schwartz, Merle J.; Beatty, Alexandra; Dachnowicz, Eileen

    2006-01-01

    Proof of academic performance often serves as the litmus test for maintaining instructional practices and programs. Just as the national focus on academic improvement has gained momentum, so too has another movement calling for character education. Educators find themselves caught in the middle, questioning whether character education is just…

  14. Improving Social Competence through Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cheung, Chau-kiu; Lee, Tak-yan

    2010-01-01

    Character education is supposed to meet early adolescents' need (i.e., eighth and ninth graders) for strengthening social competence. Moreover, adolescents' engagement in character education is integral to their learning from the education. The engagement and deficit in social competence are therefore plausible conditions for the effectiveness of…

  15. Parish Character.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Duggan, Robert D.

    1999-01-01

    Discusses the role of the Catholic parish in forming the character of its youth, asserting that vibrant communities of faith can form Catholic character and values that will survive any threat from society. Presents a formula for success in this endeavor, which includes: (1) good liturgy; (2) democratic leadership; (3) lifelong religious education…

  16. Developing Multimedia Supplementary Materials to Support Learning Beginning Level Chinese Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Xu, Lisha

    2017-01-01

    Studies investigating beginner Chinese learners' character learning strategies found that learners considered orthographic knowledge the most useful factor (Ke, 1998; Shen, 2005). Orthographic recognition correlates with character identification and production and can be used by advanced learners to solve word identification problems (Everson,…

  17. Sherlock Holmes Meets Othello: A MDS Analysis of Literary Characters.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Russell, G. W.; Lambert, W. B.

    1980-01-01

    Changes in college freshmen's perceptual organization of characters from "Othello" after three weeks of study and lecture were assessed using multidimensional scaling procedures. Sherlock Holmes experts also provided dissimilarity ratings of Conan Doyle's characters. Discussion centers on the extent to which the lectures on…

  18. Assessing Multi-cultural Television Characters for Children. Revised.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    LaRose, Robert; Eisenstock, Barbara

    Two studies were undertaken to investigate the effectiveness of portrayals of minority group characters in television productions. One study evaluated minority children's identification with minority characters in the "Superfriends" series. The second study focused on interracial attitude changes associated with exposure to a pilot for "The New…

  19. The Effects of Sex-Role Taking on Children's Responses to Aggressive Conflict Situations.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Olson, Sheryl L.

    1984-01-01

    Twenty male and twenty female third graders expected boy characters to retaliate more strongly than girl characters when intervening in an attack upon a friend and girl characters to retaliate more strongly than boys when being verbally or physically assaulted. (Author/KH)

  20. 37 CFR 11.7 - Requirements for registration.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... issues concerning good moral character and reputation when completing the application or any time... good moral character and reputation, the OED Director shall issue to the individual a notice to show... satisfaction of the OED Director that he or she: (i) Possesses good moral character and reputation; (ii...

  1. Character Education, New Media, and Political Spectacle

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Winton, Sue

    2010-01-01

    Ontario's new Character Development Initiative is analyzed to determine whether it can be characterized as political spectacle. Examination of official policy texts, media reports, speeches, web pages, webcasts, and events at the Character Development Symposium suggests that the Initiative contains many elements of political spectacle; however,…

  2. Virtue and Character in Higher Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carr, David

    2017-01-01

    Despite much recent concern with the possibilities of moral character education in elementary schooling and professional training, the university and higher educational prospects of such education have only lately received much attention. This paper begins by considering--and largely endorsing--the general case for character education in contexts…

  3. Towards an Ancient Chinese-Inspired Theory of Music Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tan, Leonard

    2016-01-01

    In this philosophical paper, I propose a theory of music education inspired by ancient Chinese philosophy. In particular, I draw on five classical Chinese philosophical texts: the Analects (lunyu [Chinese characters omitted]), the Mencius (Mengzi [Chinese characters omitted]), the Zhuangzi ([Chinese characters omitted]), the Xunzi ([Chinese…

  4. Early Reading Development in Chinese-Speaking Children with Hearing Loss

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chan, Yi-Chih; Yang, You-Jhen

    2018-01-01

    This study aims to explore early reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking children with hearing loss (HL) by examining character recognition and linguistic comprehension. Twenty-five children with HL received three measures relevant to character reading: phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA), and character recognition; two…

  5. Developing Character through Literature: A Teacher's Resource Book.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and Communication, Bloomington, IN.

    Based on the idea that the most important foundation of education is character development, this book guides teachers and parents in building strong character traits while reading and discussing popular books. Children's books and young adult books draw students into discussions that can lead to action and to personal development. Thoughtful…

  6. Positive Character Development in School Sport Programs. ERIC Digest.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Beller, Jennifer

    This digest discusses the formal and informal processes of moral character development through sport in light of the types of programs that have shown to improve moral character, sportsmanship, and fair play, noting that such efforts involve combined lifelong formal and informal educational processes with three interrelated dimensions: knowing,…

  7. Who Knows What? Maintaining Multiple Perspectives during Reading

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Weingartner, Kristin M.; Klin, Celia M.

    2009-01-01

    Recent findings (Keysar, 1994; Weingartner & Klin, 2005) have shown that readers are not always accurate at taking a story character's perspective. When readers evaluated a character's understanding of a written message, they mistakenly took into account information that was inaccessible to that character. The results from the three experiments…

  8. 42 CFR 54.5 - Religious character and independence.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... definition, practice and expression of its religious beliefs. The organization may not expend funds that it... 42 Public Health 1 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Religious character and independence. 54.5 Section... AND/OR PROJECTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSITION FROM HOMELESSNESS GRANTS § 54.5 Religious character and...

  9. 42 CFR 54.5 - Religious character and independence.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... definition, practice and expression of its religious beliefs. The organization may not expend funds that it... 42 Public Health 1 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Religious character and independence. 54.5 Section... AND/OR PROJECTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSITION FROM HOMELESSNESS GRANTS § 54.5 Religious character and...

  10. 42 CFR 54.5 - Religious character and independence.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... definition, practice and expression of its religious beliefs. The organization may not expend funds that it... 42 Public Health 1 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Religious character and independence. 54.5 Section... AND/OR PROJECTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSITION FROM HOMELESSNESS GRANTS § 54.5 Religious character and...

  11. 42 CFR 54.5 - Religious character and independence.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... definition, practice and expression of its religious beliefs. The organization may not expend funds that it... 42 Public Health 1 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Religious character and independence. 54.5 Section... AND/OR PROJECTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSITION FROM HOMELESSNESS GRANTS § 54.5 Religious character and...

  12. 42 CFR 54.5 - Religious character and independence.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... definition, practice and expression of its religious beliefs. The organization may not expend funds that it... 42 Public Health 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Religious character and independence. 54.5 Section... AND/OR PROJECTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSITION FROM HOMELESSNESS GRANTS § 54.5 Religious character and...

  13. Piaget's stages of cognitive development and adult character structure.

    PubMed

    Malerstein, A J; Ahern, M M

    1979-01-01

    Psychonalytic and Piagetian findings are bridged by understanding character structure. Social cognition of the three character types corresponds to three phase of cognitive development: Symbolic, Intuitive, and (Concrete) Operational. A child constructs his supergo by coordinating his perceptions of his caretaking as he coordinates other perceptions in the Operational Period.

  14. Important Values of American and Turkish Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baloglu Ugurlu, Nihal

    2014-01-01

    Problem Statement: Societies want to ensure that their children receive an education that includes an emphasis on good character. Therefore, character education classes in schools are an effective means of achieving this goal. Character education curricula in societies that are experiencing global changes strive for their students to gain…

  15. Keeping in Character: A Time-Tested Solution.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Benninga, Jaques S.; Wynne, Edward A.

    1998-01-01

    Refutes Alfie Kohn's criticisms of modern character education programs in the February 1997 "Kappan." The basic structure of true "for character" education relies on an approach relevant for students of all ages, has been time-tested over 2,500 years, has broad public support, and has a valid research base. Kohn advocates…

  16. Essays on Character & Opportunity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Center on Children and Families at Brookings, 2014

    2014-01-01

    These essays provide richer set of writings on the philosophical, empirical and practical issues raised by a focus on character, and in particular its relationship to questions of opportunity. Each one is an intellectual pemmican: sharp and to the point. Two scholars draw attention to the gendered nature of character formation (Segal and Lexmond);…

  17. Relationships between Character Education and School Climate

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Karaburk, Hasan

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between character education and school climate based on the lived experiences and beliefs of teachers. The research was conducted in a public middle school to explore understandings and beliefs of teachers about character education and its perceived impact on school climate. Social…

  18. Children's Recognition of Cartoon Voices.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Spence, Melanie J.; Rollins, Pamela R.; Jerger, Susan

    2002-01-01

    A study examined developmental changes in talker recognition skills by assessing 72 children's (ages 3-5) recognition of 20 cartoon characters' voices. Four- and 5-year-old children recognized more of the voices than did 3-year-olds. All children were more accurate at recognizing more familiar characters than less familiar characters. (Contains…

  19. Teaching Character Education to College Students Using Bildungsromans

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Novianti, Nita

    2017-01-01

    The paper reports a study on the teaching of character education in higher education using English Bildungsroman, "Jane Eyre." The participants were 35 sixth-semester students of English Literature program in an Indonesian state university. Guided by the approach to teaching character education exemplified by Ryan & Bohlin (1999),…

  20. Low-Budget, Cost-Effective OCR: Optical Character Recognition for MS-DOS Micros.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Perez, Ernest

    1990-01-01

    Discusses optical character recognition (OCR) for use with MS-DOS microcomputers. Cost effectiveness is considered, three types of software approaches to character recognition are explained, hardware and operation requirements are described, possible library applications are discussed, future OCR developments are suggested, and a list of OCR…

  1. 12 CFR 925.12 - Character of management requirement.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 12 Banks and Banking 7 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Character of management requirement. 925.12 Section 925.12 Banks and Banking FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE BOARD FEDERAL HOME LOAN BANK MEMBERS AND HOUSING ASSOCIATES MEMBERS OF THE BANKS Eligibility Requirements § 925.12 Character of management requirement. An...

  2. Teaching with Your Librarian--Great Character!

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Meagher, Sandy

    2005-01-01

    Attracting middle grade readers is a true art. When talking to middle grade teachers, they understand that you have to have a hook to catch these students. In this article, the author suggests several books that are perfect for character studies and for encouraging kids to develop characters of their own.

  3. Developing Individual and Team Character in Sport

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gaines, Stacey A.

