Are pictures good for learning new vocabulary in a foreign language? Only if you think they are not.

Science.gov (United States)

Carpenter, Shana K; Olson, Kellie M

2012-01-01

The current study explored whether new words in a foreign language are learned better from pictures than from native language translations. In both between-subjects and within-subject designs, Swahili words were not learned better from pictures than from English translations (Experiments 1-3). Judgments of learning revealed that participants exhibited greater overconfidence in their ability to recall a Swahili word from a picture than from a translation (Experiments 2-3), and Swahili words were also considered easier to process when paired with pictures rather than translations (Experiment 4). When this overconfidence bias was eliminated through retrieval practice (Experiment 2) and instructions warning participants to not be overconfident (Experiment 3), Swahili words were learned better from pictures than from translations. It appears, therefore, that pictures can facilitate learning of foreign language vocabulary--as long as participants are not too overconfident in the power of a picture to help them learn a new word.

Language abstraction in word of mouth

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schellekens, G.A.C.; Verlegh, P.W.J.; Smidts, A.

2010-01-01

This research examines the language that consumers use in word of mouth. For both positive and negative product experiences, we demonstrate that consumers use more abstract terms when they describe experiences that are in line with the valence of their product attitude. This effect cannot be

Efficiency of Picture Description and Storytelling Methods in Language Sampling According to the Mean Length of Utterance Index

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Salime Jafari

2012-10-01

Full Text Available Background and Aim: Due to limitation of standardized tests for Persian-speakers with language disorders, spontaneous language sampling collection is an important part of assessment of languageprotocol. Therefore, selection of a language sampling method, which will provide information of linguistic competence in a short time, is important. Therefore, in this study, we compared the languagesamples elicited with picture description and storytelling methods in order to determine the effectiveness of the two methods.Methods: In this study 30 first-grade elementary school girls were selected with simple sampling. To investigate picture description method, we used two illustrated stories with four pictures. Languagesamples were collected through storytelling by telling a famous children’s story. To determine the effectiveness of these two methods the two indices of duration of sampling and mean length ofutterance (MLU were compared.Results: There was no significant difference between MLU in description and storytelling methods(p>0.05. However, duration of sampling was shorter in the picture description method than the storytelling method (p<0.05.Conclusion: Findings show that, the two methods of picture description and storytelling have the same potential in language sampling. Since, picture description method can provide language samples with the same complexity in a shorter time than storytelling, it can be used as a beneficial method forclinical purposes.

Processing abstract language modulates motor system activity.

Science.gov (United States)

Glenberg, Arthur M; Sato, Marc; Cattaneo, Luigi; Riggio, Lucia; Palumbo, Daniele; Buccino, Giovanni

2008-06-01

Embodiment theory proposes that neural systems for perception and action are also engaged during language comprehension. Previous neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies have only been able to demonstrate modulation of action systems during comprehension of concrete language. We provide neurophysiological evidence for modulation of motor system activity during the comprehension of both concrete and abstract language. In Experiment 1, when the described direction of object transfer or information transfer (e.g., away from the reader to another) matched the literal direction of a hand movement used to make a response, speed of responding was faster than when the two directions mismatched (an action-sentence compatibility effect). In Experiment 2, we used single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to study changes in the corticospinal motor pathways to hand muscles while reading the same sentences. Relative to sentences that do not describe transfer, there is greater modulation of activity in the hand muscles when reading sentences describing transfer of both concrete objects and abstract information. These findings are discussed in relation to the human mirror neuron system.

Are Pictures Good for Learning New Vocabulary in a Foreign Language? Only If You Think They Are Not

Science.gov (United States)

Carpenter, Shana K.; Olson, Kellie M.

2012-01-01

The current study explored whether new words in a foreign language are learned better from pictures than from native language translations. In both between-subjects and within-subject designs, Swahili words were not learned better from pictures than from English translations (Experiments 1-3). Judgments of learning revealed that participants…

Binary Opposition Sociolinguistic Picture of the World (on the Material of Modern English Language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Natalia B. Boyeva-Omelechko

2017-03-01

Full Text Available The article is topical due to the interest of scientists to the problems of interaction of society and language and the role of language in constructing and reconstructing political reality. The authors of the article introduce the notion of the sociolinguistic picture of the world. This picture reflects different aspects of the phenomenon «society» with the help of words which may be called «sociolinguisms». The words in question cover such spheres of society as economical, social, political and spiritual ones. The authors put forward the idea that binary oppositions are typical of the sociolinguistic picture of the world because social phenomena usually contain interdependent and at the same time mutually excluding each other sides which are revealed by the conscience and reflecteded in the language. Unfortunately only some of these oppositions are represented in the dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms. The authors stress that their range is much wider and can be described on the basis of different types of general and explanatory dictionaries with the help of linguistic methods of investigation. Special attention is paid to national peculiarities and axiological properties of antonyms-sociolinguisms.

A Comparison of Preschool Children's Discussions with Parents during Picture Book and Chapter Book Reading

Science.gov (United States)

Leech, Kathryn A.; Rowe, Meredith L.

2014-01-01

Discussions that occur during book reading between parents and preschool children relate to children's language development, especially discussions during picture books that include extended discourse, a form of abstract language. While a recent report shows increased chapter book reading among families with preschool children, it is unknown…

The words children hear: Picture books and the statistics for language learning

OpenAIRE

Montag, Jessica L.; Jones, Michael N.; Smith, Linda B.

2015-01-01

Young children learn language from the speech they hear. Previous work suggests that the statistical diversity of words and of linguistic contexts is associated with better language outcomes. One potential source of lexical diversity is the text of picture books that caregivers read aloud to children. Many parents begin reading to their children shortly after birth, so this is potentially an important source of linguistic input for many children. We constructed a corpus of 100 children’s pict...

Selected Translated Abstracts of Chinese-Language Climate Change Publications

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cushman, R.M.; Burtis, M.D.

1999-05-01

This report contains English-translated abstracts of important Chinese-language literature concerning global climate change for the years 1995-1998. This body of literature includes the topics of adaptation, ancient climate change, climate variation, the East Asia monsoon, historical climate change, impacts, modeling, and radiation and trace-gas emissions. In addition to the biological citations and abstracts translated into English, this report presents the original citations and abstracts in Chinese. Author and title indexes are included to assist the reader in locating abstracts of particular interest.

Abstract Interpretation as a Programming Language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mads Rosendahl

2013-09-01

Full Text Available In David Schmidt's PhD work he explored the use of denotational semantics as a programming language. It was part of an effort to not only treat formal semantics as specifications but also as interpreters and input to compiler generators. The semantics itself can be seen as a program and one may examine different programming styles and ways to represent states. Abstract interpretation is primarily a technique for derivation and specification of program analysis. As with denotational semantics we may also view abstract interpretations as programs and examine the implementation. The main focus in this paper is to show that results from higher-order strictness analysis may be used more generally as fixpoint operators for higher-order functions over lattices and thus provide a technique for immediate implementation of a large class of abstract interpretations. Furthermore, it may be seen as a programming paradigm and be used to write programs in a circular style.

Selected Translated Abstracts of Russian-Language Climate-Change Publications, II. Clouds

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ravina, C.B.

1994-01-01

This report presents abstracts (translated into English) of important Russian-language literature concerning clouds as they relate to climate change. In addition to the bibliographic citations and abstracts translated into English, this report presents the original citations and abstracts in Russian. Author and title indexes are included, to assist the reader in locating abstracts of particular interest.

Language-Agnostic Relation Extraction from Abstracts in Wikis

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nicolas Heist

2018-03-01

Full Text Available Large-scale knowledge graphs, such as DBpedia, Wikidata, or YAGO, can be enhanced by relation extraction from text, using the data in the knowledge graph as training data, i.e., using distant supervision. While most existing approaches use language-specific methods (usually for English, we present a language-agnostic approach that exploits background knowledge from the graph instead of language-specific techniques and builds machine learning models only from language-independent features. We demonstrate the extraction of relations from Wikipedia abstracts, using the twelve largest language editions of Wikipedia. From those, we can extract 1.6 M new relations in DBpedia at a level of precision of 95%, using a RandomForest classifier trained only on language-independent features. We furthermore investigate the similarity of models for different languages and show an exemplary geographical breakdown of the information extracted. In a second series of experiments, we show how the approach can be transferred to DBkWik, a knowledge graph extracted from thousands of Wikis. We discuss the challenges and first results of extracting relations from a larger set of Wikis, using a less formalized knowledge graph.

Abstraction and Modularization in the BETA Programming Language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Madsen, Ole Lehrmann

2000-01-01

abstraction mechanisms and lead to a number of new possibilities. Patterns and their instances are intended for modeling concepts and phenomena in the application domain and provide the logical structure of a given system. Modularization is viewed as a means for describing the physical structure of a program....... Modules are units of program text that may be edited, stored in libraries, exist in different variants, be separately compiled, etc. Modularization is provided by a language-independent mechanism based on the context-free grammar of the language. In principle, any correct sequence of terminal...

Use of Syllabic Logograms to Help Dyslexic Readers of English Visualize Abstract Words as Pictures

Science.gov (United States)

Saez-Rodriguez, Alberto

2009-01-01

Background: Dyslexics read concrete words better than abstract ones. As a result, one of the major problems facing dyslexics is the fact that only part of the information that they require to communicate is concrete, i.e. can easily be pictured. Method: The experiment involved dyslexic third-grade, English-speaking children (8-year-olds) divided…

Selected Translated Abstracts of Chinese-Language Climate Change Publications; TOPICAL

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cushman, R.M.; Burtis, M.D.

1999-01-01

This report contains English-translated abstracts of important Chinese-language literature concerning global climate change for the years 1995-1998. This body of literature includes the topics of adaptation, ancient climate change, climate variation, the East Asia monsoon, historical climate change, impacts, modeling, and radiation and trace-gas emissions. In addition to the biological citations and abstracts translated into English, this report presents the original citations and abstracts in Chinese. Author and title indexes are included to assist the reader in locating abstracts of particular interest

How a Visual Language of Abstract Shapes Facilitates Cultural and International Border Crossings

Science.gov (United States)

Conroy, Arthur Thomas, III

2016-01-01

This article describes a visual language comprised of abstract shapes that has been shown to be effective in communicating prior knowledge between and within members of a small team or group. The visual language includes a set of geometric shapes and rules that guide the construction of the abstract diagrams that are the external representation of…

Abstract concepts, language and sociality: from acquisition to inner speech.

Science.gov (United States)

Borghi, Anna M; Barca, Laura; Binkofski, Ferdinand; Tummolini, Luca

2018-08-05

The problem of representation of abstract concepts, such as 'freedom' and 'justice', has become particularly crucial in recent years, owing to the increased success of embodied and grounded views of cognition. We will present a novel view on abstract concepts and abstract words. Since abstract concepts do not have single objects as referents, children and adults might rely more on input from others to learn them; we, therefore, suggest that linguistic and social experience play an important role for abstract concepts. We will discuss evidence obtained in our and other laboratories showing that processing of abstract concepts evokes linguistic interaction and social experiences, leading to the activation of the mouth motor system. We will discuss the possible mechanisms that underlie this activation. Mouth motor system activation can be due to re-enactment of the experience of conceptual acquisition, which occurred through the mediation of language. Alternatively, it could be due to the re-explanation of the word meaning, possibly through inner speech. Finally, it can be due to a metacognitive process revealing low confidence in the meaning of our concepts. This process induces in us the need to rely on others to ask/negotiate conceptual meaning. We conclude that with abstract concepts language works as a social tool: it extends our thinking abilities and pushes us to rely on others to integrate our knowledge.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use, and representation in the brain'. © 2018 The Author(s).

Semantic abilities in children with pragmatic language impairment: the case of picture naming skills

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ketelaars, M.P.; Hermans, S.I.A.; Cuperus, J.; Jansonius, K.; Verhoeven, L.

2011-01-01

Purpose: The semantic abilities of children with pragmatic language impairment (PLI) are subject to debate. The authors investigated picture naming and definition skills in 5-year-olds with PLI in comparison to typically developing children. Method: 84 children with PLI and 80 age-matched typically

Selected translated abstracts of Russian-language climate-change publications. 4: General circulation models

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Burtis, M.D. [comp.] [Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States). Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center; Razuvaev, V.N.; Sivachok, S.G. [All-Russian Research Inst. of Hydrometeorological Information--World Data Center, Obninsk (Russian Federation)

1996-10-01

This report presents English-translated abstracts of important Russian-language literature concerning general circulation models as they relate to climate change. Into addition to the bibliographic citations and abstracts translated into English, this report presents the original citations and abstracts in Russian. Author and title indexes are included to assist the reader in locating abstracts of particular interest.

Selected translated abstracts of Russian-language climate-change publications: II, Clouds. Issue 159

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Burtis, M.D. [comp.

1994-01-01

This report presents abstracts (translated into English) of important Russian-language literature concerning clouds as they relate to climate change. In addition to the bibliographic citations and abstracts translated into English, this report presents the original citations and abstracts in Russian. Author and title indexes are included to assist the reader in locating abstracts of particular interest.

Naming a Lego world. The role of language in the acquisition of abstract concepts.

Science.gov (United States)

Granito, Carmen; Scorolli, Claudia; Borghi, Anna Maria

2015-01-01

While embodied approaches of cognition have proved to be successful in explaining concrete concepts and words, they have more difficulties in accounting for abstract concepts and words, and several proposals have been put forward. This work aims to test the Words As Tools proposal, according to which both abstract and concrete concepts are grounded in perception, action and emotional systems, but linguistic information is more important for abstract than for concrete concept representation, due to the different ways they are acquired: while for the acquisition of the latter linguistic information might play a role, for the acquisition of the former it is instead crucial. We investigated the acquisition of concrete and abstract concepts and words, and verified its impact on conceptual representation. In Experiment 1, participants explored and categorized novel concrete and abstract entities, and were taught a novel label for each category. Later they performed a categorical recognition task and an image-word matching task to verify a) whether and how the introduction of language changed the previously formed categories, b) whether language had a major weight for abstract than for concrete words representation, and c) whether this difference had consequences on bodily responses. The results confirm that, even though both concrete and abstract concepts are grounded, language facilitates the acquisition of the latter and plays a major role in their representation, resulting in faster responses with the mouth, typically associated with language production. Experiment 2 was a rating test aiming to verify whether the findings of Experiment 1 were simply due to heterogeneity, i.e. to the fact that the members of abstract categories were more heterogeneous than those of concrete categories. The results confirmed the effectiveness of our operationalization, showing that abstract concepts are more associated with the mouth and concrete ones with the hand, independently from

Naming a Lego world. The role of language in the acquisition of abstract concepts.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carmen Granito

Full Text Available While embodied approaches of cognition have proved to be successful in explaining concrete concepts and words, they have more difficulties in accounting for abstract concepts and words, and several proposals have been put forward. This work aims to test the Words As Tools proposal, according to which both abstract and concrete concepts are grounded in perception, action and emotional systems, but linguistic information is more important for abstract than for concrete concept representation, due to the different ways they are acquired: while for the acquisition of the latter linguistic information might play a role, for the acquisition of the former it is instead crucial. We investigated the acquisition of concrete and abstract concepts and words, and verified its impact on conceptual representation. In Experiment 1, participants explored and categorized novel concrete and abstract entities, and were taught a novel label for each category. Later they performed a categorical recognition task and an image-word matching task to verify a whether and how the introduction of language changed the previously formed categories, b whether language had a major weight for abstract than for concrete words representation, and c whether this difference had consequences on bodily responses. The results confirm that, even though both concrete and abstract concepts are grounded, language facilitates the acquisition of the latter and plays a major role in their representation, resulting in faster responses with the mouth, typically associated with language production. Experiment 2 was a rating test aiming to verify whether the findings of Experiment 1 were simply due to heterogeneity, i.e. to the fact that the members of abstract categories were more heterogeneous than those of concrete categories. The results confirmed the effectiveness of our operationalization, showing that abstract concepts are more associated with the mouth and concrete ones with the hand

Comparing the Picture Exchange Communication System and Sign Language Training for Children with Autism

Science.gov (United States)

Tincani, Matt

2004-01-01

This study compared the effects of Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and sign language training on the acquisition of mands (requests for preferred items) of students with autism. The study also examined the differential effects of each modality on students' acquisition of vocal behavior. Participants were two elementary school students…

Role of Logic and Mentality as the Basics of Wittgenstein's Picture Theory of Language and Extracting Educational Principles and Methods According to This Theory

Science.gov (United States)

Heshi, Kamal Nosrati; Nasrabadi, Hassanali Bakhtiyar

2016-01-01

The present paper attempts to recognize principles and methods of education based on Wittgenstein's picture theory of language. This qualitative research utilized inferential analytical approach to review the related literature and extracted a set of principles and methods from his theory on picture language. Findings revealed that Wittgenstein…

Selected translated abstracts of Russian-language climate-change publications, III aerosols: Issue 164

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Razuvaev, V.N.; Ssivachok, S.G. [All-Russian Research Inst. of Hydrometeorological Information-World Data Center, Obninsk (Russian Federation)

1995-10-01

This report presents abstracts in Russian and translated into English of important Russian-language literature concerning aerosols as they relate to climate change. In addition to the bibliographic citations and abstracts translated into English, this report presents the original citations and abstracts in Russian. Author and title indexes are included to assist the reader in locating abstracts of particular interest.

Mandarin functional MRI Language paradigms

OpenAIRE

Ci, He; van Graan, Andre; Gonz?lvez, Gloria; Thompson, Pamela; Hill, Andrea; Duncan, John S.

2016-01-01

Abstract Objective The objective of this study was to implement convenient, fast, and accurate Mandarin task paradigms for functional MRI, and to locate the Chinese language functional areas in frontal and temporal lobes. Materials and Methods Nineteen healthy Chinese volunteers participated in this study, which utilized a block design with four language tasks: auditory naming (AN), picture naming (PN), verbal fluency?character (VFC), and verbal fluency?letter (VFL). All functional images wer...

Recently learned foreign abstract and concrete nouns are represented in distinct cortical networks similar to the native language.

Science.gov (United States)

Mayer, Katja M; Macedonia, Manuela; von Kriegstein, Katharina

2017-09-01

In the native language, abstract and concrete nouns are represented in distinct areas of the cerebral cortex. Currently, it is unknown whether this is also the case for abstract and concrete nouns of a foreign language. Here, we taught adult native speakers of German 45 abstract and 45 concrete nouns of a foreign language. After learning the nouns for 5 days, participants performed a vocabulary translation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Translating abstract nouns in contrast to concrete nouns elicited responses in regions that are also responsive to abstract nouns in the native language: the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left middle and superior temporal gyri. Concrete nouns elicited larger responses in the angular gyri bilaterally and the left parahippocampal gyrus than abstract nouns. The cluster in the left angular gyrus showed psychophysiological interaction (PPI) with the left lingual gyrus. The left parahippocampal gyrus showed PPI with the posterior cingulate cortex. Similar regions have been previously found for concrete nouns in the native language. The results reveal similarities in the cortical representation of foreign language nouns with the representation of native language nouns that already occur after 5 days of vocabulary learning. Furthermore, we showed that verbal and enriched learning methods were equally suitable to teach foreign abstract and concrete nouns. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4398-4412, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Different Loci of Semantic Interference in Picture Naming vs. Word-Picture Matching Tasks

OpenAIRE

Harvey, Denise Y.; Schnur, Tatiana T.

2016-01-01

Naming pictures and matching words to pictures belonging to the same semantic category impairs performance relative to when stimuli come from different semantic categories (i.e., semantic interference). Despite similar semantic interference phenomena in both picture naming and word-picture matching tasks, the locus of interference has been attributed to different levels of the language system – lexical in naming and semantic in word-picture matching. Although both tasks involve access to shar...

Where Does the Delay in L2 Picture Naming Come from? Psycholinguistic and Neurocognitive Evidence on Second Language Word Production

Science.gov (United States)

Hanulova, Jana; Davidson, Douglas J.; Indefrey, Peter

2011-01-01

Bilinguals are slower when naming a picture in their second language than when naming it in their first language. Although the phenomenon has been frequently replicated, it is not known what causes the delay in the second language. In this article we discuss at what processing stages a delay might arise according to current models of bilingual…

Parent-child picture-book reading, mothers' mental state language and children's theory of mind.

Science.gov (United States)

Adrian, Juan E; Clemente, Rosa A; Villanueva, Lidon; Rieffe, Carolien

2005-08-01

This study focuses on parent-child book reading and its connection to the development of a theory of mind. First, parents were asked to report about frequency of parent-child storybook reading at home. Second, mothers were asked to read four picture-books to thirty-four children between 4;0 and 5;0. Both frequency of parent-child storybook reading at home, and mother's use of mental state terms in picture-books reading tasks were significantly associated with success on false belief tasks, after partialling out a number of potential mediators such as age of children, verbal IQ, paternal education, and words used by mothers in joint picture-book reading. Among the different mental state references (cognitive terms, desires, emotions and perceptions), it was found that the frequency and variety of cognitive terms, but also the frequency of emotional terms correlated positively with children's false belief performance. Relationships between mental state language and theory of mind are discussed.

Reading Words or Pictures: Eye Movement Patterns in Adults and Children Differ by Age Group and Receptive Language Ability.

Science.gov (United States)

An, Licong; Wang, Yifang; Sun, Yadong

2017-01-01

This study was conducted to explore the differences in the degree of attention given to Chinese print and pictures by children and adults when they read picture books with and without Chinese words. We used an eye tracker from SensoMotoric Instruments to record the visual fixations of the subjects. The results showed that the adults paid more attention to Chinese print and looked at the print sooner than the children did. The stronger the children's receptive language abilities were, the less time it took them to view the pictures. All participants spent the same amount of time looking at the pictures whether Chinese words were present or absent.

The power of pictures: Vertical picture angles in power pictures

NARCIS (Netherlands)

S.R. Giessner (Steffen); M.K. Ryan (Michelle); T.W. Schubert (Thomas); N. van Quaquebeke (Niels)

2011-01-01

textabstractAbstract: Conventional wisdom suggests that variations in vertical picture angle cause the subject to appear more powerful when depicted from below and less powerful when depicted from above. However, do the media actually use such associations to represent individual differences in

Reading Words or Pictures: Eye Movement Patterns in Adults and Children Differ by Age Group and Receptive Language Ability

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Licong An

2017-05-01

Full Text Available This study was conducted to explore the differences in the degree of attention given to Chinese print and pictures by children and adults when they read picture books with and without Chinese words. We used an eye tracker from SensoMotoric Instruments to record the visual fixations of the subjects. The results showed that the adults paid more attention to Chinese print and looked at the print sooner than the children did. The stronger the children’s receptive language abilities were, the less time it took them to view the pictures. All participants spent the same amount of time looking at the pictures whether Chinese words were present or absent.

User-Extensible Graphics Using Abstract Structure,

Science.gov (United States)

1987-08-01

Flex 6 The Algol68 model of the graphical abstract structure 5 The creation of a PictureDefinition 6 The making of a picture from a PictureDefinition 7...data together with the operations that can be performed on that data. i 7! ś I _ § 4, The Alqol68 model of the graphical abstract structure Every

A Simple Take on Typed Abstract Syntax in Haskell-Like Languages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Danvy, Olivier; Rhiger, Morten

2000-01-01

We present a simple way to program typed abstract syntax in a language following a Hindley-Milner typing discipline, such as Haskell and ML, and we apply it to automate two proofs about normalization functions as embodied in type-directed partial evaluation for the simply typed lambda calculus...

Quantifying Precision and Availability of Location Memory in Everyday Pictures and Some Implications for Picture Database Design

Science.gov (United States)

Lansdale, Mark W.; Oliff, Lynda; Baguley, Thom S.

2005-01-01

The authors investigated whether memory for object locations in pictures could be exploited to address known difficulties of designing query languages for picture databases. M. W. Lansdale's (1998) model of location memory was adapted to 4 experiments observing memory for everyday pictures. These experiments showed that location memory is…

Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words? Using Images to Create a Concreteness Effect for Abstract Words: Evidence from Beginning L2 Learners of Spanish

Science.gov (United States)

Farley, Andrew; Pahom, Olga; Ramonda, Kris

2014-01-01

This study examines the lexical representation and recall of abstract words by beginning L2 learners of Spanish in the light of the predictions of the dual coding theory (Paivio 1971; Paivio and Desrochers 1980). Ninety-seven learners (forty-four males and fifty-three females) were randomly placed in the picture or non-picture group and taught…

Textual and language flaws: problems for Spanish doctors in producing abstracts in English

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lourdes Divasson Cilveti

2006-04-01

Full Text Available Scientific journals are the primary source of information for researchers. The number of articles currently indexed in databases is so large that it has become almost impossible to read every relevant article in a particular field. Thus, research paper abstracts (RPAs have acquired increasing importance. Several studies have shown that they are the skipping point, particularly among non-native English speakers. To our knowledge, little research has been carried out on RPA writing by Spanish doctors. It is thus the objective of this article to analyse the way abstracts are structured and linguistically realized by these professionals. We selected 30 RPAs written in English by Spanish speaking doctors from three leading Spanish journals on internal medicine. We recorded their textual level flaws by measuring the degree of informativeness with regard to three main variables: move patterning, ordering and structuring, and their language use flaws under two broad categories: ortho-typographic and grammatical. Length, use of hedges and keywords were also identified. 86.6% of the abstracts were informative, 13.3% uninformative while none of them could be classified as highly informative. With regard to the authors' use of language, over 70% presented some kind of flaws: 21.55% of these mistakes were ortho-typographic while 78.44% were grammatical. Our results support the need of designing specific units geared on the one hand towards explicit teaching of structured abstracts and on the other, towards the difficulties found by doctors because they lack language competence. They would also benefit from clearer guidelines from journal editors.

Reading Words or Pictures: Eye Movement Patterns in Adults and Children Differ by Age Group and Receptive Language Ability

OpenAIRE

An, Licong; Wang, Yifang; Sun, Yadong

2017-01-01

This study was conducted to explore the differences in the degree of attention given to Chinese print and pictures by children and adults when they read picture books with and without Chinese words. We used an eye tracker from SensoMotoric Instruments to record the visual fixations of the subjects. The results showed that the adults paid more attention to Chinese print and looked at the print sooner than the children did. The stronger the children’s receptive language abilities were, the less...

The role of verbal and nonverbal memory in the Family Pictures Subtest: Data from children with specific language impairment

OpenAIRE

Lum, Jarrad A. G.; Conti-Ramsden, Gina; Ullman, Michael T.

2012-01-01

This study examined the contribution of verbal and visual memory to performance on the Family Pictures subtest of the Children's Memory Scale. This subtest purports to assess declarative memory functioning in the visual/nonverbal domain. A total of 115 nine-year-old children participated in this study. Fifty-eight had specific language impairment (SLI), whilst the remaining 57 were typically developing (TD), with no history of language difficulties. Results showed that the children with SLI, ...

Sequence Text Structure Intervention during Interactive Book Reading of Expository Picture Books with Preschool Children with Language Impairment

Science.gov (United States)

Breit-Smith, Allison; Olszewski, Arnold; Swoboda, Christopher; Guo, Ying; Prendeville, Jo-Anne

2017-01-01

This study explores the outcomes of an interactive book reading intervention featuring expository picture books. This small-group intervention was delivered by four practitioners (two early childhood special education teachers and two speech-language pathologists) three times per week for 8 weeks to 6 preschool-age children (3 years 1 month to 4…

Iconicity influences how effectively minimally verbal children with autism and ability-matched typically developing children use pictures as symbols in a search task.

Science.gov (United States)

Hartley, Calum; Allen, Melissa L

2015-07-01

Previous word learning studies suggest that children with autism spectrum disorder may have difficulty understanding pictorial symbols. Here we investigate the ability of children with autism spectrum disorder and language-matched typically developing children to contextualize symbolic information communicated by pictures in a search task that did not involve word learning. Out of the participant's view, a small toy was concealed underneath one of four unique occluders that were individuated by familiar nameable objects or unfamiliar unnamable objects. Children were shown a picture of the hiding location and then searched for the toy. Over three sessions, children completed trials with color photographs, black-and-white line drawings, and abstract color pictures. The results reveal zero group differences; neither children with autism spectrum disorder nor typically developing children were influenced by occluder familiarity, and both groups' errorless retrieval rates were above-chance with all three picture types. However, both groups made significantly more errorless retrievals in the most-iconic photograph trials, and performance was universally predicted by receptive language. Therefore, our findings indicate that children with autism spectrum disorder and young typically developing children can contextualize pictures and use them to adaptively guide their behavior in real time and space. However, this ability is significantly influenced by receptive language development and pictorial iconicity. © The Author(s) 2014.

SNOW IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE PICTURE OF THE WORLD

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jelena Kazimianec

2013-10-01

Full Text Available This article carries out a semantic and pragmatic description of the Russian word снег “snow,” considering its synonymic and word-formation relations, establishing a family of words, and defining the semantic oppositions in which the word “snow” and its separate word usages appear. The author pays particular attention to the pragmatic connotations of this word, placing them against a background of the different foreign language connotations of appropriating words. The article further investigates the group of the words designating the weather phenomena that typically accompany snowfall: метель “a snowstorm,” вьюга “a snowstorm, a blizzard,” буран “a severe snowstorm,” and пурга “a snowstorm, a blizzard,” defining their semantic range and features of how they function in speech. On the basis of an analysis of the facts provided in dictionaries and poetic discourses, the author comes to a conclusion about the existence of a separate semantic group of words with this meaning that proves the special importance of this weather phenomenon for Russians. The analysis also provides a way to determine that, unlike in other languages, the concept of “snow” in the Russian picture of the world is considered as an active figure: the word combination снег идет “it is snowing” is associated with positive concepts about happiness, the novelty of life, satisfaction with Russian aesthetic concepts about beauty, etc. The author proves that words and concepts united by the component “snow” possess a certain romantic nuance in which, it may be claimed, the unique character of Russian culture consists.

Predictors of maternal language to infants during a picture book task in the home: Family SES, child characteristics and the parenting environment☆

OpenAIRE

Vernon-Feagans, Lynne; Pancsofar, Nadya; Willoughby, Mike; Odom, Erica; Quade, Alison; Cox, Martha

2008-01-01

This study investigated the contribution of child characteristics and parenting environment to the relationship between family SES/demographic characteristics and maternal language to infants.1157 children were drawn from a representative sample of 1292 infants born to mothers in rural Appalachian counties and rural counties in southern minority U.S. communities. Mothers and their 6–8 month old babies were videotaped at home while talking about a wordless picture book. Mothers' language outpu...

Convincing similar and dissimilar others: the power of language abstraction in political communication.

Science.gov (United States)

Menegatti, Michela; Rubini, Monica

2013-05-01

Three studies examined the production of political messages and their persuasive impact on recipients as a function of speaker-audience similarity. The first two studies found support for the hypothesis that political leaders (Study 1) and party activists (Study 2) formulate more abstract messages when the audience is politically similar to them than when the audience is dissimilar or heterogeneous. The third study examined the persuasive impact of message abstractness versus concreteness. We predicted and found that abstract messages are more effective in convincing an audience whose political positions are similar to the speaker's and concrete messages are more effective in convincing an audience whose political positions differ from the speaker's or are heterogeneous. Implications of these findings for the relation between language and social cognition are discussed.

Picture-books: first structured reading materials for children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ivana Martinović

2012-11-01

Full Text Available Early literacy has recently become a current topic, and there’s a widespread belief that literacy startsdeveloping almost as soon as the child is born, if the child is surrounded with adequate materials and persons who will motivate the development of literacy. The first structured reading materials that a child interacts with are picture-books. It is usually the first contact a child has with literature and a written word in general, and it happens during childhood, the child's most sensitive period, which is why it is important to pay special attention to the quality of picture-books. Croatian picture-books published till the early 80ies of the past century have been investigated to a some extent. However, the picture-books found on the Croatian market and in the libraries in the past 30 years have been the subject of research only sporadically. There's little data on the quality and features of this multifunctional material that is of such great importance for children. The aim of the paper is to give an overview of the relevant data found in literature on the historical development of picture-book publishing, their features, functions they help develop, their age-appropriateness, and quality. The paper presents research results stemming from the analysis of the Croatian Children's Book Centre documentation on contemporary picture-book publishing and data on the language of picture-books that are the result of a picture-book corpus study made as part of the PhD research by the author. The data on contemporary authors and illustrators was obtained by analysing the documentation of the Croatian Library Association, Commission for library services for children and youth. The language of the picture-book corpus was analysed using a computer programme, i.e. the analysis was conducted of the lexical diversity of picture-books for three-year olds. The picture-books have not been investigated from the linguistic perspective before, which makes this

Abstraction and the (misnamed) language familiarity effect

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Johnson, E.K.; Bruggeman, L.L.I.C.; Cutler, A.

2018-01-01

Talkers are recognized more accurately if they are speaking the listeners’ native language rather than an unfamiliar language. This "language familiarity effect" has been shown not to depend upon comprehension and must instead involve language sound patterns. We further examine the level of

Statistical learning is constrained to less abstract patterns in complex sensory input (but not the least).

Science.gov (United States)

Emberson, Lauren L; Rubinstein, Dani Y

2016-08-01

The influence of statistical information on behavior (either through learning or adaptation) is quickly becoming foundational to many domains of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, from language comprehension to visual development. We investigate a central problem impacting these diverse fields: when encountering input with rich statistical information, are there any constraints on learning? This paper examines learning outcomes when adult learners are given statistical information across multiple levels of abstraction simultaneously: from abstract, semantic categories of everyday objects to individual viewpoints on these objects. After revealing statistical learning of abstract, semantic categories with scrambled individual exemplars (Exp. 1), participants viewed pictures where the categories as well as the individual objects predicted picture order (e.g., bird1-dog1, bird2-dog2). Our findings suggest that participants preferentially encode the relationships between the individual objects, even in the presence of statistical regularities linking semantic categories (Exps. 2 and 3). In a final experiment we investigate whether learners are biased towards learning object-level regularities or simply construct the most detailed model given the data (and therefore best able to predict the specifics of the upcoming stimulus) by investigating whether participants preferentially learn from the statistical regularities linking individual snapshots of objects or the relationship between the objects themselves (e.g., bird_picture1-dog_picture1, bird_picture2-dog_picture2). We find that participants fail to learn the relationships between individual snapshots, suggesting a bias towards object-level statistical regularities as opposed to merely constructing the most complete model of the input. This work moves beyond the previous existence proofs that statistical learning is possible at both very high and very low levels of abstraction (categories vs. individual

Different Loci of Semantic Interference in Picture Naming vs. Word-Picture Matching Tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Harvey, Denise Y; Schnur, Tatiana T

2016-01-01

Naming pictures and matching words to pictures belonging to the same semantic category impairs performance relative to when stimuli come from different semantic categories (i.e., semantic interference). Despite similar semantic interference phenomena in both picture naming and word-picture matching tasks, the locus of interference has been attributed to different levels of the language system - lexical in naming and semantic in word-picture matching. Although both tasks involve access to shared semantic representations, the extent to which interference originates and/or has its locus at a shared level remains unclear, as these effects are often investigated in isolation. We manipulated semantic context in cyclical picture naming and word-picture matching tasks, and tested whether factors tapping semantic-level (generalization of interference to novel category items) and lexical-level processes (interactions with lexical frequency) affected the magnitude of interference, while also assessing whether interference occurs at a shared processing level(s) (transfer of interference across tasks). We found that semantic interference in naming was sensitive to both semantic- and lexical-level processes (i.e., larger interference for novel vs. old and low- vs. high-frequency stimuli), consistent with a semantically mediated lexical locus. Interference in word-picture matching exhibited stable interference for old and novel stimuli and did not interact with lexical frequency. Further, interference transferred from word-picture matching to naming. Together, these experiments provide evidence to suggest that semantic interference in both tasks originates at a shared processing stage (presumably at the semantic level), but that it exerts its effect at different loci when naming pictures vs. matching words to pictures.

Constructing Meaning in Interaction through Picture Books

Science.gov (United States)

Lugossy, Réka

2012-01-01

This qualitative study describes and analyses young language learners' spontaneous comments while sharing picture books during EFL sessions. It also explores teachers' responses to learners' comments, and considers reasons teachers may choose to ignore children's talk in their first language (L1). Data were collected from young Hungarian learners…

Predictors of maternal language to infants during a picture book task in the home: Family SES, child characteristics and the parenting environment.

Science.gov (United States)

Vernon-Feagans, Lynne; Pancsofar, Nadya; Willoughby, Mike; Odom, Erica; Quade, Alison; Cox, Martha

2008-01-01

This study investigated the contribution of child characteristics and parenting environment to the relationship between family SES/demographic characteristics and maternal language to infants.1157 children were drawn from a representative sample of 1292 infants born to mothers in rural Appalachian counties and rural counties in southern minority U.S. communities. Mothers and their 6-8 month old babies were videotaped at home while talking about a wordless picture book. Mothers' language output and complexity were analyzed. Child temperament, age, and parenting environment (knowledge of child development and observed mother-child engagement) were predictors of maternal language. Furthermore, their inclusion reduced the magnitude of the association between demographic characteristics and maternal language. Tests of mediation suggested that the parenting environment partially mediates the relationship between SES/demographic characteristics and maternal language. Findings are discussed with respect to identifying proximal processes that explain how SES may exert its influence on the language of young children.

Christians in South Africa: The statistical picture

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Abstract. Christians in South Africa; The statistical picture. Government censuses since 1960 indicate that the religious picture was already largely fixed by the 1950s. Already at that stage some 3 out of 4. South Africans identified themselves as 'Christians'. Since then this percentage grew steadily, mainly because of ...

Sustained Attention Ability Affects Simple Picture Naming

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Suzanne R. Jongman

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Sustained attention has previously been shown as a requirement for language production. However, this is mostly evident for difficult conditions, such as a dual-task situation. The current study provides corroborating evidence that this relationship holds even for simple picture naming. Sustained attention ability, indexed both by participants’ reaction times and individuals’ hit rate (the proportion of correctly detected targets on a digit discrimination task, correlated with picture naming latencies. Individuals with poor sustained attention were consistently slower and their RT distributions were more positively skewed when naming pictures compared to individuals with better sustained attention. Additionally, the need to sustain attention was manipulated by changing the speed of stimulus presentation. Research has suggested that fast event rates tax sustained attention resources to a larger degree than slow event rates. However, in this study the fast event rate did not result in increased difficulty, neither for the picture naming task nor for the sustained attention task. Instead, the results point to a speed-accuracy trade-off in the sustained attention task (lower accuracy but faster responses in the fast than in the slow event rate, and to a benefit for faster rates in the picture naming task (shorter naming latencies with no difference in accuracy. Performance on both tasks was largely comparable, supporting previous findings that sustained attention is called upon during language production.

Conceptual and perceptual factors in the picture superiority effect

OpenAIRE

Stenberg, Georg

2006-01-01

The picture superiority effect, i.e. better memory for pictures than for corresponding words, has been variously ascribed to a conceptual or a perceptual processing advantage. The present study aimed to disentangle perceptual and conceptual contributions. Pictures and words were tested for recognition in both their original formats and translated into participants´ second language. Multinomial Processing Tree (Batchelder & Riefer, 1999) and MINERVA (Hintzman, 1984) models were fitted to t...

It is presented initially: linear dislocation & inter-language strategies in Brazilian Academic abstracts in english and portuguese It is presented initially: linear dislocation & inter-language strategies in Brazilian Academic abstracts in english and portuguese

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tim Johns

2008-04-01

Full Text Available In Brazil, as in the rest of the world, the academic community is under pressure to publish in English so that research findings can enter the mainstream of international debate as rapidly and effectively as possible. For the same reason, it is the editorial policy of most Brazilian academic journals that all papers, whether published in Portuguese or English, should be accompanied by abstracts in both languages. If the inclusion of English abstracts is not to become a meaningless ritual, it is a matter of some importance to evaluate how well the writers of such abstracts succeed in communicating the substance of their work to their peers outside Brazil, and also to examine the linguistic features that may facilitate or interfere with that communication. Although preliminary work has been undertaken by the author on both these questions, the present paper addresses the second only, with special reference to a problem at the intersection of syntax and discourse. In Brazil, as in the rest of the world, the academic community is under pressure to publish in English so that research findings can enter the mainstream of international debate as rapidly and effectively as possible. For the same reason, it is the editorial policy of most Brazilian academic journals that all papers, whether published in Portuguese or English, should be accompanied by abstracts in both languages. If the inclusion of English abstracts is not to become a meaningless ritual, it is a matter of some importance to evaluate how well the writers of such abstracts succeed in communicating the substance of their work to their peers outside Brazil, and also to examine the linguistic features that may facilitate or interfere with that communication. Although preliminary work has been undertaken by the author on both these questions, the present paper addresses the second only, with special reference to a problem at the intersection of syntax and discourse.

A hierarchical SVG image abstraction layer for medical imaging

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Edward; Huang, Xiaolei; Tan, Gang; Long, L. Rodney; Antani, Sameer

2010-03-01

As medical imaging rapidly expands, there is an increasing need to structure and organize image data for efficient analysis, storage and retrieval. In response, a large fraction of research in the areas of content-based image retrieval (CBIR) and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) has focused on structuring information to bridge the "semantic gap", a disparity between machine and human image understanding. An additional consideration in medical images is the organization and integration of clinical diagnostic information. As a step towards bridging the semantic gap, we design and implement a hierarchical image abstraction layer using an XML based language, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Our method encodes features from the raw image and clinical information into an extensible "layer" that can be stored in a SVG document and efficiently searched. Any feature extracted from the raw image including, color, texture, orientation, size, neighbor information, etc., can be combined in our abstraction with high level descriptions or classifications. And our representation can natively characterize an image in a hierarchical tree structure to support multiple levels of segmentation. Furthermore, being a world wide web consortium (W3C) standard, SVG is able to be displayed by most web browsers, interacted with by ECMAScript (standardized scripting language, e.g. JavaScript, JScript), and indexed and retrieved by XML databases and XQuery. Using these open source technologies enables straightforward integration into existing systems. From our results, we show that the flexibility and extensibility of our abstraction facilitates effective storage and retrieval of medical images.

Lexical and Acoustic Features of Maternal Utterances Addressing Preverbal Infants in Picture Book Reading Link to 5-Year-Old Children's Language Development

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Huei-Mei

2014-01-01

Research Findings: I examined the long-term association between the lexical and acoustic features of maternal utterances during book reading and the language skills of infants and children. Maternal utterances were collected from 22 mother-child dyads in picture book-reading episodes when children were ages 6-12 months and 5 years. Two aspects of…

Revisiting the picture-superiority effect in symbolic comparisons: do pictures provide privileged access?

