First Published in 1990. Information about individual operas and other types of musical theater is scattered throughout the enormous literature of music. This book is an effort to bring that data together by comprehensively indexing plots and descriptions of individual operatic background, criticism and analysis, musical themes and bibliographical references. The principal audience for this general reference guide will be for the non-specialist, but its hoped that persons specialising in opera would also find it useful.

This print edition of Read's account of logical thought includes the original publication's diagrams and tables. In this excellent book, Read commences by offering an overview of past attitudes and definitions of logic. Individual chapters consider the various means by which logical processes are conceived and developed in the mind. Philosophical arguments, spatial reasoning and mathematical forms of logic are discussed in great depth, with illustrations appended where deemed necessary. Read, an academic and philosopher, employs his decades long experience of (...) teaching students about the logical disciplines to write a detailed and comprehensive accounts of logic's aspects. Throughout this work, he attempts to retain a clarity of expression which makes the concepts discussed understandable for readers previously unversed in the types of logical expression. Read also sets out the principles behind setting up a hypothesis, and highlights the common logical fallacies which crop up in human reasoning. Extensive attention is given to the process of syllogism, by which sound conclusions are drawn from the premises offered. Throughout the book, Read is attentive in defining and explaining the esoteric terminology native to logic. As well as allowing the reader swift comprehension of the various subtopics, this explanatory style confers improved flow to the book. At the conclusion we are offered many questions corresponding to each chapter: these are intended to test the reader's understanding, and enforce the mental habits of utilising logical and critical thought. First published in 1898 and subject to several editions with revisions and refinements thereafter, Logic Deductive and Inductive retains a good reputation among academics and logicians. Its successful balance between striking a concise introductory tone with an embrace of the core elements of the subject has served to preserve its popularity into the modern day. (shrink)

A ‘duality’ is a formal mapping between the spaces of solutions of two empirically equivalent theories. In recent times, dualities have been found to be pervasive in string theory and quantum field theory. Naïvely interpreted, duality-related theories appear to make very different ontological claims about the world—differing in e.g. space-time structure, fundamental ontology, and mereological structure. In light of this, duality-related theories raise questions familiar from discussions of underdetermination in the philosophy of science: in the presence of dual theories, what (...) is one to say about the ontology of the world? In this paper, we undertake a comprehensive and non-technical survey of the landscape of possible ontological interpretations of duality-related theories. We provide a significantly enriched and clarified taxonomy of options—several of which are novel to the literature. (shrink)

Simondon’s concept of the transindividual has become a central point of reference for contemporary critical philosophy and social philosophy. Despite its importance in the work of such writers as Étienne Balibar, Gilles Deleuze, Bernard Stiegler and Paolo Virno, Simondon’s works have not been translated into English, and thus no comprehensive study has appeared so far. Muriel Combes’s book presents not only a study of Simondon’s thought, but an examination of what it makes possible in terms of rethinking social relations.

This volume, the first dedicated and comprehensive companion to medieval logic, covers both the Latin and the Arabic traditions, and shows that they were in fact sister traditions, which both arose against the background of a Hellenistic heritage and which influenced one another over the centuries. A series of chapters by both established and younger scholars covers the whole period including early and late developments, and offers new insights into this extremely rich period in the history of logic. The volume (...) is divided into two parts, 'Periods and Traditions' and 'Themes', allowing readers to engage with the subject from both historical and more systematic perspectives. It will be a must-read for students and scholars of medieval philosophy, the history of logic, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the natural sciences themselves is unparalleled. His epoch-making concepts of ‘new paradigm’ and ‘scientific revolution’ make him probably the most influential scholar of the twentieth century. -/- Sharrock and Read take the reader through Kuhn's work in a careful and accessible way, emphasizing Kuhn's detailed studies (...) of the history of science, which often assist the understanding of his more abstract philosophical work. These historical studies provide vital insight into what Kuhn was actually trying to achieve in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: an endeavour far less extreme than either his ‘foes’ or his ‘fans’ claim. In the book's second half, Sharrock and Read provide excellent explications, defences and, where appropriate, criticisms of Kuhn's central concept of ‘incommensurability’, and tackle head on the crucial issue of whether Kuhn's insights concerning the natural sciences can be extrapolated to other disciplines, such as the social sciences. -/- This is the first comprehensive introduction to the work of Kuhn and it will be of particular interest to students and scholars in philosophy, theory of science, management science and anthropology. (shrink)

The arts of rule cover the exercise of power by princes and popular sovereigns, but they range beyond the domain of government itself, extending to civil associations, political parties, and religious institutions. Making full use of political philosophy from a range of backgrounds, this festschrift for Harvey Mansfield recognizes that although the arts of rule are comprehensive, the best government is a limited one.

