How customer service representatives lose control of the call

The contact centre industry has been growing rapidly in the Philippines over the last two decades and now boasts over one million customer service representatives (CSRs). Outsourcing work to this destination, where English may not be the first language, can lead to communication difficulties. Problems of locally recruited CSRs ‘losing control of the call’, leading to customer frustration and poor feedback, have previously been attributed to poor grammar and incomprehensible accents. However, more recent research has suggested that such communicative problems actually stem from a more general inability to build relationships and appropriately select, explain and describe information about the product or service and, if needed, instruct the client on what to do. This paper therefore examines ‘losing control of a call’ in terms of the overall exchange. Specifically, two calls were examined to analyse how information was organised, packaged and developed to the satisfaction (or not) of the client. We argue that discrete grammatical inaccuracies and regional accents do not result in losing control as much as the way overall meaning is managed by the CSR. The implications of these initial findings could be of importance to the recruitment, training, coaching and appraisal of CSRs in an industry where the nature of communication breakdown remains poorly understood.

Research note: This photograph has been altered: Testing the effectiveness of image forensic labeling on news image credibility

Despite the ubiquity of images and videos in online news environments, much of the existing research on misinformation and its correction is solely focused on textual misinformation, and little is known about how ordinary users evaluate fake or manipulated images and the most effective ways to label and correct such falsities. We designed a visual forensic label of image authenticity, Picture-O-Meter, and tested the label’s efficacy in relation to its source and placement in an experiment with 2440 participants. Our findings demonstrate that, despite human beings’ general inability to detect manipulated images on their own, image forensic labels are an effective tool for counteracting visual misinformation.

Information Skills: The Reflections and Perceptions of Student Teachers

Part of the “information rich but knowledge poor” discussion concerns physical access to information, but another aspect relates to whether people can use the information they have accessed effectively. In education this is in relation to pupils, but it also concerns teachers. If teachers fail to understand the value and relevance of information skills to themselves as learners, will this create problems in developing those skills in their own pupils? This paper focuses on interviews with (1) professionals who have expectations of student teachers regarding information skills, (2) student teachers reflecting on their own information skills. The data is set within the context of information skills development and the present teacher training ethos in Scotland. Results so far indicate three main issues: first, a lack of understanding about the term information skills; second, a general inability to view information skills as generic skills in a holistic way; and third, an inability and/or lack of opportunity, in many cases, to reflect on abilities and shortfalls.

EXPRESS: On the tip of the pen: Effects of character-level lexical variables and handwriter-level individual differences on orthographic retrieval difficulties in Chinese handwriting

In the past decades, Chinese speakers have suffered from difficulties in handwriting, which include tip-of-the-pen (TOP) states (knowing a character but failing to fully handwrite it) and character amnesia in general (a general inability to handwrite a character despite being able to recognize it). The current study presents a systematic empirical investigation of the effects of character-level lexical characteristics and handwriter-level individual differences on TOP, character amnesia and partial orthographic access in TOP states. Using a spelling-to-dictation task, we had 64 participants to handwrite 200 simplified Chinese characters. We showed that, at the lexical level, participants experienced more TOP and character amnesia in handwriting if a character was less frequent, was acquired later in life, was embedded in a less familiar word, or had more strokes; TOP but not character amnesia was additionally affected by phonetic radical order and spelling regularity. At the handwriter level, people also experienced more TOP and character amnesia if they had more digital exposure, less pen exposure, or less print exposure. In a TOP state, partial orthographic access was more likely if a character was acquired later in life, had fewer strokes, or had a left-right or top-down composition or if a handwriter had less digital exposure.

Land inventory of territorial communities as a key element of effective land management

The main resource of OTG is land and the most effective management of this resource provides an opportunity to fill the local budget, develop the community, carry out error-free and as clear as possible land management, complying with current legislation while taking into account the interests of the community. It also provides transparency in land management, which increases public confidence in local authorities. If as of today OTG is not provided with complete and up-to-date information on the condition, qualitative and quantitative indicators of community land resources. This does not meet the challenges of today. The lack of an updated cartographic basis and land inventory causes: inability to carry out the process of strategic planning of settlements and communities in general, inability to attract investment, low investment attractiveness of the territory, inability to manage land resources in full, inability to meet the needs of the population. OTG land inventory will allow for a full audit of land resources, and will develop community infrastructure, increase investment attractiveness, will identify all problems that have arisen regarding the management of the community.

Can we repeat what we do not say in L2?

