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Video
Neuroemergentism, (NM) is a novel framework which has sought to consider language development as involving the organization and reorganization of cognition and its underlying neural substrate. Work to support this framework comes from studies of language and cognitive development. In this talk, I will focus on two separate levels, the sensorimotor plasticity needed to adjust to new input and the cognitive flexibility needed to select between these competing sources of information. This talk will discuss both these levels with regard to the neurocognitive adaptations seen in bilinguals. This will include structural brain differences in monolinguals and bilinguals that vary in the age of second language acquisition. In the second part, of the talk work that has focused on the cognitive flexibility will be presented. This will focus on the adaptations of the basal ganglia and frontostriatal tracts as a gating mechanism crucial for selecting the correct motor response. This includes newer work which links genes associated with dopamine to cognitive and language flexibility in bilinguals. The ways in which sensorimotor plasticity and cognitive flexibility represent accurate but incomplete conceptualizations of the competitive processes involved in language and cognitive processing will be discussed. The talk will conclude with potential future directions using an NM framework.
Event date: 15/03/2024
Speaker: Prof. Arturo E. HERNANDEZ (University of Houston)
Hosted by: Faculty of Humanities
- Subjects:
- Language and Languages
- Keywords:
- Language acquisition Code switching (Linguistics) Psycholinguistics Bilingualism
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
In this CIHK webinar, we will discuss the material conditions of and historical background to the use of Classical Chinese or Literary Sinitic in writing-mediated brush conversation between literati of Sinitic engaged in cross-border communication within Sinographic East Asia or the Sinographic cosmopolis, which corresponds with today’s China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan (including Okinawa, formerly the Ryukyu Kingdom) and Vietnam. Compared with speech as a modality of communication, real-time writing-mediated interaction between talking humans, synchronously face-to-face, seems uncommon. In any society, speaking is premised on one condition: the interlocutors must have at least one shared spoken language at their disposal, but even then, there are circumstances under which speaking is either physically not feasible or socially inappropriate. Could writing function as an alternative modality of communication when speaking is not an option due to the absence of a shared spoken language, as in cross-border communication settings? Whereas real-time writing-mediated face-to-face interaction is rare where a regional lingua franca was known to exist (e.g., Latin and Arabic), there is ample historical evidence of literati of Classical Chinese or Literary Sinitic from different parts of Sinographic East Asia conducting ‘silent conversation’, synchronously and interactively in writing mode using brush, ink, and paper. Such a pattern of writing-assisted interaction is still practiced and observable in pen-assisted conversation – pen-talk – between Chinese and Japanese speakers today, thanks to the pragma-linguistic affordance of morphographic, non-phonographic sinograms (i.e., Chinese characters and Japanese kanji). We will outline the historical spread of Classical Chinese or Sinitic texts from the ‘center’ to the ‘peripheries’, and the historical background to the acquisition of literacy in Sinitic by the people there. Their shared knowledge of Sinitic helps explain why, for well over a thousand years until the 1900s, literati from these places were able to speak their mind by engaging in ‘Sinitic brush-talk’ 漢文筆談 in cross-border communication.
Event date: 13/5/2022
Speaker: Prof. David C. S. Li
Hosted by: Confucius Institute of Hong Kong, Department of Chinese Culture
- Subjects:
- Language and Languages and Chinese Language
- Keywords:
- History China Written communication Chinese characters Chinese language -- Written Chinese East Asia
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
The relationship between language experience and cognitive control (e.g., working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility) could be very well illustrated by the cognitively demanding language experience of interpreting training. A series of our empirical studies with interpreting students (see DONG 2023 for a review), together with studies with professional interpreters in the literature, suggest that interpreting training may first enhance students’ working memory (WM) updating ability and then WM spans, with probable some decline of WM updating ability between the shift from the two WM abilities. Similar patterns may appear in other cognitive control functions, such as cognitive flexibility (first with switching cost reduced and then with mixing cost reduced) and multi-tasking coordination. These results could be explained by the task features of interpreting (including task schemas and their cognitive loads) (see DONG & LI 2020), suggesting a close and dynamic relationship between language experience and cognitive control.
