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School leadership plays a crucial role to quality education. Social changes have led to an increase in school principals' competencies, responsibilities, and demands. There are significant gaps in the literature on school leadership and limitations in the study of principals' responsibilities. This study aimed to analyse whether principals consider the competencies assigned to them by educational legislation to be within their scope. Participants were 394 principals from state-owned schools in Andalusia, southern Spain. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses were performed. We identified four competencies that the principals believed they were unable to effectively assume within the Andalusian educational context: (1) awarding contracts for construction, services, or supplies; (2) authorising expenditures, arranging payments, and preparing the school budget; (3) promoting the qualifications and training of teaching staff; and (4) supervising non-teaching staff in the school. This study emphasises the need of a comprehensive reevaluation of how competencies assigned to school principals are managed, highlighting the significance of incorporating principals' perspectives. For future research, we recommend exploring alternative approaches in competency management to enhance their effectiveness and relevance in the educational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning vocabulary is a central and time-consuming endeavour for a language learner and it has thus been suggested that the foreign language classroom has to supply explicit support for students' vocabulary development. A major source of explicit word focus is vocabulary exercises in teaching materials and students' learning can be facilitated if they are designed in a way that is conducive to learning. Few studies have so far sought to establish what learning opportunities tasks in materials provide. The present study reports an analysis of the vocabulary exercises in three series of Swedish intermediate EFL materials, focusing on target vocabulary and learning conditions. The target vocabulary was analysed in terms of frequency distribution in general English and the learning conditions provided were studied using a modified version of the Involvement Load Hypothesis. The results indicate that learning is facilitated through extensive retrieval opportunities in the material. However, it was also found that the exercises seldom require students to use the target vocabulary and that it comprises primarily high-frequency words, that is, words that the learners are likely to already know. It is therefore concluded that a more systematic approach to vocabulary has to be adopted by materials developers to ensure that word-focused tasks contribute significantly to students' learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human-Robot Collaboration, whereby human worker and robot perform tasks jointly, is becoming the new frontier in industry production. Unlike robots, continuous work leads to an accumulation of human fatigue, which is the main cause of decreased efficiency and deterioration of health. Characteristic differences between human and robot bring challenges to collaboration task scheduling. In this paper, we studied the task scheduling of a human-robot collaboration assembly cell to achieve a trade-off between job cycle and human fatigue. A task scheduling model integrated with micro-breaks inside job cycles was proposed to avoid human fatigue accumulation by taking advantage of the human-robot collaboration characteristics. Furthermore, the optimisation of task scheduling by taking the job cycle as the objective function and maximum human fatigue as a constraint was solved. The developed method is studied on a cable assembly inspired by an industry case. The results of the case study are presented to indicate the validity and practicability of the proposed model. It suggests that compared with the model of placing rest breaks between job cycles, the proposed model outperforms in job-cycle performance in most cases. Finally, there are some insights on the HRCAC which are obtained from the results of the case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a partial disassembly line balancing problem with hazardous tasks whose successful completions are uncertain. When any hazardous task fails, it causes damages of the tasks on the workstation that it is performed on and all remaining tasks to be performed in the succeeding workstations. We attribute probabilities for the successful completion and failure of the hazardous tasks and aim to maximise the total expected net revenue. We formulate the problem as a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer programme where the assignment of the tasks to the workstations is decided in the first-stage, before the resolution of the uncertainty. We give the formulation for one, two and three hazardous tasks, and then extend to the arbitrary number of hazardous tasks. Our numerical results reveal that proposed stochastic programming models return satisfactory performance and can solve instances with up to 73 tasks very quickly. We observe that the number of tasks, number of hazardous tasks and success probabilities are the most significant parameters that affect the performance. We quantify the value of capturing uncertainty using the expected objective values attained by the solution of the stochastic model and that of the expected value model, and obtain very satisfactory results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational tasks and processes are preconditions for organizing professional learning teams but are often neglected in research. In nine schools, we examined which organizational tasks and processes were set up for lesson study, a form of a professional learning team, and in what way. Schools set up three organizational tasks and processes: recruiting participants, giving credit for time-investment, and scheduling meetings. Recruitment of participants was sometimes difficult when potential participants worked autonomously within their departments or teams. Credit for time-investment was often constrained as schools gave credit in a way that made lesson study an additional workload. Scheduling meetings was very challenging. The scheduled meetings were considered satisfactory in only one school. Here, the school leader collaborated and communicated with her teachers to plan useful and uninterrupted meetings in the timetable. Our results show that organizational work is not mundane and simple but complex and vital for embedding professional development in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Germany, about half of the school-leavers – irrespective of their school-leaving certificate – start an apprenticeship instead of entering the labour market or university. Firms act as gatekeepers who influence which school-leavers start an apprenticeship. Previous studies have provided important information on the reasons firms train. By analysing tasks, I consider an additional characteristic that probably influences firms' training decisions. The aim of my study is twofold: I examine whether tasks performed in a firm first correlate with the decision to provide apprenticeship training and second with the school-leaving certificate of newly hired apprentices. I use the BIBB Establishment Panel on Training and Competence Development to estimate hybrid models with the task shares of firms as the main independent variables. The results suggest that firms' task composition affects their decisions concerning vocational education and training (VET). Firms with a high share of routine or manual tasks are more likely to be involved in VET. Moreover, high shares of manual and routine tasks are accompanied by a higher demand for apprentices with lower secondary certificates, and high shares of interactive tasks by a high demand for apprentices with the highest secondary school-leaving certificate (i.e. the Abitur). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disassembly line balancing problem (DLBP), which is to select disassembly process, open workstations and assign selected tasks to opened workstations, plays an important role in the recycling of End Of Life products. In real-world disassembly operations, task processing times are usually stochastic due to various factors. Most related works address the uncertain processing times by assuming that the probability distribution is known and the task processing times are independent of each other. In practice, however, it is difficult to get the complete distributional information and there is always underlying correlation between the uncertain processing times. This paper investigates the DLBP with partial uncertain knowledge, i.e. the mean and covariance matrix of task processing times. A new distributionally robust formulation with a joint chance constraint is proposed. To solve the problem, an approximated mixed integer second-order cone programming (MI-SOCP) model is proposed, and a two-stage parameter-adjusting heuristic is further developed. Numerical experiments are conducted, to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. We also draw some managerial insights and consider an extension problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The study aimed to explore six public service users’ perspectives on the impact their upper limb injury or condition has on their everyday lives while receiving occupational therapy intervention at a public hospital in the context of the Northern Cape of South Africa. An interpretivist phenomenological approach was employed. Data was collected using reflexive photography and semi-structured interviews. Three main themes were generated during inductive reasoning, namely the impact on role fulfillment, change in occupational task performance and the factors impacting performance in preferred occupations. Participants confirmed that to present a contextually relevant and responsive service, Occupation-Based Hand Therapy (OBHT) approaches must be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines what it takes for a state of knowledge-how to be extended (i.e. partly constituted by entities external to the organism) within an anti-intellectualist approach to knowledge-how. I begin by examining an account of extended knowledge-how developed by Carter, J. Adam, and Boleslaw Czarnecki. 2016 ["Extended Knowledge-How." Erkenntnis 81 (2): 259–273], and argue that it fails to properly distinguish between cognitive outsourcing and extended knowing-how. I then introduce a solution to this problem which rests on the distribution of tasks between agent and non-biological entity. On closer inspection, I show that this solution is ultimately unsatisfactory, though its failure is instructive as it illuminates the important role played by an agent's skilled interaction with an external entity. Drawing on key anti-intellectualist ideas, as well as on insight from cognitive psychology, I propose an account according to which what ultimately matters for extending knowledge-how is whether a hybrid ability is self-regulated. In closing, I illuminate the practical value of extended knowledge-how vis-à-vis cognitive outsourcing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use data from a new international dataset – the European Skills and Jobs Survey – to create a unique measure of skills-displacing technological change (SDT), defined as technological change that may render workers' skills obsolete. We find that 16 percent of adult workers in the EU are impacted by SDT, with significant variance across countries, ranging from a high of 28 percent in Estonia, to below seven percent in Bulgaria. Despite claims that technological change contributes to the deskilling of jobs, we present evidence that SDT is associated with dynamic upskilling of workers. The paper also presents the first direct micro-evidence, based on worker survey responses, of the reinstatement effect of automating technology, namely a positive contribution of automation to the task content and skills complexity of the jobs of incumbent workers. Despite the recent focus on the polarising impact of automation and associated reskilling needs of lower-skilled individuals, our evidence also draws attention to the fact that SDT predominantly affects higher-skilled workers, reinforcing inequalities in upskilling opportunities within workplaces. Workers affected by SDT also experience greater job insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

\We analyse the relationship between the endowment of Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) and the demand for occupations, tasks, and skills in the local labour market areas (LLMAs) of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. We merge three data sources, and we compute the share of highly educated employees, of employees accomplishing low- versus high-routine tasks, and three novel indicators measuring the complexity of occupations, tasks, and skills. Our panel estimates show that a larger share of KETs not only corresponds to a higher demand for workers holding a tertiary education degree, or accomplishing less routinary tasks, but also to a higher demand for a wider, and more exclusive, set of occupations, tasks, and skills. These results are also robust to unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although family–supportive supervision (FSS) has been identified as one of the most useful social resources for reducing the occurrence of work interference with family (WIF), relatively little is known about the boundary conditions and the underlying mechanisms through which this relationship occurs. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, we examined how and when FSS relates to WIF in two field studies, focusing on family–role overload as a moderator and employee task crafting as a mediator. Results from Study 1, using multi-wave data from a high-technology firm, showed that family role–overload moderated the relationship between FSS and WIF such that the relationship was stronger for employees with more family role–overload than for those with less family role–overload. Results from Study 2, using multi-wave data from employees working in different industries, revealed that employee task crafting mediated the interactive effect of FSS and family–role overload on WIF. