Mental Representation and Early Language Development: Directions for Exploring Relationships. Souvenir of Conversation Hour.

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Nicolich, Lorraine McCune; And Others

This collection of conference abstracts focuses on new directions for research on mental representation and early language development. One page summaries are provided on the following topics: Mental Representation and Initial Language Learning, by Lorraine M. Nicolich; Critical Issues in Language and Cognitive Development, by Roberta Corrigan;…

Spatial language processing in the blind: evidence for a supramodal representation and cortical reorganization.

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Marijn E Struiksma

Full Text Available Neuropsychological and imaging studies have shown that the left supramarginal gyrus (SMG is specifically involved in processing spatial terms (e.g. above, left of, which locate places and objects in the world. The current fMRI study focused on the nature and specificity of representing spatial language in the left SMG by combining behavioral and neuronal activation data in blind and sighted individuals. Data from the blind provide an elegant way to test the supramodal representation hypothesis, i.e. abstract codes representing spatial relations yielding no activation differences between blind and sighted. Indeed, the left SMG was activated during spatial language processing in both blind and sighted individuals implying a supramodal representation of spatial and other dimensional relations which does not require visual experience to develop. However, in the absence of vision functional reorganization of the visual cortex is known to take place. An important consideration with respect to our finding is the amount of functional reorganization during language processing in our blind participants. Therefore, the participants also performed a verb generation task. We observed that only in the blind occipital areas were activated during covert language generation. Additionally, in the first task there was functional reorganization observed for processing language with a high linguistic load. As the visual cortex was not specifically active for spatial contents in the first task, and no reorganization was observed in the SMG, the latter finding further supports the notion that the left SMG is the main node for a supramodal representation of verbal spatial relations.

Right-Linear Languages Generated in Systems of Knowledge Representation based on LSG

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Daniela Danciulescu

2017-04-01

Full Text Available In Tudor (Preda (2010 a method for formal languages generation based on labeled stratified graph representations is sketched. The author proves that the considered method can generate regular languages and context-sensitive languages by considering an exemplification of the proposed method for a particular regular language and another one for a particular contextsensitive language. At the end of the study, the author highlights some open problems for future research among which we remind: (1 The study of the language families that can be generated by means of these structures; (2 The study of the infiniteness of the languages that can be represented in stratified graphs. In this paper, we extend the method presented in Tudor (Preda(2010, by considering the stratified graph formalism in a system of knowledge representation and reasoning. More precisely, we propose a method that can be applied for generating any Right Linear Language construction. Our method is proved and exemplified in several cases.

Understanding Conservation Delays in Children with Specific Language Impairment: Task Representations Revealed in Speech and Gesture

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Mainela-Arnold, Elina; Evans, Julia L.; Alibali, Martha W.

2006-01-01

Purpose: The authors investigated mental representations of Piagetian conservation tasks in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing peers. Children with SLI have normal nonverbal intelligence; however, they exhibit difficulties in Piagetian conservation tasks. The authors tested the hypothesis that conservation…

Coupling ontology driven semantic representation with multilingual natural language generation for tuning international terminologies.

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Rassinoux, Anne-Marie; Baud, Robert H; Rodrigues, Jean-Marie; Lovis, Christian; Geissbühler, Antoine

2007-01-01

The importance of clinical communication between providers, consumers and others, as well as the requisite for computer interoperability, strengthens the need for sharing common accepted terminologies. Under the directives of the World Health Organization (WHO), an approach is currently being conducted in Australia to adopt a standardized terminology for medical procedures that is intended to become an international reference. In order to achieve such a standard, a collaborative approach is adopted, in line with the successful experiment conducted for the development of the new French coding system CCAM. Different coding centres are involved in setting up a semantic representation of each term using a formal ontological structure expressed through a logic-based representation language. From this language-independent representation, multilingual natural language generation (NLG) is performed to produce noun phrases in various languages that are further compared for consistency with the original terms. Outcomes are presented for the assessment of the International Classification of Health Interventions (ICHI) and its translation into Portuguese. The initial results clearly emphasize the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of the proposed method for handling both a different classification and an additional language. NLG tools, based on ontology driven semantic representation, facilitate the discovery of ambiguous and inconsistent terms, and, as such, should be promoted for establishing coherent international terminologies.

STUDY OF SOLUTION REPRESENTATION LANGUAGE INFLUENCE ON EFFICIENCY OF INTEGER SEQUENCES PREDICTION

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A. S. Potapov

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Methods based on genetic programming for the problem solution of integer sequences extrapolation are the subjects for study in the paper. In order to check the hypothesis about the influence of language expression of program representation on the prediction effectiveness, the genetic programming method based on several limited languages for recurrent sequences has been developed. On the single sequence sample the implemented method with the use of more complete language has shown results, significantly better than the results of one of the current methods represented in literature based on artificial neural networks. Analysis of experimental comparison results for the realized method with the usage of different languages has shown that language extension increases the difficulty of consistent patterns search in languages, available for prediction in a simpler language though it makes new sequence classes accessible for prediction. This effect can be reduced but not eliminated completely at language extension by the constructions, which make solutions more compact. Carried out researches have drawn to the conclusion that alone the choice of an adequate language for solution representation is not enough for the full problem solution of integer sequences prediction (and, all the more, universal prediction problem. However, practically applied methods can be received by the usage of genetic programming.

Focusing on Presentation Instead of Representation: Perspectives on Representational and Non-Representational Language-Games for Educational History and Theory

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Fendler, Lynn; Smeyers, Paul

2015-01-01

Debates in science seem to depend on referential language-games, but in other senses they do not. This article addresses non-representational theory. It is a branch of newer approaches to cultural geography that strive to get a handle on spatial relationships not by representing them, but rather by presenting them. In this case, present connotes…

Hierarchical levels of representation in language prediction: The influence of first language acquisition in highly proficient bilinguals.

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Molinaro, Nicola; Giannelli, Francesco; Caffarra, Sendy; Martin, Clara

2017-07-01

Language comprehension is largely supported by predictive mechanisms that account for the ease and speed with which communication unfolds. Both native and proficient non-native speakers can efficiently handle contextual cues to generate reliable linguistic expectations. However, the link between the variability of the linguistic background of the speaker and the hierarchical format of the representations predicted is still not clear. We here investigate whether native language exposure to typologically highly diverse languages (Spanish and Basque) affects the way early balanced bilingual speakers carry out language predictions. During Spanish sentence comprehension, participants developed predictions of words the form of which (noun ending) could be either diagnostic of grammatical gender values (transparent) or totally ambiguous (opaque). We measured electrophysiological prediction effects time-locked both to the target word and to its determiner, with the former being expected or unexpected. Event-related (N200-N400) and oscillatory activity in the low beta-band (15-17Hz) frequency channel showed that both Spanish and Basque natives optimally carry out lexical predictions independently of word transparency. Crucially, in contrast to Spanish natives, Basque natives displayed visual word form predictions for transparent words, in consistency with the relevance that noun endings (post-nominal suffixes) play in their native language. We conclude that early language exposure largely shapes prediction mechanisms, so that bilinguals reading in their second language rely on the distributional regularities that are highly relevant in their first language. More importantly, we show that individual linguistic experience hierarchically modulates the format of the predicted representation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Towards a Script-Based Representation Language for Educational Films.

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Parkes, Alan P.

1987-01-01

Discusses aspects of the syntax and semantics of film, and presents a scenario for the use of film by intelligent computer assisted instruction (ICAI) systems. An outline of a representation language for educational films on videodisc is presented, and an appendix provides conceptual graphs that explain notations used in examples. (Author/LRW)

Multimodal semantic quantity representations: further evidence from Korean Sign Language

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Frank eDomahs

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Korean deaf signers performed a number comparison task on pairs of Arabic digits. In their RT profiles, the expected magnitude effect was systematically modified by properties of number signs in Korean Sign Language in a culture-specific way (not observed in hearing and deaf Germans or hearing Chinese. We conclude that finger-based quantity representations are automatically activated even in simple tasks with symbolic input although this may be irrelevant and even detrimental for task performance. These finger-based numerical representations are accessed in addition to another, more basic quantity system which is evidenced by the magnitude effect. In sum, these results are inconsistent with models assuming only one single amodal representation of numerical quantity.

Do Women Really have More Bilateral Language Representation than Men?: A Meta-Analysis of Functional Imaging Studies

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Sommer, Iris E. C.; Aleman, Andre; Bouma, Anke; Kahn, Rene S.

2004-01-01

Sex differences in cognition are consistently reported, men excelling in most visuospatial tasks and women in certain verbal tasks. It has been hypothesized that these sex differences in cognition results from a more bilateral pattern of language representation in women than in men. This bilateral pattern of language representation in women is…

A Conceptual Schema Language for the Management of Multiple Representations of Geographic Entities

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Friis-Christensen, A.; Jensen, Christian Søndergaard; Nytun, J.P.

2005-01-01

Multiple representation of geographic information occurs when a real-world entity is represented more than once in the same or different databases. This occurs frequently in practice, and it invariably results in the occurrence of inconsistencies among the different representations of the same...... entity. In this paper, we propose an approach to the modeling of multiply represented entities, which is based on the relationships among the entities and their representations. Central to our approach is the Multiple Representation Schema Language that, by intuitive and declarative means, is used...... to specify rules that match objects representing the same entity, maintain consistency among these representations, and restore consistency if necessary. The rules configure a Multiple Representation Management System, the aim of which is to manage multiple representations over a number of autonomous...

Commonalities and differences in the neural representations of English, Portuguese, and Mandarin sentences: When knowledge of the brain-language mappings for two languages is better than one.

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Yang, Ying; Wang, Jing; Bailer, Cyntia; Cherkassky, Vladimir; Just, Marcel Adam

2017-12-01

This study extended cross-language semantic decoding (based on a concept's fMRI signature) to the decoding of sentences across three different languages (English, Portuguese and Mandarin). A classifier was trained on either the mapping between words and activation patterns in one language or the mappings in two languages (using an equivalent amount of training data), and then tested on its ability to decode the semantic content of a third language. The model trained on two languages was reliably more accurate than a classifier trained on one language for all three pairs of languages. This two-language advantage was selective to abstract concept domains such as social interactions and mental activity. Representational Similarity Analyses (RSA) of the inter-sentence neural similarities resulted in similar clustering of sentences in all the three languages, indicating a shared neural concept space among languages. These findings identify semantic domains that are common across these three languages versus those that are more language or culture-specific. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Sensory Signals to Modality-Independent Conceptual Representations: A Probabilistic Language of Thought Approach.

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Goker Erdogan

2015-11-01

Full Text Available People learn modality-independent, conceptual representations from modality-specific sensory signals. Here, we hypothesize that any system that accomplishes this feat will include three components: a representational language for characterizing modality-independent representations, a set of sensory-specific forward models for mapping from modality-independent representations to sensory signals, and an inference algorithm for inverting forward models-that is, an algorithm for using sensory signals to infer modality-independent representations. To evaluate this hypothesis, we instantiate it in the form of a computational model that learns object shape representations from visual and/or haptic signals. The model uses a probabilistic grammar to characterize modality-independent representations of object shape, uses a computer graphics toolkit and a human hand simulator to map from object representations to visual and haptic features, respectively, and uses a Bayesian inference algorithm to infer modality-independent object representations from visual and/or haptic signals. Simulation results show that the model infers identical object representations when an object is viewed, grasped, or both. That is, the model's percepts are modality invariant. We also report the results of an experiment in which different subjects rated the similarity of pairs of objects in different sensory conditions, and show that the model provides a very accurate account of subjects' ratings. Conceptually, this research significantly contributes to our understanding of modality invariance, an important type of perceptual constancy, by demonstrating how modality-independent representations can be acquired and used. Methodologically, it provides an important contribution to cognitive modeling, particularly an emerging probabilistic language-of-thought approach, by showing how symbolic and statistical approaches can be combined in order to understand aspects of human perception.

Anatomical variability in the cortical representation of first and second language.

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Dehaene, S; Dupoux, E; Mehler, J; Cohen, L; Paulesu, E; Perani, D; van de Moortele, P F; Lehéricy, S; Le Bihan, D

1997-12-01

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess inter-subject variability in the cortical representation of language comprehension processes. Moderately fluent French-English bilinguals were scanned while they listened to stories in their first language (L1 = French) or in a second language (L2 = English) acquired at school after the age of seven. In all subjects, listening to L1 always activated a similar set of areas in the left temporal lobe, clustered along the left superior temporal sulcus. Listening to L2, however, activated a highly variable network of left and right temporal and frontal areas, sometimes restricted only to right-hemispheric regions. These results support the hypothesis that first language acquisition relies on a dedicated left-hemispheric cerebral network, while late second language acquisition is not necessarily associated with a reproducible biological substrate. The postulated contribution of the right hemisphere to L2 comprehension is found to hold only on average, individual subjects varying from complete right lateralization to standard left lateralization for L2.

Conglomeration or Chameleon? Teachers' Representations of Language in the Assessment of Learners with English as an Additional Language.

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Gardner, Sheena; Rea-Dickins, Pauline

2001-01-01

Investigates teacher representations of language in relation to assessment contexts. Analyzes not only what is represented in teachers' use of metalanguage, but also how it is presented--in terms of expression, voice, and source. The analysis is based on interviews with teachers, transcripts of lessons, and classroom-based assessments, formal…

Vietnamese Document Representation and Classification

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Nguyen, Giang-Son; Gao, Xiaoying; Andreae, Peter

Vietnamese is very different from English and little research has been done on Vietnamese document classification, or indeed, on any kind of Vietnamese language processing, and only a few small corpora are available for research. We created a large Vietnamese text corpus with about 18000 documents, and manually classified them based on different criteria such as topics and styles, giving several classification tasks of different difficulty levels. This paper introduces a new syllable-based document representation at the morphological level of the language for efficient classification. We tested the representation on our corpus with different classification tasks using six classification algorithms and two feature selection techniques. Our experiments show that the new representation is effective for Vietnamese categorization, and suggest that best performance can be achieved using syllable-pair document representation, an SVM with a polynomial kernel as the learning algorithm, and using Information gain and an external dictionary for feature selection.

Detecting Source Code Plagiarism on .NET Programming Languages using Low-level Representation and Adaptive Local Alignment

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Oscar Karnalim

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Even though there are various source code plagiarism detection approaches, only a few works which are focused on low-level representation for deducting similarity. Most of them are only focused on lexical token sequence extracted from source code. In our point of view, low-level representation is more beneficial than lexical token since its form is more compact than the source code itself. It only considers semantic-preserving instructions and ignores many source code delimiter tokens. This paper proposes a source code plagiarism detection which rely on low-level representation. For a case study, we focus our work on .NET programming languages with Common Intermediate Language as its low-level representation. In addition, we also incorporate Adaptive Local Alignment for detecting similarity. According to Lim et al, this algorithm outperforms code similarity state-of-the-art algorithm (i.e. Greedy String Tiling in term of effectiveness. According to our evaluation which involves various plagiarism attacks, our approach is more effective and efficient when compared with standard lexical-token approach.

[Hemispheric asymmetry modulation for language processing in aging: meta-analysis of studies using the dichotic listening test].

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Vanhoucke, Elodie; Cousin, Emilie; Baciu, Monica

2013-03-01

Growing evidence suggests that age impacts on interhemispheric representation of language. Dichotic listening test allows assessing language lateralization for spoken language and it generally reveals right-ear/left-hemisphere (LH) predominance for language in young adult subjects. According to reported results, elderly would display increasing LH predominance in some studies or stable LH language lateralization for language in others ones. The aim of this study was to depict the main pattern of results in respect with the effect of normal aging on the hemisphere specialization for language by using dichotic listening test. A meta-analysis based on 11 studies has been performed. The inter-hemisphere asymmetry does not seem to increase according to age. A supplementary qualitative analysis suggests that right-ear advantage seems to increase between 40 and 49 y old and becomes stable or decreases after 55 y old, suggesting right-ear/LH decline.

Standard model of knowledge representation

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Yin, Wensheng

2016-09-01

Knowledge representation is the core of artificial intelligence research. Knowledge representation methods include predicate logic, semantic network, computer programming language, database, mathematical model, graphics language, natural language, etc. To establish the intrinsic link between various knowledge representation methods, a unified knowledge representation model is necessary. According to ontology, system theory, and control theory, a standard model of knowledge representation that reflects the change of the objective world is proposed. The model is composed of input, processing, and output. This knowledge representation method is not a contradiction to the traditional knowledge representation method. It can express knowledge in terms of multivariate and multidimensional. It can also express process knowledge, and at the same time, it has a strong ability to solve problems. In addition, the standard model of knowledge representation provides a way to solve problems of non-precision and inconsistent knowledge.

Parametric Representation of the Speaker's Lips for Multimodal Sign Language and Speech Recognition

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Ryumin, D.; Karpov, A. A.

2017-05-01

In this article, we propose a new method for parametric representation of human's lips region. The functional diagram of the method is described and implementation details with the explanation of its key stages and features are given. The results of automatic detection of the regions of interest are illustrated. A speed of the method work using several computers with different performances is reported. This universal method allows applying parametrical representation of the speaker's lipsfor the tasks of biometrics, computer vision, machine learning, and automatic recognition of face, elements of sign languages, and audio-visual speech, including lip-reading.

Atypical right hemisphere specialization for object representations in an adolescent with specific language impairment

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Timothy T. Brown

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Individuals with a diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI show abnormal spoken language occurring alongside normal nonverbal abilities. Behaviorally, people with SLI exhibit diverse profiles of impairment involving phonological, grammatical, syntactic, and semantic aspects of language. In this study, we used a multimodal neuroimaging technique called anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG to measure the dynamic functional brain organization of an adolescent with SLI. Using single-subject statistical maps of cortical activity, we compared this patient to a sibling and to a cohort of typically developing subjects during the performance of tasks designed to evoke semantic representations of concrete objects. Localized, real-time patterns of brain activity within the language impaired patient showed marked differences from the typical functional organization, with significant engagement of right hemisphere heteromodal cortical regions generally homotopic to the left hemisphere areas that usually show the greatest activity for such tasks. Functional neuroanatomical differences were evident at early sensoriperceptual processing stages and continued through later cognitive stages, observed specifically at latencies typically associated with semantic encoding operations. Our findings show with real-time temporal specificity evidence for an atypical right hemisphere specialization for the representation of concrete entities, independent of verbal motor demands. More broadly, our results demonstrate the feasibility and potential utility of using aMEG to characterize individual patient differences in the dynamic functional organization of the brain.

Unsupervised Language Acquisition

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de Marcken, Carl

1996-11-01

This thesis presents a computational theory of unsupervised language acquisition, precisely defining procedures for learning language from ordinary spoken or written utterances, with no explicit help from a teacher. The theory is based heavily on concepts borrowed from machine learning and statistical estimation. In particular, learning takes place by fitting a stochastic, generative model of language to the evidence. Much of the thesis is devoted to explaining conditions that must hold for this general learning strategy to arrive at linguistically desirable grammars. The thesis introduces a variety of technical innovations, among them a common representation for evidence and grammars, and a learning strategy that separates the ``content'' of linguistic parameters from their representation. Algorithms based on it suffer from few of the search problems that have plagued other computational approaches to language acquisition. The theory has been tested on problems of learning vocabularies and grammars from unsegmented text and continuous speech, and mappings between sound and representations of meaning. It performs extremely well on various objective criteria, acquiring knowledge that causes it to assign almost exactly the same structure to utterances as humans do. This work has application to data compression, language modeling, speech recognition, machine translation, information retrieval, and other tasks that rely on either structural or stochastic descriptions of language.

Testing framework for embedded languages

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Leskó, Dániel; Tejfel, Máté

2012-09-01

Embedding a new programming language into an existing one is a widely used technique, because it fastens the development process and gives a part of a language infrastructure for free (e.g. lexical, syntactical analyzers). In this paper we are presenting a new advantage of this development approach regarding to adding testing support for these new languages. Tool support for testing is a crucial point for a newly designed programming language. It could be done in the hard way by creating a testing tool from scratch, or we could try to reuse existing testing tools by extending them with an interface to our new language. The second approach requires less work, and also it fits very well for the embedded approach. The problem is that the creation of such interfaces is not straightforward at all, because the existing testing tools were mostly not designed to be extendable and to be able to deal with new languages. This paper presents an extendable and modular model of a testing framework, in which the most basic design decision was to keep the - previously mentioned - interface creation simple and straightforward. Other important aspects of our model are the test data generation, the oracle problem and the customizability of the whole testing phase.

Determination of hemisphere dominance for language: comparison of frontal and temporal fMRI activation with intracarotid amytal testing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Spreer, J.; Arnold, S.; Ziyeh, S.; Klisch, J.; Schumacher, M.; Quiske, A.; Altenmueller, D.; Schulze-Bonhage, A.; Wohlfarth, R.; Steinhoff, B.J.; Herpers, M.; Kassubek, J.; Honegger, J.

2002-01-01

The reliability of frontal and temporal fMRI activations for the determination of hemisphere language dominance was evaluated in comparison with intracarotid amytal testing (IAT). Twenty-two patients were studied by IAT (bilateral in 13, unilateral in 9 patients) and fMRI using a paradigm requiring semantic decisions. Global and regional (frontal and temporoparietal) lateralisation indices (LI) were calculated from the number of activated (r>0.4) voxels in both hemispheres. Frontolateral activations associated with the language task were seen in all patients, temporoparietal activations in 20 of 22. Regional LI corresponded better with IAT results than global LI. Frontolateral LI were consistent with IAT in all patients with bilateral IAT (including three patients with right dominant and one patient with bilateral language representation) and were not conflicting in any of the patients with unilateral IAT. Temporoparietal LI were discordant with IAT in two patients with atypical language representation. In the determination of hemisphere dominance for language, regional analysis of fMRI activation is superior to global analysis. In cases with clear-cut fMRI lateralisation, i.e. consistent lateralised activation of frontal and temporoparietal language zones, IAT may be unnecessary. FMRI should be performed prior to IAT in all patients going to be operated in brain regions potentially involved in language. (orig.)

Communicative language testing in ESP context

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Alma Cenkaj Vladi

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Language tests have always been important to people. Language is the most important means of communication, and only through it we can convey and receive messages, as well as test our cognitive abilities in different fields of knowledge. But while testing other cognitive areas of human knowledge is considered relatively easy, testing language itself has resulted rather difficult. Language testing theory has undergone several phases of development, from being completely uninterested in reliability and validity, to becoming obsessed with statistical formulae, which would have catered for the much wanted reliability. Swaying from one extreme to the other, communicative language testing seems to have found a balance between reliability through statistical analyses on the one hand, and validity through closely observing elements of language competence and performance, as well as ethical issues which bring tests closer to the social dimension. This article will give a general overview of how communicative language testing came in place, the theory and pertaining elements of such tests, as well as issues that have yet to be answered.

The Cognitive Advantages of Counting Specifically: A Representational Analysis of Verbal Numeration Systems in Oceanic Languages.

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Bender, Andrea; Schlimm, Dirk; Beller, Sieghard

2015-10-01

The domain of numbers provides a paradigmatic case for investigating interactions of culture, language, and cognition: Numerical competencies are considered a core domain of knowledge, and yet the development of specifically human abilities presupposes cultural and linguistic input by way of counting sequences. These sequences constitute systems with distinct structural properties, the cross-linguistic variability of which has implications for number representation and processing. Such representational effects are scrutinized for two types of verbal numeration systems-general and object-specific ones-that were in parallel use in several Oceanic languages (English with its general system is included for comparison). The analysis indicates that the object-specific systems outperform the general systems with respect to counting and mental arithmetic, largely due to their regular and more compact representation. What these findings reveal on cognitive diversity, how the conjectures involved speak to more general issues in cognitive science, and how the approach taken here might help to bridge the gap between anthropology and other cognitive sciences is discussed in the conclusion. Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Formal Functional Test Designs: Bridging the Gap Between Test Requirements and Test Specifications

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Hops, Jonathan

1993-01-01

This presentation describes the testing life cycle, the purpose of the test design phase, and test design methods and gives an example application. Also included is a description of Test Representation Language (TRL), a summary of the language, and an example of an application of TRL. A sample test requirement and sample test design are included.

Language Networks as Models of Cognition: Understanding Cognition through Language

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Beckage, Nicole M.; Colunga, Eliana

Language is inherently cognitive and distinctly human. Separating the object of language from the human mind that processes and creates language fails to capture the full language system. Linguistics traditionally has focused on the study of language as a static representation, removed from the human mind. Network analysis has traditionally been focused on the properties and structure that emerge from network representations. Both disciplines could gain from looking at language as a cognitive process. In contrast, psycholinguistic research has focused on the process of language without committing to a representation. However, by considering language networks as approximations of the cognitive system we can take the strength of each of these approaches to study human performance and cognition as related to language. This paper reviews research showcasing the contributions of network science to the study of language. Specifically, we focus on the interplay of cognition and language as captured by a network representation. To this end, we review different types of language network representations before considering the influence of global level network features. We continue by considering human performance in relation to network structure and conclude with theoretical network models that offer potential and testable explanations of cognitive and linguistic phenomena.

Representational State Transfer a its support in programming language Java

OpenAIRE

Tran, Dac Ngoc Lam

2010-01-01

This bachelor thesis focuses on explaining the term Representational State Transfer (REST) and its usage in the programming language Java. The first chapter introduces readers with the theoretical basis of REST, its presence in HTTP protocol and its pros and cons in general. The second chapter is dedicated to the application of principles mentioned in the first chapter. On two different programs, a client and a server, I go through the analysis and programming the REST layer. After this chapt...

Approaching Sign Language Test Construction: Adaptation of the German Sign Language Receptive Skills Test

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Haug, Tobias

2011-01-01

There is a current need for reliable and valid test instruments in different countries in order to monitor deaf children's sign language acquisition. However, very few tests are commercially available that offer strong evidence for their psychometric properties. A German Sign Language (DGS) test focusing on linguistic structures that are acquired…

RLL-1: A Representation Language Language

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1980-10-01

adaptable organisms over those which contain, built-in optimized features. Compare the extinct dinosaur , unable to adapt to new situations, with two of...natural language understandirq for KRL [Bobrow & Winograd] and OWL [Szolovits, et alD. For this reason , his language is ofL.:n inadequate for any...for no particular reason , switch the organ into its Oboe state. That is, the sequence which triggers a change to the organ is a Punction of the organ’s

Neural overlap of L1 and L2 semantic representations in speech: A decoding approach.