    2012-01-01

    The idea that participation in sport builds character is a long-standing one. Advocates of sport participation believe that sport provides an appropriate context for the learning of social skills such as cooperation and the development of prosocial behavior (Weiss, Smith, & Stuntz, 2008). Research in sport regarding character development has…

  4. "Reel" Character Education: Using Film to Promote Global Citizenship

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Russell, William Benedict, III; Waters, Stewart

    2013-01-01

    This article explores using films to spark moral dilemma discussions and thereby promote critical thinking and character education for global citizenship in elementary classrooms. After clarifying some of the basic concepts associated with the fields of character education and global citizenship, and the interrelationship between the two, the…

  5. Character Development: Putting It into Practice in Admissions and Instruction

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sternberg, Robert J.

    2013-01-01

    The most important knowledge and skills a college education should develop in young people are those underlying good character, such as integrity, responsibility, work ethic, intellectual curiosity, mental flexibility, and wisdom. When leaders fail, most frequently it is because of issues of character, not lack of knowledge or intellectual…

  6. Mapping wilderness character in Denali National Park and Preserve

    Treesearch

    Rob Burrows; James Tricker; Dan Abbe; Peter Landres; Jon Paynter; David Schirokauer; Philip Hooge

    2016-01-01

    The recent development of an interagency strategy to monitor wilderness character allows on-the-ground managers and decision-makers to assess whether stewardship actions for an individual wilderness are fulfilling the legislative mandate to "preserve wilderness character." By using credible data that are consistently collected, one can assess how wilderness...

  7. On a Character Education Inventory.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Etzioni, Amatai

    1998-01-01

    The father of the communitarian movement presents a Character Education Inventory that gives specific guidance on how to build character education into a school setting. Schools must continually take inventory of their own actions to ensure that what they are doing matches what they are instructing children to do. The inventory should include…

  8. Character and Citizenship Education: Conversations between Personal and Societal Values

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sim, Jasmine B.-Y.; Low, Ee Ling

    2012-01-01

    The theme of this special issue is "Character and Citizenship Education: Conversations between Personal and Societal Values." Character education and citizenship education, taken separately or as a single entity are currently riding high on the political and educational policy agendas of several governments (Arthur, 2003; Berkowitz & Bier, 2007;…

  9. Character Sets for PLATO/NovaNET: An Expository Catalog.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gilpin, John B.

    The PLATO and NovaNET computer-based instructional systems use a fixed system character set ("normal font") and an author-definable character set ("alternate font"). The alternate font lets the author construct his own symbols and bitmapped pictures. This expository catalog allows users to determine quickly (1) whether there is…

  10. 32 CFR 935.104 - Sentence after a plea of guilty.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-07-01

    ... counsel may make any reasonable statement he wishes in mitigation or of previous good character. The prosecution may introduce evidence in aggravation, or of bad character if the accused has introduced evidence of good character. The Court shall then impose any lawful sentence that it considers proper. ...

  11. Mapping wilderness character: New tools for new concepts

    Treesearch

    James Tricker

    2012-01-01

    The recent development of an interagency strategy to monitor wilderness character (Landres et al. 2008) allows on-the-ground managers and decision makers to assess whether stewardship actions for an individual wilderness are fulfilling the mandate to "preserve wilderness character." Since nearly all wilderness monitoring data depict spatial features, a recent...

  12. The Development of Leader Character through Crucible Moments

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Byrne, Alyson; Crossan, Mary; Seijts, Gerard

    2018-01-01

    Business schools strive to develop leadership excellence in their students. In this essay, we suggest that educators should find ways to help students develop and deepen leader character, a fundamental component of exemplary leadership. Frequently, business school students have preconceived ideas of leadership, often neglecting leader character.…

  13. Character Strengths and Psychological Wellbeing among Students of Teacher Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gustems, Josep; Calderon, Caterina

    2014-01-01

    The relation between character strengths and psychological well-being can have an important effect on students' academic performance. We examined relationships between character strengths and psychological well-being as assessed by the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths and Brief Symptom Inventory. A sample of 98 teacher education students…

  14. The Content of America's Character: Recovering Civic Virtue.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Eberly, Don E., Ed.

    Addressing the problems of increasing antisocial behavior, declining civility, and decaying morals, this book contains a collection of essays that consider the origins and the development of America's character, the factors that influence it, and the consequences for society of inadequate character development. Essays include the following: "The…

  15. On the Importance of Coherence in the Study of Character Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Callina, Kristina Schmid; Lerner, Richard M.

    2017-01-01

    Nucci (this issue) gives a compelling conceptualization of the ideas needed to understand character as a multifaceted developmental system. In this article, we focus on the idea of coherence as it applies to understanding character development, education, and assessment. Using ideas from relational developmental systems (RDS) metatheory, we…

  16. Factors Influencing the Learning of Chinese Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sung, Ko-Yin; Wu, Hsiao-Ping

    2011-01-01

    This survey study, which involved 108 language learners enrolled in first-year Chinese as a foreign language classrooms in the United States, intended to address the research questions, "What types of Chinese-character learning strategies do US learners use?" and "Do US learners' Chinese-character learning strategy use differ based on the…

  17. Building Strengths of Character: Keys to Positive Youth Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Park, Nansook

    2009-01-01

    Character is vital force for positive development and societal well-being. Character strengths play important roles in positive youth development, not only as broad-protective factors, preventing or mitigating psychopathology and problems, but also as enabling conditions that promote thriving and flourishing. Recent research findings show that…

  18. The Ways Character Strengths Support K-8 Mathematics and the Common Core State Standards

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bier, Melinda C.; Sherblom, Stephen A.; Berkowitz, Marvin W.; Coulter, Bob

    2016-01-01

    Character strengths support academic learning and can and should be incorporated into all content areas. This article articulates ways character strengths, including self-efficacy, positive-attitude, perseverance, growth-mindset, intrinsic motivation, intellectual carefulness, and courage specifically support mathematics education (K-8) and can…

  19. Character Education and Media Literacy--Finding Common Ground.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Herrington, Scott D.; Emmans, Cindy C.

    2002-01-01

    Discusses curriculum development in the areas of character education and media literacy. Topics include what character education is and what it attempts to promote within a school setting; moral judgments; moral and ethical values; behavior; decision making; the role of mass media, including media violence; and adding media education to the…

  20. The Expansive Executive. Report Number 147. Second Edition.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kaplan, Robert E.

    This report seeks to understand executive leadership by focusing on a character type called "expansive." Expansive character revolves around mastery of tasks and a continual desire to accomplish. In the report, several goals are featured: to define what expansive character is; to discuss its origins; to show how moderate versus extreme…

  1. Computer-Generated, Three-Dimensional Character Animation: A Report and Analysis.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kingsbury, Douglas Lee

    This master's thesis details the experience gathered in the production "Snoot and Muttly," a short character animation with 3-D computer generated images, and provides an analysis of the computer-generated 3-D character animation system capabilities. Descriptions are provided of the animation environment at the Ohio State University…

  2. Character Education: Christian Education Perspectives

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilhelm, Gretchen M.; Firmin, Michael W.

    2008-01-01

    Character is defined broadly by leading authorities, including concepts such as practicing apt behavior and teaching right from wrong. Virtue and moral undertones tend to pervade most experts' use of character, although in secular settings, the notion of ethics is more prominent. Overall, developing in students a desire for the good is how most…

  3. Chinese-Cantonese Dictionary of Common Chinese-Cantonese Characters.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

    This dictionary contains 1,500 Chinese-Cantonese characters (selected from three frequency lists), and more than 6,000 Chinese-Cantonese terms (selected from three Cantonese-English dictionaries). The characters are arranged alphabetically according to the U.S. Army Language School System of Romanization, which is described in the…

  4. First Course in Japanese: Character Workbook.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Niwa, Tamako

    This character workbook is an introduction to Japanese writing designed to be used in conjunction with Parts One and Two of this introductory course in Japanese. All the "hiragana", several "katakana", and 88 Japanese characters are introduced in this text. The workbook, consisting of 30 lessons, is divided into three parts.…

  5. A Study of the Relationship Between Alcoholism and Character Disorder.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wolfley, Virgil L.

    Studies have shown that sociopaths and alcoholics tend to come from similar social backgrounds and that they share several characteristics. To investigate the relationship between alcoholism and character disorder syndrome in adult males, 20 males who had a history of alcohol problems and displayed characteristics of character disorder were…

  6. Another Look at Character Education in Christian Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Algera, Henry F.; Sink, Christopher A.

    2002-01-01

    A review of the literature and meta-analytic research into the effectiveness of character/moral education programs reveals that Christian educators should be wary of implementing such curricula. A history of character education demonstrates how the field has evolved. Problems associated with programming rationale, faulty methodology, and lack of…

  7. Relationships between Implementing Character Education, Student Behavior, and Student Achievement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Skaggs, Gary; Bodenhorn, Nancy

    2006-01-01

    Over a 4-year period, researchers measured several outcomes in 5 school districts initiating or enhancing character education programs. Based on student, teacher, and administrator surveys, there was a noticeable improvement in character-related behavior. In certain districts, suspension and drop-out rates also decreased after the implementation…

  8. The Implementation of Character Education through Scout Activities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mislia; Mahmud, Alimuddin; Manda, Darman

    2016-01-01

    This research aims at describing the factors influencing the extracurricular activities especially scouting. This research also aims at describing the Scouts skills that can form the students' character. This research is also to describe the strategies for the formation of the students' character through scout activities. This research was a…

  9. Is Filial Piety a Virtue? a Reading of the "Xiao Jing" ("Classic of Filial Piety") from the Perspective of Ideology Critique

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yan, Hektor K. T.

    2017-01-01

    The recent revival of Confucianism in the PRC raises questions regarding the legitimacy of cultivating Confucian virtues such as "ren" ([Chinese characters omitted] benevolence), "li" ([Chinese characters omitted] propriety) and "xiao" ([Chinese characters omitted] "filial piety" or "family…

  10. Using wilderness character to improve wilderness stewardship

    Treesearch

    Peter Landres; Wade M. Vagias; Suzy Stutzman

    2012-01-01

    This article describes how understanding wilderness character leads to improved communication among staff and with the public, helping park staff make more informed decisions about park planning, management, and monitoring in wilderness. Wilderness character is defined in terms of five qualities: natural, solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation, undeveloped,...

  11. Do Rural Schools Need Character Education?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reynolds, Janice Carner

    Studies suggest that the challenge of violence in public schools can be met through character education, whether by providing a school culture in which core values are practiced or some form of moral training (indoctrination). To assess the need for character education in rural schools, small-school superintendents and board members in central…

  12. 12 CFR 333.1 - Classification of general character of business.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... classifying their general character or type of business, 2 viz: commercial banks, banks and trust companies... 12 Banks and Banking 4 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Classification of general character of business. 333.1 Section 333.1 Banks and Banking FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION REGULATIONS AND STATEMENTS...

  13. An Aspect of Psychotherapy Utilizing a Piagetian Model of Character Structure.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ahern, Mary; Malerstein, A. J.