Science.gov (United States)

Amrhein, Paul C; McDaniel, Mark A; Waddill, Paula

2002-09-01

In 4 experiments, symbolic comparisons were investigated to test semantic-memory retrieval accounts espousing processing advantages for picture over word stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants judged pairs of animal names or pictures by responding to questions probing concrete or abstract attributes (texture or size, ferocity or intelligence). Per pair, attributes were salient or nonsalient concerning their prerated relevance to animals being compared. Distance (near or far) between attribute magnitudes was also varied. Pictures did not significantly speed responding relative to words across all other variables. Advantages were found forfar attribute magnitudes (i.e., the distance effect) and salient attributes. The distance effect was much less for salient than nonsalient concrete-attribute comparisons. These results were consistently found in additional experiments with increased statistical power to detect modality effects. Our findings argue against dual-coding and some common-code accounts of conceptual attribute processing, urging reexamination of the assumption that pictures confer privileged access to long-term knowledge.

“Surprised!” Telling the pictures. Can the illustrations in picture books promote language acquisition?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sandie Mourão

2009-11-01

Full Text Available Este artigo procura apresentar os resultados da re-análise dos dados recolhidos em dois projectos de investigaçãoacçãosobre a utilização de álbuns em língua inglesa nas aulas de Inglês da Educação Pré-Escolar em Portugal.Dois álbums forum usados, demonstrando diferentes interacções entre texto e imagem, ‘paralela’ e ‘interdependente’. Transcrições de gravações de horas do conto com estes livros foram categorizadas de acordo com asfalas em Inglês a que o texto ou imagem deram origem. Os resultados indicam que a linguagem que as criançasaprendem de facto, com os livros ‘inter-dependentes’ (onde a história escrita é diferente da história ilustrada émais rica e as próprias crianças tomam um papel mais activo na criação de um significado. As implicações destesresultados são discutidas.The following article presents the findings of a re-analysis of data from two action research projects investigatingthe use of English picture books in Pre-school English classes in Portugal. Two picture books were used, eachrepresenting parallel and interdependent storytelling models. Audio tapescripts of the picture book read aloudswere categorised according to the utterances prompted by the verbal and visual texts. Results show that foreignlanguage acquisition is extended when both the verbal and visual texts of a picture book are used for languageinput and that children are more actively involved in meaning making. Implications are discussed.

Using Picture Books as Paired Texts to Teach Educational Theories

Science.gov (United States)

Gao, Yang; Bintz, William P.

2015-01-01

Picture books, when used thoughtfully and artfully, can teach theories to graduate students in literacy and foreign language education. In this article, the authors described how a pair of picture books is used to teach Vygotsky's "Zone of Proximal Development" and Krashen's "Input Hypothesis" in the fields of literacy…

Data Abstraction Mechanisms in Sina/st

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Meyrowitz, N.K.; Aksit, Mehmet; Tripathi, Anand

1988-01-01

This paper describes a new data abstraction mechanism in an object-oriented model of computing. The data abstraction mechanism described here has been devised in the context of the design of Sina/st language. In Sina/st no language constructs have been adopted for specifying inheritance or

A comparative study on the effectiveness of still pictures and moving pictures as aids in vocabulary instruction to Turkish EFL students

OpenAIRE

Kumbaroğlu, Didem

1998-01-01

Ankara : The Institute of Economics and Social Sciences of Bilkent Univ., 1998. Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 1998. Includes bibliographical refences. Vocabulary instruction is an important aspect of language teaching, whose difficulty is acknowledged by researchers as well as teachers and students. Still pictures and moving pictures (video) are often used as aids in EFL vocabulary instruction. However, few studies have been conducted to examine the role of ...

The reliability of language performance measurement in language sample analysis of children aged 5-6 years

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zahra Soleymani

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Background and Aim: The language sample analysis (LSA is more common in other languages than Persian to study language development and assess language pathology. We studied some psychometric properties of language sample analysis in this research such as content validity of written story and its pictures, test-retest reliability, and inter-rater reliability.Methods: We wrote a story based on Persian culture from Schneider’s study. The validity of written story and drawn pictures was approved by experts. To study test-retest reliability, 30 children looked at the pictures and told their own story twice with 7-10 days interval. Children generated the story themselves and tester did not give any cue about the story. Their audio-taped story was transcribed and analyzed. Sentence and word structures were detected in the analysis.Results: Mean of experts' agreement with the validity of written story was 92.28 percent. Experts scored the quality of pictures high and excellent. There was correlation between variables in sentence and word structure (p<0.05 in test-retest, except complex sentences (p=0.137. The agreement rate was 97.1 percent in inter-rater reliability assessment of transcription. The results of inter-rater reliability of language analysis showed that correlation coefficients were significant.Conclusion: The results confirmed that the tool was valid for eliciting language sample. The consistency of language performance in repeated measurement varied from mild to high in language sample analysis approach.

The Value of Picture-Book Reading-Based Collaborative Output Activities for Vocabulary Retention

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Chia-Ho

2017-01-01

This study investigated the effects of three instructional modes: picture-book reading-only (PRO), picture-book reading plus vocabulary instruction (PRVI), and picture-book reading plus reading-based collaborative output activity (PRCOA) on young adult EFL (English as a foreign language) learners' vocabulary acquisition and retention. Eighty…

Sign Language Interpreting in Theatre: Using the Human Body to Create Pictures of the Human Soul

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael Richardson

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This paper explores theatrical interpreting for Deaf spectators, a specialism that both blurs the separation between translation and interpreting, and replaces these potentials with a paradigm in which the translator's body is central to the production of the target text. Meaningful written translations of dramatic texts into sign language are not currently possible. For Deaf people to access Shakespeare or Moliere in their own language usually means attending a sign language interpreted performance, a typically disappointing experience that fails to provide accessibility or to fulfil the potential of a dynamically equivalent theatrical translation. I argue that when such interpreting events fail, significant contributory factors are the challenges involved in producing such a target text and the insufficient embodiment of that text. The second of these factors suggests that the existing conference and community models of interpreting are insufficient in describing theatrical interpreting. I propose that a model drawn from Theatre Studies, namely psychophysical acting, might be more effective for conceptualising theatrical interpreting. I also draw on theories from neurological research into the Mirror Neuron System to suggest that a highly visual and physical approach to performance (be that by actors or interpreters is more effective in building a strong actor-spectator interaction than a performance in which meaning is conveyed by spoken words. Arguably this difference in language impact between signed and spoken is irrelevant to hearing audiences attending spoken language plays, but I suggest that for all theatre translators the implications are significant: it is not enough to create a literary translation as the target text; it is also essential to produce a text that suggests physicality. The aim should be the creation of a text which demands full expression through the body, the best picture of the human soul and the fundamental medium

Abstract Interpretation as a Programming Language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rosendahl, Mads

2013-01-01

examine different programming styles and ways to represent states. Abstract interpretation is primarily a technique for derivation and specification of program analysis. As with denotational semantics we may also view abstract interpretations as programs and examine the implementation. The main focus...... in this paper is to show that results from higher-order strictness analysis may be used more generally as fixpoint operators for higher-order functions over lattices and thus provide a technique for immediate implementation of a large class of abstract interpretations. Furthermore, it may be seen...

Abstract Machines for Programming Language Implementation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Diehl, Stephan; Hartel, Pieter H.; Sestoft, Peter

We present an extensive, annotated bibliography of the abstract machines designed for each of the main programming paradigms (imperative, object oriented, functional, logic and concurrent). We conclude that whilst a large number of efficient abstract machines have been designed for particular

Picture Book on Raising Children's Awareness Against Sexual Abuse

OpenAIRE

Christy, Evelyn; Handojo, Priska Febrinia

2015-01-01

One of the common problems leading to the sexual abuse is that the child is not aware about it. This project aims to raise children's awareness against sexual abuse through picture book. This picture book use realistic fiction as the genre of my picture book. The purpose is to make the children familiar with the story and can relate it to their life. This picture book uses the narrative theory as the framework of the story. The narrative story is consist of abstract, orientation, complication...

ABSTRACT IMPLEMENTATION OF A KIND TO MANAGE DATA SETS USING PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE C + +

OpenAIRE

Ruiz L., Edgar; Hinojosa L., Hilmar

2014-01-01

This article presents the implementation of a data abstract type to represent the Set Theory Mathematical Concept, The program has been written in C++ Program Language applying the Object Oriented Programming Paradigm through a Dev C++ v.4.1 Compiler, a GNU compiler with GPL licence. El artículo presenta la implementación de un tipo abstracto de datos para representar el concepto matemático de la teoría de conjuntos. El programa ha sido escrito en lenguaje de programación C++ aplicando el ...

Effects of reading picture books on kindergartners’ mathematics performance

Science.gov (United States)

van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, Marja; Elia, Iliada; Robitzsch, Alexander

2016-01-01

This article describes a field experiment with a pretest–posttest control group design which investigated the potential of reading picture books to children for supporting their mathematical understanding. The study involved 384 children from 18 kindergarten classes in 18 schools in the Netherlands. During three months, the children in the nine experimental classes were read picture books. Data analysis revealed that, when controlled for relevant covariates, the picture book reading programme had a positive effect (d = .13) on kindergartners’ mathematics performance as measured by a project test containing items on number, measurement and geometry. Compared to the increase from pretest to posttest in the control group, the increase in the experimental group was 22% larger. No significant differential intervention effects were found between subgroups based on kindergarten year, age, home language, socio-economic status and mathematics and language ability, but a significant intervention effect was found for girls and not for boys. PMID:26855457

An abstract machine for module replacement

OpenAIRE

Walton, Chris; Krl, Dilsun; Gilmore, Stephen

1998-01-01

In this paper we define an abstract machine model for the mλ typed intermediate language. This abstract machine is used to give a formal description of the operation of run-time module replacement from the programming language Dynamic ML. The essential technical device which we employ for module replacement is a modification of two-space copying garbage collection.

Object-oriented programming with gradual abstraction

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nørmark, Kurt; Thomsen, Lone Leth; Thomsen, Bent

2013-01-01

We describe an experimental object-oriented programming language, ASL2, that supports program development by means of a series of abstraction steps. The language allows immediate object construction, and it is possible to use the constructed objects for concrete problem solving tasks. Classes...... restrictive. As a central mechanism, weakly classified objects are allowed to borrow methods from each other. ASL2 supports class generalization, as a counterpart to class specialization and inheritance in mainstream object-oriented programming languages. The final abstraction step discussed in this paper...

Using background knowledge for picture organization and retrieval

Science.gov (United States)

Quintana, Yuri

1997-01-01

A picture knowledge base management system is described that is used to represent, organize and retrieve pictures from a frame knowledge base. Experiments with human test subjects were conducted to obtain further descriptions of pictures from news magazines. These descriptions were used to represent the semantic content of pictures in frame representations. A conceptual clustering algorithm is described which organizes pictures not only on the observable features, but also on implicit properties derived from the frame representations. The algorithm uses inheritance reasoning to take into account background knowledge in the clustering. The algorithm creates clusters of pictures using a group similarity function that is based on the gestalt theory of picture perception. For each cluster created, a frame is generated which describes the semantic content of pictures in the cluster. Clustering and retrieval experiments were conducted with and without background knowledge. The paper shows how the use of background knowledge and semantic similarity heuristics improves the speed, precision, and recall of queries processed. The paper concludes with a discussion of how natural language processing of can be used to assist in the development of knowledge bases and the processing of user queries.

Parent-Toddler Behavior and Language Differ When Reading Electronic and Print Picture Books.

Science.gov (United States)

Strouse, Gabrielle A; Ganea, Patricia A

2017-01-01

Little is known about the language and behaviors that typically occur when adults read electronic books with infants and toddlers, and which are supportive of learning. In this study, we report differences in parent and child behavior and language when reading print versus electronic versions of the same books, and investigate links between behavior and vocabulary learning. Parents of 102 toddlers aged 17-26 months were randomly assigned to read two commercially available electronic books or two print format books with identical content with their toddler. After reading, children were asked to identify an animal labeled in one of the books in both two-dimensional (pictures) and three-dimensional (replica objects) formats. Toddlers who were read the electronic books paid more attention, made themselves more available for reading, displayed more positive affect, participated in more page turns, and produced more content-related comments during reading than those who were read the print versions of the books. Toddlers also correctly identified a novel animal labeled in the book more often when they had read the electronic than the traditional print books. Availability for reading and attention to the book acted as mediators in predicting children's animal choice at test, suggesting that electronic books supported children's learning by way of increasing their engagement and attention. In contrast to prior studies conducted with older children, there was no difference between conditions in behavioral or off-topic talk for either parents or children. More research is needed to determine the potential hazards and benefits of new media formats for very young children.

Parent–Toddler Behavior and Language Differ When Reading Electronic and Print Picture Books

Science.gov (United States)

Strouse, Gabrielle A.; Ganea, Patricia A.

2017-01-01

Little is known about the language and behaviors that typically occur when adults read electronic books with infants and toddlers, and which are supportive of learning. In this study, we report differences in parent and child behavior and language when reading print versus electronic versions of the same books, and investigate links between behavior and vocabulary learning. Parents of 102 toddlers aged 17–26 months were randomly assigned to read two commercially available electronic books or two print format books with identical content with their toddler. After reading, children were asked to identify an animal labeled in one of the books in both two-dimensional (pictures) and three-dimensional (replica objects) formats. Toddlers who were read the electronic books paid more attention, made themselves more available for reading, displayed more positive affect, participated in more page turns, and produced more content-related comments during reading than those who were read the print versions of the books. Toddlers also correctly identified a novel animal labeled in the book more often when they had read the electronic than the traditional print books. Availability for reading and attention to the book acted as mediators in predicting children’s animal choice at test, suggesting that electronic books supported children’s learning by way of increasing their engagement and attention. In contrast to prior studies conducted with older children, there was no difference between conditions in behavioral or off-topic talk for either parents or children. More research is needed to determine the potential hazards and benefits of new media formats for very young children. PMID:28559858

The Study of the Use of Picture Descriptions in Enhancing Communication Skills among the 8th- Grade Students--Learners of English as a Foreign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Lavalle, Pamela I.; Briesmaster, Mark

2017-01-01

Teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) encourage students to take a more active role in the oral activities in the classroom through different strategies. This study examines the use of picture descriptions as a strategy to develop and enhance communication skills among the eighth-grade students attending a private English school in…

The abstract geometry modeling language (AgML): experience and road map toward eRHIC

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Webb, Jason; Lauret, Jerome; Perevoztchikov, Victor

2014-01-01

The STAR experiment has adopted an Abstract Geometry Modeling Language (AgML) as the primary description of our geometry model. AgML establishes a level of abstraction, decoupling the definition of the detector from the software libraries used to create the concrete geometry model. Thus, AgML allows us to support both our legacy GEANT 3 simulation application and our ROOT/TGeo based reconstruction software from a single source, which is demonstrably self- consistent. While AgML was developed primarily as a tool to migrate away from our legacy FORTRAN-era geometry codes, it also provides a rich syntax geared towards the rapid development of detector models. AgML has been successfully employed by users to quickly develop and integrate the descriptions of several new detectors in the RHIC/STAR experiment including the Forward GEM Tracker (FGT) and Heavy Flavor Tracker (HFT) upgrades installed in STAR for the 2012 and 2013 runs. AgML has furthermore been heavily utilized to study future upgrades to the STAR detector as it prepares for the eRHIC era. With its track record of practical use in a live experiment in mind, we present the status, lessons learned and future of the AgML language as well as our experience in bringing the code into our production and development environments. We will discuss the path toward eRHIC and pushing the current model to accommodate for detector miss-alignment and high precision physics.

Coalition Battle Management Language

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Tolk, Andreas; Galvin, Kevin; Hieb, Michael; Khimeche, Lionel

2004-01-01

Battle Management Language (BML) is being developed as an unambiguous language to command and control forces and equipment conducting military operations and to provide for situational awareness and a shared common operational picture...

Parent–Toddler Behavior and Language Differ When Reading Electronic and Print Picture Books

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gabrielle A. Strouse

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Little is known about the language and behaviors that typically occur when adults read electronic books with infants and toddlers, and which are supportive of learning. In this study, we report differences in parent and child behavior and language when reading print versus electronic versions of the same books, and investigate links between behavior and vocabulary learning. Parents of 102 toddlers aged 17–26 months were randomly assigned to read two commercially available electronic books or two print format books with identical content with their toddler. After reading, children were asked to identify an animal labeled in one of the books in both two-dimensional (pictures and three-dimensional (replica objects formats. Toddlers who were read the electronic books paid more attention, made themselves more available for reading, displayed more positive affect, participated in more page turns, and produced more content-related comments during reading than those who were read the print versions of the books. Toddlers also correctly identified a novel animal labeled in the book more often when they had read the electronic than the traditional print books. Availability for reading and attention to the book acted as mediators in predicting children’s animal choice at test, suggesting that electronic books supported children’s learning by way of increasing their engagement and attention. In contrast to prior studies conducted with older children, there was no difference between conditions in behavioral or off-topic talk for either parents or children. More research is needed to determine the potential hazards and benefits of new media formats for very young children.

The effects of recall-concurrent visual-motor distraction on picture and word recall.

Science.gov (United States)

Warren, M W

1977-05-01

The dual-coding model (Paivio, 1971, 1975) predicts a larger imaginal component in the recall of pictures relative to words and a larger imaginal component in the recall of concrete words relative to abstract words. These predictions were tested by examining the effect of a recall-concurrent imagery-suppression task (pursuit-rotor tracking) on the recall of pictures vs picture labels and on the recall of concrete words vs abstract words. The results showed that recall-concurrent pursuit-rotor tracking interfered with picture recall, but not word recall (Experiments 1 and 2); however, there was no evidence of an effect of recall-concurrent tracking on the recall of concrete words (Experiment 3). The results suggested a revision of the dual-coding model.

Asymmetrical Switch Costs in Bilingual Language Production Induced by Reading Words

Science.gov (United States)

Peeters, David; Runnqvist, Elin; Bertrand, Daisy; Grainger, Jonathan

2014-01-01

We examined language-switching effects in French-English bilinguals using a paradigm where pictures are always named in the same language (either French or English) within a block of trials, and on each trial, the picture is preceded by a printed word from the same language or from the other language. Participants had to either make a language…

Vocabulary Development at Home: A Multimedia Elaborated Picture Supporting Parent-Toddler Interaction

Science.gov (United States)

Gremmen, M. C.; Molenaar, I.; Teepe, R. C.

2016-01-01

Some children enter elementary school with large vocabulary delays, which negatively influence their later school performance. A rich home language environment can support vocabulary development through frequent high-quality parent-toddler interaction. Elaborated picture home activities can support this rich home language environment. This study…

A language based on analogy to communicate cultural concepts in SETI

Science.gov (United States)

Musso, Paolo

2011-02-01

The present paper is a synthesis of three presentation given by myself at the Toulouse IAC 2001 ( Analogy as a tool to communicate abstract concepts in SETI), the Bremen IAC 2003 ( From maths to culture: towards an effective message), and the Vancouver IAC 2004 ( Philosophical and religious implications of extraterrestrial intelligent life). Its aim is to find a way to make our cultural concepts understandable to hypothetical extraterrestrials (ETs) in a SETI communication. First of all, I expose the reasons why I think that analogy could be a good tool for this purpose. Then, I try to show that this is possible only in the context of an integrated language, using both abstract symbols and pictures, also sketching two practical examples about some basic concepts of our moral and religious tradition. Further studies are required to determine whether this method could be extended to the higher-level abstract concepts in the other fields of our culture. Finally, I discuss the possible role of mathematics, logic and natural science in the construction of an analogy-based language for interstellar messages with a cultural content and a possible way of managing this matter from a social point of view.

Normalization by evaluation with typed abstract syntax

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Danvy, Olivier; Rhiger, Morten; Rose, Kristoffer H.

2001-01-01

In higher-order abstract syntax, the variables and bindings of an object language are represented by variables and bindings of a meta-language. Let us consider the simply typed λ-calculus as object language and Haskell as meta-language. For concreteness, we also throw in integers and addition, bu...

Tools for language: patterned iconicity in sign language nouns and verbs.

Science.gov (United States)

Padden, Carol; Hwang, So-One; Lepic, Ryan; Seegers, Sharon

2015-01-01

When naming certain hand-held, man-made tools, American Sign Language (ASL) signers exhibit either of two iconic strategies: a handling strategy, where the hands show holding or grasping an imagined object in action, or an instrument strategy, where the hands represent the shape or a dimension of the object in a typical action. The same strategies are also observed in the gestures of hearing nonsigners identifying pictures of the same set of tools. In this paper, we compare spontaneously created gestures from hearing nonsigning participants to commonly used lexical signs in ASL. Signers and gesturers were asked to respond to pictures of tools and to video vignettes of actions involving the same tools. Nonsigning gesturers overwhelmingly prefer the handling strategy for both the Picture and Video conditions. Nevertheless, they use more instrument forms when identifying tools in pictures, and more handling forms when identifying actions with tools. We found that ASL signers generally favor the instrument strategy when naming tools, but when describing tools being used by an actor, they are significantly more likely to use more handling forms. The finding that both gesturers and signers are more likely to alternate strategies when the stimuli are pictures or video suggests a common cognitive basis for differentiating objects from actions. Furthermore, the presence of a systematic handling/instrument iconic pattern in a sign language demonstrates that a conventionalized sign language exploits the distinction for grammatical purpose, to distinguish nouns and verbs related to tool use. Copyright © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

An abstract machine model of dynamic module replacement

OpenAIRE

Walton, Chris; Kırlı, Dilsun; Gilmore, Stephen

2000-01-01

In this paper we define an abstract machine model for the mλ typed intermediate language. This abstract machine is used to give a formal description of the operation of run-time module replacement for the programming language Dynamic ML. The essential technical device which we employ for module replacement is a modification of two-space copying garbage collection. We show how the operation of module replacement could be applied to other garbage-collected languages such as Java.

Long-Term Interference at the Semantic Level: Evidence from Blocked-Cyclic Picture Matching

Science.gov (United States)

Wei, Tao; Schnur, Tatiana T.

2016-01-01

Processing semantically related stimuli creates interference across various domains of cognition, including language and memory. In this study, we identify the locus and mechanism of interference when retrieving meanings associated with words and pictures. Subjects matched a probe stimulus (e.g., cat) to its associated target picture (e.g., yarn)…

Emotion elicitation: A comparison of pictures and films

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Meike Katrin Uhrig

2016-02-01

Full Text Available AbstractPictures and film clips are widely used and accepted stimuli to elicit emotions. Based on theoretical arguments it is often assumed that the emotional effects of films exceed those of pictures, but to date this assumption has not been investigated directly. The aim of the present study was to compare pictures and films in terms of their capacity to induce emotions verified by means of explicit measures. Stimuli were (a single pictures presented for 6 s, (b a set of three consecutive pictures with emotionally congruent contents presented for 2 s each, (c short film clips with a duration of 6 s. A total of 144 participants rated their emotion and arousal states following stimulus presentation. Repeated-measures ANOVAs revealed that the film clips and 3-picture version were as effective as the classical 1-picture method to elicit positive emotions, however, modulation towards positive valence was little. Modulation toward negative valence was more effective in general. Film clips were less effective than pictorial stimuli in producing the corresponding emotion states (all p < .001 and were less arousing (all p ≤ .02. Possible reasons for these unexpected results are discussed.

Using Authentic Picture Books and Illustrated Books to Improve L2 Writing among 11-Year-Olds

Science.gov (United States)

Birketveit, Anna; Rimmereide, Hege Emma

2017-01-01

The case study investigates what impact extensive reading of authentic picture books/illustrated books had on the learners' writing skills in a Norwegian EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom of 11-year-olds. Furthermore, the study also looks into the importance the pictures/illustrations had for the learners and what type of picture-text…

Data Abstraction in GLISP.

Science.gov (United States)

Novak, Gordon S., Jr.

GLISP is a high-level computer language (based on Lisp and including Lisp as a sublanguage) which is compiled into Lisp. GLISP programs are compiled relative to a knowledge base of object descriptions, a form of abstract datatypes. A primary goal of the use of abstract datatypes in GLISP is to allow program code to be written in terms of objects,…

Exploring the Use of Color Photographs in Chinese Picture Composition Writings: An Action Research in Singapore Schools

Science.gov (United States)

Qiyan, Wang; Kian Chye, Lim; Huay Lit Woo

2006-01-01

Writing picture compositions is part of the requirements for the mother tongue language learning in Singapore primary schools. For Chinese as a mother tongue, the prevailing materials used for learning picture composition are confined to only black-and-white drawn pictures. This has caused some problems: (1) not many good and suitable…

Unipacs: A Language Arts Curriculum Theory, Abstractions, Statements in Context, and Language Change; And Instructional Packets: Symbol-Referent, Denotation and Connotation, Appropriateness, Dialect, Occasion, and Form and Media.

Science.gov (United States)

Madison Public Schools, WI.

Based on the belief that the most appropriate focus of a language arts curriculum is the process and content of communication, these several unipacs (instructional packets) explore some essential elements of communication which should be incorporated into a curricular theory: (1) abstraction , which is the assertion that words may be classified as…

Single neurons in prefrontal cortex encode abstract rules.

Science.gov (United States)

Wallis, J D; Anderson, K C; Miller, E K

2001-06-21

The ability to abstract principles or rules from direct experience allows behaviour to extend beyond specific circumstances to general situations. For example, we learn the 'rules' for restaurant dining from specific experiences and can then apply them in new restaurants. The use of such rules is thought to depend on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) because its damage often results in difficulty in following rules. Here we explore its neural basis by recording from single neurons in the PFC of monkeys trained to use two abstract rules. They were required to indicate whether two successively presented pictures were the same or different depending on which rule was currently in effect. The monkeys performed this task with new pictures, thus showing that they had learned two general principles that could be applied to stimuli that they had not yet experienced. The most prevalent neuronal activity observed in the PFC reflected the coding of these abstract rules.

The Impact of the Picture Exchange Communication System on Requesting and Speech Development in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Similar Characteristics

Science.gov (United States)

Ganz, Jennifer B.; Simpson, Richard L.; Corbin-Newsome, Jawanda

2008-01-01

By definition children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience difficulty understanding and using language. Accordingly, visual and picture-based strategies such as the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) show promise in ameliorating speech and language deficits. This study reports the results of a multiple baseline across…

Picturing Pollock: Photography’s Challenge to the Historiography of Abstract Expressionism

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peter R. Kalb

2012-12-01

Full Text Available In the summer and fall of 1950, photographers Rudy Burckhardt and Hans Namuth documented Jackson Pollock in his studio as he was creating what have become his iconic Abstract Expressionist paintings. The photographs quickly dominated the critical discourse of the new painting and initiated a crisis in the historiography of Abstract Expressionism. This paper argues that despite being produced to serve an illustrative role for the Art News series ‘An Artists Paints a Picture’, Burckhardt and Namuth’s photographs of Pollock provide a glimpse of the analytic complexity photography offered art criticism.

Modelling SDL, Modelling Languages

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael Piefel

2007-02-01

Full Text Available Today's software systems are too complex to implement them and model them using only one language. As a result, modern software engineering uses different languages for different levels of abstraction and different system aspects. Thus to handle an increasing number of related or integrated languages is the most challenging task in the development of tools. We use object oriented metamodelling to describe languages. Object orientation allows us to derive abstract reusable concept definitions (concept classes from existing languages. This language definition technique concentrates on semantic abstractions rather than syntactical peculiarities. We present a set of common concept classes that describe structure, behaviour, and data aspects of high-level modelling languages. Our models contain syntax modelling using the OMG MOF as well as static semantic constraints written in OMG OCL. We derive metamodels for subsets of SDL and UML from these common concepts, and we show for parts of these languages that they can be modelled and related to each other through the same abstract concepts.

The effects of bilingual language proficiency on recall accuracy and semantic clustering in free recall output: evidence for shared semantic associations across languages.

Science.gov (United States)

Francis, Wendy S; Taylor, Randolph S; Gutiérrez, Marisela; Liaño, Mary K; Manzanera, Diana G; Penalver, Renee M

2018-05-19

Two experiments investigated how well bilinguals utilise long-standing semantic associations to encode and retrieve semantic clusters in verbal episodic memory. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 128) studied and recalled word and picture sets. Word recall was equivalent in L1 and L2, picture recall was better in L1 than in L2, and the picture superiority effect was stronger in L1 than in L2. Semantic clustering in word and picture recall was equivalent in L1 and L2. In Experiment 2, Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 128) and English-speaking monolinguals (N = 128) studied and recalled word sequences that contained semantically related pairs. Data were analyzed using a multinomial processing tree approach, the pair-clustering model. Cluster formation was more likely for semantically organised than for randomly ordered word sequences. Probabilities of cluster formation, cluster retrieval, and retrieval of unclustered items did not differ across languages or language groups. Language proficiency has little if any impact on the utilisation of long-standing semantic associations, which are language-general.

Marking of verb tense in the English of preschool English-Mandarin bilingual children: evidence from language development profiles within subgroups on the Singapore English Action Picture Test.

Science.gov (United States)

Brebner, Chris; McCormack, Paul; Liow, Susan Rickard

2016-01-01

The phonological and morphosyntactic structures of English and Mandarin contrast maximally and an increasing number of bilinguals speak these two languages. Speech and language therapists need to understand bilingual development for children speaking these languages in order reliably to assess and provide intervention for this population. To examine the marking of verb tense in the English of two groups of bilingual pre-schoolers learning these languages in a multilingual setting where the main educational language is English. The main research question addressed was: are there differences in the rate and pattern of acquisition of verb-tense marking for English-language 1 children compared with Mandarin-language 1 children? Spoken language samples in English from 481 English-Mandarin bilingual children were elicited using a 10-item action picture test and analysed for each child's use of verb tense markers: present progressive '-ing', regular past tense '-ed', third-person singular '-s', and irregular past tense and irregular past-participle forms. For 4-6 year olds the use of inflectional markers by the different language dominance groups was compared statistically using non-parametric tests. This study provides further evidence that bilingual language development is not the same as monolingual language development. The results show that there are very different rates and patterns of verb-tense marking in English for English-language 1 and Mandarin-language 1 children. Furthermore, they show that bilingual language development in English in Singapore is not the same as monolingual language development in English, and that there are differences in development depending on language dominance. Valid and reliable assessment of bilingual children's language skills needs to consider the characteristics of all languages spoken, obtaining accurate information on language use over time and accurately establishing language dominance is essential in order to make a

The Abstraction Engine

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fortescue, Michael David

The main thesis of this book is that abstraction, far from being confined to higher formsof cognition, language and logical reasoning, has actually been a major driving forcethroughout the evolution of creatures with brains. It is manifest in emotive as well as rationalthought. Wending its way th...

Discussion: Imagining the Languaged Worker's Language

Science.gov (United States)

Urciuoli, Bonnie

2016-01-01

What people perceive as "a language"--a named entity--is abstracted from practices and notions about those practices. People take for granted that language is somehow a "thing," an objectively distinct and bounded entity. How languages come to be thus imagined indexes the conditions under which they are imagined. The articles…

TEACHING AND TRAINING WITH MOTION PICTURES (MAGNETIC SOUND).

Science.gov (United States)

Bell and Howell Co., Lincolnwood, IL.

THE PREPARATION OF A MAGNETIC-SOUND TRACK FOR 16 MM. MOTION PICTURE FILMS IS DESCRIBED. IN SCRIPT PREPARATION, THE SCRIPT SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN NARRATIVE FORM TO INCLUDE ALL SHOTS NEEDED AND TO SUPPLEMENT AND GIVE INFORMATION NOT IN THE FILM. LANGUAGE SHOULD BE KEPT SIMPLE, AND UNAVOIDABLE TECHNICAL TERMS SHOULD BE EXPLAINED. IN REWRITING THE…

Symbolic Understanding of Pictures in Low-Functioning Children with Autism: The Effects of Iconicity and Naming

Science.gov (United States)

Hartley, Calum; Allen, Melissa L.

2015-01-01

This research investigated whether symbolic understanding of pictures in low-functioning children with autism is mediated by iconicity and language. In Experiment 1, participants were taught novel words paired with unfamiliar pictures that varied in iconicity (black-and-white line drawings, greyscale photographs, colour line drawings, colour…

Integrating deductive verification and symbolic execution for abstract object creation in dynamic logic

NARCIS (Netherlands)

C.P.T. de Gouw (Stijn); F.S. de Boer (Frank); W. Ahrendt (Wolfgang); R. Bubel (Richard)

2016-01-01

textabstractWe present a fully abstract weakest precondition calculus and its integration with symbolic execution. Our assertion language allows both specifying and verifying properties of objects at the abstraction level of the programming language, abstracting from a specific implementation of

Effects of Sound, Vocabulary, and Grammar Learning Aptitude on Adult Second Language Speech Attainment in Foreign Language Classrooms

Science.gov (United States)

Saito, Kazuya

2017-01-01

This study examines the relationship between different types of language learning aptitude (measured via the LLAMA test) and adult second language (L2) learners' attainment in speech production in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms. Picture descriptions elicited from 50 Japanese EFL learners from varied proficiency levels were analyzed…

γ-oscillations modulated by picture naming and word reading: intracranial recording in epileptic patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Helen C; Nagasawa, Tetsuro; Brown, Erik C; Juhasz, Csaba; Rothermel, Robert; Hoechstetter, Karsten; Shah, Aashit; Mittal, Sandeep; Fuerst, Darren; Sood, Sandeep; Asano, Eishi

2011-10-01

We measured cortical gamma-oscillations in response to visual-language tasks consisting of picture naming and word reading in an effort to better understand human visual-language pathways. We studied six patients with focal epilepsy who underwent extraoperative electrocorticography (ECoG) recording. Patients were asked to overtly name images presented sequentially in the picture naming task and to overtly read written words in the reading task. Both tasks commonly elicited gamma-augmentation (maximally at 80-100 Hz) on ECoG in the occipital, inferior-occipital-temporal and inferior-Rolandic areas, bilaterally. Picture naming, compared to reading task, elicited greater gamma-augmentation in portions of pre-motor areas as well as occipital and inferior-occipital-temporal areas, bilaterally. In contrast, word reading elicited greater gamma-augmentation in portions of bilateral occipital, left occipital-temporal and left superior-posterior-parietal areas. Gamma-attenuation was elicited by both tasks in portions of posterior cingulate and ventral premotor-prefrontal areas bilaterally. The number of letters in a presented word was positively correlated to the degree of gamma-augmentation in the medial occipital areas. Gamma-augmentation measured on ECoG identified cortical areas commonly and differentially involved in picture naming and reading tasks. Longer words may activate the primary visual cortex for the more peripheral field. The present study increases our understanding of the visual-language pathways. Copyright © 2011 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstracts of SIG Sessions.

Science.gov (United States)

Proceedings of the ASIS Annual Meeting, 1994

1994-01-01

Includes abstracts of 18 special interest group (SIG) sessions. Highlights include natural language processing, information science and terminology science, classification, knowledge-intensive information systems, information value and ownership issues, economics and theories of information science, information retrieval interfaces, fuzzy thinking…

Language Impairment in Autistic Children.

Science.gov (United States)

Deaton, Ann Virginia

Discussed is the language impairment of children with infantile autism. The speech patterns of autistic children, including echolalia, pronomial reversal, silent language, and voice imitation, are described. The clinical picture of the autistic child is compared to that of children with such other disorders as deafness, retardation, and…

A smarter common operational picture : The application of abstraction hierarchies to naval command and control

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Arciszewski, H.F.R.; De Greef, T.E.

2011-01-01

The last decade shows significant steps in connecting military command and control systems from different defense forces optimizing joint and combined operations. However, a Common Operational Picture (COP) that provides all actors with sufficient, accurate, and timely information is still an

The role of syllables in sign language production.

Science.gov (United States)

Baus, Cristina; Gutiérrez, Eva; Carreiras, Manuel

2014-01-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate the functional role of syllables in sign language and how the different phonological combinations influence sign production. Moreover, the influence of age of acquisition was evaluated. Deaf signers (native and non-native) of Catalan Signed Language (LSC) were asked in a picture-sign interference task to sign picture names while ignoring distractor-signs with which they shared two phonological parameters (out of three of the main sign parameters: Location, Movement, and Handshape). The results revealed a different impact of the three phonological combinations. While no effect was observed for the phonological combination Handshape-Location, the combination Handshape-Movement slowed down signing latencies, but only in the non-native group. A facilitatory effect was observed for both groups when pictures and distractors shared Location-Movement. Importantly, linguistic models have considered this phonological combination to be a privileged unit in the composition of signs, as syllables are in spoken languages. Thus, our results support the functional role of syllable units during phonological articulation in sign language production.

Full Abstraction for HOPLA

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nygaard, Mikkel; Winskel, Glynn

2003-01-01

A fully abstract denotational semantics for the higher-order process language HOPLA is presented. It characterises contextual and logical equivalence, the latter linking up with simulation. The semantics is a clean, domain-theoretic description of processes as downwards-closed sets of computation...

The Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS): introduction to a novel, standardized, wide-range, high-quality, realistic picture database.

Science.gov (United States)

Marchewka, Artur; Zurawski, Łukasz; Jednoróg, Katarzyna; Grabowska, Anna

2014-06-01

Selecting appropriate stimuli to induce emotional states is essential in affective research. Only a few standardized affective stimulus databases have been created for auditory, language, and visual materials. Numerous studies have extensively employed these databases using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods. However, some limitations of the existing databases have recently been reported, including limited numbers of stimuli in specific categories or poor picture quality of the visual stimuli. In the present article, we introduce the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS), which consists of 1,356 realistic, high-quality photographs that are divided into five categories (people, faces, animals, objects, and landscapes). Affective ratings were collected from 204 mostly European participants. The pictures were rated according to the valence, arousal, and approach-avoidance dimensions using computerized bipolar semantic slider scales. Normative ratings for the categories are presented for each dimension. Validation of the ratings was obtained by comparing them to ratings generated using the Self-Assessment Manikin and the International Affective Picture System. In addition, the physical properties of the photographs are reported, including luminance, contrast, and entropy. The new database, with accompanying ratings and image parameters, allows researchers to select a variety of visual stimulus materials specific to their experimental questions of interest. The NAPS system is freely accessible to the scientific community for noncommercial use by request at http://naps.nencki.gov.pl .

THE TEACHING OF FUNCTIONAL LANGUAGE SKILLS IN A SECOND LANGUAGE TO A CHILD WITH AUTISM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Renee Chong

2006-01-01

Full Text Available This article examined the rate of self-initiated communication acquisition, in a second language, of a child with autism. The language treatment objective was to teach functional communication skills in English through the use of Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS. The findings of this study show that it is possible for a child with autism to acquire functional communication skills in his second language even though he did not possess such communication skills in his first language.

Comparison of fMRI on the cortical organization using two language tasks in normal subjects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jiang Zhen; Zhang Caiyuan; Cai Wu; Shen Junkang; Gong Zhigang

2008-01-01

Objective: To comparatively study the cortical organization using two different language tasks by BOLD-fMRI in normal subjects: Methods: BOLD-fMRI scan was performed in 8 healthy volunteers with right handiness during executing the two language tasks: picture-naming and word-generation. The AFNI software was used to analyze the functional data and to generate the statistical parametric maps for comparatively studying the activation areas of each task. Results: Both activation patterns for two language tasks shared a common brain network dispersed in frontal, parietal, and occipital lobe. The activation areas of occipital lobe for picture-naming was more obvious than those for word-generation. By contraries, the areas related to language processing for word-generation was more active than picture-imaging. Compared with picture naming, the activation patterns for word-generation was mainly left-lateralized. Conclusion: Both of two tasks can activate the brain network which dedicate to language processing, but each of them has its own characteristics according to the processing patterns. (authors)

Comparing Multilingual Children with SLI to Their Bilectal Peers: Evidence from Object and Action Picture Naming

Science.gov (United States)

Kambanaros, Maria; Grohmann, Kleanthes K.; Michaelides, Michalis; Theodorou, Elena

2013-01-01

Against the background of the increasing number of multilingual children with atypical language development around the world, this study reports research results on grammatical word class processing involving children with specific language impairment (SLI). The study investigates lexical retrieval of verbs (through picture-naming actions) and…

[Neuropsychological profiles associated with the children's oral language disorders].

Science.gov (United States)

Conde-Guzón, P A; Conde-Guzón, M J; Bartolomé-Albistegui, M T; Quirós-Expósito, P

Oral language disorders constitute a group of syndromes with a high prevalence among the childhood population. They form a heterogeneous group that ranges from simple problems in articulating a phoneme (dyslalias) to severe disorders affecting communication, such as children's dysarthrias and aphasias. In this paper our objective is to review the neuropsychological profiles of children who manifest different oral language disorders. Due to the wide range of clinical pictures and causations covered by children's oral language disorders, very few systematic reviews have been conducted to obtain an overall view of the neuropsychological profiles of these children. Although the linguistic signs and symptoms of these disorders are well understood, the associated neuropsychological signs and symptoms have not been studied. In some cases, these neuropsychological signs cause greater learning problems in children than the actual language problems themselves. Childhood language disorders are associated with different neuropsychological problems. The most commonly associated neuropsychological deficits are problems involving memory, attention, executive functions, motor dysfunctions, temporal perception, tactile recognition, body scheme, spatial orientation and difficulties in visual discrimination. Mnemonic disorders (essentially in short-term and working auditory memory) are usually a common denominator in the different clinical pictures that make up language disorders. The mnemonic impairment associated to dyslalias deserves special attention as this disorder is sometimes similar to that seen in language problems deriving from clinical pictures with important neurological alterations.

Vocabulary development at home: A multimedia elaborated picture supporting parent-toddler interaction

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gremmen, M.C.; Molenaar, I.; Teepe, R.C.

2016-01-01

Some children enter elementary school with large vocabulary delays, which negatively influence their later school performance.A rich home language environment can support vocabulary development through frequent high-quality parent–toddler interaction. Elaborated picture home activities can support

Vocabulary development at home: A multimedia elaborated picture supporting parent-toddler interaction

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gremmen, M.C.; Molenaar, I.; Teepe, R.C.