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Van de Putte, Eowyn; De Baene, Wouter; Brass, Marcel; Duyck, Wouter

2017-11-15

Although research has now converged towards a consensus that both languages of a bilingual are represented in at least partly shared systems for language comprehension, it remains unclear whether both languages are represented in the same neural populations for production. We investigated the neural overlap between L1 and L2 semantic representations of translation equivalents using a production task in which the participants had to name pictures in L1 and L2. Using a decoding approach, we tested whether brain activity during the production of individual nouns in one language allowed predicting the production of the same concepts in the other language. Because both languages only share the underlying semantic representation (sensory and lexical overlap was maximally avoided), this would offer very strong evidence for neural overlap in semantic representations of bilinguals. Based on the brain activation for the individual concepts in one language in the bilateral occipito-temporal cortex and the inferior and the middle temporal gyrus, we could accurately predict the equivalent individual concepts in the other language. This indicates that these regions share semantic representations across L1 and L2 word production. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The notion of intercultural and teaching-learning process of foreign languages in Brazil: representations and realities of FFL

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Joice Armani Galli

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Although the history of humanity is merged with the history of languages, studies related to the field of language sciences have been very recent. Several elements compose the broad field of human sciences, such as behavioral analysis and the sense of belonging and exclusion. Situated in this context, the epistemological reflection about Foreign Languages (FL represents a sign of contemporaneity. This fact is maximized by its interdisciplinary character, making the lines that delimit the linguistic field research in FL very tenuous. The degree of variants of the object Language makes the research on teaching and learning highly complex due to the subjectivity it involves. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss issues such as representation and interculturalism in the research methodology. Such dimension allows some outlines for the development of linguistic research to be drawn, establishing an interface with the process of teaching and learning in FL. Cuq (2010, Puren (2009, Courtillon (1998 and De Carlo (1998 are some of the theoretical references on which this reflection is based on. Some representations related to literacy will be pointed out in order to highlight aspects related to the reality of current teaching of French as a Foreign Language (FFL in Brazil.

Cross-Language Mediation in Foreign Language Teaching and Testing

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Stathopoulou, Maria

2015-01-01

This book contributes to the growing field of foreign language teaching and testing by shedding light on mediation between languages. Stathopoulou offers an empirically-grounded definition of mediation as a form of translanguaging and offers tools and methods for further research in multilingual testing. The book explores what cross-language…

ART-ML: a new markup language for modelling and representation of biological processes in cardiovascular diseases.

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Karvounis, E C; Exarchos, T P; Fotiou, E; Sakellarios, A I; Iliopoulou, D; Koutsouris, D; Fotiadis, D I

2013-01-01

With an ever increasing number of biological models available on the internet, a standardized modelling framework is required to allow information to be accessed and visualized. In this paper we propose a novel Extensible Markup Language (XML) based format called ART-ML that aims at supporting the interoperability and the reuse of models of geometry, blood flow, plaque progression and stent modelling, exported by any cardiovascular disease modelling software. ART-ML has been developed and tested using ARTool. ARTool is a platform for the automatic processing of various image modalities of coronary and carotid arteries. The images and their content are fused to develop morphological models of the arteries in 3D representations. All the above described procedures integrate disparate data formats, protocols and tools. ART-ML proposes a representation way, expanding ARTool, for interpretability of the individual resources, creating a standard unified model for the description of data and, consequently, a format for their exchange and representation that is machine independent. More specifically, ARTool platform incorporates efficient algorithms which are able to perform blood flow simulations and atherosclerotic plaque evolution modelling. Integration of data layers between different modules within ARTool are based upon the interchange of information included in the ART-ML model repository. ART-ML provides a markup representation that enables the representation and management of embedded models within the cardiovascular disease modelling platform, the storage and interchange of well-defined information. The corresponding ART-ML model incorporates all relevant information regarding geometry, blood flow, plaque progression and stent modelling procedures. All created models are stored in a model repository database which is accessible to the research community using efficient web interfaces, enabling the interoperability of any cardiovascular disease modelling software

Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) Representation in Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML).

Science.gov (United States)

Park, J; Lechevalier, D; Ak, R; Ferguson, M; Law, K H; Lee, Y-T T; Rachuri, S

2017-01-01

This paper describes Gaussian process regression (GPR) models presented in predictive model markup language (PMML). PMML is an extensible-markup-language (XML) -based standard language used to represent data-mining and predictive analytic models, as well as pre- and post-processed data. The previous PMML version, PMML 4.2, did not provide capabilities for representing probabilistic (stochastic) machine-learning algorithms that are widely used for constructing predictive models taking the associated uncertainties into consideration. The newly released PMML version 4.3, which includes the GPR model, provides new features: confidence bounds and distribution for the predictive estimations. Both features are needed to establish the foundation for uncertainty quantification analysis. Among various probabilistic machine-learning algorithms, GPR has been widely used for approximating a target function because of its capability of representing complex input and output relationships without predefining a set of basis functions, and predicting a target output with uncertainty quantification. GPR is being employed to various manufacturing data-analytics applications, which necessitates representing this model in a standardized form for easy and rapid employment. In this paper, we present a GPR model and its representation in PMML. Furthermore, we demonstrate a prototype using a real data set in the manufacturing domain.

Knowledge acquisition and representation for the Systems Test and Operations Language (STOL) Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS)

Science.gov (United States)

Seamster, Thomas L.; Eike, David R.; Ames, Troy J.

1990-01-01

This presentation concentrates on knowledge acquisition and its application to the development of an expert module and a user interface for an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). The Systems Test and Operations Language (STOL) ITS is being developed to assist NASA control center personnel in learning a command and control language as it is used in mission operations rooms. The objective of the tutor is to impart knowledge and skills that will permit the trainee to solve command and control problems in the same way that the STOL expert solves those problems. The STOL ITS will achieve this object by representing the solution space in such a way that the trainee can visualize the intermediate steps, and by having the expert module production rules parallel the STOL expert's knowledge structures.

Current Research/Development in Language Testing.

Science.gov (United States)

Oller, John W., Jr.

A discussion of language testing looks at the relationship between the processes of language learning and language testing, particularly from the point of view of pragmatics theory. It outlines some of the theory of Charles Sanders Pierce and its role in the evolution of linguistic theory, as well as the work of other theorists concerning the…

Quiver representations

CERN Document Server

Schiffler, Ralf

2014-01-01

This book is intended to serve as a textbook for a course in Representation Theory of Algebras at the beginning graduate level. The text has two parts. In Part I, the theory is studied in an elementary way using quivers and their representations. This is a very hands-on approach and requires only basic knowledge of linear algebra. The main tool for describing the representation theory of a finite-dimensional algebra is its Auslander-Reiten quiver, and the text introduces these quivers as early as possible. Part II then uses the language of algebras and modules to build on the material developed before. The equivalence of the two approaches is proved in the text. The last chapter gives a proof of Gabriel’s Theorem. The language of category theory is developed along the way as needed.

Language and number: a bilingual training study.

Science.gov (United States)

Spelke, E S; Tsivkin, S

2001-01-01

Three experiments investigated the role of a specific language in human representations of number. Russian-English bilingual college students were taught new numerical operations (Experiment 1), new arithmetic equations (Experiments 1 and 2), or new geographical or historical facts involving numerical or non-numerical information (Experiment 3). After learning a set of items in each of their two languages, subjects were tested for knowledge of those items, and new items, in both languages. In all the studies, subjects retrieved information about exact numbers more effectively in the language of training, and they solved trained problems more effectively than untrained problems. In contrast, subjects retrieved information about approximate numbers and non-numerical facts with equal efficiency in their two languages, and their training on approximate number facts generalized to new facts of the same type. These findings suggest that a specific, natural language contributes to the representation of large, exact numbers but not to the approximate number representations that humans share with other mammals. Language appears to play a role in learning about exact numbers in a variety of contexts, a finding with implications for practice in bilingual education. The findings prompt more general speculations about the role of language in the development of specifically human cognitive abilities.

Do women really have more bilateral language representation than men? A meta-analysis of functional imaging studies

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Sommer, IEC; Aleman, A; Bouma, A; Kahn, RS

Sex differences in cognition are consistently reported, men excelling in most visuospatial tasks and women in certain verbal tasks. It has been hypothesized that these sex differences in cognition results from a more bilateral pattern of language representation in women than in men. This bilateral

A controllability test for general first-order representations

NARCIS (Netherlands)

U. Helmke; J. Rosenthal; J.M. Schumacher (Hans)

1995-01-01

textabstractIn this paper we derive a new controllability rank test for general first-order representations. The criterion generalizes the well-known controllability rank test for linear input-state systems as well as a controllability rank test by Mertzios et al. for descriptor systems.

Language Testing in Japan.

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, James Dean, Ed.; Yamashita, Sayoko Okada, Ed.

Papers on second language testing in Japan include: "Differences Between Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced Tests" (James Dean Brown); "Criterion-Referenced Test Construction and Evaluation" (Dale T. Griffe); "Behavioral Learning Objectives as an Evaluation Tool" (Judith A. Johnson); "Developing Norm-…

A new formal graphic language for the representation of complex energy distribution systems

Science.gov (United States)

Benes, E.; Viehboeck, F. P.

A schematic notation system for the representation in design and analysis of multi-component heating systems is presented. This graphic language is clear and rigorous and allows quick changes between two basic levels of abstraction, as shown by two examples: a swimming pool with combined solar/electric heating system and the low temperature heating system of the Institute of Molecular Biology in Salzburg, Austria. The notation's 'energy path graphs' are more adequate for judging the relative merits of alternative system configurations than commonly used simplified installation schemes.

From the transnational to the Sinophone: lesbian representations in Chinese-language films.

Science.gov (United States)

Wong, Alvin Ka Hin

2012-01-01

This article theorizes global lesbian cinema in Chinese-language films through regionalism, diaspora studies, and Sinophone studies. Through an inter-regional analysis of Butterfly (Yan Yan Mak, 2004, Hong Kong) and diasporic and Sinophone readings of Saving Face (Alice Wu, 2005, USA), I argue that Mak's film illustrates a Hong Kong regional retranslation of a Taiwanese lesbian story, which complicates any claim to a stable "Chinese" identity. Finally, Wu's representation of lesbianism also troubles the politics of Chineseness by pointing to the ways diasporic reproduction of "community" works through the disciplining of other non-normative sexualities.

A voxel-based asymmetry study of the relationship between hemispheric asymmetry and language dominance in Wada tested patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Keller, Simon S; Roberts, Neil; Baker, Gus; Sluming, Vanessa; Cezayirli, Enis; Mayes, Andrew; Eldridge, Paul; Marson, Anthony G; Wieshmann, Udo C

2018-03-23

Determining the anatomical basis of hemispheric language dominance (HLD) remains an important scientific endeavor. The Wada test remains the gold standard test for HLD and provides a unique opportunity to determine the relationship between HLD and hemispheric structural asymmetries on MRI. In this study, we applied a whole-brain voxel-based asymmetry (VBA) approach to determine the relationship between interhemispheric structural asymmetries and HLD in a large consecutive sample of Wada tested patients. Of 135 patients, 114 (84.4%) had left HLD, 10 (7.4%) right HLD, and 11 (8.2%) bilateral language representation. Fifty-four controls were also studied. Right-handed controls and right-handed patients with left HLD had comparable structural brain asymmetries in cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar regions that have previously been documented in healthy people. However, these patients and controls differed in structural asymmetry of the mesial temporal lobe and a circumscribed region in the superior temporal gyrus, suggesting that only asymmetries of these regions were due to brain alterations caused by epilepsy. Additional comparisons between patients with left and right HLD, matched for type and location of epilepsy, revealed that structural asymmetries of insula, pars triangularis, inferior temporal gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, ventral temporo-occipital cortex, mesial somatosensory cortex, and mesial cerebellum were significantly associated with the side of HLD. Patients with right HLD and bilateral language representation were significantly less right-handed. These results suggest that structural asymmetries of an insular-fronto-temporal network may be related to HLD. © 2018 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The case for bilingual language tests: a study of test adaptation and ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The justification for the use of language tests in education in multilingual and multicultural societies needs to include both the aims of bilingual education, and evidence that the international standards for tests that are available in two or more languages are being met. In multilingual and multicultural societies, language tests ...

Impact of family language and testing language on reading performance in a bilingual educational context.

Science.gov (United States)

Elosua Oliden, Paula; Mujika Lizaso, Josu

2014-01-01

When different languages co-exist in one area, or when one person speaks more than one language, the impact of language on psychological and educational assessment processes can be considerable. The aim of this work was to study the impact of testing language in a community with two official languages: Spanish and Basque. By taking the PISA 2009 Reading Comprehension Test as a basis for analysis, four linguistic groups were defined according to the language spoken at home and the test language. Psychometric equivalence between test forms and differences in results among the four language groups were analyzed. The comparison of competence means took into account the effects of the index of socioeconomic and cultural status (ISEC) and gender. One reading unit with differential item functioning was detected. The reading competence means were considerably higher in the monolingual Spanish-Spanish group. No differences were found between the language groups based on family language when the test was conducted in Basque. The study illustrates the importance of taking into account psychometric, linguistic and sociolinguistic factors in linguistically diverse assessment contexts.

Language Testing and Technology: Past and Future.

Science.gov (United States)

Chalhoub-Deville, Micheline

2001-01-01

Reflects on what has transpired in the second language (L2) testing field in relation to technology and situates developments within the larger language testing, general measurement, and educational contexts. (Author/VWL)

LADO as a Language Test: Issues of Validity

Science.gov (United States)

McNamara, Tim; Van Den Hazelkamp, Carolien; Verrips, Maaike

2016-01-01

This article brings together the theoretical field of language testing and the practical field of language analysis for the determination of the origin of asylum seekers. It considers what it would mean to think of language analysis as a form of language test, subject to the same validity constraints, and proposes a research agenda.

Evaluation, Use, and Refinement of Knowledge Representations through Acquisition Modeling

Science.gov (United States)

Pearl, Lisa

2017-01-01

Generative approaches to language have long recognized the natural link between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition. The basic idea is that the knowledge representations provided by Universal Grammar enable children to acquire language as reliably as they do because these representations highlight the…

Is functional MR imaging assessment of hemispheric language dominance as good as the Wada test?: a meta-analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Dym, R Joshua; Burns, Judah; Freeman, Katherine; Lipton, Michael L

2011-11-01

To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to quantitatively assess functional magnetic resonance (MR) imaging lateralization of language function in comparison with the Wada test. This study was determined to be exempt from review by the institutional review board. A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. A structured Medline search was conducted to identify all studies that compared functional MR imaging with the Wada test for determining hemispheric language dominance prior to brain surgery. Studies meeting predetermined inclusion criteria were selected independently by two radiologists who also assessed their quality using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies tool. Language dominance was classified as typical (left hemispheric language dominance) or atypical (right hemispheric language dominance or bilateral language representation) for each patient. A meta-analysis was then performed by using a bivariate random-effects model to derive estimates of sensitivity and specificity, with Wada as the standard of reference. Subgroup analyses were also performed to compare the different functional MR imaging techniques utilized by the studies. Twenty-three studies, comprising 442 patients, met inclusion criteria. The sensitivity and specificity of functional MR imaging for atypical language dominance (compared with the Wada test) were 83.5% (95% confidence interval: 80.2%, 86.7%) and 88.1% (95% confidence interval: 87.0%, 89.2%), respectively. Functional MR imaging provides an excellent, noninvasive alternative for language lateralization and should be considered for the initial preoperative assessment of hemispheric language dominance. Further research may help determine which functional MR methods are most accurate for specific patient populations. RSNA, 2011

International Test Comparisons: Reviewing Translation Error in Different Source Language-Target Language Combinations

Science.gov (United States)

Zhao, Xueyu; Solano-Flores, Guillermo; Qian, Ming

2018-01-01

This article addresses test translation review in international test comparisons. We investigated the applicability of the theory of test translation error--a theory of the multidimensionality and inevitability of test translation error--across source language-target language combinations in the translation of PISA (Programme of International…

Quantum Computers and Quantum Computer Languages: Quantum Assembly Language and Quantum C Language

OpenAIRE

Blaha, Stephen

2002-01-01

We show a representation of Quantum Computers defines Quantum Turing Machines with associated Quantum Grammars. We then create examples of Quantum Grammars. Lastly we develop an algebraic approach to high level Quantum Languages using Quantum Assembly language and Quantum C language as examples.

International English Language Testing: A Critical Response

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, Graham

2010-01-01

Uysal's article provides a research agenda for IELTS and lists numerous issues concerning the test's reliability and validity. She asks useful questions, but her analysis ignores the uncertainties inherent in all language test development and the wider social and political context of international high-stakes language testing. In this response, I…

Computers in Language Testing: Present Research and Some Future Directions.

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, James Dean

1997-01-01

Explores recent developments in the use of computers in language testing in four areas: (1) item banking; (2) computer-assisted language testing; (3) computerized-adaptive language testing; and (4) research on the effectiveness of computers in language testing. Examines educational measurement literature in an attempt to forecast the directions…

Deep bottleneck features for spoken language identification.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bing Jiang

Full Text Available A key problem in spoken language identification (LID is to design effective representations which are specific to language information. For example, in recent years, representations based on both phonotactic and acoustic features have proven their effectiveness for LID. Although advances in machine learning have led to significant improvements, LID performance is still lacking, especially for short duration speech utterances. With the hypothesis that language information is weak and represented only latently in speech, and is largely dependent on the statistical properties of the speech content, existing representations may be insufficient. Furthermore they may be susceptible to the variations caused by different speakers, specific content of the speech segments, and background noise. To address this, we propose using Deep Bottleneck Features (DBF for spoken LID, motivated by the success of Deep Neural Networks (DNN in speech recognition. We show that DBFs can form a low-dimensional compact representation of the original inputs with a powerful descriptive and discriminative capability. To evaluate the effectiveness of this, we design two acoustic models, termed DBF-TV and parallel DBF-TV (PDBF-TV, using a DBF based i-vector representation for each speech utterance. Results on NIST language recognition evaluation 2009 (LRE09 show significant improvements over state-of-the-art systems. By fusing the output of phonotactic and acoustic approaches, we achieve an EER of 1.08%, 1.89% and 7.01% for 30 s, 10 s and 3 s test utterances respectively. Furthermore, various DBF configurations have been extensively evaluated, and an optimal system proposed.

Adaptation of a Vocabulary Test from British Sign Language to American Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Mann, Wolfgang; Roy, Penny; Morgan, Gary

2016-01-01

This study describes the adaptation process of a vocabulary knowledge test for British Sign Language (BSL) into American Sign Language (ASL) and presents results from the first round of pilot testing with 20 deaf native ASL signers. The web-based test assesses the strength of deaf children's vocabulary knowledge by means of different mappings of…

Adapting tests of sign language assessment for other sign languages--a review of linguistic, cultural, and psychometric problems.

Science.gov (United States)

Haug, Tobias; Mann, Wolfgang

2008-01-01

Given the current lack of appropriate assessment tools for measuring deaf children's sign language skills, many test developers have used existing tests of other sign languages as templates to measure the sign language used by deaf people in their country. This article discusses factors that may influence the adaptation of assessment tests from one natural sign language to another. Two tests which have been adapted for several other sign languages are focused upon: the Test for American Sign Language and the British Sign Language Receptive Skills Test. A brief description is given of each test as well as insights from ongoing adaptations of these tests for other sign languages. The problems reported in these adaptations were found to be grounded in linguistic and cultural differences, which need to be considered for future test adaptations. Other reported shortcomings of test adaptation are related to the question of how well psychometric measures transfer from one instrument to another.

Triple representation of language, working memory, social and emotion processing in the cerebellum: convergent evidence from task and seed-based resting-state fMRI analyses in a single large cohort.

Science.gov (United States)

Guell, Xavier; Gabrieli, John D E; Schmahmann, Jeremy D

2018-05-15

Delineation of functional topography is critical to the evolving understanding of the cerebellum's role in a wide range of nervous system functions. We used data from the Human Connectome Project (n = 787) to analyze cerebellar fMRI task activation (motor, working memory, language, social and emotion processing) and resting-state functional connectivity calculated from cerebral cortical seeds corresponding to the peak Cohen's d of each task contrast. The combination of exceptional statistical power, activation from both motor and multiple non-motor tasks in the same participants, and convergent resting-state networks in the same participants revealed novel aspects of the functional topography of the human cerebellum. Consistent with prior studies there were two distinct representations of motor activation. Newly revealed were three distinct representations each for working memory, language, social, and emotional task processing that were largely separate for these four cognitive and affective domains. In most cases, the task-based activations and the corresponding resting-network correlations were congruent in identifying the two motor representations and the three non-motor representations that were unique to working memory, language, social cognition, and emotion. The definitive localization and characterization of distinct triple representations for cognition and emotion task processing in the cerebellum opens up new basic science questions as to why there are triple representations (what different functions are enabled by the different representations?) and new clinical questions (what are the differing consequences of lesions to the different representations?). Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Development of a test and flight engineering oriented language, phase 3

Science.gov (United States)

Kamsler, W. F.; Case, C. W.; Kinney, E. L.; Gyure, J.

1970-01-01

Based on an analysis of previously developed test oriented languages and a study of test language requirements, a high order language was designed to enable test and flight engineers to checkout and operate the proposed space shuttle and other NASA vehicles and experiments. The language is called ALOFT (a language oriented to flight engineering and testing). The language is described, its terminology is compared to similar terms in other test languages, and its features and utilization are discussed. The appendix provides the specifications for ALOFT.

Production Practice During Language Learning Improves Comprehension.

Science.gov (United States)

Hopman, Elise W M; MacDonald, Maryellen C

2018-04-01

Language learners often spend more time comprehending than producing a new language. However, memory research suggests reasons to suspect that production practice might provide a stronger learning experience than comprehension practice. We tested the benefits of production during language learning and the degree to which this learning transfers to comprehension skill. We taught participants an artificial language containing multiple linguistic dependencies. Participants were randomly assigned to either a production- or a comprehension-learning condition, with conditions designed to balance attention demands and other known production-comprehension differences. After training, production-learning participants outperformed comprehension-learning participants on vocabulary comprehension and on comprehension tests of grammatical dependencies, even when we controlled for individual differences in vocabulary learning. This result shows that producing a language during learning can improve subsequent comprehension, which has implications for theories of memory and learning, language representations, and educational practices.

Imitation, Sign Language Skill and the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) Model.

Science.gov (United States)

Holmer, Emil; Heimann, Mikael; Rudner, Mary

2016-01-01

Imitation and language processing are closely connected. According to the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model (Rönnberg et al., 2013) pre-existing mental representation of lexical items facilitates language understanding. Thus, imitation of manual gestures is likely to be enhanced by experience of sign language. We tested this by eliciting imitation of manual gestures from deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) signing and hearing non-signing children at a similar level of language and cognitive development. We predicted that the DHH signing children would be better at imitating gestures lexicalized in their own sign language (Swedish Sign Language, SSL) than unfamiliar British Sign Language (BSL) signs, and that both groups would be better at imitating lexical signs (SSL and BSL) than non-signs. We also predicted that the hearing non-signing children would perform worse than DHH signing children with all types of gestures the first time (T1) we elicited imitation, but that the performance gap between groups would be reduced when imitation was elicited a second time (T2). Finally, we predicted that imitation performance on both occasions would be associated with linguistic skills, especially in the manual modality. A split-plot repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated that DHH signers imitated manual gestures with greater precision than non-signing children when imitation was elicited the second but not the first time. Manual gestures were easier to imitate for both groups when they were lexicalized than when they were not; but there was no difference in performance between familiar and unfamiliar gestures. For both groups, language skills at T1 predicted imitation at T2. Specifically, for DHH children, word reading skills, comprehension and phonological awareness of sign language predicted imitation at T2. For the hearing participants, language comprehension predicted imitation at T2, even after the effects of working memory capacity and motor skills were taken into

Imitation, sign language skill and the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emil eHolmer

2016-02-01

Full Text Available Imitation and language processing are closely connected. According to the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU model (Rönnberg et al., 2013 pre-existing mental representation of lexical items facilitates language understanding. Thus, imitation of manual gestures is likely to be enhanced by experience of sign language. We tested this by eliciting imitation of manual gestures from deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH signing and hearing non-signing children at a similar level of language and cognitive development. We predicted that the DHH signing children would be better at imitating gestures lexicalized in their own sign language (Swedish Sign Language, SSL than unfamiliar British Sign Language (BSL signs, and that both groups would be better at imitating lexical signs (SSL and BSL than non-signs. We also predicted that the hearing non-signing children would perform worse than DHH signing children with all types of gestures the first time (T1 we elicited imitation, but that the performance gap between groups would be reduced when imitation was elicited a second time (T2. Finally, we predicted that imitation performance on both occasions would be associated with linguistic skills, especially in the manual modality. A split-plot repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated that DHH signers imitated manual gestures with greater precision than non-signing children when imitation was elicited the second but not the first time. Manual gestures were easier to imitate for both groups when they were lexicalized than when they were not; but there was no difference in performance between familiar and unfamiliar gestures. For both groups, language skills at the T1 predicted imitation at T2. Specifically, for DHH children, word reading skills, comprehension and phonological awareness of sign language predicted imitation at T2. For the hearing participants, language comprehension predicted imitation at T2, even after the effects of working memory capacity and motor skills

Short and long term representation of an unfamiliar tone distribution.

Science.gov (United States)

Cui, Anja X; Diercks, Charlette; Troje, Nikolaus F; Cuddy, Lola L

2016-01-01

We report on a study conducted to extend our knowledge about the process of gaining a mental representation of music. Several studies, inspired by research on the statistical learning of language, have investigated statistical learning of sequential rules underlying tone sequences. Given that the mental representation of music correlates with distributional properties of music, we tested whether participants are able to abstract distributional information contained in tone sequences to form a mental representation. For this purpose, we created an unfamiliar music genre defined by an underlying tone distribution, to which 40 participants were exposed. Our stimuli allowed us to differentiate between sensitivity to the distributional properties contained in test stimuli and long term representation of the distributional properties of the music genre overall. Using a probe tone paradigm and a two-alternative forced choice discrimination task, we show that listeners are able to abstract distributional properties of music through mere exposure into a long term representation of music. This lends support to the idea that statistical learning is involved in the process of gaining musical knowledge.

Short and long term representation of an unfamiliar tone distribution

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anja X. Cui

2016-08-01

Full Text Available We report on a study conducted to extend our knowledge about the process of gaining a mental representation of music. Several studies, inspired by research on the statistical learning of language, have investigated statistical learning of sequential rules underlying tone sequences. Given that the mental representation of music correlates with distributional properties of music, we tested whether participants are able to abstract distributional information contained in tone sequences to form a mental representation. For this purpose, we created an unfamiliar music genre defined by an underlying tone distribution, to which 40 participants were exposed. Our stimuli allowed us to differentiate between sensitivity to the distributional properties contained in test stimuli and long term representation of the distributional properties of the music genre overall. Using a probe tone paradigm and a two-alternative forced choice discrimination task, we show that listeners are able to abstract distributional properties of music through mere exposure into a long term representation of music. This lends support to the idea that statistical learning is involved in the process of gaining musical knowledge.

Knowledge Representation: A Brief Review.

Science.gov (United States)

Vickery, B. C.

1986-01-01

Reviews different structures and techniques of knowledge representation: structure of database records and files, data structures in computer programming, syntatic and semantic structure of natural language, knowledge representation in artificial intelligence, and models of human memory. A prototype expert system that makes use of some of these…

Testing Math or Testing Language? The Construct Validity of the KeyMath-Revised for Children With Intellectual Disability and Language Difficulties.

