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Music has a priming effect on product selection. The purpose of this paper is to extend the current understanding on this issue using an experimental design incorporating behavioural and brainwave data.

An experiment with 40 participants was conducted to explore how and why wine tasting preferences would be primed by different genres of musical stimuli. Electroencephalographic measurement was adopted to measure participant brainwave activity in two experiments, each involving two rounds of wine tasting, and the treatment was administered between the two rounds.

Significant associations between the musical stimulus genre and participant change in wine selection were found, and the musical stimuli resulted in different brainwave activities because participant β and γ wave activities significantly differed in the first and second wine tasting rounds. Correlational analyses indicated that α, β and γ wave activities generated by the musical stimuli were significantly but negatively correlated with α wave activity. α wave activity in the musical stimulus phases was significantly negatively correlated with β wave activity in the second round of wine tasting, and the other associations were significant and positive.

This study highlighted the priming effect of musical stimuli in wine tasting. Empirical evidence derived from experimental research was analysed with behavioural and brainwave data. This study’s original contribution is that it explored wine tasting preferences from a neuromarketing perspective. The results of this study can provide empirical evidence on how to effectively use music in marketing strategies.

The aim of the article is to develop a framework for assessment for contemporary commercial music (CCM) in a music department that is still organised in a traditional way. Assessment of CCM in tertiary institutions and external graded music exams were described and analysed, followed by the presentation of an assessment framework.

This research design is a content analysis. Data was collected through purposive sampling of primary sources of CCM syllabi. These syllabi are used descriptively and analytically for comparison.

The major findings from the content analysis are presented as an assessment framework for CCM. The assessment framework has implications for teaching and learning vocal CCM at both undergraduate and postgraduate in higher education.

The study focused on the development of assessment criteria for CCM, in a music department where no degree specialisation for CCM exists, and CCM is manifested in the principal instrument only. The framework for assessment may be useful to practitioners and academics who are attempting to introduce CCM in classically oriented music departments and where external constraints prohibit the introduction of a degree specialising in CCM.

This article presents an authentic assessment framework for CCM, that considers its style and performance practices.

Cultural intermediaries define the standards many consumers use when evaluating cultural products. Yet, little research has focused on whether cultural intermediaries may systematically differ from each other with regard to the standards they emphasize. The purpose of this paper is to build on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production to examine how the type of subfield reviewed and/or the cultural intermediary’s expertise (or “field-specific cultural capital”) affect the standards an intermediary uses.

This paper employed a computer-aided content analysis of the full corpus of “Rolling Stone” music album reviews (1967-2014).

Critics with lower field-specific cultural capital reflect the same logic as the subfield they are critiquing. Critics with higher field-specific cultural capital reflect the opposite logic.

Bourdieu was ambivalent about whether cultural intermediaries will reflect the logic of a subfield. Results show that the answer depends on the intermediary’s field-specific cultural capital. The results also reinforce previous findings that individuals with high field-specific cultural capital are more likely to break with the logic of a field.

Not all intermediaries are created equal. Producers and consumers who rely on cultural intermediaries should understand the intermediary’s critical analysis within the context of his/her experience.

This is one of the first studies to examine how a cultural intermediary’s field-specific cultural capital impacts his or her work. The findings are based on a large review sample and include reviewers’ analyses as they developed from having lower to higher field-specific cultural capital.

The main objective of the present study is to explore whether there are variations in the employment of evaluative language resources by male and female writers. More specifically, the study focuses on variations, if any, that can be attributed to difference in gender.

The study compared and contrasted forty recommendation letters written by male academics to the same number of letters written by female recommenders. The study uses both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

The investigation of three attitudinal resources in letters of recommendations showed that the most employed resource was the judgment sub-system. The appreciation domain was in the second position, and the least frequent was the affect. The results also revealed no statistically significant variations in attitude sub-systems: Affect and appreciation as the writers in both groups (males and females) employed almost the same options in each. In respect with judgment, however, the analysis explored significant differences between the two sets as male academics used more judgment resources than females.

The main contributions of this study may be as follows: first, it is one of very few studies drawing on the attitude-category of appraisal system, as an analytical tool to examine gender differences in recommendation letters very particularly on the ones written by non-native speakers of English. Second, the gender factor is central in the genre of the recommendation letters and hence researchers should be cognizant of its role as certain variations might be impacted by it. Third, the lists of tokens can be offered as heuristics for academics to have most common words or phrases to use in their letters. Finally, the findings can hopefully bear some important pedagogical implications, very specifically for novice and non-native academic writers of recommendations letters.

This paper is a corpus-driven study of written electronic texts, particularly the “About Us” sections in the university websites of 41 members of the Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU). This inquiry is important because it will provide an insight as to how AAOU members describe and portray themselves in the World Wide Web, a platform which is highly utilized in the field of distance education. This will also lead to the understanding of conventional knowledge among AAOU members during the period of study. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Guided by Swales’ (1990) seminal work on genre analysis, the researchers conducted a three-part genre analysis which involved identification and analysis of moves, keywords, and concordance lines.

Results of the keyword analysis were conducted using the AntConc application. Anthony (2017) found that the top 100 keywords with positive keyness exemplified inherent characteristics of open and distance learning institutions as well as characteristics common to higher education institutions and their thrusts. The analysis also found that the use of adjectives and verbs with positive denotations is common in the “About Us” sections. Concordance for several keywords related to the overarching theme of the AAOU 2017 Conference then revealed that the AAOU members are active in the discourse about accessibility, assessment, and quality, while there is not much discourse on openness, inclusivity, and justice. Meanwhile, subscribing to equality and equity could still be a point of discussion among the AAOU members as the concordance analysis revealed more discourse on equality than equity as a goal and principle. Overall, results of the genre analysis resonated with previous studies of the academic genre as the “About Us” sections are promotional in both authoritarian and inclusive ways.

The inquiry will provide the members of the AAOU with an overview of their common communicative purposes, overused or underused keywords, and their usage of these words which they may opt to work on in the future.

The purpose of this study is to survey the landscape of online collections of digital games.

First, the study identifies existing sites hosting collections and criteria that make a collection valuable for research, then it reports on sites that fit the criteria and analyzes trends.

Most sites provide simple binary downloads, but some choose encapsulation. Common metadata terms consistently include genre, year of release and publisher. Most sites claim the right to provide their collections as “abandonware,” but remove games if they are asked to.

This study was conducted using a very limited subcategory of digital games, which could be expanded in other studies. Future research may require a multilingual team to account for collections based in non–English-speaking countries. Direct communication with sites’ management may be valuable in the future as well, but was not conducted in this study.

The study identifies practices that have developed organically in this field without any guiding standards. Understanding these may aid in Humanities research into digital games, as well as potential collection development in the future.

Digital games are increasingly important as cultural artifacts, and there is a growing effort to preserve them for the future, but there are no standards for collecting and providing them. Understanding how this is currently done can help in providing access into the future for both casual and analytical use.

While game preservation is a growing and active field of research, no study has been published in recent years on this particular subject. It will be valuable for the development of future collections and for research using current ones.