2016-01-01

Some children enter elementary school with large vocabulary delays, which negatively influence their later school performance. A rich home language environment can support vocabulary development through frequent high-quality parent-toddler interaction. Elaborated picture home activities can support

From a dictionary to an atlas: segmental mapping of the linguistic picture of the world

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sergey N. Gagarin

2014-01-01

Full Text Available 'At the heart of any language lies a vision. It embraces the world around us in myriads of complex ways. It is the lifeblood of every people's identity. It is so essential and indispensable that few assets of humankind can rival it for value or timelessness. It is known as the linguistic picture of the world, and it is notorious for being among the knottiest study subjects of language science. No coherent methodology has been proposed to date as to how it should be consistently structured to result in a systemic and navigable map of its core words and concepts. This constitutes a conspicuous gap in contemporary linguistics, which the present article addresses from the perspective of cognitive lexicology and lexicography while engaging the linguistic picture of the world on a segment-by-segment basis. In keeping with the aforesaid approach, one segment at a time is selected, and the discourse that reflects it is analysed with a view to identifying transcendental notions contained therein. The latter are construed as a type of cognitive concepts which epitomise the core ideas inherent in a particular type of spoken or written discourse. Being verbalised by means of relevant verbal fields, these transcendental notions permeate the cognitive and textual fabric of the selected segment of a linguistic picture of the world. By way of demonstrating the feasibility of this approach, a new type of dictionary has been compiled by the author, which captures and reveals in a semantically structured way the verbal side of the transcendental notion "countering" in the socio-political discourse of English-language media. Along with other transcendental notions, such as "facilitation", "communication", "attitude", etc., it is viewed as part of a range of the cognitive pillars which are essential to a limited segment of a linguistic picture of the world, but are by no means reserved to it, stretching far beyond and reaching throughout the vision of the world

Chinese Translation Errors in English/Chinese Bilingual Children's Picture Books

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Qiaoya; Chen, Xiaoning

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to review the Chinese translation errors in 31 English/Chinese bilingual children's picture books. While bilingual children's books make definite contributions to language acquisition, few studies have examined the quality of these books, and even fewer have specifically focused on English/Chinese bilingual books.…

Boy Troubles? Male Literacy Depictions in Children's Choices Picture Books

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Gritter, Kristine; Van Duinen, Deborah Vriend; Montgomery, Kimberly; Blowers, Devony; Bishop, Dan

2017-01-01

This article is a critical content analysis of Children's Choice award-winning picture books from 2000 to 2014. The "critical" part of the analysis consists of selecting archetypes for males presented in these texts based on applying feminist poststructuralist literacy theory that situates literacy and language at the center of gender…

Literature Based Science Activities in Kindergarten through Children's Picture Book.

Science.gov (United States)

Cho, Boo-Kyung; Kim, Jeong Joon

This paper suggests an alternative approach to early childhood science education that considers contemporary trends in both literature and science. The whole language approach to picture books is recommended and this strategy is described in the four sections of this report. The sections provide information on the relationship between science…

Picture norms for Chinese preschool children: name agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lamei Wang

Full Text Available Pictorial stimuli standardized for Chinese children are still absent although it is needed in order to test the development of children's cognitive functions. This study presents normative measures for Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures, viewed by 4- and 6-year old Chinese children. Name agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity were obtained for each age group. The data indicate substantial differences between young and older children in name agreement based on expected name, familiarity and visual complexity. The correlation pattern of the variables collected in the present study were consistent with children's norms in other languages and norms of Chinese adults, while there are cross-age and cross-culture differences in specific variables. The obtained measures represent a useful tool for further research on Chinese children's pictorial processing and constitute the first picture normative study for children in this language.

Language as skill

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Chater, Nick; McCauley, Stewart M.; Christiansen, M. H.

2016-01-01

occurs on-line. These properties are difficult to reconcile with the 'abstract knowledge' viewpoint, and crucially suggest that language comprehension and production are facets of a unitary skill. This viewpoint is exemplified in the Chunk-Based Learner, a computational acquisition model that processes...... incrementally and learns on-line. The model both parses and produces language; and implements the idea that language acquisition is nothing more than learning to process. We suggest that the Now-or-Never bottleneck also provides a strong motivation for unified perception-production models in other domains......Are comprehension and production a single, integrated skill, or are they separate processes drawing on a shared abstract knowledge of language? We argue that a fundamental constraint on memory, the Now-or-Never bottleneck, implies that language processing is incremental and that language learning...

Impaired reasoning and problem-solving in individuals with language impairment due to aphasia or language delay

Science.gov (United States)

Baldo, Juliana V.; Paulraj, Selvi R.; Curran, Brian C.; Dronkers, Nina F.

2015-01-01

The precise nature of the relationship between language and thought is an intriguing and challenging area of inquiry for scientists across many disciplines. In the realm of neuropsychology, research has investigated the inter-dependence of language and thought by testing individuals with compromised language abilities and observing whether performance in other cognitive domains is diminished. One group of such individuals is patients with aphasia who have an impairment in speech and language arising from a brain injury, such as a stroke. Our previous research has shown that the degree of language impairment in these individuals is strongly associated with the degree of impairment on complex reasoning tasks, such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) and Raven’s Matrices. In the current study, we present new data from a large group of individuals with aphasia that show a dissociation in performance between putatively non-verbal tasks on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) that require differing degrees of reasoning (Picture Completion vs. Picture Arrangement tasks). We also present an update and replication of our previous findings with the WCST showing that individuals with the most profound core language deficits (i.e., impaired comprehension and disordered language output) are particularly impaired on problem-solving tasks. In the second part of the paper, we present findings from a neurologically intact individual known as “Chelsea” who was not exposed to language due to an unaddressed hearing loss that was present since birth. At the age of 32, she was fitted with hearing aids and exposed to spoken and signed language for the first time, but she was only able to acquire a limited language capacity. Chelsea was tested on a series of standardized neuropsychological measures, including reasoning and problem-solving tasks. She was able to perform well on a number of visuospatial tasks but was disproportionately impaired on tasks that required

Lingvocognitive features of adjectives through the prism of the paremiological picture of the world

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И О Натхо

2008-12-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the attempt to outline the contours of the paremiological linguistic picture of the world revealing some characteristic LSG of adjectives in it by the example of proverbs and sayings of the English language on the basis of the general review of the traditional linguistics positions and from the point of view of the cognitive approach to the linguistic picture of the world.

Phonological processing of ignored distractor pictures, an fMRI investigation

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Bles Mart

2008-02-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Neuroimaging studies of attention often focus on interactions between stimulus representations and top-down selection mechanisms in visual cortex. Less is known about the neural representation of distractor stimuli beyond visual areas, and the interactions between stimuli in linguistic processing areas. In the present study, participants viewed simultaneously presented line drawings at peripheral locations, while in the MRI scanner. The names of the objects depicted in these pictures were either phonologically related (i.e. shared the same consonant-vowel onset construction, or unrelated. Attention was directed either at the linguistic properties of one of these pictures, or at the fixation point (i.e. away from the pictures. Results Phonological representations of unattended pictures could be detected in the posterior superior temporal gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the insula. Conclusion Under some circumstances, the name of ignored distractor pictures is retrieved by linguistic areas. This implies that selective attention to a specific location does not completely filter out the representations of distractor stimuli at early perceptual stages.

Parallel language activation during word processing in bilinguals: Evidence from word production in sentence context

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Starreveld, P.A.; de Groot, A.M.B.; Rossmark, B.M.M.; van Hell, J.G.

2014-01-01

In two picture-naming experiments we examined whether bilinguals co-activate the non-target language during word production in the target language. The pictures were presented out-of-context (Experiment 1) or in visually presented sentence contexts (Experiment 2). In both experiments different

Attenuating the alcohol allure: attentional broadening reduces rapid motivational response to alcohol pictures.

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Ryerson, Nicole C; Neal, Lauren B; Gable, Philip A

2017-04-01

Past research has found that exposure to alcohol cues causes a narrowing of attentional scope and enhances the neural responses associated with approach motivation. The current research sought to determine if a manipulated broadened (global) attentional scope would reduce approach-motivated neural reactivity to alcohol pictures. In the current study, participants (n = 82) were exposed to alcohol and neutral pictures following either a global or local attentional scope manipulation. Early motivated attentional processing was assessed using the N1 event-related potential (ERP), a neurophysiological marker of rapid motivated attention. A global attentional scope reduced N1 amplitudes to alcohol pictures as compared to a local attentional scope. Self-reported binge drinking related to larger N1 amplitudes to alcohol pictures, but not to neutral pictures. Individuals with greater binge drinking experience demonstrated increased rapid motivated attentional processing to alcohol pictures. These results suggest that enhancing a global (vs. local) attentional scope attenuates rapid motivated attentional processing of alcohol pictures in comparison to neutral pictures. Graphical abstract ᅟ.

Ideas for using English picture books for the new foreign languages activities in Japanese elementary schools

OpenAIRE

Hall, James M

2009-01-01

In 2007 the English Department together with the Educadon Development Center(EDC)from Newton, Massachusetts in the USA workedwith 19 different elementary schools in using Endish picture books to teach about culture. EDC chose 15 picture books to use and then designed teaching guides for each book with the English Department. The project was funded by the Japan Center for Global Partnership and was called Cross Cultural Understanding using Picture Boobs (CCUP). Before the schools used the pict...

Special Learners: Using Picture Books in Music Class to Encourage Participation of Students with Autistic Spectrum Disorder

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Hagedorn, Victoria S.

2004-01-01

Many autistic students think and learn in pictures, not language. Visual representation of tasks, objects, and songs can greatly assist the autistic student. Using picture books in the music class is a popular strategy for many teachers. This article provides a list of books that a teacher has used with success in classes for children with…

Out of mind, out of sight: Language affects perceptual vividness in memory

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L. Vandeberg (Lisa); A. Eerland (Anita); R.A. Zwaan (Rolf)

2012-01-01

textabstractWe examined whether language affects the strength of a visual representation in memory. Participants studied a picture, read a story about the depicted object, and then selected out of two pictures the one whose transparency level most resembled that of the previously presented picture.

Modelling language

CERN Document Server

Cardey, Sylviane

2013-01-01

In response to the need for reliable results from natural language processing, this book presents an original way of decomposing a language(s) in a microscopic manner by means of intra/inter‑language norms and divergences, going progressively from languages as systems to the linguistic, mathematical and computational models, which being based on a constructive approach are inherently traceable. Languages are described with their elements aggregating or repelling each other to form viable interrelated micro‑systems. The abstract model, which contrary to the current state of the art works in int

Abstract Interpretation Using Attribute Grammar

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rosendahl, Mads

1990-01-01

This paper deals with the correctness proofs of attribute grammars using methods from abstract interpretation. The technique will be described by defining a live-variable analysis for a small flow-chart language and proving it correct with respect to a continuation style semantics. The proof...

Out of mind, out of sight: language affects perceptual vividness in memory

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vandeberg, L.; Eerland, A.; Zwaan, R.A.

2012-01-01

We examined whether language affects the strength of a visual representation in memory. Participants studied a picture, read a story about the depicted object, and then selected out of two pictures the one whose transparency level most resembled that of the previously presented picture. The stories

Out of mind, out of sight: Language affects perceptual vividness in memory

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vandeberg, Lisa; Eerland, A.|info:eu-repo/dai/nl/412493543; Zwaan, Rolf

2012-01-01

We examined whether language affects the strength of a visual representation in memory. Participants studied a picture, read a story about the depicted object, and then selected out of two pictures the one whose transparency level most resembled that of the previously presented picture. The stories

Storybooks aren't just for fun: narrative and non-narrative picture books foster equal amounts of generic language during mother-toddler book sharing.

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Nyhout, Angela; O'Neill, Daniela K

2014-01-01

Parents and children encounter a variety of animals and objects in the early picture books they share, but little is known about how the context in which these entities are presented influences talk about them. The present study investigated how the presence or absence of a visual narrative context influences mothers' tendency to refer to animals as individual characters or as members of a kind when sharing picture books with their toddlers (mean age 21.3 months). Mother-child dyads shared both a narrative and a non-narrative book, each featuring six animals and matched in terms of length and quantity of text. Mothers made more specific (individual-referring) statements about animals in the narrative books, whereas they provided more labels for animals in the non-narrative books. But, of most interest, the frequency and proportion of mothers' use of generic (kind-referring) utterances did not differ across the two different types of books. Further coding of the content of the utterances revealed that mothers provided more story-specific descriptions of states and actions of the animals when sharing narrative books and more physical descriptions of animals when sharing non-narrative books. However, the two books did not differ in terms of their elicitation of natural facts about the animals. Overall, although the two types of books encouraged different types of talk from mothers, they stimulated generic language and talk about natural facts to an equal degree. Implications for learning from picture storybooks and book genre selection in classrooms and home reading are discussed.

An Eye-Tracking Study of Learning from Science Text with Concrete and Abstract Illustrations

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Mason, Lucia; Pluchino, Patrik; Tornatora, Maria Caterina; Ariasi, Nicola

2013-01-01

This study investigated the online process of reading and the offline learning from an illustrated science text. The authors examined the effects of using a concrete or abstract picture to illustrate a text and adopted eye-tracking methodology to trace text and picture processing. They randomly assigned 59 eleventh-grade students to 3 reading…

From grasp to language: embodied concepts and the challenge of abstraction.

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Arbib, Michael A

2008-01-01

The discovery of mirror neurons in the macaque monkey and the discovery of a homologous "mirror system for grasping" in Broca's area in the human brain has revived the gestural origins theory of the evolution of the human capability for language, enriching it with the suggestion that mirror neurons provide the neurological core for this evolution. However, this notion of "mirror neuron support for the transition from grasp to language" has been worked out in very different ways in the Mirror System Hypothesis model [Arbib, M.A., 2005a. From monkey-like action recognition to human language: an evolutionary framework for neurolinguistics (with commentaries and author's response). Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28, 105-167; Rizzolatti, G., Arbib, M.A., 1998. Language within our grasp. Trends in Neuroscience 21(5), 188-194] and the Embodied Concept model [Gallese, V., Lakoff, G., 2005. The brain's concepts: the role of the sensory-motor system in reason and language. Cognitive Neuropsychology 22, 455-479]. The present paper provides a critique of the latter to enrich analysis of the former, developing the role of schema theory [Arbib, M.A., 1981. Perceptual structures and distributed motor control. In: Brooks, V.B. (Ed.), Handbook of Physiology--The Nervous System II. Motor Control. American Physiological Society, pp. 1449-1480].

The Relationship of Language and Emotion: N400 Support for an Embodied View of Language Comprehension

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Chwilla, D.J.; Virgillito, D.; Vissers, C.T.W.M.

2011-01-01

According to embodied theories, the symbols used by language are meaningful because they are grounded in perception, action, and emotion. In contrast, according to abstract symbol theories, meaning arises from the syntactic combination of abstract, amodal symbols. If language is grounded in internal

Language Assessment of Latino English Learning Children: A Records Abstraction Study

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Kraemer, Robert; Fabiano-Smith, Leah

2017-01-01

The researchers examined how speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in a small northern California school district assessed Spanish speaking English learning (EL) Latino children suspected of language impairments. Specifically we sought to (1) determine whether SLPs adhered to federal, state, and professional guidelines during initial assessments and…

Verification Based on Set-Abstraction Using the AIF Framework

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mödersheim, Sebastian Alexander

The AIF framework is a novel method for analyzing advanced security protocols, web services, and APIs, based a new abstract interpretation method. It consists of the specification language AIF and a translation/abstraction processes that produces a set of first-order Horn clauses. These can...

Analogical mapping across modalities in children with specific language impairment (SLI).

Science.gov (United States)

Leroy, Sandrine; Maillart, Christelle; Parisse, Christophe

2014-09-01

Analogical mapping is a domain-general cognitive process found in language development, and more particularly in the abstraction of construction schemas. Analogical mapping is considered as the general cognitive process which consists in the alignment of two or several sequences in order to detect their common relational structure and generalize it to new items. The current study investigated analogical mapping across modalities in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Nineteen children with SLI and their age-matched peers were administered two tasks: a linguistic analogical reasoning task (composed of syllables) and a similar non-linguistic analogical reasoning task (composed of pictures). In the two tasks, the items presented were divided into two groups: items with perceptual cues and items without perceptual cues. Children had to complete a sequence sharing the same relational structure as previously presented sequences. Results showed an expected group effect with poorer performance for children with SLI compared to children with typical language development (TLD). Results corroborate hypotheses suggesting that children with SLI have difficulties with analogical mapping, which may hinder the abstraction of construction schemas. Interestingly, whereas no interaction effect between group and modality (linguistic vs. non-linguistic) was revealed, a triple interaction Group*Modality*Perceptual support was observed. In the non-linguistic task, the performance of children with SLI was the same for items with and without perceptual clues, but in the linguistic task they performed more poorly for items without perceptual cues compared to items with perceptual cues. The results and limits of the study are discussed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Picturing German: Teaching Language and Literature through Visual Art

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Knapp, Thyra E.

2012-01-01

This article examines the importance of visual culture with regard to its pedagogical applications in the German language classroom. I begin by outlining the benefits and concerns associated with making visual art a part of the curriculum. Next, practical ideas are presented for using paintings in beginning, intermediate, and advanced courses.…

Effects of affective picture viewing on postural control

OpenAIRE

Stins, John F; Beek, Peter J

2007-01-01

Abstract Background Emotion theory holds that unpleasant events prime withdrawal actions, whereas pleasant events prime approach actions. Recent studies have suggested that passive viewing of emotion eliciting images results in postural adjustments, which become manifest as changes in body center of pressure (COP) trajectories. From those studies it appears that posture is modulated most when viewing pictures with negative valence. The present experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis t...

A Flame of Nezami’s Language

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Heidarali Dahmardeh

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Abstract Nezami’s Poem is in the front rank of poetry. He always attempted to choose the best words- fine words using beautiful words and expressions. His poetry is enriched by his power of imagination and awareness of the common knowledge and beliefs of the time. The common features of his speech includes a unique use of the words-word choice, creating new compounds, compounding- description, repetition, emphasis, transformation, omission, using Quranic verses, Islamic hadiths and Arabic compounds, expressions of astrology and medicine, adages, proverbs and idioms regularly used by ordinary people. He is a poet familiar with the language of ordinary people and their beliefs, customs and traditions. Since he rightfully attended to the spoken language and because of his particular style of speech, his works are full of street talks to the extent that this propery can be viewed as the prominent stylistic feature of his poems. He took advantage of the common sciences of the time and utilized the scientific, astrological and medical terms and also the technical meanings and themes of these sciences. His imagination and awareness of the sciences and beliefs made his poems productive. Some of the features of his poems are as follow:   1- Imagery : Imagery refers to producing pictures, paintings or shows in the mind of readers /listeners using words. That is, the poet or writer should have such mastery over using words, space, meanings and their relations that makes him able to effectively use the sentences and words to create paintings, pictures or shows in the mind of readers or listener, to enable the reader to imagine a real painting or picture when he is over with his reading.    2- Diction : Experts of language issues and grammar beliefs that word coining can strengthen the foundation of language. So, the first premise in creating fine text is to choose musical words appropriate for the given text and meaning. In the first step, melodic

The role of pictures in improving health communication: a review of research on attention, comprehension, recall, and adherence.

Science.gov (United States)

Houts, Peter S; Doak, Cecilia C; Doak, Leonard G; Loscalzo, Matthew J

2006-05-01

To assess the effects of pictures on health communications. Peer reviewed studies in health education, psychology, education, and marketing journals were reviewed. There was no limit placed on the time periods searched. Pictures closely linked to written or spoken text can, when compared to text alone, markedly increase attention to and recall of health education information. Pictures can also improve comprehension when they show relationships among ideas or when they show spatial relationships. Pictures can change adherence to health instructions, but emotional response to pictures affects whether they increase or decrease target behaviors. All patients can benefit, but patients with low literacy skills are especially likely to benefit. Patients with very low literacy skills can be helped by spoken directions plus pictures to take home as reminders or by pictures plus very simply worded captions. Educators should: (1) ask "how can I use pictures to support key points?", (2) minimize distracting details in pictures, (3) use simple language in conjunction with pictures, (4) closely link pictures to text and/or captions, (5) include people from the intended audience in designing pictures, (6) have health professionals plan the pictures, not artists, and (7) evaluate pictures' effects by comparing response to materials with and without pictures.

Dynamics of Semantic and Word-Formation Subsystems of the Russian Language: Historical Dynamics of the Word Family

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Olga Ivanovna Dmitrieva

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The article provides comprehensive justification of the principles and methods of the synchronic and diachronic research of word-formation subsystems of the Russian language. The authors also study the ways of analyzing historical dynamics of word family as the main macro-unit of word-formation system. In the field of analysis there is a family of words with the stem 'ход-' (the meaning of 'motion', word-formation of which is investigated in different periods of the Russian literary language. Significance of motion-verbs in the process of forming a language picture of the world determined the character and the structure of this word family as one of the biggest in the history of the Russian language. In the article a structural and semantic dynamics of the word family 'ход-' is depicted. The results of the study show that in the ancient period the prefixes of verbal derivatives were formed, which became the apex-branched derivational paradigms existing in modern Russian. The old Russian period of language development is characterized by the appearance of words with connotative meaning (with suffixes -ishk-, -ichn-, as well as the words with possessive semantics (with suffixes –ev-, -sk-. In this period the verbs with the postfix -cz also supplement the analyzed word family. The period of formation of the National Russian language was marked by the loss of a large number of abstract nouns and the appearance of neologisms from some old Russian abstract nouns. The studied family in the modern Russian language is characterized by the following processes: the appearance of terms, the active semantic derivation, the weakening of word-formation variability, the semantic differentiation of duplicate units, the development of subsystem of words with connotative meanings, and the preservation of derivatives in all functional styles.

Cross-language activation in same-script and different-script trilinguals

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Poarch, G.J.; Hell, J.G. van

2014-01-01

In a picture naming study, we examined cross-language activation during speech production in three groups of trilinguals: L3-immersed German-English-Dutch, non-L3-immersed Dutch-English-German, and L3-immersed Russian-English-German trilinguals. All trilinguals named pictures with cognate and

Gender Concepts and Gender Stereotypes in a Linguistic Picture of the World

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Yuliia Petrivna Maslova

2017-08-01

Full Text Available The article comprehends the notion of a concept and a stereotypes in the linguistic picture of the world through the prism of a gender perspective. The linguistic and philosophical interpretations of the above concepts by well-known scholars are described, special attention is paid to their scientific research. The observation of the city of the world is based on the understanding of the following: the name of the city of culture, the historical city of culture, the special culture of the world, the city of culture, the information picture of the world. The gender stereotypes, concepts and the conceptosphere in interaction with the language are analyzed in detail.

Abstraction by Set-Membership

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mödersheim, Sebastian Alexander

2010-01-01

The abstraction and over-approximation of protocols and web services by a set of Horn clauses is a very successful method in practice. It has however limitations for protocols and web services that are based on databases of keys, contracts, or even access rights, where revocation is possible, so...... that the set of true facts does not monotonically grow with the transitions. We extend the scope of these over-approximation methods by defining a new way of abstraction that can handle such databases, and we formally prove that the abstraction is sound. We realize a translator from a convenient specification...... language to standard Horn clauses and use the verifier ProVerif and the theorem prover SPASS to solve them. We show by a number of examples that this approach is practically feasible for wide variety of verification problems of security protocols and web services....

English made easy volume one a new ESL approach learning English through pictures

CERN Document Server

Crichton, Jonathan

2015-01-01

This is a fun and user–friendly way to learn English English Made Easy is a breakthrough in English language learning—imaginatively exploiting how pictures and text can work together to create understanding and help learners learn more productively. It gives beginner English learners easy access to the vocabulary, grammar and functions of English as it is actually used in a comprehensive range of social situations. Self–guided students and classroom learners alike will be delighted by the way they are helped to progress easily from one unit to the next, using a combination of pictures and text

Language comprehenders retain implied shape and orientation of objects.

Science.gov (United States)

Pecher, Diane; van Dantzig, Saskia; Zwaan, Rolf A; Zeelenberg, René

2009-06-01

According to theories of embodied cognition, language comprehenders simulate sensorimotor experiences to represent the meaning of what they read. Previous studies have shown that picture recognition is better if the object in the picture matches the orientation or shape implied by a preceding sentence. In order to test whether strategic imagery may explain previous findings, language comprehenders first read a list of sentences in which objects were mentioned. Only once the complete list had been read was recognition memory tested with pictures. Recognition performance was better if the orientation or shape of the object matched that implied by the sentence, both immediately after reading the complete list of sentences and after a 45-min delay. These results suggest that previously found match effects were not due to strategic imagery and show that details of sensorimotor simulations are retained over longer periods.

Pictures in Pictures: Art History and Art Museums in Children's Picture Books

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Yohlin, Elizabeth

2012-01-01

Children's picture books that recreate, parody, or fictionalize famous artworks and introduce the art museum experience, a genre to which I will refer as "children's art books," have become increasingly popular over the past decade. This essay explores the pedagogical implications of this trend through the family program "Picture Books and Picture…

An Evaluation of Strategies for Training Staff to Implement the Picture Exchange Communication System

Science.gov (United States)

Barnes, Clarissa S.; Dunning, Johnna L.; Rehfeldt, Ruth Anne

2011-01-01

The picture exchange communication system (PECS) is a functional communication system frequently used with individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders who experience severe language delays (Frost & Bondy, 2002). Few empirical investigations have evaluated strategies for training direct care staff how to effectively implement PECS with…

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III: Psychometric properties and significance for application

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Nataša Bucik

2003-12-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this article is to present the content, conceptual structure and methodological steps of the latest revision of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III, which is a highly functional and valuable vocabulary test that has been in use since 1959 in different language and cultural surroundings. On the case of the PPVT-III we are presenting the procedure of development and standardization of such vocabulary tests as well as its translation and adaptation from one language and cultural milieu to another. We also note the practical use of the PPVT-III for research purposes. In Slovenian language no vocabulary tests were developed or adapted so far; PPVT-III is presented in this context, too.

Programming languages for circuit design.

Science.gov (United States)

Pedersen, Michael; Yordanov, Boyan

2015-01-01

This chapter provides an overview of a programming language for Genetic Engineering of Cells (GEC). A GEC program specifies a genetic circuit at a high level of abstraction through constraints on otherwise unspecified DNA parts. The GEC compiler then selects parts which satisfy the constraints from a given parts database. GEC further provides more conventional programming language constructs for abstraction, e.g., through modularity. The GEC language and compiler is available through a Web tool which also provides functionality, e.g., for simulation of designed circuits.

Abstraction and art.

Science.gov (United States)

Gortais, Bernard

2003-07-29

In a given social context, artistic creation comprises a set of processes, which relate to the activity of the artist and the activity of the spectator. Through these processes we see and understand that the world is vaster than it is said to be. Artistic processes are mediated experiences that open up the world. A successful work of art expresses a reality beyond actual reality: it suggests an unknown world using the means and the signs of the known world. Artistic practices incorporate the means of creation developed by science and technology and change forms as they change. Artists and the public follow different processes of abstraction at different levels, in the definition of the means of creation, of representation and of perception of a work of art. This paper examines how the processes of abstraction are used within the framework of the visual arts and abstract painting, which appeared during a period of growing importance for the processes of abstraction in science and technology, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The development of digital platforms and new man-machine interfaces allow multimedia creations. This is performed under the constraint of phases of multidisciplinary conceptualization using generic representation languages, which tend to abolish traditional frontiers between the arts: visual arts, drama, dance and music.

Visually defining and querying consistent multi-granular clinical temporal abstractions.

Science.gov (United States)

Combi, Carlo; Oliboni, Barbara

2012-02-01

The main goal of this work is to propose a framework for the visual specification and query of consistent multi-granular clinical temporal abstractions. We focus on the issue of querying patient clinical information by visually defining and composing temporal abstractions, i.e., high level patterns derived from several time-stamped raw data. In particular, we focus on the visual specification of consistent temporal abstractions with different granularities and on the visual composition of different temporal abstractions for querying clinical databases. Temporal abstractions on clinical data provide a concise and high-level description of temporal raw data, and a suitable way to support decision making. Granularities define partitions on the time line and allow one to represent time and, thus, temporal clinical information at different levels of detail, according to the requirements coming from the represented clinical domain. The visual representation of temporal information has been considered since several years in clinical domains. Proposed visualization techniques must be easy and quick to understand, and could benefit from visual metaphors that do not lead to ambiguous interpretations. Recently, physical metaphors such as strips, springs, weights, and wires have been proposed and evaluated on clinical users for the specification of temporal clinical abstractions. Visual approaches to boolean queries have been considered in the last years and confirmed that the visual support to the specification of complex boolean queries is both an important and difficult research topic. We propose and describe a visual language for the definition of temporal abstractions based on a set of intuitive metaphors (striped wall, plastered wall, brick wall), allowing the clinician to use different granularities. A new algorithm, underlying the visual language, allows the physician to specify only consistent abstractions, i.e., abstractions not containing contradictory conditions on

Noun and verb differences in picture naming: past studies and new evidence.

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Mätzig, Simone; Druks, Judit; Masterson, Jackie; Vigliocco, Gabriella

2009-06-01

We re-examine the double dissociation view of noun-verb differences by critically reviewing past lesion studies reporting selective noun or verb deficits in picture naming, and reporting the results of a new picture naming study carried out with aphasic patients and comparison participants. Since there are theoretical arguments and empirical evidence that verb processing is more demanding than noun processing, in the review we distinguished between cases that presented with large and small differences between nouns and verbs. We argued that the latter cases may be accounted for in terms of greater difficulty in processing verbs than nouns. For the cases reporting large differences between nouns and verbs we assessed consistency in lesion localization and consistency in diagnostic classification. More variability both in terms of diagnostic category and lesion sites was found among the verb impaired than the noun impaired patients. In the experimental study, nine aphasic patients and nine age matched neurologically unimpaired individuals carried out a picture naming study that used a large set of materials matched for age of acquisition and in addition to accuracy measures, latencies were also recorded. Despite the patients' variable language deficits, diagnostic category and the matched materials, all patients performed faster and more accurately in naming the object than the action pictures. The comparison participants performed similarly. We also carried out a qualitative analysis of the errors patients made and showed that different types of errors were made in response to object and action pictures. We concluded that action naming places more and different demands on the language processor than object naming. The conclusions of the literature review and the results of the experimental study are discussed in relation to claims previous studies have made on the basis of the double dissociation found between nouns and verbs. We argue that these claims are only

Multimedia: How to Combine Language and Visuals

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Holger Horz

2008-08-01

Full Text Available In the last decade, advanced computer technology has allowed for development of information systems and learning environments that combine language with other forms of human communication in innovative ways. Language in the form of written texts, for example, can be combined not only with static pictures or graphs as in printed material, but also with animation or video.

Highcrop picture tool

OpenAIRE

Fog, Erik

2013-01-01

Pictures give other impulses than words and numbers. With images, you can easily spot new opportunities. The Highcrop-tool allows for optimization of the organic arable farm based on picture-cards. The picture-cards are designed to make it easier and more inspiring to go close to the details of production. By using the picture-cards you can spot the areas, where there is a possibility to optimize the production system for better results in the future. Highcrop picture cards can be used to:...

The Six Languages of Social Work.

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Bloom, Martin; And Others

1991-01-01

Describes six languages that scientifically minded and practice-competent social workers need to be fluent in lay language of client, abstract language of theorist, empirical and often quantitative language of researcher, categorical language of information scientist, technical terminology or jargon used by helping professionals, and preferential…

Sound iconicity of abstract concepts: Place of articulation is implicitly associated with abstract concepts of size and social dominance.

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Auracher, Jan

2017-01-01

The concept of sound iconicity implies that phonemes are intrinsically associated with non-acoustic phenomena, such as emotional expression, object size or shape, or other perceptual features. In this respect, sound iconicity is related to other forms of cross-modal associations in which stimuli from different sensory modalities are associated with each other due to the implicitly perceived correspondence of their primal features. One prominent example is the association between vowels, categorized according to their place of articulation, and size, with back vowels being associated with bigness and front vowels with smallness. However, to date the relative influence of perceptual and conceptual cognitive processing on this association is not clear. To bridge this gap, three experiments were conducted in which associations between nonsense words and pictures of animals or emotional body postures were tested. In these experiments participants had to infer the relation between visual stimuli and the notion of size from the content of the pictures, while directly perceivable features did not support-or even contradicted-the predicted association. Results show that implicit associations between articulatory-acoustic characteristics of phonemes and pictures are mainly influenced by semantic features, i.e., the content of a picture, whereas the influence of perceivable features, i.e., size or shape, is overridden. This suggests that abstract semantic concepts can function as an interface between different sensory modalities, facilitating cross-modal associations.

Augmentative and alternative communication: from qualification to speech, language and hearing science clinical practice

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Carla Ciceri Cesa

Full Text Available ABSTRACT Purpose: to investigate the qualification of the speech language and hearing therapists and their clinical performance with Augmentative and Alternative Communication. Methods: a descriptive, transversal, individual and contemporary study. Data were collected through a questionnaire, filled by twenty-four speech therapists, selected by a convenience sample. Content analysis was chosen for data study. Results: regarding access to the information media, all speech therapists in the sample presented the initiative to supply the absence of language training with Augmentative and Alternative Communication by different means. Regarding the dual focus on intervention, all speech therapists were favorable to this practice. However, according to experience, they reported resistance from the family, school and other therapists. The results showed two different types of introduction implementation and use of Augmentative and Alternative Communication, predominantly formed by strategies contemplating the pragmatic use of language through the contextualization of significant activities for the user. The other way used the Picture Exchange Communication System. Conclusion: the speech-language and hearing therapists in the present study inserted different interlocutors in the intervention, guided by implicit or explicit linguistic principles, by theoretical frameworks specific to the area of Augmentative and Alternative Communication knowledge, by global neuromotor elements and, finally, by principles of functionality and general wellness.

Prediction in a visual language: real-time sentence processing in American Sign Language across development.

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Lieberman, Amy M; Borovsky, Arielle; Mayberry, Rachel I

2018-01-01

Prediction during sign language comprehension may enable signers to integrate linguistic and non-linguistic information within the visual modality. In two eyetracking experiments, we investigated American Sign language (ASL) semantic prediction in deaf adults and children (aged 4-8 years). Participants viewed ASL sentences in a visual world paradigm in which the sentence-initial verb was either neutral or constrained relative to the sentence-final target noun. Adults and children made anticipatory looks to the target picture before the onset of the target noun in the constrained condition only, showing evidence for semantic prediction. Crucially, signers alternated gaze between the stimulus sign and the target picture only when the sentential object could be predicted from the verb. Signers therefore engage in prediction by optimizing visual attention between divided linguistic and referential signals. These patterns suggest that prediction is a modality-independent process, and theoretical implications are discussed.

The Effects of Linguistic Labels Related to Abstract Scenes on Memory

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Kentaro Inomata

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Boundary extension is the false memory beyond the actual boundary of a picture scene. Gagnier (2011 suggested that a linguistic label has no effect on the magnitude of boundary extension. Although she controlled the timing of the presentation or information of the linguistic label, the information of stimulus was not changed. In the present study, the depiction of the main object was controlled in order to change the contextual information of a scene. In experiment, the 68 participants were shown 12 pictures. The stimulus consisted pictures that depicted the main object or did not depict the main object, and half of them were presented with linguistic description. Participants rated the object-less pictures more closely than the original pictures, when the former were presented with linguistic labels. However, when they were presented without linguistic labels, boundary extension did not occur. There was no effect of labels on the pictures that depicted the main objects. On the basis of these results, the linguistic label enhances the representation of the abstract scene like a homogeneous field or a wall. This finding suggests that boundary extension may be affected by not only visual information but also by other sensory information mediated by linguistic representation.

Language Use, Language Ability, and Language Development: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Published in "Dissertation Abstracts International," July through December 1983 (Vol. 44 Nos. 1 through 6).

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ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, IL.

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 27 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) instructional strategies in teaching synonyms, antonyms, classification, paraphrasing, and locating a main idea; (2) formal aspects of metaphor; (3) linguistic…

The Effectiveness of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A South African Pilot Study

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Travis, Julia; Geiger, Martha

2010-01-01

This study investigated the effects of introducing the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) on the frequency of requesting and commenting and the length of verbal utterances of two children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who presented with some spoken language, but limited use of language in communicative exchanges. A mixed research…

Iconic Native Culture Cues Inhibit Second Language Production in a Non-immigrant Population: Evidence from Bengali-English Bilinguals.

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Roychoudhuri, Kesaban S; Prasad, Seema G; Mishra, Ramesh K

2016-01-01

We examined if iconic pictures belonging to one's native culture interfere with second language production in bilinguals in an object naming task. Bengali-English bilinguals named pictures in both L1 and L2 against iconic cultural images representing Bengali culture or neutral images. Participants named in both "Blocked" and "Mixed" language conditions. In both conditions, participants were significantly slower in naming in English when the background was an iconic Bengali culture picture than a neutral image. These data suggest that native language culture cues lead to activation of the L1 lexicon that competed against L2 words creating an interference. These results provide further support to earlier observations where such culture related interference has been observed in bilingual language production. We discuss the results in the context of cultural influence on the psycholinguistic processes in bilingual object naming.

Multiply Controlled Verbal Operants: An Analysis and Extension to the Picture Exchange Communication System

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Bondy, A.; Tincani, M.; Frost, L.

2004-01-01

This paper presents Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior as a framework for understanding language acquisition in children with autism. We describe Skinner's analysis of pure and impure verbal operants and illustrate how this analysis may be applied to the design of communication training programs. The picture exchange communication system…

A coordination language for databases

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Li, Ximeng; Wu, Xi; Lluch Lafuente, Alberto

2017-01-01

We present a coordination language for the modeling of distributed database applications. The language, baptized Klaim-DB, borrows the concepts of localities and nets of the coordination language Klaim but re-incarnates the tuple spaces of Klaim as databases. It provides high-level abstractions...... and primitives for the access and manipulation of structured data, with integrity and atomicity considerations. We present the formal semantics of Klaim-DB and develop a type system that avoids potential runtime errors such as certain evaluation errors and mismatches of data format in tables, which are monitored...... in the semantics. The use of the language is illustrated in a scenario where the sales from different branches of a chain of department stores are aggregated from their local databases. Raising the abstraction level and encapsulating integrity checks in the language primitives have benefited the modeling task...

Pictures with narration versus pictures with on-screen text during teaching Mathematics

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Panagiotis Ioannou

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The purpose of the present study was to compare the effects of two different teaching methods on students’ comprehension in Mathematics: pictures with concurrent narration versus pictures with on-screen text, during teaching triangles, a lesson in Mathematics. Forty primary school children (boys and girls selected to participate in this study. Students splitted into two experimental groups with the technique of simple random sampling. The first group consisted of students who viewed and listened (pictures with narration group, while the second group consisted of students who viewed (pictures with on-screen text a presentation of triangles. A recall test was used to evaluate students’ comprehension. The results showed that students’ comprehension was better when triangles' presentation (pictures was accompanied with spoken words, than with printed words. The pictures with narration group performed better than the pictures with on-screen text group, in recall test (M = 4.97, SD = 1.32 p<0.01. Results are consistent with the modality principle in which learners are more likely to build connections between corresponding words and pictures when words are presented in a spoken form (narration simultaneously with pictures.

Consideration of vision and picture quality: psychological effects induced by picture sharpness

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Kusaka, Hideo

1989-08-01

A psychological hierarchy model of human vision(1)(2) suggests that the visual signals are processed in a serial manner from lower to higher stages: that is "sensation" - "perception" - "emotion." For designing a future television system, it is important to find out what kinds of physical factors affect the "emotion" experienced by an observer in front of the display. This paper describes the psychological effects induced by the sharpness of the picture. The subjective picture quality was evaluated for the same pictures with five different levels of sharpness. The experiment was performed on two kinds of printed pictures: (A) a woman's face, and (B) a town corner. From these experiments, it was found that the amount of high-frequency peaking (physical value of the sharpness) which psychologically gives the best picture quality, differs between pictures (A) and (B). That is, the optimum picture sharpness differs depending on the picture content. From these results, we have concluded that the psychophysical sharpness of the picture is not only determined at the stage of "perception" (e.g., resolution or signal to noise ratio, which everyone can judge immediately), but also at the stage of "emotion" (e.g., sensation of reality or beauty).

Early positivity signals changes in an abstract linguistic pattern.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Júlia Monte-Ordoño

Full Text Available The extraction of abstract structures from speech (or from gestures in the case of sign languages has been claimed to be a fundamental mechanism for language acquisition. In the present study we registered the neural responses that are triggered when a violation of an abstract, token-independent rule is detected. We registered ERPs while presenting participants with trisyllabic CVCVCV nonsense words in an oddball paradigm. Standard stimuli followed an ABB rule (where A and B are different syllables. Importantly, to distinguish neural responses triggered by changes in surface information from responses triggered by changes in the underlying abstract structure, we used two types of deviant stimuli. Phoneme deviants differed from standards only in their phonemes. Rule deviants differed from standards in both their phonemes and their composing rule. We observed a significant positivity as early as 300 ms after the presentation of deviant stimuli that violated the abstract rule (Rule deviants. The amplitude of this neural response was correlated with participants' performance in a behavioral rule learning test. Differences in electrophysiological responses observed between learners and non-learners suggest that individual differences in an abstract rule learning task might be related to how listeners select relevant sources of information.

Young Readers' Narratives Based on a Picture Book: Model Readers and Empirical Readers

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Hoel, Trude

2015-01-01

The article present parts of a research project where the aim is to investigate six- to seven-year-old children's language use in storytelling. The children's oral texts are based on the wordless picture book "Frog, Where Are You?" Which has been, and still remains, a frequent tool for collecting narratives from children. The Frog story…

Exploring Episodic Affordance and Response in Children's Narratives Based on a Picture Book

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Hoel, Trude

2016-01-01

This article presents part of a research project where the aim is to investigate six- to seven-year-old children's language use in storytelling. The children's oral texts are based on the picture book "Frog, Where Are You?" The book consists of a series of episodes that more or less directly point to the plot structure. However, it also…

Cascaded Processing in Written Naming: Evidence from the Picture-Picture Interference Paradigm

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Roux, Sebastien; Bonin, Patrick

2012-01-01

The issue of how information flows within the lexical system in written naming was investigated in five experiments. In Experiment 1, participants named target pictures that were accompanied by context pictures having phonologically and orthographically related or unrelated names (e.g., a picture of a "ball" superimposed on a picture of…

Children prenatally exposed to maternal anxiety devote more attentional resources to neutral pictures.