Science.gov (United States)

Rhodes, Katherine T; Branum-Martin, Lee; Morris, Robin D; Romski, MaryAnn; Sevcik, Rose A

2015-11-01

Although it is often assumed that mathematics ability alone predicts mathematics test performance, linguistic demands may also predict achievement. This study examined the role of language in mathematics assessment performance for children with intellectual disability (ID) at less severe levels, on the KeyMath-Revised Inventory (KM-R) with a sample of 264 children, in grades 2-5. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the hypothesis that the KM-R would demonstrate discriminant validity with measures of language abilities in a two-factor model was compared to two plausible alternative models. Results indicated that KM-R did not have discriminant validity with measures of children's language abilities and was a multidimensional test of both mathematics and language abilities for this population of test users. Implications are considered for test development, interpretation, and intervention.

Relationships between narrative language samples and norm-referenced test scores in language assessments of school-age children.

Science.gov (United States)

Danahy Ebert, Kerry; Scott, Cheryl M

2014-10-01

Both narrative language samples and norm-referenced language tests can be important components of language assessment for school-age children. The present study explored the relationship between these 2 tools within a group of children referred for language assessment. The study is a retrospective analysis of clinical records from 73 school-age children. Participants had completed an oral narrative language sample and at least one norm-referenced language test. Correlations between microstructural language sample measures and norm-referenced test scores were compared for younger (6- to 8-year-old) and older (9- to 12-year-old) children. Contingency tables were constructed to compare the 2 types of tools, at 2 different cutpoints, in terms of which children were identified as having a language disorder. Correlations between narrative language sample measures and norm-referenced tests were stronger for the younger group than the older group. Within the younger group, the level of language assessed by each measure contributed to associations among measures. Contingency analyses revealed moderate overlap in the children identified by each tool, with agreement affected by the cutpoint used. Narrative language samples may complement norm-referenced tests well, but age combined with narrative task can be expected to influence the nature of the relationship.

Nonword Repetition: The Relative Contributions of Phonological Short-Term Memory and Phonological Representations in Children with Language and Reading Impairment

Science.gov (United States)

Rispens, Judith; Baker, Anne

2012-01-01

Purpose: This study investigates the relative contributions of phonological short-term memory and phonological representations to nonword repetition (NWR). This was evaluated in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and/or reading impairment (RI); it was also studied from a developmental perspective by comparing 2 groups of typically…

The Age of Second Language Acquisition Determines the Variability in Activation Elicited by Narration in Three Languages in Broca's and Wernicke's Area

Science.gov (United States)

Bloch, Constantine; Kaiser, Anelis; Kuenzli, Esther; Zappatore, Daniela; Haller, Sven; Franceschini, Rita; Luedi, Georges; Radue, Ernst-Wilhelm; Nitsch, Cordula

2009-01-01

It is generally accepted that the presence of a second language (L2) has an impact on the neuronal substrates build up and used for language processing; the influence of the age of L2 exposure, however, is not established. We tested the hypothesis that the age of L2 acquisition has an effect on the cortical representation of a multilingual…

Diagnostic work up for language testing in patients undergoing awake craniotomy for brain lesions in language areas.

Science.gov (United States)

Bilotta, Federico; Stazi, Elisabetta; Titi, Luca; Lalli, Diana; Delfini, Roberto; Santoro, Antonio; Rosa, Giovanni

2014-06-01

Awake craniotomy is the technique of choice in patients with brain tumours adjacent to primary and accessory language areas (Broca's and Wernicke's areas). Language testing should be aimed to detect preoperative deficits, to promptly identify the occurrence of new intraoperative impairments and to establish the course of postoperative language status. Aim of this case series is to describe our experience with a dedicated language testing work up to evaluate patients with or at risk for language disturbances undergoing awake craniotomy for brain tumour resection. Pre- and intra operative testing was accomplished with 8 tests. Intraoperative evaluation was accomplished when patients were fully cooperative (Ramsey awake craniotomy for brain tumour resection with preoperative language disturbances or at risk for postoperative language deficits. This approach allows a systematic evaluation and recording of language function status and can be accomplished even when a neuropsychologist or speech therapist are not involved in the operation crew.

The Language Faculty - mind or brain?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thrane, Torben

2009-01-01

I. Dretske. Apart from a brief introduction and a conclusion, the paper contains 5 main sections: Three levels of Chomskyan linguistics, Representational theories of mind, Representational systems, Representational architecture, and finally The language faculty in brain studies.......The paper subjects Chomsky's compound creation - the 'mind/brain' - to scrutiny. It argues that it creates a slipway for talk about the human language faculty,  such that what should properly be discussed in functional terms - what the brain does when processing language - is instead talked about...

Grammar tests increase the ability to lateralize language function in the Wada test.

Science.gov (United States)

Połczyńska, Monika; Curtiss, Susan; Walshaw, Particia; Siddarth, Prabha; Benjamin, Chris; Moseley, Brian D; Vigil, Celia; Jones, Michael; Eliashiv, Dawn; Bookheimer, Susan

2014-12-01

Grammar is a core component of the language system, yet it is rarely assessed during the Wada (intracarotid amobarbital) test. It is hypothesized that adding grammar tests to the recovery phase of the Wada test will increase our ability to lateralize language function. Sixteen individuals (nine females, fifteen right-handed, mean age 38.4 years, SD=10.7) with medically refractory temporal lobe epilepsy participated in the study. On EEG ten patients had seizures originating in the left hemisphere (LH), five in the right hemisphere (RH), and one was insufficiently lateralized. We included only patients who were LH-dominant on the standard test in the encoding phase of the Wada test. In the recovery phase of Wada testing the participants underwent evaluation with a standard language and a new test of grammar, the CYCLE-N. Ten patients underwent bilateral injections, six unilateral (one RH, five LH). As expected, injection in the LH decreased language performance to a greater extent than injection to the RH on both tests. However, the CYCLE-N produced more profound language deficits in the injected LH compared to the RH (p=0.01), whereas the standard tests did not cause such pronounced differences (p=0.2). The results suggest that the standard tests did not significantly differentiate the effects of the injections and the CYCLE-N, for the most part, did. Our results are of particular relevance to patients who are too obtunded to speak in the encoding phase. In sum, the CYCLE-N may be helpful in assessing hemispheric dominance for language. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Listening to accented speech in a second language: First language and age of acquisition effects.

Science.gov (United States)

Larraza, Saioa; Samuel, Arthur G; Oñederra, Miren Lourdes

2016-11-01

Bilingual speakers must acquire the phonemic inventory of 2 languages and need to recognize spoken words cross-linguistically; a demanding job potentially made even more difficult due to dialectal variation, an intrinsic property of speech. The present work examines how bilinguals perceive second language (L2) accented speech and where accommodation to dialectal variation takes place. Dialectal effects were analyzed at different levels: An AXB discrimination task tapped phonetic-phonological representations, an auditory lexical-decision task tested for effects in accessing the lexicon, and an auditory priming task looked for semantic processing effects. Within that central focus, the goal was to see whether perceptual adjustment at a given level is affected by 2 main linguistic factors: bilinguals' first language and age of acquisition of the L2. Taking advantage of the cross-linguistic situation of the Basque language, bilinguals with different first languages (Spanish or French) and ages of acquisition of Basque (simultaneous, early, or late) were tested. Our use of multiple tasks with multiple types of bilinguals demonstrates that in spite of very similar discrimination capacity, French-Basque versus Spanish-Basque simultaneous bilinguals' performance on lexical access significantly differed. Similarly, results of the early and late groups show that the mapping of phonetic-phonological information onto lexical representations is a more demanding process that accentuates non-native processing difficulties. L1 and AoA effects were more readily overcome in semantic processing; accented variants regularly created priming effects in the different groups of bilinguals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Journal for Language Teaching - Vol 44, No 2 (2010)

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Students' Comprehension of the representation of African American Vernacular in Alice Walker's The Color Purple · EMAIL FULL TEXT EMAIL FULL TEXT ... bias in a test of academic literacy: Does the Test of Academic Literacy Levels (TALL) treat students from English and African language backgrounds differently?

Age of language acquisition and cortical language organization in multilingual patients undergoing awake brain mapping.

Science.gov (United States)

Fernández-Coello, Alejandro; Havas, Viktória; Juncadella, Montserrat; Sierpowska, Joanna; Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni; Gabarrós, Andreu

2017-06-01

OBJECTIVE Most knowledge regarding the anatomical organization of multilingualism is based on aphasiology and functional imaging studies. However, the results have still to be validated by the gold standard approach, namely electrical stimulation mapping (ESM) during awake neurosurgical procedures. In this ESM study the authors describe language representation in a highly specific group of 13 multilingual individuals, focusing on how age of acquisition may influence the cortical organization of language. METHODS Thirteen patients who had a high degree of proficiency in multiple languages and were harboring lesions within the dominant, left hemisphere underwent ESM while being operated on under awake conditions. Demographic and language data were recorded in relation to age of language acquisition (for native languages and early- and late-acquired languages), neuropsychological pre- and postoperative language testing, the number and location of language sites, and overlapping distribution in terms of language acquisition time. Lesion growth patterns and histopathological characteristics, location, and size were also recorded. The distribution of language sites was analyzed with respect to age of acquisition and overlap. RESULTS The functional language-related sites were distributed in the frontal (55%), temporal (29%), and parietal lobes (16%). The total number of native language sites was 47. Early-acquired languages (including native languages) were represented in 97 sites (55 overlapped) and late-acquired languages in 70 sites (45 overlapped). The overlapping distribution was 20% for early-early, 71% for early-late, and 9% for late-late. The average lesion size (maximum diameter) was 3.3 cm. There were 5 fast-growing and 7 slow-growing lesions. CONCLUSIONS Cortical language distribution in multilingual patients is not homogeneous, and it is influenced by age of acquisition. Early-acquired languages have a greater cortical representation than languages acquired

Gender representations in the illustrations of the 6th Grade Language Textbook used in Greek Elementary School

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Nikolaos Karintzaidis

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This study explores the way in which the two sexes are presented in education and particularly in the illustration of the language textbook used in the 6th Grade of Greek elementary school. In a society where gender equality is constitutionally enshrined and displayed as an educational policy objective, it attempts to examine if school textbook images respond to the demands of social reality, or perpetuate outdated gender stereotyped educational practices. The visual communication system that school textbooks use has the same rhetoric in of the conveyance of ideological and cultural messages as the linguistic system. Therefore, students receive plenty of information from both communication systems about the roles and stereotypes that are considered appropriate for each sex. In the past, several studies have analyzed the linguistic system, while this is the first attempt at an organized and systematic analysis of the visual system in language textbooks, and specifically the one in 6th Grade. Both content analysis, as a measurement technique, and semiotics, as a visual analysis method, were used as a research method. The analysis of data showed that (a the presentation of the two sexes in the illustration of this language textbook is not objectively compared with social changes, (b apart from the quantitative inequality that exists in the presentation of the two sexes, there also appears to be a big difference in qualities such as behavioral characteristics, occupations, and activities, and (c there is a reduction in the representation of outdated gender stereotypes, which is not necessarily positive, as the diversity of roles they undertake in the modern social sphere is not emphasized. Keywords: textbook, illustration, representation, gender roles, stereotypes, semiotics

Natural language generation of surgical procedures.

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Wagner, J C; Rogers, J E; Baud, R H; Scherrer, J R

1999-01-01

A number of compositional Medical Concept Representation systems are being developed. Although these provide for a detailed conceptual representation of the underlying information, they have to be translated back to natural language for used by end-users and applications. The GALEN programme has been developing one such representation and we report here on a tool developed to generate natural language phrases from the GALEN conceptual representations. This tool can be adapted to different source modelling schemes and to different destination languages or sublanguages of a domain. It is based on a multilingual approach to natural language generation, realised through a clean separation of the domain model from the linguistic model and their link by well defined structures. Specific knowledge structures and operations have been developed for bridging between the modelling 'style' of the conceptual representation and natural language. Using the example of the scheme developed for modelling surgical operative procedures within the GALEN-IN-USE project, we show how the generator is adapted to such a scheme. The basic characteristics of the surgical procedures scheme are presented together with the basic principles of the generation tool. Using worked examples, we discuss the transformation operations which change the initial source representation into a form which can more directly be translated to a given natural language. In particular, the linguistic knowledge which has to be introduced--such as definitions of concepts and relationships is described. We explain the overall generator strategy and how particular transformation operations are triggered by language-dependent and conceptual parameters. Results are shown for generated French phrases corresponding to surgical procedures from the urology domain.

Asymmetrical Representation of Gender in Amharic1

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Administrator

in its grammar. Gender representation in this language is asymmetrical heavily ..... In dictionaries where. Amharic appears either as the target or the source language, verbs are entered ...... The Dialects of Amharic Revisited. Semitica et.

Test of user- and system programs coded in real time languages - requirements on program language and testing tool

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hertlin, J.; Mackert, M.

1979-01-01

In the present paper the functions are presented, which should be part of a test system for user programs in a higher treat time programming language, taking into account time sequences and competitive processes. As can be shown by the problem of testing, use of higher level real time programming languages renders the task of program development essentially easier, however performance of test procedures without appropriate test systems is very difficult. After the presentation of notions and methods for the testing of programs, general requirements on testing tools are described and the test system functions for a program test, beeing uncritical with respect to time, are placed together. Thereby, for every individual function, the interface between the test system, the program under test, and the residual program-generation system (compiler, binder, operating system, delay-time system, and loader) is given too. For the time-critical test, a series of desirable functions are described, which can be implemented with acceptable expense. (orig.) [de

Language Testing Courses: What Are They in 2007?

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Brown, James Dean; Bailey, Kathleen M.

2008-01-01

In 1996, we published an article that investigated the characteristics of basic language testing courses in terms of the instructors, course characteristics, and students. The present study is designed to describe the same characteristics of basic language testing courses in 2007 and to examine how such courses have changed since 1996. To those…

Designing a Dictionary for an Endangered Language Community: Lexicographical Deliberations, Language Ideological Clarifications

Science.gov (United States)

Kroskrity, Paul V.

2015-01-01

Dictionaries of endangered languages represent especially important products of language documentation, in part because they are usually the most familiar and useful genre of linguistic representation to endangered language community members. This familiarity, however, can become problematic when it is accompanied by language ideologies that…

Aligning English grammar testing with European language standards

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bodrič Radmila

2015-01-01

Full Text Available In recent years, foreign language testing has gained in significance with the advent of The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2001 (CEFR, a European language document which set comparable standards for learning, teaching and assessing foreign languages. The CEFR was used to set the research aim of this paper - testing grammar at level B2. The main aim of the research was to determine grammatical competence at level B2 and additional aims included: (a determining which particular areas of grammar need to be learned by students at level B2, (b formulating grammatical descriptors for each individual area of grammar, (c determining the test’s threshold level which would fulfil the criteria for grammatical competence at level B2, and (d determining the extent to which students have mastered the given areas. The pre-testing was followed by the main testing on the sample of 164 students in two secondary schools. The results indicated that the quantity and quality of grammatical competence was lower than expected: 47% of the population failed to fulfil the basic level of grammatical competence. The causes may be attributed to the factors of a subjective and objective nature. Level B2 is demanding qualitatively as well as quantitatively, regarding both the formal and the functional complexity and scope of language use, which requires intensive language production, high levels of motivation and sound working habits in order to master the given grammatical structures.

Validity of the American Sign Language Discrimination Test

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Bochner, Joseph H.; Samar, Vincent J.; Hauser, Peter C.; Garrison, Wayne M.; Searls, J. Matt; Sanders, Cynthia A.

2016-01-01

American Sign Language (ASL) is one of the most commonly taught languages in North America. Yet, few assessment instruments for ASL proficiency have been developed, none of which have adequately demonstrated validity. We propose that the American Sign Language Discrimination Test (ASL-DT), a recently developed measure of learners' ability to…

GSFC Systems Test and Operation Language (STOL) functional requirements and language description

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Desjardins, R.; Hall, G.; Mcguire, J.; Merwarth, P.; Mocarsky, W.; Truszkowski, W.; Villasenor, A.; Brosi, F.; Burch, P.; Carey, D.

1978-01-01

The Systems Tests and Operation Language (STOL) provides the means for user communication with payloads, applications programs, and other ground system elements. It is a systems operation language that enables an operator or user to communicate a command to a computer system. The system interprets each high level language directive from the user and performs the indicated action, such as executing a program, printing out a snapshot, or sending a payload command. This document presents the following: (1) required language features and implementation considerations; (2) basic capabilities; (3) telemetry, command, and input/output directives; (4) procedure definition and control; (5) listing, extension, and STOL nucleus capabilities.

Quantum Computers and Quantum Computer Languages: Quantum Assembly Language and Quantum C

OpenAIRE

Blaha, Stephen

2002-01-01

We show a representation of Quantum Computers defines Quantum Turing Machines with associated Quantum Grammars. We then create examples of Quantum Grammars. Lastly we develop an algebraic approach to high level Quantum Languages using Quantum Assembly language and Quantum C language as examples.

Testing as an inevitable instrument in today's language learning ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

In the foregoing analysis, we have unequivocably declared that testing or assessment is an inevitable instrument in present day's language learning environment and that testing is the other side of teaching itself. In teaching any aspect of language, learner must be tested to determine the progress made so far as well as ...

Testing-Context Analysis: Assessment Is Just Another Part of Language Curriculum Development

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, James Dean

2008-01-01

In keeping with the theme of the International Language Testing Association/Language Testing Research Colloquium Conference in 2008, "Focusing on the Core: Justifying the Use of Language Assessments to Stakeholders," I define "stakeholder-friendly tests," "defensible testing," and "testing-context analysis."…

The Unified Language Testing Plan: Speaking Proficiency Test. Spanish and English Pilot Validation Studies. Report Number 1.

Science.gov (United States)

Thornton, Julie A.

This report describes one segment of the Federal Language Testing Board's Unified Language Testing Plan (ULTP), the validation of speaking proficiency tests in Spanish and English. The ULTP is a project to increase standardization of foreign language proficiency measurement and promote sharing of resources among testing programs in the federal…

Methods and characteristics of assembly language software testing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Lingfang

2001-01-01

Single chip micro-controllers are widely implemented to the controlling and testing products in industrial controlling and national defence embedded controlling systems. The invalidation of the source programs could lead to the unreliability of the whole systems, even to cause fatal results. Therefore, software testing is the necessary measures to reduce the mistakes and to improve the quality of the software. In the paper, the development of the software testing is presented. The distinctions between the assembly language testing and those of the high level languages is introduced. And the essential flow and methods of software testing are discussed in detail

Experimental Applications of Automatic Test Markup Language (ATML)

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Lansdowne, Chatwin A.; McCartney, Patrick; Gorringe, Chris

2012-01-01

The authors describe challenging use-cases for Automatic Test Markup Language (ATML), and evaluate solutions. The first case uses ATML Test Results to deliver active features to support test procedure development and test flow, and bridging mixed software development environments. The second case examines adding attributes to Systems Modelling Language (SysML) to create a linkage for deriving information from a model to fill in an ATML document set. Both cases are outside the original concept of operations for ATML but are typical when integrating large heterogeneous systems with modular contributions from multiple disciplines.

Multimodality language mapping in patients with left-hemispheric language dominance on Wada test.

Science.gov (United States)

Kojima, Katsuaki; Brown, Erik C; Rothermel, Robert; Carlson, Alanna; Matsuzaki, Naoyuki; Shah, Aashit; Atkinson, Marie; Mittal, Sandeep; Fuerst, Darren; Sood, Sandeep; Asano, Eishi

2012-10-01

We determined the utility of electrocorticography (ECoG) and stimulation for detecting language-related sites in patients with left-hemispheric language-dominance on Wada test. We studied 13 epileptic patients who underwent language mapping using event-related gamma-oscillations on ECoG and stimulation via subdural electrodes. Sites showing significant gamma-augmentation during an auditory-naming task were defined as language-related ECoG sites. Sites at which stimulation resulted in auditory perceptual changes, failure to verbalize a correct answer, or sensorimotor symptoms involving the mouth were defined as language-related stimulation sites. We determined how frequently these methods revealed language-related sites in the superior-temporal, inferior-frontal, dorsolateral-premotor, and inferior-Rolandic regions. Language-related sites in the superior-temporal and inferior-frontal gyri were detected by ECoG more frequently than stimulation (p hemispheric language-dominance. Measurement of language-related gamma-oscillations is warranted in presurgical evaluation of epileptic patients. Copyright © 2012 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

A common language of landscape representation: New Zealand and California painting in the nineteenth century

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Heath Schenker

1995-10-01

Full Text Available In the nineteenth century, landscape painters in California and New Zealand shared a common language of landscape representation, looking at untamed coasts and rugged mountains through a lens shaped by two centuries of European artistic tradition. Explored in this paper is the influence of the picturesque tradition in New Zealand and California art in the nineteenth century. Ideological functions of landscape painting are identified: that is, ways artists in both New Zealand and California appropriated the landscape to support certain cultural, political and social agendas. Their work represents not only the land but the myths inscribed upon it by bourgeois culture.

Seeing conflict and engaging control: Experience with contrastive language benefits executive function in preschoolers.

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Doebel, Sabine; Zelazo, Philip David

2016-12-01

Engaging executive function often requires overriding a prepotent response in favor of a conflicting but adaptive one. Language may play a key role in this ability by supporting integrated representations of conflicting rules. We tested whether experience with contrastive language that could support such representations benefits executive function in 3-year-old children. Children who received brief experience with language highlighting contrast between objects, attributes, and actions showed greater executive function on two of three 'conflict' executive function tasks than children who received experience with contrasting stimuli only and children who read storybooks with the experimenter, controlling for baseline executive function. Experience with contrasting stimuli did not benefit executive function relative to reading books with the experimenter, indicating experience with contrastive language, rather than experience with contrast generally, was key. Experience with contrastive language also boosted spontaneous attention to contrast, consistent with improvements in representing contrast. These findings indicate a role for language in executive function that is consistent with the Cognitive Complexity and Control theory's key claim that coordinating conflicting rules is critical to overcoming perseveration, and suggest new ideas for testing theories of executive function. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

TexMo: A Multi-language Development Environment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pfeiffer, Rolf-Helge; Wasowski, Andrzej

2012-01-01

Contemporary software systems contain a large number of artifacts expressed in multiple languages, ranging from domain-specific languages to general purpose languages. These artifacts are interrelated to form software systems. Existing development environments insufficiently support handling...... relations between artifacts in multiple languages. This paper presents a taxonomy for multi-language development environments, organized according to language representation, representation of relations between languages, and types of these relations. Additionally, we present TexMo, a prototype of a multi-language...... development environment, which uses an explicit relation model and implements visualization, static checking, navigation, and refactoring of cross-language relations. We evaluate TexMo by applying it to development of a web-application, JTrac, and provide preliminary evidence of its feasibility by running...

Acceptance Testing Of Web Applications With Test Description Language

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Łukasz Olek

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Acceptance tests are usually created by a client after a part of a system is implemented. However, some methodologies propose the elaboration of test cases before implementing a system. This approach increases the probability of system implementation that fulfills requirements, but may be problematic for customers and testers. To allow acceptance testing in such conditions, we propose to define test cases by recording them on an interactive mockup (a low detailed user-interface prototype. The paper focuses on Test Description Language, a notation used to store test cases.

False Belief and Language Comprehension in Cantonese-Speaking Children

Science.gov (United States)

Cheung, Him

2006-01-01

The current research compared two accounts of the relation between language and false belief in children, namely that (a) language is generally related to false belief because both require secondary representation in a social-interactional context and that (b) specific language structures that explicitly code meta representation contribute…

Web Ontologies to Categorialy Structure Reality: Representations of Human Emotional, Cognitive and Motivational Processes

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Juan-Miguel eLópez-Gil

2016-04-01

Full Text Available This work presents a Web ontology for modeling and representation of the emotional, cognitive and motivational state of online learners, interacting with university systems for distance or blended education. The ontology is understood as a way to provide the required mechanisms to model reality and associate it to emotional responses, but without committing to a particular way of organizing these emotional responses. Knowledge representation for the contributed ontology is performed by using Web Ontology Language (OWL, a semantic web language designed to represent rich and complex knowledge about things, groups of things, and relations between things. OWL is a computational logic-based language such that computer programs can exploit knowledge expressed in OWL and also facilitates sharing and reusing knowledge using the global infrastructure of the Web. The proposed ontology has been tested in the field of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs to check if it is capable of representing emotions and motivation of the students in this context of use.

Web Ontologies to Categorialy Structure Reality: Representations of Human Emotional, Cognitive, and Motivational Processes

Science.gov (United States)

López-Gil, Juan-Miguel; Gil, Rosa; García, Roberto

2016-01-01

This work presents a Web ontology for modeling and representation of the emotional, cognitive and motivational state of online learners, interacting with university systems for distance or blended education. The ontology is understood as a way to provide the required mechanisms to model reality and associate it to emotional responses, but without committing to a particular way of organizing these emotional responses. Knowledge representation for the contributed ontology is performed by using Web Ontology Language (OWL), a semantic web language designed to represent rich and complex knowledge about things, groups of things, and relations between things. OWL is a computational logic-based language such that computer programs can exploit knowledge expressed in OWL and also facilitates sharing and reusing knowledge using the global infrastructure of the Web. The proposed ontology has been tested in the field of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to check if it is capable of representing emotions and motivation of the students in this context of use. PMID:27199796

Handbook for Classroom Testing in Peace Corps Language Programs. Manual T0068.

Science.gov (United States)

Anderson, Neil J.

This manual provides instructors in Peace Corps language training programs with information about two kinds of classroom testing: formative, ongoing testing and summative testing that occurs at the end of an instructional period. The first of the manual's four chapters on the purposes of language testing, discusses language testing within a…

Mixing Languages during Learning? Testing the One Subject—One Language Rule

Science.gov (United States)

2015-01-01

In bilingual communities, mixing languages is avoided in formal schooling: even if two languages are used on a daily basis for teaching, only one language is used to teach each given academic subject. This tenet known as the one subject-one language rule avoids mixing languages in formal schooling because it may hinder learning. The aim of this study was to test the scientific ground of this assumption by investigating the consequences of acquiring new concepts using a method in which two languages are mixed as compared to a purely monolingual method. Native balanced bilingual speakers of Basque and Spanish—adults (Experiment 1) and children (Experiment 2)—learnt new concepts by associating two different features to novel objects. Half of the participants completed the learning process in a multilingual context (one feature was described in Basque and the other one in Spanish); while the other half completed the learning phase in a purely monolingual context (both features were described in Spanish). Different measures of learning were taken, as well as direct and indirect indicators of concept consolidation. We found no evidence in favor of the non-mixing method when comparing the results of two groups in either experiment, and thus failed to give scientific support for the educational premise of the one subject—one language rule. PMID:26107624

Mixing Languages during Learning? Testing the One Subject-One Language Rule.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eneko Antón

Full Text Available In bilingual communities, mixing languages is avoided in formal schooling: even if two languages are used on a daily basis for teaching, only one language is used to teach each given academic subject. This tenet known as the one subject-one language rule avoids mixing languages in formal schooling because it may hinder learning. The aim of this study was to test the scientific ground of this assumption by investigating the consequences of acquiring new concepts using a method in which two languages are mixed as compared to a purely monolingual method. Native balanced bilingual speakers of Basque and Spanish-adults (Experiment 1 and children (Experiment 2-learnt new concepts by associating two different features to novel objects. Half of the participants completed the learning process in a multilingual context (one feature was described in Basque and the other one in Spanish; while the other half completed the learning phase in a purely monolingual context (both features were described in Spanish. Different measures of learning were taken, as well as direct and indirect indicators of concept consolidation. We found no evidence in favor of the non-mixing method when comparing the results of two groups in either experiment, and thus failed to give scientific support for the educational premise of the one subject-one language rule.