    One component of psychotherapy is the type of psychotherapeutic atmosphere created by the therapist. The various character structures of patients require different psychotherapeutic atmospheres. Three character structures are identifiable, each distinguished by a style of social cognition which parallels a stage of cognition in the child as…

  14. Study on the characters of control valve for ammonia injection in selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system of coal-fired power plant

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yao, Che; Li, Tao; Zhang, Hong; Zhou, Yanming

    2017-08-01

    In this paper, the characters of two control valves used for ammonia injection in SCR system are discussed. The linear/quadratic character between pressure drop/outlet flow rate and valve opening/dynamic pressure inlet are investigated using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) and response surface analysis (RSA) methods. The results show that the linear character of brake valve is significantly better than butterfly valve, which means that the brake valve is more suitable for ammonia injection adjustment than the butterfly valve.

  15. "They may be pixels, but they're MY pixels:" developing a metric of character attachment in role-playing video games.

    PubMed

    Lewis, Melissa L; Weber, René; Bowman, Nicholas David

    2008-08-01

    This paper proposes a new and reliable metric for measuring character attachment (CA), the connection felt by a video game player toward a video game character. Results of construct validity analyses indicate that the proposed CA scale has a significant relationship with self-esteem, addiction, game enjoyment, and time spent playing games; all of these relationships are predicted by theory. Additionally, CA levels for role-playing games differ significantly from CA levels of other character-driven games.

  16. Printed Arabic optical character segmentation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mohammad, Khader; Ayyesh, Muna; Qaroush, Aziz; Tumar, Iyad

    2015-03-01

    A considerable progress in recognition techniques for many non-Arabic characters has been achieved. In contrary, few efforts have been put on the research of Arabic characters. In any Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system the segmentation step is usually the essential stage in which an extensive portion of processing is devoted and a considerable share of recognition errors is attributed. In this research, a novel segmentation approach for machine Arabic printed text with diacritics is proposed. The proposed method reduces computation, errors, gives a clear description for the sub-word and has advantages over using the skeleton approach in which the data and information of the character can be lost. Both of initial evaluation and testing of the proposed method have been developed using MATLAB and shows 98.7% promising results.

  17. The event-related potential effects of cognitive conflict in a Chinese character-generation task.

    PubMed

    Qiu, Jiang; Zhang, Qinglin; Li, Hong; Luo, Yuejia; Yin, Qinging; Chen, Antao; Yuan, Hong

    2007-06-11

    High-density event-related potentials were recorded to examine the electrophysiologic correlates of the evaluation of possible answers provided during a Chinese character-generation task. We examined three conditions: the character given was what participants initially generated (Consistent answer), the character given was correct (Unexpected Correct answer), or it was incorrect (Unexpected Incorrect answer). Results showed that Unexpected Correct and Incorrect answers elicited a more negative event-related potential deflection (N320) than did Consistent answers between 300 and 400 ms. Dipole source analysis of difference waves (Unexpected Correct or Incorrect minus Consistent answers) localized the generator of the N320 in the anterior cingulate cortex. The N320 therefore likely reflects the cognitive change or conflict between old and new ways of thinking while identifying and judging characters.

  18. Development of OCR system for portable passport and visa reader

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Visilter, Yury V.; Zheltov, Sergey Y.; Lukin, Anton A.

    1999-01-01

    The modern passport and visa documents include special machine-readable zones satisfied the ICAO standards. This allows to develop the special passport and visa automatic readers. However, there are some special problems in such OCR systems: low resolution of character images captured by CCD-camera (down to 150 dpi), essential shifts and slopes (up to 10 degrees), rich paper texture under the character symbols, non-homogeneous illumination. This paper presents the structure and some special aspects of OCR system for portable passport and visa reader. In our approach the binarization procedure is performed after the segmentation step, and it is applied to the each character site separately. Character recognition procedure uses the structural information of machine-readable zone. Special algorithms are developed for machine-readable zone extraction and character segmentation.

  19. Structural model constructing for optical handwritten character recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Khaustov, P. A.; Spitsyn, V. G.; Maksimova, E. I.

    2017-02-01

    The article is devoted to the development of the algorithms for optical handwritten character recognition based on the structural models constructing. The main advantage of these algorithms is the low requirement regarding the number of reference images. The one-pass approach to a thinning of the binary character representation has been proposed. This approach is based on the joint use of Zhang-Suen and Wu-Tsai algorithms. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is confirmed by the results of the experiments. The article includes the detailed description of the structural model constructing algorithm’s steps. The proposed algorithm has been implemented in character processing application and has been approved on MNIST handwriting characters database. Algorithms that could be used in case of limited reference images number were used for the comparison.

  20. Development of real-time motion capture system for 3D on-line games linked with virtual character

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kim, Jong Hyeong; Ryu, Young Kee; Cho, Hyung Suck

    2004-10-01

    Motion tracking method is being issued as essential part of the entertainment, medical, sports, education and industry with the development of 3-D virtual reality. Virtual human character in the digital animation and game application has been controlled by interfacing devices; mouse, joysticks, midi-slider, and so on. Those devices could not enable virtual human character to move smoothly and naturally. Furthermore, high-end human motion capture systems in commercial market are expensive and complicated. In this paper, we proposed a practical and fast motion capturing system consisting of optic sensors, and linked the data with 3-D game character with real time. The prototype experiment setup is successfully applied to a boxing game which requires very fast movement of human character.

  1. The noncommutative family Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Yong

    2016-12-01

    In this paper, we define the eta cochain form and prove its regularity when the kernel of a family of Dirac operators is a vector bundle. We decompose the eta form as a pairing of the eta cochain form with the Chern character of an idempotent matrix and we also decompose the Chern character of the index bundle for a fibration with boundary as a pairing of the family Chern-Connes character for a manifold with boundary with the Chern character of an idempotent matrix. We define the family b-Chern-Connes character and then we prove that it is entire and give its variation formula. By this variation formula, we prove another noncommutative family Atiyah-Patodi-Singer index theorem. Thus, we extend the results of Getzler and Wu to the family case.

  2. User Demographics for Embodiment Customization

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Cowell, Andrew J.; Stanney, Kay M.

    Attempts at interface agent personalization are usually aimed at helping the user perform a task or service. For example,scheduling of appointments, inspection of messages, discovering items of interest and different forms of negotiation. While this is very noble undertaking, it makes assumptions about the level of trust and credibility a user may place in such an agent in a realworld setting. If Microsoft's experiments in social user interfaces teach us anything, it is that a ''one size fits all'' solution does not truly engage the user and encourage reuse. This ''relationship management'' between the user and the character begins whenmore » the two first meet. As with human-human relationships, first impressions are essential. Instead of looking at the functional aspects of the relationship, we believe the characters embodiment is the best place to start the personalization process. We describe a study in which participants from several different age ranges,genders and ethnic groups were asked their preference of anthropomorphic character, based on a cooperative computer task. We found that participants generally selected characters from the same ethic group as themselves and that almost all participants selected a young character (instead of a middle aged or elderly character). No significant preference was found for character gender.« less

  3. [Temperament and character traits measured by temperament and character inventory (TCI) by Cloninger in patients with ischemic heart disease].

    PubMed

    Stetkiewicz-Lewandowicz, Agnieszka; Borkowska, Alina; Sobów, Tomasz

    2014-09-01

    Ischemic heart disease (IHD) is one of the main causes of death and disability worldwide. This situation stimulates research of its ethiopathogenesis. The role of psychosocial factors like depression, stress is underlined. Also personality traits play an important role in this process. The aim of study was to assess temperament and character traits in a group of patients with IHD. Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) was used to determine temperament and character dimensions. Temperament traits: harm avoidance (HA), reward dependence (RD), novelty seeking (NS), persistence (P), character traits: cooperativeness (C), self-directedness (SD), self-transcendence (ST). Each of these traits has a varying number of subscales. The dimensions are determined from a 240-item questionnaire. Patients with IHD obtained higher scores in HA dimension of the TCI questionnaire. The study group achieved lower score in a subscale of NS called extravagance (NS3), and higher score of C dimension called compassion (C4). The intensity of temperament and character traits are different in a group of patients with IHD in comparison with the control group especially in dimensions of HA, NS3 and C4. Variables that differentiated the study group were also sex, age and years of education.

  4. Two-stage neural-network-based technique for Urdu character two-dimensional shape representation, classification, and recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Megherbi, Dalila B.; Lodhi, S. M.; Boulenouar, A. J.

    2001-03-01

    This work is in the field of automated document processing. This work addresses the problem of representation and recognition of Urdu characters using Fourier representation and a Neural Network architecture. In particular, we show that a two-stage Neural Network scheme is used here to make classification of 36 Urdu characters into seven sub-classes namely subclasses characterized by seven proposed and defined fuzzy features specifically related to Urdu characters. We show that here Fourier Descriptors and Neural Network provide a remarkably simple way to draw definite conclusions from vague, ambiguous, noisy or imprecise information. In particular, we illustrate the concept of interest regions and describe a framing method that provides a way to make the proposed technique for Urdu characters recognition robust and invariant to scaling and translation. We also show that a given character rotation is dealt with by using the Hotelling transform. This transform is based upon the eigenvalue decomposition of the covariance matrix of an image, providing a method of determining the orientation of the major axis of an object within an image. Finally experimental results are presented to show the power and robustness of the proposed two-stage Neural Network based technique for Urdu character recognition, its fault tolerance, and high recognition accuracy.

  5. Temperament and character effects on late adolescents' well-being and emotional-behavioural difficulties.

    PubMed

    Crescentini, Cristiano; Garzitto, Marco; Paschetto, Andrea; Brambilla, Paolo; Fabbro, Franco

    2018-01-01

    Research on adults points to personality as a crucial determinant of well-being. The present study investigates the question of personality's relation to well-being and psychosocial adjustment in adolescence. We assessed the role of temperament and character (Temperament and Character Inventory, TCI-125), on psychological well-being (PWB; Psychological Well-Being scales), subjective well-being (SWB; Positive and Negative Affect, PA and NA, respectively), and psychosocial adjustment (emotional-behavioural problems measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire for Adolescents, SDQ-A), in 72 Italian late adolescents (aged 17.5 ± 0.75). Multiple regressions were conducted to predict PWB, SWB, and SDQ-A scores using TCI-125 scales as predictors. Character maturity, and in particular Self-Directedness, had a widespread protective effect on well-being and psychosocial adjustment, while different strengths and emotional-behavioural difficulties were associated to specific temperamental and character traits. For example, Harm-Avoidance and Novelty-Seeking positively predicted internalized and externalized problems, respectively. The present results suggest the usefulness of continuing to evaluate temperament and, in particular, character dimensions in investigations focused on adolescents' well-being and psychosocial functioning, especially in the contexts of potential interventions aimed at enhancing development of adolescents' character dimensions at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal levels.