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals' cognitive skills can be improved through learning by doing various tasks at work. We report the results of studying rich information on job tasks performed at the individual level based on three measures of job task complexity: (i) overall job complexity, (ii) analytical task intensity, and (iii) interactive task intensity. Controlling for task selection, we show that both overall job task complexity and analytical tasks can contribute to the development of a worker's cognitive skills, while interactive tasks play a less significant role. Furthermore, we find that complex job tasks can offset the effect of aging on cognitive functioning. We show the implications of our research results for work design, cognitive interventions, and retirement policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of senior civil servants' (SCS) tasks on their role perceptions has been widely ignored in the past research on the administrative élite. This paper presents new survey data on SCS in German federal ministries to test this relation by categorizing SCS into three task-related groups: strategists, policy specialists and administrators. Regression analyses reveal that SCS's tasks do not influence their (strong) identification with reactive (supportive) roles but have a significant impact on their identification with active, more politically entrepreneurial roles. This entails two important findings: First, SCS's tasks matter for their appreciation of different roles. Second, active and reactive role models are not irreconcilable (as it is often argued in the literature on bureaucratic politicization), but complementary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three studies were conducted to develop primes that activate differing beliefs about God and to determine if these activated beliefs impact scrupulosity symptoms. In Study 1, potential positive, negative, and neutral primes were created from Bible verses and rated on arousal, valence, familiarity, and complexity. In Study 2, the selected primes were tested to determine if they differentially activated positive and negative beliefs about God. In Study 3, participants were randomly assigned to read one of three primes (positive, negative, or neutral). Participants then completed a thought-induction task and measures of scrupulosity and thought-action fusion. There were no significant differences in reactions to the thought-induction task or self-report measures of scrupulosity or thought-action fusion between conditions. An exploratory analysis revealed that participants in the negative condition had higher state anxiety following the prime compared to participants in the positive condition. Results demonstrate the potential of the primes to activate negative beliefs about God and highlight the possible detrimental impact negative beliefs about God may have on state anxiety. However, they do not suggest that the primes impact scrupulosity and related constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are increasingly surrounded by talk of digitalization. Yet, we remain unsure about what impact this digitalization will have upon socio-economic institutions, how the introduction of this digitalization will be contested, the likely role of the state in managing the adoption of digital technology, and the likely consequences for the broader political economy if and when it is introduced. This article examines the process of digitalization as it has unfolded in the service sector in Japan. Based on qualitative interviews with managers in the hospitality industry and union officials, the paper depicts a process that contrasts starkly with the more optimistic view adopted by some commentators, according to which digitalization has the potential to improve working conditions and contribute to a more stable form of growth. Instead, the paper draws on Regulation Theory to argue that the introduction of digitalization is part of a wider process of neoliberalization. As such, digitalization has contributed to deskilling, the fragmentation of work tasks, a digital divide, the intensification of work, and higher levels of workplace surveillance. This represents a further dismantling of the social compromise that underpinned Japan's earlier period of economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective assessment of near viewing behaviours performed in a laboratory setting showed that children demonstrate differing viewing distances and angles based on the type of task. Findings will contribute to our understanding of how near work influences myopia. Evidence suggests that near working distance and viewing breaks are associated with myopia. The purpose of this study was to use an objective, continuously measuring range finding device to examine these viewing behaviours in children. Viewing distance, number of breaks, and head and eye angles were assessed in 16 non-myopic and 19 myopic children (ages 13.38 ± 4.14 years) using the Clouclip, an objective rangefinder, during five 15-minute near tasks, including (a) passive reading and (b) active writing on printed material, (c) passive viewing and (d) active engagement on an iPad, and (e) active engagement on a cell phone. Height and Harmon distance were measured. Viewing behaviours were analysed by task, refractive error group, and gender. Mean viewing distances significantly differed by task (P < 0.001) and were highly correlated with children's Harmon distance and height for all near tasks (P < 0.05), except for the active printed task (P > 0.05). Viewing distances did not differ by gender or refractive error group. During each task, mean number of viewing breaks was 2.6 ± 4.1 and did not vary between task (P = 0.92) or refractive error group (P = 0.65). Head declination and total viewing angle varied by type of near task (P < 0.001 for both). Children demonstrated differing viewing distances and viewing angles based on the type of near task they were performing. Viewing behaviours did not vary between myopic and non-myopic children. Findings will contribute to a better understanding of how near viewing behaviours can be quantified objectively and relationships with myopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NATO's 2010 Strategic Concept established three core tasks for the Alliance: collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security. While those tasks remain sound, the 2010 Concept reflected a different geopolitical, geostrategic, and security environment from today's, characterized by renewed conflict with Russia, concerns about China's strategic and economic ambitions, and new security challenges like hybrid threats and disinformation. Considering the changed strategic landscape and emerging challenges, we argue that NATO should make several refinements to its core tasks. European Allies must improve defense capabilities, ensuring their ability to help NATO meet its core tasks. In conjunction with the other Allied nuclear powers (the United Kingdom and France), the U.S. must renew its commitment to maintaining NATO as a nuclear alliance. NATO should adopt a more rigorous operational