Shared Representations and the Translation Process

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schaeffer, Moritz; Carl, Michael

2015-01-01

The purpose of the present chapter is to investigate automated processing during translation. We provide evidence from a translation priming study which suggests that translation involves activation of shared lexico-semantic and syntactical representations, i.e., the activation of features of both...... source and target language items which share one single cognitive representation. We argue that activation of shared representations facilitates automated processing. The chapter revises the literal translation hypothesis and the monitor model (Ivir 1981; Toury 1995; Tirkkonen-Condit 2005), and re...

Shared Representations and the Translation Process

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schaeffer, Moritz; Carl, Michael

2013-01-01

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate automated processing during translation. We provide evidence from a translation priming study which suggests that translation involves activation of shared lexico-semantic and syntactical representations, i.e., the activation of features of both...... source and target language items which share one single cognitive representation. We argue that activation of shared representations facilitates automated processing. The paper revises the literal translation hypothesis and the monitor model (Ivir 1981; Toury 1995; Tirkkonen-Condit 2005), and re...

Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, Matthew L; Ferreira, Victor S; Mayberry, Rachel I

2015-01-01

Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL). Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2) signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect). Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming) operates similarly in sign and speech.

Constructing an Online Test Framework, Using the Example of a Sign Language Receptive Skills Test

Science.gov (United States)

Haug, Tobias; Herman, Rosalind; Woll, Bencie

2015-01-01

This paper presents the features of an online test framework for a receptive skills test that has been adapted, based on a British template, into different sign languages. The online test includes features that meet the needs of the different sign language versions. Features such as usability of the test, automatic saving of scores, and score…

Validity, Reliability and Standardization Study of the Language Assessment Test for Aphasia

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Bülent Toğram

2012-09-01

Full Text Available OBJECTIVE: Aphasia assessment is the first step towards a well- founded language therapy. Language tests need to consider cultural as well as typological linguistic aspects of a given language. This study was designed to determine the standardization, validity and reliability of Language Assessment Test for Aphasia, which consists of eight subtests including spontaneous speech and language, auditory comprehension, repetition, naming, reading, grammar, speech acts, and writing. METHODS: The test was administered to 282 healthy participants and 92 aphasic participants in age, education and gender matched groups. The validity study of the test was investigated with analysis of content, structure and criterion-related validity. For reliability of the test, the analysis of internal consistency, stability and equivalence reliability was conducted. The influence of variables on healhty participants’ sub-test scores, test score and language score was examined. According to significant differences, norms and cut-off scores based on language score were determined. RESULTS: The group with aphasia performed highly lower than healthy participants on subtest, test and language scores. The test scores of healthy group were mostly affected by age and educational level but not affected by gender. According to significant differences, age and educational level for both groups were determined. Considering age and educational levels, the reference values for the cut-off scores were presented. CONCLUSION: The test was found to be a highly reliable and valid aphasia test for Turkish- speaking aphasic patients either in Turkey or other Turkish communities around the world

Examining Test Speededness by Native Language

Science.gov (United States)

Talento-Miller, Eileen; Guo, Fanmin; Han, Kyung T.

2013-01-01

When power tests include a time limit, it is important to assess the possibility of speededness for examinees. Past research on differential speededness has examined gender and ethnic subgroups in the United States on paper and pencil tests. When considering the needs of a global audience, research regarding different native language speakers is…

Force Concept Inventory-based multiple-choice test for investigating students’ representational consistency

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Pasi Nieminen

2010-08-01

Full Text Available This study investigates students’ ability to interpret multiple representations consistently (i.e., representational consistency in the context of the force concept. For this purpose we developed the Representational Variant of the Force Concept Inventory (R-FCI, which makes use of nine items from the 1995 version of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI. These original FCI items were redesigned using various representations (such as motion map, vectorial and graphical, yielding 27 multiple-choice items concerning four central concepts underpinning the force concept: Newton’s first, second, and third laws, and gravitation. We provide some evidence for the validity and reliability of the R-FCI; this analysis is limited to the student population of one Finnish high school. The students took the R-FCI at the beginning and at the end of their first high school physics course. We found that students’ (n=168 representational consistency (whether scientifically correct or not varied considerably depending on the concept. On average, representational consistency and scientifically correct understanding increased during the instruction, although in the post-test only a few students performed consistently both in terms of representations and scientifically correct understanding. We also compared students’ (n=87 results of the R-FCI and the FCI, and found that they correlated quite well.

Communicative Language Testing: Implications for Computer Based Language Testing in French for Specific Purposes

Science.gov (United States)

García Laborda, Jesús; López Santiago, Mercedes; Otero de Juan, Nuria; Álvarez Álvarez, Alfredo

2014-01-01

Current evolutions of language testing have led to integrating computers in FSP assessments both in oral and written communicative tasks. This paper deals with two main issues: learners' expectations about the types of questions in FSP computer based assessments and the relation with their own experience. This paper describes the experience of 23…

Lexical and articulatory interactions in children's language production.

Science.gov (United States)

Heisler, Lori; Goffman, Lisa; Younger, Barbara

2010-09-01

Traditional models of adult language processing and production include two levels of representation: lexical and sublexical. The current study examines the influence of the inclusion of a lexical representation (i.e. a visual referent and/or object function) on the stability of articulation as well as on phonetic accuracy and variability in typically developing children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). A word learning paradigm was developed so that we could compare children's production with and without lexical representation. The variability and accuracy of productions were examined using speech kinematics as well as traditional phonetic accuracy measures. Results showed that phonetic forms with lexical representation were produced with more articulatory stability than phonetic forms without lexical representation. Using more traditional transcription measures, a paired lexical referent generally did not influence segmental accuracy (percent consonant correct and type token ratio). These results suggest that lexical and articulatory levels of representation are not completely independent. Implications for models of language production are discussed.

At the Interface between Language Testing and Second Language Acquisition: Language Ability and Context of Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Gu, Lin

2014-01-01

This study investigated the relationship between latent components of academic English language ability and test takers' study-abroad and classroom learning experiences through a structural equation modeling approach in the context of TOEFL iBT® testing. Data from the TOEFL iBT public dataset were used. The results showed that test takers'…

Methodological and Theoretical Issues in the Adaptation of Sign Language Tests: An Example from the Adaptation of a Test to German Sign Language

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Haug, Tobias

2012-01-01

Despite the current need for reliable and valid test instruments in different countries in order to monitor the sign language acquisition of deaf children, very few tests are commercially available that offer strong evidence for their psychometric properties. This mirrors the current state of affairs for many sign languages, where very little…

Time-frequency Representations Application in Psychological Testing

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REIZ Romulus

2015-10-01

Full Text Available A psychological test is a test that is designed to measure one aspect of human behavior. These tests are usually designed to evaluate a person’s ability to complete tasks that were individual's performance on certain tasks that have usually been requested in advance. Usually a test score is used to compare with other results to measure the individual’s performance regarding cognitive ability, aptitude, personality, etc. One such test is the so called “finger tapping” test, designed to measure the integrity of the neuromuscular system and examine motor control. There are several ways to perform such a test. The purpose of this paper isn’t to study the finger tapping test which is well documented in the literature, but to develop if possible a simple way of performing such a test. Using the method presented in the paper a nonstationary signal was obtained and it was analyzed using the Short-time Fourier time frequency representation to obtain the signals frequency and its variation in time. The results presented in the paper show that this method can be used to perform the test and the frequency and spatial amplitude of the obtained tapping signal can be determined easily.

Study of functional brain imaging for bilingual language cognition

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sun Da

2008-01-01

Bilingual and multilingual brain studies of language recognition is an interdisciplinary subject which needs to identify different levels involved in the neural representation of languages, such as neuroanatomical, neurofunctional, biochemical, psychological and linguistic levels. Furthermore, specific factor's such as age, manner of acquisition and environmental factors seem to affect the neural representation. Functional brain imaging, such as PET, SPECT and functional MRI can explore the neurolinguistics representation of bilingualism in the brain in subjects, and elucidate the neuronal mechanisms of bilingual language processing. Functional imaging methods show differences in the pattern of cerebral activation associated with a second language compared with the subject's native language. It shows that verbal memory processing in two unrelated languages is mediated by a common neural system with some distinct cortical areas. The different patterns of activation differ according to the language used. It also could be ascribed either to age of acquisition or to proficiency level. And attained proficiency is more important than age of acquisition as a determinant of the cortical representation of the second language. The study used PET and SPECT shows that sign and spoken language seem to be localized in the same brain areas, and elicit similar regional cerebral blood flow patterns. But for sign language perception, the functional anatomy overlaps that of language processing contain both auditory and visual components. And the sign language is dependent on spatial information too. (authors)

Study Guide for Teacher Certification Test in Speech and Language Pathology.

Science.gov (United States)

Umberger, Forrest G.

This study guide is designed for individuals preparing to take the Georgia Teacher Certification Test (TCT) in speech and language pathology. The test covers five subareas: (1) fundamentals of speech and language; (2) speech and language disorders; (3) related handicapping conditions; (4) hearing impairment; and (5) program management and…

Program Helps Design Tests Of Developmental Software

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Hops, Jonathan

1994-01-01

Computer program called "A Formal Test Representation Language and Tool for Functional Test Designs" (TRL) provides automatic software tool and formal language used to implement category-partition method and produce specification of test cases in testing phase of development of software. Category-partition method useful in defining input, outputs, and purpose of test-design phase of development and combines benefits of choosing normal cases having error-exposing properties. Traceability maintained quite easily by creating test design for each objective in test plan. Effort to transform test cases into procedures simplified by use of automatic software tool to create cases based on test design. Method enables rapid elimination of undesired test cases from consideration and facilitates review of test designs by peer groups. Written in C language.

Representations of abstract grammatical feature agreement in young children.

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Melançon, Andréane; Shi, Rushen

2015-11-01

A fundamental question in language acquisition research is whether young children have abstract grammatical representations. We tested this question experimentally. French-learning 30-month-olds were first taught novel word-object pairs in the context of a gender-marked determiner (e.g., un MASC ravole 'a ravole'). Test trials presented the objects side-by-side while one of them was named in new phrases containing other determiners and an adjective (e.g., le MASC joli ravole MASC 'the pretty ravole'). The gender agreement between the new determiner and the non-adjacent noun was manipulated in different test trials (e.g., le MASC __ravole MASC; *la FEM __ravole MASC). We found that online comprehension of the named target was facilitated in gender-matched trials but impeded in gender-mismatched trials. That is, children assigned the determiner genders to the novel nouns during word learning. They then processed the non-adjacent gender agreement between the two categories (Det, Noun) during test. The results demonstrate abstract featural representation and grammatical productivity in young children.

MRI language dominance assessment in epilepsy patients at 1.0 T: region of interest analysis and comparison with intracarotid amytal testing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Deblaere, K.; Vandemaele, P.; Tieleman, A.; Achten, E.; Boon, P.A.; Vonck, K.; Vingerhoets, G.; Backes, W.; Defreyne, L.

2004-01-01

The primary goal of this study was to test the reliability of presurgical language lateralization in epilepsy patients with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a 1.0-T MR scanner using a simple word generation paradigm and conventional equipment. In addition, hemispherical fMRI language lateralization analysis and region of interest (ROI) analysis in the frontal and temporo-parietal regions were compared with the intracarotid amytal test (IAT). Twenty epilepsy patients under presurgical evaluation were prospectively examined by both fMRI and IAT. The fMRI experiment consisted of a word chain task (WCT) using the conventional headphone set and a sparse sequence. In 17 of the 20 patients, data were available for comparison between the two procedures. Fifteen of these 17 patients were categorized as left hemispheric dominant, and 2 patients demonstrated bilateral language representation by both fMRI and IAT. The highest reliability for lateralization was obtained using frontal ROI analysis. Hemispherical analysis was less powerful and reliable in all cases but one, while temporo-parietal ROI analysis was unreliable as a stand-alone analysis when compared with IAT. The effect of statistical threshold on language lateralization prompted for the use of t-value-dependent lateralization index plots. This study illustrates that fMRI-determined language lateralization can be performed reliably in a clinical MR setting operating at a low field strength of 1 T without expensive stimulus presentation systems. (orig.)

MRI language dominance assessment in epilepsy patients at 1.0 T: region of interest analysis and comparison with intracarotid amytal testing

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Deblaere, K.; Vandemaele, P.; Tieleman, A.; Achten, E. [Department of Neuroradiology, Ghent University Hospital, De Pintelaan 185, 9000, Ghent (Belgium); Boon, P.A.; Vonck, K. [Reference Center for Refractory Epilepsy of the Department of Neurology, Ghent University Hospital, Ghent (Belgium); Vingerhoets, G. [Labaratory for Neuropsychology, Neurology Section of the Department of Internal Medicine, Ghent University, Ghent (Belgium); Backes, W. [Department of Neuroradiology, University Hospital Maastricht, Maastricht (Netherlands); Defreyne, L. [Department of Interventional Radiology, Ghent University Hospital, Ghent (Belgium)

2004-06-01

The primary goal of this study was to test the reliability of presurgical language lateralization in epilepsy patients with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a 1.0-T MR scanner using a simple word generation paradigm and conventional equipment. In addition, hemispherical fMRI language lateralization analysis and region of interest (ROI) analysis in the frontal and temporo-parietal regions were compared with the intracarotid amytal test (IAT). Twenty epilepsy patients under presurgical evaluation were prospectively examined by both fMRI and IAT. The fMRI experiment consisted of a word chain task (WCT) using the conventional headphone set and a sparse sequence. In 17 of the 20 patients, data were available for comparison between the two procedures. Fifteen of these 17 patients were categorized as left hemispheric dominant, and 2 patients demonstrated bilateral language representation by both fMRI and IAT. The highest reliability for lateralization was obtained using frontal ROI analysis. Hemispherical analysis was less powerful and reliable in all cases but one, while temporo-parietal ROI analysis was unreliable as a stand-alone analysis when compared with IAT. The effect of statistical threshold on language lateralization prompted for the use of t-value-dependent lateralization index plots. This study illustrates that fMRI-determined language lateralization can be performed reliably in a clinical MR setting operating at a low field strength of 1 T without expensive stimulus presentation systems. (orig.)

tOWL: a temporal Web Ontology Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Milea, Viorel; Frasincar, Flavius; Kaymak, Uzay

2012-02-01

Through its interoperability and reasoning capabilities, the Semantic Web opens a realm of possibilities for developing intelligent systems on the Web. The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is the most expressive standard language for modeling ontologies, the cornerstone of the Semantic Web. However, up until now, no standard way of expressing time and time-dependent information in OWL has been provided. In this paper, we present a temporal extension of the very expressive fragment SHIN(D) of the OWL Description Logic language, resulting in the temporal OWL language. Through a layered approach, we introduce three extensions: 1) concrete domains, which allow the representation of restrictions using concrete domain binary predicates; 2) temporal representation , which introduces time points, relations between time points, intervals, and Allen's 13 interval relations into the language; and 3) timeslices/fluents, which implement a perdurantist view on individuals and allow for the representation of complex temporal aspects, such as process state transitions. We illustrate the expressiveness of the newly introduced language by using an example from the financial domain.

An XML Representation for Crew Procedures

Science.gov (United States)

Simpson, Richard C.

2005-01-01

NASA ensures safe operation of complex systems through the use of formally-documented procedures, which encode the operational knowledge of the system as derived from system experts. Crew members use procedure documentation on the ground for training purposes and on-board space shuttle and space station to guide their activities. Investigators at JSC are developing a new representation for procedures that is content-based (as opposed to display-based). Instead of specifying how a procedure should look on the printed page, the content-based representation will identify the components of a procedure and (more importantly) how the components are related (e.g., how the activities within a procedure are sequenced; what resources need to be available for each activity). This approach will allow different sets of rules to be created for displaying procedures on a computer screen, on a hand-held personal digital assistant (PDA), verbally, or on a printed page, and will also allow intelligent reasoning processes to automatically interpret and use procedure definitions. During his NASA fellowship, Dr. Simpson examined how various industries represent procedures (also called business processes or workflows), in areas such as manufacturing, accounting, shipping, or customer service. A useful method for designing and evaluating workflow representation languages is by determining their ability to encode various workflow patterns, which depict abstract relationships between the components of a procedure removed from the context of a specific procedure or industry. Investigators have used this type of analysis to evaluate how well-suited existing workflow representation languages are for various industries based on the workflow patterns that commonly arise across industry-specific procedures. Based on this type of analysis, it is already clear that existing workflow representations capture discrete flow of control (i.e., when one activity should start and stop based on when other

Testing the Claims of Asylum Seekers: The Role of Language Analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Eades, Diana

2009-01-01

Language tests in immigration contexts typically perform a gate-keeping role in decisions about whether an applicant should be granted residence or citizenship in a new country. In refugee contexts, so-called language tests or language analyses also play a gate-keeping role, but a more ambitious one; namely that of providing answers to questions…

Comparison of the reliability of parental reporting and the direct test of the Thai Speech and Language Test.

Science.gov (United States)

Prathanee, Benjamas; Angsupakorn, Nipa; Pumnum, Tawitree; Seepuaham, Cholada; Jaiyong, Pechcharat

2012-11-01

To find reliability of parental or caregiver's report and testing of the Thai Speech and Language Test for Children Aged 0-4 Years Old. Five investigators assessed speech and language abilities from video both contexts: parental or caregivers' report and test forms of Thai Speech and Language Test for Children Aged 0-4 Years Old. Twenty-five normal and 30 children with delayed development or risk for delayed speech and language skills were assessed at age intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 24, 30, 36 and 48 months. Reliability of parental or caregivers' testing and reporting was at a moderate level (0.41-0.60). Inter-rater reliability among investigators was excellent (0.86-1.00). The parental or caregivers' report form of the Thai Speech and Language test for Children aged 0-4 years old was an indicator for success at a moderate level. Trained professionals could use both forms of this test as reliable tools at an excellent level.

Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

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Matthew L Hall

Full Text Available Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL. Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2 signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect. Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming operates similarly in sign and speech.

Lexical and articulatory interactions in children’s language production

Science.gov (United States)

Heisler, Lori; Goffman, Lisa; Younger, Barbara

2009-01-01

Traditional models of adult language processing and production include two levels of representation: lexical and sublexical. The current study examines the influence of the inclusion of a lexical representation (i.e., a visual referent and/or object function) on the stability of articulation as well as on phonetic accuracy and variability in typically developing children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). A word learning paradigm was developed so that we could compare children’s production with and without lexical representation. The variability and accuracy of productions were examined using speech kinematics as well as traditional phonetic accuracy measures. Results showed that phonetic forms with lexical representation were produced with more articulatory stability than phonetic forms without lexical representation. Using more traditional transcription measures, a paired lexical referent generally did not influence segmental accuracy (percent consonant correct and type token ratio). These results suggest that lexical and articulatory levels of representation are not completely independent. Implications for models of language production are discussed. PMID:20712738

The Developmental Onset of Symbolic Approximation: Beyond Nonsymbolic Representations, The Language of Numbers Matters

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Iro eXenidou-Dervou

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Symbolic (i.e., with Arabic numerals approximate arithmetic with large numerosities is an important predictor of mathematics. It was previously evidenced to onset before formal schooling at the kindergarten age (Gilmore et al., 2007 and was assumed to map onto pre-existing nonsymbolic (i.e., abstract magnitudes representations. With a longitudinal study (Experiment 1, we show, for the first time, that nonsymbolic and symbolic arithmetic demonstrate different developmental trajectories. In contrast to Gilmore et al.’s (2007 findings, Experiment 1 showed that symbolic arithmetic onsets in grade 1, with the start of formal schooling, not earlier. Gilmore et al. (2007 had examined English-speaking children, whereas we assessed a large Dutch-speaking sample. The Dutch language for numbers can be cognitively more demanding, for example, due to the inversion property in numbers above twenty. Thus, for instance, the number 48 is named in Dutch achtenveertig (eight and forty instead of forty eight. To examine the effect of the language of numbers, we conducted a cross-cultural study with English- and Dutch-speaking children that had similar SES and math achievement skills (Experiment 2. Results demonstrated that Dutch-speaking kindergarteners lagged behind English-speaking children in symbolic arithmetic, not nonsymbolic and demonstrated a WM overload in symbolic arithmetic, not nonsymbolic. Also, we show for the first time that the ability to name two-digit numbers highly correlates with symbolic approximate arithmetic not nonsymbolic. Our experiments empirically demonstrate that the symbolic number system is modulated more by development and education than the nonsymbolic system. Also, in contrast to the nonsymbolic system, the symbolic system is modulated by language.

Natural language processing techniques for automatic test ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Natural language processing techniques for automatic test questions generation using discourse connectives. ... PROMOTING ACCESS TO AFRICAN RESEARCH. AFRICAN JOURNALS ... Journal of Computer Science and Its Application.

Modular Chemical Descriptor Language (MCDL: Stereochemical modules

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Gakh Andrei A

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background In our previous papers we introduced the Modular Chemical Descriptor Language (MCDL for providing a linear representation of chemical information. A subsequent development was the MCDL Java Chemical Structure Editor which is capable of drawing chemical structures from linear representations and generating MCDL descriptors from structures. Results In this paper we present MCDL modules and accompanying software that incorporate unique representation of molecular stereochemistry based on Cahn-Ingold-Prelog and Fischer ideas in constructing stereoisomer descriptors. The paper also contains additional discussions regarding canonical representation of stereochemical isomers, and brief algorithm descriptions of the open source LINDES, Java applet, and Open Babel MCDL processing module software packages. Conclusions Testing of the upgraded MCDL Java Chemical Structure Editor on compounds taken from several large and diverse chemical databases demonstrated satisfactory performance for storage and processing of stereochemical information in MCDL format.

Representational Technologies and Learner Problem-Solving Strategies in Chemistry

Science.gov (United States)

McCollum, Brett; Sepulveda, Ana; Moreno, Yuritzel

2016-01-01

Learning within the sciences is often considered through a quantitative lens, but acquiring proficiency with the symbolic representations in chemistry is arguably more akin to language learning. Representational competencies are central to successful communication of chemical information including molecular composition, structure, and properties.…

Determining the Association between Language and Cognitive Tests in Poststroke Aphasia

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Kylie J. Wall

2017-05-01

Full Text Available BackgroundIndividuals with aphasia are often excluded from studies exploring poststroke cognition because so many of the standard cognitive assessments rely on language ability. Our primary objective was to examine the association between performance on cognitive tests and performance on comprehension and naming tests in poststroke aphasia. Second, we aimed to determine the association between language performance and a real-life measure of cognition (Kettle Test. Third, we explored the feasibility of administering cognitive tests in aphasia.MethodsThirty-six participants with poststroke aphasia and 32 controls were assessed on a battery of pen-and-paper cognitive tests recommended in stroke. Auditory comprehension was measured using the Comprehensive Aphasia Test and naming was measured using the Boston Naming Test. Twenty-two community dwelling participants with aphasia and controls were also asked to complete the Kettle Test. Multiple linear regressions were used to explore the relationship between language performance and performance on the cognitive tests. Feasibility was determined by quantifying missing data.ResultsThe cognitive tests with the highest variance accounted for by auditory comprehension and naming were animal fluency (R2 = 0.67, R2 = 0.78 and the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test (recognition discrimination index (R2 = 0.65, R2 = 0.78. All cognitive tests were significantly associated with auditory comprehension and naming, except for the Star Cancellation Test and the Kettle Test. Thirty-three percent of participants with aphasia were unable to complete all the cognitive tests.ConclusionLanguage and non-linguistic cognitive processes are often interrelated. Most pen-and-paper cognitive tests were significantly associated with both auditory comprehension and naming, even in tests that do not require a verbal response. Language performance was not significantly associated with a real-life cognitive performance measure. Task

Medical Named Entity Recognition for Indonesian Language Using Word Representations

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Rahman, Arief

2018-03-01

Nowadays, Named Entity Recognition (NER) system is used in medical texts to obtain important medical information, like diseases, symptoms, and drugs. While most NER systems are applied to formal medical texts, informal ones like those from social media (also called semi-formal texts) are starting to get recognition as a gold mine for medical information. We propose a theoretical Named Entity Recognition (NER) model for semi-formal medical texts in our medical knowledge management system by comparing two kinds of word representations: cluster-based word representation and distributed representation.

Population Size and the Rate of Language Evolution: A Test Across Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu Languages

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Greenhill, Simon J.; Hua, Xia; Welsh, Caela F.; Schneemann, Hilde; Bromham, Lindell

2018-01-01

What role does speaker population size play in shaping rates of language evolution? There has been little consensus on the expected relationship between rates and patterns of language change and speaker population size, with some predicting faster rates of change in smaller populations, and others expecting greater change in larger populations. The growth of comparative databases has allowed population size effects to be investigated across a wide range of language groups, with mixed results. One recent study of a group of Polynesian languages revealed greater rates of word gain in larger populations and greater rates of word loss in smaller populations. However, that test was restricted to 20 closely related languages from small Oceanic islands. Here, we test if this pattern is a general feature of language evolution across a larger and more diverse sample of languages from both continental and island populations. We analyzed comparative language data for 153 pairs of closely-related sister languages from three of the world's largest language families: Austronesian, Indo-European, and Niger-Congo. We find some evidence that rates of word loss are significantly greater in smaller languages for the Indo-European comparisons, but we find no significant patterns in the other two language families. These results suggest either that the influence of population size on rates and patterns of language evolution is not universal, or that it is sufficiently weak that it may be overwhelmed by other influences in some cases. Further investigation, for a greater number of language comparisons and a wider range of language features, may determine which of these explanations holds true. PMID:29755387

Preexisting semantic representation improves working memory performance in the visuospatial domain.