The goal of this study was to determine whether it is possible to teach children with serious decoding problems four text comprehension strategies in listening contexts. The subjects were 9-11 year old students from special schools for children with learning disabilities. All the students were very poor at decoding; half of the group were also poor listeners, whereas the other half consisted of normal listeners. The experimental children were trained in strategies of clarifying, questioning, summarising and predicting through a (...) combination of reciprocal teaching and direct instruction. The results indicated significant programme effects on a strategic listening comprehension test. A transfer effect on general listening comprehension and general reading comprehension tests was not found. The poor listeners within the experimental group did not perform better than the normal listeners. (shrink)

Several studies have highlighted that reading comprehension is determined by different linguistic skills: semantics, syntax, and morphology, in addition to one’s own competence in reading fluency. On the other hand, according to the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis, linguistic skills developed in one’s own native language facilitate the development of these skills in a second one. In this study, we wanted to explore the linguistic abilities that determine reading comprehension in Spanish and in English in Secondary Education (...) students. To do this, 73 Secondary Education Students participated in this study. The students carried out a battery of tasks in English and Spanish, all of them related to reading comprehension and different linguistic skills, which included syntactic awareness tasks, synonymy judgment tasks, and morphological awareness tasks. The results indicated a positive correlation between linguistic competencies in both languages, which were determined by school year, with a lower performance in the 1st year than in the 3rd year. Moreover, we found more skills with correlations in English reading comprehension than in Spanish. Finally, reading comprehension in L1 was mainly explained English reading comprehension, while English reading comprehension was predicted by grade, and syntactic awareness, as well as Spanish reading comprehension. This could be explained by the different levels of exposure to L1 and L2 of sample subjects, as the linguistic variables have different influences on the reading comprehension of both languages. (shrink)

El desarrollo de habilidades lectoras y el conocimiento de elementos teóricos para la comprensión de los textos científicos es una necesidad en la formación de todo profesional. Para que los futuros egresados puedan comprender esta tipología textual es necesario que cada docente, desde las diferentes asignaturas del currículo escolar, le ofrezcan las herramientas necesarias para interactuar con estos. Por tal motivo este trabajo tiene como objetivo realizar una revisión bibliográfica de los aspectos esenciales acerca de la comprensión lectora y en (...) particular de los textos científicos, sustentada en las concepciones vigotskianas, así como en categorías de la Lingüística Textual que posibilitan la interpretación y procesamiento de la información en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje. The development of literacy skills and knowledge of theoretical elements for the understanding of scientific texts is a need in any professional training. In order that future graduates can understand this textual typology it is necessary that each teacher, from the different subjects of the school curriculum, offers the necessary tools to interact with these texts. For this reason this work is intended to carry out a literature review of the essential aspects of reading comprehension and in particular of scientific texts, supported in the vigotskians conceptions and categories of Textual Linguistics that make possible the interpretation and processing of information in the teaching-learning process. (shrink)

Reading is one of the most common everyday activities, yet research elucidating how affective influence reading processes and outcomes is sparse with inconsistent results. To investigate this question, we randomly assigned participants (N = 136) to happiness (positive affect), sadness (negative affect), and neutral video-induction conditions prior to engaging in self-paced reading of a long, complex science text. Participants completed assessments targeting multiple levels of comprehension (e.g. recognising factual information, integrating different textual components, and open-ended responses (...) of concepts from memory) after reading and after a week-long delay. Results indicated that the Sadness (vs. Happiness) condition had higher comprehension scores, with the largest effects emerging for assessments targeting deeper levels comprehension immediately after reading. Eye-tracking analyses revealed that such benefits may be partly driven by sustained attentional focus over the 20-minute reading session. We discuss results with respect to theories on affect, cognition, and text comprehension. (shrink)