  6. A Content Analysis of Physical Activity in TV Shows Popular Among Adolescents

    PubMed Central

    Gietzen, Megan S.; Gollust, Sarah E.; Linde, Jennifer A.; Neumark-Sztainer, Dianne; Eisenberg, Marla E.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose Previous research demonstrates that television has the potential to influence youth behaviors, but little evidence exists on how television depicts physical activity (PA), an important public health priority for youth. This mixed-methods study investigates depictions of television characters’ participation in PA in the top 25 favorite shows ranked by a diverse sample of 2,793 adolescents. Method Randomly selected episodes from each show were content analyzed for PA incidents, reasons and context, and in relation to the gender and weight status of participating characters. Results A total of 374 incidents of PA were coded across 75 episodes, with an average of 5.0 incidents per episode. Although male and female characters were equally likely to engage in at least one incident of PA, male characters were involved in a statistically significantly larger proportion of PA incidents than female characters and were more likely to engage in PA for competitive sport. There was no statistically significant difference in engagement in PA or the proportion of PA incidents for characters coded as overweight compared to non-overweight characters. Conclusions Although female characters tended to be underrepresented in PA, this study reveals positive messages for how gender and weight are portrayed in relation to PA on TV. PMID:28151062

  7. Searching for Judy: how small mysteries affect narrative processes and memory.

    PubMed

    Love, Jessica; McKoon, Gail; Gerrig, Richard J

    2010-05-01

    Current theories of text processing say little about how authors' narrative choices, including the introduction of small mysteries, can affect readers' narrative experiences. Gerrig, Love, and McKoon (2009) provided evidence that 1 type of small mystery-a character introduced without information linking him or her to the story-affects readers' moment-by-moment processing. For that project, participants read stories that introduced characters by proper name alone (e.g., "Judy") or with information connecting the character to the rest of the story (e.g., "our principal Judy"). In an online recognition probe task, responses to the character's name 3 lines after his or her introduction were faster when the character had not been introduced with connecting information, suggesting that the character remained accessible awaiting resolution. In the 4 experiments in this article, we extend our theoretical analysis of small mysteries. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found evidence that trait information (e.g., "daredevil Judy") is not sufficient to connect a character to a text. In Experiments 3 and 4, we found evidence that the moment-by-moment processing effects of such small mysteries also affect readers' memory for the stories. We interpret the results in terms of Kintsch's (1988) construction-integration model of discourse processing. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

  8. Temperament and character effects on late adolescents’ well-being and emotional-behavioural difficulties

    PubMed Central

    Garzitto, Marco; Paschetto, Andrea; Brambilla, Paolo; Fabbro, Franco

    2018-01-01

    Background Research on adults points to personality as a crucial determinant of well-being. The present study investigates the question of personality’s relation to well-being and psychosocial adjustment in adolescence. Methods We assessed the role of temperament and character (Temperament and Character Inventory, TCI-125), on psychological well-being (PWB; Psychological Well-Being scales), subjective well-being (SWB; Positive and Negative Affect, PA and NA, respectively), and psychosocial adjustment (emotional-behavioural problems measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire for Adolescents, SDQ-A), in 72 Italian late adolescents (aged 17.5 ± 0.75). Multiple regressions were conducted to predict PWB, SWB, and SDQ-A scores using TCI-125 scales as predictors. Results Character maturity, and in particular Self-Directedness, had a widespread protective effect on well-being and psychosocial adjustment, while different strengths and emotional-behavioural difficulties were associated to specific temperamental and character traits. For example, Harm-Avoidance and Novelty-Seeking positively predicted internalized and externalized problems, respectively. Discussion The present results suggest the usefulness of continuing to evaluate temperament and, in particular, character dimensions in investigations focused on adolescents’ well-being and psychosocial functioning, especially in the contexts of potential interventions aimed at enhancing development of adolescents’ character dimensions at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal levels. PMID:29607254

  9. Healthy characters? An investigation of marketing practices in children's food advertising.

    PubMed

    Castonguay, Jessica; Kunkel, Dale; Wright, Paul; Duff, Caroline

    2013-01-01

    To determine the nutritional quality of foods advertised with familiar children's characters and health-related messages. Children's programming aired on the most popular broadcast and cable channels during 2011 was sampled to form a composite weekday and weekend day. All food advertisements (ads) included in this programming were content analyzed. Five hundred seventy-seven food ads. Familiar characters promoting products were either trade or licensed characters. A product's nutritional quality was determined using the United States Department of Health and Human Services' categorizations, based on the frequency foods should be consumed. Health cues were present when a food was claimed to be healthy, physical activity was depicted, or the product was associated with fruit. Frequencies and chi square analyses were conducted; P < .05. Nearly three quarters (73%) of food ads targeting children use a familiar character. The majority of these ads (72%) promote foods of low nutritional quality, yet 53% employ a health-related message. Familiar characters proliferate in food advertising to children, yet marketers do not adhere to recommendations that characters promote strictly healthy foods. Future research is needed to investigate effects and inform policy decisions in this realm. Copyright © 2013 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. A cognitive network for oracle-bone characters related to animals

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Dress. Andreas; Grünewald, Stefan; Zeng, Zhenbing

    This paper is dedicated to HAO Bailin on the occasion of his eighties birthday, the great scholar and very good friend who never tired to introduce us to the wonderful and complex intricacies of Chinese culture and history. In this paper, we present an analysis of oracle-bone characters for animals from a `cognitive' point of view. After some general remarks on oraclebone characters presented in Section 1 and a short outline of the paper in Section 2, we collect various oracle-bone characters for animals from published resources in Section 3. In the next section, we begin analysing a group of 60 ancient animal characters from www.zdic.net, a highly acclaimed internet dictionary of Chinese characters that is strictly based on historical sources, and introduce five categories of specific features regarding their (graphical) structure that will be used in Section 5 to associate corresponding feature vectors to these characters. In Section 6, these feature vectors will be used to investigate their dissimilarity in terms of a family of parameterised distance measures. And in the last section, we apply the SplitsTree method as encoded in the NeighbourNet algorithms to construct a corresponding family of dissimilarity-based networks with the intention of elucidating how the ancient Chinese might have perceived the `animal world' in the late bronze age and to demonstrate that these pictographs reflect an intuitive understanding of this world and its inherent structure that predates its classification in the oldest surviving Chinese encyclopedia from approximately the 3rd century BC, the ErYa, as well as similar classification systems in the West by one to two millennia. We also present an English dictionary of 70 oracle-bone characters for animals in Appendix 1. In Appendix 2, we list various variants of animal characters that were published in the Jia Gu Wen Bian (cf. , A Complete Collection of Oracle Bone Characters, edited by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, published by the Zhonghua Book Company in 1965). We recall the frequencies of the 521 most frequent oracle-bone characters in Appendix 3 as reported in [7, 8]. And in Appendix 4, we list the animals registered in the last five chapters of the ErYa.

  11. Diversification of Angraecum (Orchidaceae, Vandeae) in Madagascar: Revised Phylogeny Reveals Species Accumulation through Time Rather than Rapid Radiation

    PubMed Central

    2016-01-01

    Angraecum is the largest genus of subtribe Angraecinae (Orchidaceae) with about 221 species. Madagascar is the center of the diversity for the genus with ca. 142 species, of which 90% are endemic. The great morphological diversity associated with species diversification in the genus on the island of Madagascar offers valuable insights for macroevolutionary studies. Phylogenies of the Angraecinae have been published but a lack of taxon and character sampling and their limited taxonomic resolution limit their uses for macroevolutionary studies. We present a new phylogeny of Angraecum based on chloroplast sequence data (matk, rps16, trnL), nuclear ribosomal (ITS2) and 39 morphological characters from 194 Angraecinae species of which 69 were newly sampled. Using this phylogeny, we evaluated the monophyly of the sections of Angraecum as defined by Garay and investigated the patterns of species diversification within the genus. We used maximum parsimony and bayesian analyses to generate phylogenetic trees and dated divergence times of the phylogeny. We analyzed diversification patterns within Angraecinae and Angraecum with an emphasis on four floral characters (flower color, flower size, labellum position, spur length) using macroevolutionary models to evaluate which characters or character states are associated with speciation rates, and inferred ancestral states of these characters. The phylogenetic analysis showed the polyphyly of Angraecum sensu lato and of all Angraecum sections except sect. Hadrangis, and that morphology can be consistent with the phylogeny. It appeared that the characters (flower color, flower size, spur length) formerly used by many authors to delineate Angraecum groups were insufficient to do so. However, the newly described character, position of the labellum (uppermost and lowermost), was the main character delimiting clades within a monophyletic Angraecum sensu stricto. This character also appeared to be associated with speciation rates in Angraecum. The macroevolutionary model-based phylogeny failed to detect shifts in diversification that could be associated directly with morphological diversification. Diversification in Angraecum resulted from gradual species accumulation through time rather than from rapid radiation, a diversification pattern often encountered in tropical rain forests. PMID:27669569

  12. Diversification of Angraecum (Orchidaceae, Vandeae) in Madagascar: Revised Phylogeny Reveals Species Accumulation through Time Rather than Rapid Radiation.

    PubMed

    Andriananjamanantsoa, Herinandrianina N; Engberg, Shannon; Louis, Edward E; Brouillet, Luc

    Angraecum is the largest genus of subtribe Angraecinae (Orchidaceae) with about 221 species. Madagascar is the center of the diversity for the genus with ca. 142 species, of which 90% are endemic. The great morphological diversity associated with species diversification in the genus on the island of Madagascar offers valuable insights for macroevolutionary studies. Phylogenies of the Angraecinae have been published but a lack of taxon and character sampling and their limited taxonomic resolution limit their uses for macroevolutionary studies. We present a new phylogeny of Angraecum based on chloroplast sequence data (matk, rps16, trnL), nuclear ribosomal (ITS2) and 39 morphological characters from 194 Angraecinae species of which 69 were newly sampled. Using this phylogeny, we evaluated the monophyly of the sections of Angraecum as defined by Garay and investigated the patterns of species diversification within the genus. We used maximum parsimony and bayesian analyses to generate phylogenetic trees and dated divergence times of the phylogeny. We analyzed diversification patterns within Angraecinae and Angraecum with an emphasis on four floral characters (flower color, flower size, labellum position, spur length) using macroevolutionary models to evaluate which characters or character states are associated with speciation rates, and inferred ancestral states of these characters. The phylogenetic analysis showed the polyphyly of Angraecum sensu lato and of all Angraecum sections except sect. Hadrangis, and that morphology can be consistent with the phylogeny. It appeared that the characters (flower color, flower size, spur length) formerly used by many authors to delineate Angraecum groups were insufficient to do so. However, the newly described character, position of the labellum (uppermost and lowermost), was the main character delimiting clades within a monophyletic Angraecum sensu stricto. This character also appeared to be associated with speciation rates in Angraecum. The macroevolutionary model-based phylogeny failed to detect shifts in diversification that could be associated directly with morphological diversification. Diversification in Angraecum resulted from gradual species accumulation through time rather than from rapid radiation, a diversification pattern often encountered in tropical rain forests.