The paper analyzes the results of a sentence repetition task performed by Lithuanian L2 speakers of different language proficiency levels. This paper focuses on a set of targeted verb forms included in the task because they are less likely to occur in free production. The different forms the speakers produced are analyzed by considering their correspondence (or not) to the targeted form, by comparing the speakers among each other with respect to their learner variety and by comparing the task results to the repertoire of the same speaker in the free production data. In multiple cases of failed re-production, the analysis examines what the targeted forms were substituted with and tries to identify possible reasons for such substitution. This analysis confirms the general inability of the basic variety speakers to distinguish between morphologically different forms and the dominant trend showing that L2 learners are more meaning-focused than form-focused. The analysis also shows growing implicit knowledge, or at least gradual passive acquisition, of the less frequent forms as the speaker advances in the post-basic continuum.

General Introduction

First, this introduction sets out the main objective of this book, which is to determine the status and evaluate the contribution made by the three foremost environmental principles—polluter-pays, prevention, and precaution—to the construction of environmental law at the international, EU, and national levels. Second, it highlights that the concept of risk has become the activating concept of modern environmental law. Most of the environmental risks produced by industrial society have been the subject of preventive regulatory measures. This introduction explains that a new generation of risks has emerged due to the general inability of scientists to make reliable predictions about hazards due to uncertainties or insufficient knowledge and, on the other hand, by the impossibility of assessing the character of damage that might occur. It focuses on the possibility that law-makers may choose more open concepts, particularly those principles for which no fixed definition can be found.

‘The machine man of 1925’

This chapter moves beyond the human sciences, to develop the exploration (launched in the Introductions and Chapter 1) of the re-imagining of human nature and potentiality. It investigates the representation of the machine in the series, contrasting the volumes concerned with the dehumanizing effects of mechanized mass production with those taking a more nuanced and original line, arguing that the machine liberates human thought and creativity (a topic of evident relevance to today’s discussions of human-computer interaction and AI). It argues that To-Day and To-Morrow’s presentation of technology as prosthesis offers a more benign vision of mechanized futurity than the ‘prosthetic modernism’ of writers like Marinetti and Wyndham Lewis. H. Stafford Hatfield’s Automaton: or, The Future of the Mechanical Man (1928) is examined for the way in which it floats the possibility of a ‘mechanical brain’, yet is indicative of a general inability to predict the imminent electronic computer—thus raising a question of the limits of prediction in relation to thought-paradigms. A line is suggested from the series’ running together of technology, media and psychology, to the development of media studies, especially as articulated by Marshall McLuhan.

Lesbians Have More Fun: Phallocentrism and Its Effects on Desire And Satisfaction in Women

Objective: to study sexual desire, satisfaction, and orgasm in women who have sex with men (WSM) and women who have sex with women (WSW), as a function of the practices used and the mutuality of the sexual activity. Design and Method: 1000 women (WSM=878, WSW=122) completed a selfreport online questionnaire regarding sexual desire, sexual practices, and frequency of solitary and partnered orgasms. Results: There was no difference between the two groups on the frequency of orgasm during solitary sex. Compared to WSM, WSW reported having more sexual desire, more mutual and varied partnered sex, and more frequent orgasms during partnered sex. Conclusions: Our results suggest that diminished desire in some WSM may be related to the sexual practices themselves and not to a general inability to enjoy sex.

The Archaeology of the Archaic Periods in East Texas

The archaeology of the Archaic periods—Early, ca. 10,000–8000 years B.P., Middle, ca. 8000–5000 years B.P., and Late, ca. 5000–2500 years B.P.—in East Texas is not well understood in broad terms, although valuable information on the archaeological character of the Archaic peoples in the region has been gained over the years from the detailed investigation of a few specific sites. New knowledge concerning the archaeology of the Archaic periods in East Texas is slow in coming, due in part to the kinds of Archaic sites that have been identified by archaeologists during survey investigations and/or recommended by archeologists, state agencies, and federal agencies for further work; a general inability to identify contextually intact buried sites in the valleys of East Texas rivers and creeks; and the lack of development of a chronology based on well–controlled absolute dating of features or buried occupation zones in single component or multi–component stratified sites. This article summarizes what is currently known about Archaic peoples and groups over this lengthy period of time in the East Texas region, including the kinds of sites that have been investigated, their known or estimated chronological age, and their associated material culture remains; it does not attempt to rectify the limitations of the known Archaic archaeological record, but rather judiciously presents archaeological findings from selected sites in East Texas, as well as in northwestern Louisiana. Some broad themes of the Archaic in the Eastern Woodlands and Southeastern U.S. also come under consideration, particularly the lack of complexity and the notable apparent absence of evidence of Archaic ritual beliefs seen in the East Texas archaeological record compared to neighboring regions.