The paper analyses empirical research results comparing the impact of the medium (traditional, paper-based vs. screen-based) on the reading process and text comprehension. It focuses on two analytical approaches—the first looks at the construction of cognitive maps of texts and the other the material aspects of the medium – which enable readers to orientate themselves and to explore and interpret the text more comprehensively. The paper discusses differences in how readers approach textual meaning according to experience of using (...) digital technologies, the text, and reader experience and abilities. It concludes by arguing that strengthening these individual experiences and abilities is key to effective inference of textual meaning. (shrink)

Two studies examined children’s developing understanding of Aesop’s fables in relation to reading comprehension and to theory of mind. Study 1 included 172 children from Junior Kindergarten through Grade 6 in a school-wide examination of the relation between reading comprehension skills and understanding of Aesop’s fables told orally. Study 2 examined the relation between theory of mind and fables understanding among 186 Junior (4-year-old) and Senior (5-year-old) Kindergarten children. Study 1 results showed a developmental progression in (...) fables understanding with children’s responses becoming increasingly decontextualized as they were able to extract the life lesson. After general vocabulary, passage comprehension predicted fables understanding. Study 2 results showed a relation between young children’s theory of mind development and their understanding of fables. After general vocabulary, second-order theory of mind predicted children’s fables understanding. Findings point to the importance of developing mental state awareness in children’s ability to judge characters’ intentions and to understand the deeper message embedded in fables. (shrink)

Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning condition characterized by severe and persistent difficulties in written word recognition, decoding and spelling that may impair both text reading fluency and text reading comprehension. Despite this, some adults with dyslexia successfully complete their university studies even though graduating from university involves intensive exposure to long and complex texts. This study examined the cognitive skills underlying both text reading comprehension and text reading fluency in a sample of 54 (...) university students with dyslexia and 63 university students without dyslexia, based on a set of tests adapted for an adult population, including listening comprehension, word reading, pseudoword reading, phonemic awareness, spelling, visual span, reading span, vocabulary, non-verbal reasoning, and general knowledge. The contribution of these skills to text reading fluency and text reading comprehension was examined using stepwise multiplicative linear regression analyses. As far as TRF is concerned, a regression model including word reading, pseudoword reading and spelling best fits the data, while a regression model including listening comprehension, general knowledge and vocabulary best fits the data obtained for text reading comprehension. Overall, these results are discussed in the light of the current literature on adults with dyslexia and both text reading fluency and text reading comprehension. (shrink)

This study examined how vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, and orthographic knowledge are related to comprehension monitoring and whether comprehension monitoring mediates the relations between these language skills and reading comprehension. Eighty-nine Chinese children were assessed on their vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, orthographic knowledge, and comprehension monitoring in Grade 1. Their reading comprehension skills were assessed in Grade 1 and Grade 3. Results showed that in Grade 1, comprehension monitoring mediated the relations between vocabulary and (...) syntactic knowledge and reading comprehension. For Grade 3 reading comprehension, syntactic knowledge in Grade 1 was the only significant predictor. These findings indicate that multiple language skills make direct and indirect contributions via comprehension monitoring to Chinese reading comprehension, and the relations would change as children’s reading skills develop. (shrink)

The present study tests a section of the DIET (direct and indirect effects model of text comprehension; Kim, 2017) model and focuses on the relations between early language skills, various facets of mental state understanding, and text comprehension. In a sample of 267 children, I analyzed the relations between language skills (vocabulary, sentence comprehension) at age 3;6, theory of mind (ToM) at age 5;6, mental state language and metacognitive knowledge at age 9;2, and children’s listening and (...) class='Hi'>reading comprehension of texts at age 13;7 years. For reading comprehension, results favored a total mediation model that included only direct links from metacognitive knowledge and mental state language to reading comprehension. For listening comprehension, by contrast, a model that also included direct relations from language and ToM in preschool was favored. Metacognitive skills did not mediate the relation between early skills and later text comprehension but, along with mental state language, showed direct relations with reading comprehension beyond listening comprehension. Early language skills showed various indirect relations with later reading comprehension via ToM, mental state language, and listening comprehension, whereas ToM showed only small indirect relations with later reading comprehension via later listening comprehension. These different relations of the various components with later listening in contrast to reading comprehension are discussed. (shrink)

