Serdecznie zapraszamy na kolejne spotkanie z cyklu WA Wednesday Lunch Talk, które odbędzie się 18 czerwca o godz. 13:15 — tym razem spotykamy się w Auli.
W ramach spotkania wysłuchamy dwóch prezentacji w języku angielskim:
- Dr Karolina Baranowska: “Active Aging: Learning English and developing fine psychomotor abilities”
In the early 21st century, there has been growing interest in Foreign Language Geragogy (Słowik-Krogulec 2021). While much research still focuses on children and working-age adults (Pfenninger and Singleton 2019), studies increasingly demonstrate that foreign language learning can enhance the quality of life in older adulthood (Koutska 2024). It promotes linguistic self-confidence, communication, autonomy, and executive functions (Pfenninger and Polz 2018), and serves as psychosocial rehabilitation, increasing life satisfaction. In this talk, I will present preliminary findings of an interdisciplinary study that explored the effects of using mini-EDUball—educational balls that integrate physical and cognitive activity—on English vocabulary acquisition and fine psychomotor development in older adults. The study involved participants aged 60+, who were divided into four groups with different types of physical and language input. Over a 12-week English course, groups varied in the use of mini-EDUball or anti-stress balls for either language practice or fine motor training.
The study draws on the interdisciplinary EDUball program, officially approved by the Polish Ministry of Education, which integrates physical activity with cognitive learning (Rokita and Cichy 2014). Prior research has shown that this method supports the development of literacy, numeracy, and motor coordination in children (Cichy 2010; Kaczmarczyk 2013; Cichy et al. 2015), and its adaptation for older adults is currently being explored.
During the talk, I will also demonstrate how participants’ fine psychomotor abilities were measured using the MLS battery of the Vienna Test System (Schuhfried 2013), which assesses hand motor efficiency across various contact surfaces.
- Dr Halszka Bąk: “The “norm” in norming databases of affective language”
When you sit down to resolve a research problem at the intersection of language and affect (or emotion), you will typically not create your own stimuli. Rather, you will reach for one of the apparently abundant databases of affective language with appropriate norms compiled for research purposes. However, how often do you ponder the construct validity behind the affective dimensions you rely on to select the words for the stimulus material for your study? The study I am working on and will be presenting here is a meta‑analysis which evaluates what we know about the nature of basic affective dimensions (valence, arousal, dominance) based on the most commonly used affective language norms. In it, I looked at the key parameters that determine construct validity behind the affective dimensions of language. This included factors like: languages existing norms come from, the role of translation in the compilation of these databases, the populations the norming studies’ participants come from, the way affective dimensions are constructed within study designs. The preliminary results show fundamentally inconsistent reporting of study and translation procedures and marked variability in the constructs of affect. Among the existing norms, Germanic languages and female college-age populations are overrepresented. Correlations between the norms of valence often reach ceiling values, but those for arousal and dominance range from low to moderate. Overall, the illusion of an abundance of affective language resources obscures serious problems with the norms many empirical studies rely on. The analysis concludes with recommendations for future directions in affective norming studies, focusing on a recommended standard of reporting in those studies.
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