Science.gov (United States)

Rudner, Mary; Orfanidou, Eleni; Cardin, Velia; Capek, Cheryl M; Woll, Bencie; Rönnberg, Jerker

2016-05-01

Working memory (WM) for spoken language improves when the to-be-remembered items correspond to preexisting representations in long-term memory. We investigated whether this effect generalizes to the visuospatial domain by administering a visual n-back WM task to deaf signers and hearing signers, as well as to hearing nonsigners. Four different kinds of stimuli were presented: British Sign Language (BSL; familiar to the signers), Swedish Sign Language (SSL; unfamiliar), nonsigns, and nonlinguistic manual actions. The hearing signers performed better with BSL than with SSL, demonstrating a facilitatory effect of preexisting semantic representation. The deaf signers also performed better with BSL than with SSL, but only when WM load was high. No effect of preexisting phonological representation was detected. The deaf signers performed better than the hearing nonsigners with all sign-based materials, but this effect did not generalize to nonlinguistic manual actions. We argue that deaf signers, who are highly reliant on visual information for communication, develop expertise in processing sign-based items, even when those items do not have preexisting semantic or phonological representations. Preexisting semantic representation, however, enhances the quality of the gesture-based representations temporarily maintained in WM by this group, thereby releasing WM resources to deal with increased load. Hearing signers, on the other hand, may make strategic use of their speech-based representations for mnemonic purposes. The overall pattern of results is in line with flexible-resource models of WM.

Prosodic cues to word order: what level of representation?

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Carline eBernard

2012-10-01

Full Text Available Within language, systematic correlations exist between syntactic structure and prosody. Prosodic prominence, for instance, falls on the complement and not the head of syntactic phrases, and its realization depends on the phrasal position of the prominent element. Thus, in Japanese, a functor-final language, prominence is phrase-initial and realized as increased pitch (^Tōkyō ni ‘Tokyo to’, whereas in French, English or Italian, functor-initial languages, it manifests itself as phrase-final lengthening (to Rome. Prosody is readily available in the linguistic signal even to the youngest infants. It has, therefore, been proposed that young learners might be able to exploit its correlations with syntax to bootstrap language structure. In this study, we tested this hypothesis, investigating how 8-month-old monolingual French infants processed an artificial grammar manipulating the relative position of prosodic prominence and word frequency. In Condition 1, we created a speech stream in which the two cues, prosody and frequency, were aligned, frequent words being prosodically non-prominent and infrequent ones being prominent, as is the case in natural language (functors are prosodically minimal compared to content words. In Condition 2, the two cues were misaligned, with frequent words carrying prosodic prominence, unlike in natural language. After familiarization with the aligned or the misaligned stream in a headturn preference procedure, we tested infants’ preference for test items having a frequent word initial or a frequent word final word order. We found that infants’ familiarized with the aligned stream showed the expected preference for the frequent word initial test items, mimicking the functor-initial word order of French. Infants in the misaligned condition showed no preference. These results suggest that infants are able to use word frequency and prosody as early cues to word order and they integrate them into a coherent

Representations of commonsense knowledge

CERN Document Server

Davis, Ernest

1990-01-01

Representations of Commonsense Knowledge provides a rich language for expressing commonsense knowledge and inference techniques for carrying out commonsense knowledge. This book provides a survey of the research on commonsense knowledge.Organized into 10 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the basic ideas on artificial intelligence commonsense reasoning. This text then examines the structure of logic, which is roughly analogous to that of a programming language. Other chapters describe how rules of universal validity can be applied to facts known with absolute certainty to deduce ot

THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DESIGNING COURSES ON LANGUAGE TESTING AND ASSESSMENT

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Olha Kvasova

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The paper considers the theoretical underpinnings and practices of designing courses on language testing and assessment for pre-service FL teacher training. The author analyses definitions of assessment literacy offered in the studies of world experts including teaching content and objectives of such long implemented courses. She further reasons the urgent need in introducing courses on language testing and assessment in Ukrainian universities; specifies the goal of the courses which lies in training student teachers in developing quality tests and administering assessments on the outset of their teaching career; outlines the content area to be covered in the course placing emphasis on its being based on professional needs; specifies course objectives such as building students’ awareness of key concepts and principles of language testing, developing ability to critically analyze available ready-made tests and make decisions about their fitting particular assessment needs, building skills to develop own or adapt ready-made tests and tailor them to the educational context; discusses preconditions of efficient running and attaining good outcomes of such courses which, in her view, are predetermined by traditionally high standards of teaching language pedagogy in Ukraine. An innovative structure of the course based on principles of testing cycle as well as interactive and constructivist methods of teaching language testing and assessment to student teachers are offered in the article.

Refining English Language Tests for University Admission: A Malaysian Example

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Arshad Abd Samad

2008-06-01

Full Text Available English has now become the lingua franca of much of technological, business and academic endeavours. Consequently, learning the English language is now seen as vital, especially at the university level where proficiency in the language has become a selection criterion. At present, the Malaysian University English Test (MUET has been adopted by Malaysian public universities as an indicator of English language proficiency. A student’s overall result depends on all the four language components of the MUET and often determines the number and nature of the English language courses he or she has to attend at university. This study seeks to examine whether MUET is an accurate predictor of performance and success at university and how the MUET can be finetuned as an entry level English language test. It was carried out among 52 third year undergraduates of the Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia, admitted into the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL programme. The findings of the study do not offer conclusive evidence about the validity of MUET as a predictor of academic success. However, six models of various combinations of scores on language components on the MUET scores are examined in terms of their effectiveness in increasing the accuracy in selecting students for the TESL programme. The correlations obtained using these models indicate that the combination of various components of the MUET can be used to more accurately predict student achievement at tertiary level than the cumulative MUET score itself. The results of these correlations and their implications in using language tests as admission requirements in general are also discussed

Empirical Methods in Natural Language Generation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Krahmer, Emiel; Theune, Mariet

Natural language generation (NLG) is a subfield of natural language processing (NLP) that is often characterized as the study of automatically converting non-linguistic representations (e.g., from databases or other knowledge sources) into coherent natural language text. In recent years the field

DEVELOPING COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TESTS FOR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

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Y. M. Harsono

2005-01-01

Full Text Available The Communicative Approach of teaching English in senior high school in Indonesia has been adopted since the implementation of The 1984 Curriculum, but the tests–the communicative language tests–(CL Tests have not been developed and used properly. The objective of the study is to develop CL Tests for senior high school. The procedure of conducting the study consists of three major steps, that is, identifying the objectives, developing the test specification, and developing the CL Tests. The development of the CL Tests in detail consists of fifteen sub-steps from determining what language skills tested, selecting the suitable source materials, up to rewriting the CL Tests to be used as CL Tests alternative for senior high school. The results of the test development reveal that there are fifteen CL Tests consisting of three tests of listening, three reading, three speaking, and three writing tests. The whole tests have construct and content validity, no complete evidence of concurrent validity with report marks and semester test scores, high to very high inter-rater reliability, and no complete practicality.

L1 and L2 Picture Naming in Mandarin-English Bilinguals: A Test of Bilingual Dual Coding Theory

Science.gov (United States)

Jared, Debra; Poh, Rebecca Pei Yun; Paivio, Allan

2013-01-01

This study examined the nature of bilinguals' conceptual representations and the links from these representations to words in L1 and L2. Specifically, we tested an assumption of the Bilingual Dual Coding Theory that conceptual representations include image representations, and that learning two languages in separate contexts can result in…

Computer-Adaptive Testing in Second Language Contexts.

Science.gov (United States)

Chalhoub-Deville, Micheline; Deville, Craig

1999-01-01

Provides a broad overview of computerized testing issues with an emphasis on computer-adaptive testing (CAT). A survey of the potential benefits and drawbacks of CAT are given, the process of CAT development is described; and some L2 instruments developed to assess various language skills are summarized. (Author/VWL)

Scripting language design and the implementation test for PSO-GA ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

... the Characters of Code (COC) are measured in order to test the easiness of the programming language. The results show that across all algorithms, the scripting language is anticipated to enable easy programming which has been presented by the very less number of COC compared to the JAVA programming language.

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....

Ezhil: A Tamil Programming Language

OpenAIRE

Annamalai, Muthiah

2009-01-01

Ezhil is a Tamil language based interpreted procedural programming language. Tamil keywords and grammar are chosen to make the native Tamil speaker write programs in the Ezhil system. Ezhil allows easy representation of computer program closer to the Tamil language logical constructs equivalent to the conditional, branch and loop statements in modern English based programming languages. Ezhil is a compact programming language aimed towards Tamil speaking novice computer users. Grammar for Ezh...

The mystery of language evolution.

Science.gov (United States)

Hauser, Marc D; Yang, Charles; Berwick, Robert C; Tattersall, Ian; Ryan, Michael J; Watumull, Jeffrey; Chomsky, Noam; Lewontin, Richard C

2014-01-01

Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, (1) studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; (2) the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; (3) our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; (4) all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language's origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses. We conclude by presenting some suggestions about possible paths forward.

The mystery of language evolution

Science.gov (United States)

Hauser, Marc D.; Yang, Charles; Berwick, Robert C.; Tattersall, Ian; Ryan, Michael J.; Watumull, Jeffrey; Chomsky, Noam; Lewontin, Richard C.

2014-01-01

Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, (1) studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; (2) the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; (3) our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; (4) all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language's origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses. We conclude by presenting some suggestions about possible paths forward. PMID:24847300

Multi-representation based on scientific investigation for enhancing students’ representation skills

Science.gov (United States)

Siswanto, J.; Susantini, E.; Jatmiko, B.

2018-03-01

This research aims to implementation learning physics with multi-representation based on the scientific investigation for enhancing students’ representation skills, especially on the magnetic field subject. The research design is one group pretest-posttest. This research was conducted in the department of mathematics education, Universitas PGRI Semarang, with the sample is students of class 2F who take basic physics courses. The data were obtained by representation skills test and documentation of multi-representation worksheet. The Results show gain analysis value of .64 which means some medium improvements. The result of t-test (α = .05) is shows p-value = .001. This learning significantly improves students representation skills.

A common neural substrate for language production and verbal working memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Acheson, Daniel J; Hamidi, Massihullah; Binder, Jeffrey R; Postle, Bradley R

2011-06-01

Verbal working memory (VWM), the ability to maintain and manipulate representations of speech sounds over short periods, is held by some influential models to be independent from the systems responsible for language production and comprehension [e.g., Baddeley, A. D. Working memory, thought, and action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007]. We explore the alternative hypothesis that maintenance in VWM is subserved by temporary activation of the language production system [Acheson, D. J., & MacDonald, M. C. Verbal working memory and language production: Common approaches to the serial ordering of verbal information. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 50-68, 2009b]. Specifically, we hypothesized that for stimuli lacking a semantic representation (e.g., nonwords such as mun), maintenance in VWM can be achieved by cycling information back and forth between the stages of phonological encoding and articulatory planning. First, fMRI was used to identify regions associated with two different stages of language production planning: the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) for phonological encoding (critical for VWM of nonwords) and the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) for lexical-semantic retrieval (not critical for VWM of nonwords). Next, in the same subjects, these regions were targeted with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) during language production and VWM task performance. Results showed that rTMS to the pSTG, but not the MTG, increased error rates on paced reading (a language production task) and on delayed serial recall of nonwords (a test of VWM). Performance on a lexical-semantic retrieval task (picture naming), in contrast, was significantly sensitive to rTMS of the MTG. Because rTMS was guided by language production-related activity, these results provide the first causal evidence that maintenance in VWM directly depends on the long-term representations and processes used in speech production.

Bootstrapping language acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Abend, Omri; Kwiatkowski, Tom; Smith, Nathaniel J; Goldwater, Sharon; Steedman, Mark

2017-07-01

The semantic bootstrapping hypothesis proposes that children acquire their native language through exposure to sentences of the language paired with structured representations of their meaning, whose component substructures can be associated with words and syntactic structures used to express these concepts. The child's task is then to learn a language-specific grammar and lexicon based on (probably contextually ambiguous, possibly somewhat noisy) pairs of sentences and their meaning representations (logical forms). Starting from these assumptions, we develop a Bayesian probabilistic account of semantically bootstrapped first-language acquisition in the child, based on techniques from computational parsing and interpretation of unrestricted text. Our learner jointly models (a) word learning: the mapping between components of the given sentential meaning and lexical words (or phrases) of the language, and (b) syntax learning: the projection of lexical elements onto sentences by universal construction-free syntactic rules. Using an incremental learning algorithm, we apply the model to a dataset of real syntactically complex child-directed utterances and (pseudo) logical forms, the latter including contextually plausible but irrelevant distractors. Taking the Eve section of the CHILDES corpus as input, the model simulates several well-documented phenomena from the developmental literature. In particular, the model exhibits syntactic bootstrapping effects (in which previously learned constructions facilitate the learning of novel words), sudden jumps in learning without explicit parameter setting, acceleration of word-learning (the "vocabulary spurt"), an initial bias favoring the learning of nouns over verbs, and one-shot learning of words and their meanings. The learner thus demonstrates how statistical learning over structured representations can provide a unified account for these seemingly disparate phenomena. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Relative Importance of Persons, Items, Subtests, and Languages to TOEFL Test Variance.

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, James Dean

1999-01-01

Explored the relative contributions to Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) score dependability of various numbers of persons, items, subtests, languages, and their various interactions. Sampled 15,000 test takers, 1000 each from 15 different language backgrounds. (Author/VWL)

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

Is there a language divide in pap test use?

Science.gov (United States)

Ponce, Ninez A; Chawla, Neetu; Babey, Susan H; Gatchell, Melissa S; Etzioni, David A; Spencer, Benjamin A; Brown, E Richard; Breen, Nancy

2006-11-01

We sought to determine whether primary language use, measured by language of interview, is associated with disparities in cervical cancer screening. We undertook a secondary data analysis of a pooled sample of the 2001 and 2003 California Health Interview Surveys. The surveys were conducted in English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, and Vietnamese. The study was a cross-sectional analysis of 3-year Pap test use among women ages 18 to 64, with no reported cervical cancer diagnosis or hysterectomy (n = 38,931). In addition to language of interview, other factors studied included race/ethnicity, marital status, income, educational attainment, years lived in the United States, insurance status, usual source of care, smoking status, area of residence, and self-rated health status. We fit weighted multivariate logit models predicting 3-year Pap test use as a function of language of interview, adjusting for the effects of specified covariates. Compared with the referent English interview group, women who interviewed in Spanish were 1.65 times more likely to receive a Pap test in the past 3 years. In contrast, we observed a significantly reduced risk of screening among women who interviewed in Vietnamese (odds ratio [OR] 0.67; confidence interval [CI] 0.48-0.93), Cantonese (OR 0.44; 95% CI 0.30-0.66), Mandarin (OR 0.48; 95% CI 0.33-0.72), and Korean (OR 0.62; 0.40-0.98). Improved language access could reduce cancer screening disparities, especially in the Asian immigrant community.

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 and Cognition Interaction Neural Mechanisms

OpenAIRE

Perlovsky, Leonid

2011-01-01

How language and cognition interact in thinking? Is language just used for communication of completed thoughts, or is it fundamental for thinking? Existing approaches have not led to a computational theory. We develop a hypothesis that language and cognition are two separate but closely interacting mechanisms. Language accumulates cultural wisdom; cognition develops mental representations modeling surrounding world and adapts cultural knowledge to concrete circumstances of life. Language is a...

The International English Language Testing System (IELTS): The Speaking Test.

Science.gov (United States)

Ingram, D. E.

1991-01-01

The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) assesses proficiency in English both generally and for special purposes of non-native English speakers studying, training, or learning English in English-speaking countries. The Speaking subtest of the IELTS measures a candidate's general proficiency in speaking in everyday situations via a…

The sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis for language acquisition and language evolution.

Science.gov (United States)

Imai, Mutsumi; Kita, Sotaro

2014-09-19

Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We review evidence that, contrary to the traditional view in linguistics, sound symbolism is an important design feature of language, which affects online processing of language, and most importantly, language acquisition. We propose the sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis, claiming that (i) pre-verbal infants are sensitive to sound symbolism, due to a biologically endowed ability to map and integrate multi-modal input, (ii) sound symbolism helps infants gain referential insight for speech sounds, (iii) sound symbolism helps infants and toddlers associate speech sounds with their referents to establish a lexical representation and (iv) sound symbolism helps toddlers learn words by allowing them to focus on referents embedded in a complex scene, alleviating Quine's problem. We further explore the possibility that sound symbolism is deeply related to language evolution, drawing the parallel between historical development of language across generations and ontogenetic development within individuals. Finally, we suggest that sound symbolism bootstrapping is a part of a more general phenomenon of bootstrapping by means of iconic representations, drawing on similarities and close behavioural links between sound symbolism and speech-accompanying iconic gesture. © 2014 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Expanding Horizons and Unresolved Conundrums: Language Testing and Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Leung, Constant; Lewkowicz, Jo

2006-01-01

Since the last "TESOL Quarterly" commemorative issue 15 years ago, there have been too many important developments in language testing and assessment for all of them to be discussed in a single article. Therefore, this article focuses on issues that we believe are integrally linked to pedagogic and curriculum concerns of English language teaching.…

Teaching Statistics in Language Testing Courses

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, James Dean

2013-01-01

The purpose of this article is to examine the literature on teaching statistics for useful ideas that teachers of language testing courses can draw on and incorporate into their teaching toolkits as they see fit. To those ends, the article addresses eight questions: What is known generally about teaching statistics? Why are students so anxious…

The representation of roots in the spelling of children with specific language impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

Deacon, S Hélène; Cleave, Patricia L; Baylis, Julia; Fraser, Jillian; Ingram, Elizabeth; Perlmutter, Signy

2014-01-01

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have demonstrated general spelling and writing difficulties. We investigated the sensitivity of children with SLI to the consistent spelling of root morphemes, a feature to which young typically developing children demonstrate sensitivity. We asked children with SLI and two groups of typically developing children (n = 17 in each group) to spell the same letter-sound sequence (e.g., win) as a root, and as a component of inflected, derived, and control words (e.g., win, wins, winner, wink). Children with SLI and spelling-age-matched children (mean age of 9 and 7 years, respectively) were more accurate and more consistent in spelling the initial sections of the inflected and derived words than of the control words, a pattern that suggests sensitivity to the representation of roots in spelling. The absence of a group-level interaction suggests comparable sensitivity in the two groups. Our results suggest that elementary-school-aged children with SLI are sensitive to the consistent spelling of roots, at least to the extent predicted by their general spelling abilities.

The heterogeneity of mental representation: Ending the imagery debate.

Science.gov (United States)

Pearson, Joel; Kosslyn, Stephen M

2015-08-18

The possible ways that information can be represented mentally have been discussed often over the past thousand years. However, this issue could not be addressed rigorously until late in the 20th century. Initial empirical findings spurred a debate about the heterogeneity of mental representation: Is all information stored in propositional, language-like, symbolic internal representations, or can humans use at least two different types of representations (and possibly many more)? Here, in historical context, we describe recent evidence that humans do not always rely on propositional internal representations but, instead, can also rely on at least one other format: depictive representation. We propose that the debate should now move on to characterizing all of the different forms of human mental representation.

Gender Representation in Japanese EFL Textbooks--A Corpus Study

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Jackie F. K.

2018-01-01

This paper seeks to investigate whether the Japanese government's attempt to promote a 'gender-equal' society in recent decades and the improved status of women are reflected in patterns of gender representation in Japanese English as a foreign language textbooks. The study made an analysis of four popular series of English language textbooks…

The Representation of Polysemy: MEG Evidence

OpenAIRE

Pylkkänen, Liina; Llinás, Rodolfo; Murphy, Gregory L.

2006-01-01

Most words in natural language are polysemous; i.e., they can be used in more than one way. For example, paper can be used to refer to a substance made out of wood pulp or to a daily publication printed on that substance. Even though virtually every sentence contains polysemy, there is little agreement as to how polysemy is represented in the mental lexicon. Do different uses of polysemous words involve access to a single representation or do our minds store distinct representations for each ...

The Relationship between the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Scores and Academic Success of International Master's Students

Science.gov (United States)

Arcuino, Cathy Lee T.

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine if the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) are related to academic success defined by final cumulative grade point average (GPA). The data sample, from three Midwestern universities, was comprised of international graduate students who…

A poetic of silence: trauma, representation and language in Escape from Death, by Paul Celan

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maria Esther Torinho

2014-10-01

Paul Celan’s poem Escape from death presents situations lived by himself in a Nazi concentration camp, which inserts the poem in the context of the literature of testimony; it is a poem fulfilled with high amount of drama, in which content and structure combine to offer a dense reading, loaded with meaning. One can see, in the poem, that silence dominates the scenery, expressing, through the many gaps left by a fragmentary language, what is difficult for the poet to express, the feelings which are impossible to talk about, what leads the reader to an astonishing feeling, making contact with the meaning only through stages and amid the gaps. This article approaches the poem starting from concepts related to Literature of testimony and the impossibility of representing the real (Roland Barthes; in what concern the formal aspects, beside the Bakhtin’s ideas about polyphony, and Barros and Fiorin’s studies about dialogism, polyphony and interdiscursivity; furthermore, starting from the musical concept of escape, as suggested by the title of the poem and highlighted in the text, we discuss figurative language – metaphor and metonymy, irony and ellipses, as the author's strategies to face the hesitation between trauma and representation so one have a silence poetic, in which the ellipses and metaphors play an essential role.

Causes, coping, and culture: a comparative survey study on representation of back pain in three Swiss language regions.

Science.gov (United States)

Schulz, Peter J; Hartung, Uwe; Riva, Silvia

2013-01-01

This study intends to contribute to a research tradition that asks how causal attributions of illnesses affect coping behavior. Causal attributions are understood as the most important element of illness representations and coping as a means to preserve quality of life. The issue is applied to a condition so far often neglected in research on illness representations-back pain-and a third concept is added to the picture: culture. The aim of this study is (a) to explore the causal factors to which persons with back pain attribute the further course of their illness, (b) to find out whether the attributed causes are predictors of coping maxims, and (c) to find out whether cultural factors affect attributions and coping and moderate the relationship between the two. A total of 1259 gainfully employed or self-employed persons with recent episodes of back pain were recruited in the three language regions of Switzerland. They were asked to complete a structured online interview, measuring among many other variables attributed causes, coping maxims, and affiliation to one of the Swiss micro-cultures (German-, French- or Italian-speaking). Attributed causes of the illness that can be influenced by a patient go along with more active coping styles. Cultural affiliation impacts on coping maxims independently, but culture moderates the relationship of attributed causes and coping maxims only in two of twenty possible cases. The results show that cultural differences can be analytically incorporated in the models of illness representations. Results may help to improve healthcare providers' communication with patients and plan public health campaigns. The approach to micro-cultural differences and the substantive relationships between alterability of causes and activity in coping may help the further development of models of illness representations.

Causes, coping, and culture: a comparative survey study on representation of back pain in three Swiss language regions.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peter J Schulz

Full Text Available INTRODUCTION: This study intends to contribute to a research tradition that asks how causal attributions of illnesses affect coping behavior. Causal attributions are understood as the most important element of illness representations and coping as a means to preserve quality of life. The issue is applied to a condition so far often neglected in research on illness representations-back pain-and a third concept is added to the picture: culture. AIM: The aim of this study is (a to explore the causal factors to which persons with back pain attribute the further course of their illness, (b to find out whether the attributed causes are predictors of coping maxims, and (c to find out whether cultural factors affect attributions and coping and moderate the relationship between the two. METHODS: A total of 1259 gainfully employed or self-employed persons with recent episodes of back pain were recruited in the three language regions of Switzerland. They were asked to complete a structured online interview, measuring among many other variables attributed causes, coping maxims, and affiliation to one of the Swiss micro-cultures (German-, French- or Italian-speaking. RESULTS: Attributed causes of the illness that can be influenced by a patient go along with more active coping styles. Cultural affiliation impacts on coping maxims independently, but culture moderates the relationship of attributed causes and coping maxims only in two of twenty possible cases. IMPLICATIONS: The results show that cultural differences can be analytically incorporated in the models of illness representations. Results may help to improve healthcare providers' communication with patients and plan public health campaigns. The approach to micro-cultural differences and the substantive relationships between alterability of causes and activity in coping may help the further development of models of illness representations.

Do Questions Written in the Target Language Make Foreign Language Listening Comprehension Tests More Difficult?

Science.gov (United States)

Filipi, Anna

2012-01-01

The Assessment of Language Competence (ALC) certificates is an annual, international testing program developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research to test the listening and reading comprehension skills of lower to middle year levels of secondary school. The tests are developed for three levels in French, German, Italian and…

Sesotho Online : Establishing an internet-based language ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

It is against this background that the status, presentation and representation of African languages are being investigated. This article reports on the contribution of the website Sesotho Online to the establishment of an internet-based language knowledge community for the Sesotho language. In its literature review the article ...

Action representation: crosstalk between semantics and pragmatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Prinz, Wolfgang

2014-03-01

Marc Jeannerod pioneered a representational approach to movement and action. In his approach, motor representations provide both, declarative knowledge about action and procedural knowledge for action (action semantics and action pragmatics, respectively). Recent evidence from language comprehension and action simulation supports the claim that action pragmatics and action semantics draw on common representational resources, thus challenging the traditional divide between declarative and procedural action knowledge. To account for these observations, three kinds of theoretical frameworks are discussed: (i) semantics is grounded in pragmatics, (ii) pragmatics is anchored in semantics, and (iii) pragmatics is part and parcel of semantics. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Diagrammatic Representations in Domain-Specific Languages

OpenAIRE

Tourlas, Konstantinos

2002-01-01

One emerging approach to reducing the labour and costs of software development favours the specialisation of techniques to particular application domains. The rationale is that programs within a given domain often share enough common features and assumptions to enable the incorporation of substantial support mechanisms into domain-specific programming languages and associated tools. Instead of being machine-oriented, algorithmic implementations, programs in many domain-speci...

Test Anxiety among Foreign Language Learners: A Review of Literature

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Selami Aydın

2009-04-01

Full Text Available The findings obtained from previous research indicate that test anxiety has significant effects on the foreign language learning process. Thus, this paper aims to present a synthesis of research results on the sources and effects of test anxiety among foreign language learners. The results of the studies reviewed in the paper were mainly categorized under two sub-sections: the sources and effects of test anxiety. It is expected that the study will not only contribute to the limited research on the subject in Turkey, but also help increase the awareness among target groups such as learners, teacher and examiners.

Through the Window of Language: Assessing the Influence of Language Diversity on Thought

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

John A. LUCY

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Historically, researchers divided over whether the diverse representations of reality across languages were natural or conventional, but all tacitly assumed an optimal fit between language and reality. Twentieth century anthropological linguists interested in linguistic relativity have questioned this assumption and sought to characterize "reality" without it by using domain- or structure-centered approaches.

Attention and Representational Momentum

OpenAIRE

Hayes, Amy; Freyd, Jennifer J

1995-01-01

Representational momentum, the tendency for memory to be distorted in the direction of an implied transformation, suggests that dynamics are an intrinsic part of perceptual representations. We examined the effect of attention on dynamic representation by testing for representational momentum under conditions of distraction. Forward memory shifts increase when attention is divided. Attention may be involved in halting but not in maintaining dynamic representations.