  13. Moral character in the workplace.

    PubMed

    Cohen, Taya R; Panter, A T; Turan, Nazli; Morse, Lily; Kim, Yeonjeong

    2014-11-01

    Using two 3-month diary studies and a large cross-sectional survey, we identified distinguishing features of adults with low versus high levels of moral character. Adults with high levels of moral character tend to: consider the needs and interests of others and how their actions affect other people (e.g., they have high levels of Honesty-Humility, empathic concern, guilt proneness); regulate their behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences (e.g., they have high levels of Conscientiousness, self-control, consideration of future consequences); and value being moral (e.g., they have high levels of moral identity-internalization). Cognitive moral development, Emotionality, and social value orientation were found to be relatively undiagnostic of moral character. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that employees with low moral character committed harmful work behaviors more frequently and helpful work behaviors less frequently than did employees with high moral character, according to their own admissions and coworkers' observations. Study 3 revealed that adults with low moral character committed more delinquent behavior and had more lenient attitudes toward unethical negotiation tactics than did adults with high moral character. By showing that individual differences have consistent, meaningful effects on employees' behaviors, after controlling for demographic variables (e.g., gender, age, income) and basic attributes of the work setting (e.g., enforcement of an ethics code), our results contest situationist perspectives that deemphasize the importance of personality. Moral people can be identified by self-reports in surveys, and these self-reports predict consequential behaviors months after the initial assessment.

  14. Good character at school: positive classroom behavior mediates the link between character strengths and school achievement

    PubMed Central

    Wagner, Lisa; Ruch, Willibald

    2015-01-01

    Character strengths have been found to be substantially related to children’s and adolescents’ well-being. Initial evidence suggests that they also matter for school success (e.g., Weber and Ruch, 2012). The present set of two studies aimed at replicating and extending these findings in two different age groups, primary school students (N = 179; mean age = 11.6 years) and secondary school students (N = 199; mean age = 14.4 years). The students completed the VIA-Youth (Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth), a self-report measure of the 24 character strengths in the VIA classification. Their teachers rated the students’ positive behavior in the classroom. Additionally, school achievement was assessed: For the primary school students (Study 1), teachers rated the students’ overall school achievement and for the secondary school students (Study 2), we used their grades as a measure of school achievement. We found that several character strengths were associated with both positive classroom behavior and school achievement. Across both samples, school achievement was correlated with love of learning, perseverance, zest, gratitude, hope, and perspective. The strongest correlations with positive classroom behavior were found for perseverance, self-regulation, prudence, social intelligence, and hope. For both samples, there were indirect effects of some of the character strengths on school achievement through teacher-rated positive classroom behavior. The converging findings from the two samples support the notion that character strengths contribute to positive classroom behavior, which in turn enhances school achievement. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and for school interventions based on character strengths. PMID:26029144

  15. Experimental confirmation of a character-facing bias in literacy development.

    PubMed

    McIntosh, Robert D; Anderson, Eilidh L; Henderson, Rowena M

    2018-06-01

    When learning to write, children often mirror-reverse individual letters. For children learning to use the Latin alphabet, in a left-to-right writing culture, letters that appear to face left (such as J and Z) seem to be more prone to reversal than those that appear to face right (such as B and C). It has been proposed that, because most asymmetrical Latin letters face right, children statistically learn this general regularity and are subsequently biased to write any letter rightward. The evidence for this character-facing bias is circumstantial, however, because letter-facing direction is confounded with other factors that could affect error rates; for instance, J and Z are left-facing, but they are also infrequent. We report the first controlled experimental test of the character-facing bias. We taught 43 Scottish primary schoolchildren (aged 4.8-5.8 years) four artificial, letter-like characters, two of which were left-facing and two of which were right-facing. The characters were novel and so were not subject to prior exposure effects, and alternate groups of children were assigned to identical but mirror-reflected character sets. Children were three times more likely to mirror-write a novel character they had learned in a left-facing format than to mirror-write one they had learned in a right-facing format. This provides the first experimental confirmation of the character-facing bias in literacy development and suggests that implicit knowledge acquired from exposure to written language is readily generalized to novel letter-like forms. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  16. Do dyslexic individuals present a reduced visual attention span? Evidence from visual recognition tasks of non-verbal multi-character arrays.

    PubMed

    Yeari, Menahem; Isser, Michal; Schiff, Rachel

    2017-07-01

    A controversy has recently developed regarding the hypothesis that developmental dyslexia may be caused, in some cases, by a reduced visual attention span (VAS). To examine this hypothesis, independent of phonological abilities, researchers tested the ability of dyslexic participants to recognize arrays of unfamiliar visual characters. Employing this test, findings were rather equivocal: dyslexic participants exhibited poor performance in some studies but normal performance in others. The present study explored four methodological differences revealed between the two sets of studies that might underlie their conflicting results. Specifically, in two experiments we examined whether a VAS deficit is (a) specific to recognition of multi-character arrays as wholes rather than of individual characters within arrays, (b) specific to characters' position within arrays rather than to characters' identity, or revealed only under a higher attention load due to (c) low-discriminable characters, and/or (d) characters' short exposure. Furthermore, in this study we examined whether pure dyslexic participants who do not have attention disorder exhibit a reduced VAS. Although comorbidity of dyslexia and attention disorder is common and the ability to sustain attention for a long time plays a major rule in the visual recognition task, the presence of attention disorder was neither evaluated nor ruled out in previous studies. Findings did not reveal any differences between the performance of dyslexic and control participants on eight versions of the visual recognition task. These findings suggest that pure dyslexic individuals do not present a reduced visual attention span.

  17. Unexplored Character Diversity in Onychophora (Velvet Worms): A Comparative Study of Three Peripatid Species

    PubMed Central

    Oliveira, Ivo de Sena; Franke, Franziska Anni; Hering, Lars; Schaffer, Stefan; Rowell, David M.; Weck-Heimann, Andreas; Monge-Nájera, Julián; Morera-Brenes, Bernal; Mayer, Georg

    2012-01-01

    Low character variation among onychophoran species has been an obstacle for taxonomic and phylogenetic studies in the past, however we have identified a number of new and informative characters using morphological, molecular, and chromosomal techniques. Our analyses involved a detailed examination of Epiperipatus biolleyi from Costa Rica, Eoperipatus sp. from Thailand, and a new onychophoran species and genus from Costa Rica, Principapillatus hitoyensis gen. et sp. nov.. Scanning electron microscopy on embryos and specimens of varying age revealed novel morphological characters and character states, including the distribution of different receptor types along the antennae, the arrangement and form of papillae on the head, body and legs, the presence and shape of interpedal structures and fields of modified scales on the ventral body surface, the arrangement of lips around the mouth, the number, position and structure of crural tubercles and anal gland openings, and the presence and shape of embryonic foot projections. Karyotypic analyses revealed differences in the number and size of chromosomes among the species studied. The results of our phylogenetic analyses using mitochondrial COI and 12S rRNA gene sequences are in line with morphological and karyotype data. However, our data show a large number of unexplored, albeit informative, characters in the Peripatidae. We suggest that analysing these characters in additional species would help unravel species diversity and phylogeny in the Onychophora, and that inconsistencies among most diagnostic features used for the peripatid genera in the literature could be addressed by identifying a suite of characters common to all peripatids. PMID:23284667

  18. Pay Attention to the Overlooked Cryptic Diversity in Existing Barcoding Data: the Case of Mollusca with Character-Based DNA Barcoding.

    PubMed

    Zou, Shanmei; Li, Qi

    2016-06-01

    With the global biodiversity crisis, DNA barcoding aims for fast species identification and cryptic species diversity revelation. For more than 10 years, large amounts of DNA barcode data have been accumulating in publicly available databases, most of which were conducted by distance or tree-building methods that have often been argued, especially for cryptic species revelation. In this context, overlooked cryptic diversity may exist in the available barcoding data. The character-based DNA barcoding, however, has a good chance for detecting the overlooked cryptic diversity. In this study, marine mollusk was as the ideal case for detecting the overlooked potential cryptic species from existing cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) sequences with character-based DNA barcode. A total of 1081 COI sequences of mollusks, belonging to 176 species of 25 families of Gastropoda, Cephalopoda, and Lamellibranchia, were conducted by character analysis. As a whole, the character-based barcoding results were consistent with previous distance and tree-building analysis for species discrimination. More importantly, quite a number of species analyzed were divided into distinct clades with unique diagnostical characters. Based on the concept of cryptic species revelation of character-based barcoding, these species divided into separate taxonomic groups might be potential cryptic species. The detection of the overlooked potential cryptic diversity proves that the character-based barcoding mode possesses more advantages of revealing cryptic biodiversity. With the development of DNA barcoding, making the best use of barcoding data is worthy of our attention for species conservation.

  19. Phylogenetic comparative methods complement discriminant function analysis in ecomorphology.

    PubMed

    Barr, W Andrew; Scott, Robert S

    2014-04-01

    In ecomorphology, Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA) has been used as evidence for the presence of functional links between morphometric variables and ecological categories. Here we conduct simulations of characters containing phylogenetic signal to explore the performance of DFA under a variety of conditions. Characters were simulated using a phylogeny of extant antelope species from known habitats. Characters were modeled with no biomechanical relationship to the habitat category; the only sources of variation were body mass, phylogenetic signal, or random "noise." DFA on the discriminability of habitat categories was performed using subsets of the simulated characters, and Phylogenetic Generalized Least Squares (PGLS) was performed for each character. Analyses were repeated with randomized habitat assignments. When simulated characters lacked phylogenetic signal and/or habitat assignments were random, <5.6% of DFAs and <8.26% of PGLS analyses were significant. When characters contained phylogenetic signal and actual habitats were used, 33.27 to 45.07% of DFAs and <13.09% of PGLS analyses were significant. False Discovery Rate (FDR) corrections for multiple PGLS analyses reduced the rate of significance to <4.64%. In all cases using actual habitats and characters with phylogenetic signal, correct classification rates of DFAs exceeded random chance. In simulations involving phylogenetic signal in both predictor variables and predicted categories, PGLS with FDR was rarely significant, while DFA often was. In short, DFA offered no indication that differences between categories might be explained by phylogenetic signal, while PGLS did. As such, PGLS provides a valuable tool for testing the functional hypotheses at the heart of ecomorphology. Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  20. Good character at school: positive classroom behavior mediates the link between character strengths and school achievement.