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van den Heuvel, Marion I; Henrichs, Jens; Donkers, Franc C L; Van den Bergh, Bea R H

2017-10-22

Maternal anxiety during pregnancy can negatively affect fetal neurodevelopment, predisposing the offspring to a higher risk of behavioral and emotional problems later in life. The current study investigates the association between maternal anxiety during pregnancy and child affective picture processing using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Mothers reported anxiety during the second trimester using the anxiety subscale of the Symptom Checklist (SCL-90). At age 4 years, child affective picture processing (N = 86) was measured by recording ERPs during viewing of neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant pictures selected from the International Affective Pictures System. The late positive potential (LPP)-an ERP component reflecting individual differences in affective processing-was used as child outcome. The expected positive association between maternal anxiety and LPP amplitude for unpleasant pictures was not found. Nevertheless, we found a positive association between maternal anxiety during pregnancy and LPP amplitudes for neutral pictures in the middle and late time window at anterior locations (all p anxiety and gestational age at birth and after FDR correction for multiple comparisons. Our study provides neurophysiological evidence that children prenatally exposed to higher maternal anxiety devote more attentional resources to neutral pictures, but not to unpleasant pictures. Possibly, these children show enhanced vigilance for threat when viewing neutral pictures. Although useful in dangerous environments, this enhanced vigilance may predispose children prenatally exposed to higher maternal anxiety to developing behavioral and/or emotional problems later in life. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEzYi6IS2HA. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Time course of syllabic and sub-syllabic processing in Mandarin word production: Evidence from the picture-word interference paradigm.

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Wang, Jie; Wong, Andus Wing-Kuen; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2017-06-05

The time course of phonological encoding in Mandarin monosyllabic word production was investigated by using the picture-word interference paradigm. Participants were asked to name pictures in Mandarin while visual distractor words were presented before, at, or after picture onset (i.e., stimulus-onset asynchrony/SOA = -100, 0, or +100 ms, respectively). Compared with the unrelated control, the distractors sharing atonal syllables with the picture names significantly facilitated the naming responses at -100- and 0-ms SOAs. In addition, the facilitation effect of sharing word-initial segments only appeared at 0-ms SOA, and null effects were found for sharing word-final segments. These results indicate that both syllables and subsyllabic units play important roles in Mandarin spoken word production and more critically that syllabic processing precedes subsyllabic processing. The current results lend strong support to the proximate units principle (O'Seaghdha, Chen, & Chen, 2010), which holds that the phonological structure of spoken word production is language-specific and that atonal syllables are the proximate phonological units in Mandarin Chinese. On the other hand, the significance of word-initial segments over word-final segments suggests that serial processing of segmental information seems to be universal across Germanic languages and Chinese, which remains to be verified in future studies.

Presheaf models for CCS-like languages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Winskel, Glynn

2003-01-01

for a general process language, in which CCS and related languages are easily encoded. The results are then transferred to traditional models for processes. By first establishing the congruence results for presheaf models, abstract, general proofs of congruence properties can be provided and the awkwardness...... caused through traditional models not always possessing the cartesian liftings, used in the breakdown of process operations, are side stepped. The abstract results are applied to show that hereditary history-preserving bisimulation is a congruence for CCS-like languages to which is added a refinement...

Impacts of Visual Sonority and Handshape Markedness on Second Language Learning of American Sign Language

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Williams, Joshua T.; Newman, Sharlene D.

2016-01-01

The roles of visual sonority and handshape markedness in sign language acquisition and production were investigated. In Experiment 1, learners were taught sign-nonobject correspondences that varied in sign movement sonority and handshape markedness. Results from a sign-picture matching task revealed that high sonority signs were more accurately…

Associations From Pictures.

Science.gov (United States)

Pettersson, Rune

A picture can be interpreted in different ways by various persons. There is often a difference between a picture's denotation (literal meaning), connotation (associative meaning), and private associations. Two studies were conducted in order to observe the private associations that pictures awaken in people. One study deals with associations made…

Abstract Representations of Object-Directed Action in the Left Inferior Parietal Lobule.

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Chen, Quanjing; Garcea, Frank E; Jacobs, Robert A; Mahon, Bradford Z

2018-06-01

Prior neuroimaging and neuropsychological research indicates that the left inferior parietal lobule in the human brain is a critical substrate for representing object manipulation knowledge. In the present functional MRI study we used multivoxel pattern analyses to test whether action similarity among objects can be decoded in the inferior parietal lobule independent of the task applied to objects (identification or pantomime) and stimulus format in which stimuli are presented (pictures or printed words). Participants pantomimed the use of objects, cued by printed words, or identified pictures of objects. Classifiers were trained and tested across task (e.g., training data: pantomime; testing data: identification), stimulus format (e.g., training data: word format; testing format: picture) and specific objects (e.g., training data: scissors vs. corkscrew; testing data: pliers vs. screwdriver). The only brain region in which action relations among objects could be decoded across task, stimulus format and objects was the inferior parietal lobule. By contrast, medial aspects of the ventral surface of the left temporal lobe represented object function, albeit not at the same level of abstractness as actions in the inferior parietal lobule. These results suggest compulsory access to abstract action information in the inferior parietal lobe even when simply identifying objects.

Flexibility in embodied language understanding.

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Willems, Roel M; Casasanto, Daniel

2011-01-01

Do people use sensori-motor cortices to understand language? Here we review neurocognitive studies of language comprehension in healthy adults and evaluate their possible contributions to theories of language in the brain. We start by sketching the minimal predictions that an embodied theory of language understanding makes for empirical research, and then survey studies that have been offered as evidence for embodied semantic representations. We explore four debated issues: first, does activation of sensori-motor cortices during action language understanding imply that action semantics relies on mirror neurons? Second, what is the evidence that activity in sensori-motor cortices plays a functional role in understanding language? Third, to what extent do responses in perceptual and motor areas depend on the linguistic and extra-linguistic context? And finally, can embodied theories accommodate language about abstract concepts? Based on the available evidence, we conclude that sensori-motor cortices are activated during a variety of language comprehension tasks, for both concrete and abstract language. Yet, this activity depends on the context in which perception and action words are encountered. Although modality-specific cortical activity is not a sine qua non of language processing even for language about perception and action, sensori-motor regions of the brain appear to make functional contributions to the construction of meaning, and should therefore be incorporated into models of the neurocognitive architecture of language.

Flexibility in embodied language understanding

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Roel M Willems

2011-06-01

Full Text Available Do people use sensori-motor cortices to understand language? Here we review neurocognitive studies of language comprehension in healthy adults and evaluate their possible contributions to theories of language in the brain. We start by sketching the minimal predictions that an embodied theory of language understanding makes for empirical research, and then survey studies that have been offered as evidence for embodied semantic representations. We explore four debated issues: first, does activation of sensori-motor cortices during action language understanding imply that action semantics relies on mirror neurons? Second, what is the evidence that activity in sensori-motor cortices plays a functional role in understanding language? Third, to what extent do responses in perceptual and motor areas depend on the linguistic and extra-linguistic context? And finally, can embodied theories accommodate language about abstract concepts? Based on the available evidence, we conclude that sensori-motor cortices are activated during a variety of language comprehension tasks, for both concrete and abstract language. Yet, this activity depends on the context in which perception and action words are encountered. Although modality-specific cortical activity is not a sine qua non of language processing even for language about perception and action, sensori-motor regions of the brain appear to make functional contributions to the construction of meaning, and should therefore be incorporated into models of the neurocognitive architecture of language.

From Perception to Recognition Memory: Time Course and Lateralization of Neural Substrates of Word and Abstract Picture Processing

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Maillard, Louis; Barbeau, Emmanuel J.; Baumann, Cedric; Koessler, Laurent; Benar, Christian; Chauvel, Patrick; Liegeois-Chauvel, Catherine

2011-01-01

Through study of clinical cases with brain lesions as well as neuroimaging studies of cognitive processing of words and pictures, it has been established that material-specific hemispheric specialization exists. It remains however unclear whether such specialization holds true for all processes involved in complex tasks, such as recognition…

The Link between Form and Meaning in American Sign Language: Lexical Processing Effects

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Thompson, Robin L.; Vinson, David P.; Vigliocco, Gabriella

2009-01-01

Signed languages exploit iconicity (the transparent relationship between meaning and form) to a greater extent than spoken languages. where it is largely limited to onomatopoeia. In a picture-sign matching experiment measuring reaction times, the authors examined the potential advantage of iconicity both for 1st- and 2nd-language learners of…

Out of Mind, Out of Sight: Language Affects Perceptual Vividness in Memory

OpenAIRE

Vandeberg, Lisa; Eerland, Anita; Zwaan, Rolf A.

2012-01-01

textabstractWe examined whether language affects the strength of a visual representation in memory. Participants studied a picture, read a story about the depicted object, and then selected out of two pictures the one whose transparency level most resembled that of the previously presented picture. The stories contained two linguistic manipulations that have been demonstrated to affect concept availability in memory, i.e., object presence and goal-relevance. The results show that described ab...

Use of Abstracts, Orientations, and Codas in Narration by Language-Disordered and Nondisordered Children.

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Sleight, Christine C.; Prinz, Philip M.

1985-01-01

Forty language-disordered and nondisordered elementary children viewed a nonverbal film, wrote the story, and narrated it to language-disordered and nondisordered peers unfamiliar with the film. Language-disordered Ss made fewer references to the orientation clauses of props and activities than nondisordered Ss. Neither group modified their…

Learning and Processing Abstract Words and Concepts: Insights From Typical and Atypical Development.

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Vigliocco, Gabriella; Ponari, Marta; Norbury, Courtenay

2018-05-21

The paper describes two plausible hypotheses concerning the learning of abstract words and concepts. According to a first hypothesis, children would learn abstract words by extracting co-occurrences among words in linguistic input, using, for example, mechanisms as described by models of Distributional Semantics. According to a second hypothesis, children would exploit the fact that abstract words tend to have more emotional associations than concrete words to infer that they refer to internal/mental states. Each hypothesis makes specific predictions with regards to when and which abstract words are more likely to be learned; also they make different predictions concerning the impact of developmental disorders. We start by providing a review of work characterizing how abstract words and concepts are learned in development, especially between the ages of 6 and 12. Second, we review some work from our group that tests the two hypotheses above. This work investigates typically developing (TD) children and children with atypical development (developmental language disorders [DLD] and autism spectrum disorder [ASD] with and without language deficits). We conclude that the use of strategies based on emotional information, or on co-occurrences in language, may play a role at different developmental stages. © 2018 Cognitive Science Society Inc.

Context incorporation using context-aware language features

OpenAIRE

Vlachostergiou, Aggeliki; Marandianos, George; Kollias, Stefanos

2017-01-01

This paper investigates the problem of context incorporation into human language systems and particular in Sentiment Analysis (SA) systems. So far, the analysis of how different features, when incorporated into such systems, improve their performance, has been discussed in a number of studies. However, a complete picture of their effectiveness remains unexplored. With this work, we attempt to extend the pool of the context - aware language features at the sentence level and to provide the ...

Brief Report: Generalisation of Word-Picture Relations in Children with Autism and Typically Developing Children

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Hartley, Calum; Allen, Melissa L.

2014-01-01

We investigated whether low-functioning children with autism generalise labels from colour photographs based on sameness of shape, colour, or both. Children with autism and language-matched controls were taught novel words paired with photographs of unfamiliar objects, and then sorted pictures and objects into two buckets according to whether or…

Papa Pig Just Left for Pigtown: Children's Oral and Written Picture Descriptions under Varying Instructions.

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De Temple, Jeanne M.; And Others

1991-01-01

Investigates the extent of variation in children's language performance in a picture description task arising from mode (oral or written) versus degree of demand for decontextualization. Finds that children manipulated the wide range of the oral form of the contextualized/decontextualized continuum more skillfully than the written form. Finds no…

Language in low-functioning children with autistic disorder: differences between receptive and expressive skills and concurrent predictors of language.

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Maljaars, Jarymke; Noens, Ilse; Scholte, Evert; van Berckelaer-Onnes, Ina

2012-10-01

Language profiles of children with autistic disorder and intellectual disability (n = 36) were significantly different from the comparison groups of children with intellectual disability (n = 26) and typically developing children (n = 34). The group low-functioning children with autistic disorder obtained a higher mean score on expressive than on receptive language, whereas both comparison groups showed the reverse pattern. Nonverbal mental age, joint attention, and symbolic understanding of pictures were analyzed in relation to concurrent receptive and expressive language abilities. In the group with autistic disorder and intellectual disability, symbol understanding and joint attention were most strongly related to language abilities. Nonverbal mental age was the most important predictor of language abilities in the comparison groups.

The Role of Book Features in Young Children's Transfer of Information from Picture Books to Real-World Contexts.

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Strouse, Gabrielle A; Nyhout, Angela; Ganea, Patricia A

2018-01-01

Picture books are an important source of new language, concepts, and lessons for young children. A large body of research has documented the nature of parent-child interactions during shared book reading. A new body of research has begun to investigate the features of picture books that support children's learning and transfer of that information to the real world. In this paper, we discuss how children's symbolic development, analogical reasoning, and reasoning about fantasy may constrain their ability to take away content information from picture books. We then review the nascent body of findings that has focused on the impact of picture book features on children's learning and transfer of words and letters, science concepts, problem solutions, and morals from picture books. In each domain of learning we discuss how children's development may interact with book features to impact their learning. We conclude that children's ability to learn and transfer content from picture books can be disrupted by some book features and research should directly examine the interaction between children's developing abilities and book characteristics on children's learning.

The Role of Book Features in Young Children's Transfer of Information from Picture Books to Real-World Contexts

Science.gov (United States)

Strouse, Gabrielle A.; Nyhout, Angela; Ganea, Patricia A.

2018-01-01

Picture books are an important source of new language, concepts, and lessons for young children. A large body of research has documented the nature of parent-child interactions during shared book reading. A new body of research has begun to investigate the features of picture books that support children's learning and transfer of that information to the real world. In this paper, we discuss how children's symbolic development, analogical reasoning, and reasoning about fantasy may constrain their ability to take away content information from picture books. We then review the nascent body of findings that has focused on the impact of picture book features on children's learning and transfer of words and letters, science concepts, problem solutions, and morals from picture books. In each domain of learning we discuss how children's development may interact with book features to impact their learning. We conclude that children's ability to learn and transfer content from picture books can be disrupted by some book features and research should directly examine the interaction between children's developing abilities and book characteristics on children's learning. PMID:29467690

The Role of Book Features in Young Children's Transfer of Information from Picture Books to Real-World Contexts

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gabrielle A. Strouse

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Picture books are an important source of new language, concepts, and lessons for young children. A large body of research has documented the nature of parent-child interactions during shared book reading. A new body of research has begun to investigate the features of picture books that support children's learning and transfer of that information to the real world. In this paper, we discuss how children's symbolic development, analogical reasoning, and reasoning about fantasy may constrain their ability to take away content information from picture books. We then review the nascent body of findings that has focused on the impact of picture book features on children's learning and transfer of words and letters, science concepts, problem solutions, and morals from picture books. In each domain of learning we discuss how children's development may interact with book features to impact their learning. We conclude that children's ability to learn and transfer content from picture books can be disrupted by some book features and research should directly examine the interaction between children's developing abilities and book characteristics on children's learning.

Assessing Language Needs Within an Institutional Context: An Ethnographic Approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Holliday, Adrian

1995-01-01

This article describes an analysis of English-language needs of an oil company in the Middle East, exploring the role of ethnography in carrying out the holistic research necessary to obtain a clear picture of the company's needs. It includes a discussion of the project's findings and recommendations for language training. (11 references) (MDM)

Nanosyntax: A short primer to a new approach to language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michal Starke

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Nanosyntax is a new approach to the architecture of language, designed to make (better sense of the new empirical picture emerging from recent years of syntactic research. It is a large-scale project, addressing a wide array of issues, ranging from big issues such as the modularity of language, to fine details, such as the derivation of allomorphy in irregular patterns of given languages and its interaction with syntactic structures.

Waste management research abstracts no. 13. Information on research in progress

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

1982-05-01

The 222 research abstracts contained in this issue have been collected during recent months ending 15 January 1982. The abstracts reflect research currently in progress in the field of radioactive waste management: environmental impacts, site selection, decontamination and decommissioning, environmental restoration and legal aspects of radioactive waste management. The abstracts have been printed in the language and in the form of submittal and without any changes other than minor editorial ones.

Waste management research abstracts no. 13. Information on research in progress

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1982-05-01

The 222 research abstracts contained in this issue have been collected during recent months ending 15 January 1982. The abstracts reflect research currently in progress in the field of radioactive waste management: environmental impacts, site selection, decontamination and decommissioning, environmental restoration and legal aspects of radioactive waste management. The abstracts have been printed in the language and in the form of submittal and without any changes other than minor editorial ones

Abstracts of the Charite-symposium 'CT and MR in medicine'

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1988-01-01

127 abstracts of papers read at the Charite-symposium are presented. They chiefly deal with the diagnostic application of computerized tomograhpy and NMR imaging in clinical and surgical medicine comprising the use of contrast media. CT and MR in relation to irradiation planning and possibilities in image processing such as the new picture archiving and communication system (PACS) are included as well

Flexible Language Interoperability

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ekman, Torbjörn; Mechlenborg, Peter; Schultz, Ulrik Pagh

2007-01-01

Virtual machines raise the abstraction level of the execution environment at the cost of restricting the set of supported languages. Moreover, the ability of a language implementation to integrate with other languages hosted on the same virtual machine typically constrains the features...... of the language. In this paper, we present a highly flexible yet efficient approach to hosting multiple programming languages on an object-oriented virtual machine. Our approach is based on extending the interface of each class with language-specific wrapper methods, offering each language a tailored view...... of a given class. This approach can be deployed both on a statically typed virtual machine, such as the JVM, and on a dynamic virtual machine, such as a Smalltalk virtual machine. We have implemented our approach to language interoperability on top of a prototype virtual machine for embedded systems based...

Role of inhibition in language switching: Evidence from event-related brain potentials in overt picture naming

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Verhoef, K.M.W.; Roelofs, A.P.A.; Chwilla, D.J.

2009-01-01

How are bilinguals able to switch from one language to another? The prevailing inhibition hypothesis takes larger reaction-time (RT) costs for switching to the first language (L1) than to the second language (L2) as evidence for suppression of the non-target language. Switch cost asymmetries can

Multiple Grammars and the Logic of Learnability in Second Language Acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Roeper, Tom W

2016-01-01

The core notion of modern Universal Grammar is that language ability requires abstract representation in terms of hierarchy, movement operations, abstract features on words, and fixed mapping to meaning. These mental structures are a step toward integrating representational knowledge of all kinds into a larger model of cognitive psychology. Examining first and second language at once provides clues as to how abstractly we should represent this knowledge. The abstract nature of grammar allows both the formulation of many grammars and the possibility that a rule of one grammar could apply to another grammar. We argue that every language contains Multiple Grammars which may reflect different language families. We develop numerous examples of how the same abstract rules can apply in various languages and develop a theory of how language modules (case-marking, topicalization, and quantification) interact to predict L2 acquisition paths. In particular we show in depth how Germanic Verb-second operations, based on Verb-final structure, can apply in English. The argument is built around how and where V2 from German can apply in English, seeking to explain the crucial contrast: "nothing" yelled out Bill/(*)"nothing" yelled Bill out in terms of the necessary abstractness of the V2 rule.

Immediate integration of prosodic information from speech and visual information from pictures in the absence of focused attention: a mismatch negativity study.

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Li, X; Yang, Y; Ren, G

2009-06-16

Language is often perceived together with visual information. Recent experimental evidences indicated that, during spoken language comprehension, the brain can immediately integrate visual information with semantic or syntactic information from speech. Here we used the mismatch negativity to further investigate whether prosodic information from speech could be immediately integrated into a visual scene context or not, and especially the time course and automaticity of this integration process. Sixteen Chinese native speakers participated in the study. The materials included Chinese spoken sentences and picture pairs. In the audiovisual situation, relative to the concomitant pictures, the spoken sentence was appropriately accented in the standard stimuli, but inappropriately accented in the two kinds of deviant stimuli. In the purely auditory situation, the speech sentences were presented without pictures. It was found that the deviants evoked mismatch responses in both audiovisual and purely auditory situations; the mismatch negativity in the purely auditory situation peaked at the same time as, but was weaker than that evoked by the same deviant speech sounds in the audiovisual situation. This pattern of results suggested immediate integration of prosodic information from speech and visual information from pictures in the absence of focused attention.

Waste management research abstracts No. 17

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1986-11-01

The research data sheets contained in this issue have been collected during the period ending August 1986, and reflect research currently in progress in the field of radioactive waste management. This publication covers a wide range of programmes in the IAEA Member States. Abstracts intended for inclusion in this publication were submitted in the English, French, Russian or Spanish language

Hardware description languages

Science.gov (United States)

Tucker, Jerry H.

1994-01-01

Hardware description languages are special purpose programming languages. They are primarily used to specify the behavior of digital systems and are rapidly replacing traditional digital system design techniques. This is because they allow the designer to concentrate on how the system should operate rather than on implementation details. Hardware description languages allow a digital system to be described with a wide range of abstraction, and they support top down design techniques. A key feature of any hardware description language environment is its ability to simulate the modeled system. The two most important hardware description languages are Verilog and VHDL. Verilog has been the dominant language for the design of application specific integrated circuits (ASIC's). However, VHDL is rapidly gaining in popularity.

Mother and Infant Talk about Mental States Relates to Desire Language and Emotion Understanding

Science.gov (United States)

Taumoepeau, Mele; Ruffman, Ted

2006-01-01

This study assessed the relation between mother mental state language and child desire language and emotion understanding in 15--24-month-olds. At both times point, mothers described pictures to their infants and mother talk was coded for mental and nonmental state language. Children were administered 2 emotion understanding tasks and their mental…

Supporting English Language Arts Standards within the Context of Early Singing Experiences

Science.gov (United States)

Nordquist, Alice L.

2015-01-01

Music teachers may integrate a variety of English language arts content standards into their curriculum to enhance students' music experiences while also supporting their language development. John M. Feierabend and Melanie Champagne's picture book adaptation of "My Aunt Came Back" lends itself to multiple singing and discussion…

The behavioural patterns and neural correlates of concrete and abstract verb processing in aphasia: A novel verb semantic battery

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Reem S.W. Alyahya

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Typically, processing is more accurate and efficient for concrete than abstract concepts in both healthy adults and individuals with aphasia. While, concreteness effects have been thoroughly documented with respect to noun processing, other words classes have received little attention despite tending to be less concrete than nouns. The aim of the current study was to explore concrete-abstract differences in verbs and identify their neural correlates in post-stroke aphasia. Given the dearth of comprehension tests for verbs, a battery of neuropsychological tests was developed in this study to assess the comprehension of concrete and abstract verbs. Specifically, a sensitive verb synonym judgment test was generated that varied both the items' imageability and frequency, and a picture-to-word matching test with numerous concrete verbs. Normative data were then collected and the tests were administered to a cohort of 48 individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia to explore the behavioural patterns and neural correlates of verb processing. The results revealed significantly better comprehension of concrete than abstract verbs, aligning with the existing aphasiological literature on noun processing. In addition, the patients performed better during verb comprehension than verb production. Lesion-symptom correlational analyses revealed common areas that support processing of concrete and abstract verbs, including the left anterior temporal lobe, posterior supramarginal gyrus and superior lateral occipital cortex. A direct contrast between them revealed additional regions with graded differences. Specifically, the left frontal regions were associated with processing abstract verbs; whereas, the left posterior temporal and occipital regions were associated with processing concrete verbs. Moreover, overlapping and distinct neural correlates were identified in association with the comprehension and production of concrete verbs. These patient findings

The behavioural patterns and neural correlates of concrete and abstract verb processing in aphasia: A novel verb semantic battery.

Science.gov (United States)

Alyahya, Reem S W; Halai, Ajay D; Conroy, Paul; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A

2018-01-01

Typically, processing is more accurate and efficient for concrete than abstract concepts in both healthy adults and individuals with aphasia. While, concreteness effects have been thoroughly documented with respect to noun processing, other words classes have received little attention despite tending to be less concrete than nouns. The aim of the current study was to explore concrete-abstract differences in verbs and identify their neural correlates in post-stroke aphasia. Given the dearth of comprehension tests for verbs, a battery of neuropsychological tests was developed in this study to assess the comprehension of concrete and abstract verbs. Specifically, a sensitive verb synonym judgment test was generated that varied both the items' imageability and frequency, and a picture-to-word matching test with numerous concrete verbs. Normative data were then collected and the tests were administered to a cohort of 48 individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia to explore the behavioural patterns and neural correlates of verb processing. The results revealed significantly better comprehension of concrete than abstract verbs, aligning with the existing aphasiological literature on noun processing. In addition, the patients performed better during verb comprehension than verb production. Lesion-symptom correlational analyses revealed common areas that support processing of concrete and abstract verbs, including the left anterior temporal lobe, posterior supramarginal gyrus and superior lateral occipital cortex. A direct contrast between them revealed additional regions with graded differences. Specifically, the left frontal regions were associated with processing abstract verbs; whereas, the left posterior temporal and occipital regions were associated with processing concrete verbs. Moreover, overlapping and distinct neural correlates were identified in association with the comprehension and production of concrete verbs. These patient findings align with data from

Planning for Evolution in a Production Environment: Migration from a Legacy Geometry Code to an Abstract Geometry Modeling Language in STAR

Science.gov (United States)

Webb, Jason C.; Lauret, Jerome; Perevoztchikov, Victor

2012-12-01

Increasingly detailed descriptions of complex detector geometries are required for the simulation and analysis of today's high-energy and nuclear physics experiments. As new tools for the representation of geometry models become available during the course of an experiment, a fundamental challenge arises: how best to migrate from legacy geometry codes developed over many runs to the new technologies, such as the ROOT/TGeo [1] framework, without losing touch with years of development, tuning and validation. One approach, which has been discussed within the community for a number of years, is to represent the geometry model in a higher-level language independent of the concrete implementation of the geometry. The STAR experiment has used this approach to successfully migrate its legacy GEANT 3-era geometry to an Abstract geometry Modelling Language (AgML), which allows us to create both native GEANT 3 and ROOT/TGeo implementations. The language is supported by parsers and a C++ class library which enables the automated conversion of the original source code to AgML, supports export back to the original AgSTAR[5] representation, and creates the concrete ROOT/TGeo geometry implementation used by our track reconstruction software. In this paper we present our approach, design and experience and will demonstrate physical consistency between the original AgSTAR and new AgML geometry representations.

Evidence for cross-script abstract identities in learners of Japanese kana.

Science.gov (United States)

Schubert, Teresa; Gawthrop, Roderick; Kinoshita, Sachiko

2018-05-07

The presence of abstract letter identity representations in the Roman alphabet has been well documented. These representations are invariant to letter case (upper vs. lower) and visual appearance. For example, "a" and "A" are represented by the same abstract identity. Recent research has begun to consider whether the processing of non-Roman orthographies also involves abstract orthographic representations. In the present study, we sought evidence for abstract identities in Japanese kana, which consist of two scripts, hiragana and katakana. Abstract identities would be invariant to the script used as well as to the degree of visual similarity. We adapted the cross-case masked-priming letter match task used in previous research on Roman letters, by presenting cross-script kana pairs and testing adult beginning -to- intermediate Japanese second-language (L2) learners (first-language English readers). We found robust cross-script priming effects, which were equal in magnitude for visually similar (e.g., り/リ) and dissimilar (e.g., あ/ア) kana pairs. This pattern was found despite participants' imperfect explicit knowledge of the kana names, particularly for katakana. We also replicated prior findings from Roman abstract letter identities in the same participants. Ours is the first study reporting abstract kana identity priming (in adult L2 learners). Furthermore, these representations were acquired relatively early in our adult L2 learners.

Interdisciplinary perspectives on abstracts for information retrieval

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Soon Keng Chan

2004-10-01

Full Text Available The paper examines the abstract genre from the perspectives of English for Specific Purposes (ESP practitioners and information professionals. It aims to determine specific interdisciplinary interests in the abstract, and to explore areas of collaboration in terms of research and pedagogical practices. A focus group (FG comprising information professionals from the Division of Information Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, convened for a discussion on the subject of abstracts and abstracting. Two major issues that have significant implications for ESP practices emerged during the discussion. While differences in terms of approach to and objectives of the abstract genre are apparent between information professionals and language professionals, the demands for specific cognitive processes involved in abstracting proved to be similar. This area of similarity provides grounds for awareness raising and collaboration between the two disciplines. While ESP practitioners need to consider adding the dimension of information science to the rhetorical and linguistic scaffolding that they have been providing to novice-writers, information professionals can contribute useful insights about the qualities of abstracts that have the greatest impact in meeting the end-users' needs in information search.

Cognate costs in bilingual speech production: Evidence from language switching

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Mirjam Broersma

2016-09-01

Full Text Available This study investigates cross-language lexical competition in the bilingual mental lexicon. It provides evidence for the occurrence of inhibition as well as the commonly reported facilitation during the production of cognates (words with similar phonological form and meaning in two languages in a mixed picture naming task by highly proficient Welsh-English bilinguals. Previous studies have typically found cognate facilitation. It has previously been proposed (with respect to non-cognates that cross-language inhibition is limited to low-proficient bilinguals; therefore, we tested highly proficient, early bilinguals. In a mixed naming experiment (i.e., picture naming with language switching, 48 highly proficient, early Welsh-English bilinguals named pictures in Welsh and English, including cognate and non-cognate targets. Participants were English-dominant, Welsh-dominant, or had equal language dominance. The results showed evidence for cognate inhibition in to ways. First, both facilitation and inhibition were found on the cognate trials themselves, compared to non-cognate controls, modulated by the participants’ language dominance. The English-dominant group showed cognate inhibition when naming in Welsh (and no difference between cognates and controls when naming in English, and the Welsh-dominant and equal dominance groups generally showed cognate facilitation. Second, cognate inhibition was found as a behavioral adaptation effect, with slower naming for non-cognate filler words in trials after cognates than after non-cognate controls. This effect was consistent across all language dominance groups and both target languages, suggesting that cognate production involved cognitive control even if this was not measurable in the cognate trials themselves. Finally, the results replicated patterns of symmetrical switch costs, as commonly reported for balanced bilinguals. We propose that cognate processing might be affected by two different

A Flame of Nezami’s Language

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Heidarali Dahmardeh

2013-04-01

Full Text Available  Abstract Nezami’s Poem is in the front rank of poetry. He always attempted to choose the best words- fine words using beautiful words and expressions. His poetry is enriched by his power of imagination and awareness of the common knowledge and beliefs of the time. The common features of his speech includes a unique use of the words-word choice, creating new compounds, compounding- description, repetition, emphasis, transformation, omission, using Quranic verses, Islamic hadiths and Arabic compounds, expressions of astrology and medicine, adages, proverbs and idioms regularly used by ordinary people. He is a poet familiar with the language of ordinary people and their beliefs, customs and traditions. Since he rightfully attended to the spoken language and because of his particular style of speech, his works are full of street talks to the extent that this propery can be viewed as the prominent stylistic feature of his poems. He took advantage of the common sciences of the time and utilized the scientific, astrological and medical terms and also the technical meanings and themes of these sciences. His imagination and awareness of the sciences and beliefs made his poems productive. Some of the features of his poems are as follow:   1- Imagery : Imagery refers to producing pictures, paintings or shows in the mind of readers /listeners using words. That is, the poet or writer should have such mastery over using words, space, meanings and their relations that makes him able to effectively use the sentences and words to create paintings, pictures or shows in the mind of readers or listener, to enable the reader to imagine a real painting or picture when he is over with his reading.    2- Diction : Experts of language issues and grammar beliefs that word coining can strengthen the foundation of language. So, the first premise in creating fine text is to choose musical words appropriate for the given text and meaning. In the first step

Objects as closures: Abstract semantics of object oriented languages

Science.gov (United States)

Reddy, Uday S.

1989-01-01

We discuss denotational semantics of object-oriented languages, using the concept of closure widely used in (semi) functional programming to encapsulate side effects. It is shown that this denotational framework is adequate to explain classes, instantiation, and inheritance in the style of Simula as well as SMALLTALK-80. This framework is then compared with that of Kamin, in his recent denotational definition of SMALLTALK-80, and the implications of the differences between the two approaches are discussed.

Objects as closures - Abstract semantics of object oriented languages

Science.gov (United States)

Reddy, Uday S.

1988-01-01

The denotational semantics of object-oriented languages is discussed using the concept of closure widely used in (semi) functional programming to encapsulate side effects. It is shown that this denotational framework is adequate to explain classes, instantiation, and inheritance in the style of Simula as well as SMALLTALK-80. This framework is then compared with that of Kamin (1988), in his recent denotational definition of SMALLTALK-80, and the implications of the differences between the two approaches are discussed.

Making sense of diversity in the workplace: organizational justice and language abstraction in employees' accounts of diversity-related incidents.

Science.gov (United States)

Roberson, Quinetta M; Stevens, Cynthia Kay

2006-03-01

To discern patterns of employee sense-making about workplace diversity, the authors analyzed 751 natural language accounts of diversity incidents from 712 workers in one department of a large organization. Six generic incident types emerged: discrimination, representation, treatment by management, work relationships, respect between groups, and diversity climates. Consistent with hypotheses, incidents that respondents viewed as negative, accounts from women, and those involving members of respondents' in-groups were more likely to cite justice issues. Partially consistent with research on the linguistic intergroup bias, both negative and positive accounts involving out-group members and accounts from men were more likely to be expressed using abstract verb forms. The authors discuss future opportunities to integrate research on diversity, justice, and the linguistic category model.

Some aspects on the Pictures of the North

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lennart Pettersson

2008-02-01

In order to show some of the possibilities of the methods mentioned above I will discuss some of the possible aspects of a quantitative study of the pictures of the north as they appear in illustrated travel literature of the nineteenth century. I will present statistics dealing with artistic subjects, differences between the patterns of illustrations in books published in different languages and how the pictorial revolution in the 19th century changed the travel literature. In the second part of the article I will examine one illustrated travel book in order to high-light how text and illustration complemented each other and created significance together.

Learning to Believe: Challenges in Children's Acquisition of a World-Picture in Wittgenstein's "On Certainty"

Science.gov (United States)

Ariso, José María

2015-01-01

Wittgenstein scholars have tended to interpret the acquisition of certainties, and by extension, of a world-picture, as the achievement of a state in which these certainties are assimilated in a seemingly unconscious way as one masters language-games. However, it has not been stressed that the attainment of this state often involves facing a…

GLOBAL EDUCATION IN SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kip Cates

1999-01-01

Full Text Available This article paints an optimistic picture of the role we second language teachers can play not only in improving our students' language proficiency but also in infusing global education into our classes as we join with our students to address global concerns, such as peace, prosperity, environmental protection, and human rights. The article is divided into four parts. The first part describes global education and identifies organizations of second language educators participating in global education. The second part of the article focuses on two key areas of global education: peace education and environmental education. Next, we address questions that second language teachers frequently ask about including global education in their teaching. Lastly, we supply lists of print and electronic resources on peace education and environmental education.

Parameterized Dataflow (Extended Abstract

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dominic Duggan

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Dataflow networks have application in various forms of stream processing, for example for parallel processing of multimedia data. The description of dataflow graphs, including their firing behavior, is typically non-compositional and not amenable to separate compilation. This article considers a dataflow language with a type and effect system that captures the firing behavior of actors. This system allows definitions to abstract over actor firing rates, supporting the definition and safe composition of actor definitions where firing rates are not instantiated until a dataflow graph is launched.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation: language function.

Science.gov (United States)

Epstein, C M

1998-07-01

Studies of language using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) have focused both on identification of language areas and on elucidation of function. TMS may result in either inhibition or facilitation of language processes and may operate directly at a presumptive site of language cortex or indirectly through intracortical networks. TMS has been used to create reversible "temporary lesions," similar to those produced by Wada tests and direct cortical electrical stimulation, in cerebral cortical areas subserving language function. Rapid-rate TMS over the left inferior frontal region blocks speech output in most subjects. However, the results are not those predicted from classic models of language organization. Speech arrest is obtained most easily over facial motor cortex, and true aphasia is rare, whereas right hemisphere or bilateral lateralization is unexpectedly prominent. A clinical role for these techniques is not yet fully established. Interfering with language comprehension and verbal memory is currently more difficult than blocking speech output, but numerous TMS studies have demonstrated facilitation of language-related tasks, including oral word association, story recall, digit span, and picture naming. Conversely, speech output also facilitates motor responses to TMS in the dominant hemisphere. Such new and often-unexpected findings may provide important insights into the organization of language.

Functional MRI of Language Processing and Recovery

NARCIS (Netherlands)

C. Méndez Orellana (Carolina)

2015-01-01

markdownabstract__Abstract__ My thesis describe the utility of implementing fMRI to investigate how the language system is reorganized in brain damaged patients. Specifically for aphasia research fMRI allows to show how specific language treatment methods have the potential to enhance language

The relation between language, culture, and thought.

Science.gov (United States)

Imai, Mutsumi; Kanero, Junko; Masuda, Takahiko

2016-04-01

The relationship between culture, language, and thought has long been one of the most important topics for those who wish to understand the nature of human cognition. This issue has been investigated for decades across a broad range of research disciplines. However, there has been scant communication across these different disciplines, a situation largely arising through differences in research interests and discrepancies in the definitions of key terms such as 'culture,' 'language,' and 'thought.' This article reviews recent trends in research on the relation between language, culture and thought to capture how cognitive psychology and cultural psychology have defined 'language' and 'culture,' and how this issue was addressed within each research discipline. We then review recent research conducted in interdisciplinary perspectives, which directly compared the roles of culture and language. Finally, we highlight the importance of considering the complex interplay between culture and language to provide a comprehensive picture of how language and culture affect thought. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Romani identity in Romani language teaching materials

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bakker, Peter; Daval-Markussen, Aymeric

2013-01-01

– an essential part of schoolbooks – and language use. It appears that ideological choices with regard to the role of the school and attitudes towards Romani culture are typically reflected in visual images as well as the choice of language varieties. Compilers of educational materials have made a range...... of different choices for images and language varieties, which reflect a diversity of views on Romani education. These views range from a romantic view of an idealized past to adjustment to wider society, to a view where Roma do not come into the picture as a different group at all, in a modern world probably...... close to the actual experience of the Romani children. The choice of language to be taught in the classes for Roma children range from the state language, but adjusted to a Roma world, to the simultaneous use of several varieties, a standardized language or a local variety only. The images and language...

Control-flow analysis of function calls and returns by abstract interpretation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Midtgaard, Jan; Jensen, Thomas P.

2012-01-01

Abstract interpretation techniques are used to derive a control-flow analysis for a simple higher-order functional language. The analysis approximates the interprocedural control-flow of both function calls and returns in the presence of first-class functions and tail-call optimization. In additi...... a rational reconstruction of a constraint-based CFA from abstract interpretation principles....

Picture Naming in Typically Developing and Language-Impaired Children: The Role of Sustained Attention

Science.gov (United States)

Jongman, Suzanne R.; Roelofs, Ardi; Scheper, Annette R.; Meyer, Antje S.

2017-01-01

Background: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have problems not only with language performance but also with sustained attention, which is the ability to maintain alertness over an extended period of time. Although there is consensus that this ability is impaired with respect to processing stimuli in the auditory perceptual…

Effects of affective picture viewing on postural control

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Beek Peter J

2007-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Emotion theory holds that unpleasant events prime withdrawal actions, whereas pleasant events prime approach actions. Recent studies have suggested that passive viewing of emotion eliciting images results in postural adjustments, which become manifest as changes in body center of pressure (COP trajectories. From those studies it appears that posture is modulated most when viewing pictures with negative valence. The present experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that pictures with negative valence have a greater impact on postural control than neutral or positive ones. Thirty-four healthy subjects passively viewed a series of emotion eliciting images, while standing either in a bipedal or unipedal stance on a force plate. The images were adopted from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS. We analysed mean and variability of the COP and the length of the associated sway path as a function of emotion. Results The mean position of the COP was unaffected by emotion, but unipedal stance resulted in overall greater body sway than bipedal stance. We found a modest effect of emotion on COP: viewing pictures of mutilation resulted in a smaller sway path, but only in unipedal stance. We obtained valence and arousal ratings of the images with an independent sample of viewers. These subjects rated the unpleasant images as significantly less pleasant than neutral images, and the pleasant images as significantly more pleasant than neutral images. However, the subjects rated the images as overall less pleasant and less arousing than viewers in a closely comparable American study, pointing to unknown differences in viewer characteristics. Conclusion Overall, viewing emotion eliciting images had little effect on body sway. Our finding of a reduction in sway path length when viewing pictures of mutilation was indicative of a freezing strategy, i.e. fear bradycardia. The results are consistent with current knowledge about the

An Algebraic Approach to Incomparable Families of Formal Languages

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rozenberg, G.; Asveld, P.R.J.; Salomaa, A.

1993-01-01

We extend some results of Ginsburg and Spanier [S. Ginsburg & E.H. Spanier, On incomparable Abstract Families of Languages (AFL), J. Comput. Systems Sci. 9 (1974) 88-108] on incomparable full AFL's (full Abstract Families of Languages) to similar structures like full hyper-AFL's, full hyper(1)-AFL's

An Algebraic Approach to Incomparable Families of Formal Languages

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Asveld, P.R.J.; Rozenberg, G.; Salomaa, A.

1992-01-01

We extend some results of Ginsburg and Spanier [S. Ginsburg & E.H. Spanier, On incomparable Abstract Families of Languages (AFL), J. Comput. Systems Sci. 9 (1974) 88-108] on incomparable full AFL's (full Abstract Families of Languages) to similar structures like full hyper-AFL's, full hyper(1)-AFL's

LEADSTO: a Language and Environment for Analysis of Dynamics by SimulaTiOn (extended abstract)

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bosse, T.; Jonker, C.M.; van der Meij, L.; Treur, J.

2005-01-01

This paper presents the language and software environment LEADSTO that has been developed to model and simulate dynamic processes in terms of both qualitative and quantitative concepts. The LEADSTO language is a declarative order-sorted temporal language, extended with quantitative means. Dynamic

Learning abstract visual concepts via probabilistic program induction in a Language of Thought.