The Future of World Englishes in Language Testing

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, James Dean

2014-01-01

This article begins by defining "world Englishes" (WEs) and the related paradigm of inner-, outer-, and expanding-circle English(es). The discussion then turns to the central concerns of the WEs and language testing (LT) communities with regard to how English tests can best be constructed to include various WEs by discussing (a) what…

Techniques for Automated Testing of Lola Industrial Robot Language Parser

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. M. Lutovac

2014-06-01

Full Text Available The accuracy of parsing execution directly affects the accuracy of semantic analysis, optimization and object code generation. Therefore, parser testing represents the basis of compiler testing. It should include tests for correct and expected, but also for unexpected and invalid cases. Techniques for testing the parser, as well as algorithms and tools for test sentences generation, are discussed in this paper. The methodology for initial testing of a newly developed compiler is proposed. Generation of negative test sentences by modifying the original language grammar is described. Positive and negative test cases generated by Grow, Purdom’s algorithm with and without length control, CDRC-P algorithm and CDRC-P algorithm with length control are applied to the testing of L-IRL robot programming language. For this purpose two different tools for generation of test sentences are used. Based on the presented analysis of possible solutions, the appropriate method can be chosen for testing the parser for smaller grammars with many recursive rules.

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…

Language Planning and Planned Languages: How Can Planned Languages Inform Language Planning?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Humphrey Tonkin

2015-04-01

Full Text Available The field of language planning (LP has largely ignored planned languages. Of classic descriptions of LP processes, only Tauli (preceded by Wüster suggests that planned languages (what Wüster calls Plansprache might bear on LP theory and practice. If LP aims "to modify the linguistic behaviour of some community for some reason," as Kaplan and Baldauf put it, creating a language de novo is little different. Language policy and planning are increasingly seen as more local and less official, and occasionally more international and cosmopolitan. Zamenhof's work on Esperanto provides extensive material, little studied, documenting the formation of the language and linking it particularly to issues of supranational LP. Defining LP decision-making, Kaplan & Baldauf begin with context and target population. Zamenhof's Esperanto came shortly before Ben-Yehuda's revived Hebrew. His target community was (mostly the world's educated elite; Ben-Yehuda's was worldwide Jewry. Both planners were driven not by linguistic interest but by sociopolitical ideology rooted in reaction to anti-Semitism and imbued with the idea of progress. Their territories had no boundaries, but were not imaginary. Function mattered as much as form (Haugen's terms, status as much as corpus. For Zamenhof, status planning involved emphasis on Esperanto's ownership by its community - a collective planning process embracing all speakers (cf. Hebrew. Corpus planning included a standardized European semantics, lexical selectivity based not simply on standardization but on representation, and the development of written, and literary, style. Esperanto was successful as linguistic system and community language, less as generally accepted lingua franca. Its terminology development and language cultivation offers a model for language revival, but Zamenhof's somewhat limited analysis of language economy left him unprepared to deal with language as power.

Making the grade: The English language test dilemma.

Science.gov (United States)

Trueland, Jennifer

2017-08-02

Hayley Purcell admits she felt apprehensive about receiving the results of a test designed to ensure she was proficient in English. After months of preparation, at a cost of several hundred pounds, the Australian had achieved a very good result overall, with 7.5 out of a possible nine in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).

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.

Effects of tonal language background on tests of temporal sequencing in children.

Science.gov (United States)

Mukari, Siti Zamratol-Mai S; Yu, Xuan; Ishak, Wan Syafira; Mazlan, Rafidah

2015-01-01

The aims of the present study were to determine the effects of language background on the performance of the pitch pattern sequence test (PPST) and duration pattern sequence test (DPST). As temporal order sequencing may be affected by age and working memory, these factors were also studied. Performance of tonal and non-tonal language speakers on PPST and DPST were compared. Twenty-eight native Mandarin (tonal language) speakers and twenty-nine native Malay (non-tonal language) speakers between seven to nine years old participated in this study. The results revealed that relative to native Malay speakers, native Mandarin speakers demonstrated better scores on the PPST in both humming and verbal labeling responses. However, a similar language effect was not apparent in the DPST. An age effect was only significant in the PPST (verbal labeling). Finally, no significant effect of working memory was found on the PPST and the DPST. These findings suggest that the PPST is affected by tonal language background, and highlight the importance of developing different normative values for tonal and non-tonal language speakers.

Iconicity as a general property of language: evidence from spoken and signed languages

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Pamela Perniss

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Current views about language are dominated by the idea of arbitrary connections between linguistic form and meaning. However, if we look beyond the more familiar Indo-European languages and also include both spoken and signed language modalities, we find that motivated, iconic form-meaning mappings are, in fact, pervasive in language. In this paper, we review the different types of iconic mappings that characterize languages in both modalities, including the predominantly visually iconic mappings in signed languages. Having shown that iconic mapping are present across languages, we then proceed to review evidence showing that language users (signers and speakers exploit iconicity in language processing and language acquisition. While not discounting the presence and importance of arbitrariness in language, we put forward the idea that iconicity need also be recognized as a general property of language, which may serve the function of reducing the gap between linguistic form and conceptual representation to allow the language system to hook up to motor and perceptual experience.

Prior knowledge of deaf students fluent in brazilian sign languages regarding the algebraic language in high school

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Silvia Teresinha Frizzarini

2014-06-01

Full Text Available There are few researches with deeper reflections on the study of algebra with deaf students. In order to validate and disseminate educational activities in that context, this article aims at highlighting the deaf students’ prior knowledge, fluent in Brazilian Sign Language, referring to the algebraic language used in high school. The theoretical framework used was Duval’s theory, with analysis of the changes, by treatment and conversion, of different registers of semiotic representation, in particular inequalities. The methodology used was the application of a diagnostic evaluation performed with deaf students, all fluent in Brazilian Sign Language, in a special school located in the north of Paraná State. We emphasize the need to work in both directions of conversion, in different languages, especially when the starting record is the graphic. Therefore, the conclusion reached was that one should not separate the algebraic representation from other records, due to the need of sign language perform not only the communication function, but also the functions of objectification and treatment, fundamental in cognitive development.

Testing foreign language impact on engineering students' scientific problem-solving performance

Science.gov (United States)

Tatzl, Dietmar; Messnarz, Bernd

2013-12-01

This article investigates the influence of English as the examination language on the solution of physics and science problems by non-native speakers in tertiary engineering education. For that purpose, a statistically significant total number of 96 students in four year groups from freshman to senior level participated in a testing experiment in the Degree Programme of Aviation at the FH JOANNEUM University of Applied Sciences, Graz, Austria. Half of each test group were given a set of 12 physics problems described in German, the other half received the same set of problems described in English. It was the goal to test linguistic reading comprehension necessary for scientific problem solving instead of physics knowledge as such. The results imply that written undergraduate English-medium engineering tests and examinations may not require additional examination time or language-specific aids for students who have reached university-entrance proficiency in English as a foreign language.

"Language," "Communication," and the Longing for the Authentic in LSP Testing

Science.gov (United States)

Hoekje, Barbara

2016-01-01

This commentary argues that the OET research raises inescapable contradictions in trying to separate "language" from "communication" within a weak performance test and advocates for reconceptualizing the legitimate domain of "language" more widely, reclaiming the full potential of the communicative competence…

Language and Symbolic Representation in Contemporary Mayan Poetry: a Linguistic and Literary Analysis of “Yaan a bin xook” by Briceida Cuevas Cob (2005

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Manya Wubbold

2015-12-01

Full Text Available This investigation, based on the dual analysis (linguistic/literary of the Mayan version of the poem “Yaan a bin xook”/ “Irás a la escuela”/“You Will Go to School” written by Briceida Cuevas Cob (2005, focuses on how cultural belief, practice, and iconic representation are communicated through language.  By working closely with Mayan language and culture expert Rolando Ek Naal, a native speaker of Maya, key terms and concepts throughout the poem have been examined to identify cultural symbolism that is embedded linguistically.   Besides the expertise of Mr. Ek Naal, this study has also been guided by the commentary of the poet herself, taken from a personal interview granted in 2012.  Although, Cuevas Cob is a contemporary poet and in this poem speaks about issues facing young Mayan women today, many aspects of the language and imagery that she uses (as this study demonstrates can be traced to Ancient belief and expression

The interplay of language and visual perception in working memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Souza, Alessandra S; Skóra, Zuzanna

2017-09-01

How do perception and language interact to form the representations that guide our thoughts and actions over the short-term? Here, we provide a first examination of this question by investigating the role of verbal labels in a continuous visual working memory (WM) task. Across four experiments, participants retained in memory the continuous color of a set of dots which were presented sequentially (Experiments 1-3) or simultaneously (Experiment 4). At test, they reproduced the colors of all dots using a color wheel. During stimulus presentation participants were required to either label the colors (color labeling) or to repeat "bababa" aloud (articulatory suppression), hence prompting or preventing verbal labeling, respectively. We tested four competing hypotheses of the labeling effect: (1) labeling generates a verbal representation that overshadows the visual representation; (2) labeling yields a verbal representation in addition to the visual one; (3) the labels function as a retrieval cue, adding distinctiveness to items in memory; and (4) labels activate visual categorical representations in long-term memory. Collectively, our experiments show that labeling does not overshadow the visual input; it augments it. Mixture modeling showed that labeling increased the quantity and quality of information in WM. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that labeling activates visual long-term categorical representations which help in reducing the noise in the internal representations of the visual stimuli in WM. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Representing and computing regular languages on massively parallel networks

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Miller, M.I.; O' Sullivan, J.A. (Electronic Systems and Research Lab., of Electrical Engineering, Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO (US)); Boysam, B. (Dept. of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY (US)); Smith, K.R. (Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Southern Illinois Univ., Edwardsville, IL (US))

1991-01-01

This paper proposes a general method for incorporating rule-based constraints corresponding to regular languages into stochastic inference problems, thereby allowing for a unified representation of stochastic and syntactic pattern constraints. The authors' approach first established the formal connection of rules to Chomsky grammars, and generalizes the original work of Shannon on the encoding of rule-based channel sequences to Markov chains of maximum entropy. This maximum entropy probabilistic view leads to Gibb's representations with potentials which have their number of minima growing at precisely the exponential rate that the language of deterministically constrained sequences grow. These representations are coupled to stochastic diffusion algorithms, which sample the language-constrained sequences by visiting the energy minima according to the underlying Gibbs' probability law. The coupling to stochastic search methods yields the all-important practical result that fully parallel stochastic cellular automata may be derived to generate samples from the rule-based constraint sets. The production rules and neighborhood state structure of the language of sequences directly determines the necessary connection structures of the required parallel computing surface. Representations of this type have been mapped to the DAP-510 massively-parallel processor consisting of 1024 mesh-connected bit-serial processing elements for performing automated segmentation of electron-micrograph images.

No grammatical gender effect on affective ratings: evidence from Italian and German languages.

Science.gov (United States)

Montefinese, Maria; Ambrosini, Ettore; Roivainen, Eka

2018-06-06

In this study, we tested the linguistic relativity hypothesis by studying the effect of grammatical gender (feminine vs. masculine) on affective judgments of conceptual representation in Italian and German. In particular, we examined the within- and cross-language grammatical gender effect and its interaction with participants' demographic characteristics (such as, the raters' age and sex) on semantic differential scales (affective ratings of valence, arousal and dominance) in Italian and German speakers. We selected the stimuli and the relative affective measures from Italian and German adaptations of the ANEW (Affective Norms for English Words). Bayesian and frequentist analyses yielded evidence for the absence of within- and cross-languages effects of grammatical gender and sex- and age-dependent interactions. These results suggest that grammatical gender does not affect judgments of affective features of semantic representation in Italian and German speakers, since an overt coding of word grammar is not required. Although further research is recommended to refine the impact of the grammatical gender on properties of semantic representation, these results have implications for any strong view of the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

Concurrent word generation and motor performance: further evidence for language-motor interaction.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amy D Rodriguez

Full Text Available Embodied/modality-specific theories of semantic memory propose that sensorimotor representations play an important role in perception and action. A large body of evidence supports the notion that concepts involving human motor action (i.e., semantic-motor representations are processed in both language and motor regions of the brain. However, most studies have focused on perceptual tasks, leaving unanswered questions about language-motor interaction during production tasks. Thus, we investigated the effects of shared semantic-motor representations on concurrent language and motor production tasks in healthy young adults, manipulating the semantic task (motor-related vs. nonmotor-related words and the motor task (i.e., standing still and finger-tapping. In Experiment 1 (n = 20, we demonstrated that motor-related word generation was sufficient to affect postural control. In Experiment 2 (n = 40, we demonstrated that motor-related word generation was sufficient to facilitate word generation and finger tapping. We conclude that engaging semantic-motor representations can have a reciprocal influence on motor and language production. Our study provides additional support for functional language-motor interaction, as well as embodied/modality-specific theories.

Linking Video and Text via Representations of Narrative

OpenAIRE

Salway, Andrew; Graham, Mike; Tomadaki, Eleftheria; Xu, Yan

2003-01-01

The ongoing TIWO project is investigating the synthesis of language technologies, like information extraction and corpus-based text analysis, video data modeling and knowledge representation. The aim is to develop a computational account of how video and text can be integrated by representations of narrative in multimedia systems. The multimedia domain is that of film and audio description – an emerging text type that is produced specifically to be informative about the events and objects dep...

Thought beyond language: neural dissociation of algebra and natural language.

Science.gov (United States)

Monti, Martin M; Parsons, Lawrence M; Osherson, Daniel N

2012-08-01

A central question in cognitive science is whether natural language provides combinatorial operations that are essential to diverse domains of thought. In the study reported here, we addressed this issue by examining the role of linguistic mechanisms in forging the hierarchical structures of algebra. In a 3-T functional MRI experiment, we showed that processing of the syntax-like operations of algebra does not rely on the neural mechanisms of natural language. Our findings indicate that processing the syntax of language elicits the known substrate of linguistic competence, whereas algebraic operations recruit bilateral parietal brain regions previously implicated in the representation of magnitude. This double dissociation argues against the view that language provides the structure of thought across all cognitive domains.

A theory upon origin of implicit musical language

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József P. Vas

2015-11-01

Full Text Available The author suggests that the origin of musicality is implied in an implicit musical language every human being possesses in uterus due to a resonance and attunement with prenatal environment, mainly the mother. It is emphasized that ego-development and evolving implicit musical language can be regarded as parallel processes. To support this idea a lot of examples of musical representations are demonstrated by the author. Music is viewed as a tone of ego-functioning involving the musical representations of bodily and visceral senses, cross-modal perception, unity of sense of self, individual fate of ego, and tripolar and bipolar musical coping codes. Finally, a special form of music therapy is shown to illustrate how can implicit musical language be transformed into explicit language by virtue of participants’ spontaneity, creativity, and playfulness.

A Theory Upon Origin of Implicit Musical Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Vas József, P

2015-11-30

The author suggests that the origin of musicality is implied in an implicit musical language every human being possesses in uterus due to a resonance and attunement with prenatal environment, mainly the mother. It is emphasized that ego-development and evolving implicit musical language can be regarded as parallel processes. To support this idea a lot of examples of musical representations are demonstrated by the author. Music is viewed as a tone of ego-functioning involving the musical representations of bodily and visceral senses, cross-modal perception, unity of sense of self, individual fate of ego, and tripolar and bipolar musical coping codes. Finally, a special form of music therapy is shown to illustrate how can implicit musical language be transformed into explicit language by virtue of participants' spontaneity, creativity, and playfulness.

Word reading skill predicts anticipation of upcoming spoken language input: a study of children developing proficiency in reading.

Science.gov (United States)

Mani, Nivedita; Huettig, Falk

2014-10-01

Despite the efficiency with which language users typically process spoken language, a growing body of research finds substantial individual differences in both the speed and accuracy of spoken language processing potentially attributable to participants' literacy skills. Against this background, the current study took a look at the role of word reading skill in listeners' anticipation of upcoming spoken language input in children at the cusp of learning to read; if reading skills affect predictive language processing, then children at this stage of literacy acquisition should be most susceptible to the effects of reading skills on spoken language processing. We tested 8-year-olds on their prediction of upcoming spoken language input in an eye-tracking task. Although children, like in previous studies to date, were successfully able to anticipate upcoming spoken language input, there was a strong positive correlation between children's word reading skills (but not their pseudo-word reading and meta-phonological awareness or their spoken word recognition skills) and their prediction skills. We suggest that these findings are most compatible with the notion that the process of learning orthographic representations during reading acquisition sharpens pre-existing lexical representations, which in turn also supports anticipation of upcoming spoken words. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cognitive Representation of Colour in Bilinguals: The Case of Greek Blues

Science.gov (United States)

Athanasopoulos, Panos

2009-01-01

A number of recent studies demonstrate that bilinguals with languages that differ in grammatical and lexical categories may shift their cognitive representation of those categories towards that of monolingual speakers of their second language. The current paper extended that investigation to the domain of colour in Greek-English bilinguals with…

Does the Test Work? Evaluating a Web-Based Language Placement Test

Science.gov (United States)

Long, Avizia Y.; Shin, Sun-Young; Geeslin, Kimberly; Willis, Erik W.

2018-01-01

In response to the need for examples of test validation from which everyday language programs can benefit, this paper reports on a study that used Bachman's (2005) assessment use argument (AUA) framework to examine evidence to support claims made about the intended interpretations and uses of scores based on a new web-based Spanish language…

Language Adaptation for Extending Post-Editing Estimates for Closely Related Languages

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rios Miguel

2016-10-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an open-source toolkit for predicting human post-editing efforts for closely related languages. At the moment, training resources for the Quality Estimation task are available for very few language directions and domains. Available resources can be expanded on the assumption that MT errors and the amount of post-editing required to correct them are comparable across related languages, even if the feature frequencies differ. In this paper we report a toolkit for achieving language adaptation, which is based on learning new feature representation using transfer learning methods. In particular, we report performance of a method based on Self-Taught Learning which adapts the English-Spanish pair to produce Quality Estimation models for translation from English into Portuguese, Italian and other Romance languages using the publicly available Autodesk dataset.

Conformance test development with the Java modeling language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Søndergaard, Hans; Korsholm, Stephan E.; Ravn, Anders P.

2017-01-01

In order to claim conformance with a Java Specification Request, a Java implementation has to pass all tests in an associated Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK). This paper presents a model-based development of a TCK test suite and a test execution tool for the draft Safety-Critical Java (SCJ......) profile specification. The Java Modeling Language (JML) is used to model conformance constraints for the profile. JML annotations define contracts for classes and interfaces. The annotations are translated by a tool into runtime assertion checks.Hereby the design and elaboration of the concrete test cases...

Internal representations reveal cultural diversity in expectations of facial expressions of emotion.

Science.gov (United States)

Jack, Rachael E; Caldara, Roberto; Schyns, Philippe G

2012-02-01

Facial expressions have long been considered the "universal language of emotion." Yet consistent cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions contradict such notions (e.g., R. E. Jack, C. Blais, C. Scheepers, P. G. Schyns, & R. Caldara, 2009). Rather, culture--as an intricate system of social concepts and beliefs--could generate different expectations (i.e., internal representations) of facial expression signals. To investigate, they used a powerful psychophysical technique (reverse correlation) to estimate the observer-specific internal representations of the 6 basic facial expressions of emotion (i.e., happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger, and sad) in two culturally distinct groups (i.e., Western Caucasian [WC] and East Asian [EA]). Using complementary statistical image analyses, cultural specificity was directly revealed in these representations. Specifically, whereas WC internal representations predominantly featured the eyebrows and mouth, EA internal representations showed a preference for expressive information in the eye region. Closer inspection of the EA observer preference revealed a surprising feature: changes of gaze direction, shown primarily among the EA group. For the first time, it is revealed directly that culture can finely shape the internal representations of common facial expressions of emotion, challenging notions of a biologically hardwired "universal language of emotion."

A Process for the Representation of openEHR ADL Archetypes in OWL Ontologies.

Science.gov (United States)

Porn, Alex Mateus; Peres, Leticia Mara; Didonet Del Fabro, Marcos

2015-01-01

ADL is a formal language to express archetypes, independent of standards or domain. However, its specification is not precise enough in relation to the specialization and semantic of archetypes, presenting difficulties in implementation and a few available tools. Archetypes may be implemented using other languages such as XML or OWL, increasing integration with Semantic Web tools. Exchanging and transforming data can be better implemented with semantics oriented models, for example using OWL which is a language to define and instantiate Web ontologies defined by W3C. OWL permits defining significant, detailed, precise and consistent distinctions among classes, properties and relations by the user, ensuring the consistency of knowledge than using ADL techniques. This paper presents a process of an openEHR ADL archetypes representation in OWL ontologies. This process consists of ADL archetypes conversion in OWL ontologies and validation of OWL resultant ontologies using the mutation test.

Development of a test and flight engineering oriented language. Phase 3: Presentation

Science.gov (United States)

Kamsler, W. F.; Case, C. W.; Kinney, E. L.; Gyure, J.

1970-01-01

The format material used in an oral presentation of the phase 3 study effort is given. The material includes a description of the language ALOFT and a terminology comparison with other test languages.

Language lateralization by functional MRI : a comparison with wada test-preliminary results

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ryoo, Jae Wook; Na, Dong Gyu; Byun, Hong Sik

1999-01-01

To evaluate the usefulness of functional MR imaging (fMRI) for the determination of language dominance and to assess differences in language lateralization according to activation task or activated area. Functional maps of the language area were obtained during word generation tasks(noun and verb) and a reading task in ten patients (9 right handed, 1 left handed) who had undergone the Wada test. MR examinations were performed using a 1.5T scanner and the EPI BOLD technique. The SPM program was employed for the postprocessing of images and the threshold for significance was set at p<0.001 or p<0.01. A lateralization index was calculated from the number of activated pixels in three hemispheric regions (whole hemisphere, frontal lobe, and temporoparietal lobe), and the results were compared with those of Wada tests. The results for lateralization of language area were compared among stimulation tasks and regions and used for calculation of lateralization indices. During the Wada test, nine patients were left dominant and one patient was right dominant for language. Language dominance based on activated signals in each hemisphere was consistent with the results of the Wada test in 87.5% (verb and noun generation tasks) and 90% (reading task) of patients. Language dominance determined by activated signals in the frontal lobe was consistent in 87.5%, 75%, and 80% of patients in each stimulation task (verb generation, noun generation, and reading), respectively. The consistency rate of activated signals in the temporoparietal lobe was 87.5%, 87.5% and 80% of patients in each task. the mean value of the lateralization index, calculated on the basis of activated signals in the temporoparietal lobe was higher than that in the hemisphere or frontal lobe. The verb generation task showed a higher lateralization index than the noun generation or reading task. The lateralization index was higher in the verb generation task and in the region of the temporoparietal lobe than in

Language lateralization by functional MRI : a comparison with wada test-preliminary results

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ryoo, Jae Wook; Na, Dong Gyu; Byun, Hong Sik [Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan Univ. School of Medicine, Seoul (Korea, Republic of)] (and others)

1999-05-01

To evaluate the usefulness of functional MR imaging (fMRI) for the determination of language dominance and to assess differences in language lateralization according to activation task or activated area. Functional maps of the language area were obtained during word generation tasks(noun and verb) and a reading task in ten patients (9 right handed, 1 left handed) who had undergone the Wada test. MR examinations were performed using a 1.5T scanner and the EPI BOLD technique. The SPM program was employed for the postprocessing of images and the threshold for significance was set at p<0.001 or p<0.01. A lateralization index was calculated from the number of activated pixels in three hemispheric regions (whole hemisphere, frontal lobe, and temporoparietal lobe), and the results were compared with those of Wada tests. The results for lateralization of language area were compared among stimulation tasks and regions and used for calculation of lateralization indices. During the Wada test, nine patients were left dominant and one patient was right dominant for language. Language dominance based on activated signals in each hemisphere was consistent with the results of the Wada test in 87.5% (verb and noun generation tasks) and 90% (reading task) of patients. Language dominance determined by activated signals in the frontal lobe was consistent in 87.5%, 75%, and 80% of patients in each stimulation task (verb generation, noun generation, and reading), respectively. The consistency rate of activated signals in the temporoparietal lobe was 87.5%, 87.5% and 80% of patients in each task. the mean value of the lateralization index, calculated on the basis of activated signals in the temporoparietal lobe was higher than that in the hemisphere or frontal lobe. The verb generation task showed a higher lateralization index than the noun generation or reading task. The lateralization index was higher in the verb generation task and in the region of the temporoparietal lobe than in

Neural Language Processing in Adolescent First-Language Learners: Longitudinal Case Studies in American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Ferjan Ramirez, Naja; Leonard, Matthew K; Davenport, Tristan S; Torres, Christina; Halgren, Eric; Mayberry, Rachel I

2016-03-01

One key question in neurolinguistics is the extent to which the neural processing system for language requires linguistic experience during early life to develop fully. We conducted a longitudinal anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG) analysis of lexico-semantic processing in 2 deaf adolescents who had no sustained language input until 14 years of age, when they became fully immersed in American Sign Language. After 2 to 3 years of language, the adolescents' neural responses to signed words were highly atypical, localizing mainly to right dorsal frontoparietal regions and often responding more strongly to semantically primed words (Ferjan Ramirez N, Leonard MK, Torres C, Hatrak M, Halgren E, Mayberry RI. 2014. Neural language processing in adolescent first-language learners. Cereb Cortex. 24 (10): 2772-2783). Here, we show that after an additional 15 months of language experience, the adolescents' neural responses remained atypical in terms of polarity. While their responses to less familiar signed words still showed atypical localization patterns, the localization of responses to highly familiar signed words became more concentrated in the left perisylvian language network. Our findings suggest that the timing of language experience affects the organization of neural language processing; however, even in adolescence, language representation in the human brain continues to evolve with experience. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The Empirical Dimension of Communicative Language Tests: The Case of Selected Philippine Universities

Science.gov (United States)

Bernardo, Alejandro S.

2011-01-01

This study examined the "communicativeness" of 22 English language tests designed and administered by 22 English instructors from 22 different colleges and universities in the Philippines. Its key objective was to answer the question "How communicative are the language tests used in assessing students' competence (knowledge of the…

The Self Representation in Schizophrenic patients: Considerations on the Draw a Tree Test

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Salvatore Settineri

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract   Objective: The tree is the archetypal symbol of the identification in the growing life. The objective of this study is to evaluate the representation of the self in schizophrenic patients through the tree drawing. Methods: Were identified 36 patients, 22 women and 14 (M-age=53, suffering from schizophrenic disorder. Through the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS and the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS positive and negative symptoms, and the reactive tree representation of the self were assessed.   Results: In the group with negative symptoms archetypal figures are more frequent, such as images that are part of the collective unconscious, or thought more archaic. In patients in which emerges the delirium, that is part of the most evolved thinking, near to the secondary process, the reality testing is better preserved. In cases where there are symptoms mixed the tree structure leads to an archetypal image. Conclusions: This study shows that in the draw of the tree trunk-to-crown ratio in schizophrenic patients was significantly higher than that of healthy individuals. The usefulness of the study insert itself in the Jungian analytic thought, for which psychotic thought corresponds to an abbaissement of the self activity.   Keyword: Representation of Self; Schizophrenia; Draw a Tree Test.