    PubMed

    Wagner, Lisa; Ruch, Willibald

    2015-01-01

    Character strengths have been found to be substantially related to children's and adolescents' well-being. Initial evidence suggests that they also matter for school success (e.g., Weber and Ruch, 2012). The present set of two studies aimed at replicating and extending these findings in two different age groups, primary school students (N = 179; mean age = 11.6 years) and secondary school students (N = 199; mean age = 14.4 years). The students completed the VIA-Youth (Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth), a self-report measure of the 24 character strengths in the VIA classification. Their teachers rated the students' positive behavior in the classroom. Additionally, school achievement was assessed: For the primary school students (Study 1), teachers rated the students' overall school achievement and for the secondary school students (Study 2), we used their grades as a measure of school achievement. We found that several character strengths were associated with both positive classroom behavior and school achievement. Across both samples, school achievement was correlated with love of learning, perseverance, zest, gratitude, hope, and perspective. The strongest correlations with positive classroom behavior were found for perseverance, self-regulation, prudence, social intelligence, and hope. For both samples, there were indirect effects of some of the character strengths on school achievement through teacher-rated positive classroom behavior. The converging findings from the two samples support the notion that character strengths contribute to positive classroom behavior, which in turn enhances school achievement. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and for school interventions based on character strengths.

  1. Factors Influencing Labeling Nonconsensual Sex as Sexual Assault.

    PubMed

    Yndo, Monica C; Zawacki, Tina

    2017-03-01

    The current study examined the effects of physical attractiveness and sexual interest cues on men's sexual perceptions of women and whether increases in sexual perceptions of a woman would lead to decreases in labeling of subsequent nonconsensual sex as sexual assault. Two hundred thirty-three male college students ( M age = 19.17, SD = 1.22) read a vignette describing a hypothetical social interaction between a man and a woman; within the vignette, the female character's physical attractiveness (attractive vs. less attractive) and the degree to which the female character behaved interested in the male character (uninterested vs. ambiguous) were manipulated. The vignette ends with the male character physically forcing sexual intercourse with the female character. After reading the vignette, participants' labeling of the nonconsensual sex as sexual assault was addressed. Participants' perceptions of the female character's sexual interest in the male character prior to the nonconsensual sex was assessed as a dependent variable during stopping points in the vignette, prior to sexual assault. Both physical attractiveness and interest cues had a significant positive influence on men's perception of the female character as sexually interested. In addition, perceptions of sexual interest had a direct negative effect on sexual assault labeling. These results indicate that increases in physical attractiveness and interest cues increase perceptions of sexual interest, in turn decreasing the labeling of nonconsensual sex as sexual assault. This experimental research contributes to the literature on misperception of sexual interest and sexual assault labeling. These findings provide implications for intervention programs and for forensic issues related to sexual assault.

  2. Character Reading Fluency, Word Segmentation Accuracy, and Reading Comprehension in L2 Chinese

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shen, Helen H.; Jiang, Xin

    2013-01-01

    This study investigated the relationships between lower-level processing and general reading comprehension among adult L2 (second-language) beginning learners of Chinese, in both target and non-target language learning environments. Lower-level processing in Chinese reading includes the factors of character-naming accuracy, character-naming speed,…

  3. Construct(ion) and Context: A Response to Methodological Issues in Studying Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Deutsch, Nancy L.

    2017-01-01

    In this article, I respond to Noel Card's "Methodological Issues in Measuring the Development of Character." I focus on the ways in which social scientific knowledge represents human constructions of the world and the implications of this stance for the measurement of character. Further, I consider how context influences those…

  4. The Complexity of Character: An Ability-Based Model for Higher Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Graham, Sandra E.; Diez, Mary E.

    2015-01-01

    Character development in higher education is a complex process. This process has often been delegated to a single course on ethics or courses on religion. The authors of this article pose an alternative higher educational process whereby character development is rooted in a series of abilities that are contextualized throughout the entire…

  5. Ensuring Good Character and Civic Education: Connecting through Service Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shumer, Robert; Lam, Carolina; Laabs, Bonnie

    2012-01-01

    Character and citizenship education are part of the vision of many countries, including Singapore. Ensuring they are implemented in academic environments, service learning has been shown to be a natural bridge between the two. Research has shown that service learning, when done well, produces outcomes related to character development and…

  6. Legislating Character: Moral Education in North Carolina's Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cooley, Aaron

    2008-01-01

    This article analyzes the epistemological aims and justification of character education legislation passed by the North Carolina General Assembly. I take this specific state law as representative of the broader national trends in the character education movement. I primarily use the work of Richard Rorty as the theoretical lens for the analysis…

  7. Professional Practice in Strategic Leadership and Societal Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gordon, Vincent Hoover Adams, Jr.

    2016-01-01

    A demonstration in the research focuses on the development of a syllabus for high school assemblies. The Peaceful Solution Character Education Incorporated (PSCEI) is a non-profit organization committed to "promoting character education as its main tool for positive character development with a variety of courses designed to reach all ages so…

  8. The Forgotten American: A Story for Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sanchez, Tony

    2007-01-01

    As character education continues to be an objective of the social studies, the more effective educators have taken up the challenge by first understanding the principles of their discipline and the opportunities for examining the values of character to be encountered. Social studies is rediscovering the focus on the actual men and women of history…

  9. A Menagerie of Promotional Characters: Promoting Food to Children through Food Packaging

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hebden, Lana; King, Lesley; Kelly, Bridget; Chapman, Kathy; Innes-Hughes, Christine

    2011-01-01

    Objective: To determine the extent to which (1) promotional characters are used on food packaging for healthful and less-healthful food and (2) different companies use this persuasive marketing strategy. Design: Cross-sectional supermarket audit of all food and beverages featuring promotional characters on the packaging. Setting: Three Australian…

  10. Character Development Practices in Higher Education Institutions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wesley, Vernon L.

    2010-01-01

    Character Development continues to be the all too unintentional elephant in the room of Higher Education. This project looked at what character development practices are being accomplished and who in higher education is making it happen. No longer satisfied with leaving the task to elementary and secondary education, higher education has begun to…

  11. Writing Quality Predicts Chinese Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Guan, Connie Qun; Perfetti, Charles A.; Meng, Wanjin

    2015-01-01

    To examine the importance of manual character writing to reading in a new writing system, 48 adult Chinese-as-a-foreign-language students were taught characters in either a character writing-to-read or an alphabet typing-to-read condition, and engaged in corresponding handwriting or typing training for five consecutive days. Prior knowledge of…

  12. Character Development among Youth: Linking Lives in Time and Place

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lerner, Richard M.

    2018-01-01

    This article embeds the study of character development within the two-decades-long research program framed by the Lerner and Lerner model of positive youth development. Character development involves attaining the feelings, thoughts, and skills needed to act coherently across time and place to serve self and others in mutually beneficial, positive…

  13. Character, School Leadership, and the Brain: Learning How To Integrate Knowledge with Behavioral Change.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Calabrese, Raymond L.; Roberts, Brian

    2002-01-01

    Asserts that character is at the core of leadership, and that character development requires behavioral change as well as knowledge acquisition. Discusses how incorporating behavioral change into administrator preparation programs requires faculty to consider recent findings in neuroscience on how the brain learns, and the incorporation of these…

  14. Character Education in Christian Higher Education: A Historical Analysis and Contemporary Challenge (Part I)

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jeynes, William H.; Robinson, David

    2010-01-01

    In this set of two articles, the authors summarize the history of the practice of character instruction in Christian higher education. They examine character education beginning with the founding of Harvard in 1636 to contemporary times. They note that virtually every historian, theologian, and social scientist acknowledges that character…

  15. Character Education in Christian Higher Education: A Historical Analysis and Contemporary Challenge (Part II)

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Robinson, David; Jeynes, William H.

    2010-01-01

    In this pair of two articles, the authors summarize the history of the practice of character instruction in Christian higher education. They examine character education beginning with the founding of Harvard in 1636 to contemporary times. They note that virtually every historian, theologian, and social scientist acknowledges that character…

  16. Effects of the "Beauty Is Good" Stereotype on Children's Information Processing.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ramsey, Jennifer L.; Langlois, Judith H.

    2002-01-01

    Two studies examined schematic information processing as a function of attractiveness stereotyping among 3- to 7- year-olds. Found that children made more errors identifying female characters with stereotype-inconsistent traits but either did just the opposite with male characters or had no difference in errors with male characters. Findings pose…

  17. The Effects of Athletic Competition on Character Development in College Student Athletes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stoll, Sharon Kay

    2012-01-01

    This article argues that there are inherent problems in athletic competition relating to character development in college student athletes. A review of the research supports the claim that athletic competitions do not build character. The author proposes ways to address this problem and provides personal observations and published research to…

  18. Rachel's Challenge: A Moral Compass for Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hollingshead, Barbara; Crump, Christi; Eddy, Rochelle; Rowe, Dina

    2009-01-01

    Though American life in 1923 was significantly different than the present day, authors John Dewey and Diana Brannon share similar concerns about character. Historically, educators as far back as the 1800s have felt an obligation to the community to transcend the primary purpose for schooling by including character education in their curricula.…

  19. Character in Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carr, David

    2007-01-01

    Qualities of personal character would appear to play a significant role in the professional conduct of teachers. It is often said that we remember teachers as much for the kinds of people they were than for anything they may have taught us, and some kinds of professional expertise may best be understood as qualities of character. After (roughly)…

  20. Using Microcomputer Word Processors for Foreign Languages.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith, Kim L.

    1984-01-01

    Describes the programs and modifications needed to do word processing using foreign language characters. One such program, Screenwriter, uses soft character sets -- character sets which can be designed by the program user. This program has a word processing power combined with a foreign language capability that would allow any person to work with…

  1. On the Semilattice of Weak Orders of a Set.

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1984-03-01

    the analvsis of cladistic character compatibi litv, ibid., 29 (1976), pp. 181-187. 17] ........ An alge-braic analvsis of cladistic characters, Discrete ... Math ., 16 (1976), pp. 141-147. (Sj ESTABROOK, G. F., and Ic.ORRIS, F. R., When are two pi_ alita tive t axonomi c-har-acters comnpIat_ible? J1. Math

  2. A Reawakening: Character Education and the Role of the School Board Member.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    California School Boards Association, Sacramento.

