Hind M. Alotaibi, Ahmed Alduais, Fawaz Qasem
et al.
Sensory integration theory (SIT), which posits that the neurological process of integrating sensory information from the environment and one’s body influences learning and behaviour, and the sensory processing measure (SPM), a psychometric tool with versions for individuals aged 4 months to 87 years, are fundamental to understanding and assessing sensory processing. This study examined the existing evidence on the SPM and SIT using scientometric and narrative methods. A search of Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection from 1983 to 2024 yielded 238 unique records after deduplication. Scientometric analysis, conducted with CiteSpace (Version 6.4.R1) and VOSviewer (Version 1.6.19) explored publication trends, keyword co-occurrences, and citation bursts. A narrative method, based on a purposive sample of studies selected by title relevance from the 238 records, provided qualitative insights into key themes and concepts. Scientometric analysis revealed 11 key clusters, including ‘sensory processing behaviour’, ‘classroom context’, and ‘using electroencephalogram (EEG) technology’, reflecting diverse research areas and a growing publication trend, particularly after 2011. A narrative analysis, guided by these clusters, explored sensory processing differences in children with developmental disorders like autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared to typically developing children, the relationship between sensory processing and other functional areas, the impact of classroom contexts on sensory processing, the use of EEG in sensory processing disorder (SPD) diagnosis, and the effectiveness of interventions like sound-based therapy and sensory integration therapy. The combined approach highlighted the wide application of the SPM and SIT, informing future research directions, such as longitudinal studies, comparative effectiveness research, and cultural adaptations of assessments and interventions.
Abstract Background In Norway’s welfare system, General Practitioners (GPs) issue sickness certificates (SCs) to document patient’s inability to work. These documents serve a dual role as medical evidence and as a basis for social welfare decisions. The language used in SCs can shape how non-medical stakeholders perceive a patient’s work capacity. This study examines how SC language constructs narratives of work ability, focusing on how it portrays patients’ limitations and prospects for recovery. Methods We conducted a qualitative discourse analysis of 155 SCs written by Norwegian GPs for patients under 35 years old with common mental health conditions. We focused on certificates issued around week 39 of the patient’s sick leave. Using discourse analysis techniques, we examined linguistic features that convey the patient’s work capacity and functional limitations. Results SCs predominantly emphasized incapacity and the necessity of work absence through discursive choices such as definitive language, amplified descriptions, and rhetorical strategies reinforcing limitations. Recovery potential was presented with tentative language, reflecting uncertainty in prognosis, while the temporal dimension of treatment was frequently framed as a barrier to returning to work. Additionally, the use of specialized terminology, generalized label, and elliptical constructions placed a significant interpretative burden on non-medical readers. Furthermore, SCs largely lacked explicit recommendations for workplace accommodations or interdisciplinary collaboration, limiting their utility in facilitating structured return-to-work strategies. Conclusions Time constraints, administrative pressures, and the dual roles of GPs as clinicians and bureaucrats shape the entire production of SCs. In turn, these discursive choices often reinforce narratives of incapacity. Enhancing SC relevance through structural modifications and interdisciplinary collaboration, including employer involvement in evaluating workplace accommodations, could improve welfare assessments and support tailored reintegration strategies. Positioning SCs as collaborative tools – rather than standalone assessments – may better align clinical evaluations with workplace realities and foster shared accountability for recovery and return-to-work efforts. SCs seem to place a disproportionate burden on GPs to translate medical conditions into work-related recommendations, often without the support or expertise required for such interdisciplinary evaluations.