Improving the Traditional Testing Methods in Learning Foreign Languages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pachovski, Veno; Dimova, Slobodanka; Vaneva, Marjana

2012-01-01

A model for gathering oral answers as part of testing the speaker skills (i.e. command of language, native or foreign) is presented, as well as the software used in the experimentation. The research presented here is a result of more than six (6) months’ work with TESOL experts, based on 60 test...

The GRAIL concept modelling language for medical terminology.

Science.gov (United States)

Rector, A L; Bechhofer, S; Goble, C A; Horrocks, I; Nowlan, W A; Solomon, W D

1997-02-01

The GALEN representation and integration language (GRAIL) has been developed to support effective clinical user interfaces and extensible re-usable models of medical terminology. It has been used successfully to develop the prototype GALEN common reference (CORE) model for medical terminology and for a series of projects in clinical user interfaces within the GALEN and PEN&PAD projects. GRAIL is a description logic or frame language with novel features to support part-whole and other transitive relations and to support the GALEN modelling style aimed at re-use and application independence. GRAIL began as an experimental language. However, it has clarified many requirements for an effective knowledge representation language for clinical concepts. It still has numerous limitations despite its practical successes. The GRAIL experience is expected to form the basis for future languages which meet the same requirements but have greater expressiveness and more soundly based semantics. This paper provides a description and motivation for the GRAIL language and gives examples of the modelling paradigm which it supports.

Morality constrains the default representation of what is possible.

Science.gov (United States)

Phillips, Jonathan; Cushman, Fiery

2017-05-02

The capacity for representing and reasoning over sets of possibilities, or modal cognition, supports diverse kinds of high-level judgments: causal reasoning, moral judgment, language comprehension, and more. Prior research on modal cognition asks how humans explicitly and deliberatively reason about what is possible but has not investigated whether or how people have a default, implicit representation of which events are possible. We present three studies that characterize the role of implicit representations of possibility in cognition. Collectively, these studies differentiate explicit reasoning about possibilities from default implicit representations, demonstrate that human adults often default to treating immoral and irrational events as impossible, and provide a case study of high-level cognitive judgments relying on default implicit representations of possibility rather than explicit deliberation.

Bio-ecology and language: a necessary unity

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Cowley, Stephen

2014-01-01

-ecology. While shaped by discourse and beliefs about language-systems (and representations), the language and actions of human organism–environment systems change the world. As Garner (2004) argues, ecolinguistics can do more than invoke ‘interaction’ between language and ecology. While ‘realities’ are partly...... shared, much is biophysical. Living subjects link language and languaging with experience and technologies that have transformed the bio-ecology. Once these dynamics are subject to investigation, macrosocial issues can be reconnected with biological, human and linguistic concerns. Ecolinguistics can thus...

Computer-Based English Language Testing in China: Present and Future

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Guoxing; Zhang, Jing

2017-01-01

In this special issue on high-stakes English language testing in China, the two articles on computer-based testing (Jin & Yan; He & Min) highlight a number of consistent, ongoing challenges and concerns in the development and implementation of the nationwide IB-CET (Internet Based College English Test) and institutional computer-adaptive…

Representation of Aloneness in Forever Alone Guy Comic Strips

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Pricillia Chandra

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This study aims to discuss the representation of aloneness in Forever Alone Guy comic strips. The purpose of this research is to find out how the meaning of aloneness is constructed in the representation of Forever Alone Guy through the theory of representation described by Stuart Hall (1997, 2013. In the theory suggested by Hall, it is described that there are two ways to be done in creating representation. Those ways are through language/sign and mental representation. The mental representation is the only way used in this research with a reason that this analysis focuses to the stigmas attached to the concept of aloneness. The analysis shows that the construction of meaning is done through embedding clusters of negative stigmas to the three entities: single, alone and lonely. Thus, through the analysis, it can be concluded that the dominant meaning which represents being single and alone as the ‘imperfect’ condition plays an important role in the construction of the meaning

Language Teachers' Target Language Project: Language for Specific Purposes of Language Teaching

Science.gov (United States)

Korenev, Alexey; Westbrook, Carolyn; Merry, Yvonne; Ershova, Tatiana

2016-01-01

The Language Teachers' Target Language project (LTTL) aims to describe language teachers' target language use domain (Bachman & Palmer 2010) and to develop a language test for future teachers of English. The team comprises four researchers from Moscow State University (MSU) and Southampton Solent University.

Training Senior Teachers in Compulsory Computer Based Language Tests

Science.gov (United States)

Laborda, Jesus Garcia; Royo, Teresa Magal

2009-01-01

The IBT TOEFL has become the principal example of online high stakes language testing since 2005. Most instructors who do the preparation for IBT TOEFL face two main realities: first, students are eager and highly motivated to take the test because of the prospective implications; and, second, specific studies would be necessary to see if…

Recovering grammar relationships for the Java language specification

NARCIS (Netherlands)

R. Lämmel (Ralf); V. Zaytsev (Vadim)

2011-01-01

textabstractGrammar convergence is a method that helps in discovering relationships between different grammars of the same language or different language versions. The key element of the method is the operational, transformation-based representation of those relationships. Given input grammars for

Language Testing: The State of the Art. An Online Interview with James Dean Brown

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, James Dean; Salmani Nodoushan, Mohammad Ali

2015-01-01

In this interview, JD Brown reflects on language testing/assessment. He suggests that language testing can be seen as a continuum with hard core positivist approaches at one end and post modernist interpretive perspectives at the other, and also argues that norm referencing (be it proficiency, placement, or aptitude testing) and criterion…

Tracing the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes: cognitive representations of hypothesis testing.

Science.gov (United States)

Van Wallendael, L R; Hastie, R

1990-05-01

A well-documented phenomenon in opinion-revision literature is subjects' failure to revise probability estimates for an exhaustive set of mutually exclusive hypotheses in a complementary manner. However, prior research has not addressed the question of whether such behavior simply represents a misunderstanding of mathematical rules, or whether it is a consequence of a cognitive representation of hypotheses that is at odds with the Bayesian notion of a set relationship. Two alternatives to the Bayesian representation, a belief system (Shafer, 1976) and a system of independent hypotheses, were proposed, and three experiments were conducted to examine cognitive representations of hypothesis sets in the testing of multiple competing hypotheses. Subjects were given brief murder mysteries to solve and allowed to request various types of information about the suspects; after having received each new piece of information, subjects rated each suspect's probability of being the murderer. Presence and timing of suspect eliminations were varied in the first two experiments; the final experiment involved the varying of percentages of clues that referred to more than one suspect (for example, all of the female suspects). The noncomplementarity of opinion revisions remained a strong phenomenon in all conditions. Information-search data refuted the idea that subjects represented hypotheses as a Bayesian set; further study of the independent hypotheses theory and Shaferian belief functions as descriptive models is encouraged.

Effects of computer-based immediate feedback on foreign language listening comprehension and test-associated anxiety.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Shu-Ping; Su, Hui-Kai; Lee, Shin-Da

2012-06-01

This study investigated the effects of immediate feedback on computer-based foreign language listening comprehension tests and on intrapersonal test-associated anxiety in 72 English major college students at a Taiwanese University. Foreign language listening comprehension of computer-based tests designed by MOODLE, a dynamic e-learning environment, with or without immediate feedback together with the state-trait anxiety inventory (STAI) were tested and repeated after one week. The analysis indicated that immediate feedback during testing caused significantly higher anxiety and resulted in significantly higher listening scores than in the control group, which had no feedback. However, repeated feedback did not affect the test anxiety and listening scores. Computer-based immediate feedback did not lower debilitating effects of anxiety but enhanced students' intrapersonal eustress-like anxiety and probably improved their attention during listening tests. Computer-based tests with immediate feedback might help foreign language learners to increase attention in foreign language listening comprehension.

TEST OF ENGLISH FOR AVIATION PERSONNEL TO MEET ICAO LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY REQUIREMENTS

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Olena Petrashchuk

2012-10-01

Full Text Available  The article is devoted to the actual problem of the assessment of English language proficiency of aviation personnel. The paper presents an English language test, which is used for professional pilots and air traffic controllers.

Developing Testing Accommodations for English Language Learners: Illustrations as Visual Supports for Item Accessibility

Science.gov (United States)

Solano-Flores, Guillermo; Wang, Chao; Kachchaf, Rachel; Soltero-Gonzalez, Lucinda; Nguyen-Le, Khanh

2014-01-01

We address valid testing for English language learners (ELLs)--students in the United States who are schooled in English while they are still acquiring English as a second language. Also, we address the need for procedures for systematically developing ELL testing accommodations--changes in tests intended to support ELLs to gain access to the…

Some Problems and Proposals for Knowledge Representation.

Science.gov (United States)

1984-01-01

BROTHER(BiI, AI ) and FATHER( AI ,John) According to Woods, these both denote the fact that Bill is the uncle of John. However, we now must have two...34knowledge representation language being developed at the Berkeley Artificial Inteligience Research Project. KODIAK is an attempt to redress the above

A Representation System User Interface for Knowledge Base Designers

OpenAIRE

Fikes, Richard E.

1982-01-01

A major strength of frame-based knowledge representation languages is their ability to provide the knowledge base designer with a concise and intuitively appealing means expression. The claim of intuitive appeal is based on the observation that the object -centered style of description provided by these languages often closely matches a designer's understanding of the domain being modeled and therefore lessens the burden of reformulation involved in developing a formal description. To be effe...

Second Language Acquisition.

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McLaughlin, Barry; Harrington, Michael

1989-01-01

A distinction is drawn between representational and processing models of second-language acquisition. The first approach is derived primarily from linguistics, the second from psychology. Both fields, it is argued, need to collaborate more fully, overcoming disciplinary narrowness in order to achieve more fruitful research. (GLR)

Interaction and Representational Integration: Evidence from Speech Errors

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Goldrick, Matthew; Baker, H. Ross; Murphy, Amanda; Baese-Berk, Melissa

2011-01-01

We examine the mechanisms that support interaction between lexical, phonological and phonetic processes during language production. Studies of the phonetics of speech errors have provided evidence that partially activated lexical and phonological representations influence phonetic processing. We examine how these interactive effects are modulated…

Knowledge Representation in the Context of E-business Applications

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Simona Elena Varlan

2010-03-01

Full Text Available The article emphasizes the theoretical principles of knowledge representation. The paper also tries to show how to represent knowledge in the context of e-business applications creating atagging platform for economic knowledge using SKOS language.

Spatial representations elicit dual-coding effects in mental imagery.

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Verges, Michelle; Duffy, Sean

2009-08-01

Spatial aspects of words are associated with their canonical locations in the real world. Yet little research has tested whether spatial associations denoted in language comprehension generalize to their corresponding images. We directly tested the spatial aspects of mental imagery in picture and word processing (Experiment 1). We also tested whether spatial representations of motion words produce similar perceptual-interference effects as demonstrated by object words (Experiment 2). Findings revealed that words denoting an upward spatial location produced slower responses to targets appearing at the top of the display, whereas words denoting a downward spatial location produced slower responses to targets appearing at the bottom of the display. Perceptual-interference effects did not obtain for pictures or for words lacking a spatial relation. These findings provide greater empirical support for the perceptual-symbols system theory (Barsalou, 1999, 2008). Copyright © 2009 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Artificial intelligence, expert systems, computer vision, and natural language processing

Science.gov (United States)

Gevarter, W. B.

1984-01-01

An overview of artificial intelligence (AI), its core ingredients, and its applications is presented. The knowledge representation, logic, problem solving approaches, languages, and computers pertaining to AI are examined, and the state of the art in AI is reviewed. The use of AI in expert systems, computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition and understanding, speech synthesis, problem solving, and planning is examined. Basic AI topics, including automation, search-oriented problem solving, knowledge representation, and computational logic, are discussed.

Understanding and representing natural language meaning

Science.gov (United States)

Waltz, D. L.; Maran, L. R.; Dorfman, M. H.; Dinitz, R.; Farwell, D.

1982-12-01

During this contract period the authors have: (1) continued investigation of events and actions by means of representation schemes called 'event shape diagrams'; (2) written a parsing program which selects appropriate word and sentence meanings by a parallel process know as activation and inhibition; (3) begun investigation of the point of a story or event by modeling the motivations and emotional behaviors of story characters; (4) started work on combining and translating two machine-readable dictionaries into a lexicon and knowledge base which will form an integral part of our natural language understanding programs; (5) made substantial progress toward a general model for the representation of cognitive relations by comparing English scene and event descriptions with similar descriptions in other languages; (6) constructed a general model for the representation of tense and aspect of verbs; (7) made progress toward the design of an integrated robotics system which accepts English requests, and uses visual and tactile inputs in making decisions and learning new tasks.

Do children with dyslexia and/or specific language impairment compensate for place assimilation? Insight into phonological grammar and representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Marshall, Chloe R; Ramus, Franck; van der Lely, Heather

2011-10-01

English speakers have to recognize, for example, that te[m] in te[m] pens is a form of ten, despite place assimilation of the nasal consonant. Children with dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI) are commonly proposed to have a phonological deficit, and we investigate whether that deficit extends to place assimilation, as a way of probing phonological representations and phonological grammar. Children with SLI plus dyslexia, SLI only, and dyslexia only listened to sentences containing a target word in different assimilatory contexts-viable, unviable, and no change-and pressed a button to report hearing the target. The dyslexia-only group did not differ from age-matched controls, but the SLI groups showed more limited ability to accurately identify words within sentences. Once this factor was taken into account, the groups did not differ in their ability to compensate for assimilation. The results add to a growing body of evidence that phonological representations are not necessarily impaired in dyslexia. SLI children's results suggest that they too are sensitive to this aspect of phonological grammar, but are more liberal in their acceptance of alternative phonological forms of words. Furthermore, these children's ability to reject alternative phonological forms seems to be primarily limited by their vocabulary size and phonological awareness abilities.

Visual dataflow language for educational robots programming

OpenAIRE

ZIMIN G.A.; MORDVINOV D.A.

2016-01-01

Visual domain-specific languages usually have low entry barrier. Sometimes even children can program on such languages by working with visual representations. This is widely used in educational robotics domain, where most commonly used programming environments are visual. The paper describes a novel dataflow visual programming environment for embedded robotic platforms. Obviously, complex dataflow languages are not simple for understanding. The purpose of our tool is to "bridge" between light...

Immigration, language proficiency, and autobiographical memories: Lifespan distribution and second-language access.

Science.gov (United States)

Esposito, Alena G; Baker-Ward, Lynne

2016-08-01

This investigation examined two controversies in the autobiographical literature: how cross-language immigration affects the distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan and under what circumstances language-dependent recall is observed. Both Spanish/English bilingual immigrants and English monolingual non-immigrants participated in a cue word study, with the bilingual sample taking part in a within-subject language manipulation. The expected bump in the number of memories from early life was observed for non-immigrants but not immigrants, who reported more memories for events surrounding immigration. Aspects of the methodology addressed possible reasons for past discrepant findings. Language-dependent recall was influenced by second-language proficiency. Results were interpreted as evidence that bilinguals with high second-language proficiency, in contrast to those with lower second-language proficiency, access a single conceptual store through either language. The final multi-level model predicting language-dependent recall, including second-language proficiency, age of immigration, internal language, and cue word language, explained ¾ of the between-person variance and (1)/5 of the within-person variance. We arrive at two conclusions. First, major life transitions influence the distribution of memories. Second, concept representation across multiple languages follows a developmental model. In addition, the results underscore the importance of considering language experience in research involving memory reports.

Language and Spatial Reorientation: Evidence from Severe Aphasia

Science.gov (United States)

Bek, Judith; Blades, Mark; Siegal, Michael; Varley, Rosemary

2010-01-01

Investigating spatial cognition in individuals with acquired language impairments can inform our understanding of how components of language are involved in spatial representation. Using the reorientation paradigm of Hermer-Vazquez, Spelke, and Katsnelson (1999), we examined spatial cue integration (landmark-geometry conjunctions) in individuals…

Event representations constrain the structure of language: Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases.

Science.gov (United States)

Strickland, Brent; Geraci, Carlo; Chemla, Emmanuel; Schlenker, Philippe; Kelepir, Meltem; Pfau, Roland

2015-05-12

According to a theoretical tradition dating back to Aristotle, verbs can be classified into two broad categories. Telic verbs (e.g., "decide," "sell," "die") encode a logical endpoint, whereas atelic verbs (e.g., "think," "negotiate," "run") do not, and the denoted event could therefore logically continue indefinitely. Here we show that sign languages encode telicity in a seemingly universal way and moreover that even nonsigners lacking any prior experience with sign language understand these encodings. In experiments 1-5, nonsigning English speakers accurately distinguished between telic (e.g., "decide") and atelic (e.g., "think") signs from (the historically unrelated) Italian Sign Language, Sign Language of the Netherlands, and Turkish Sign Language. These results were not due to participants' inferring that the sign merely imitated the action in question. In experiment 6, we used pseudosigns to show that the presence of a salient visual boundary at the end of a gesture was sufficient to elicit telic interpretations, whereas repeated movement without salient boundaries elicited atelic interpretations. Experiments 7-10 confirmed that these visual cues were used by all of the sign languages studied here. Together, these results suggest that signers and nonsigners share universally accessible notions of telicity as well as universally accessible "mapping biases" between telicity and visual form.

Testing Math or Testing Language? The Construct Validity of the KeyMath-Revised for Children with Intellectual Disability and Language Difficulties

Science.gov (United States)

Rhodes, Katherine T.; Branum-Martin, Lee; Morris, Robin D.; Romski, MaryAnn; Sevcik, Rose A.

2015-01-01

Although it is often assumed that mathematics ability alone predicts mathematics test performance, linguistic demands may also predict achievement. This study examined the role of language in mathematics assessment performance for children with intellectual disability (ID) at less severe levels, on the KeyMath-Revised Inventory (KM-R) with a…

The consequences of English language testing for international health professionals and students: An Australian case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Rumsey, Michele; Thiessen, Jodi; Buchan, James; Daly, John

2016-02-01

To discuss the perceptions about the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) and its impact on migration and practice of migrant health professionals in Australia. Thematic analysis of interviews with 14 health industry participants and 35 migrated health professionals in Australia. Language testing is a barrier to health professional registration for migrant health workers in Australia. While two English language tests are recognised by the registration authorities in Australia, it is the International English Language Testing System that is most commonly used. This paper reports that study participants had underlying negative perceptions of the International English Language Testing System which they report, affect their move to Australia. These negative perceptions are caused by: frustration due to changes to processes for migration and registration; challenges regarding the structure of IELTS including timing of when test results expire, scoring requirements, cost, and suitability; and the resulting feelings of inadequacy caused by the test itself. This study has shown that some respondents have experienced difficulties in relation to the International English Language Testing System as part of their migration process. It was found that there is very little research into the effectiveness of the IELTS as it is currently administered for overseas health care professionals. Several recommendations are provided including areas for further research. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The differential item functioning and structural equivalence of a nonverbal cognitive ability test for five language groups

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Pieter Schaap

2011-10-01

Research purpose: The aim of the study was to determine the differential item functioning (DIF and structural equivalence of a nonverbal cognitive ability test (the PiB/SpEEx Observance test [401] for five South African language groups. Motivation for study: Cultural and language group sensitive tests can lead to unfair discrimination and is a contentious workplace issue in South Africa today. Misconceptions about psychometric testing in industry can cause tests to lose credibility if industries do not use a scientifically sound test-by-test evaluation approach. Research design, approach and method: The researcher used a quasi-experimental design and factor analytic and logistic regression techniques to meet the research aims. The study used a convenience sample drawn from industry and an educational institution. Main findings: The main findings of the study show structural equivalence of the test at a holistic level and nonsignificant DIF effect sizes for most of the comparisons that the researcher made. Practical/managerial implications: This research shows that the PIB/SpEEx Observance Test (401 is not completely language insensitive. One should see it rather as a language-reduced test when people from different language groups need testing. Contribution/value-add: The findings provide supporting evidence that nonverbal cognitive tests are plausible alternatives to verbal tests when one compares people from different language groups.

Denials of Racism in Canadian English Language Textbooks

Science.gov (United States)

Gulliver, Trevor; Thurrell, Kristy

2016-01-01

This critical discourse analysis examines denials of racism in descriptions of Canada and Canadians from English language textbooks. Denials of racism often accompany racist and nationalist discourse, preempting observations of racism. The study finds that in representations of Canada or Canadians, English language texts minimize and downplay…

A word in the hand: action, gesture and mental representation in humans and non-human primates

Science.gov (United States)

Cartmill, Erica A.; Beilock, Sian; Goldin-Meadow, Susan

2012-01-01

The movements we make with our hands both reflect our mental processes and help to shape them. Our actions and gestures can affect our mental representations of actions and objects. In this paper, we explore the relationship between action, gesture and thought in both humans and non-human primates and discuss its role in the evolution of language. Human gesture (specifically representational gesture) may provide a unique link between action and mental representation. It is kinaesthetically close to action and is, at the same time, symbolic. Non-human primates use gesture frequently to communicate, and do so flexibly. However, their gestures mainly resemble incomplete actions and lack the representational elements that characterize much of human gesture. Differences in the mirror neuron system provide a potential explanation for non-human primates' lack of representational gestures; the monkey mirror system does not respond to representational gestures, while the human system does. In humans, gesture grounds mental representation in action, but there is no evidence for this link in other primates. We argue that gesture played an important role in the transition to symbolic thought and language in human evolution, following a cognitive leap that allowed gesture to incorporate representational elements. PMID:22106432

Algorithmic foundation of multi-scale spatial representation

CERN Document Server

Li, Zhilin

2006-01-01

With the widespread use of GIS, multi-scale representation has become an important issue in the realm of spatial data handling. However, no book to date has systematically tackled the different aspects of this discipline. Emphasizing map generalization, Algorithmic Foundation of Multi-Scale Spatial Representation addresses the mathematical basis of multi-scale representation, specifically, the algorithmic foundation.Using easy-to-understand language, the author focuses on geometric transformations, with each chapter surveying a particular spatial feature. After an introduction to the essential operations required for geometric transformations as well as some mathematical and theoretical background, the book describes algorithms for a class of point features/clusters. It then examines algorithms for individual line features, such as the reduction of data points, smoothing (filtering), and scale-driven generalization, followed by a discussion of algorithms for a class of line features including contours, hydrog...

Language and the origin of numerical concepts.

Science.gov (United States)

Gelman, Rochel; Gallistel, C R

2004-10-15

Reports of research with the Pirahã and Mundurukú Amazonian Indians of Brazil lend themselves to discussions of the role of language in the origin of numerical concepts. The research findings indicate that, whether or not humans have an extensive counting list, they share with nonverbal animals a language-independent representation of number, with limited, scale-invariant precision. What causal role, then, does knowledge of the language of counting serve? We consider the strong Whorfian proposal, that of linguistic determinism; the weak Whorfian hypothesis, that language influences how we think; and that the "language of thought" maps to spoken language or symbol systems.

Bilingualism, Language Disorders and Intercultural Families in Contemporary Italy: Family Relations, Transmission of Language and Representations of Otherness.

Science.gov (United States)

Bruno, Davide; Balottin, Umberto; Berlincioni, Vanna; Moro, Marie Rose

2016-03-01

This study aims to show how language disorders in children affect language transmission and the mixedness experience in intercultural families. To this end, it adopts a qualitative method of study based on the administration of ad hoc interviews to intercultural couples who consulted our Child Neuropsychiatry Service because of language disorders in their children. One of the main consequences, when the child of an intercultural couple presents a language disorder and a diagnostic process has to be initiated, may be interruption of the transmission of the second language, especially if it is the mother's language. The decision to do this, which may be taken on the advice of teachers and health professionals, but also because the parents themselves often attribute their child's language disorder to his bilingual condition, affects not only the relationship between the mother and her child, but also processes in the construction of parenthood and in the structuring of the child's personality and the plurality of his affiliations. A clear understanding of how the dialectic between the categories of "alien" and "familiar" is managed in these contemporary families, which have to reckon with the condition of otherness, is crucial for psychiatrists and psychotherapists working in settings in which cultural difference is an issue to consider.

Processes and Reasoning in Representations of Linear Functions

Science.gov (United States)

Adu-Gyamfi, Kwaku; Bossé, Michael J.

2014-01-01

This study examined student actions, interpretations, and language in respect to questions raised regarding tabular, graphical, and algebraic representations in the context of functions. The purpose was to investigate students' interpretations and specific ways of working within table, graph, and the algebraic on notions fundamental to a…

Wada test for evaluation of language and memory function in medically intractable epilepsy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hong, Yong Kook; Chung, Tae Sub; Suh, Jung Ho; Kim, Dong Ik; Kim, Eun Kyung; Lee, Byung In; Huh, Kyun

1992-01-01

The Wada test was performed for lateralization of language and memory function, using intracarotid injection of Sodium Amytal. But the internal carotid artery (ICA) Wada test has some limitations for testing memory function. The posterior cerebral artery (PCA) Wada test has been designed to modify the ICA Wada test for testing memory function selectively. In our study, 10 patients out of 12 patients with intractable seizure underwent only the ICA Wada test and the other 2 patients underwent both the ICA and the selective PCA Wada test. In all 12 patients undergoing the ICA Wada test, we successfully localized speech and language dominance. Four of 12 patients who underwent the ICA Wada test for evaluation of memory function displayed superior memory functions in one hemisphere, but the other hemisphere also significantly contributed to memory. The selective PCA Wada test, performed in 2 patients, showed successful results of memory function test in both patients. Four of 12 patients underwent temporal lobectomy and there was no major post-operative language or memory deficits. We concluded that the ICA and PCA Wada tests are useful for preoperative evaluation of medically intractable epilepsy, and the PCA Wada test is valuable in memory evaluation in some patients who have high risk of postoperative global amnesia after temporal lobectomy following equivocal results of memory function by the ICA Wada test

Wada test for evaluation of language and memory function in medically intractable epilepsy

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hong, Yong Kook; Chung, Tae Sub; Suh, Jung Ho; Kim, Dong Ik; Kim, Eun Kyung; Lee, Byung In; Huh, Kyun [College of Medicine, Yonsei University, Seoul (Korea, Republic of)

1992-05-15

The Wada test was performed for lateralization of language and memory function, using intracarotid injection of Sodium Amytal. But the internal carotid artery (ICA) Wada test has some limitations for testing memory function. The posterior cerebral artery (PCA) Wada test has been designed to modify the ICA Wada test for testing memory function selectively. In our study, 10 patients out of 12 patients with intractable seizure underwent only the ICA Wada test and the other 2 patients underwent both the ICA and the selective PCA Wada test. In all 12 patients undergoing the ICA Wada test, we successfully localized speech and language dominance. Four of 12 patients who underwent the ICA Wada test for evaluation of memory function displayed superior memory functions in one hemisphere, but the other hemisphere also significantly contributed to memory. The selective PCA Wada test, performed in 2 patients, showed successful results of memory function test in both patients. Four of 12 patients underwent temporal lobectomy and there was no major post-operative language or memory deficits. We concluded that the ICA and PCA Wada tests are useful for preoperative evaluation of medically intractable epilepsy, and the PCA Wada test is valuable in memory evaluation in some patients who have high risk of postoperative global amnesia after temporal lobectomy following equivocal results of memory function by the ICA Wada test.