    The California School Boards Association (CSBA) established a task force to define the term "character education" and to clarify the needs of the public schools for curricula and instructional materials supporting character education. This report synthesizes the results of the task force's efforts. The failure of U.S. society's formal…

  3. Adolescent Moral Judgement: A Study of UK Secondary School Pupils

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Walker, David Ian; Thoma, Stephen J.; Jones, Chantel; Kristjánsson, Kristján

    2017-01-01

    Despite a recent world-wide upsurge of academic interest in moral and character education, little is known about pupils' character development in schools, especially in the UK context. The authors used a version of the Intermediate Concept Measure for Adolescents, involving dilemmas, to assess an important component of character--moral…

  4. Implementing Character Education Program through Music and Integrated Activities in Early Childhood Settings in Taiwan

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Angela

    2016-01-01

    This study explores the efficacy of using musical activities to enhance the character aspect of education of preschoolers in a Taiwanese school setting. The Taiwanese educational authority stipulates that character development activities should focus on the core values of caring, respect, courage, honesty, responsibility, and cooperation.…

  5. Virtues and Character Strengths Related to Approach Coping Strategies of College Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gustems-Carnicer, Josep; Calderón, Caterina

    2016-01-01

    The objectives of this study are: (1) to describe virtues, character strengths and coping strategies of college students; (2) to analyze the relationship between virtues, character strengths and coping strategies; and (3) to evaluate the predictive relationship between virtues and coping strategies. Ninety-one college students (98% females), aged…

  6. The Effects of Graphic Similarity on Japanese Recognition of Simplified Chinese Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Teng, Xiaochun; Yamada, Jun

    2017-01-01

    The pedagogical and theoretical questions addressed in this study relate to the extent to which native Japanese readers with little or no knowledge of Chinese characters recognize Chinese characters that are viewed as abbreviations of the kanji they already know. Three graphic similarity functions (i.e., an orthographically acceptable similarity,…

  7. Interactive Character as a Virtual Tour Guide to an Online Museum Exhibition.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    de Almeida, Pilar; Yokoi, Shigeki

    Online museums could benefit from digital "lifelike" characters in order to guide users to virtual tours and to customize the tour information to users' interests. Digital characters have been explored in online museum web sites with different degrees of interaction and modes of communication. Such research, however, does not explore…

  8. Educational Impact of Digital Visualization Tools on Digital Character Production Computer Science Courses

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    van Langeveld, Mark Christensen

    2009-01-01

    Digital character production courses have traditionally been taught in art departments. The digital character production course at the University of Utah is centered, drawing uniformly from art and engineering disciplines. Its design has evolved to include a synergy of computer science, functional art and human anatomy. It gives students an…

  9. Roles High School Principals Play in Establishing a Successful Character Education Initiative

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Francom, Jacob A.

    2016-01-01

    Principal leadership is crucial to the success of a high school character education initiative. The purpose of this qualitative grounded theory research was to identify the roles that high school principals play in developing, implementing, and sustaining a high functioning character education program. Data were collected through interviews and…

  10. Characters and Episodes that Provide Models for Middle School Writers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pelttari, Carole

    2012-01-01

    While conducting a content analysis of award-winning, middle school fiction, I indentified a number of episodes and characters that might be used as models for students' writing. Research suggests that teachers can motivate students (Bruning & Horn, 2000; Codling, Gambrell, Kennedy, Palmer, & Graham, 1996) to respond to character-writers (Van…

  11. Transfer of Perceptual Expertise: The Case of Simplified and Traditional Chinese Character Recognition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Liu, Tianyin; Chuk, Tin Yim; Yeh, Su-Ling; Hsiao, Janet H.

    2016-01-01

    Expertise in Chinese character recognition is marked by reduced holistic processing (HP), which depends mainly on writing rather than reading experience. Here we show that, while simplified and traditional Chinese readers demonstrated a similar level of HP when processing characters shared between the simplified and traditional scripts, simplified…

  12. The Impact of Character Education Curricula on Youth Educators

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harms, Kristyn Marie; Fritz, Susan; Rockwell, S. Kay

    2004-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to determine degrees of internalization of character traits across two groups (K-12 teachers and Extension staff) with varying years of participation in character education professional and program development activities. An online survey was developed to collect data describing the 109 respondents, the extent of…

  13. Exploring Elementary Students' Perceptions of Disabilities Using Children's Literature

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilkins, Julia; Howe, Kathryn; Seiloff, Maddie; Rowan, Shelly; Lilly, Elizabeth

    2016-01-01

    The portrayal of characters in children's literature can be a very powerful influence on young children. Teachers have a responsibility to expose children to characters of all types, including those with disabilities. The goal of this study was to explore how third and fourth grade students responded to characters with disabilities in children's…

  14. The Psychobiological Theory of Temperament and Character: Comment on Farmer and Goldberg (2008)

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cloninger, C. Robert

    2008-01-01

    The revised Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI-R) is the third stage of development of a widely used multiscale personality inventory that began with the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) and then the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). The author describes the third stage of the psychobiological theory of temperament and…

  15. Superman Is Dead: How We Help Students Make Sense of Literary Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gilmore, Barry

    2012-01-01

    In her book "Why Do We Care about Literary Characters?" Blakely Vermeule addresses the tendency of the academic establishment to dismiss affection for literary characters in favor of objective analysis, describing teachers with "the furrowed brow, the worried expression: responsible teachers [who] wean their students off their passion for literary…

  16. Teaching Receptive Naming of Chinese Characters to Children with Autism by Incorporating Echolalia.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Leung, Jin-Pang; Wu, Kit-I

    1997-01-01

    The facilitative effect of incorporating echolalia on teaching receptive naming of Chinese characters to four Hong Kong children (ages 8-10) with autism was assessed. Results from two experiments indicated echolalia was the active component contributing to the successful acquisition and maintenance of receptive naming of Chinese characters.…

  17. 16 CFR 18.7 - Misrepresentation as to character of business.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 16 Commercial Practices 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Misrepresentation as to character of business. 18.7 Section 18.7 Commercial Practices FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION GUIDES AND TRADE PRACTICE RULES GUIDES FOR THE NURSERY INDUSTRY § 18.7 Misrepresentation as to character of business. (a) In the sale...

  18. Preservice Secondary Teachers' Sense of Efficacy in Teaching Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Waters, Stewart; Russell, William B., III

    2014-01-01

    This study investigated the personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy for character education of 130 preservice secondary teachers at a large university where there were no formal courses dedicated to character education, but the topic was included in some of the content coursework. The subjects were in one teacher education program…

  19. A Multi-Method Approach to Studying the Relationship between Character Strengths and Vocational Interests in Adolescents

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Proyer, Rene T.; Sidler, Nicole; Weber, Marco; Ruch, Willibald

    2012-01-01

    The relationship between character strengths and vocational interests was tested. In an online study, 197 thirteen to eighteen year-olds completed a questionnaire measuring character strengths and a multi-method measure for interests (questionnaire, nonverbal test, and objective personality tests). The main findings were that intellectual…

  20. From Malaysia to America: Community-Based Character Education for Children and Youth

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Haslip, Meishi Lim; Haslip, Michael J.

    2013-01-01

    This article shares lessons learned from the implementation of a community-based character education program in Malaysia. The program at Jenjarom Learning Center is directed toward the transformation and empowerment of local children and youth through moral and character education. The stated purpose of the program has been to awaken the…

  1. Design and User Evaluation of a Mobile Application to Teach Chinese Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rosell-Aguilar, Fernando; Qian, Kan

    2015-01-01

    This paper presents both the pedagogical design principles and the challenges faced during the development of a mobile app, Chinese Characters First Steps, to support recognising, learning and practising writing Chinese characters at beginners' level, including the difficult balance between pedagogy and technical affordances. We also present the…

  2. First Steps in Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hill, Patty Smith

    2017-01-01

    For many centuries, there has been theoretical statements asserting faith in character as the main objective in education, but it is only comparatively recently enough has been known about character and the scientific conditions for its development to make an honored place for it in the curricula. Today, it is creeping into curricula under new…

  3. Inculcating Character Education through EFL Teaching in Indonesian State Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Qoyyimah, Uswatun

    2016-01-01

    This paper describes how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in Indonesia have implemented the recent character education policy within an era of school-based curriculum reform. The character education policy required all teachers, EFL teachers included, to instil certain values in every lesson whilst the school-based curriculum reform…

  4. High School Athletes' Perspectives on Character Development through Sport Participation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Camire, Martin; Trudel, Pierre

    2010-01-01

    Background: Results from empirical research on character development in sport remain mixed concerning the outcomes of sport participation, in part because character is a socially constructed concept that can be interpreted in a wide variety of manners. Furthermore, the majority of research in this field has been conducted employing quantitative…

  5. Use of Phonological Codes for Chinese Characters: Evidence from Processing of Parafoveal Preview when Reading Sentences

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tsai, Jie-Li; Lee, Chia-Ying; Tzeng, Ovid J. L.; Hung, Daisy L.; Yen, Nai-Shing

    2004-01-01

    The role of phonological coding for character identification was examined with the benefit of processing parafoveal characters in eye fixations while reading Chinese sentences. In Experiment 1, the orthogonal manipulation of phonological and orthographic similarity can separate two types of phonological benefits for homophonic previews, according…

  6. Adding Character to Camp Programs: Using Ropes Courses To Teach Values.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rothschild, Jack

    2001-01-01

    Steps in integrating character values into the camp curriculum are: having a vision, choosing character values and relating them to program activities, providing incentives, ensuring that all levels can be completed during the camp session, making the program age-appropriate, providing staff training, tracking campers' progress, seeking feedback,…

  7. A Functional Study of "zhi [Chinese character omitted]" in the Chinese Nominal Group

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zhang, Weiwei; Li, Manliang

    2017-01-01

    Over the past decades, subjects concerned with the Chinese character "zhi [Chinese character omitted]", i.e. grammatical structure, in ancient Chinese language, have been widely explored. This paper conducts a research from a new dimension: the Cardiff Grammar, an integral part of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) which is famous for…

  8. Fostering Character Education in an Urban Early Childhood Setting

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kokoszka, Carla; Smith, Juliette

    2016-01-01

    This article describes the character education program in Donald Stewart School No. 51, in Elizabeth, NJ, a dual-language preschool serving 300 students that first opened its doors in 2004. Over the years this school has been committed to laying the foundation of character development with its preschoolers. Their pillar "Friends Care, Friends…

  9. Non-Markovian character in human mobility: Online and offline.

    PubMed

    Zhao, Zhi-Dan; Cai, Shi-Min; Lu, Yang

    2015-06-01

    The dynamics of human mobility characterizes the trajectories that humans follow during their daily activities and is the foundation of processes from epidemic spreading to traffic prediction and information recommendation. In this paper, we investigate a massive data set of human activity, including both online behavior of browsing websites and offline one of visiting towers based mobile terminations. The non-Markovian character observed from both online and offline cases is suggested by the scaling law in the distribution of dwelling time at individual and collective levels, respectively. Furthermore, we argue that the lower entropy and higher predictability in human mobility for both online and offline cases may originate from this non-Markovian character. However, the distributions of individual entropy and predictability show the different degrees of non-Markovian character between online and offline cases. To account for non-Markovian character in human mobility, we apply a protype model with three basic ingredients, namely, preferential return, inertial effect, and exploration to reproduce the dynamic process of online and offline human mobilities. The simulations show that the model has an ability to obtain characters much closer to empirical observations.