Along with the popularity of Frozen 2 which later became the branding of Norwegian tourism, interest in tourism texts also increased. Therefore, researcher seek to what extent translated texts and visual analysis convey meaning. This research analyzed textual and visual tourism text titled “The Places in Norway that Inspired Frozen 2” from the visitnorway.com site. The purpose of this research are: (1) to understand the application of translation method in the tourism text analyzed, and (2) to understand the process of visual analysis of the illustrations in the tourism text analyzed. In this research, communicative translation that emphasize the transfer of contextual meaning from the source text into the target text is the most appropriate method to apply on the translation of the informative language tourism text. As for visual analysis in exploring general information related to the illustrations in the tourism text that could produce picture descriptions that support the need of information the source text author was to convey. Based on the application of these communicative translation method and visual analysis, results have shown that both are able to convey the meaning and purpose of the tourism text, which is to attract tourists to visit Norway by introducing nature and culture through its relevance to the Frozen film.
Published in 2021 by Presa Universitară Clujeană, ”A Lifetime Dedicated to Norwegian Language and Literature” is a celebratory scholarly work compiled and edited by the members of the Department of Scandinavian Languages and Literature at the Faculty of Letters in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in honour of Professor Sanda Tomescu Baciu, founder of The Norwegian Language and Literature BA program (1991), of the Department of Scandinavian Languages and Literature (2001) and disseminator of Norwegian culture, language and li-terature for over thirty years. Throughout her entire career, Professor Sanda Tomescu Baciu has never ceased to raise interest in Norwegian studies, and strive to offer her students the best academic resources, a warm and welcoming learning environment and also countless scholarship opportunities. Her contribution to the popularization and the increasing fascination with the North is immeasurably valuable to the academic community, not only in Romania, but also internationally. Her colleagues and editors of this volume have carefully selected and arranged a collection of congratulatory messages and academic essays from various fields encompassed in the Scandinavian studies.
The volume Rewriting Norse Mythology in Contemporary Norwegian Literature. The Search for Identity in a Multicultural World by Cristina Vișovan appeared at the publishing house Casa Cărții de Știință from Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in the collection "Nordica”, the only one of its kind dedicated entirely to Nordic literature at a national level, and has at its basis Mrs. Vișovan’s doctoral thesis that was successfully defended in 2019 at Babeș-Bolyai University under the supervision of the esteemed Professor Sanda Tomescu Baciu. Mrs. Vișovan is a graduate of the program English language and literature and Norwegian language and literature from the same university. Later, she continued her studies at the University of Oslo, where Mrs. Vișovan is a graduate of Viking and Medieval Studies.
Joakim Moestue Halvorsen, Nick Worth, Cathy Bulley
Introduction: Although several interventions have been proposed for frozen shoulder, there is a lack of evidence regarding the best care for the condition, especially concerning corticosteroid treatment and the number of injections used. The treatment strategies and clinical reasoning behind the management among physical therapists providing injection therapy have not previously been evaluated.
Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was distributed among 138 Norwegian physical therapists providing injection therapy to evaluate current practice regarding their management of frozen shoulder with corticosteroid injections. Descriptive statistics were used to identify trends in current practice, which were further evaluated in relation to the available literature.
Results: The majority of the 32 respondents used multiple ultrasound-guided intra-articular corticosteroid injections for frozen shoulder. None reported to usually achieve satisfactory results following only a single injection, while 87.1 % reported this following 2-3 injections. The use of functional outcome measures as part of the evaluation and decision-making is generally limited among the respondents.
Conclusion: Multiple intra-articular corticosteroid injections are currently used in practice in Norway, with the respondents reporting beneficial outcomes following 2-3 injections. However, their efficacy compared to a single injection needs further investigation.
The institution of the kindergarten serves important functions in western societies. The mandate of kindergarten staff reflects this, encompassing aspects of vital importance for children’s well-being and their learning and development processes. Empirical research is needed to scrutinise how kindergarten staff perform these tasks. Analyses of previous studies (Gulbrandsen, Johansson & Nilsen, 2002; Hopperstad, Hellem & Kjørholt, 2005; Borg, Backe-Hansen & Kristiansen, 2008) indicate that while assistants are the main occupational group in Norwegian kindergartens, they have rarely been engaged as informants in kindergarten research. This article reports results from a literature review that investigated which occupational groups have featured as informants in Norwegian kindergarten research from 2008 to 2017. The searches resulted in 149 hits; kindergarten assistants were included as informants in only 43 hits, and they were never the sole occupational group investigated. In closing, the article discusses the methodological and epistemological implications resulting from the skewed representation of kindergarten staff.