Science.gov (United States)

Overlan, Matthew C; Jacobs, Robert A; Piantadosi, Steven T

2017-11-01

The ability to learn abstract concepts is a powerful component of human cognition. It has been argued that variable binding is the key element enabling this ability, but the computational aspects of variable binding remain poorly understood. Here, we address this shortcoming by formalizing the Hierarchical Language of Thought (HLOT) model of rule learning. Given a set of data items, the model uses Bayesian inference to infer a probability distribution over stochastic programs that implement variable binding. Because the model makes use of symbolic variables as well as Bayesian inference and programs with stochastic primitives, it combines many of the advantages of both symbolic and statistical approaches to cognitive modeling. To evaluate the model, we conducted an experiment in which human subjects viewed training items and then judged which test items belong to the same concept as the training items. We found that the HLOT model provides a close match to human generalization patterns, significantly outperforming two variants of the Generalized Context Model, one variant based on string similarity and the other based on visual similarity using features from a deep convolutional neural network. Additional results suggest that variable binding happens automatically, implying that binding operations do not add complexity to peoples' hypothesized rules. Overall, this work demonstrates that a cognitive model combining symbolic variables with Bayesian inference and stochastic program primitives provides a new perspective for understanding people's patterns of generalization. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Penggunaan Model Pembelajaran Picture and Picture Untuk Meningkatkan Kemampuan Siswa Menulis Karangan

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Heriyanto Heriyanto

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Menulis merupakan keterampilan berbahasa yang kompleks, produktif dan ekspresif, karena penulis harus terampil menggunakan grofologi, struktur bahasa dan memiliki pengetahuan bahasa yang memadai, untuk itu perlu dilatih secara teratur dan cermat sejak kelas awal SD. Karangan sebagai salah satu hasil karya menulis, merupakan hasil pekerjaan dari mengarang. Menulis karangan dalam penelitian ini adalah menulis karangan narasi. Salah satu masalah dalam pembelajaran Bahasa Indonesia adalah kesulitan siswa dalam menulis karangan yang baik dan benar, yang juga terjadi pada siswa kelas IVA SDN Pinggir Papas 1. Pembelajaran menulis karangan dengan menggunakan model kooperatif tipe picture and picture  diharapkan mampu meningkatkan pemahaman siswa dalam hal menulis karangan. Untuk itu, dilakukan penelitian terhadap siswa kelas IVA SDN Pinggir Papas I Kecamatan Kalianget Kabupaten Sumenep yang berjumlah 33 siswa. Penelitian dengan judul “Penggunaan Model Pembelajaran Kooperatif Tipe Picture and Picture untuk Meningkatkan Kemampuan Siswa Menulis Karangan” ini menggunakan penelitian tindakan kelas sebanyak dua putaran. Setiap putaran terdiri dari tahap rancangan, kegiatan, pengamatan, dan refleksi. Data yang diperoleh berupa nilai hasil LKS dan kuis individu berupa menulis karangan, lembar observasi aktivitas guru dan siswa serta penilaian penggunaan model pembelajaran kooperatif picture and picture, juga hasil respon siswa. Dari hasil analis menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan model pembelajaran kooperatif tipe picture and picture dapat meningkatkan kemampuan menulis karangan siswa kelas IVA SDN Pinggir Papas 1. Peningkatan ini terjadi pada nilai rata-rata LKS, yaitu dari 55 menjadi 71,6. Adapun hasil karangan individu siswa dari rata-rata 56,7 dengan ketuntasan 55% menjadi 74,5 dengan ketuntasan mencapai 88% atau terjadi peningkatan sebesar 33% dari siklus I.

Place-Based Picture Books as an Adult Learning Tool: Supporting Agricultural Learning in Papua New Guinea

Science.gov (United States)

Simoncini, Kym; Pamphilon, Barbara; Mikhailovich, Katja

2017-01-01

This article describes the rationale, development, and outcomes of two place-based, dual-language picture books with agricultural messages for women farmers and their families in Papua New Guinea. The purpose of the books was to disseminate better agricultural and livelihood practices to women farmers with low literacy. The books were designed and…

Metaphor in pictures.

Science.gov (United States)

Kennedy, J M

1982-01-01

Pictures can be literal or metaphoric. Metaphoric pictures involve intended violations of standard modes of depiction that are universally recognizable. The types of metaphoric pictures correspond to major groups of verbal metaphors, with the addition of a class of pictorial runes. Often the correspondence between verbal and pictorial metaphors depends on individual features of objects and such physical parameters as change of scale. A more sophisticated analysis is required for some pictorial metaphors, involving juxtapositions of well-known objects and indirect reference.

Syntactic Language Extension via an Algebra of Languages and Transformations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Jacob; Brabrand, Claus

2010-01-01

We propose an algebra of languages and transformations as a means for extending languages syntactically. The algebra provides a layer of high-level abstractions built on top of languages (captured by context-free grammars) and transformations (captured by constructive catamorphisms). The algebra...... is self-contained in that any term of the algebra specifying a transformation can be reduced to a catamorphism, before the transformation is run. Thus, the algebra comes “for free” without sacrificing the strong safety and efficiency properties of constructive catamorphisms. The entire algebra...... as presented in the paper is implemented as the Banana Algebra Tool which may be used to syntactically extend languages in an incremental and modular fashion via algebraic composition of previously defined languages and transformations. We demonstrate and evaluate the tool via several kinds of extensions....

Event-related brain responses to emotional words, pictures, and faces - a cross-domain comparison.

Science.gov (United States)

Bayer, Mareike; Schacht, Annekathrin

2014-01-01

Emotion effects in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have previously been reported for a range of visual stimuli, including emotional words, pictures, and facial expressions. Still, little is known about the actual comparability of emotion effects across these stimulus classes. The present study aimed to fill this gap by investigating emotion effects in response to words, pictures, and facial expressions using a blocked within-subject design. Furthermore, ratings of stimulus arousal and valence were collected from an independent sample of participants. Modulations of early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive complex (LPC) were visible for all stimulus domains, but showed clear differences, particularly in valence processing. While emotion effects were limited to positive stimuli for words, they were predominant for negative stimuli in pictures and facial expressions. These findings corroborate the notion of a positivity offset for words and a negativity bias for pictures and facial expressions, which was assumed to be caused by generally lower arousal levels of written language. Interestingly, however, these assumed differences were not confirmed by arousal ratings. Instead, words were rated as overall more positive than pictures and facial expressions. Taken together, the present results point toward systematic differences in the processing of written words and pictorial stimuli of emotional content, not only in terms of a valence bias evident in ERPs, but also concerning their emotional evaluation captured by ratings of stimulus valence and arousal.

Producing colour pictures from SCAN

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Robichaud, K.

1982-01-01

The computer code SCAN.TSK has been written for use on the Interdata 7/32 minicomputer which will convert the pictures produced by the SCAN program into colour pictures on a colour graphics VDU. These colour pictures are a more powerful aid to detecting errors in the MONK input data than the normal lineprinter pictures. This report is intended as a user manual for using the program on the Interdata 7/32, and describes the method used to produce the pictures and gives examples of JCL, input data and of the pictures that can be produced. (U.K.)

Literary Language in Development of L2 Competence

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dan Lu

2012-11-01

Full Text Available Nowadays it is believed that language in daily communication rather than literary language should be the target of learning in L2 education. This is mainly because literary language is said to be uncommon in life. This paper reports on a study in which some Hong Kong ESL learners’ English proficiency was re-examined through literary texts. These learners had reached intermediate or advanced levels of English prior to the study and were generally competent in daily English. However, many of them encountered difficulty in understanding literary language. Their proficiency in general English test could not match their performances in understanding literary works. The findings reveal that learners who are strong in general proficiency may not be good in understanding literary language. Lack of literary language in the curriculum results in a false and distorted picture about the learners’ proficiency. Literary language helps upgrade L2 learners’ real proficiency in the target language.

Device for transmitting pictures and device for receiving said pictures

NARCIS (Netherlands)

1993-01-01

Device for transmitting television pictures in the form of transform coefficients and motion vectors. The motion vectors of a sub-picture are converted (20) into a series of difference vectors and a reference vector. Said series is subsequently applied to a variable-length encoder (22) which encodes

Annotating abstract pronominal anaphora in the DAD project

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Navarretta, Costanza; Olsen, Sussi Anni

2008-01-01

n this paper we present an extension of the MATE/GNOME annotation scheme for anaphora (Poesio 2004) which accounts for abstract anaphora in Danish and Italian. By abstract anaphora it is here meant pronouns whose linguistic antecedents are verbal phrases, clauses and discourse segments. The exten......n this paper we present an extension of the MATE/GNOME annotation scheme for anaphora (Poesio 2004) which accounts for abstract anaphora in Danish and Italian. By abstract anaphora it is here meant pronouns whose linguistic antecedents are verbal phrases, clauses and discourse segments....... The extended scheme, which we call the DAD annotation scheme, allows to annotate information about abstract anaphora which is important to investigate their use, see Webber (1988), Gundel et al. (2003), Navarretta (2004) and which can influence their automatic treatment. Intercoder agreement scores obtained...... by applying the DAD annotation scheme on texts and dialogues in the two languages are given and show that th information proposed in the scheme can be recognised in a reliable way....

Semantic interference from distractor pictures in single-picture naming: evidence for competitive lexical selection.

Science.gov (United States)

Jescheniak, Jörg D; Matushanskaya, Asya; Mädebach, Andreas; Müller, Matthias M

2014-10-01

Picture-naming studies have demonstrated interference from semantic-categorically related distractor words, but not from corresponding distractor pictures, and the lack of generality of the interference effect has been argued to challenge theories viewing lexical selection in speech production as a competitive process. Here, we demonstrate that semantic interference from context pictures does become visible, if sufficient attention is allocated to them. We combined picture naming with a spatial-cuing procedure. When participants' attention was shifted to the distractor, semantically related distractor pictures interfered with the response, as compared with unrelated distractor pictures. This finding supports models conceiving lexical retrieval as competitive (Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999) but is difficult to reconcile with the response exclusion hypothesis (Finkbeiner & Caramazza, 2006b) proposed as an alternative.

The ALIA4J approach to efficient language implementation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bockisch, Christoph; Sewe, Andreas

2012-01-01

New programming languages are frequently designed to improve upon other languages or to simplify programs through domain-specific abstractions. They are often implemented as transformations to an established (intermediate) language (IL). But while many new languages overlap in the semantics of their

Annotated Bibliography of Dr Salmani Nodoushan's Research on Education and Language Teaching

Science.gov (United States)

Etemadfar Kashani, Abbas Ali

2016-01-01

This is an annotated bibliography of the research conducted on education and language teaching and assessment by Dr. Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan in the past 25 years. This bibliography is a precise picture of the current state of education and language teaching and assessment in Iran. Dr. Salmani Nodoushan is the most distinguished Iranian…

Klaim-DB: A Modeling Language for Distributed Database Applications

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wu, Xi; Li, Ximeng; Lluch Lafuente, Alberto

2015-01-01

and manipulation of structured data, with integrity and atomicity considerations. We present the formal semantics of KlaimDB and illustrate the use of the language in a scenario where the sales from different branches of a chain of department stores are aggregated from their local databases. It can be seen......We present the modelling language, Klaim-DB, for distributed database applications. Klaim-DB borrows the distributed nets of the coordination language Klaim but essentially re-incarnates the tuple spaces of Klaim as databases, and provides high-level language abstractions for the access...... that raising the abstraction level and encapsulating integrity checks (concerning the schema of tables, etc.) in the language primitives for database operations benefit the modelling task considerably....

The influence of affordances on user preferences for multimedia language learning applications

OpenAIRE

Uther, M; Banks, AP

2016-01-01

This study investigates the influence of sensory and cognitive affordances on the user experience of mobile devices for multimedia language learning applications. A primarily audio-based language learning application – ‘Vowel Trainer’, was chosen against a comparison, text and picture-based language learning application – ‘Learn English for Taxi Drivers’. Impressions of the two applications were assessed on two different devices that have virtually the same interface and identical sound outpu...

The Effects of Captions on EFL Learners' Comprehension of English-Language Television Programs

Science.gov (United States)

Rodgers, Michael P. H.; Webb, Stuart

2017-01-01

The Multimedia Principle (Fletcher & Tobias, 2005) states that people learn better and comprehend more when words and pictures are presented together. The potential for English language learners to increase their comprehension of video through the use of captions, which graphically display the same language as the spoken dialogue, has been…

Language, embodiment, and the cognitive niche.

Science.gov (United States)

Clark, Andy

2006-08-01

Embodied agents use bodily actions and environmental interventions to make the world a better place to think in. Where does language fit into this emerging picture of the embodied, ecologically efficient agent? One useful way to approach this question is to consider language itself as a cognition-enhancing animal-built structure. To take this perspective is to view language as a kind of self-constructed cognitive niche: a persisting but never stationary material scaffolding whose crucial role in promoting thought and reason remains surprisingly poorly understood. It is the very materiality of this linguistic scaffolding, I suggest, that gives it some key benefits. By materializing thought in words, we create structures that are themselves proper objects of perception, manipulation, and (further) thought.

On national flags and language tags: Effects of flag-language congruency in bilingual word recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Grainger, Jonathan; Declerck, Mathieu; Marzouki, Yousri

2017-07-01

French-English bilinguals performed a generalized lexical decision experiment with mixed lists of French and English words and pseudo-words. In Experiment 1, each word/pseudo-word was superimposed on the picture of the French or UK flag, and flag-word congruency was manipulated. The flag was not informative with respect to either the lexical decision response or the language of the word. Nevertheless, lexical decisions to word stimuli were faster following the congruent flag compared with the incongruent flag, but only for French (L1) words. Experiment 2 replicated this flag-language congruency effect in a priming paradigm, where the word and pseudo-word targets followed the brief presentation of the flag prime, and this time effects were seen in both languages. We take these findings as evidence for a mechanism that automatically processes linguistic and non-linguistic information concerning the presence or not of a given language. Language membership information can then modulate lexical processing, in line with the architecture of the BIA model, but not the BIA+ model. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Rethinking foundations of language from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Gong, Tao; Shuai, Lan; Wu, Yicheng

2018-04-21

The issue of language foundations has been of great controversy ever since it was first raised in Lenneberg's (1967) monograph Biological Foundations of Language. Based on a survey of recent findings relevant to the study of language acquisition and evolution, we propose that: (i) the biological predispositions for language are largely domain-general, not necessarily language-specific or human-unique; (ii) the socio-cultural environment of language serves as another important foundation of language, which helps shape language components, induce and drive language shift; and (iii) language must have coevolved with the cognitive mechanisms associated with it through intertwined biological and cultural evolution. In addition to theoretical issues, this paper also evaluates the primary approaches recently joining the endeavor of studying language foundations and evolution, including human experiments and computer simulations. Most of the evidence surveyed in this paper comes from a variety of disciplines, and methodology therein complements each other to form a global picture of language foundations. These reflect the complexity of the issue of language foundations and the necessity of taking a multidisciplinary perspective to address it. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Computability, complexity, and languages fundamentals of theoretical computer science

CERN Document Server

Davis, Martin D; Rheinboldt, Werner

1983-01-01

Computability, Complexity, and Languages: Fundamentals of Theoretical Computer Science provides an introduction to the various aspects of theoretical computer science. Theoretical computer science is the mathematical study of models of computation. This text is composed of five parts encompassing 17 chapters, and begins with an introduction to the use of proofs in mathematics and the development of computability theory in the context of an extremely simple abstract programming language. The succeeding parts demonstrate the performance of abstract programming language using a macro expa

Linguistic Representation of Emotions in Japanese and Hungarian: Quantity and Abstractness

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Márton SZEMEREY

2012-05-01

Full Text Available In the present paper, two linguistic aspects of emotion expression are studied in the form they are performed in present day Japanese and Hungarian. After a brief summary on the recent emotional researches connected to Japanese culture and language, the concept of Linguistic Category Model is introduced. The quantitative study presented afterwards investigates emotion expression in terms of amount and abstraction. Translations were used for comparison and the results showed that 1 Japanese tend to use less explicit emotion terms compared to Hungarians and 2 emotion language in Japanese is characterized by the choice of less abstract phrases compared to Hungarian. These findings are discussed in the light of their relevance to former researches of cross-cultural psychology and linguistics.

Analysis of brief language tests in the detection of cognitive decline and dementia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marcia Radanovic

Full Text Available Abstract Lexical access difficulties are frequent in normal aging and initial stages of dementia. Verbal fluency tests are valuable to detect cognitive decline, evidencing lexico-semantic and executive dysfunction. Objectives: To establish which language tests can contribute in detecting dementia and to verify schooling influence on subject performance. Method: 74 subjects: 33 controls, 17 Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR 0.5 and 24 (Brief Cognitive Battery - BCB e Boston Naming Test - BNT 1 were compared in tests of semantic verbal fluency (animal and fruit, picture naming (BCB and BNT and the language items of Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE. Results: There were significant differences between the control group and both CDR 0.5 and CDR 1 in all tests. Cut-off scores were: 11 and 10 for animal fluency, 8 for fruit fluency (in both, 8 and 9 for BCB naming. The CDR 0.5 group performed better than the CDR 1 group only in animal fluency. Stepwise multiple regression revealed fruit fluency, animal fluency and BCB naming as the best discriminators between patients and controls (specificity: 93.8%; sensitivity: 91.3%. In controls, comparison between illiterates and literates evidenced schooling influence in all tests, except for fruit fluency and BCB naming. In patients with dementia, only fruit fluency was uninfluenced by schooling. Conclusion: The combination of verbal fluency tests in two semantic categories along with a simple picture naming test is highly sensitive in detecting cognitive decline. Comparison between literate and illiterate subjects shows a lesser degree of influence of schooling on the selected tests, thus improving discrimination between low performance and incipient cognitive decline.

Lesson 6. Picture unsharpness

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chikirdin, Eh.G.

1999-01-01

Lecture concerning the picture sharpness in biomedical radiography is presented. Notion of picture sharpness and visual acuity as an analyser of picture sharpness is specified. Attention is paid to the POX-curve as a statistical method for assessment of visual acuity. Conceptions of the sensitivity of using X-ray image visualization system together with specificity and accuracy are considered. Among indices of sharp parameters of visualization system the resolution, resolving power, picture unsharpness are discussed. It is shown that gradation and sharp characteristics of the image closely correlate that need an attention in practice to factors determining them [ru

Language production in a shared task: Cumulative semantic interference from self- and other-produced context words

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hoedemaker, R.S.; Ernst, J.; Meyer, A.S.; Belke, E.

2017-01-01

This study assessed the effects of semantic context in the form of self-produced and other-produced words on subsequent language production. Pairs of participants performed a joint picture naming task, taking turns while naming a continuous series of pictures. In the single-speaker version of this

When Bilinguals Choose a Single Word to Speak: Electrophysiological Evidence for Inhibition of the Native Language

Science.gov (United States)

Misra, Maya; Guo, Taomei; Bobb, Susan C.; Kroll, Judith F.

2012-01-01

Behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures are reported for a study in which relatively proficient Chinese-English bilinguals named identical pictures in each of their two languages. Production occurred only in Chinese (the first language, L1) or only in English (the second language, L2) in a given block with the order counterbalanced…

Word Order in Russian Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Kimmelman, Vadim

2012-01-01

In this paper the results of an investigation of word order in Russian Sign Language (RSL) are presented. A small corpus of narratives based on comic strips by nine native signers was analyzed and a picture-description experiment (based on Volterra et al. 1984) was conducted with six native signers. The results are the following: the most frequent…

Banana Algebra: Compositional syntactic language extension

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Jacob; Brabrand, Claus; Christiansen, David Raymond

2013-01-01

We propose an algebra of languages and transformations as a means of compositional syntactic language extension. The algebra provides a layer of high-level abstractions built on top of languages (captured by context-free grammars) and transformations (captured by constructive catamorphisms...... algebra as presented in the paper is implemented as the Banana Algebra Tool which may be used to syntactically extend languages in an incremental and modular fashion via algebraic composition of previously defined languages and transformations. We demonstrate and evaluate the tool via several kinds...

Using Spanish-English Cognates in Children's Choices Picture Books to Develop Latino English Learners' Linguistic Knowledge

Science.gov (United States)

Hernández, Anita C.; Montelongo, José A.; Herter, Roberta J.

2016-01-01

Educators can take advantage of Latino English learners' linguistic backgrounds by teaching Spanish-English cognate vocabulary using the Children's Choices picture books. Cognates are words that have identical or nearly identical spellings and meanings in two languages because of their Latin and Greek origins. Students can learn to recognize…

Language development in Japanese children who receive cochlear implant and/or hearing aid.

Science.gov (United States)

Iwasaki, Satoshi; Nishio, Shinya; Moteki, Hideaki; Takumi, Yutaka; Fukushima, Kunihiro; Kasai, Norio; Usami, Shin-Ichi

2012-03-01

This study aimed to investigate a wide variety of factors that influence auditory, speech, and language development following pediatric cochlear implantation (CI). Prospective collection of language tested data in profound hearing-impaired children. Pediatric CI can potentially be effective to development of practical communication skills and early implantation is more effective. We proposed a set of language tests (assessment package of the language development for Japanese hearing-impaired children; ALADJIN) consisting of communication skills testing (test for question-answer interaction development; TQAID), comprehensive (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised; PVT-R and Standardized Comprehension Test for Abstract Words; SCTAW) and productive vocabulary (Word Fluency Test; WFT), and comprehensive and productive syntax (Syntactic processing Test for Aphasia; STA). Of 638 hearing-impaired children recruited for this study, 282 (44.2%) with >70 dB hearing impairment had undergone CI. After excluding children with low birth weight (11 points on the Pervasive Developmental Disorder ASJ Rating Scale for the test of autistic tendency, and those better than those in HA-only users. The scores for PVT-R (pbetter than those in HA-only users. STA and TQAID scores in CI-HA users were significantly (pbetter than those in unilateral CI-only users. The high correlation (r=0.52) has been found between the age of CI and maximum speech discrimination score. The scores of speech and language tests in the implanted children before 24 months of age have been better than those in the implanted children after 24 months of age. We could indicate that CI was effective for language development in Japanese hearing-impaired children and early CI was more effective for productive vocabulary and syntax. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Power of Pictures : Vertical Picture Angles in Power Pictures

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Giessner, Steffen R.; Ryan, Michelle K.; Schubert, Thomas W.; van Quaquebeke, Niels

2011-01-01

Conventional wisdom suggests that variations in vertical picture angle cause the subject to appear more powerful when depicted from below and less powerful when depicted from above. However, do the media actually use such associations to represent individual differences in power? We argue that the

Special Issue: Every picture tells a story: Pupil representations of learning the violin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrea Creech

2006-06-01

Full Text Available Abstract: The influence on learning outcomes of interpersonal interaction amongst teachers, pupils and parents is the subject of an inquiry that took this researcher on a voyage from the qualitative to the quantitative side of the “methodological divide”, and back again. This paper presents findings from first phase of the research, which included a quantitative survey to examine how learning and teaching experience for violin pupils was influenced by the interpersonal dynamics of responsiveness and control, within pupilparent and pupil-teacher relationships. As part of the survey pupils were asked to draw pictures of their violin lessons. It was thought that the pictures might reveal pupils’ perceptions of their experience of learning an instrument and that the pictures would add depth to the quantitative scales that measured interpersonal mechanisms and pupil outcomes. The pictures were subjected to content analysis and coded accordingly. These codes were matched with pupil artists’ scores for control and responsiveness, as well as with their scores for outcomes that included enjoyment of music, personal satisfaction, self esteem, self efficacy, friendship, motivation and musical attainment. Analysis of variance was computed in order to test the null hypotheses that a pupil-teacher-parent interpersonal behaviour (control and responsiveness was not represented in their pictures and b pupil outcomes were not reflected in their depictions of violin lessons. This paper presents the results of this analysis, thus addressing the question of whether the pictures could be accepted as telling a credible and coherent story about pupils’ perceptions of learning the violin.

Waste management research abstracts no. 16. Information on radioactive waste programmes in progress

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

1985-11-01

The research abstracts contained in this issue have been collected during recent months ending August 1985. The abstracts reflect research currently in progress in the field of radioactive waste management: environmental impacts, site selection, decontamination and decommissioning, environmental restoration and legal aspects of radioactive waste management. The abstracts have been printed in the language and in the form of submittal and without any changes other than minor editorial ones.

Waste management research abstracts no. 16. Information on radioactive waste programmes in progress

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1985-11-01

The research abstracts contained in this issue have been collected during recent months ending August 1985. The abstracts reflect research currently in progress in the field of radioactive waste management: environmental impacts, site selection, decontamination and decommissioning, environmental restoration and legal aspects of radioactive waste management. The abstracts have been printed in the language and in the form of submittal and without any changes other than minor editorial ones

Digital Picture Production and Picture aesthetic Competency in It-didactic Design

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rasmussen, Helle

, that It and media are only used seldom by 21 % of teachers in Visual Arts and 7 % of teachers in this subject never use It and Media in these lessons. Art teachers – among others - also express the need for continuing education. (Ministeriet for Børn og Undervisning 2011). Since lessons in digital picture...... production have been a demand in Visual Arts in Danish schools for more than two decades, these conditions call for development of new didactic knowledge. Besides new genres and ways of using digital pictures and media continuously develop. (Sørensen 2002). This ought to be an incessant challenge...... subject Visual Arts – and crosswise of subjects in school. The overall research question has been: How can IT-didactic designs support lessons in production of complex meaning in digital pictures and increase the development of pupil’s picture aesthetic competences? By using the expression ‘complex...

Pictures in Training

Science.gov (United States)

Miller, Elmo E.

1973-01-01

Pictures definitely seem to help training, but a study for the military finds these pictures need not be in moving form, such as films or videotape. Just how the pictorial techniques should be employed and with how much success depends on individual trainee and program differences. (KP)

Geometric picture of quantum discord for two-qubit quantum states

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shi Mingjun; Jiang Fengjian; Sun Chunxiao; Du Jiangfeng

2011-01-01

Among various definitions of quantum correlations, quantum discord has attracted considerable attention. To find an analytical expression for quantum discord is an intractable task. Exact results are known only for very special states, namely two-qubit X-shaped states. We present in this paper a geometric viewpoint, from which two-qubit quantum discord can be described clearly. The known results on X state discord are restated in the directly perceivable geometric language. As a consequence, the dynamics of classical correlations and quantum discord for an X state in the presence of decoherence is endowed with geometric interpretation. More importantly, we extend the geometric method to the case of more general states, for which numerical as well as analytical results on quantum discord have not yet been obtained. Based on the support of numerical computations, some conjectures are proposed to help us establish the geometric picture. We find that the geometric picture for these states has an intimate relationship with that for X states. Thereby, in some cases, analytical expressions for classical correlations and quantum discord can be obtained.

Predictors of second language acquisition in Latino children with specific language impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

Gutiérrez-Clellen, Vera; Simon-Cereijido, Gabriela; Sweet, Monica

2012-02-01

This study evaluated the extent to which the language of intervention, the child's development in Spanish, and the effects of English vocabulary, use, proficiency, and exposure predict differences in the rates of acquisition of English in Latino children with specific language impairment (SLI). In this randomized controlled trial, 188 Latino preschoolers with SLI participated in a small-group academic enrichment program for 12 weeks and were followed up 3 and 5 months later. Children were randomly assigned to either a bilingual or an English-only program. Predictors of English growth included measures of Spanish language skills and English vocabulary, use, proficiency, and exposure. Performance on English outcomes (i.e., picture description and narrative sample) was assessed over time. A series of longitudinal models were tested via multilevel modeling with baseline and posttreatment measures nested within child. Children demonstrated growth on the English outcomes over time. The language of intervention, Spanish skills, English vocabulary, and English use significantly predicted differences in rates of growth across children for specific measures of English development. This study underscores the role of the child's first language skills, the child's level of English vocabulary development, and level of English use for predicting differences in English acquisition in Latino preschoolers with SLI. These factors should be carefully considered in making clinical decisions.

Design and practice for a picture archiving and communication system based structured report module

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tian Junzhang; Jiang Guihua; Zheng Liyin; Ou Jingchai; Wu Pingyang; Hong Wensong; Jin Lin; Huang Dajiang; Zhang Xuelin

2004-01-01

Objective: To design and explore structured report module based on PACS, and to make diagnostic reports with pictures and words in application of computer implementing synchronous transmission of reports and pictures. Methods: 1000 Mb trunk net was adopted in PACS and 100 Mb was exchanged on tabletop. Structured report was designed with six function modules including basic item area, image sign area, diagnostic impression area, advice area, signature area, and picture area by application of programming language such as Delphi 6.0 and VC ++ 6.0. DICOM. Medical images or waveform were inserted directly in the diagnosis report through citing DICOM composite object. Basic function library was designed and constructed in whole system environment. Results: The structured report module based on PACS could structure image diagnosis report in inerrability structure in term of compute. The time and period of reports were shortened and utilization of report original datum were improved. Conclusion: The structured report module was in favor of promotion to combine with clinic teaching and scientific research. The quality and efficiency of image diagnosis work were raised by structured report module

Long-term interference at the semantic level: Evidence from blocked-cyclic picture matching.

Science.gov (United States)

Wei, Tao; Schnur, Tatiana T

2016-01-01

Processing semantically related stimuli creates interference across various domains of cognition, including language and memory. In this study, we identify the locus and mechanism of interference when retrieving meanings associated with words and pictures. Subjects matched a probe stimulus (e.g., cat) to its associated target picture (e.g., yarn) from an array of unrelated pictures. Across trials, probes were either semantically related or unrelated. To test the locus of interference, we presented probes as either words or pictures. If semantic interference occurs at the stage common to both tasks, that is, access to semantic representations, then interference should occur in both probe presentation modalities. Results showed clear semantic interference effects independent of presentation modality and lexical frequency, confirming a semantic locus of interference in comprehension. To test the mechanism of interference, we repeated trials across 4 presentation cycles and manipulated the number of unrelated intervening trials (zero vs. two). We found that semantic interference was additive across cycles and survived 2 intervening trials, demonstrating interference to be long-lasting as opposed to short-lived. However, interference was smaller with zero versus 2 intervening trials, which we interpret to suggest that short-lived facilitation counteracted the long-lived interference. We propose that retrieving meanings associated with words/pictures from the same semantic category yields both interference due to long-lasting changes in connection strength between semantic representations (i.e., incremental learning) and facilitation caused by short-lived residual activation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Sociolinguistic Typology and Sign Languages.

Science.gov (United States)

Schembri, Adam; Fenlon, Jordan; Cormier, Kearsy; Johnston, Trevor

2018-01-01

This paper examines the possible relationship between proposed social determinants of morphological 'complexity' and how this contributes to linguistic diversity, specifically via the typological nature of the sign languages of deaf communities. We sketch how the notion of morphological complexity, as defined by Trudgill (2011), applies to sign languages. Using these criteria, sign languages appear to be languages with low to moderate levels of morphological complexity. This may partly reflect the influence of key social characteristics of communities on the typological nature of languages. Although many deaf communities are relatively small and may involve dense social networks (both social characteristics that Trudgill claimed may lend themselves to morphological 'complexification'), the picture is complicated by the highly variable nature of the sign language acquisition for most deaf people, and the ongoing contact between native signers, hearing non-native signers, and those deaf individuals who only acquire sign languages in later childhood and early adulthood. These are all factors that may work against the emergence of morphological complexification. The relationship between linguistic typology and these key social factors may lead to a better understanding of the nature of sign language grammar. This perspective stands in contrast to other work where sign languages are sometimes presented as having complex morphology despite being young languages (e.g., Aronoff et al., 2005); in some descriptions, the social determinants of morphological complexity have not received much attention, nor has the notion of complexity itself been specifically explored.

Sociolinguistic Typology and Sign Languages

Science.gov (United States)

Schembri, Adam; Fenlon, Jordan; Cormier, Kearsy; Johnston, Trevor

2018-01-01

This paper examines the possible relationship between proposed social determinants of morphological ‘complexity’ and how this contributes to linguistic diversity, specifically via the typological nature of the sign languages of deaf communities. We sketch how the notion of morphological complexity, as defined by Trudgill (2011), applies to sign languages. Using these criteria, sign languages appear to be languages with low to moderate levels of morphological complexity. This may partly reflect the influence of key social characteristics of communities on the typological nature of languages. Although many deaf communities are relatively small and may involve dense social networks (both social characteristics that Trudgill claimed may lend themselves to morphological ‘complexification’), the picture is complicated by the highly variable nature of the sign language acquisition for most deaf people, and the ongoing contact between native signers, hearing non-native signers, and those deaf individuals who only acquire sign languages in later childhood and early adulthood. These are all factors that may work against the emergence of morphological complexification. The relationship between linguistic typology and these key social factors may lead to a better understanding of the nature of sign language grammar. This perspective stands in contrast to other work where sign languages are sometimes presented as having complex morphology despite being young languages (e.g., Aronoff et al., 2005); in some descriptions, the social determinants of morphological complexity have not received much attention, nor has the notion of complexity itself been specifically explored. PMID:29515506

Sociolinguistic Typology and Sign Languages

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Adam Schembri

2018-02-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the possible relationship between proposed social determinants of morphological ‘complexity’ and how this contributes to linguistic diversity, specifically via the typological nature of the sign languages of deaf communities. We sketch how the notion of morphological complexity, as defined by Trudgill (2011, applies to sign languages. Using these criteria, sign languages appear to be languages with low to moderate levels of morphological complexity. This may partly reflect the influence of key social characteristics of communities on the typological nature of languages. Although many deaf communities are relatively small and may involve dense social networks (both social characteristics that Trudgill claimed may lend themselves to morphological ‘complexification’, the picture is complicated by the highly variable nature of the sign language acquisition for most deaf people, and the ongoing contact between native signers, hearing non-native signers, and those deaf individuals who only acquire sign languages in later childhood and early adulthood. These are all factors that may work against the emergence of morphological complexification. The relationship between linguistic typology and these key social factors may lead to a better understanding of the nature of sign language grammar. This perspective stands in contrast to other work where sign languages are sometimes presented as having complex morphology despite being young languages (e.g., Aronoff et al., 2005; in some descriptions, the social determinants of morphological complexity have not received much attention, nor has the notion of complexity itself been specifically explored.

Bilingual Language Switching: Production vs. Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Mosca, Michela; de Bot, Kees

2017-01-01

This study aims at assessing how bilinguals select words in the appropriate language in production and recognition while minimizing interference from the non-appropriate language. Two prominent models are considered which assume that when one language is in use, the other is suppressed. The Inhibitory Control (IC) model suggests that, in both production and recognition, the amount of inhibition on the non-target language is greater for the stronger compared to the weaker language. In contrast, the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) model proposes that, in language recognition, the amount of inhibition on the weaker language is stronger than otherwise. To investigate whether bilingual language production and recognition can be accounted for by a single model of bilingual processing, we tested a group of native speakers of Dutch (L1), advanced speakers of English (L2) in a bilingual recognition and production task. Specifically, language switching costs were measured while participants performed a lexical decision (recognition) and a picture naming (production) task involving language switching. Results suggest that while in language recognition the amount of inhibition applied to the non-appropriate language increases along with its dominance as predicted by the IC model, in production the amount of inhibition applied to the non-relevant language is not related to language dominance, but rather it may be modulated by speakers' unconscious strategies to foster the weaker language. This difference indicates that bilingual language recognition and production might rely on different processing mechanisms and cannot be accounted within one of the existing models of bilingual language processing. PMID:28638361

Mirror neurons, language, and embodied cognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Perlovsky, Leonid I; Ilin, Roman

2013-05-01

Basic mechanisms of the mind, cognition, language, its semantic and emotional mechanisms are modeled using dynamic logic (DL). This cognitively and mathematically motivated model leads to a dual-model hypothesis of language and cognition. The paper emphasizes that abstract cognition cannot evolve without language. The developed model is consistent with a joint emergence of language and cognition from a mirror neuron system. The dual language-cognition model leads to the dual mental hierarchy. The nature of cognition embodiment in the hierarchy is analyzed. Future theoretical and experimental research is discussed. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Brief Report: Increasing Communication Skills for an Elementary-Aged Student with Autism Using the Picture Exchange Communication System.

Science.gov (United States)

Kravits, Tamara R.; Kamps, Debra M.; Kemmerer, Katie; Potucek, Jessica

2002-01-01

Effects of the Picture Exchange Communication System on the spontaneous communication skills and social interactions of a 6-year-old girl with autism across her home and school environments were evaluated. Results indicated increases in spontaneous language, increases in intelligible verbalizations in two of three settings, and changes in peer…

Do cavies talk? The effect of anthropomorphic picture books on children's knowledge about animals.

Science.gov (United States)

Ganea, Patricia A; Canfield, Caitlin F; Simons-Ghafari, Kadria; Chou, Tommy

2014-01-01

Many books for young children present animals in fantastical and unrealistic ways, such as wearing clothes, talking and engaging in human-like activities. This research examined whether anthropomorphism in children's books affects children's learning and conceptions of animals, by specifically assessing the impact of depictions (a bird wearing clothes and reading a book) and language (bird described as talking and as having human intentions). In Study 1, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children saw picture books featuring realistic drawings of a novel animal. Half of the children also heard factual, realistic language, while the other half heard anthropomorphized language. In Study 2, we replicated the first study using anthropomorphic illustrations of real animals. The results show that the language used to describe animals in books has an effect on children's tendency to attribute human-like traits to animals, and that anthropomorphic storybooks affect younger children's learning of novel facts about animals. These results indicate that anthropomorphized animals in books may not only lead to less learning but also influence children's conceptual knowledge of animals.

Partitions in languages and parallel computations

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Burgin, M S; Burgina, E S

1982-05-01

Partitions of entries (linguistic structures) are studied that are intended for parallel data processing. The representations of formal languages with the aid of such structures is examined, and the relationships are considered between partitions of entries and abstract families of languages and automata. 18 references.

Dictionary of the Slovenian Sign Language on the WWW

OpenAIRE

Cempre, Luka; Bešir, Aleksander; Solina, Franc

2013-01-01

The article describes technical and user-interface issues of transferring the contents and functionality of the CD-ROM version of the Slovenian sing language dictionary to the web. The dictionary of Slovenian sign language consist of video clips showing the demonstra- tion of signs that deaf people use for communication, text description of the words corresponding to the signs and pictures illustrating the same word/sign. A new technical solution—a video sprite—for concatenating subsections o...

Mariner Mars 1971 television picture catalog. Volume 2: Sequence design and picture coverage

Science.gov (United States)

Koskela, P. E.; Helton, M. R.; Seeley, L. N.; Zawacki, S. J.

1972-01-01

A collection of data relating to the Mariner 9 TV picture is presented. The data are arranged to offer speedy identification of what took place during entire science cycles, on individual revolutions, and during individual science links or sequences. Summary tables present the nominal design for each of the major picture-taking cycles, along with the sequences actually taken on each revolution. These tables permit identification at a glance, all TV sequences and the corresponding individual pictures for the first 262 revolutions (primary mission). A list of TV pictures, categorized according to their latitude and longitude, is also provided. Orthographic and/or mercator plots for all pictures, along with pertinent numerical data for their center points are presented. Other tables and plots of interest are also included. This document is based upon data contained in the Supplementary Experiment Data Record (SEDR) files as of 21 August 1972.

Air Pollution Translations: A Bibliography With Abstracts - Volume 1.

Science.gov (United States)

National Air Pollution Control Administration (DHEW), Washington, DC.

Cited are 558 references with abstracts translated from the original foreign languages, including 511 from Russian, 129 from German, and 18 from other countries. The entries are generally of a technical or advanced nature and are grouped into 13 subject areas: General, Emission Sources, Atmospheric Interaction, Measurement Methods, Control…

Old Romanian pluralized mass and abstract nouns

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gabriela Pană Dindelegan

2017-09-01

Full Text Available The analysis of a rich old Romanian corpus shows that the ‘pluralization’ of mass and abstract nouns is extremely frequent in old Romanian. The semantic effects of pluralization are similar for mass and abstract nouns, consisting in the creation of denotative and/or connotative semantic variants. Of the plural endings, –uri is specialized for the pluralization of mass nouns in Daco-Romanian. The evolution of the ending –uri illustrates the specific process by which a grammatical (plural morpheme is converted into a lexical morpheme (the so-called ‘lexical plurals’. ‘Lexical plurals’ have isolated occurrences in other Romance languages, but they have not reached the spread and regularity they display in Romanian.

An analysis of the abstracts presented at the annual meetings of the Society for Neuroscience from 2001 to 2006.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

John M Lin

2008-04-01

Full Text Available Annual meeting abstracts published by scientific societies often contain rich arrays of information that can be computationally mined and distilled to elucidate the state and dynamics of the subject field. We extracted and processed abstract data from the Society for Neuroscience (SFN annual meeting abstracts during the period 2001-2006 in order to gain an objective view of contemporary neuroscience. An important first step in the process was the application of data cleaning and disambiguation methods to construct a unified database, since the data were too noisy to be of full utility in the raw form initially available. Using natural language processing, text mining, and other data analysis techniques, we then examined the demographics and structure of the scientific collaboration network, the dynamics of the field over time, major research trends, and the structure of the sources of research funding. Some interesting findings include a high geographical concentration of neuroscience research in the north eastern United States, a surprisingly large transient population (66% of the authors appear in only one out of the six studied years, the central role played by the study of neurodegenerative disorders in the neuroscience community, and an apparent growth of behavioral/systems neuroscience with a corresponding shrinkage of cellular/molecular neuroscience over the six year period. The results from this work will prove useful for scientists, policy makers, and funding agencies seeking to gain a complete and unbiased picture of the community structure and body of knowledge encapsulated by a specific scientific domain.

The neural correlates of agrammatism: Evidence from aphasic and healthy speakers performing an overt picture description task

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eva eSchoenberger

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Functional brain imaging studies have improved our knowledge of the neural localization of language functions and the functional recovery after a lesion. However, the neural correlates of agrammatic symptoms in aphasia remain largely unknown. The present fMRI study examined the neural correlates of morpho-syntactic encoding and agrammatic errors in continuous language production by combining three approaches. First, the neural mechanisms underlying natural morpho-syntactic processing in a picture description task were analyzed in 15 healthy speakers. Second, agrammatic-like speech behavior was induced in the same group of healthy speakers to study the underlying functional processes by limiting the utterance length. In a third approach, five agrammatic participants performed the picture description task to gain insights in the neural correlates of agrammatism and the functional reorganization of language processing after stroke. In all approaches, utterances were analyzed for syntactic completeness, complexity and morphology. Event-related data analysis was conducted by defining every clause-like unit (CLU as an event with its onset-time and duration. Agrammatic and correct CLUs were contrasted. Due to the small sample size as well as heterogeneous lesion sizes and sites with lesion foci in the insula lobe, inferior frontal, superior temporal and inferior parietal areas the activation patterns in the agrammatic speakers were analyzed on a single subject level. In the group of healthy speakers, posterior temporal and inferior parietal areas were associated with greater morpho-syntactic demands in complete and complex CLUs. The intentional manipulation of morpho-syntactic structures and the omission of function words were associated with additional inferior frontal activation. Overall, the results revealed that the investigation of the neural correlates of agrammatic language production can be reasonably conducted with an overt language production

The neural correlates of agrammatism: Evidence from aphasic and healthy speakers performing an overt picture description task.