Event date: 4/12/2023
Speaker: Prof. Yanping Dong (Zhejiang University)
Hosted by: Faculty of Humanities
- Subjects:
- Translating and Interpreting and Language and Languages
- Keywords:
- Cognition Language languages Translating interpreting
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
I will discuss how co-speech (i.e., speech-accompanying) gestures relate to language and conceptualisation underlying language. I will focus on “representational gestures”, which can depict motion, action, and shape or can indicate locations. I will provide evidence for the following two points. Various aspects of language shape co-speech gestures. Conversely, the way we produce co-speech gestures can shape language. I will discuss these issues in relation to manner and path in motion event descriptions, clause-linkage types in complex event descriptions, and metaphor. I will conclude that gesture and language are parts of a "conceptualisation engine”, which takes advantage of unique strengths of spatio-motoric representation and linguistic representation.
Event date: 26/02/2024
Speaker: Prof. Sotaro Kita (University of Warwick)
Hosted by: Faculty of Humanities
- Subjects:
- Language and Languages
- Keywords:
- Nonverbal communication Language languages Gesture
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
We have witnessed a rapid expansion of the global Chinese medicines market in recent years. Herb-based products are becoming an integral part of health management not only in the East, but also in the Western world. Notwithstanding the booming of herbal markets, there are challenging issues and concerns from the medical/healthcare professionals, the nutritional/pharmaceutical communities, regulatory agencies, as well as the general public. In this presentation, a closer look will be taken at the scientific challenges of the quality, safety, and effectiveness of herbal products. While some of these difficulties are unlikely to be overcome within a short period of time, there are wide-open opportunities for international collaborative research to help meet the demands for high-quality Chinese medicine products.
Event date: 01/12/2023
Speaker: Prof. CHE Chun-Tao
Hosted by: PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research
- Subjects:
- Medicine
- Keywords:
- China Drugs -- Quality control Herbs -- Therapeutic use Medicine Chinese Materia medica
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
Focusing on tensions and links between national formation and international outlooks, this talk shows how classical world visions persist as China’s modernizers and revolutionaries adopted and revised the Western nation-state and cosmopolitanism. The concepts of tianxia (all under heaven) and datong (great harmony) have been updated into outlooks of global harmony that value unity, equality, and reciprocity as strategies of overcoming interstate conflict, national divides, and social fragmentation. The talk will delve into two debates: the embrace of the West vs. aspirations for a common world, and the difference between liberal cosmopolitanism and socialist internationalism.
Event date: 16/9/2022
Speaker: Prof. Ban Wang
Hosted by: Confucius Institute of Hong Kong, Department of Chinese Culture
- Subjects:
- Chinese Studies
- Keywords:
- Diplomatic relations World politics China Civilization
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the relaxation of the Ming sea ban, along with the arrival of the Europeans, generated a multipolar environment in East Asia. It revolved around the intra-Asian exchange centered upon Chinese silk and Japanese silver, and a nascent global flow of New World bullion to China and spices for Western Europe. The situation changed during the mid-seventeenth century amid mounting restrictions on overseas contacts from the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan and the consolidation and militarization of Chinese merchants under the Zheng family. By 1683, when the Qing forced the Zheng to surrender and occupied their bastion of Taiwan, China had achieved naval preeminence in the East Asian sea lanes. Other than a few outposts, the Europeans had largely withdrawn from the area north of island Southeast Asia, which remained under the hegemony of the Dutch East India Company. In 1684, the Qing court legalized private trade and travel abroad, prompting another wave of overseas migration. Authorities in China and across eastern maritime Asia enacted policies that kept the Qing merchants and immigrants separate from the earlier Ming loyalists. Additionally, both groups of Chinese were accorded significant political, economic, and legal privileges. This infrastructure, backed by Qing naval power, paved the way for the “Chinese century” in maritime Asia.