The value of oral corrective feedback for the development of metalinguistic knowledge has been acknowledged in the research literature for decades. Yet, teachers in second language teacher education programmes still tend to provide written feedback almost exclusively, leaving untapped potential for successful formative assessment. This study aims to investigate the potential complementarity of written and oral feedback through a qualitative case study of one teacher educator’s grammar feedback practices in English as a second language. Eighteen student teachers at a Norwegian university college received individual written and oral corrective feedback on their essays. The provided feedback was analysed using Ellis’s (2009) and Lyster and Ranta’s (1997) taxonomies. Inter- and intra-rater reliability tests confirmed the findings. The analysis shows that written and oral feedback fulfil different functions and have complementary roles. The described case may function as an inspiring example of exemplary practice for teacher educators and language teachers.
In September 2016, Raluca-Daniela Răduț, currently junior lecturer, Ph. D., at the Department of Scandinavian Languages and Literature at the Faculty of Letters, Babeș-Bolyai University, defended her Ph. D. dissertation entitled The Poetry of Jan Erik Vold and the Norwegian Lyric Modernism in the 1960s. Professor Sanda Tomescu Baciu (Babeș-Bolyai University) was the advisor for the Ph.D. project and Professor Henning Howlid Wærp (University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway) functioned as a tutor for Răduț during a stay in Tromsø, supported by EEA research grants. In 2018 the dissertation was published in book form at Casa Cărții de Știință, as a part of the series Colecția Nordica.
Sara M Vambheim,1 Magne Arve Flaten2 1Department of Psychology, UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, 2Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway Objectives: The present review investigated whether there are systematic sex differences in the placebo and the nocebo effect. Methods: A literature search was conducted in multiple electronic databases. Studies were included if the study compared a group or condition where a placebo was administered to a natural history group or similar cohort. Results: Eighteen studies were identified – 12 on placebo effects and 6 on nocebo effects. Chi-square tests revealed that 1) males responded more strongly to placebo treatment, and females responded more strongly to nocebo treatment, and 2) males responded with larger placebo effects induced by verbal information, and females responded with larger nocebo effects induced by conditioning procedures. Conclusion: This review indicates that there are sex differences in the placebo and nocebo effects, probably caused by sex differences in stress, anxiety, and the endogenous opioid system. Keywords: placebo response, nocebo response, placebo analgesia, nocebo hyperalgesia, sex differences
In this article I try to define arctic drama in a concrete and metaphorical way by touching upon the dramatic oeuvre of Knut Hamsun. In Play of Life Hamsun plays with nature and the polar as topos. The drama, situated in a small market town in the Nordland area of northern Norway, uses coastal nature and culture as a framework. Nature is a driving force in this pre-expressive drama where the mythical enlightens the inner and symbolic dimension of human actions and spiritual conditions. This article will also show how nature is used to reflect the inner world of the characters. I will end with a look into the northern-Norwegian identity, the authorship of Hamsun, and the biosophical dimensions studied by the philosopher Peter Wessel Zappfe.
This article emerges from two big questions: Who is Lukács’s Ibsen? and How does he fit into Lukács’s understanding of the history of bourgeois literature? Although many critics have insisted on Ibsen’s (counter)romanticism, Lukács locates Ibsen – whom he calls a romantic à rebours – more decisively in the “era of decay.” Of course, themes of degeneration are common in Ibsen’s plays and covered extensively by the scholarship, but Ibsen himself is infrequently described as decadent (in Nordau, he is “a mystic and an ego-maniac”). Even less often does one assert that Ibsen’s realism was subject to some form of late 19th century degeneration. In order to better understand what decadence can mean in the case of Ibsen, I consider Lukács’s readings of The Wild Duck and When We Dead Awaken. I then offer my own reading of When We Dead Awaken and, via that reading, my own definition of Ibsen’s decadence. At stake is a more comparative (and less idealized) understanding of what makes Ibsen’s drama modern.