definition of crisis management, and a more systematic emphasis on the early warning and pre-crisis phases. Finally, while national "resilience" is already implied in Article 3ʹs requirement for member states to "maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack," adding it as a fourth core task would powerfully emphasize the need for allies to address new elements of resilience, to include both technological threats and democratic backsliding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a stock handling system that combines an automatic shelf and a picking robot with the aim of reducing the labor required for stocking and disposing of items. The robot system was developed by referring to the rules of the robot competition WRS2020 F.C.S.C. The picking robot is a standard single-arm mobile manipulation robot and the automatic shelf is characterized by the fact that the shelves move up and down and back and forth automatically. Automatic movement of the shelves in the pull-out direction allows the end-effector of the manipulator to approach the item from above and select the grasping position from a number of candidates. This improves the stability of the grasping of the item and is expected to prevent the item from falling during transportation. When there are tall items at the front of the shelf, the end-effector can directly approach the items at the back of the shelf from above the shelf as the shelf plate automatically moves in the pull-out direction. We report the mechanical configuration of the automatic shelf and basic experimental results for stocking and disposal work by the proposed robot system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we developed an evaluation method using image analysis for reaching tasks. Using this method, we studied forearm function during the reaching task in rats that received a unilateral injection of 6-OHDA into the striatum. The success ratio of the reaching task reduced to 40.5% seven days after the injection. In addition, significant changes were observed in the pronation angle of the forearm, posture control, and targeting (i.e., the distance between all fingertips and the center of the target pellet). Thus, unilateral injection of 6-OHDA reduces dopaminergic function in the brain and causes deterioration of forearm function and posture control in the reaching task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first framework (up to the authors' knowledge) to address time-varying objectives in finite-horizon Deep Reinforcement Learning (DeepRL), based on a switching control solution developed on the ground of Bellman's principle of optimality. By augmenting the state space of the system with information on its visit time, the DeepRL agent is able to solve problems in which its task dynamically changes within the same episode. To address the scalability problems caused by the state space augmentation, we propose a procedure to partition the episode length to define separate sub-problems that are then solved by specialised DeepRL agents. Contrary to standard solutions, with the proposed approach the DeepRL agents correctly estimate the value function at each time-step and are hence able to solve time-varying tasks. Numerical simulations validate the approach in a classic RL environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates a novel physician scheduling problem. Different types of tasks can be performed by physicians with certain qualifications. Tasks have different properties depending on their types, lengths, and starting times. Physicians performing tasks can yield different values of benefit and cost according to their qualifications and the task property. The objective is to maximise the sum of profit (i.e., benefit minus cost). For solving the studied problem, three layer-progressive processes are proposed and corresponding solution strategies are developed for them respectively. A Variable Neighbourhood Search is applied in the first-layer process to assign a certain qualification of physicians to each task property. The problem is then decomposed into scheduling physicians of single qualification as the second-layer process. On this layer, a heuristic incorporating a Dynamic Programming algorithm is developed to generate a task property list for each qualification of physicians to guarantee the optimum of the solutions. The Dynamic Programming algorithm is applied on the third-layer process to get the task property list for a physician. In the computational experiments, the proposed approach is compared with three meta-heuristic algorithms and Gurobi. The results show that the proposed approach outperforms other compared algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare the performance of teams with that of individuals in a simple creative task – generating a title for a short video. To measure performance, we assess the quality of titles using click rate as well as subjective assessment of the fit between the title and the video. Although teams are costlier to organizations, we find no significant differences in the performance of teams relative to that of individuals. As a result, in the task we use in this paper, allocating creative work to individuals is more efficient than allocating it to teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many digital controllers need an operating system to perform tasks such as networking and file operations. This causes an increase in task jitter which can affect the performance of the control system. Some researchers have claimed that Root-Mean-Square (RMS) of the task jitter is a good indicator of how the control system will be affected but there has been without evi- dence to show this to be true. In this paper, Gaussian, Uniform and a Brute force distributed task jitter, all with the same jitter RMS, were tested on a second order control system. The collected step response envelopes of 10,000 simulations for each jitter type show a very similar shape suggesting that task jitter RMS is a good indicator of control system performance. The overshoot distribution is shown to be normal which means that system performance can be characterised by a much smaller number of simulation runs.The work also shows that particular patterns can have a significant impact on overshoot and settling time. A real control system subject to task jitter may randomly and occasionally show extreme behaviour which may be outside acceptable limits. Simulation is essential to find these extremes early in the design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boredom is a common workplace problem. Previous research has suggested that repetitive and monotonous work tasks may lead to boredom. However, these tasks have been reduced due to increased workplace automation. Thus, the current cause of boredom may be due to low mental workload. This research developed a general boredom model and compared the effects of feedback type (performance and ranking) and intervention method (game and quiz) on boredom and task performance. Results revealed that the secondary task interventions can reduce boredom and feedback could shorten the response time. Gender also had a significant influence on response