Children with autism spectrum disorder show marked difficulties in reading comprehension, a complex cognitive skill fundamental to successful daily functioning that is associated with core executive functions. However, the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying reading comprehension deficits in these children remain elusive. Twenty-one right-handed males with high-functioning ASD and 23 age-, IQ-, educational level-, sex- and handedness-matched typically developing individuals underwent a reading comprehension test and the semantic verbal fluency test that tapped core executive functions underlying (...) reading comprehension during concurrent prefrontal functional near-infrared spectroscopy measurement. Participants’ information processing efficiency was also assessed. High-functioning ASD children exhibited general reading comprehension [main effect of group: F = 7.58, p = 0.009], selective verbal fluency deficits [Group × category interaction: F = 4.90, p = 0.032] and slower processing speed. Regarding the hemodynamics of the prefrontal cortex, although ASD individuals showed comparable patterns of PFC brain activation to their healthy counterparts, lower PFC intrahemispheric [main effect of group: F = 11.36, p = 0.002] and interhemispheric [main effect of group: F = 7.79, p = 0.008] functional connectivity were evident during the semantic verbal fluency test. At the whole-group level, poorer reading comprehension performance was associated with poorer performance in the semantic verbal fluency test. Moreover, poorer semantic verbal fluency test performance was associated with slower information processing speed, which is associated with reduced left medial PFC functional connectivity. Abnormal intrahemispheric and interhemispheric prefrontal hypoconnectivity is associated with deficits in executive processes essential for reading comprehension in ASD. Our study has provided important implications for the neuropsychological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying reading comprehension deficits in ASD. (shrink)

Reading comprehension is never considered a simple task in linguists’ views as it requires a full set of linguistic knowledge, such as word decoding, understanding syntactic and morphological structures, and deriving proper meanings from these structures in a given context. Bearing the simple view of reading, the primary goal of this study is to explore whether the split presentation of Chinese splittable compounds influences the recognition of the compounds in second language Chinese reading comprehension, and (...) how the reading skills, i.e., word decoding and linguistic comprehension, cooperate to complete this reading comprehension task. Splittable compounds in Chinese are typically verbs composed of two constituents with limited separability. The separable property of SCs and their vague morpho-syntactic status are supposed to cause difficulties for L2 Chinese learners in recognizing the compounds. Especially for those whose native language manifests lexical integrity, the split presentation of the compounds may invite the L2 Chinese readers to process them with a mechanism different from that for their non-split forms. To the best of our knowledge, the efforts on investigating this issue are insufficient. In this study, 27 Spanish speaking L2 Chinese learners were invited to complete tasks including reading and interpreting 6 selected SCs in the split and non-split forms, rating their familiarities with each SC and reporting the syntactic category of the SCs based on their existing linguistic knowledge. The results, showed that the split presentation of SCs did cause challenges for L2 Chinese learners in recognizing the compounds in the reading process, regardless of their Chinese proficiencies. The L2 Chinese participants performed significantly worse in recognizing split SCs in salient Verb-Object structures than recognizing those in unsalient Verb-Object structures. These findings underscore the importance of linguistic comprehension in L2 Chinese in-text word reading comprehension and suggest words as the basic processing units. (shrink)

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home promotes the importance of indoor environment qualities. With the settings and functions of home offices, an experiment was carried out to determine the interaction effects between indoor plants and traffic noise levels on the performance and environmental evaluations of English reading comprehension tasks and the performance of short-term breaks. A sample of 22 Chinese university students took part in the experiment. Two visual conditions and five TNLs were included. Participants’ accuracy (...) rates, eye movements, mental workload, and feelings about the environment were collected. The mental fatigue recovery, visual fatigue recovery, anxiety recovery, and unfriendly recovery were measured for the analysis of a 5-min short-term break. The results demonstrate plants have significant effects on ERCTs and short-term breaks, especially at 45 and 50 dBA TNL; the effects of TNLs on ERCTs’ eye movements and work environment satisfaction differ by the presence of plants, e.g., the average pupil diameter, lighting and layout satisfaction; The effects of indoor plants on ERCT differ by the range of TNLs. In conclusion, indoor plants are beneficial to home workers engaged in ERCT when TNL does not exceed 50 dBA. The current data highlight the importance of audio-visual interaction in home offices and provide insights into the interaction mechanism between indoor plants and traffic noise. (shrink)