Science.gov (United States)

Schönberger, Eva; Heim, Stefan; Meffert, Elisabeth; Pieperhoff, Peter; da Costa Avelar, Patricia; Huber, Walter; Binkofski, Ferdinand; Grande, Marion

2014-01-01

Functional brain imaging studies have improved our knowledge of the neural localization of language functions and the functional reorganization after a lesion. However, the neural correlates of agrammatic symptoms in aphasia remain largely unknown. The present fMRI study examined the neural correlates of morpho-syntactic encoding and agrammatic errors in continuous language production by combining three approaches. First, the neural mechanisms underlying natural morpho-syntactic processing in a picture description task were analyzed in 15 healthy speakers. Second, agrammatic-like speech behavior was induced in the same group of healthy speakers to study the underlying functional processes by limiting the utterance length. In a third approach, five agrammatic participants performed the picture description task to gain insights in the neural correlates of agrammatism and the functional reorganization of language processing after stroke. In all approaches, utterances were analyzed for syntactic completeness, complexity, and morphology. Event-related data analysis was conducted by defining every clause-like unit (CLU) as an event with its onset-time and duration. Agrammatic and correct CLUs were contrasted. Due to the small sample size as well as heterogeneous lesion sizes and sites with lesion foci in the insula lobe, inferior frontal, superior temporal and inferior parietal areas the activation patterns in the agrammatic speakers were analyzed on a single subject level. In the group of healthy speakers, posterior temporal and inferior parietal areas were associated with greater morpho-syntactic demands in complete and complex CLUs. The intentional manipulation of morpho-syntactic structures and the omission of function words were associated with additional inferior frontal activation. Overall, the results revealed that the investigation of the neural correlates of agrammatic language production can be reasonably conducted with an overt language production paradigm.

Multiply controlled verbal operants: An analysis and extension to the picture exchange communication system

OpenAIRE

Bondy, Andy; Tincani, Matt; Frost, Lori

2004-01-01

This paper presents Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior as a framework for understanding language acquisition in children with autism. We describe Skinner's analysis of pure and impure verbal operants and illustrate how this analysis may be applied to the design of communication training programs. The picture exchange communication system (PECS) is a training program influenced by Skinner's framework. We describe the training sequence associated with PECS and illustrate how this sequ...

Language practice as games: Implications for sociology of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Language practice as games: Implications for sociology of translation in development contexts in Africa. ... Abstract. Drawing from Game Theory, the article conceptualises language practice as games, that is ... AJOL African Journals Online.

Evaluation of primary/preferred language data collection.

Science.gov (United States)

Duong, Linh M; Singh, Simple D; Buchanan, Natasha; Phillips, Joan L; Gerlach, Ken

2012-01-01

A literature review was conducted to identify peer-reviewed articles related to primary/preferred language and interpreter-use data collection practices in hospitals, clinics, and outpatient settings to assess its completeness and quality. In January 2011, Embase (Ovid), MEDLINE (Ovid), PubMed, and Web of Science databases were searched for eligible studies. Primary and secondary inclusion criteria were applied to selected eligible articles. This extensive literature search yielded 768 articles after duplicates were removed. After primary and secondary inclusion criteria were applied, 28 eligible articles remained for data abstraction. All 28 articles in this review reported collecting primary/preferred language data, but only 18% (5/28) collected information on interpreter use. This review revealed that there remains variability in the way that primary/preferred language and interpreter use data are collected; all studies used various methodologies for evaluating and abstracting these data. Likewise, the sources from which the data were abstracted differed.

Get the picture? The effects of iconicity on toddlers' reenactment from picture books.

Science.gov (United States)

Simcock, Gabrielle; DeLoache, Judy

2006-11-01

What do toddlers learn from everyday picture-book reading interactions? To date, there has been scant research exploring this question. In this study, the authors adapted a standard imitation procedure to examine 18- to 30-month-olds' ability to learn how to reenact a novel action sequence from a picture book. The results provide evidence that toddlers can imitate specific target actions on novel real-world objects on the basis of a picture-book interaction. Children's imitative performance after the reading interaction varied both as a function of age and the level of iconicity of the pictures in the book. These findings are discussed in terms of children's emerging symbolic capacity and the flexibility of the cognitive representation.

Revisiting the Wittgensteinian Legacy: Perspectives on Representational and Non-Representational Language-Games for Educational History and Theory

Science.gov (United States)

Smeyers, Paul; Fendler, Lynn

2015-01-01

Debates in science seem to depend on referential language-games, but in other senses they do not. Language works in more complex ways, even in work that purports to be purely scientific. This article investigates the scope and limitations of language-games in educational history and theory. The study addresses concepts and pictures as examples of…

Directed forgetting: Comparing pictures and words.

Science.gov (United States)

Quinlan, Chelsea K; Taylor, Tracy L; Fawcett, Jonathan M

2010-03-01

The authors investigated directed forgetting as a function of the stimulus type (picture, word) presented at study and test. In an item-method directed forgetting task, study items were presented 1 at a time, each followed with equal probability by an instruction to remember or forget. Participants exhibited greater yes-no recognition of remember than forget items for each of the 4 study-test conditions (picture-picture, picture-word, word-word, word-picture). However, this difference was significantly smaller when pictures were studied than when words were studied. This finding demonstrates that the magnitude of the directed forgetting effect can be reduced by high item memorability, such as when the picture superiority effect is operating. This suggests caution in using pictures at study when the goal of an experiment is to examine potential group differences in the magnitude of the directed forgetting effect. 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

Qualitative Analysis of Dietary Behaviors in Picture Book Fiction for 4- to 8-Year-Olds.

Science.gov (United States)

Matvienko, Oksana

2016-10-01

Picture books may facilitate parents' efforts to decrease pickiness and other undesirable food habits in children. This study conducted a content analysis of dietary behaviors and feeding strategies featured in fictional picture books compared with those discussed in the research literature. Several databases were searched for fictional picture books about dietary behavior, published between 2000 and 2016, accessible in the US, available in print format, and designated for 4- to 8-year-olds. Messages about dietary behavior in picture book fiction. Stories were systematically coded using holistic, data-driven, and evaluation coding methods. The final set of codes was examined for themes and patterns. Of the 104 books, 50% featured a specific eating behavior, 21% lifestyle/eating patterns, 20% food-related sensations and emotions, and 9% table manners. Books about dietary behaviors are abundant but the topic coverage is unbalanced. Problem behaviors portrayed in books overlap those discussed in the research literature. However, problem-solving strategies and actions do not align with those endorsed by nutrition professionals. Messages vary in their complexity (in terms of their plot and/or language), ranging from clear and direct to vague, sophisticated, unresolved, conflicting, or controversial. Recommendations for practitioners are discussed. Copyright © 2016 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Naming and categorizing objects: task differences modulate the polarity of semantic effects in the picture-word interference paradigm.

Science.gov (United States)

Hantsch, Ansgar; Jescheniak, Jörg D; Mädebach, Andreas

2012-07-01

The picture-word interference paradigm is a prominent tool for studying lexical retrieval during speech production. When participants name the pictures, interference from semantically related distractor words has regularly been shown. By contrast, when participants categorize the pictures, facilitation from semantically related distractors has typically been found. In the extant studies, however, differences in the task instructions (naming vs. categorizing) were confounded with the response level: While responses in naming were typically located at the basic level (e.g., "dog"), responses were located at the superordinate level in categorization (e.g., "animal"). The present study avoided this confound by having participants respond at the basic level in both naming and categorization, using the same pictures, distractors, and verbal responses. Our findings confirm the polarity reversal of the semantic effects--that is, semantic interference in naming, and semantic facilitation in categorization. These findings show that the polarity reversal of the semantic effect is indeed due to the different tasks and is not an artifact of the different response levels used in previous studies. Implications for current models of language production are discussed.

Radiodiagnosis of lung picture changes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kamenetskij, M.S.; Lezova, T.F.

1988-01-01

The roentgenological picture of changes of the lung picture in the case of different pathological states in the lungs and the heart, is described. A developed diagnostic algorithm for the syndrome of lung picture change and the rules of its application are given. 5 refs.; 9 figs

Tip-of-the-tongue in a second language: the effects of brief first-language exposure and long-term use.

Science.gov (United States)

Kreiner, Hamutal; Degani, Tamar

2015-04-01

Bilinguals have more tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) incidents than monolinguals. Whereas previous research has focused on differences in the long term language experience between these groups, the present study examined the hypothesis that both long-term and transient context factors modulate TOT rates. Russian-Hebrew bilinguals who acquired Hebrew either early (11years) were compared to native Hebrew speakers on a picture naming task in Hebrew, before and after viewing a short movie in Russian. Both the short-term context (before-after the movie) and long-term language experience modulated TOT rates: Late bilinguals exhibited significantly higher TOT rates than early bilinguals who did not significantly differ from native Hebrew speakers. Critically, following the Russian movie, bilinguals in both groups differed from the native speakers of the target language. Thus, exposure to the non-target language exerted a global, non-item-specific, cross-language interference effect. The findings highlight the dynamic nature of the bilingual system in which both short and long-term language experience operate to influence bilingual performance. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Processors and systems (picture processing)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gemmar, P

1983-01-01

Automatic picture processing requires high performance computers and high transmission capacities in the processor units. The author examines the possibilities of operating processors in parallel in order to accelerate the processing of pictures. He therefore discusses a number of available processors and systems for picture processing and illustrates their capacities for special types of picture processing. He stresses the fact that the amount of storage required for picture processing is exceptionally high. The author concludes that it is as yet difficult to decide whether very large groups of simple processors or highly complex multiprocessor systems will provide the best solution. Both methods will be aided by the development of VLSI. New solutions have already been offered (systolic arrays and 3-d processing structures) but they also are subject to losses caused by inherently parallel algorithms. Greater efforts must be made to produce suitable software for multiprocessor systems. Some possibilities for future picture processing systems are discussed. 33 references.

Sustained attention in language production: an individual differences investigation.

Science.gov (United States)

Jongman, Suzanne R; Roelofs, Ardi; Meyer, Antje S

2015-01-01

Whereas it has long been assumed that most linguistic processes underlying language production happen automatically, accumulating evidence suggests that these processes do require some form of attention. Here we investigated the contribution of sustained attention: the ability to maintain alertness over time. In Experiment 1, participants' sustained attention ability was measured using auditory and visual continuous performance tasks. Subsequently, employing a dual-task procedure, participants described pictures using simple noun phrases and performed an arrow-discrimination task while their vocal and manual response times (RTs) and the durations of their gazes to the pictures were measured. Earlier research has demonstrated that gaze duration reflects language planning processes up to and including phonological encoding. The speakers' sustained attention ability correlated with the magnitude of the tail of the vocal RT distribution, reflecting the proportion of very slow responses, but not with individual differences in gaze duration. This suggests that sustained attention was most important after phonological encoding. Experiment 2 showed that the involvement of sustained attention was significantly stronger in a dual-task situation (picture naming and arrow discrimination) than in simple naming. Thus, individual differences in maintaining attention on the production processes become especially apparent when a simultaneous second task also requires attentional resources.

Language specificity of lexical-phonological therapy in bilingual aphasia: A clinical and electrophysiological study.

Science.gov (United States)

Radman, Narges; Spierer, Lucas; Laganaro, Marina; Annoni, Jean-Marie; Colombo, Françoise

2016-08-01

Based on findings for overlapping representations of bilingual people's first (L1) and second (L2) languages, unilingual therapies of bilingual aphasia have been proposed to benefit the untrained language. However, the generalisation patterns of intra- and cross-language and phonological therapy and their neural bases remain unclear. We tested whether the effects of an intensive lexical-phonological training (LPT) in L2 transferred to L1 word production in a Persian-French bilingual stroke patient with Broca's aphasia. Language performance was assessed using the Bilingual Aphasia Test, a 144-item picture naming (PN) task and a word-picture verification (WPV) task. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded during PN and WPV in both languages before and after an LPT in French on a wordlist from the PN task. After the therapy, naming improved only for the treated L2 items. The naming performance improved neither in the untrained L2 items nor in the corresponding items in L1. EEG analyses revealed a Language x Session topographic interaction at 540 ms post-stimulus, driven by a modification of the electrophysiological response to the treated L2 but not L1 items. These results indicate that LPT modified the brain networks engaged in the phonological-phonetic processing during naming only in the trained language for the trained items.

Consumer language, patient language, and thesauri: a review of the literature

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Catherine A

2011-01-01

Objective: Online social networking sites are web services in which users create public or semipublic profiles and connect to build online communities, finding likeminded people through self-labeled personal attributes including ethnicity, leisure interests, political beliefs, and, increasingly, health status. Thirty-nine percent of patients in the United States identified themselves as users of social networks in a recent survey. “Tags,” user-generated descriptors functioning as labels for user-generated content, are increasingly important to social networking, and the language used by patients is thus becoming important for knowledge representation in these systems. However, patient language poses considerable challenges for health communication and networking. How have information systems traditionally incorporated these languages in their controlled vocabularies and thesauri? How do system builders know what consumers and patients say? Methods: This comprehensive review of the literature of health care (PubMed MEDLINE, CINAHL), library science, and information science (Library and Information Science and Technology Abstracts, Library and Information Science Abstracts, and Library Literature) examines the research domains in which consumer and patient language has been explored. Results: Consumer contributions to controlled vocabulary appear to be seriously under-researched inside and outside of health care. Conclusion: The author reflects on the implications of these findings for online social networks devoted to patients and the patient experience. PMID:21464851

Content Abstract Classification Using Naive Bayes

Science.gov (United States)

Latif, Syukriyanto; Suwardoyo, Untung; Aldrin Wihelmus Sanadi, Edwin

2018-03-01

This study aims to classify abstract content based on the use of the highest number of words in an abstract content of the English language journals. This research uses a system of text mining technology that extracts text data to search information from a set of documents. Abstract content of 120 data downloaded at www.computer.org. Data grouping consists of three categories: DM (Data Mining), ITS (Intelligent Transport System) and MM (Multimedia). Systems built using naive bayes algorithms to classify abstract journals and feature selection processes using term weighting to give weight to each word. Dimensional reduction techniques to reduce the dimensions of word counts rarely appear in each document based on dimensional reduction test parameters of 10% -90% of 5.344 words. The performance of the classification system is tested by using the Confusion Matrix based on comparative test data and test data. The results showed that the best classification results were obtained during the 75% training data test and 25% test data from the total data. Accuracy rates for categories of DM, ITS and MM were 100%, 100%, 86%. respectively with dimension reduction parameters of 30% and the value of learning rate between 0.1-0.5.

The effect of a training programme stimulating language functions on Alzheimer-type dementia and maintenance of language skills

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrzej Potemkowski

2017-12-01

Full Text Available In dementia of the Alzheimer’s type, memory and language impairments coexist, occur early and aggravate with time. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of our proprietary language function stimulating programme on cognitive functions and the maintenance of language skills in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer-type dementia as well as to evaluate the programme’s effectiveness depending on patients’ age, sex, education, severity of dementia and level of motivation. The intervention group (54 patients and the control group (34 patients were divided into subgroups according to the severity of dementia (mild/moderate. Tests such as the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Clock-Drawing Test, the Boston Naming Test and picture description were performed at 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12 months. In the course of 1 year, the Mini-Mental State Examination scores in the intervention group improved on average by 0.87 points, whilst in the control group they declined by 1.32 points over the same period of time. Statistically significant differences in the Clock-Drawing Test were found at 6 and 12 months, with the mean score differing by 0.98 and 1.35 points respectively across the groups. The score difference in the Boston Naming Test grew gradually. At 3 months it was 3.67 points, amounting to as much as 7.96 points at 12 months. For the picture description task, the mean scores at 12 months increased by 1.18 points in the intervention group in the mild dementia subgroup and by 0.66 points in the moderate dementia subgroup. In the control group, the scores decreased. The use of our proprietary training programme, specially designed to stimulate language functions in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer-type dementia, facilitates the maintenance of general cognitive function and improvement of language skills, and its effectiveness increases with the patient’s motivation. This confirms the importance of supplementing non

Non-Determinism: An Abstract Concept in Computer Science Studies

Science.gov (United States)

Armoni, Michal; Gal-Ezer, Judith

2007-01-01

Non-determinism is one of the most important, yet abstract, recurring concepts of Computer Science. It plays an important role in Computer Science areas such as formal language theory, computability theory, distributed computing, and operating systems. We conducted a series of studies on the perception of non-determinism. In the current research,…

Event-related brain responses to emotional words, pictures, and faces – a cross-domain comparison

Science.gov (United States)

Bayer, Mareike; Schacht, Annekathrin

2014-01-01

Emotion effects in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have previously been reported for a range of visual stimuli, including emotional words, pictures, and facial expressions. Still, little is known about the actual comparability of emotion effects across these stimulus classes. The present study aimed to fill this gap by investigating emotion effects in response to words, pictures, and facial expressions using a blocked within-subject design. Furthermore, ratings of stimulus arousal and valence were collected from an independent sample of participants. Modulations of early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive complex (LPC) were visible for all stimulus domains, but showed clear differences, particularly in valence processing. While emotion effects were limited to positive stimuli for words, they were predominant for negative stimuli in pictures and facial expressions. These findings corroborate the notion of a positivity offset for words and a negativity bias for pictures and facial expressions, which was assumed to be caused by generally lower arousal levels of written language. Interestingly, however, these assumed differences were not confirmed by arousal ratings. Instead, words were rated as overall more positive than pictures and facial expressions. Taken together, the present results point toward systematic differences in the processing of written words and pictorial stimuli of emotional content, not only in terms of a valence bias evident in ERPs, but also concerning their emotional evaluation captured by ratings of stimulus valence and arousal. PMID:25339927

Ad Oculos. Images, Imagination and Abstract Thinking

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Alessandra Cirafici

2018-03-01

Full Text Available The unusual edition of Elements of Euclid released for publishing in 1847 by Oliver Byrne offers the occasion to suggest a few elements for discussion on the uniqueness of the ‘representation’ of geometric-mathematical thinking—and more in general of the abstract thinking—enshrined in its ‘nature of a pure imaginative vision able to connect the intelligible with the tangible’. The purpose is, thus, a reasoning on images and communicative artefacts, that, when articulated, provide different variations of the idea of ‘transcription’ of complex theoretical structures from one language (that of abstract logic to another (that of sensory experience, with a view to facilitate, ease and make more accurate the noetic process. Images able over time to facilitate the understanding of complex and abstract theoretical principles—since able to show them in an extremely concrete way, ad oculos,—and which at some points could reveal the horizons of art interpretation to inscrutable and figurative meaningless formulas.

The emergence of grammar in a language-ready brain. Comment on "Towards a Computational Comparative Neuroprimatology: Framing the language-ready brain" by Michael A. Arbib

Science.gov (United States)

Hawkins, John A.

2016-03-01

Arbib makes the interesting proposal [3, §1.6] that the first Homo sapiens could have been ;language-ready;, without possessing the kind of rich lexicon, grammar and compositional semantics that we see in the world's languages today. This early language readiness would have consisted of a set of ;protolanguage; abilities, which he enumerates (1-7 in §1.6), supported by brain mechanisms unique to humans. The transition to full ;language; (properties 8-11 in §1.6 and §3) would have required no changes in the genome, he argues, but could have resulted from cultural evolution plus some measure of Baldwinian evolution favoring offspring with greater linguistic skill. The full picture is set out in [1].

Learning abstract algebra with ISETL

CERN Document Server

Dubinsky, Ed

1994-01-01

Most students in abstract algebra classes have great difficulty making sense of what the instructor is saying. Moreover, this seems to remain true almost independently of the quality of the lecture. This book is based on the constructivist belief that, before students can make sense of any presentation of abstract mathematics, they need to be engaged in mental activities which will establish an experiential base for any future verbal explanation. No less, they need to have the opportunity to reflect on their activities. This approach is based on extensive theoretical and empirical studies as well as on the substantial experience of the authors in teaching astract algebra. The main source of activities in this course is computer constructions, specifically, small programs written in the mathlike programming language ISETL; the main tool for reflections is work in teams of 2-4 students, where the activities are discussed and debated. Because of the similarity of ISETL expressions to standard written mathematics...

Incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary through brief multi-modal exposure.

Science.gov (United States)

Bisson, Marie-Josée; van Heuven, Walter J B; Conklin, Kathy; Tunney, Richard J

2013-01-01

First language acquisition requires relatively little effort compared to foreign language acquisition and happens more naturally through informal learning. Informal exposure can also benefit foreign language learning, although evidence for this has been limited to speech perception and production. An important question is whether informal exposure to spoken foreign language also leads to vocabulary learning through the creation of form-meaning links. Here we tested the impact of exposure to foreign language words presented with pictures in an incidental learning phase on subsequent explicit foreign language learning. In the explicit learning phase, we asked adults to learn translation equivalents of foreign language words, some of which had appeared in the incidental learning phase. Results revealed rapid learning of the foreign language words in the incidental learning phase showing that informal exposure to multi-modal foreign language leads to foreign language vocabulary acquisition. The creation of form-meaning links during the incidental learning phase is discussed.

Clustering, Hierarchical Organization, and the Topography of Abstract and Concrete Nouns

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Joshua eTroche

2014-04-01

Full Text Available The empirical study of language has historically relied heavily upon concrete word stimuli. By definition, concrete words evoke salient perceptual associations that fit well within feature-based, sensorimotor models of word meaning. In contrast, many theorists argue that abstract words are disembodied in that their meaning is mediated through language. We investigated word meaning as distributed in multidimensional space using hierarchical cluster analysis. Participants (N=365 rated target words (n=400 English nouns across 12 cognitive dimensions (e.g., polarity, ease of teaching, emotional valence. Factor reduction revealed three latent factors, corresponding roughly to perceptual salience, affective association, and magnitude. We plotted the original 400 words for the three latent factors. Abstract and concrete words showed overlap in their topography but also differentiated themselves in semantic space. This topographic approach to word meaning offers a unique perspective to word concreteness.

Clustering, hierarchical organization, and the topography of abstract and concrete nouns.

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Troche, Joshua; Crutch, Sebastian; Reilly, Jamie

2014-01-01

The empirical study of language has historically relied heavily upon concrete word stimuli. By definition, concrete words evoke salient perceptual associations that fit well within feature-based, sensorimotor models of word meaning. In contrast, many theorists argue that abstract words are "disembodied" in that their meaning is mediated through language. We investigated word meaning as distributed in multidimensional space using hierarchical cluster analysis. Participants (N = 365) rated target words (n = 400 English nouns) across 12 cognitive dimensions (e.g., polarity, ease of teaching, emotional valence). Factor reduction revealed three latent factors, corresponding roughly to perceptual salience, affective association, and magnitude. We plotted the original 400 words for the three latent factors. Abstract and concrete words showed overlap in their topography but also differentiated themselves in semantic space. This topographic approach to word meaning offers a unique perspective to word concreteness.

Short-Term Free Recall and Sequential Memory for Pictures and Words: A Simultaneous-Successive Processing Interpretation.

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Randhawa, Bikkar S.; And Others

1982-01-01

Replications of two basic experiments in support of the dual-coding processing model with grade 10 and college subjects used pictures, concrete words, and abstract words as stimuli presented at fast and slow rates for immediate and sequential recall. Results seem to be consistent with predictions of simultaneous-successive cognitive theory. (MBR)

Exoplanets and Multiverses (Abstract)

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Trimble, V.

2016-12-01

(Abstract only) To the ancients, the Earth was the Universe, of a size to be crossed by a god in a day, by boat or chariot, and by humans in a lifetime. Thus an exoplanet would have been a multiverse. The ideas gradually separated over centuries, with gradual acceptance of a sun-centered solar system, the stars as suns likely to have their own planets, other galaxies beyond the Milky Way, and so forth. And whenever the community divided between "just one' of anything versus "many," the "manies" have won. Discoveries beginning in 1991 and 1995 have gradually led to a battalion or two of planets orbiting other stars, very few like our own little family, and to moderately serious consideration of even larger numbers of other universes, again very few like our own. I'm betting, however, on habitable (though not necessarily inhabited) exoplanets to be found, and habitable (though again not necessarily inhabited) universes. Only the former will yield pretty pictures.

Pictures as a neurological tool: lessons from enhanced and emergent artistry in brain disease.

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Schott, G D

2012-06-01

Pictures created spontaneously by patients with brain disease often display impaired or diminished artistry, reflecting the patient's cerebral damage. This article explores the opposite: those pictures created in the face of brain disease that show enhanced or enduring artistry, and those that emerge for the first time in artistically naïve patients. After comments on background issues relating to the patient and the viewer, the paintings and drawings are considered in relation to the heterogeneous conditions in which this artistic creativity is seen. These conditions include various dementias-most notably frontotemporal lobar dementia, stroke, Parkinson's disease, autism and related disorders and psychiatric disease, epilepsy, migraine and trauma. In the discussion, it is argued that evidence of underlying brain dysfunction revealed by these pictures often rests on the abnormal context in which the pictures are created, or on changes in artistry demonstrated by a sequence of pictures. In the former, the compulsive element and sensory and emotional accompaniments are often important features; in the latter, evolving changes are evident, and have included depiction of increasing menace in portrayal of faces. The occurrence of synaesthesia, and its relation to creativity, are briefly discussed in respect of two unusual patients, followed by considering the role of the anterior and frontal lobes, mesolimbic connections and the right hemisphere. In at least some patients, impaired inhibition leading to paradoxical functional facilitation, with compensatory changes particularly in the right posterior hemisphere, is likely to be pivotal in enabling unusual artistry to emerge; preservation of language, however, is not a prerequisite. Many patients studied have been artists, and it appears possible that some of those with an artistic predisposition may be more likely to experience pathologically obsessive creativity. The discussion concludes that occasionally pictures

A Dual Coding Model of Processing Chinese as a Second Language: A Cognitive-Load Approach

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Sham, Diana Po Lan

2002-01-01

The research was conducted in Sydney and Hong Kong using students, from grades 5 to 9, whose first language or teaching medium was English, learning to read Chinese as second language. According to cognitive load theory, the processing of single Chinese characters accompanied by pictures should impose extraneous cognitive load and thus hinders…

Abnormal functional lateralization and activity of language brain areas in typical specific language impairment (developmental dysphasia)

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De Guibert, Clément; Maumet, Camille; Jannin, Pierre; Ferré, Jean-Christophe; Tréguier, Catherine; Barillot, Christian; Le Rumeur, Elisabeth; Allaire, Catherine; Biraben, Arnaud

2011-01-01

Atypical functional lateralization and specialization for language have been proposed to account for developmental language disorders, yet results from functional neuroimaging studies are sparse and inconsistent. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study compared children with a specific subtype of specific language impairment affecting structural language (n=21), to a matched group of typically-developing children using a panel of four language tasks neither requiring reading nor metalinguistic skills, including two auditory lexico-semantic tasks (category fluency and responsive naming) and two visual phonological tasks based on picture naming. Data processing involved normalizing the data with respect to a matched pairs pediatric template, groups and between-groups analysis, and laterality indexes assessment within regions of interest using single and combined task analysis. Children with specific language impairment exhibited a significant lack of left lateralization in all core language regions (inferior frontal gyrus-opercularis, inferior frontal gyrus-triangularis, supramarginal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus), across single or combined task analysis, but no difference of lateralization for the rest of the brain. Between-group comparisons revealed a left hypoactivation of Wernicke’s area at the posterior superior temporal/supramarginal junction during the responsive naming task, and a right hyperactivation encompassing the anterior insula with adjacent inferior frontal gyrus and the head of the caudate nucleus during the first phonological task. This study thus provides evidence that this specific subtype of specific language impairment is associated with atypical lateralization and functioning of core language areas. PMID:21719430

Effects of syntactic structure in the memory of concrete and abstract Chinese sentences.

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Ho, C S; Chen, H C

1993-09-01

Smith (1981) found that concrete English sentences were better recognized than abstract sentences and that this concreteness effect was potent only when the concrete sentence was also affirmative but the effect switched to an opposite end when the concrete sentence was negative. These results were partially replicated in Experiment 1 by using materials from a very different language (i.e., Chinese): concrete-affirmative sentences were better remembered than concrete-negative and abstract sentences, but no reliable difference was found between the latter two types. In Experiment 2, the task was modified by using a visual presentation instead of an oral one as in Experiment 1. Both concrete-affirmative and concrete-negative sentences were better memorized then abstract ones in Experiment 2. The findings in the two experiments are explained by a combination of the dual-coding model and Marschark's (1985) item-specific and relational processing. The differential effects of experience with different language systems on processing verbal materials in memory are also discussed.

Fundamentals of reversible flowchart languages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Yokoyama, Tetsuo; Axelsen, Holger Bock; Glück, Robert

2016-01-01

Abstract This paper presents the fundamentals of reversible flowcharts. They are intended to naturally represent the structure and control flow of reversible (imperative) programming languages in a simple computation model, in the same way classical flowcharts do for conventional languages......, structured reversible flowcharts are as expressive as unstructured ones, as shown by a reversible version of the classic Structured Program Theorem. We illustrate how reversible flowcharts can be concretized with two example programming languages, complete with syntax and semantics: a low-level unstructured...... language and a high-level structured language. We introduce concrete tools such as program inverters and translators for both languages, which follow the structure suggested by the flowchart model. To further illustrate the different concepts and tools brought together in this paper, we present two major...

Snake pictures draw more early attention than spider pictures in non-phobic women: evidence from event-related brain potentials.

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Van Strien, J W; Eijlers, R; Franken, I H A; Huijding, J

2014-02-01

Snakes were probably the first predators of mammals and may have been important agents of evolutionary changes in the primate visual system allowing rapid visual detection of fearful stimuli (Isbell, 2006). By means of early and late attention-related brain potentials, we examined the hypothesis that more early visual attention is automatically allocated to snakes than to spiders. To measure the early posterior negativity (EPN), 24 healthy, non-phobic women watched the random rapid serial presentation of 600 snake pictures, 600 spider pictures, and 600 bird pictures (three pictures per second). To measure the late positive potential (LPP), they also watched similar pictures (30 pictures per stimulus category) in a non-speeded presentation. The EPN amplitude was largest for snake pictures, intermediate for spider pictures and smallest for bird pictures. The LPP was significantly larger for both snake and spider pictures when compared to bird pictures. Interestingly, spider fear (as measured by a questionnaire) was associated with EPN amplitude for spider pictures, whereas snake fear was not associated with EPN amplitude for snake pictures. The results suggest that ancestral priorities modulate the early capture of visual attention and that early attention to snakes is more innate and independent of reported fear. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Prospective Teacher Concerns: A Comparative Study of Departments of English Language Teaching and Language and Literature

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mustafa naci kayaoğlu

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Language teachers in Turkey do not take a standard pre-service education as graduates of English Language Teaching (ELT, linguistics, and translation departments all end up with language teaching profession and this, in turn, results in different teaching needs and concerns. The researchers argue that these different concerns may be one of the underlying causes of chronic language education problems in Turkey, in that Turkish Ministry of National Education does not take into consideration the comparative picture of practicing teachers and composes curricula, teaching materials, and compulsory one-shot professional development activities that all reflect “one size fits all” ideology. Therefore, determining the needs and concerns of pre-service language teachers is of vital importance. The current study has arisen from Griffith’s (2012 call for more larger-scale studies on teacher concerns across different contexts via triangulation. The researchers aim at not only investigating teacher concerns but also painting a much detailed comparative picture between ELT and linguistics department prospective teachers. The researchers target convenience sampling, in the full knowledge that this group will not represent the whole population. However, this type of non-probability sampling can serve well when it is easy to gather much informative data. Building on the recent work of Griffiths (2012, the researchers have modified and extended the existing measurement tool of Griffiths (2012 to investigate the issue much deeper and compensate the caveats. They adapted her instrument and asked the participants to add their thoughts as well as deciding their concern level. The results are mainly in line with the referred study in terms of the rating and frequency. The study reveals that there are some differences between the concerns of ELT department students and language and literature department students. While prospective teachers studying at the

Prospective Teacher Concerns: A Comparative Study of Departments of English Language Teaching and Language and Literature

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

mustafa naci kayaoğlu

2013-06-01

Full Text Available Language teachers in Turkey do not take a standard pre-service education as graduates of English Language Teaching (ELT, linguistics, and translation departments all end up with language teaching profession and this, in turn, results in different teaching needs and concerns. The researchers argue that these different concerns may be one of the underlying causes of chronic language education problems in Turkey, in that Turkish Ministry of National Education does not take into consideration the comparative picture of practicing teachers and composes curricula, teaching materials, and compulsory one-shot professional development activities that all reflect “one size fits all” ideology. Therefore, determining the needs and concerns of pre-service language teachers is of vital importance. The current study has arisen from Griffith’s (2012 call for more larger-scale studies on teacher concerns across different contexts via triangulation. The researchers aim at not only investigating teacher concerns but also painting a much detailed comparative picture between ELT and linguistics department prospective teachers. The researchers target convenience sampling, in the full knowledge that this group will not represent the whole population. However, this type of non-probability sampling can serve well when it is easy to gather much informative data. Building on the recent work of Griffiths (2012, the researchers have modified and extended the existing measurement tool of Griffiths (2012 to investigate the issue much deeper and compensate the caveats. They adapted her instrument and asked the participants to add their thoughts as well as deciding their concern level. The results are mainly in line with the referred study in terms of the rating and frequency. The study reveals that there are some differences between the concerns of ELT department students and language and literature department students. While prospective teachers studying at the

Resituating indigenous languages and identities as outlined in the ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

lawton.hikwa

Linguistic hegemony, while largely attributable to the ... culture are analysed as fundamental human rights and .... be defined as the effort to obtain a more complete picture of ... study. The methods also allowed for the. Language- based. Problems in Africa. Restricted .... It creates opportunities for cultural identity and upward.

Out of mind, out of sight: language affects perceptual vividness in memory.

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Lisa Vandeberg

Full Text Available We examined whether language affects the strength of a visual representation in memory. Participants studied a picture, read a story about the depicted object, and then selected out of two pictures the one whose transparency level most resembled that of the previously presented picture. The stories contained two linguistic manipulations that have been demonstrated to affect concept availability in memory, i.e., object presence and goal-relevance. The results show that described absence of an object caused people to select the most transparent picture more often than described presence of the object. This effect was not moderated by goal-relevance, suggesting that our paradigm tapped into the perceptual quality of representations rather than, for example, their linguistic availability. We discuss the implications of these findings within a framework of grounded cognition.

Out of mind, out of sight: language affects perceptual vividness in memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Vandeberg, Lisa; Eerland, Anita; Zwaan, Rolf A

2012-01-01

We examined whether language affects the strength of a visual representation in memory. Participants studied a picture, read a story about the depicted object, and then selected out of two pictures the one whose transparency level most resembled that of the previously presented picture. The stories contained two linguistic manipulations that have been demonstrated to affect concept availability in memory, i.e., object presence and goal-relevance. The results show that described absence of an object caused people to select the most transparent picture more often than described presence of the object. This effect was not moderated by goal-relevance, suggesting that our paradigm tapped into the perceptual quality of representations rather than, for example, their linguistic availability. We discuss the implications of these findings within a framework of grounded cognition.

Modeling Abstraction Hierarchy Levels of the Cyber Attacks Using Random Process

OpenAIRE

Durrieu , Gilles; Frénod , Emmanuel; Morineau , Thierry; NGUYEN , THONG

2017-01-01

International audience; Aspects of human behavior in cyber security allow more natural security to the user. This research focuses the appearance of anticipating cyber threats and their abstraction hierarchy levels on the mental picture levels of human. The study concerns the modeling of the behaviors of mental states of an individual under cyber attacks. The mental state of agents being not observable, we propose a non-stationary hidden Markov chain approach to model the agent mental behavio...

The role of verbal and pictorial information in multimodal incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary.

Science.gov (United States)

Bisson, Marie-Josée; van Heuven, Walter J B; Conklin, Kathy; Tunney, Richard J

2015-01-01

This study used eye tracking to investigate the allocation of attention to multimodal stimuli during an incidental learning situation, as well as its impact on subsequent explicit learning. Participants were exposed to foreign language (FL) auditory words on their own, in conjunction with written native language (NL) translations, or with both written NL translations and pictures. Incidental acquisition of FL words was assessed the following day through an explicit learning task where participants learned to recognize translation equivalents, as well as one week later through recall and translation recognition tests. Results showed higher accuracy scores in the explicit learning task for FL words presented with meaning during incidental learning, whether written meaning or both written meaning and picture, than for FL words presented auditorily only. However, participants recalled significantly more FL words after a week delay if they had been presented with a picture during incidental learning. In addition, the time spent looking at the pictures during incidental learning significantly predicted recognition and recall scores one week later. Overall, results demonstrated the impact of exposure to multimodal stimuli on subsequent explicit learning, as well as the important role that pictorial information can play in incidental vocabulary acquisition.

The "third abstraction" of the Chinese artist LaoZhu: Neural and behavioral indicators of aesthetic appreciation.

Science.gov (United States)

Bao, Yan; Yang, Taoxi; Zhang, Jinfan; Zhang, Jiyuan; Lin, Xiaoxiong; Paolini, Marco; Pöppel, Ernst; Silveira, Sarita

2017-06-01

The eminent Chinese artist LaoZhu has created a homogeneous set of abstract pictures that are referred to as the "third abstraction." By definition, these pictures are meant to be representations of the artist's personal involvement and as such to create an internal point of view in the observer on an implicit level of processing. Aiming at investigating whether the artist's choice of a specific color is experienced in a specific way in the recipient, we assessed both explicit and implicit (i.e. neurocognitive) correlates in naive viewers of LaoZhu's pieces. The behavioral results reveal a preference of the original red paintings over color-changed counterparts in green or black. Paradoxically and inconsistent with predictions, we found higher levels of neural activation in several brain regions (predominantly in the frontal and parietal cortices) for the color-changed compared to the original red conditions. These observations add empirically to the complementarity of early visual pathways and higher-order cognition as well as of explicit and implicit information processing during aesthetic appreciation. We discuss our findings in light of processing effort and top-down control of the color-changed paintings. With regard to the third abstraction as defined by LaoZhu, in particular to the distinction between an external and internal point of view when viewing abstract art, our results contribute to an understanding of "abstraction and empathy" as a fundamental part of aesthetic appreciations. © 2017 The Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

IV. NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (CB): measuring language (vocabulary comprehension and reading decoding).

Science.gov (United States)

Gershon, Richard C; Slotkin, Jerry; Manly, Jennifer J; Blitz, David L; Beaumont, Jennifer L; Schnipke, Deborah; Wallner-Allen, Kathleen; Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick; Gleason, Jean Berko; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy; Adams, Marilyn Jager; Weintraub, Sandra

2013-08-01

Mastery of language skills is an important predictor of daily functioning and health. Vocabulary comprehension and reading decoding are relatively quick and easy to measure and correlate highly with overall cognitive functioning, as well as with success in school and work. New measures of vocabulary comprehension and reading decoding (in both English and Spanish) were developed for the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (CB). In the Toolbox Picture Vocabulary Test (TPVT), participants hear a spoken word while viewing four pictures, and then must choose the picture that best represents the word. This approach tests receptive vocabulary knowledge without the need to read or write, removing the literacy load for children who are developing literacy and for adults who struggle with reading and writing. In the Toolbox Oral Reading Recognition Test (TORRT), participants see a letter or word onscreen and must pronounce or identify it. The examiner determines whether it was pronounced correctly by comparing the response to the pronunciation guide on a separate computer screen. In this chapter, we discuss the importance of language during childhood and the relation of language and brain function. We also review the development of the TPVT and TORRT, including information about the item calibration process and results from a validation study. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of the measures are discussed. © 2013 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Microservices: a Language-based Approach

OpenAIRE

Guidi , Claudio; Lanese , Ivan; Mazzara , Manuel; Montesi , Fabrizio

2017-01-01

International audience; Microservices is an emerging development paradigm where software is obtained by composing autonomous entities, called (micro)services. However, microservice systems are currently developed using general-purpose programming languages that do not provide dedicated abstractions for service composition. Instead, current practice is focused on the deployment aspects of microservices, in particular by using containerization. In this chapter, we make the case for a language-b...

What Is Seen and What Is Listened: an Experience on the Visual Learning of Music Through the Artistic Picture

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carmen M. Zavala Arnal

2017-09-01

Full Text Available This paper shows the results of an experiment consisting of a sequence of didactic activities carried out with students of first grade of Musical Language of Professional Conservatory Education through the artistic picture as main tool for the historical and musical contextualization and to support musical audition and interpretation. On this occasion, the central panel of the altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin from the parochial church of Retascón (Zaragoza, made in the first third of the fifteen century by the Master of Retascón, which includes singing angels with music sheet rolls / music scrolls, is the medium through which the different learning activities are going to be developed. In addition, an unpublished iconographic-musical description of the selected work is provided. With the aim of reaching some specific learning objects related to Medieval and modal music, apart from the particular methodologies of artistic and musical education, the quantitative method is used. Its results confirm the usefulness of the artistic picture in Musical Language learning.

A Multidimensional Review of Bilingual Aphasia as a Language Disorder

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Mohsen Akbari

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Aphasia as a multifaceted language disorder associated with the complicated links between language and brain has been and is of interest and significance to the stream of research in different disciplines including neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive studies and language acquisition. Along with explorations into the manifestations of aphasia in monolingual speakers, bilingual aphasia has similarly become the most current form of this language disorder due to the rising number of bilingual speakers in recent decades all over the world and the probability of facing bilinguals suffering from this language deficit. To paint a picture of this multidimensional linguistic impairment and to get out of the labyrinth of aphasia and in particular bilingual aphasia, the present review study aims to provide a summary of aphasia-related studies in different contexts worldwide and run through the variables affecting the manifestations and language recovery patterns in bilingual aphasic speakers.

From emblems to diagrams: Kepler's new pictorial language of scientific representation.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen-Morris, Raz

2009-01-01

Kepler's treatise on optics of 1604 furnished, along with technical solutions to problems in medieval perspective, a mathematically-based visual language for the observation of nature. This language, based on Kepler's theory of retinal pictures, ascribed a new role to geometrical diagrams. This paper examines Kepler's pictorial language against the backdrop of alchemical emblems that flourished in and around the court of Rudolf II in Prague. It highlights the cultural context in which Kepler's optics was immersed, and the way in which Kepler attempted to demarcate his new science from other modes of the investigation of nature.

Manipulating affective state using extended picture presentations.