time. Notably, results revealed a 4% probability of task failure during the experiment, indicating other interventions are also required. This research indicates that interventions to reduce boredom caused by low mental workload should be designed differently from tasks that have been designed to combat the boredom caused by repetitive and monotonous work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of tonal noise and task difficulty on electroencephalography (EEG) and cognitive performance. Methods. Twelve healthy volunteers participated in the present study. Four noise signals were generated by four prominence tone levels (0, 2, 5 and 9) at background noise levels of 55 dBA and frequency of 500 Hz using the Test Tone Generator from Esser Audio (USA). The participants were asked to perform the tasks with low, moderate and high levels of difficulty while exposed to the noises in an acoustics laboratory. The values of reaction time, correct rate and missed numbers were recorded during each step. Moreover, the EEG signals were measured. Results. The results showed that higher tone level and more task difficulty significantly decreased the correct rate, and increased the miss numbers. However, no significant effect was observed on reaction times. Furthermore, tone level and task difficulty significantly increased activity of the θ and β bands and decreased activity of the α band. Conclusion. Task difficulty and tone level could significantly affect the parameters of performance and the activity of EEG bands. Therefore, noise control can help sustain appropriate performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muscle fatigue (MF) can lead to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in the long term; however, it can be managed if the causes are well known. This study aimed to examine the grip force (GF) and grip fatigue (GFa) of employees with light, moderate and heavy manual tasks using a dynamometer and find their possible relationship with other factors. The nature of heavy manual tasks led to more experience of GFa and GF of the right hand. Moreover, the equal need for both hands in occupations with light and moderate manual tasks is the reason for more GFa in the left hand. In this primary study, the height, weight and age of subjects and their exposure to vibration had a decisive effect on GF. In order to determine the accurate effects of the aforementioned risk factors on MF, it is recommended for future studies to be performed on larger populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In practice, allocating tasks to resources is often tackled in (near) real-time due to the latency of the task information and sudden task arrivals into a system. Therefore, the problem must be solved within a very short time budget, when tasks are urgent or idle resources are critical to the system's performance. Local search algorithms could be a good solution to this issue. These algorithms usually focus the search on limited solution areas by applying local updates on an incumbent solution. To investigate the feasibility and performance of applying a local search algorithm to resource allocation, a special case of the Generalized Assignment Problem (GAP) is modelled, where task profits are independent of the resources assigned and resources' capacities are identical. Then the performance of a local search algorithm to the target problems is examined empirically, characterizing the features of the GAP that make the problem hard for heuristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various interpretations and parameters have been proposed to assess spinal stability such as antagonist muscle coactivity, trunk stiffness and spinal buckling load; however, the correlation between these parameters remains unknown. We evaluated spinal stability during different tasks while changing the external moment and load height and investigated likely relationships between different EMG- and model-based parameters (e.g., EMG coactivity ratio, trunk stiffness, force coactivity ratio) and stability margins. EMG and kinematics of 40 young healthy subjects were recorded during various quasi-static tasks. Muscle forces, trunk stiffness and stability margins were calculated by a nonlinear subject-specific EMG-assisted-optimization musculoskeletal model of the trunk. The load elevation and external moment increased muscle activities and trunk stiffness while all stability margins (i.e., buckling loads) decreased. The force coactivity ratio was strongly correlated with the hand-load stability margin (i.e., additional weight in hands to initiate instability; R2 = 0.54) demonstrating the stabilizing role of abdominal muscles. The total trunk stiffness (Pearson's r = 0.96) and the sum of EMGs of back muscles (Pearson's r = 0.65) contributed the most to the T1 stability margin (i.e., additional required load at T1 for instability/buckling). Force coactivity ratio and trunk stiffness can be used as alternative spinal stability metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often, second/foreign (L2) language learners receive little opportunity to interact orally in the target language. Interactive, conversation-based spoken dialog systems (SDSs) that use automated speech recognition and natural language processing have the potential to address this need by engaging learners in meaningful, goal-oriented speaking practice. However, these technology-based learning tools are often developed without input from teaching professionals. As part of a larger development effort, this study examined English as a second language (ESL) teachers' perceptions regarding SDS-based speaking tasks, addressing the following research questions: (a) What do teachers think about the SDS-based tasks? (b) How would they use them in the context of their English instruction? Overall, 16 ESL instructors in an intensive English program in the United States were asked to interact with four SDS-based speaking tasks designed to elicit specific linguistic phenomena (e.g. making requests; wh-questions). The teachers completed a survey after each task to gauge their user experience, level of engagement, and perceptions of the usefulness of the tasks for their teaching contexts. A subgroup of instructors (n = 7) also participated in audio-recorded focus group meetings. Descriptive statistics were calculated for each survey item and the open-ended responses from the surveys and focus groups were analyzed qualitatively for major themes. The findings show that teachers had positive views of the SDS tasks' potential for speaking practice and diagnostic purposes, primarily in a flipped classroom model. Their perceptions seemed to be related to their own user experience and, in particular, to the perceived authenticity of a given task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative priming refers to the delayed response to a probe target that was previously a prime distractor. Memory retrieval has been proposed as one critical mechanism for the manifestation of negative priming. This perspective perpetuates that the contextual similarity between prime and probe trials should modulate memory retrieval, and therefore, affect negative priming. However, evidence for the contextual similarity effect in negative priming is mixed. The present study tested the hypothesis that attended contextual cues are more likely to be encoded into a distractor representation, and thus, are more likely to modulate the negative priming effect. By manipulating whether the contextual cues were relevant to the task demand in Section 1, and by manipulating whether cues had an abrupt or simultaneous onset, and by analysing reaction time (RT) distributions of the data in Section 2, our results demonstrated that attended cues produced the contextual similarity effect in negative priming, especially when RTs were long. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affective effects on breadth of attention have been related to aspects of different components of affective states such as the arousal and valence of affective experience and the motivational intensity of action tendency. As none of these explanations fully aligns with existing evidence, we hypothesised that affective effects on breadth of attention may arise from the appraisal component of affective states. Based on this reconceptualisation, we tested the effects of conduciveness and power appraisals on two measures of breadth of attention. In two web-based experiments, we manipulated these appraisals in a 2 × 2 design using a game-like arithmetic task where participants could (1) gain or lose rewards (goal conducive vs. obstructive) based on (2) either their action or the actions of a "robot" (high vs. low power). Breadth of attention was assessed using the flanker task (Experiment 1; n = 236) and the Navon task (Experiment 2; n = 215). We found that appraisals did not directly influence breadth of attention even though high power appraisal significantly improved the overall performance in both experiments indicating successful appraisal manipulation. We discuss ways in which these findings inform future efforts to explain the origins of affective effects on attentional breadth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some research has highlighted how teachers prepare their course materials, little is known about how future teachers design support for their students, and thus plan and anticipate what can and will happen in the classroom. We have therefore sought to investigate whether identifiable learner profiles emerge when regular primary school students are offered a complex task: How students respond to the task? How well they perform? The ambition was to develop a typology of profiles concerning student task engagement that would allow any teacher to anticipate regulatory actions that would be matched as closely as possible to the realities of the classroom. To do this, we observed 282 French-speaking Belgian students aged 10–12 years old in the first moments of performing a complex reading task. The data analysis revealed that six learner profiles can be used to plan teaching activities: the 'regular' student, the student who gets discouraged because the task seems too complex, the one who gets blocked during the task, the one who bypasses the actual task without achieving the learning objectives, the one who does not engage in the task and the high-performing student who finishes faster than the others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider non-clairvoyant task offloading for random tasks in mobile edge computing within the framework of combinatorial optimisation. For offline non-clairvoyant task offloading, we propose a non-clairvoyant task offloading algorithm, which is able to determine a task offloading strategy without knowing the amount of computation and communication of any task. For online non-clairvoyant task offloading, we propose a randomised online task offloading algorithm, which is able to make an offloading decision for an arrival task without knowing anything about future tasks and other tasks. For both algorithms, we analyse the probability of certain performance guarantee. We also demonstrate numerical data. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first paper which considers both offline and online non-clairvoyant task offloading in mobile edge computing, together with analytical results on performance guarantee with high probability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores translation task equivalence by comparing parallel translation test tasks in levels of difficulty, using eyetracking, as well as NASA-TLX and retrospection. It also examines the effectiveness of measures of translation difficulty when differences in translation difficulty may be minor. Fifty-two participants completed two Chinese-to-English parallel translation test tasks, ‘Airplane’ and ‘Subway’, in a randomly assigned, counter-balanced order, with their eyes tracked. Upon completion of each task, participants were asked questions regarding translation difficulty. They were also required to fill in the NASATLX questionnaire. Paired samples t-tests showed significant differences in eye-tracking metrics, temporal measures, subjective ratings, and translation quality, indicating that ‘Airplane’ was more difficult. The retrospective interviews confirmed these differences. Temporal measures were found more sensitive to task change than eye-tracking measures. The target text and source text eye-tracking measures were similar in sensitivity. The effectiveness of the measures is explained in relation to what is actually measured or elicited, translation directionality, translators, and task. This study has implications for validating parallel translation tests, translation task development, understanding differences and similarities in translation difficulty, and measuring translation difficulty [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wh-phrases in Mandarin have an interrogative (like English what) and an indefinite (like English a/some) interpretation. Previous comprehension studies find that children can access both interpretations around 4.5 years old; studies with younger children focus on production and find that children between 2 and 4.5 do not reliably produce the indefinite interpretation in naturalistic speech or in elicited imitation tasks. In this article, we use comprehension tasks to examine 3-year-olds' interpretation of wh-phrases. We find that they have adult-like interpretations of wh-phrases in two different contexts: in dou -sentences (Experiment 1), where the indefinite interpretation is the only available interpretation and the whole sentence receives a universal reading (roughly equivalent to English any), and in negated sentences (Experiment 2), where the interpretation of wh-phrases depends on prosodic prominence and the indefinite interpretation leads to an existential reading of the sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has demonstrated that a minimum ratio of 5 affirmative to 1 constructive interactions is correlated with successful long-term intimate relationships, and similar (i.e., 4:1) ratios have been suggested in the context of supervisory relationships in employment settings. However, research has yet to examine methods of increasing interactional ratios to achieve such levels. In the current