York University

About: York University is a education organization based out in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 18899 authors who have published 43357 publications receiving 1568560 citations.

The Function of Fiction is the Abstraction and Simulation of Social Experience

Abstract: Fiction literature has largely been ignored by psychology researchers because its only function seems to be entertainment, with no connection to empirical validity. We argue that literary narratives have a more important purpose. They offer models or simulations of the social world via abstraction, simplification, and compression. Narrative fiction also creates a deep and immersive simulative experience of social interactions for readers. This simulation facilitates the communication and understanding of social information and makes it more compelling, achieving a form of learning through experience. Engaging in the simulative experiences of fiction literature can facilitate the understanding of others who are different from ourselves and can augment our capacity for empathy and social inference.

Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children.

Abstract: Studies often report that bilingual participants possess a smaller vocabulary in the language of testing than monolinguals, especially in research with children. However, each study is based on a small sample so it is difficult to determine whether the vocabulary difference is due to sampling error. We report the results of an analysis of 1,738 children between 3 and 10 years old and demonstrate a consistent difference in receptive vocabulary between the two groups. Two preliminary analyses suggest that this difference does not change with different language pairs and is largely confined to words relevant to a home context rather than a school context.

Phrase sets for evaluating text entry techniques

Abstract: In evaluations of text entry methods, participants enter phrases of text using a technique of interest while performance data are collected. This paper describes and publishes (via the internet) a collection of 500 phrases for such evaluations. Utility programs are also provided to compute statistical properties of the phrase set, or any other phrase set. The merits of using a pre-defined phrase set are described as are methodological considerations, such as attaining results that are generalizable and the possible addition of punctuation and other characters.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Institutional Theory: New Perspectives on Private Governance

Abstract: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a pervasive topic in the business literature, but has largely neglected the role of institutions. This introductory article to the Special Issue of Socio-Economic Review examines the potential contributions of institutional theory to understanding CSR as a mode of governance. This perspective suggests going beyond grounding CSR in the voluntary behaviour of companies, and understanding the larger historical and political determinants of whether and in what forms corporations take on social responsibilities. Historically, the prevailing notion of CSR emerged through the defeat of more institutionalized forms of social solidarity in liberal market economies. Meanwhile, CSR is more tightly linked to formal institutions of stakeholder participation or state intervention in other advanced economies. The tensions between business-driven and multi-stakeholder forms of CSR extend to the transnational level, where the form and meaning of CSR remain highly contested. CSR research and practice thus rest on a basic paradox between a liberal notion of voluntary engagement and a contrary implication of socially binding responsibilities. Institutional theory seems to be a promising avenue to explore how the boundaries between business and society are constructed in different ways, and improve our understanding of the effectiveness of CSR within the wider institutional field of economic governance.