Search

Eighteen people participated in an experiment in which they were asked to search for targets on control room like displays which had been produced using three different coding methods. The monochrome coding method displayed the information in black and white only, the maximally discriminable method contained colours chosen for their high perceptual discriminability, the visual layers method contained colours developed from psychological and cartographic principles which grouped information into a perceptual hierarchy. The visual layers method produced significantly faster search times than the other two coding methods which did not differ significantly from each other. Search time also differed significantly for presentation order and for the method x order interaction. There was no significant difference between the methods in the number of errors made. Participants clearly preferred the visual layers coding method. Proposals are made for the design of experiments to further test and develop the visual layers colour coding methodology. Keywords: Colour displays; Colour coding; Cartography; Control rooms; Perception; Visual layers

Given that the higher-level goals or ‘orientations’ of second language learners impact their motivation to learn, they are of consequent interest to researchers. Once conceptualized simply as either ‘integrative’ or ‘instrumental’, these orientations are increasingly understood to be more complex, particularly since the L2 in question is often English; as a global lingua franca, English is extending its range of functions around the world, while also becoming ‘deterritorialized’. In contexts such as Japan and Pakistan, the latter the setting for this study, new orientations have recently been identified. However, research methods employed have not always included factor analytic techniques, which are particularly valuable for finding underlying structures in complex data. 500 postgraduates in a public university in North-Western Pakistan were surveyed and their responses subjected to factor analysis. 11 factors were identified: ‘Education-Prestige’, ‘Identification’, ‘Receptive L2 Use for Non-Professional Purposes’, ‘Further Study-Work Abroad’, ‘Media-Instrumental’, ‘Travel-Friendship’, ‘Extrinsic-Ideal L2 Self’, ‘Business’, ‘National Interest’, ‘Intrinsic’, ‘International Posture and Learning L2 for Local Purposes’. Findings confirm the newly-discovered ‘National Interest’ orientation in this context and point towards the emergence of an ‘L2 Indigenous Integrative’ orientation that relates to using L2 for local purposes. Theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We aimed to develop a concise psychometric scale to assess athletes' in-competition emotions, which would reduce the practical and conceptual limitations of previous measures. Four studies were designed to develop and assess the validity of the new Brief In-Competition Emotion (BICE) scale. In Study 1, the content validity of 39 emotion adjectives was investigated using expert analysis, 9 adjectives were subsequently removed. In Study 2, 402 university athletes used the remaining 30 adjectives to record their in-competition emotions and confirmatory factor analyses and a reliability removal method was used to create the 10-item BICE scale. Study 3 (N = 109) and Study 4 (N = 74) consisted of both concurrent and predictive validity assessments of the BICE scale. Construct validity, reliability and confirmatory factor analyses completed during Study 1 and Study 2 resulted in the development of the 10-item BICE scale, consisting of five composite emotion factors: anger, anxiety, excitement, dejection and happiness. The findings from Study 3 and Study 4 showed that the BICE scale presented acceptable levels of concurrent and predictive validity. The BICE scale is a rigorously developed parsimonious scale which offers researchers new opportunities for investigation and provides applied practitioners with a new method of evaluating in-competition intervention efficacies. • The development of a unique scale to assess athletes' in-competition emotions • The BICE Scale factors correlated with comparable factors from other emotion scales • Athlete in-competition emotion was related to objective and subjective performance [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]