study, we analyzed the effects of task clarification and, if necessary, self-monitoring on ratios of affirmative to constructive feedback statements made by three supervisors of direct care staff during in-situ supervision at an early intensive behavioral intervention clinic. Results show that two supervisors achieved the criterion for ratios of affirmative to constructive statements with task clarification, while the third participant required self-monitoring to achieve the criterion. A social validity measure indicated that both supervisors and direct care staff members approved of the procedures and the outcome of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learners' monitoring judgments during reading are based on a variety of cues, and the roles of task features in promoting and constraining judgment accuracy are beginning to be understood. This work examined task and item characteristics influencing adults' monitoring of performance during reading and study tasks. In Study 1a, adults (N = 242) read an expository text, provided text ratings, completed comprehension items, and provided confidence judgments during testing. Readers' text complexity ratings predicted their item-level confidence, while their ratings of interest and cohesion predicted their bias scores. In Study 1b, the roles of linguistic features in predicting item-level monitoring estimates were examined using the comprehension items (item n = 23) from Study 1a. Selected item features, including length, ease, density, concreteness, and meaningfulness, were examined. Item ease significantly predicted item-level bias, while ease, density, concreteness, and meaningfulness predicted item-level confidence. Study 2 (N = 68) applied similar procedures to examine the effect of item feedback on the contributions of item features to learners' monitoring. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two item feedback conditions. Item density emerged as a significant predictor of item-level confidence, but only for those who first received item-by-item correctness feedback followed by massed feedback. Implications for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aimed to examine the difference between cheating and persistence during a persistence task to advance persistence measurement. Through a within-subject design (N = 78, mean age: 5.2 years), two different versions of the puzzle box task were administered. The original puzzle box task was administered in condition I (i.e., open version). Children could exhibit three types of behavior: persistence, cheating, and off-task. In condition II (i.e., the fixed version), the box was manipulated to make it impossible to cheat. Hence, children could only exhibit persistence or off-task behavior. The results revealed that while persistence remained stable across the two conditions, the amount of off-task increased substantially when there was no possibility to cheat. These findings indicate that persistence and cheating can be reliably distinguished and provide an empirical basis for analyzing behavioral dynamics between persistence, cheating, and off-task in the puzzle box task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study deals with the influence of specific motor experiences on efficient grasp planning. Forty 5- to 6-year-old children learned to use an unfamiliar tool with either a thumb-up or a thumb-down grip to accomplish a task. Before and after training, the extent to which children would rotate the tool using an awkward initial grip (thumb-down) to ensure a comfortable end-grip (end-state comfort), a pattern that has been interpreted as representing efficient grasping, was measured. The number of thumb-down grips increased only in the group that had trained to use the tool with this specific grip, but did not change after a training with an incongruent thumb-up grip. This demonstrates how the experience with specific tool-use-related grips influences efficient grasping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored the connection between children's language skills, creativity, and play. The participants were 151 (76 boys and 75 girls) primarily middle-income, European American children. Ages ranged from 4 to 6 years. This project employed mixed methods approaches. Children engaged in several tasks. These included: creating a story about their drawing while completing the Goodenough Harris Draw a Person Task, creating an original story with the opportunity to incorporate props; and completing the TELD- 3 receptive and expressive language task. We also recorded children's social and cognitive play behaviours using a modified version of Rubin's (2001) Play Observation Scale (POS). We found positive interactions between story creativity and play behaviours, story creativity and language, creativity (drawing) and language, creativity (drawing) and play behaviours, and play behaviours and language. These findings support the connection between creativity, language, and play and the benefits these skills and abilities have on children's learning and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preponderance of evidence in the literature suggests that intermittent tasks reduce productivity and quality of work. In a task switching study, with intermittent tasks appearing once a minute or once every three minutes, we examined attention allocation and the effect of switching on the quantity and novelty of work. Self-reported estimates matched attention allocation obtained from eye fixations, indicating awareness and volitional control of attention. Arousal, quantity, and novelty of work were higher in the switching conditions in comparison to the single task condition. The findings point to the possibility of a quickening effect induced by switching that may be beneficial for work under specific task conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate assessment of biomechanical risk associated with pushing/pulling tasks represents a challenging issue, especially in the health system where personnel are often required to maneuver beds and carts. Most studies in this field have been carried out in the laboratory, while few data have been collected under actual working conditions. This study aims to characterize the forces exerted during non-powered hospital bed maneuvering. Twenty participants were required to move a bed (equipped with a customized handlebar to measure exerted forces) along an actual hospital path including straight, turn and maneuver phases. The results show that higher forces are associated with the initial phase (peak and mean values 222 and 68 N) while the straight, turn and maneuvering phases required similar (lower) efforts. The combined effect of left, right and transversal forces suggests that the trunk of the operator might experience axial rotation, thus calling for further investigations of this aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For complex tasks such as tying a knot, simply creating a robot hand with many degrees of freedom is insufficient. It is also important to extract the requirements of the task, design the hand based on these requirements, and implement functions to use the hand effectively. Thus, in