  10. Master of Puppets: An Animation-by-Demonstration Computer Puppetry Authoring Framework

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Cui, Yaoyuan; Mousas, Christos

    2018-03-01

    This paper presents Master of Puppets (MOP), an animation-by-demonstration framework that allows users to control the motion of virtual characters (puppets) in real time. In the first step, the user is asked to perform the necessary actions that correspond to the character's motions. The user's actions are recorded, and a hidden Markov model is used to learn the temporal profile of the actions. During the runtime of the framework, the user controls the motions of the virtual character based on the specified activities. The advantage of the MOP framework is that it recognizes and follows the progress of the user's actions in real time. Based on the forward algorithm, the method predicts the evolution of the user's actions, which corresponds to the evolution of the character's motion. This method treats characters as puppets that can perform only one motion at a time. This means that combinations of motion segments (motion synthesis), as well as the interpolation of individual motion sequences, are not provided as functionalities. By implementing the framework and presenting several computer puppetry scenarios, its efficiency and flexibility in animating virtual characters is demonstrated.

  11. Trainable multiscript orientation detection

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Van Beusekom, Joost; Rangoni, Yves; Breuel, Thomas M.

    2010-01-01

    Detecting the correct orientation of document images is an important step in large scale digitization processes, as most subsequent document analysis and optical character recognition methods assume upright position of the document page. Many methods have been proposed to solve the problem, most of which base on ascender to descender ratio computation. Unfortunately, this cannot be used for scripts having no descenders nor ascenders. Therefore, we present a trainable method using character similarity to compute the correct orientation. A connected component based distance measure is computed to compare the characters of the document image to characters whose orientation is known. This allows to detect the orientation for which the distance is lowest as the correct orientation. Training is easily achieved by exchanging the reference characters by characters of the script to be analyzed. Evaluation of the proposed approach showed accuracy of above 99% for Latin and Japanese script from the public UW-III and UW-II datasets. An accuracy of 98.9% was obtained for Fraktur on a non-public dataset. Comparison of the proposed method to two methods using ascender / descender ratio based orientation detection shows a significant improvement.

  12. Principal Component 2-D Long Short-Term Memory for Font Recognition on Single Chinese Characters.

    PubMed

    Tao, Dapeng; Lin, Xu; Jin, Lianwen; Li, Xuelong

    2016-03-01

    Chinese character font recognition (CCFR) has received increasing attention as the intelligent applications based on optical character recognition becomes popular. However, traditional CCFR systems do not handle noisy data effectively. By analyzing in detail the basic strokes of Chinese characters, we propose that font recognition on a single Chinese character is a sequence classification problem, which can be effectively solved by recurrent neural networks. For robust CCFR, we integrate a principal component convolution layer with the 2-D long short-term memory (2DLSTM) and develop principal component 2DLSTM (PC-2DLSTM) algorithm. PC-2DLSTM considers two aspects: 1) the principal component layer convolution operation helps remove the noise and get a rational and complete font information and 2) simultaneously, 2DLSTM deals with the long-range contextual processing along scan directions that can contribute to capture the contrast between character trajectory and background. Experiments using the frequently used CCFR dataset suggest the effectiveness of PC-2DLSTM compared with other state-of-the-art font recognition methods.

  13. Characterizing behavioural ‘characters’: an evolutionary framework

    PubMed Central

    Araya-Ajoy, Yimen G.; Dingemanse, Niels J.

    2014-01-01

    Biologists often study phenotypic evolution assuming that phenotypes consist of a set of quasi-independent units that have been shaped by selection to accomplish a particular function. In the evolutionary literature, such quasi-independent functional units are called ‘evolutionary characters’, and a framework based on evolutionary principles has been developed to characterize them. This framework mainly focuses on ‘fixed’ characters, i.e. those that vary exclusively between individuals. In this paper, we introduce multi-level variation and thereby expand the framework to labile characters, focusing on behaviour as a worked example. We first propose a concept of ‘behavioural characters’ based on the original evolutionary character concept. We then detail how integration of variation between individuals (cf. ‘personality’) and within individuals (cf. ‘individual plasticity’) into the framework gives rise to a whole suite of novel testable predictions about the evolutionary character concept. We further propose a corresponding statistical methodology to test whether observed behaviours should be considered expressions of a hypothesized evolutionary character. We illustrate the application of our framework by characterizing the behavioural character ‘aggressiveness’ in wild great tits, Parus major. PMID:24335984

  14. Grain boundary character distribution in nanocrystalline metals produced by different processing routes

    DOE PAGES

    Bober, David B.; Kumar, Mukal; Rupert, Timothy J.; ...

    2015-12-28

    Nanocrystalline materials are defined by their fine grain size, but details of the grain boundary character distribution should also be important. Grain boundary character distributions are reported for ball-milled, sputter-deposited, and electrodeposited Ni and Ni-based alloys, all with average grain sizes of ~20 nm, to study the influence of processing route. The two deposited materials had nearly identical grain boundary character distributions, both marked by a Σ3 length percentage of 23 to 25 pct. In contrast, the ball-milled material had only 3 pct Σ3-type grain boundaries and a large fraction of low-angle boundaries (16 pct), with the remainder being predominantlymore » random high angle (73 pct). Furthermore, these grain boundary character measurements are connected to the physical events that control their respective processing routes. Consequences for material properties are also discussed with a focus on nanocrystalline corrosion. As a whole, the results presented here show that grain boundary character distribution, which has often been overlooked in nanocrystalline metals, can vary significantly and influence material properties in profound ways.« less

  15. Personality and emotion-based high-level control of affective story characters.

    PubMed

    Su, Wen-Poh; Pham, Binh; Wardhani, Aster

    2007-01-01

    Human emotional behavior, personality, and body language are the essential elements in the recognition of a believable synthetic story character. This paper presents an approach using story scripts and action descriptions in a form similar to the content description of storyboards to predict specific personality and emotional states. By adopting the Abridged Big Five Circumplex (AB5C) Model of personality from the study of psychology as a basis for a computational model, we construct a hierarchical fuzzy rule-based system to facilitate the personality and emotion control of the body language of a dynamic story character. The story character can consistently perform specific postures and gestures based on his/her personality type. Story designers can devise a story context in the form of our story interface which predictably motivates personality and emotion values to drive the appropriate movements of the story characters. Our system takes advantage of relevant knowledge described by psychologists and researchers of storytelling, nonverbal communication, and human movement. Our ultimate goal is to facilitate the high-level control of a synthetic character.

  16. Modelling acquired dyslexia: a software tool for developing grapheme-phoneme correspondences.

    PubMed Central

    D'Autrechy, C. L.; Reggia, J. A.; Berndt, R. S.

    1991-01-01

    In extending a computer model of acquired dyslexia, it has become necessary to develop a way to group printed characters in a word so that the character groups essentially have a one-to-one correspondence with the word's phonemes (speech sounds). This requires deriving a set of correspondences (legal character groupings, legal associations of character groups with phonemes, etc.) that yield a single grouping or "segmentation" of characters when applied to any English word. To facilitate and partially automate this task, a segmentation program has been developed that uses an interchangeable set of correspondences. The program segments words according to these correspondences and tabulates their success over large sets of words. The program has been used successfully to segment a 20,000 word corpus, demonstrating that this approach can be used effectively and efficiently. PMID:1807611

  17. Role of Kekulé and Non-Kekulé Structures in the Radical Character of Alternant Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons: A TAO-DFT Study

    PubMed Central

    Yeh, Chia-Nan; Chai, Jeng-Da

    2016-01-01

    We investigate the role of Kekulé and non-Kekulé structures in the radical character of alternant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) using thermally-assisted-occupation density functional theory (TAO-DFT), an efficient electronic structure method for the study of large ground-state systems with strong static correlation effects. Our results reveal that the studies of Kekulé and non-Kekulé structures qualitatively describe the radical character of alternant PAHs, which could be useful when electronic structure calculations are infeasible due to the expensive computational cost. In addition, our results support previous findings on the increase in radical character with increasing system size. For alternant PAHs with the same number of aromatic rings, the geometrical arrangements of aromatic rings are responsible for their radical character. PMID:27457289

  18. Differences in duration of eye fixation for conditions in a numerical stroop-effect experiment.

    PubMed

    Crespo, Antonio; Cabestrero, Raúl; Quirós, Pilar

    2009-02-01

    Durations of eye fixation were recorded for a numerical Stroop effect experiment. Participants (6 men, 19 women; M age=22 yr.) reported the number of characters present in sequences of variable length (2 to 5 characters) while attempting to ignore the identity of the character. Three conditions were included: congruent (the number of characters and the numeral were matched, e.g., responding "two" to 22), incongruent (the number of characters and the numeral were mismatched, e.g., responding "two" to 55), and control (baseline of stimuli made up of "X"s, e.g., responding "two" to XX). Comparisons among the three conditions produced the longest response times and average durations of fixation for the incongruent condition. The shortest response times and average durations of fixation were obtained for the congruent condition.

  19. When goals collide: monitoring the goals of multiple characters.

    PubMed

    Magliano, Joseph P; Taylor, Holly A; Kim, Hyun-Jeong Joyce

    2005-12-01

    Most story plots contain multiple characters who are independent, interact, and often have conflicting goals. One would expect that narrative understanding would require monitoring of the goals, concerns, and situations of multiple agents. There is considerable evidence that understanders monitor the primary protagonist's goal plans (e.g., Suh & Trabasso, 1993). However, there is relatively little research on the extent to which understanders monitor the goals of multiple agents. We investigated the impact of characters' roles and prominence on the extent to which understanders monitor the goal plans of multiple characters in a feature length film. In Experiment 1, participants made situation change judgments, and in Experiment 2, they verbally described scenes. Both types of judgments indicated that viewers monitor the goals and plans of multiple agents but do so to a greater extent for characters more prominent to the plotline.

  20. Character Recognition Method by Time-Frequency Analyses Using Writing Pressure

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Watanabe, Tatsuhito; Katsura, Seiichiro

    With the development of information and communication technology, personal verification becomes more and more important. In the future ubiquitous society, the development of terminals handling personal information requires the personal verification technology. The signature is one of the personal verification methods; however, the number of characters is limited in the case of the signature and therefore false signature is used easily. Thus, personal identification is difficult from handwriting. This paper proposes a “haptic pen” that extracts the writing pressure, and shows a character recognition method by time-frequency analyses. Although the figures of characters written by different amanuenses are similar, the differences appear in the time-frequency domain. As a result, it is possible to use the proposed character recognition for personal identification more exactly. The experimental results showed the viability of the proposed method.

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