Science.gov (United States)

Sutton, S K; Davidson, R J; Donzella, B; Irwin, W; Dottl, D A

1997-03-01

Separate, extended series of positive, negative, and neutral pictures were presented to 24 (12 men, 12 women) undergraduates. Each series was presented on a different day, with full counterbalancing of presentation orders. Affective state was measured using (a) orbicularis oculi activity in response to acoustic startle probes during picture presentation, (b) corrugator supercilii activity between and during picture presentation, and (c) changes in self-reports of positive and negative affect. Participants exhibited larger eyeblink reflex magnitudes when viewing negative than when viewing positive pictures. Corrugator activity was also greater during the negative than during the positive picture set, during both picture presentation and the period between pictures. Self-reports of negative affect increased in response to the negative picture set, and self-reports of positive affect were greatest following the positive picture set. These findings suggest that extended picture presentation is an effective method of manipulating affective state and further highlight the utility of startle probe and facial electromyographic measures in providing on-line readouts of affective state.

Concreteness and Psychological Distance in Natural Language Use.

Science.gov (United States)

Snefjella, Bryor; Kuperman, Victor

2015-09-01

Existing evidence shows that more abstract mental representations are formed and more abstract language is used to characterize phenomena that are more distant from the self. Yet the precise form of the functional relationship between distance and linguistic abstractness is unknown. In four studies, we tested whether more abstract language is used in textual references to more geographically distant cities (Study 1), time points further into the past or future (Study 2), references to more socially distant people (Study 3), and references to a specific topic (Study 4). Using millions of linguistic productions from thousands of social-media users, we determined that linguistic concreteness is a curvilinear function of the logarithm of distance, and we discuss psychological underpinnings of the mathematical properties of this relationship. We also demonstrated that gradient curvilinear effects of geographic and temporal distance on concreteness are nearly identical, which suggests uniformity in representation of abstractness along multiple dimensions. © The Author(s) 2015.

Language control in bilinguals: Intention to speak vs. execution of speech.

Science.gov (United States)

Reverberi, Carlo; Kuhlen, Anna; Abutalebi, Jubin; Greulich, R Stefan; Costa, Albert; Seyed-Allaei, Shima; Haynes, John-Dylan

2015-05-01

Bilinguals require a high degree of cognitive control to select the language intended for speaking and inhibit the unintended. Previous neuroimaging studies have not teased apart brain regions for generating the intention to use a given language, and those for speaking in that language. Separating these two phases can clarify at what stage competition between languages occurs. In this fMRI study German-English bilinguals were first cued to use German or English. After a delay, they named a picture in the cued language. During the intention phase, the precuneus, right superior lateral parietal lobule, and middle temporal gyrus were more activated when participants had to update the currently active language. During language execution activation was higher for English compared to German in brain areas associated with cognitive control, most notably the anterior cingulate and the caudate. Our results suggest two different systems enabling cognitive control during bilingual language production. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

3D Fourier synthesis of a new X-ray picture identical in projection to a previous picture

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Carlsson, P.E.

1993-01-01

A central problem in diagnostic radiology is to compare a new X-ray picture with a previous picture and from this comparison be able to decide if anatomical changes have occurred in the patient or not. It is of primary interest that these pictures are identical in projection. If not it is difficult to decide with confidence if differences between the pictures are due to anatomical changes or differences in their projection geometry. In this thesis we present a non invasive method that makes it possible to find the relative changes in the projection geometry between the exposure of a previous picture and a new picture. The method presented is based on the projection slice theorem (central section theorem). Instead of an elaborate search for a single new picture a pre-planned set of pictures are exposed from a circular orbit above the patient. By using 3D Fourier transform techniques we are able to synthesize a new X-ray picture from this set of pictures that is identical in projection to the previous one. The method has certain limits. Those are as follows: *The X-ray focus position must always be at a fixed distance from the image plane. *The object may only be translated parallel to the image plane and rotated around axes perpendicular to this plane. Under those restrictions, we may treat divergent projection pictures as if they are generated by a parallel projection of a scaled object. The unknown rotation and translation of the object in the previous case are both retrieved in two different procedures and compensated for. Experiments on synthetic data has proved that the method is working even in the presence of severe noise

Implicit Schemata and Categories in Memory-Based Language Processing

Science.gov (United States)

van den Bosch, Antal; Daelemans, Walter

2013-01-01

Memory-based language processing (MBLP) is an approach to language processing based on exemplar storage during learning and analogical reasoning during processing. From a cognitive perspective, the approach is attractive as a model for human language processing because it does not make any assumptions about the way abstractions are shaped, nor any…

The language of mathematics: investigating the ways language counts for children's mathematical development.

Science.gov (United States)

Vukovic, Rose K; Lesaux, Nonie K

2013-06-01

This longitudinal study examined how language ability relates to mathematical development in a linguistically and ethnically diverse sample of children from 6 to 9 years of age. Study participants were 75 native English speakers and 92 language minority learners followed from first to fourth grades. Autoregression in a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework was used to evaluate the relation between children's language ability and gains in different domains of mathematical cognition (i.e., arithmetic, data analysis/probability, algebra, and geometry). The results showed that language ability predicts gains in data analysis/probability and geometry, but not in arithmetic or algebra, after controlling for visual-spatial working memory, reading ability, and sex. The effect of language on gains in mathematical cognition did not differ between language minority learners and native English speakers. These findings suggest that language influences how children make meaning of mathematics but is not involved in complex arithmetical procedures whether presented with Arabic symbols as in arithmetic or with abstract symbols as in algebraic reasoning. The findings further indicate that early language experiences are important for later mathematical development regardless of language background, denoting the need for intensive and targeted language opportunities for language minority and native English learners to develop mathematical concepts and representations. Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Semantic and stylistic pecularities of Slavicisms in language of modern newspapers

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Жанар Кабдыляшымовна Киынова

2012-12-01

Full Text Available In article functioning of slavonicims in language of modern Kazakhstan and Russian newspapers is considered. On the basis of examples, ekstserpirovanny from modern newspapers, the informative picture about tendencies and regularities of modern word usage in mass media is given.

"Professionalism" in Second and Foreign Language Teaching: A Qualitative Research Synthesis

Science.gov (United States)

Jansem, Anchalee

2018-01-01

This qualitative research synthesis concludes and displays pictures of professionalism in second/foreign language education. Adopting Weed's processes as the methodological framework for doing qualitative research synthesis, the researcher employed seven steps, from retrieving to selecting studies directly associated with professionalism. The…

English made easy, v.1 a new ESL approach learning English through pictures

CERN Document Server

Crichton, Jonathan

2015-01-01

This is a fun and userfriendly way to learn EnglishEnglish Made Easy is a breakthrough in English language learningimaginatively exploiting how pictures and text can work together to create understanding and help learners learn more productively. It gives beginner English learners easy access to the vocabulary, grammar and functions of English as it is actually used in a comprehensive range of social situations. Selfguided students and classroom learners alike will be delighted by the way they are helped to progress easily from one unit to the next, using a combina

Bossa Nova: Introducing modularity into the Bossa Nova domain-specific language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lawall, Julia Laetitia; Duschene, Hervé; Muller, Gilles

2005-01-01

subfamilies in using this language to implement an encyclopedic, multi-OS library of scheduling policies. In this paper, we propose that introducing certain kinds of modularity into the language can furnish abstractions appropriate for implementing scheduling policy subfamilies. We present the design of our...... of how to capture these subfamilies in DSL abstractions. A solution should retain features of the original DSL to leverage existing expertise and support tools.   The Bossa DSL is a language targeted towards the development of kernel process scheduling policies. We have encountered the issue of program...

Gaze differences in processing pictures with emotional content.

Science.gov (United States)

Budimir, Sanja; Palmović, Marijan

2011-01-01

The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) is a set of standardized emotionally evocative color photographs developed by NIMH Center for Emotion and Attention at the University of Florida. It contains more than 900 emotional pictures indexed by emotional valence, arousal and dominance. However, when IAPS pictures were used in studying emotions with the event-related potentials, the results have shown a great deal of variation and inconsistency. In this research arousal and dominance of pictures were controlled while emotional valence was manipulated as 3 categories, pleasant, neutral and unpleasant pictures. Two experiments were conducted with an eye-tracker in order to determine to what the participants turn their gaze. Participants were 25 psychology students with normal vision. Every participant saw all pictures in color and same pictures in black/white version. This makes 200 analyzed units for color pictures and 200 for black and white pictures. Every picture was divided into figure and ground. Considering that perception can be influenced by color, edges, luminosity and contrast and since all those factors are collapsed on the pictures in IAPS, we compared color pictures with same black and white pictures. In first eye-tracking IAPS research we analyzed 12 emotional pictures and showed that participants have higher number of fixations for ground on neutral and unpleasant pictures and for figure on pleasant pictures. Second experiment was conducted with 4 sets of emotional complementary pictures (pleasant/unpleasant) which differ only on the content in the figure area and it was shown that participants were more focused on the figure area than on the ground area. Future ERP (event related potential) research with IAPS pictures should take into consideration these findings and to either choose pictures with blank ground or adjust pictures in the way that ground is blank. For the following experiments suggestion is to put emotional content in the figure

Improving Spoken Language Outcomes for Children With Hearing Loss: Data-driven Instruction.

Science.gov (United States)

Douglas, Michael

2016-02-01

To assess the effects of data-driven instruction (DDI) on spoken language outcomes of children with cochlear implants and hearing aids. Retrospective, matched-pairs comparison of post-treatment speech/language data of children who did and did not receive DDI. Private, spoken-language preschool for children with hearing loss. Eleven matched pairs of children with cochlear implants who attended the same spoken language preschool. Groups were matched for age of hearing device fitting, time in the program, degree of predevice fitting hearing loss, sex, and age at testing. Daily informal language samples were collected and analyzed over a 2-year period, per preschool protocol. Annual informal and formal spoken language assessments in articulation, vocabulary, and omnibus language were administered at the end of three time intervals: baseline, end of year one, and end of year two. The primary outcome measures were total raw score performance of spontaneous utterance sentence types and syntax element use as measured by the Teacher Assessment of Spoken Language (TASL). In addition, standardized assessments (the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals--Preschool Version 2 (CELF-P2), the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT), the Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (ROWPVT), and the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation 2 (GFTA2)) were also administered and compared with the control group. The DDI group demonstrated significantly higher raw scores on the TASL each year of the study. The DDI group also achieved statistically significant higher scores for total language on the CELF-P and expressive vocabulary on the EOWPVT, but not for articulation nor receptive vocabulary. Post-hoc assessment revealed that 78% of the students in the DDI group achieved scores in the average range compared with 59% in the control group. The preliminary results of this study support further investigation regarding DDI to investigate whether this method can consistently

Relationship between abstract thinking and eye gaze pattern in patients with schizophrenia

Science.gov (United States)

2014-01-01

Background Effective integration of visual information is necessary to utilize abstract thinking, but patients with schizophrenia have slow eye movement and usually explore limited visual information. This study examines the relationship between abstract thinking ability and the pattern of eye gaze in patients with schizophrenia using a novel theme identification task. Methods Twenty patients with schizophrenia and 22 healthy controls completed the theme identification task, in which subjects selected which word, out of a set of provided words, best described the theme of a picture. Eye gaze while performing the task was recorded by the eye tracker. Results Patients exhibited a significantly lower correct rate for theme identification and lesser fixation and saccade counts than controls. The correct rate was significantly correlated with the fixation count in patients, but not in controls. Conclusions Patients with schizophrenia showed impaired abstract thinking and decreased quality of gaze, which were positively associated with each other. Theme identification and eye gaze appear to be useful as tools for the objective measurement of abstract thinking in patients with schizophrenia. PMID:24739356

Language development and everyday functioning of children with hearing loss assessed at 3 years of age

OpenAIRE

Ching, Teresa Y. C.; Crowe, Kathryn; Martin, Vivienne; Day, Julia; Mahler, Nicole; Youn, Samantha; Street, Laura; Cook, Cassandra; Orsini, Julia

2010-01-01

This paper reports language ability and everyday functioning of 133 children with hearing impairment who were evaluated at 3 years of age, as part of the Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with Hearing Impairment (LOCHI) study. The language abilities of children were evaluated using the Preschool Language Scale (PLS-4), Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP) and Child Development Inventory (CDI). Everyday functioning of children was e...

Objective age of acquisition for 223 Italian words: norms and effects on picture naming speed.

Science.gov (United States)

Lotto, Lorella; Surian, Luca; Job, Remo

2010-02-01

The present study provides a set of objective age of acquisition (AoA) norms for 223 Italian words that may be useful for conducting cross-linguistic studies or experiments on Italian language processing. The data were collected by presenting children from the ages of 2 to 11 with a normed picture set (Lotto, Dell'Acqua, & Job, 2001). Following the study of Morrison, Chappell, and Ellis (1997), we report two measures of objective AoA. Both measures strongly correlated with each other, and they also showed a good correlation with the rated AoA provided by adult participants. Furthermore, we assessed the relationship between the AoA measures and other variables used in psycholinguistic experiments. Regression analyses showed that familiarity, typicality, and word frequency were significant predictors of AoA. AoA, but not word frequency, was found to determine naming latencies. Finally, we present a path model in which AoA is a mediator in predicting speed in picture naming. The norms and the picture set can also be downloaded from http://dpss.psy.unipd.it/files/strumenti.php and from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Neural correlates of visualizations of concrete and abstract words in preschool children: A developmental embodied approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amedeo eD'angiulli

2015-06-01

Full Text Available The neural correlates of visualization underlying word comprehension were examined in preschool children. On each trial, a concrete or abstract word was delivered binaurally (part 1: post-auditory visualization, followed by a four-picture array (a target plus three distractors (part 2: matching visualization. Children were to select the picture matching the word they heard in part 1. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs locked to each stimulus presentation and task interval were averaged over sets of trials of increasing word abstractness. ERP time-course during both parts of the task showed that early activity (i.e. < 300 ms was predominant in response to concrete words, while activity in response to abstract words became evident only at intermediate (i.e. 300-699 ms and late (i.e. 700-1000 ms ERP intervals. Specifically, ERP topography showed that while early activity during post-auditory visualization was linked to left temporo-parietal areas for concrete words, early activity during matching visualization occurred mostly in occipito-parietal areas for concrete words, but more anteriorly in centro-parietal areas for abstract words. In intermediate ERPs, post-auditory visualization coincided with parieto-occipital and parieto-frontal activity in response to both concrete and abstract words, while in matching visualization a parieto-central activity was common to both types of words. In the late ERPs for both types of words, the post-auditory visualization involved right-hemispheric activity following a post-anterior pathway sequence: occipital, parietal and temporal areas; conversely, matching visualization involved left-hemispheric activity following an ant-posterior pathway sequence: frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital areas. These results suggest that, similarly for concrete and abstract words, meaning in young children depends on variably complex visualization processes integrating visuo-auditory experiences and supramodal embodying

Analogical Reasoning in Children with Specific Language Impairment

Science.gov (United States)

Leroy, Sandrine; Parisse, Christophe; Maillart, Christelle

2012-01-01

Usage-based theory considers analogical reasoning as a cognitive process required in language development. We hypothesized that difficulties with analogical reasoning could hinder the abstraction of construction schemas, thus slowing down morphosyntactic development for children with specific language impairment (SLI). We also hypothesized, in…

The Geneva Smoking Pictures: development and preliminary validation.

OpenAIRE

Khazaal, Yasser; Zullino, Daniele; Billieux, Joël

2012-01-01

Cue reactivity is essential to the maintenance of addictive disorders. A useful way to study cue reactivity is by means of normative pictures, but few validated tobacco-related pictures are available. This study describes a database of smoking-related pictures: The Geneva Smoking Pictures (GSP). Sixty smoking-related pictures were presented to 91 participants who assessed them according to the classic emotional pictures validation provided by the International Affective Picture System (NIMH C...

Language Geography from Microblogging Platforms

Science.gov (United States)

Mocanu, Delia; Baronchelli, Andrea; Perra, Nicola; Gonçalves, Bruno; Vespignani, Alessandro

2013-03-01

Microblogging platforms have now become major open source indicators for complex social interactions. With the advent of smartphones, the everincreasing mobile Internet traffic gives us the unprecedented opportunity to complement studies of complex social phenomena with real-time location information. In this work, we show that the data nowadays accessible allows for detailed studies at different scales, ranging from country-level aggregate analysis to the analysis of linguistic communities withing specific neighborhoods. The high resolution and coverage of this data permits us to investigate such issues as the linguistic homogeneity of different countries, touristic seasonal patterns within countries, and the geographical distribution of different languages in bilingual regions. This work highlights the potentialities of geolocalized studies of open data sources that can provide an extremely detailed picture of the language geography.

Increased Stroop interference with better second-language reading skill.

Science.gov (United States)

Braet, Wouter; Noppe, Nele; Wagemans, Johan; Op de Beeck, Hans

2011-03-01

Skilled readers demonstrate remarkable efficiency in processing written words, unlike beginning readers for whom reading occurs more serially and places higher demands on visual attention. In the present study, we used the Stroop paradigm to investigate the relationship between reading skill and automaticity, in individuals learning a second language with a different orthographic system. Prior studies using this paradigm have presented a mixed picture, finding a positive, a negative, or no relationship between the size of Stroop interference and reading skills. Our results show that Stroop interference in the second language was positively related to reading skill (when controlled for interference in the first language). Furthermore, interference was positively related to objective but not subjective indices of the amount of exposure to the second language. We suggest that the lack of consistency in the results of earlier studies may be due, at least in part, to these studies looking at Stroop interference in isolation, rather than comparing interference between languages.

The picture superiority effect in associative recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Hockley, William E

2008-10-01

The picture superiority effect has been well documented in tests of item recognition and recall. The present study shows that the picture superiority effect extends to associative recognition. In three experiments, students studied lists consisting of random pairs of concrete words and pairs of line drawings; then they discriminated between intact (old) and rearranged (new) pairs of words and pictures at test. The discrimination advantage for pictures over words was seen in a greater hit rate for intact picture pairs, but there was no difference in the false alarm rates for the two types of stimuli. That is, there was no mirror effect. The same pattern of results was found when the test pairs consisted of the verbal labels of the pictures shown at study (Experiment 4), indicating that the hit rate advantage for picture pairs represents an encoding benefit. The results have implications for theories of the picture superiority effect and models of associative recognition.

Pictures, images, and recollective experience.

Science.gov (United States)

Dewhurst, S A; Conway, M A

1994-09-01

Five experiments investigated the influence of picture processing on recollective experience in recognition memory. Subjects studied items that differed in visual or imaginal detail, such as pictures versus words and high-imageability versus low-imageability words, and performed orienting tasks that directed processing either toward a stimulus as a word or toward a stimulus as a picture or image. Standard effects of imageability (e.g., the picture superiority effect and memory advantages following imagery) were obtained only in recognition judgments that featured recollective experience and were eliminated or reversed when recognition was not accompanied by recollective experience. It is proposed that conscious recollective experience in recognition memory is cued by attributes of retrieved memories such as sensory-perceptual attributes and records of cognitive operations performed at encoding.

Text-Picture Relations in Cooking Instructions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Sluis, Ielka; Leito, Shadira; Redeker, Gisela; Bunt, Harry

2016-01-01

Like many other instructions, recipes on packages with ready-to-use ingredients for a dish combine a series of pictures with short text paragraphs. The information presentation in such multimodal instructions can be compact (either text or picture) and/or cohesive (text and picture). In an

The Spectator in the Picture

OpenAIRE

Hopkins, Robert

2001-01-01

This paper considers whether pictures ever implicitly represent internal spectators of the scenes they depict, and what theoretical construal to offer of their doing so. Richard Wollheim's discussion (Painting as an Art, ch.3) is taken as the most sophisticated attempt to answer these questions. I argue that Wollheim does not provide convincing argument for his claim that some pictures implicitly represent an internal spectator with whom the viewer of the picture is to imaginatively identify....

Use of positive and negative words in scientific PubMed abstracts between 1974 and 2014 : retrospective analysis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vinkers, Christiaan H|info:eu-repo/dai/nl/304824755; Tijdink, Joeri K; Otte, Willem M

2015-01-01

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether language used in science abstracts can skew towards the use of strikingly positive and negative words over time. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of all scientific abstracts in PubMed between 1974 and 2014. METHODS: The yearly frequencies of positive, negative, and

Combining Language Corpora with Experimental and Computational Approaches for Language Acquisition Research

Science.gov (United States)

Monaghan, Padraic; Rowland, Caroline F.

2017-01-01

Historically, first language acquisition research was a painstaking process of observation, requiring the laborious hand coding of children's linguistic productions, followed by the generation of abstract theoretical proposals for how the developmental process unfolds. Recently, the ability to collect large-scale corpora of children's language…

Introducing ALAS: A Novel Agent-Oriented Programming Language

Science.gov (United States)

Mitrović, Dejan; Ivanović, Mirjana; Vidaković, Milan

2011-09-01

Agent-oriented programming languages represent a family of programming languages that provide developers with high-level abstractions and constructs necessary for implementing and using agent-related concepts. In this paper a novel agent-oriented programming language for rapid and efficient development of reactive agents, named ALAS, is presented. The simple, but powerful set of language constructs is designed to support the execution of agents in heterogenous environments, and to enable easy employment of advanced agent features, such as mobility and web service integration.

Exploring Multicultural Themes through Picture Books.

Science.gov (United States)

Farris, Pamela J.

1995-01-01

Advocates inclusion of multicultural picture books in social studies instruction to offer different outlooks and visions in a short format. Describes selection of picture books with multicultural themes and those that represent various cultures, gender equity, and religious themes. Suggests that picture books may help students develop better…

Task Irrelevant External Cues Can Influence Language Selection in Voluntary Object Naming: Evidence from Hindi-English Bilinguals.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Divya Bhatia

Full Text Available We examined if external cues such as other agents' actions can influence the choice of language during voluntary and cued object naming in bilinguals in three experiments. Hindi-English bilinguals first saw a cartoon waving at a color patch. They were then asked to either name a picture in the language of their choice (voluntary block or to name in the instructed language (cued block. The colors waved at by the cartoon were also the colors used as language cues (Hindi or English. We compared the influence of the cartoon's choice of color on naming when speakers had to indicate their choice explicitly before naming (Experiment 1 as opposed to when they named directly on seeing the pictures (Experiment 2 and 3. Results showed that participants chose the language indicated by the cartoon greater number of times (Experiment 1 and 3. Speakers also switched significantly to the language primed by the cartoon greater number of times (Experiment 1 and 2. These results suggest that choices leading to voluntary action, as in the case of object naming can be influenced significantly by external non-linguistic cues. Importantly, these symbolic influences can work even when other agents are merely indicating their choices and are not interlocutors in bilingual communication.

Clinical picture and treatment implication in a child with Capgras syndrome: a case report

OpenAIRE

Mazzone, Luigi; Armando, Marco; De Crescenzo, Franco; Demaria, Francesco; Valeri, Giovanni; Vicari, Stefano

2012-01-01

Abstract Introduction Capgras syndrome is a delusional misidentification syndrome characterized by the patient’s belief that his or her relatives have been replaced by impostors. Case presentation Here we describe the clinical picture and the therapeutic approach to an 11-year-old Caucasian girl with Capgras syndrome. A complete psychopathological assessment was conducted during the acute phase, at one month, two months and six months since diagnosis. Conclusion Subsequent follow-up evaluatio...

Why does picture naming take longer than word reading? The contribution of articulatory processes.

Science.gov (United States)

Riès, Stéphanie; Legou, Thierry; Burle, Borís; Alario, F-Xavier; Malfait, Nicole

2012-10-01

Since the 19th century, it has been known that response latencies are longer for naming pictures than for reading words aloud. While several interpretations have been proposed, a common general assumption is that this difference stems from cognitive word-selection processes and not from articulatory processes. Here we show that, contrary to this widely accepted view, articulatory processes are also affected by the task performed. To demonstrate this, we used a procedure that to our knowledge had never been used in research on language processing: response-latency fractionating. Along with vocal onsets, we recorded the electromyographic (EMG) activity of facial muscles while participants named pictures or read words aloud. On the basis of these measures, we were able to fractionate the verbal response latencies into two types of time intervals: premotor times (from stimulus presentation to EMG onset), mostly reflecting cognitive processes, and motor times (from EMG onset to vocal onset), related to motor execution processes. We showed that premotor and motor times are both longer in picture naming than in reading, although than in reading, although articulation is already initiated in the latter measure. Future studies based on this new approach should bring valuable clues for a better understanding of the relation between the cognitive and motor processes involved in speech production.

Learning from static versus animated pictures of embodied knowledge : A pilot study on reconstructing a ballet choreography as concept map

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Fürstenau, B.; Kuhtz, M.; Simon-Hatala, B.; Kneppers, L.; Cañas, A.; Reiska, P.; Novak, J.

2016-01-01

In a research study we investigated whether static or animated pictures better support learning of abstract pedagogical content about action-oriented learning. For that purpose, we conducted a study with two experimental groups. One group received a narration about learning theory and a supporting

Optimal timing of pulse onset for language mapping with navigated repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Science.gov (United States)

Krieg, Sandro M; Tarapore, Phiroz E; Picht, Thomas; Tanigawa, Noriko; Houde, John; Sollmann, Nico; Meyer, Bernhard; Vajkoczy, Peter; Berger, Mitchel S; Ringel, Florian; Nagarajan, Srikantan

2014-10-15

Within the primary motor cortex, navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) has been shown to yield maps strongly correlated with those generated by direct cortical stimulation (DCS). However, the stimulation parameters for repetitive nTMS (rTMS)-based language mapping are still being refined. For this purpose, the present study compares two rTMS protocols, which differ in the timing of pulse train onset relative to picture presentation onset during object naming. Results were the correlated with DCS language mapping during awake surgery. Thirty-two patients with left-sided perisylvian tumors were examined by rTMS prior to awake surgery. Twenty patients underwent rTMS pulse trains starting at 300 ms after picture presentation onset (delayed TMS), whereas another 12 patients received rTMS pulse trains starting at the picture presentation onset (ONSET TMS). These rTMS results were then evaluated for correlation with intraoperative DCS results as gold standard in terms of differential consistencies in receiver operating characteristics (ROC) statistics. Logistic regression analysis by protocols and brain regions were conducted. Within and around Broca's area, there was no difference in sensitivity (onset TMS: 100%, delayed TMS: 100%), negative predictive value (NPV) (onset TMS: 100%, delayed TMS: 100%), and positive predictive value (PPV) (onset TMS: 55%, delayed TMS: 54%) between the two protocols compared to DCS. However, specificity differed significantly (onset TMS: 67%, delayed TMS: 28%). In contrast, for posterior language regions, such as supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus, and posterior superior temporal gyrus, early pulse train onset stimulation showed greater specificity (onset TMS: 92%, delayed TMS: 20%), NPV (onset TMS: 92%, delayed TMS: 57%) and PPV (onset TMS: 75%, delayed TMS: 30%) with comparable sensitivity (onset TMS: 75%, delayed TMS: 70%). Logistic regression analysis also confirmed the greater fit of the predictions by rTMS that had the

An adaptive semantic matching paradigm for reliable and valid language mapping in individuals with aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilson, Stephen M; Yen, Melodie; Eriksson, Dana K

2018-04-17

Research on neuroplasticity in recovery from aphasia depends on the ability to identify language areas of the brain in individuals with aphasia. However, tasks commonly used to engage language processing in people with aphasia, such as narrative comprehension and picture naming, are limited in terms of reliability (test-retest reproducibility) and validity (identification of language regions, and not other regions). On the other hand, paradigms such as semantic decision that are effective in identifying language regions in people without aphasia can be prohibitively challenging for people with aphasia. This paper describes a new semantic matching paradigm that uses an adaptive staircase procedure to present individuals with stimuli that are challenging yet within their competence, so that language processing can be fully engaged in people with and without language impairments. The feasibility, reliability and validity of the adaptive semantic matching paradigm were investigated in sixteen individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia and fourteen neurologically normal participants, in comparison to narrative comprehension and picture naming paradigms. All participants succeeded in learning and performing the semantic paradigm. Test-retest reproducibility of the semantic paradigm in people with aphasia was good (Dice coefficient = 0.66), and was superior to the other two paradigms. The semantic paradigm revealed known features of typical language organization (lateralization; frontal and temporal regions) more consistently in neurologically normal individuals than the other two paradigms, constituting evidence for validity. In sum, the adaptive semantic matching paradigm is a feasible, reliable and valid method for mapping language regions in people with aphasia. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Picture Book of Quantum Mechanics

CERN Document Server

Brandt, Siegmund

2012-01-01

The aim of this book is to explain the basic concepts and phenomena of quantum mechanics by means of visualization. Computer-generated illustrations in color are used extensively throughout the text, helping to establish the relation between quantum mechanics—wave functions, interference, atomic structure, and so forth—and classical physics—point mechanics, statistical mechanics, and wave optics. Even more important, by studying the pictures in parallel with the text, readers develop an intuition for such notoriously abstract phenomena as • the tunnel effect • excitation and decay of metastable states • wave-packet motion within a well • systems of distinguishable and indistinguishable particles • free wave packets and scattering in 3 dimensions • angular-momentum decomposition • stationary bound states in various 3-dimensional potentials • hybrid states • Kepler motion of wave packets in the Coulomb field • spin and magnetic resonance Illustrations from experiments in a variety of f...

Ubiquitous picture-rich content representation

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Wiley; Dean, Jennifer; Muzzolini, Russ

2010-02-01

The amount of digital images taken by the average consumer is consistently increasing. People enjoy the convenience of storing and sharing their pictures through online (digital) and offline (traditional) media. A set of pictures can be uploaded to: online photo services, web blogs and social network websites. Alternatively, these images can be used to generate: prints, cards, photo books or other photo products. Through uploading and sharing, images are easily transferred from one format to another. And often, a different set of associated content (text, tags) is created across formats. For example, on his web blog, a user may journal his experiences of his recent travel; on his social network website, his friends tag and comment on the pictures; in his online photo album, some pictures are titled and keyword-tagged. When the user wants to tell a complete story, perhaps in a photo book, he must collect, across all formats: the pictures, writings and comments, etc. and organize them in a book format. The user has to arrange the content of his trip in each format. The arrangement, the associations between the images, tags, keywords and text, cannot be shared with other formats. In this paper, we propose a system that allows the content to be easily created and shared across various digital media formats. We define a uniformed data association structure to connect: images, documents, comments, tags, keywords and other data. This content structure allows the user to switch representation formats without reediting. The framework under each format can emphasize (display or hide) content elements based on preference. For example, a slide show view will emphasize the display of pictures with limited text; a blog view will display highlighted images and journal text; and the photo book will try to fit in all images and text content. In this paper, we will discuss the strategy to associate pictures with text content, so that it can naturally tell a story. We will also list

An 00 visual language definition approach supporting multiple views

OpenAIRE

Akehurst, David H.; I.E.E.E. Computer Society

2000-01-01

The formal approach to visual language definition is to use graph grammars and/or graph transformation techniques. These techniques focus on specifying the syntax and manipulation rules of the concrete representation. This paper presents a constraint and object-oriented approach to defining visual languages that uses UML and OCL as a definition language. Visual language definitions specify a mapping between concrete and abstract models of possible visual sentences, which carl subsequently be ...

Computer-Generated Abstract Paintings Oriented by the Color Composition of Images

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Mao Li

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Designers and artists often require reference images at authoring time. The emergence of computer technology has provided new conditions and possibilities for artistic creation and research. It has also expanded the forms of artistic expression and attracted many artists, designers and computer experts to explore different artistic directions and collaborate with one another. In this paper, we present an efficient k-means-based method to segment the colors of an original picture to analyze the composition ratio of the color information and calculate individual color areas that are associated with their sizes. This information is transformed into regular geometries to reconstruct the colors of the picture to generate abstract images. Furthermore, we designed an application system using the proposed method and generated many works; some artists and designers have used it as an auxiliary tool for art and design creation. The experimental results of datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method and can give us inspiration for our work.

Comics in language and literature teaching in lower primary school grades: Instructional potential

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Stojanović Buba D.

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is presenting possibilities for using comics in teaching mother tongue, literature and linguistic culture in foreign language teaching, specifically the English language. Comics in teaching can motivate students to experience literary creation, to comprehend grammatical categories and spelling rules more completely or to be the feedback on the experience of what has been read. They boost the reading perception of students and develop students' ability to separate the key segments which are represented by picture and text. In modern age, dominated by digital media, comics surely deserve a special place in teaching in order to consolidate the value of books. The paper presents elements of comics, their structure and role the in teaching language and literature. Comics are visual aids for communication characterized by time dimension which is achieved by ordering scenes, which makes them similar to film. Their important characteristic is simultaneous expression by picture and text, which makes it a powerful aid in teaching language and literature. Dialogues are typical for comics, as well as dynamic storyline, which makes them especially interesting to students. Brief remarks on the historical development of comics are given because of the review on their general development, as well as on the possibilities for their application in teaching. The reading crisis occurs when children start school because they are supposed to acquire complex mental skills-technique of reading and writing. When aversion to the written media is obvious, comics can be of great help. The paper illustrates the use of comics in teaching literature, grammar, and linguistic culture as the motivational tool for reading and analysing a literary text. Special emphasis is placed on the possibilities of motivation to experience literary creation. Stimulated by comics, with compulsory reading, students can experience the work in pictures, which they will

Cultural adaptation of the Test of Narrative Language (TNL) into Brazilian Portuguese.

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Rossi, Natalia Freitas; Lindau, Tâmara de Andrade; Gillam, Ronald Bradley; Giacheti, Célia Maria

To accomplish the translation and cultural adaptation of the Test of Narrative Language (TNL) into Brazilian Portuguese. The TNL is a formal instrument which assesses narrative comprehension and oral narration of children between the ages of 5-0 and 11-11 (years-months). The TNL translation and adaptation process had the following steps: (1) translation into the target language; (2) summary of the translated versions; (3) back-translation; (4) checking of the conceptual, semantics and cultural equivalence process and (5) pilot study (56 children within the test age range and from both genders). The adapted version maintained the same structure as the original version: number of tasks (both, three comprehension and oral narration), narrative formats (no picture, sequenced pictures and single picture) and scoring system. There were no adjustments to the pictures. The "McDonald's Story" was replaced by the "Snack Bar History" to meet the semantic and experiential equivalence of the target population. The other stories had semantic and grammatical adjustments. Statistically significant difference was found when comparing the raw score (comprehension, narration and total) of age groups from the adapted version. Adjustments were required to meet the equivalence between the original and the translated versions. The adapted version showed it has the potential to identify differences in oral narratives of children in the age range provided by the test. Measurement equivalence for validation and test standardization are in progress and will be able to supplement the study outcomes.

THE REFLECTION OF BILINGUALISM IN THE SPEECH OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN SPEAKING NATIVE (ERZYA AND NON-NATIVE (RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

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Mosina, N.M.

2016-03-01

Full Text Available This article considers the specific features of Mordovian speech of 16 bilingual children, aged 3 to 7 years, speaking both the Erzya and Russian languages, living in Mordovia. Their language is studied on the example of short stories in pictures, and it attempts to identify the influence of the Russian language on the Erzya one and to detect the occurrences of interference at the lexical and grammatical levels.

Individual differences in language ability are related to variation in word recognition, not speech perception: Evidence from eye-movements

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McMurray, Bob; Munson, Cheyenne; Tomblin, J. Bruce

2013-01-01

Purpose This study examined speech perception deficits associated with individual differences in language ability contrasting auditory, phonological or lexical accounts by asking if lexical competition is differentially sensitive to fine-grained acoustic variation. Methods 74 adolescents with a range of language abilities (including 35 impaired) participated in an experiment based on McMurray, Tanenhaus and Aslin (2002). Participants heard tokens from six 9-step Voice Onset Time (VOT) continua spanning two words (beach/peach, beak/peak, etc), while viewing a screen containing pictures of those words and two unrelated objects. Participants selected the referent while eye-movements to each picture were monitored as a measure of lexical activation. Fixations were examined as a function of both VOT and language ability. Results Eye-movements were sensitive to within-category VOT differences: as VOT approached the boundary, listeners made more fixations to the competing word. This did not interact with language ability, suggesting that language impairment is not associated with differential auditory sensitivity or phonetic categorization. Listeners with poorer language skills showed heightened competitors fixations overall, suggesting a deficit in lexical processes. Conclusions Language impairment may be better characterized by a deficit in lexical competition (inability to suppress competing words), rather than differences phonological categorization or auditory abilities. PMID:24687026

Individual differences in language ability are related to variation in word recognition, not speech perception: evidence from eye movements.

Science.gov (United States)

McMurray, Bob; Munson, Cheyenne; Tomblin, J Bruce

2014-08-01

The authors examined speech perception deficits associated with individual differences in language ability, contrasting auditory, phonological, or lexical accounts by asking whether lexical competition is differentially sensitive to fine-grained acoustic variation. Adolescents with a range of language abilities (N = 74, including 35 impaired) participated in an experiment based on McMurray, Tanenhaus, and Aslin (2002). Participants heard tokens from six 9-step voice onset time (VOT) continua spanning 2 words (beach/peach, beak/peak, etc.) while viewing a screen containing pictures of those words and 2 unrelated objects. Participants selected the referent while eye movements to each picture were monitored as a measure of lexical activation. Fixations were examined as a function of both VOT and language ability. Eye movements were sensitive to within-category VOT differences: As VOT approached the boundary, listeners made more fixations to the competing word. This did not interact with language ability, suggesting that language impairment is not associated with differential auditory sensitivity or phonetic categorization. Listeners with poorer language skills showed heightened competitors fixations overall, suggesting a deficit in lexical processes. Language impairment may be better characterized by a deficit in lexical competition (inability to suppress competing words), rather than differences in phonological categorization or auditory abilities.

Nonstandard Maternal Work Schedules: Implications for African American Children’s Early Language Outcomes

OpenAIRE

Odom, Erika C.; Vernon-Feagans, Lynne; Crouter, Ann C.

2013-01-01

In this study, observed maternal positive engagement and perception of work-family spillover were examined as mediators of the association between maternal nonstandard work schedules and children’s expressive language outcomes in 231 African American families living in rural households. Mothers reported their work schedules when their child was 24 months of age and children’s expressive language development was assessed during a picture book task at 24 months and with a standardized assessmen...

Cognitive components of picture naming.

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Johnson, C J; Paivio, A; Clark, J M

1996-07-01

A substantial research literature documents the effects of diverse item attributes, task conditions, and participant characteristics on the case of picture naming. The authors review what the research has revealed about 3 generally accepted stages of naming a pictured object: object identification, name activation, and response generation. They also show that dual coding theory gives a coherent and plausible account of these findings without positing amodal conceptual representations, and they identify issues and methods that may further advance the understanding of picture naming and related cognitive tasks.

Phonological processing of rhyme in spoken language and location in sign language by deaf and hearing participants: a neurophysiological study.

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Colin, C; Zuinen, T; Bayard, C; Leybaert, J

2013-06-01

Sign languages (SL), like oral languages (OL), organize elementary, meaningless units into meaningful semantic units. Our aim was to compare, at behavioral and neurophysiological levels, the processing of the location parameter in French Belgian SL to that of the rhyme in oral French. Ten hearing and 10 profoundly deaf adults performed a rhyme judgment task in OL and a similarity judgment on location in SL. Stimuli were pairs of pictures. As regards OL, deaf subjects' performances, although above chance level, were significantly lower than that of hearing subjects, suggesting that a metaphonological analysis is possible for deaf people but rests on phonological representations that are less precise than in hearing people. As regards SL, deaf subjects scores indicated that a metaphonological judgment may be performed on location. The contingent negative variation (CNV) evoked by the first picture of a pair was similar in hearing subjects in OL and in deaf subjects in OL and SL. However, an N400 evoked by the second picture of the non-rhyming pairs was evidenced only in hearing subjects in OL. The absence of N400 in deaf subjects may be interpreted as the failure to associate two words according to their rhyme in OL or to their location in SL. Although deaf participants can perform metaphonological judgments in OL, they differ from hearing participants both behaviorally and in ERP. Judgment of location in SL is possible for deaf signers, but, contrary to rhyme judgment in hearing participants, does not elicit any N400. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Examining lateralized semantic access using pictures.

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Lovseth, Kyle; Atchley, Ruth Ann

2010-03-01

A divided visual field (DVF) experiment examined the semantic processing strategies employed by the cerebral hemispheres to determine if strategies observed with written word stimuli generalize to other media for communicating semantic information. We employed picture stimuli and vary the degree of semantic relatedness between the picture pairs. Participants made an on-line semantic relatedness judgment in response to sequentially presented pictures. We found that when pictures are presented to the right hemisphere responses are generally more accurate than the left hemisphere for semantic relatedness judgments for picture pairs. Furthermore, consistent with earlier DVF studies employing words, we conclude that the RH is better at accessing or maintaining access to information that has a weak or more remote semantic relationship. We also found evidence of faster access for pictures presented to the LH in the strongly-related condition. Overall, these results are consistent with earlier DVF word studies that argue that the cerebral hemispheres each play an important and separable role during semantic retrieval. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

TreePics: visualizing trees with pictures

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Nicolas Puillandre

2017-09-01

Full Text Available While many programs are available to edit phylogenetic trees, associating pictures with branch tips in an efficient and automatic way is not an available option. Here, we present TreePics, a standalone software that uses a web browser to visualize phylogenetic trees in Newick format and that associates pictures (typically, pictures of the voucher specimens to the tip of each branch. Pictures are visualized as thumbnails and can be enlarged by a mouse rollover. Further, several pictures can be selected and displayed in a separate window for visual comparison. TreePics works either online or in a full standalone version, where it can display trees with several thousands of pictures (depending on the memory available. We argue that TreePics can be particularly useful in a preliminary stage of research, such as to quickly detect conflicts between a DNA-based phylogenetic tree and morphological variation, that may be due to contamination that needs to be removed prior to final analyses, or the presence of species complexes.

Tipo abstracto de datos "Biblioteca" Library Abstract data type

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Silvana Temesio Vizoso

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Análisis de la descripción bibliográfica desde un punto de vista conceptual a partir de la especificación formal: tipo abstracto de datos "biblioteca". Se detallan otros abordajes usando el modelo entidad-relación y el lenguaje XML. Se concluye la relevancia del enfoque abstracto y su aplicabilidad genérica en un sujeto de cambio permanente.Analysis of bibliographic description from a conceptual point of view from the formal specification: "library" abstract data type. Other approaches are detailed using the entity-relationship model and XML language. We conclude the relevance of abstract approach and its general applicability in a subject of constant change.

A human mirror neuron system for language: Perspectives from signed languages of the deaf.