Different kinds of omissions sometimes occur, or are perceived to occur, in traditional narratives and in tradition-inspired literature. A familiar instance is when a narrator realizes that he or she does not fully remember the story that he or she has begun to tell, and so leaves out part of it, which for listeners may possibly result in an unintelligible narrative. But many instances of narrative gap are not so obvious. From straightforward, objective gaps one can distinguish less-obvious subjective gaps: in many cases narrators do not leave out anything crucial or truly relevant from their exposition, and yet readers perceive gaps and take steps to fill them. The present paper considers four examples of subjective gaps drawn from ancient Greek literature (the Pandora myth), ancient Roman literature (the Pygmalion legend), ancient Hebrew literature (the Joseph legend), and early Christian literature (the Jesus legend). I consider the quite varied ways in which interpreters expand the inherited texts of these stories, such as by devising names, manufacturing motives, creating backstories, and in general filling in biographical ellipses. Finally, I suggest an explanation for the phenomenon of subjective gaps, arguing that, despite their variety, they have a single cause.
The classical languages, Greek and Latin, have a special kind of afterlife, namely through their explosive expansion into other languages, from antiquity until today. The aim of the present paper is to give a broad survey of this field of study – enough to show that there is a lot to find. As examples are chosen English, Spanish and Norwegian – three Indo-European languages, all of them with rich material for our purpose. In the national philologies, the treatment of the Greek and Latin elements are often not given special attention, but are studied alongside other aspects of the language in question. A cooperation with classical philology would be an advantage. Moreover, only classical philology can give the full picture, seen from the point of view of Greek and Latin, and explain why and how these languages have lended so many words and word elements to so many vernacular languages. Another aspect of the field, which I call ‘international words’, is the enormous potential that these words have, if disseminated in a good way to the general population. If taught systematically, the learner will be able to see the connections between words, learn new words faster, and develop a deeper understanding of the vocabularies in – for example – English, Spanish and Norwegian.
“Poor daddy”–child's perspective and iconotext in three award-winning picture books. The Western dichotomy between children and adults characterize our opinion both on children and childhood. In this understanding framework the children are seen as something totally different from adults. Can artistic children's literature modify this habitual thinking about such hierarchical levels? The three books to examine closer have all won awards from Ministry of Culture as the best Norwegian picture book that year. Both Svein Nyhus: Pappa [Daddy] (1998), Hans Sande and Gry Moursund: Arkimedes og brødskiva [Archimedes and the Sandwich] (2000) and Stein Erik Lunde and Øyvind Torseter: Eg kan ikkje sove no [I Can't Sleep Now] (2008) are first-person narratives where the main character is a child. In such picture books visual and verbal point of view rarely are the same. The illustrations usually observe the central character from a distance and then allow the reader not only to adopt the narrator's point of view. What kind of ambiguities in the complex relationship between text and images give signals to the readers–and to the understanding of the narrator's position and perspective? What can this perspective and the iconotext in the three books tell us about today's children's role?
Keywords: Norwegian picture books, childhood, first person narratives, text and image, the dichotomy between children and adults, Svein Nyhus, Hans Sande, Gry Moursund, Stein Erik Lunde, Øyvind Torseter
The article is an overview of Sami literature, past and present, with a specific emphasis on the connection between tradition and innovation, in which literature is regarded in a broader sense than only limited to the written word. Thus the relationship between the traditional epic yoik songs and contemporary poetry is being dealt with, as is the multimedia approach that several Sami artists have chosen for their creative expression. It is almost more the rule than an exemption that Sami artists express themselves through the use of more than only one medium. Through the introduction to Sami literature, the reader also gets acquainted with the history and the culture of the Sami, who are the indigenous people of the northern regions of Scandinavia, Finland and the Kola peninsula in Russia.