This study investigated the association between syntactic awareness and L2 Chinese passage-level reading comprehension among 209 Chinese as a second language adult-learners. The participants were administered a character knowledge test, a vocabulary knowledge test, a morphological awareness test, a grammatical judgment and correction test, a word order test, and two reading comprehension tests. Partial correlation analyses showed that the participants’ performance in two syntactic awareness tasks were significantly positively correlated with their passage-level reading comprehension. (...) Multiple regression analyses revealed that syntactic awareness made a unique contribution to L2 Chinese reading even when the effects of age, major, gender, length of learning Chinese, character knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, and morphological awareness were controlled for. In addition, the word order knowledge had a stronger predicting power to L2 Chinese reading comprehension compared to the grammatical judgment/correction ability. (shrink)

Drawing on Moreno's cognitive-affective theory of learning with media, this research aims to investigate the effectiveness of different multimedia glosses on learners' vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension in a CALL environment. A total of 160 university students who learnt English as a foreign language in four classes participated in the study and were exposed to one of the four conditions: L2 definition only, L2 definition coupled with audio, L2 definition plus video, and L2 definition with picture. Participants were (...) asked to read eight hypermediated reading texts. Reading comprehension as well as vocabulary acquisition were measured using a pretest–posttest design. The results show first that all these four conditions led to students' vocabulary gains. More specifically, participants who had access to L2 definition plus picture and plus videos achieved significantly higher scores than the other two groups, L2 definition coupled with audio and L2 definition only. Concerning reading comprehension, all multimedia glossing presentation led to better reading comprehension, but no differences were found among all the glossing groups. The questionnaire and interview data indicate that students preferred L2 definition coupled with video and picture glosses, followed by audio and L2 definition only. The results reflect that multimedia glossing presentation creates a different effect on students' vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension, respectively. They also provide pedagogical implications for learning in times of COVID-19. (shrink)

Reading in Chinese is complex because readers should not only recognize characters by basic units but also integrate characters into words when reading text. While many efforts have been devoted to investigating the effect of sub-lexical orthographic knowledge in Chinese character reading, less is known about the role played by lexical orthographic knowledge at word level. A total of 424 secondary learners with Chinese as a second language in Hong Kong were assessed with character reading, (...) class='Hi'>reading comprehension, and two lexical orthographic knowledge tasks: lexical orthographic choice and lexical orthographic choice in context. Path analysis results demonstrated that these lexical orthographic skills significantly mediated the effect of character reading on comprehension, in which OKCC was a more critical mediator as its mediating effect was bigger than that of OKC. Further analyses showed that these mediating effects were significant only among students with richer learning experience. Our results illustrate the possible trajectory of CSL learners’ literacy development from character reading to reading comprehension and provide pedagogical implications for teaching and learning. (shrink)

Digital reading devices such as Kindle differ from paper books with respect to the kinesthetic and tactile feedback provided to the reader, but the role of these features in reading is rarely studied empirically. This experiment compares reading of a long text on Kindle DX and in print. Fifty participants (24 years old) read a 28 page (approx. one hour reading time) long mystery story on Kindle or in a print pocket book and completed several tests (...) measuring various levels of reading comprehension: engagement, recall, capacities to locate events in the text and reconstructing the plot of the story. Results showed that in most tests subjects performed identically whatever the reading medium. However, on measures related to chronology and temporality, those who had read in the print pocket book, performed better than those who had read on a Kindle. It is concluded that, basically comprehension was similar with both media, but, because kinesthetic feedback is less informative with kindle, readers were not as efficient to locate events in the space of the text and hence in the temporality of the story. We suggest that, to get a correct spatial representation of the text and consequently a coherent temporal organization of the story, readers would be reliant on the sensorimotor cues which are afforded by the manipulation of the book. (shrink)