this study, we have designed a robot hand with three fingers each having three degrees of freedom and developed basic functions to realize rope-knotting tasks. In experiments, the designed robot hand and functions were applied to performing various manipulations during rope-knotting tasks, and the redundancy provided by the structure could be utilized to generate motions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research compared hand selection in a preferential reaching paradigm with unimanual (i.e., pick-up cup) and bimanual (pick-up cup and pour from pitcher) tasks. In addition, relationships between self-report, questionnaire-based hand preference (unimanual and bimanual) and patterns of hand selection were assessed. Data offer support for a division of labour between the hands in at the midline; however, bimanual selection otherwise reflects consideration of object proximity (i.e., location) and comfort (i.e., biomechanical constraints). When grasping cups in right space, the right-hand was used to stabilize the cup and left-hand to mobilize the pitcher, whereas the opposite pattern was observed in left-space. Unimanual hand selection was also driven by object location. Subsequent analyses revealed a relationship between unimanual measures, but not bimanual measures of hand preference. Overall, findings support the notion that questionnaire data are associated with hand preference for grasping to a certain extent; however, use of a comprehensive battery of assessments is recommended when assessing and/or predicting handedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty six empirical investigations have now established that children and adults with DSM-defined Attention deficit/Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) of the Hyperactive type (ADHD-H) or, more commonly, Combined Hyperactive/Inattentive types (ADHD-C) manifest a small but significant visual attentional bias to the right side (left subclinical neglect), consistently suggesting the existence of a subtle right hemisphere dysfunction or hemispheric imbalance in hyperactive people. Only one research team has investigated and compared the DSM-defined Inattentive subtype (ADHD-I) to the Hyperactive subtype (ADHD-H), confirming that line bisection is biased to the right in ADHD-H and discovering that it is biased to the left in ADHD-I. We aimed to test whether a similar crossed double dissociation would extend to Rey's Complex Figure Copy Task (RCF-CT), a simple visuospatial-constructive task. Clinical files of 205 juvenile clients from 6 to 16 years of age from a neuropsychological private clinic specialized in ADHD were analysed. Extreme scores on the Connors-3 Hyperactivity vs Inattention Parent Rating scales associated, respectively, with significant rightward and significant leftward emplacement of the drawing on the page on the RCF-CT. These results replicate previous findings and extend the "energetics" model of hemispheric specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creative problem solving is often conceptualised as a process of search. However, little is known about the difficulties of carrying out this search process. We conducted three studies examining how strongly different task characteristics impact creative problem-solving performance. In Study 1, regression analyses on normative data of Remote Associates Test (RAT) problems identified key task characteristics that best predict performance. We replicated these findings in a sample that was more diverse with respect to age and education background and proposed that two key factors may interact in predicting RAT problem difficulty (Study 2). We then confirmed this prediction in a pre-registered study (Study 3). Our results suggest that (a) the semantic distance between the cues and the answer and (b) the number of strong but irrelevant associates are important determinants of RAT problem difficulty, and that their influence is interdependent. Implications for theories and for studies aimed at improving creative problem-solving performance are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time estimates are an important part of many costing systems. As they may be subject to estimation error and hence result in measurement error in product and service costs, it is important to understand the sources of this estimation error as well as mechanisms to mitigate them. We performed a computer-based lab experiment to test the joint impact of task interruption and interactive time estimation on the accuracy of time estimates. As predicted, we find that the negative impact of task interruption on time estimation accuracy is mitigated when participants are allowed to interactively discuss their time estimates before making a final time estimate alone. We explain our findings through the underlying effects of cognitive load and confidence. Hence, managers may improve the accuracy of their time-based costing systems by enabling an interactive time estimation process to offset the detrimental effect of task interruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that students benefit from opportunities to interpret and create different representations (e.g., diagrams, graphs, tables, symbols) of mathematical ideas. Employing Marton's Variation theory as a lens, I argue for an expansion of the use of multiple representations in task design for graphs: Incorporate two different forms of the same type of graph to represent a relationship between variables in a situation. With this approach, designers, teachers, and researchers can engineer opportunities for students to discern, or separate, features of representation systems, such as the Cartesian coordinate system, and in turn, promote students' mathematical reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both researchers and practitioners agree that having highly engaged employees results in individuals and organizations reaping various positive consequences related to performance and absenteeism. However, available research syntheses date from the early years of this line of research, thus cover only a small fraction (under 10%) of the available studies. The present meta-analysis updates the results of work engagement and its three facets (vigour, dedication, and absorption) on task performance and includes a substantial number of studies on absenteeism with separate analyses of longitudinal studies. A total of 179 unique correlations representing an overall sample size of N = 139,182 was examined, confirming and enhancing a positive association between work engagement and task performance (ρ =.483) and a negative association between work engagement and absenteeism (ρ = −.171). The three facets of engagement had similar effects on performance, but only vigour and dedication correlated significantly negatively with absenteeism. Work engagement is linked positively to future task performance and negatively to future absenteeism. The influence of several methodical moderators is examined. Finally, we discuss how these findings can inform research and practice in order to contribute to a more effective and healthy work environment for employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]