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Knapp, Heather Patterson; Corina, David P

2010-01-01

Language is proposed to have developed atop the human analog of the macaque mirror neuron system for action perception and production [Arbib M.A. 2005. From monkey-like action recognition to human language: An evolutionary framework for neurolinguistics (with commentaries and author's response). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 105-167; Arbib M.A. (2008). From grasp to language: Embodied concepts and the challenge of abstraction. Journal de Physiologie Paris 102, 4-20]. Signed languages of the deaf are fully-expressive, natural human languages that are perceived visually and produced manually. We suggest that if a unitary mirror neuron system mediates the observation and production of both language and non-linguistic action, three prediction can be made: (1) damage to the human mirror neuron system should non-selectively disrupt both sign language and non-linguistic action processing; (2) within the domain of sign language, a given mirror neuron locus should mediate both perception and production; and (3) the action-based tuning curves of individual mirror neurons should support the highly circumscribed set of motions that form the "vocabulary of action" for signed languages. In this review we evaluate data from the sign language and mirror neuron literatures and find that these predictions are only partially upheld. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Poule de Luxe to Geisha: Source Languages behind the Present-Day English Synonyms of Prostitute

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Bożena Duda

2014-11-01

Full Text Available This paper aims at drawing a picture, as complete as possible, of an anthropocentric reality hidden in the synonyms of prostitute which have been incorporated into the English lexico-semantic system from other languages since the beginning of the 19th century. The body of Present-day English synonyms of prostitute to be analysed includes horizontal, geisha, shawl and poule de luxe. Apart from providing the source languages from which English borrowed the afore-mentioned synonyms of prostitute, an attempt will be made at discovering the plausible cultural and sociological justification for the lexical borrowings to have taken place. In order to make the onomasiological picture of the sense ‘prostitute’ as complete as it can be within the limits of this paper, a mention will be made of the lexical heritage within the range of the synonyms of prostitute which were incorporated into the English language in the course of Middle English, Early Modern English and Late Modern English.

Going on exchange to Scandinavia to improve language skills

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Caudery, Tim; Petersen, Margrethe; Shaw, Philip

Most exchange students now come to Scandinavian countries not because they are students of the languages of the countries concerned, but because they wish to experience study abroad and can do so in Scandinavia through the medium of English used as a lingua franca. This paper reports on a three......-year study (2005-2007) of the language experiences and language-related attitudes of exchange students in Sweden and Denmark. The study includes some 240 subjects who were interviewed individually three times each during their stay in Scandinavia and who all, at the end of each interview, completed a simple...... vocabulary test and a picture description test. On this basis, the paper addresses issues such as the following: Though the incoming exchange students' studies are to be in the medium of English rather than Swedish/Danish, does language learning nevertheless still play a role in their motivation for going...

Defunctionalized Interpreters for Programming Languages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Danvy, Olivier

2008-01-01

by Reynolds in ``Definitional Interpreters for Higher-Order Programming Languages'' for functional implementations of denotational semantics, natural semantics, and big-step abstract machines using closure conversion, CPS transformation, and defunctionalization. Over the last few years, the author and his......This document illustrates how functional implementations of formal semantics (structural operational semantics, reduction semantics, small-step and big-step abstract machines, natural semantics, and denotational semantics) can be transformed into each other. These transformations were foreshadowed...... students have further observed that functional implementations of small-step and of big-step abstract machines are related using fusion by fixed-point promotion and that functional implementations of reduction semantics and of small-step abstract machines are related using refocusing and transition...

Transdisciplinary Approach and Intensity in Second Language Learning/Teaching

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Joan Netten

2000-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Abstract This article explores the concept and role of intensity in the research project on Intensive Core French in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Intensity in this project is characterized by a reorganization of the timetable and a reorientation of the curriculum. The theoretical foundation of the project – a transdisciplinary approach to second language learning/teaching – is based on Cummins's hypothesis on the interdependence of languages, a sociopsychological theory of development, and Vygotsky's conception of the relationship between instruction and development. A model is developed in order to illustrate the relationship between second language learning and the development of cognitive, social and personal capacities and organizational skills. It is argued that the types of teaching strategies used in second language classrooms have important effects on the development of these capacities. The transdisciplinary approach developed in our research project, which tests on the concept of intensity and implies the compacting of the curriculum both in English and other subjects, enhances the effects of second language instruction.

Wigner method dynamics in the interaction picture

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Møller, Klaus Braagaard; Dahl, Jens Peder; Henriksen, Niels Engholm

1994-01-01

that the dynamics of the interaction picture Wigner function is solved by running a swarm of trajectories in the classical interaction picture introduced previously in the literature. Solving the Wigner method dynamics of collision processes in the interaction picture ensures that the calculated transition......The possibility of introducing an interaction picture in the semiclassical Wigner method is investigated. This is done with an interaction Picture description of the density operator dynamics as starting point. We show that the dynamics of the density operator dynamics as starting point. We show...... probabilities are unambiguous even when the asymptotic potentials are anharmonic. An application of the interaction picture Wigner method to a Morse oscillator interacting with a laser field is presented. The calculated transition probabilities are in good agreement with results obtained by a numerical...

Reduced sensitivity to context in language comprehension: A characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorders or of poor structural language ability?

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Eberhardt, Melanie; Nadig, Aparna

2018-01-01

We present two experiments examining the universality and uniqueness of reduced context sensitivity in language processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), as proposed by the Weak Central Coherence account (Happé & Frith, 2006, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36(1), 25). That is, do all children with ASD exhibit decreased context sensitivity, and is this characteristic specific to ASD versus other neurodevelopmental conditions? Experiment 1, conducted in English, was a comparison of children with ASD with normal language and their typically-developing peers on a picture selection task where interpretation of sentential context was required to identify homonyms. Contrary to the predictions of Weak Central Coherence, the ASD-normal language group exhibited no difficulty on this task. Experiment 2, conducted in German, compared children with ASD with variable language abilities, typically-developing children, and a second control group of children with Language Impairment (LI) on a sentence completion task where a context sentence had to be considered to produce the continuation of an ambiguous sentence fragment. Both ASD-variable language and LI groups exhibited reduced context sensitivity and did not differ from each other. Finally, to directly test which factors contribute to reduced context sensitivity, we conducted a regression analysis for each experiment, entering nonverbal IQ, structural language ability, and autism diagnosis as predictors. For both experiments structural language ability emerged as the only significant predictor. These convergent findings demonstrate that reduced sensitivity to context in language processing is linked to low structural language rather than ASD diagnosis. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Does "a picture is worth 1000 words" apply to iconic Chinese words? Relationship of Chinese words and pictures.

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Lo, Shih-Yu; Yeh, Su-Ling

2018-05-29

The meaning of a picture can be extracted rapidly, but the form-to-meaning relationship is less obvious for printed words. In contrast to English words that follow grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence rule, the iconic nature of Chinese words might predispose them to activate their semantic representations more directly from their orthographies. By using the paradigm of repetition blindness (RB) that taps into the early level of word processing, we examined whether Chinese words activate their semantic representations as directly as pictures do. RB refers to the failure to detect the second occurrence of an item when it is presented twice in temporal proximity. Previous studies showed RB for semantically related pictures, suggesting that pictures activate their semantic representations directly from their shapes and thus two semantically related pictures are represented as repeated. However, this does not apply to English words since no RB was found for English synonyms. In this study, we replicated the semantic RB effect for pictures, and further showed the absence of semantic RB for Chinese synonyms. Based on our findings, it is suggested that Chinese words are processed like English words, which do not activate their semantic representations as directly as pictures do.

Studying Arabic as a foreign second language together with Arab heritage language learners

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dhahir, Omar

2015-01-01

questionnaire and qualitative (interviews). The major findings of the study was that the group follows the general patterns of SCISs, to ask, cooperate and communicate, and that AHLLs’ presence only partially increases and promotes the opportunities of sociocultural interaction in the learning environment.......Abstract This article reports on my study of the sociocultural-interactive Strategies (SCISs) used by a mixed group of learners of Arabic at University of Southern Denmark (SDU). The group consists of learners of Arabic as a foreign language (FLLs) and Arab Heritage Language Learners (AHLLs). FLLs...

Language and Cognition

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fusaroli, Riccardo

The Ph.D dissertation “Language and Cognition” addresses the way social uses of language – e.g. on the media, or in conversation – shape the way we think and act. Cognitive sciences have started focusing on embodiment and joint cognition – the way in which cognitive processes are deeply shaped...... interacting, without making place for and relying upon the external world, for its structures, its resistances and its dynamics. Cognition is thus a relational process aimed at - perceiving the regularities and affordances (possibilities for further action, perception and, more generally, cognition...... to linguistic use, but also the effects of these processes on the coordination of other cognitive processes. It involved conceptual and experimental methodologies. Chapter 2 The cognitive study of metaphors largely focuses on showing how abstract thought and language uses are strongly shaped by embodied...

A Conceptual Paper on the Application of the Picture Word Inductive Model Using Bruner's Constructivist View of Learning and the Cognitive Load Theory

Science.gov (United States)

Jiang, Xuan; Perkins, Kyle

2013-01-01

Bruner's constructs of learning, specifically the structure of learning, spiral curriculum, and discovery learning, in conjunction with the Cognitive Load Theory, are used to evaluate the Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM), an inquiry-oriented inductive language arts strategy designed to teach K-6 children phonics and spelling. The PWIM reflects…

The Picture Exchange Communication System.

Science.gov (United States)

Bondy, A; Frost, L

2001-10-01

The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is an alternative/augmentative communication system that was developed to teach functional communication to children with limited speech. The approach is unique in that it teaches children to initiate communicative interactions within a social framework. This article describes the advantages to implementing PECS over traditional approaches. The PECS training protocol is described wherein children are taught to exchange a single picture for a desired item and eventually to construct picture-based sentences and use a variety of attributes in their requests. The relationship of PECS's implementation to the development of speech in previously nonvocal students is reviewed.

Task choice and semantic interference in picture naming.

Science.gov (United States)

Piai, Vitória; Roelofs, Ardi; Schriefers, Herbert

2015-05-01

Evidence from dual-task performance indicates that speakers prefer not to select simultaneous responses in picture naming and another unrelated task, suggesting a response selection bottleneck in naming. In particular, when participants respond to tones with a manual response and name pictures with superimposed semantically related or unrelated distractor words, semantic interference in naming tends to be constant across stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) between the tone stimulus and the picture-word stimulus. In the present study, we examine whether semantic interference in picture naming depends on SOA in case of a task choice (naming the picture vs reading the word of a picture-word stimulus) based on tones. This situation requires concurrent processing of the tone stimulus and the picture-word stimulus, but not a manual response to the tones. On each trial, participants either named a picture or read aloud a word depending on the pitch of a tone, which was presented simultaneously with picture-word onset or 350 ms or 1000 ms before picture-word onset. Semantic interference was present with tone pre-exposure, but absent when tone and picture-word stimulus were presented simultaneously. Against the background of the available studies, these results support an account according to which speakers tend to avoid concurrent response selection, but can engage in other types of concurrent processing, such as task choices. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language production in a shared task: Cumulative semantic interference from self- and other-produced context words

OpenAIRE

Hoedemaker, R.; Ernst, J.; Meyer, A.; Belke, E.

2017-01-01

This study assessed the effects of semantic context in the form of self-produced and other-produced words on subsequent language production. Pairs of participants performed a joint picture naming task, taking turns while naming a continuous series of pictures. In the single-speaker version of this paradigm, naming latencies have been found to increase for successive presentations of exemplars from the same category, a phenomenon known as Cumulative Semantic Interference (CSI). As expected, th...

Defunctionalized Interpreters for Programming Languages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Danvy, Olivier

2008-01-01

by Reynolds in ``Definitional Interpreters for Higher-Order Programming Languages'' for functional implementations of denotational semantics, natural semantics, and big-step abstract machines using closure conversion, CPS transformation, and defunctionalization. Over the last few years, the author and his...... operational semantics can be expressed as a reduction semantics: for deterministic languages, a reduction semantics is a structural operational semantics in continuation style, where the reduction context is a defunctionalized continuation. As the defunctionalized counterpart of the continuation of a one...

Tracing the time course of picture--word processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, M C; Magee, L E

1980-12-01

A number of independent lines of research have suggested that semantic and articulatory information become available differentially from pictures and words. The first of the experiments reported here sought to clarify the time course by which information about pictures and words becomes available by considering the pattern of interference generated when incongruent pictures and words are presented simultaneously in a Stroop-like situation. Previous investigators report that picture naming is easily disrupted by the presence of a distracting word but that word naming is relatively immune to interference from an incongruent picture. Under the assumption that information available from a completed process may disrupt an ongoing process, these results suggest that words access articulatory information more rapidly than do pictures. Experiment 1 extended this paradigm by requiring subjects to verify the category of the target stimulus. In accordance with the hypothesis that picture access the semantic code more rapidly than words, there was a reversal in the interference pattern: Word categorization suffered considerable disruption, whereas picture categorization was minimally affected by the presence of an incongruent word. Experiment 2 sought to further test the hypothesis that access to semantic and articulatory codes is different for pictures and words by examining memory for those items following naming or categorization. Categorized words were better recognized than named words, whereas the reverse was true for pictures, a result which suggests that picture naming involves more extensive processing than picture categorization. Experiment 3 replicated this result under conditions in which viewing time was held constant. The last experiment extended the investigation of memory differences to a situation in which subjects were required to generate the superordinate category name. Here, memory for categorized pictures was as good as memory for named pictures. Category

Waste management research abstracts no. 22. Information on radioactive waste programmes in progress

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1995-07-01

The research abstracts contained in this issue have been collected during recent months and cover the period between January 1992 - February 1994 (through July 1994 for abstracts from the United States). The abstracts reflect research currently in progress in the field of radioactive waste management: environmental impacts, site selection, decontamination and decommissioning, environmental restoration and legal aspects of radioactive waste management. Though the information contained in this publication covers a wide range of programmes in many countries, the WMRA should not be interpreted as providing a complete survey of on-going research and IAEA Member States. For the first time, the abstracts published in document are only in English language. In addition, the abstracts received for this issue have been assigned INIS subject category codes and thesaurus terms to facilitate searches and also to fully utilize established sets of technical categories and terms

Picture reality decision, semantic categories and gender. A new set of pictures, with norms and an experimental study.

Science.gov (United States)

Barbarotto, Riccardo; Laiacona, Marcella; Macchi, Valeria; Capitani, Erminio

2002-01-01

We present a new corpus of 80 pictures of unreal objects, useful for a controlled assessment of object reality decision. The new pictures were assembled from parts of the Snodgrass and Vanderwart [J. Exp. Psychol., Hum. Learning Memory 6; 1980: 174] set and were devised for the purpose of contrasting natural categories (animals, fruits and vegetables), artefacts (tools, vehicles and furniture), body parts and musical instruments. We examined 140 normal subjects in a free-choice and a multiple-choice object decision task, assembled with 80 pictures of real objects and above 80 new pictures of unreal objects in order to obtain a difficulty index for each picture. We found that the tasks were more difficult with pictures representing natural entities than with pictures of artefacts. We found a gender by category interaction, with a female superiority with some natural categories (fruits and vegetables, but not animals), and a male advantage with artefacts. On this basis, the difficulty index we calculated for each picture is separately reported for males and females. We discuss the possible origin of the gender effect, which has been found with the same categories in other tasks and has a counterpart in the different familiarity of the stimuli for males and females. In particular, we contrast explanations based on socially determined gender differences with accounts based on evolutionary pressures. We further comment on the relationship between data from normal subjects and the domain-specific account of semantic category dissociations observed in brain-damaged patients.

Formal models, languages and applications

CERN Document Server

Rangarajan, K; Mukund, M

2006-01-01

A collection of articles by leading experts in theoretical computer science, this volume commemorates the 75th birthday of Professor Rani Siromoney, one of the pioneers in the field in India. The articles span the vast range of areas that Professor Siromoney has worked in or influenced, including grammar systems, picture languages and new models of computation. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: Finite Array Automata and Regular Array Grammars (150 KB). Contents: Finite Array Automata and Regular Array Grammars (A Atanasiu et al.); Hexagonal Contextual Array P Systems (K S Dersanambika et al.); Con

Use of positive and negative words in scientific PubMed abstracts between 1974 and 2014 : retrospective analysis

OpenAIRE

Vinkers, Christiaan H; Tijdink, Joeri K; Otte, Willem M

2015-01-01

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether language used in science abstracts can skew towards the use of strikingly positive and negative words over time. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of all scientific abstracts in PubMed between 1974 and 2014. METHODS: The yearly frequencies of positive, negative, and neutral words (25 preselected words in each category), plus 100 randomly selected words were normalised for the total number of abstracts. Subanalyses included pattern quantification of individual wo...

Native-likeness in second language lexical categorization reflects individual language history and linguistic community norms.

Science.gov (United States)

Zinszer, Benjamin D; Malt, Barbara C; Ameel, Eef; Li, Ping

2014-01-01

SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS FACE A DUAL CHALLENGE IN VOCABULARY LEARNING: First, they must learn new names for the 100s of common objects that they encounter every day. Second, after some time, they discover that these names do not generalize according to the same rules used in their first language. Lexical categories frequently differ between languages (Malt et al., 1999), and successful language learning requires that bilinguals learn not just new words but new patterns for labeling objects. In the present study, Chinese learners of English with varying language histories and resident in two different language settings (Beijing, China and State College, PA, USA) named 67 photographs of common serving dishes (e.g., cups, plates, and bowls) in both Chinese and English. Participants' response patterns were quantified in terms of similarity to the responses of functionally monolingual native speakers of Chinese and English and showed the cross-language convergence previously observed in simultaneous bilinguals (Ameel et al., 2005). For English, bilinguals' names for each individual stimulus were also compared to the dominant name generated by the native speakers for the object. Using two statistical models, we disentangle the effects of several highly interactive variables from bilinguals' language histories and the naming norms of the native speaker community to predict inter-personal and inter-item variation in L2 (English) native-likeness. We find only a modest age of earliest exposure effect on L2 category native-likeness, but importantly, we find that classroom instruction in L2 negatively impacts L2 category native-likeness, even after significant immersion experience. We also identify a significant role of both L1 and L2 norms in bilinguals' L2 picture naming responses.

Native-Likeness in Second Language Lexical Categorization Reflects Individual Language History and Linguistic Community Norms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Benjamin D Zinszer

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Second language learners face a dual challenge in vocabulary learning: First, they must learn new names for the hundreds of common objects that they encounter every day. Second, after some time, they discover that these names do not generalize according to the same rules used in their first language. Lexical categories frequently differ between languages (Malt et al., 1999, and successful language learning requires that bilinguals learn not just new words but new patterns for labeling objects. In the present study, Chinese learners of English with varying language histories and resident in two different language settings (Beijing, China and State College, PA, USA named 67 photographs of common serving dishes (e.g., cups, plates, and bowls in both Chinese and English. Participants’ response patterns were quantified in terms of similarity to the responses of functionally monolingual native speakers of Chinese and English and showed the cross-language convergence previously observed in simultaneous bilinguals (Ameel et al., 2005. For English, bilinguals’ names for each individual stimulus were also compared to the dominant name generated by the native speakers for the object. Using two statistical models, we disentangle the effects of several highly interactive variables from bilinguals' language histories and the naming norms of the native speaker community to predict inter-personal and inter-item variation in L2 (English native-likeness. We find only a modest age of earliest exposure effect on L2 category native-likeness, but importantly, we find that classroom instruction in L2 negatively impacts L2 category native-likeness, even after significant immersion experience. We also identify a significant role of both L1 and L2 norms in bilinguals’ L2 picture naming responses.

ABSTRACT NOUNS IN THE SPEECH OF THE EMGLISHMEN (BASED ON FICTION WORKS AND BRITISH NATIONAL CORPUS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Natalia Veniaminovna Khokhlova

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The research aimed at studying the use of abstract nouns in the Englishmen’s speech from the standpoint of sociolinguistics. The article introduces a new, sociolinguistic, approach to research of abstract nouns; it is also the first time they are studied in a language corpus. The first stage of the research was based on fiction literary works: abstract nouns were extracted of analysis from the statements of the characters belonging to the opposite social classes. Later, these data was compared with the results of the original corpus research based on the British national corpus: sentences with nouns were selected out of the conversational subcorpus of BNC and were further sorted into abstract, concrete and words denoting people. Then, their frequency and vocabulary was studied with regards to speakers’ age, gender and social standing. The results revealed that abstract words are used more often that concrete ones regardless of the speaker’s social characteristics, however, the size and content of vocabulary is different (it is generally more substantial in the speech of women and representatives of higher social classes. The results of this research can be used in elaborating a course of the English language or in teaching general linguistics, sociolinguistics and country studies. 

Patterns of Stuttering Comparing two Languages: A Case Report

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Janeth Hernández-Jaramillo

2015-09-01

Full Text Available In bilinguals, specific patterns of stuttering in each one of the languages may be different. This study reports on the case of a bilingual adult who speaks Spanish and English simultaneously and whose dominant language is Spanish. Speech and language testing was performed in both languages. The samples chosen for the analysis of speech corpus were: spontaneous speech, de­scription of the picture and reading. Some differences in the stuttering distribution were found. Of the disfluent instants, 61.39 % of the total was presented in English and the other remaining 38.61 % in Spanish. In both languages, stuttering by word type was more frequent in function words (i.e. prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, particles and infinitive forms than in content words (i.e. verbs, nouns, adjectives. As observed, dysfluency types were similar in Spanish and English, with the greatest percentage being word repetition, followed by phonemic prolongations. These were more frequent in English than in Spanish. Although it is possible to find similari­ties in the stuttering pattern suggesting general stuttering laws, differences associated not only with language-specific idiosyncrasies but also with the individual’s bilingualism characteristics were also found.

Effects of Opportunities for Word Retrieval during Second Language Vocabulary Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Barcroft, Joe

2007-01-01

Research suggests that memory for an item improves when one is allowed to retrieve the item (Slamecka & Graf, 1978). This study explored benefits of providing opportunities for target-word retrieval during second language vocabulary learning. English speakers studied new Spanish words while viewing 24 word-picture pairs. They first viewed all 24…

Toddlers, Electronic Media, and Language Development: What Researchers Know So Far

Science.gov (United States)

Guernsey, Lisa

2013-01-01

Electronic media--whether child-oriented videos and games or background television--is increasingly embedded in young children's lives, raising questions of its impact on children's language skills. New research presents a multitextured picture of how different types of e-media--depending on content, context, and a child's age--can help and hurt.…

Pictures Improve Memory of SAT Vocabulary Words.

Science.gov (United States)

Price, Melva; Finkelstein, Arleen

1994-01-01

Suggests that students can improve their memory of Scholastic Aptitude Test vocabulary words by associating the words with corresponding pictures taken from magazines. Finds that long-term recall of words associated with pictures was higher than recall of words not associated with pictures. (RS)

A Functional Correspondence between Monadic Evaluators and Abstract Machines for Languages with Computational Effects

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ager, Mads Sig; Danvy, Olivier; Midtgaard, Jan

2005-01-01

We extend our correspondence between evaluators and abstract machines from the pure setting of the lambda-calculus to the impure setting of the computational lambda-calculus. We show how to derive new abstract machines from monadic evaluators for the computational lambda-calculus. Starting from (1......) a generic evaluator parameterized by a monad and (2) a monad specifying a computational effect, we inline the components of the monad in the generic evaluator to obtain an evaluator written in a style that is specific to this computational effect. We then derive the corresponding abstract machine by closure......-converting, CPS-transforming, and defunctionalizing this specific evaluator. We illustrate the construction first with the identity monad, obtaining the CEK machine, and then with a lifting monad, a state monad, and with a lifted state monad, obtaining variants of the CEK machine with error handling, state...

A genre analysis of English language research grant proposal abstracts in Chile

OpenAIRE

Matzler, Pascal P

2014-01-01

The writing of English-language research genres represent a challenging task for non-native-speaker researchers. Grant proposals, in particular, are a high-stakes genre that will greatly influence a researcher’s career development opportunities; however, novice researchers are faced with an urgent lack of publicly available exemplars or teaching materials for this genre. The present study attempts to address this issue by means of Swalesian genre analysis. First, a move system analysis is app...

False recollection of emotional pictures in Alzheimer's disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Gallo, David A; Foster, Katherine T; Wong, Jessica T; Bennett, David A

2010-10-01

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) can reduce the effects of emotional content on memory for studied pictures, but less is known about false memory. In healthy adults, emotionally arousing pictures can be more susceptible to false memory effects than neutral pictures, potentially because emotional pictures share conceptual similarities that cause memory confusions. We investigated these effects in AD patients and healthy controls. Participants studied pictures and their verbal labels, and then picture recollection was tested using verbal labels as retrieval cues. Some of the test labels had been associated with a picture at study, whereas other had not. On this picture recollection test, we found that both AD patients and controls incorrectly endorsed some of the test labels that had not been studied with pictures. These errors were associated with medium to high levels of confidence, indicating some degree of false recollection. Critically, these false recollection judgments were greater for emotional compared to neutral items, especially for positively valenced items, in both AD patients and controls. Dysfunction of the amygdala and hippocampus in early AD may impair recollection, but AD did not disrupt the effect of emotion on false recollection judgments. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Modular Domain-Specific Language Components in Scala

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hofer, Christian; Ostermann, Klaus

2010-01-01

Programs in domain-­specific embedded languages (DSELs) can be represented in the host language in different ways, for instance implicitly as libraries, or explicitly in the form of abstract syntax trees. Each of these representations has its own strengths and weaknesses. The implicit approach ha...... or transformation. We propose a new design for implementing DSELs in Scala which makes it easy to use different program representations at the same time. It enables the DSL implementor to define modular language components and to compose transformations and interpretations for them....

Constructing Hardware in a Scale Embedded Language

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

2014-08-21

Chisel is a new open-source hardware construction language developed at UC Berkeley that supports advanced hardware design using highly parameterized generators and layered domain-specific hardware languages. Chisel is embedded in the Scala programming language, which raises the level of hardware design abstraction by providing concepts including object orientation, functional programming, parameterized types, and type inference. From the same source, Chisel can generate a high-speed C++-based cycle-accurate software simulator, or low-level Verilog designed to pass on to standard ASIC or FPGA tools for synthesis and place and route.

CESAS: Computerized event sequence abstracting system outlines and applications

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Watanabe, N.; Kobayashi, K.; Fujiki, K.

1990-01-01

For the purpose of efficient utilization of the safety-related event information on the nuclear power plants, a new computer software package CESAS has been under development. CESAS is to systematically abstract the event sequence, that is a series of sequential and causal relationships between occurrences, from the event description written in natural language of English. This system is designed to be based on the knowledge engineering technique utilized in the field of natural language processing. The analytical process in this system consists of morphemic, syntactic, semantic, and syntagmatic analyses. At this moment, the first version of CESAS has been developed and applied to several real event descriptions for studying its feasibility. This paper describes the outlines of CESAS and one of analytical results in comparison with a manually-extracted event sequence

Neural Correlates of Processing Negative and Sexually Arousing Pictures

Science.gov (United States)

Bailey, Kira; West, Robert; Mullaney, Kellie M.

2012-01-01

Recent work has questioned whether the negativity bias is a distinct component of affective picture processing. The current study was designed to determine whether there are different neural correlates of processing positive and negative pictures using event-related brain potentials. The early posterior negativity and late positive potential were greatest in amplitude for erotic pictures. Partial Least Squares analysis revealed one latent variable that distinguished erotic pictures from neutral and positive pictures and another that differentiated negative pictures from neutral and positive pictures. The effects of orienting task on the neural correlates of processing negative and erotic pictures indicate that affective picture processing is sensitive to both stimulus-driven, and attentional or decision processes. The current data, together with other recent findings from our laboratory, lead to the suggestion that there are distinct neural correlates of processing negative and positive stimuli during affective picture processing. PMID:23029071

Name agreement in picture naming : An ERP study

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Cheng, Xiaorong; Schafer, Graham; Akyürek, Elkan G.

Name agreement is the extent to which different people agree on a name for a particular picture. Previous studies have found that it takes longer to name low name agreement pictures than high name agreement pictures. To examine the effect of name agreement in the online process of picture naming, we

Distance-dependent processing of pictures and words.

Science.gov (United States)

Amit, Elinor; Algom, Daniel; Trope, Yaacov

2009-08-01

A series of 8 experiments investigated the association between pictorial and verbal representations and the psychological distance of the referent objects from the observer. The results showed that people better process pictures that represent proximal objects and words that represent distal objects than pictures that represent distal objects and words that represent proximal objects. These results were obtained with various psychological distance dimensions (spatial, temporal, and social), different tasks (classification and categorization), and different measures (speed of processing and selective attention). The authors argue that differences in the processing of pictures and words emanate from the physical similarity of pictures, but not words, to the referents. Consequently, perceptual analysis is commonly applied to pictures but not to words. Pictures thus impart a sense of closeness to the referent objects and are preferably used to represent such objects, whereas words do not convey proximity and are preferably used to represent distal objects in space, time, and social perspective.

77 FR 25082 - Picture Permit Imprint Indicia

Science.gov (United States)

2012-04-27

... POSTAL SERVICE 39 CFR Part 111 Picture Permit Imprint Indicia AGENCY: Postal Service\\TM\\. ACTION... Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM[supreg]) 604.5 to add picture permit imprint indicia standards allowing...: The use of picture permit imprint indicia is designed to improve the effectiveness of a mailpiece by...

An EMOF-Compliant Abstract Syntax for Bigraphs

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Timo Kehrer

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Bigraphs are an emerging modeling formalism for structures in ubiquitous computing. Besides an algebraic notation, which can be adopted to provide an algebraic syntax for bigraphs, the bigraphical theory introduces a visual concrete syntax which is intuitive and unambiguous at the same time; the standard visual notation can be customized and thus tailored to domain-specific requirements. However, in contrast to modeling standards based on the Meta-Object Facility (MOF and domain-specific languages typically used in model-driven engineering (MDE, the bigraphical theory lacks a precise definition of an abstract syntax for bigraphical modeling languages. As a consequence, available modeling and analysis tools use proprietary formats for representing bigraphs internally and persistently, which hampers the exchange of models across tool boundaries. Moreover, tools can be hardly integrated with standard MDE technologies in order to build sophisticated tool chains and modeling environments, as required for systematic engineering of large systems or fostering experimental work to evaluate the bigraphical theory in real-world applications. To overcome this situation, we propose an abstract syntax for bigraphs which is compliant to the Essential MOF (EMOF standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG. We use typed graphs as a formal underpinning of EMOF-based models and present a canonical mapping which maps bigraphs to typed graphs in a natural way. We also discuss application-specific variation points in the graph-based representation of bigraphs. Following standard techniques from software product line engineering, we present a framework to customize the graph-based representation to support a variety of application scenarios.

Aging memory for pictures: Using high-density event-related potentials to understand the effect of aging on the picture superiority effect

OpenAIRE

Ally, Brandon A.; Waring, Jill D.; Beth, Ellen H.; McKeever, Joshua D.; Milberg, William P.; Budson, Andrew E.

2007-01-01

High-density event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to understand the effect of aging on the neural correlates of the picture superiority effect. Pictures and words were systematically varied at study and test while ERPs were recorded at retrieval. Here, the results of the word-word and picture-picture study-test conditions are presented. Behavioral results showed that older adults demonstrated the picture superiority effect to a greater extent than younger adults. The ERP data helped to e...

Emotionally Negative Pictures Enhance Gist Memory

OpenAIRE

Bookbinder, S. H.; Brainerd, C. J.

2016-01-01

In prior work on how true and false memory are influenced by emotion, valence and arousal have often been conflated. Thus, it is difficult to say which specific effects are due to valence and which are due to arousal. In the present research, we used a picture-memory paradigm that allowed emotional valence to be manipulated with arousal held constant. Negatively-valenced pictures elevated both true and false memory, relative to positive and neutral pictures. Conjoint recognition modeling reve...

Spoken language development in oral preschool children with permanent childhood deafness.

Science.gov (United States)

Sarant, Julia Z; Holt, Colleen M; Dowell, Richard C; Rickards, Field W; Blamey, Peter J

2009-01-01

This article documented spoken language outcomes for preschool children with hearing loss and examined the relationships between language abilities and characteristics of children such as degree of hearing loss, cognitive abilities, age at entry to early intervention, and parent involvement in children's intervention programs. Participants were evaluated using a combination of the Child Development Inventory, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Preschool Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals depending on their age at the time of assessment. Maternal education, cognitive ability, and family involvement were also measured. Over half of the children who participated in this study had poor language outcomes overall. No significant differences were found in language outcomes on any of the measures for children who were diagnosed early and those diagnosed later. Multiple regression analyses showed that family participation, degree of hearing loss, and cognitive ability significantly predicted language outcomes and together accounted for almost 60% of the variance in scores. This article highlights the importance of family participation in intervention programs to enable children to achieve optimal language outcomes. Further work may clarify the effects of early diagnosis on language outcomes for preschool children.

Aerobic Exercise Improves Mood, Cognition, and Language Function in Parkinson's Disease: Results of a Controlled Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Altmann, Lori J P; Stegemöller, Elizabeth; Hazamy, Audrey A; Wilson, Jonathan P; Bowers, Dawn; Okun, Michael S; Hass, Chris J

2016-10-01

Parkinson's disease (PD) results in a range of non-motor deficits that can affect mood, cognition, and language, and many of these issues are unresponsive to pharmacological intervention. Aerobic exercise can improve mood and cognition in healthy older adults, although only a few studies have examined exercise effects on these domains in PD. The current study assesses the effects of aerobic exercise on aspects of cognition, mood, and language production in people with PD. This study compares the effects of aerobic exercise to stretch-balance training and a no-contact control group in participants with idiopathic PD. The aerobic and stretch-balance groups trained three times a week for 16 weeks, while controls continued normal activities. Outcome measures included disease severity, mood, cognition (speed of processing, memory, and executive function), and language production (picture descriptions). Cognition and language were assessed in single and dual task conditions. Depressive symptoms increased only in the control group (pimproved in the aerobic exercise group only in the single task (p=.007) and declined in controls in the dual task. Completeness of picture descriptions improved significantly more in the aerobic group than in the stretch-balance group (pexercise is a viable intervention for PD that can be protective against increased depressive symptoms, and can improve several non-motor domains, including executive dysfunction and related aspects of language production. (JINS, 2016, 22, 878-889).

Comic Books: A Learning Tool for Meaningful Acquisition of Written Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Guimarães, Cayley; Oliveira Machado, Milton César; Fernandes, Sueli F.

2018-01-01

Deaf people use Sign Language (SL) for intellectual development, communications and other human activities that are mediated by language--such as the expression of complex and abstract thoughts and feelings; and for literature, culture and knowledge. The Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) is a complete linguistic system of visual-spatial manner,…

MultiPic: A standardized set of 750 drawings with norms for six European languages

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Duñabeitia, J.A.; Crepaldi, D.; Meyer, A.S.; New, B.; Pliatsikas, C.; Smolka, E.; Brysbaert, M.

2018-01-01

Numerous studies in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics have used pictures of objects as stimulus materials. Currently, authors engaged in cross-linguistic work or wishing to run parallel studies at multiple sites where different languages are spoken must rely on rather small

Promoting Self-Questioning through Picture Book Illustrations

Science.gov (United States)

Lohfink, Gayla

2013-01-01

This teaching tip manuscript demonstrates how picture book illustrations can be used as an inquiry tool that facilitates one's connecting of visual investigations in a picture to the process of generating self-questions. Techniques suggested to promote self-questioning are (1) introducing young readers to an interactive picture book read aloud…

A Picture of Subsidized Households 2009

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Housing and Urban Development — Picture of Subsidized Households describes the nearly 5 million households living in HUD-subsidized housing in the United States for the year 2009. Picture 2009...

A Picture of Subsidized Housholds 2008

Data.gov (United States)

Department of Housing and Urban Development — Picture of Subsidized Households describes the nearly 5 million households living in HUD-subsidized housing in the United States for the year 2008. Picture 2008...

Report on Networking and Programming Languages 2017

KAUST Repository

Bjorner, Nikolaj

2017-10-26

The third workshop on Networking and Programming Lan-guages, NetPL 2017, was held in conjunction with SIG-COMM 2017. The workshop series attracts invited speakers from academia and industry and a selection of contributed abstracts for short presentations. NetPL brings together re-searchers from the networking community and researchers from the programming languages and verification communities. The workshop series is a timely forum for exciting trends, technological and scientific advances in the intersection of these communities. We describe some of the high-lights from the invited talks through the lens of three trends: Advances in network machine architectures, network programming abstractions, and network verification. NetPL included five invited speakers, four from academia, and one from industry. The program contained six contributed talks out of eight submitted for presentation. The workshop organizers reviewed the abstracts for quality and scope. A total of 42 registrations were received and the attendance occupied the lecture room to the brink. Slides and abstracts from all talks are available from the workshop home page.1 Videos of the presentations are available in the NetPL YouTube channel.2.

Report on Networking and Programming Languages 2017

KAUST Repository

Bjorner, Nikolaj; Canini, Marco; Sultana, Nik

2017-01-01

The third workshop on Networking and Programming Lan-guages, NetPL 2017, was held in conjunction with SIG-COMM 2017. The workshop series attracts invited speakers from academia and industry and a selection of contributed abstracts for short presentations. NetPL brings together re-searchers from the networking community and researchers from the programming languages and verification communities. The workshop series is a timely forum for exciting trends, technological and scientific advances in the intersection of these communities. We describe some of the high-lights from the invited talks through the lens of three trends: Advances in network machine architectures, network programming abstractions, and network verification. NetPL included five invited speakers, four from academia, and one from industry. The program contained six contributed talks out of eight submitted for presentation. The workshop organizers reviewed the abstracts for quality and scope. A total of 42 registrations were received and the attendance occupied the lecture room to the brink. Slides and abstracts from all talks are available from the workshop home page.1 Videos of the presentations are available in the NetPL YouTube channel.2.

How vision is shaped by language comprehension--top-down feedback based on low-spatial frequencies.

Science.gov (United States)

Hirschfeld, Gerrit; Zwitserlood, Pienie

2011-03-04

Effects of language comprehension on visual processing have been extensively studied within the embodied-language framework. However, it is unknown whether these effects are caused by passive repetition suppression in visual processing areas, or depend on active feedback, based on partial input, from prefrontal regions. Based on a model of top-down feedback during visual recognition, we predicted diminished effects when low-spatial frequencies were removed from targets. We compared low-pass and high-pass filtered pictures in a sentence-picture-verification task. Target pictures matched or mismatched the implied shape of an object mentioned in a preceding sentence, or were unrelated to the sentences. As predicted, there was a large match advantage when the targets contained low-spatial frequencies, but no effect of linguistic context when these frequencies were filtered out. The proposed top-down feedback model is superior to repetition suppression in explaining the current results, as well as earlier results about the lateralization of this effect, and peculiar color match effects. We discuss these findings in the context of recent general proposals of prediction and top-down feedback. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Promoting Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM to Develop Students’ Writing Skill

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fitri Novia

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract: The objective of this study was to find out whether or not there was significant difference between students who were taught using picture word inductive model (PWIM and that of those who were not. The experimental method was used to conduct the study. The population of this study was the eighth grade students in SMP N 1 Sirah Pulau Padang.  Out of this pouplation, 68 students were taken as a sample and were divided  equally into two groups by using purposive sampling method. Therefore, class VIII 1 was the experimental group whereas VIII 3 as the control group, each of them consists of 34 students. The data were collected by asking students to write descriptive paragraph. To find out the validity, content validity was used. Inter-rater reliability was used to find out the reliability. T-test was used to analyze the data. Based on the result, the value of t-obtained was 3.155, at the significant level p<0.05 in two tailed testing with do = 66, the critical value of t-table = 1.9966. Since the value of t-obtained was higher than t-table, the Null Hypotheses (Ho was rejected and Alternative Analysis (Ha was accepted. It meant that there was significant difference between students who were taught using picture word inductive model (PWIM and that of those who were not. In conclusion, PWIM could help students to develop writing skill.   Key Word: Writing skill, Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM.

Incoming exchange students' learning and use of lingua franca English and local languages in Scandinavia

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Caudery, Tim; Petersen, Margrethe; Shaw, Philip

if they stayed for a second semester. Each interview concluded with two tests: a picture description test and a basic vocabulary test; all interviews were recorded. Findings relating to the interviewees' language goals, interaction with others and language use in such interaction will be presented and discussed...... in relation to the importance for students of developing skills in English as a lingua franca and the desire by the EU to promote multilingualism through student exchange....

The role of verbal and pictorial information in multimodal incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary

OpenAIRE

Bisson, Marie-Josée; Van Heuven, Walter J.B.; Conklin, Kathy; Tunney, Richard J.

2014-01-01

This study used eye tracking to investigate the allocation of attention to multimodal stimuli during an incidental learning situation, as well as its impact on subsequent explicit learning. Participants were exposed to foreign language (FL) auditory words on their own, in conjunction with written native language (NL) translations, or with both written NL translations and pictures. Incidental acquisition of FL words was assessed the following day through an explicit learning task where partici...

Language community as an agent of individual’s socialization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

G. V. Liakhovich

2017-03-01

In the article the analysis of the works of national and foreign researchers in sociolinguistics, sociology of language based on a common interpretation of the language community. Characterized the role of linguistic community in in the construction of social space in the context of the theory P.Berger and T. Lukman. Also the paper presents the analysis of the works of domestic and foreign social scientists who have studied the mechanisms and factors of a young person, her social conditioning. Sociological approach to the explanation of linguistic community as an agent of socialization of the individual is characterized. The authors considers that the notion is interlinked with the categories of linguistic situation, linguistic identity, linguistic picture of the world and linguistic processes. The paper interprets the state of linguistic community depending on the state of languages in society.

Transformation Strategies between Block-Oriented and Graph-Oriented Process Modelling Languages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mendling, Jan; Lassen, Kristian Bisgaard; Zdun, Uwe

2006-01-01

Much recent research work discusses the transformation between different process modelling languages. This work, however, is mainly focussed on specific process modelling languages, and thus the general reusability of the applied transformation concepts is rather limited. In this paper, we aim...... to abstract from concrete transformation strategies by distinguishing two major paradigms for representing control flow in process modelling languages: block-oriented languages (such as BPEL and BPML) and graph-oriented languages (such as EPCs and YAWL). The contribution of this paper are generic strategies...... for transforming from block-oriented process languages to graph-oriented languages, and vice versa....

Transformation Strategies between Block-Oriented and Graph-Oriented Process Modelling Languages