Event date: 09/11/2022
Speaker: Dr. Xing Hang
Hosted by: Confucius Institute of Hong Kong
- Subjects:
- Area Studies and Chinese Studies
- Keywords:
- Chinese diaspora Chinese Qing Dynasty (China) Southeast Asia
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Video
Geospatial information science is a discipline that focuses on using geospatial information technology to understand people, places, nature and processes of the earth. IoT refers to Internet of things, the combination of sensors, software and other technologies to connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet. The era of IoT brings us opportunities and challenges for geospatial information science. In the keynote, five characteristics and three scientific issues of geo-spatial information science in the era of IoT are summarised.
Event date: 06/09/2022
Speaker: Prof. Daren Li
Moderator: Prof. Christopher Chao (Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Panel members: Prof. Qingyan Chen, Prof. Qinhao Chen (Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Hosted by: PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research
- Subjects:
- Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics
- Keywords:
- Internet of things Geospatial data Spatial data mining
- Resource Type:
- Video
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Collection
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e-book
Social Problems: Continuity and Change is a realistic but motivating look at the many issues that are facing our society today. As this book's subtitle, Continuity and Change, implies, social problems are persistent, but they have also improved in the past and can be improved in the present and future, provided that our nation has the wisdom and will to address them. It is easy for students to read a social problems textbook and come away feeling frustrated by the enormity of the many social problems facing us today. Social Problems: Continuity and Change certainly does not minimize the persistence of social problems, but neither does it overlook the possibilities for change offered by social research and by the activities of everyday citizens working to make a difference. Readers the book will find many examples of how social problems have been improved and of strategies that hold great potential for solving them today and in the future. You will find several pedagogical features help to convey the “continuity and change” theme of this text and the service sociology vision in which it is grounded: Each chapter begins with a “Social Problems in the News” story related to the social problem discussed in that chapter. These stories provide an interesting starting point for the chapter's discussion and show its relevance for real-life issues. Three types of boxes in each chapter provide examples of how social problems have been changed and can be changed. In no particular order, A first box, “Applying Social Research,” discusses how the findings from sociological and other social science research have either contributed to public policy related to the chapter's social problem or have the potential of doing so. A second box, “Lessons from Other Nations,” discusses how another nation or nations have successfully addressed the social problem of that chapter. A third box, “People Making a Difference,” discusses efforts by individuals, non-profit organizations or social change groups, or social movements relating to the chapter's social problem. Students will see many examples in this box of how ordinary people can indeed make a difference. A fourth box in each chapter, “Children and Our Future,” examines how the social problem discussed in that chapter particularly affects children, and it outlines the problem's repercussions for their lives as adolescents and adults. This box reinforces for students the impact of social problems on children and the importance of addressing these problems for their well-being as well as for the nation's well-being.Each chapter ends with a “Using What You Know” feature that presents students with a scenario involving the social problem from the chapter and that puts them in a decision-making role. This feature helps connect the chapter's theoretical discussion with potential real-life situations. Each chapter also ends with a “What You Can Do” feature that suggests several activities, strategies, or other efforts that students might undertake to learn more about and/or to address the social problem examined in the chapter. Like other aspects of the book, this feature helps counter “doom and gloom” feelings that little can be done about social problems. Other pedagogical features in each chapter include Learning Objectives at the beginning of a major section that highlight key topics to be learned; Key Takeaways at the end of a major section that highlight important points that were discussed in the section; For Your Review questions, also at the end of a major section, that have students think critically about that section's discussion; and a Summary that reviews the major points made in the chapter. The founders of American sociology a century or more ago in cities like Atlanta and Chicago wanted to reduce social inequality, to improve the lives of people of color, and more generally to find solutions to the most vexing social problems of their times. A former president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, A. Javier Treviño, has used the term service sociology to characterize their vision of their new discipline. Social Problems: Continuity and Change is grounded in this vision by offering a sociological understanding of today's social problems and of possible solutions to these problems.
- Subjects:
- Sociology
- Keywords:
- Textbooks Social problems Social change
- Resource Type:
- e-book