Cubic scattering amplitudes for all massless representations of the Poincare group in any space-time dimension

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fradkin, E.S.; Metsaev, R.R.

1996-02-01

Using the language of highest weight representations and the light cone formalism we construct a full list of cubic amplitudes of scattering for all bosonic massless representations of the Poincare group in any even space-time dimension. (author). 29 refs

Does the speaker's voice quality influence children's performance on a language comprehension test?

Science.gov (United States)

Lyberg-Åhlander, Viveka; Haake, Magnus; Brännström, Jonas; Schötz, Susanne; Sahlén, Birgitta

2015-02-01

A small number of studies have explored children's perception of speakers' voice quality and its possible influence on language comprehension. The aim of this explorative study was to investigate the relationship between the examiner's voice quality, the child's performance on a digital version of a language comprehension test, the Test for Reception of Grammar (TROG-2), and two measures of cognitive functioning. The participants were (n = 86) mainstreamed 8-year old children with typical language development. Two groups of children (n = 41/45) were presented with the TROG-2 through recordings of one female speaker: one group was presented with a typical voice and the other with a simulated dysphonic voice. Significant associations were found between executive functioning and language comprehension. The results also showed that children listening to the dysphonic voice achieved significantly lower scores for more difficult sentences ("the man but not the horse jumps") and used more self-corrections on simpler sentences ("the girl is sitting"). Findings suggest that a dysphonic speaker's voice may force the child to allocate capacity to the processing of the voice signal at the expense of comprehension. The findings have implications for clinical and research settings where standardized language tests are used.

Knowledge Representation from Classification Schema to Semantic Web (I

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Silvia-Adriana Tomescu

2014-01-01

Full Text Available In this essay we aim to investigate knowledge as approach of describing possible worlds through classification schema, taxonomies, ontologies and semantic web. We focus on the historical background and the methods of culture and civilization representation. In this regard, we studied the ancient concern to classify knowledge, from the biblical period when the Tree Metaphor concentrated the essence of knowledge, to the Francis Bacon classification and then Paul Otlet and we analysed the languages used in the scientific fields and then in the information science filed, emphasizing on the improvements of the ICT: hypertext and semantic web. We paid a special attention to the knowledge construction through math language and exchange standards. The reason of the approach comes from the logic and philosophic base of the knowledge representation that underline the idea that only properly structured scientific domains ensure the progress of the society.

Screening for Specific Language Impairment in Preschool Children: Evaluating a Screening Procedure Including the Token Test

Science.gov (United States)

Willinger, Ulrike; Schmoeger, Michaela; Deckert, Matthias; Eisenwort, Brigitte; Loader, Benjamin; Hofmair, Annemarie; Auff, Eduard

2017-01-01

Specific language impairment (SLI) comprises impairments in receptive and/or expressive language. Aim of this study was to evaluate a screening for SLI. 61 children with SLI (SLI-children, age-range 4-6 years) and 61 matched typically developing controls were tested for receptive language ability (Token Test-TT) and for intelligence (Wechsler…

Unique Neural Characteristics of Atypical Lateralization of Language in Healthy Individuals

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Szymon P. Biduła

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI in 63 healthy participants, including left-handed and ambidextrous individuals, we tested how atypical lateralization of language—i. e., bilateral or right hemispheric language representation—differs from the typical left-hemisphere dominance. Although regardless of their handedness, all 11 participants from the atypical group engaged classical language centers, i.e., Broca's and Wernicke's areas, the right-hemisphere components of the default mode network (DMN, including the angular gyrus and middle temporal gyrus, were also critically involved during the verbal fluency task. Importantly, activity in these regions could not be explained in terms of mirroring the typical language pattern because left-hemisphere dominant individuals did not exhibit similar significant signal modulations. Moreover, when spatial extent of language-related activity across whole brain was considered, the bilateral language organization entailed more diffuse functional processing. Finally, we detected significant differences between the typical and atypical group in the resting-state connectivity at the global and local level. These findings suggest that the atypical lateralization of language has unique features, and is not a simple mirror image of the typical left hemispheric language representation.

The mystery of language evolution

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marc D Hauser

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that, to date, 1 studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; 2 the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; 3 our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; 4 all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language’s origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses. We conclude by presenting some suggestions about possible paths forward.

Representational Classroom Practices that Contribute to Students' Conceptual and Representational Understanding of Chemical Bonding

Science.gov (United States)

Hilton, Annette; Nichols, Kim

2011-11-01

Understanding bonding is fundamental to success in chemistry. A number of alternative conceptions related to chemical bonding have been reported in the literature. Research suggests that many alternative conceptions held by chemistry students result from previous teaching; if teachers are explicit in the use of representations and explain their content-specific forms and functions, this might be avoided. The development of an understanding of and ability to use multiple representations is crucial to students' understanding of chemical bonding. This paper draws on data from a larger study involving two Year 11 chemistry classes (n = 27, n = 22). It explores the contribution of explicit instruction about multiple representations to students' understanding and representation of chemical bonding. The instructional strategies were documented using audio-recordings and the teacher-researcher's reflection journal. Pre-test-post-test comparisons showed an improvement in conceptual understanding and representational competence. Analysis of the students' texts provided further evidence of the students' ability to use multiple representations to explain macroscopic phenomena on the molecular level. The findings suggest that explicit instruction about representational form and function contributes to the enhancement of representational competence and conceptual understanding of bonding in chemistry. However, the scaffolding strategies employed by the teacher play an important role in the learning process. This research has implications for professional development enhancing teachers' approaches to these aspects of instruction around chemical bonding.

Modeling Language and Cognition with Deep Unsupervised Learning:A Tutorial Overview

OpenAIRE

Marco eZorzi; Marco eZorzi; Alberto eTestolin; Ivilin Peev Stoianov; Ivilin Peev Stoianov

2013-01-01

Deep unsupervised learning in stochastic recurrent neural networks with many layers of hidden units is a recent breakthrough in neural computation research. These networks build a hierarchy of progressively more complex distributed representations of the sensory data by fitting a hierarchical generative model. In this article we discuss the theoretical foundations of this approach and we review key issues related to training, testing and analysis of deep networks for modeling language and cog...

Modeling language and cognition with deep unsupervised learning: a tutorial overview

OpenAIRE

Zorzi, Marco; Testolin, Alberto; Stoianov, Ivilin P.

2013-01-01

Deep unsupervised learning in stochastic recurrent neural networks with many layers of hidden units is a recent breakthrough in neural computation research. These networks build a hierarchy of progressively more complex distributed representations of the sensory data by fitting a hierarchical generative model. In this article we discuss the theoretical foundations of this approach and we review key issues related to training, testing and analysis of deep networks for modeling language and cog...

Positivity of the English Language

Science.gov (United States)

Kloumann, Isabel M.; Danforth, Christopher M.; Harris, Kameron Decker; Bliss, Catherine A.; Dodds, Peter Sheridan

2012-01-01

Over the last million years, human language has emerged and evolved as a fundamental instrument of social communication and semiotic representation. People use language in part to convey emotional information, leading to the central and contingent questions: (1) What is the emotional spectrum of natural language? and (2) Are natural languages neutrally, positively, or negatively biased? Here, we report that the human-perceived positivity of over 10,000 of the most frequently used English words exhibits a clear positive bias. More deeply, we characterize and quantify distributions of word positivity for four large and distinct corpora, demonstrating that their form is broadly invariant with respect to frequency of word use. PMID:22247779

Positivity of the English language.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Isabel M Kloumann

Full Text Available Over the last million years, human language has emerged and evolved as a fundamental instrument of social communication and semiotic representation. People use language in part to convey emotional information, leading to the central and contingent questions: (1 What is the emotional spectrum of natural language? and (2 Are natural languages neutrally, positively, or negatively biased? Here, we report that the human-perceived positivity of over 10,000 of the most frequently used English words exhibits a clear positive bias. More deeply, we characterize and quantify distributions of word positivity for four large and distinct corpora, demonstrating that their form is broadly invariant with respect to frequency of word use.

Present and Future Languages – How Innovation Has Changed Us

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Manuel Luís Au-Yong-Oliveira

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Given the growth in usage of online social networks, such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat, which rely on videos and images (such as photos to relay information between connections, new intuitive languages, though not yet formally recognized, have emerged. We also herein give the example of a new language we have created – the Business Narrative Modelling Language (BNML – which communicates business perspectives based on pictorial representations, supported by the narrative. Currently, the concept of language is linked to the use of words. We foresee that such a definition of language will have to change to include other structured forms of communication, resorting and relying on graphics, also. We give examples of BNML representations, with regards to two case studies we have performed, based on face-to-face interviews and company visits. At ExpressGlass technology plays an important role, while at Yazaki Saltano a remarkable team effort between Toyota suppliers is made evident, to create innovation.

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 ...

Knowledge representation in a world with vague concepts

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Tresp, C. [Aachen Technical Univ. (Germany); Becks, A.; Klinkenberg, R.; Hiltner, J. [Univ. of Dortmund (Germany)

1996-12-31

In this paper the foundation of a knowledge representation system is introduced. It deals with fuzzy concepts and uncertain relationships. The problem we finally wish to solve, lays in the fact that on the one hand most actual methods of knowledge representation are not able to deal with vague knowledge. On the other hand, those few methods that care for vagueness lack well-defined semantics and therefore do not have a implementation-independent behavior. The proposed method is designed to model vague knowledge with well-defined semantics. Besides the language definition, basic patterns of reasoning are introduced.

AMSTERDAM-NIJMEGEN EVERYDAY LANGUAGE TEST - CONSTRUCTION, RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

NARCIS (Netherlands)

BLOMERT, L; KEAN, ML; KOSTER, C; SCHOKKER, J

1994-01-01

The Amsterdam-Nijmegen Everyday Language Test (ANELT) is designed to measure, first, the level of verbal communicative abilities of aphasic patients and, second, changes in these abilities over time. The level of communicative effectiveness is determined by the adequacy of bringing a message across.

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.

Multilingual natural language generation as part of a medical terminology server.

Science.gov (United States)

Wagner, J C; Solomon, W D; Michel, P A; Juge, C; Baud, R H; Rector, A L; Scherrer, J R

1995-01-01

Re-usable and sharable, and therefore language-independent concept models are of increasing importance in the medical domain. The GALEN project (Generalized Architecture for Languages Encyclopedias and Nomenclatures in Medicine) aims at developing language-independent concept representation systems as the foundations for the next generation of multilingual coding systems. For use within clinical applications, the content of the model has to be mapped to natural language. A so-called Multilingual Information Module (MM) establishes the link between the language-independent concept model and different natural languages. This text generation software must be versatile enough to cope at the same time with different languages and with different parts of a compositional model. It has to meet, on the one hand, the properties of the language as used in the medical domain and, on the other hand, the specific characteristics of the underlying model and its representation formalism. We propose a semantic-oriented approach to natural language generation that is based on linguistic annotations to a concept model. This approach is realized as an integral part of a Terminology Server, built around the concept model and offering different terminological services for clinical applications.

Computer Testing as a Form of Accommodation for English Language Learners

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Abedi, Jamal

2009-01-01

This study compared performance of both English language learners (ELLs) and non-ELL students in Grades 4 and 8 under accommodated and nonaccommodated testing conditions. The accommodations used in this study included a computerized administration of a math test with a pop-up glossary, a customized English dictionary, extra testing time, and…

Using Norm-Referenced Tests to Determine Severity of Language Impairment in Children: Disconnect between U.S. Policy Makers and Test Developers

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Spaulding, Tammie J.; Szulga, Margaret Swartwout; Figueroa, Cecilia

2012-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify various U.S. state education departments' criteria for determining the severity of language impairment in children, with particular focus on the use of norm-referenced tests. A secondary objective was to determine if norm-referenced tests of child language were developed for the purpose of…

The Faculty of Language Integrates the Two Core Systems of Number.

Science.gov (United States)

Hiraiwa, Ken

2017-01-01

Only humans possess the faculty of language that allows an infinite array of hierarchically structured expressions (Hauser et al., 2002; Berwick and Chomsky, 2015). Similarly, humans have a capacity for infinite natural numbers, while all other species seem to lack such a capacity (Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Dehaene, 1997). Thus, the origin of this numerical capacity and its relation to language have been of much interdisciplinary interest in developmental and behavioral psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and linguistics (Dehaene, 1997; Hauser et al., 2002; Pica et al., 2004). Hauser et al. (2002) and Chomsky (2008) hypothesize that a recursive generative operation that is central to the computational system of language (called Merge ) can give rise to the successor function in a set-theoretic fashion, from which capacities for discretely infinite natural numbers may be derived. However, a careful look at two domains in language, grammatical number and numerals, reveals no trace of the successor function. Following behavioral and neuropsychological evidence that there are two core systems of number cognition innately available, a core system of representation of large, approximate numerical magnitudes and a core system of precise representation of distinct small numbers (Feigenson et al., 2004), I argue that grammatical number reflects the core system of precise representation of distinct small numbers alone. In contrast, numeral systems arise from integrating the pre-existing two core systems of number and the human language faculty. To the extent that my arguments are correct, linguistic representations of number, grammatical number, and numerals do not incorporate anything like the successor function.

Chomsky-Schützenberger parsing for weighted multiple context-free languages

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Tobias Denkinger

2017-07-01

Full Text Available We prove a Chomsky-Schützenberger representation theorem for multiple context-free languages weighted over complete commutative strong bimonoids. Using this representation we devise a parsing algorithm for a restricted form of those devices.

The representation of language within language : A syntactico-pragmatic typology of direct speech

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Vries, M.

The recursive phenomenon of direct speech (quotation) comes in many different forms, and it is arguably an important and widely used ingredient of both spoken and written language. This article builds on (and provides indirect support for) the idea that quotations are to be defined pragmatically as

ROPE: Recoverable Order-Preserving Embedding of Natural Language

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Widemann, David P. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Wang, Eric X. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Thiagarajan, Jayaraman J. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

2016-02-11

We present a novel Recoverable Order-Preserving Embedding (ROPE) of natural language. ROPE maps natural language passages from sparse concatenated one-hot representations to distributed vector representations of predetermined fixed length. We use Euclidean distance to return search results that are both grammatically and semantically similar. ROPE is based on a series of random projections of distributed word embeddings. We show that our technique typically forms a dictionary with sufficient incoherence such that sparse recovery of the original text is possible. We then show how our embedding allows for efficient and meaningful natural search and retrieval on Microsoft’s COCO dataset and the IMDB Movie Review dataset.

The Social Perception of Heroes and Murderers: Effects of Gender-Inclusive Language in Media Reports.

Science.gov (United States)

Hansen, Karolina; Littwitz, Cindy; Sczesny, Sabine

2016-01-01

The way media depict women and men can reinforce or diminish gender stereotyping. Which part does language play in this context? Are roles perceived as more gender-balanced when feminine role nouns are used in addition to masculine ones? Research on gender-inclusive language shows that the use of feminine-masculine word pairs tends to increase the visibility of women in various social roles. For example, when speakers of German were asked to name their favorite "heroine or hero in a novel," they listed more female characters than when asked to name their favorite "hero in a novel." The research reported in this article examines how the use of gender-inclusive language in news reports affects readers' own usage of such forms as well as their mental representation of women and men in the respective roles. In the main experiment, German participants (N = 256) read short reports about heroes or murderers which contained either masculine generics or gender-inclusive forms (feminine-masculine word pairs). Gender-inclusive forms enhanced participants' own usage of gender-inclusive language and this resulted in more gender-balanced mental representations of these roles. Reading about "heroines and heroes" made participants assume a higher percentage of women among persons performing heroic acts than reading about "heroes" only, but there was no such effect for murderers. A post-test suggested that this might be due to a higher accessibility of female exemplars in the category heroes than in the category murderers. Importantly, the influence of gender-inclusive language on the perceived percentage of women in a role was mediated by speakers' own usage of inclusive forms. This suggests that people who encounter gender-inclusive forms and are given an opportunity to use them, use them more themselves and in turn have more gender-balanced mental representations of social roles.

The social perception of heroes and murderers: Effects of gender-inclusive language in media reports

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Karolina eHansen

2016-03-01

Full Text Available The way media depict women and men can reinforce or diminish gender stereotyping. Which part does language play in this context? Are roles perceived as more gender-balanced when feminine role nouns are used in addition to masculine ones? Research on gender-inclusive language shows that the use of feminine-masculine word pairs tends to increase the visibility of women in various social roles. For example, when speakers of German were asked to name their favorite heroine or hero in a novel, they listed more female characters than when asked to name their favorite hero in a novel. The research reported in this paper examines how the use of gender-inclusive language in news reports affects readers’ own usage of such forms as well as their mental representation of women and men in the respective roles. In the main experiment, German participants (N = 256 read short reports about heroes or murderers which contained either masculine generics or gender-inclusive forms (feminine-masculine word pairs. Gender-inclusive forms enhanced participants’ own usage of gender-inclusive language and this resulted in more gender-balanced mental representations of these roles. Reading about heroines and heroes made participants assume a higher percentage of women among persons performing heroic acts than reading about heroes only, but there was no such effect for murderers. A post-test suggested that this might be due to a higher accessibility of female exemplars in the category heroes than in the category murderers. Importantly, the influence of gender-inclusive language on the perceived percentage of women in a role was mediated by speakers’ own usage of inclusive forms. This suggests that people who encounter gender-inclusive forms and are given an opportunity to use them, use them more themselves and in turn have more gender-balanced mental representations of social roles.

The immediate and chronic influence of spatio-temporal metaphors on the mental representations of time in English, Mandarin, and Mandarin-English speakers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vicky T. Lai

2013-04-01

Full Text Available In this paper we examine whether experience with spatial metaphors for time has an influence on people’s representation of time. In particular we ask whether spatiotemporal metaphors can have both chronic and immediate effects on temporal thinking. In Study 1, we examine the prevalence of ego-moving representations for time in Mandarin speakers, English speakers, and Mandarin-English (ME bilinguals. As predicted by observations in linguistic analyses, we find that Mandarin speakers are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English speakers. Further, we find that ME bilinguals tested in English are less likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are English monolinguals (an effect of L1 on meaning-making in L2, and also that ME bilinguals tested in Mandarin are more likely to take an ego-moving perspective than are Mandarin monolinguals (an effect of L2 on meaning-making in L1. These findings demonstrate that habits of metaphor use in one language can influence temporal reasoning in another language, suggesting the metaphors can have a chronic effect on patterns in thought. In Study 2 we test Mandarin speakers using either horizontal or vertical metaphors in the immediate context of the task. We find that Mandarin speakers are more likely to construct front-back representations of time when understanding front-back metaphors, and more likely to construct up-down representations of time when understanding up-down metaphors. These findings demonstrate that spatiotemporal metaphors can also have an immediate influence on temporal reasoning. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the metaphors we use to talk about time have both immediate and long-term consequences for how we conceptualize and reason about this fundamental domain of experience.

Distributed Language and Dialogism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Steffensen, Sune Vork

2015-01-01

addresses Linell’s critique of Distributed Language as rooted in biosemiotics and in theories of organism-environment systems. It is argued that Linell’s sense-based approach entails an individualist view of how conspecific Others acquire their status as prominent parts of the sense-maker’s environment......This article takes a starting point in Per Linell’s (2013) review article on the book Distributed Language (Cowley, 2011a) and other contributions to the field of ‘Distributed Language’, including Cowley et al. (2010) and Hodges et al. (2012). The Distributed Language approach is a naturalistic...... and anti-representational approach to language that builds on recent developments in the cognitive sciences. With a starting point in Linell’s discussion of the approach, the article aims to clarify four aspects of a distributed view of language vis-à-vis the tradition of Dialogism, as presented by Linell...

The International English Language Testing System (IELTS): Its Nature and Development.

Science.gov (United States)

Ingram, D. E.

The nature and development of the recently released International English Language Testing System (IELTS) instrument are described. The test is the result of a joint Australian-British project to develop a new test for use with foreign students planning to study in English-speaking countries. It is expected that the modular instrument will become…

What's special about human language? The contents of the "narrow language faculty" revisited

Science.gov (United States)

Traxler, Matthew J.; Boudewyn, Megan; Loudermilk, Jessica

2012-01-01

In this review we re-evaluate the recursion-only hypothesis, advocated by Fitch, Hauser and Chomsky (Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch, 2002; Fitch, Hauser & Chomsky, 2005). According to the recursion-only hypothesis, the property that distinguishes human language from animal communication systems is recursion, which refers to the potentially infinite embedding of one linguistic representation within another of the same type. This hypothesis predicts (1) that non-human primates and other animals lack the ability to learn recursive grammar, and (2) that recursive grammar is the sole cognitive mechanism that is unique to human language. We first review animal studies of recursive grammar, before turning to the claim that recursion is a property of all human languages. Finally, we discuss other views on what abilities may be unique to human language. PMID:23105948

What's special about human language? The contents of the "narrow language faculty" revisited.

Science.gov (United States)

Traxler, Matthew J; Boudewyn, Megan; Loudermilk, Jessica

2012-10-01

In this review we re-evaluate the recursion-only hypothesis, advocated by Fitch, Hauser and Chomsky (Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch, 2002; Fitch, Hauser & Chomsky, 2005). According to the recursion-only hypothesis, the property that distinguishes human language from animal communication systems is recursion, which refers to the potentially infinite embedding of one linguistic representation within another of the same type. This hypothesis predicts (1) that non-human primates and other animals lack the ability to learn recursive grammar, and (2) that recursive grammar is the sole cognitive mechanism that is unique to human language. We first review animal studies of recursive grammar, before turning to the claim that recursion is a property of all human languages. Finally, we discuss other views on what abilities may be unique to human language.

Psycholinguistically Oriented Second Language Research.

Science.gov (United States)

Juffs, Alan

2001-01-01

Reviews recent research that investigates second language performance from the perspective of sentence processing (on-line comprehension studies) and word recognition. Concentrates on describing methods that employ reaction time measures as correlates of processing difficulty or knowledge representation. (Author/VWL)

The Graphical Representation of the Digital Astronaut Physiology Backbone

Science.gov (United States)

Briers, Demarcus

2010-01-01

This report summarizes my internship project with the NASA Digital Astronaut Project to analyze the Digital Astronaut (DA) physiology backbone model. The Digital Astronaut Project (DAP) applies integrated physiology models to support space biomedical operations, and to assist NASA researchers in closing knowledge gaps related to human physiologic responses to space flight. The DA physiology backbone is a set of integrated physiological equations and functions that model the interacting systems of the human body. The current release of the model is HumMod (Human Model) version 1.5 and was developed over forty years at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC). The physiology equations and functions are scripted in an XML schema specifically designed for physiology modeling by Dr. Thomas G. Coleman at UMMC. Currently it is difficult to examine the physiology backbone without being knowledgeable of the XML schema. While investigating and documenting the tags and algorithms used in the XML schema, I proposed a standard methodology for a graphical representation. This standard methodology may be used to transcribe graphical representations from the DA physiology backbone. In turn, the graphical representations can allow examination of the physiological functions and equations without the need to be familiar with the computer programming languages or markup languages used by DA modeling software.

Electrophysiological Correlates of Error Monitoring and Feedback Processing in Second Language Learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Bultena, Sybrine; Danielmeier, Claudia; Bekkering, Harold; Lemhöfer, Kristin

2017-01-01

Humans monitor their behavior to optimize performance, which presumably relies on stable representations of correct responses. During second language (L2) learning, however, stable representations have yet to be formed while knowledge of the first language (L1) can interfere with learning, which in some cases results in persistent errors. In order to examine how correct L2 representations are stabilized, this study examined performance monitoring in the learning process of second language learners for a feature that conflicts with their first language. Using EEG, we investigated if L2 learners in a feedback-guided word gender assignment task showed signs of error detection in the form of an error-related negativity (ERN) before and after receiving feedback, and how feedback is processed. The results indicated that initially, response-locked negativities for correct (CRN) and incorrect (ERN) responses were of similar size, showing a lack of internal error detection when L2 representations are unstable. As behavioral performance improved following feedback, the ERN became larger than the CRN, pointing to the first signs of successful error detection. Additionally, we observed a second negativity following the ERN/CRN components, the amplitude of which followed a similar pattern as the previous negativities. Feedback-locked data indicated robust FRN and P300 effects in response to negative feedback across different rounds, demonstrating that feedback remained important in order to update memory representations during learning. We thus show that initially, L2 representations may often not be stable enough to warrant successful error monitoring, but can be stabilized through repeated feedback, which means that the brain is able to overcome L1 interference, and can learn to detect errors internally after a short training session. The results contribute a different perspective to the discussion on changes in ERN and FRN components in relation to learning, by extending the

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.

Gender Differences in Emotional Language in Children's Picture Books.

Science.gov (United States)

Tepper, Clary A.; Cassidy, Kimberly Wright

1999-01-01

Examined gender differences in emotional language in children's picture books, using 178 books read to or by preschool children. Males had higher representations on titles, pictures, and central roles, but males and females were associated with equal amounts of emotional language and similar types of emotional words. (SLD)

A categorical foundation for structured reversible flowchart languages: Soundness and adequacy

OpenAIRE

Glück, Robert; Kaarsgaard, Robin

2017-01-01

Structured reversible flowchart languages is a class of imperative reversible programming languages allowing for a simple diagrammatic representation of control flow built from a limited set of control flow structures. This class includes the reversible programming language Janus (without recursion), as well as more recently developed reversible programming languages such as R-CORE and R-WHILE. In the present paper, we develop a categorical foundation for this class of languages based on inve...

A cross-talk between brain-damage patients and infants on action and language.

Science.gov (United States)

Papeo, Liuba; Hochmann, Jean-Remy

2012-06-01

Sensorimotor representations in the brain encode the sensory and motor aspects of one's own bodily activity. It is highly debated whether sensorimotor representations are the core basis for the representation of action-related knowledge and, in particular, action words, such as verbs. In this review, we will address this question by bringing to bear insights from the study of brain-damaged patients exhibiting language disorders and from the study of the mechanisms for language acquisition in infants. Cognitive neuropsychology studies have assessed how damage to representations supporting action production impacts patients' ability to process action-related words. While correlations between verbal and nonverbal (motor) impairments are very common in patients, damage to the representations for action production can leave the ability to understand action-words unaffected; likewise, actions can still be produced successfully in cases of impaired action-word understanding. Studies with infants have evaluated the relevance of sensorimotor information when infants learn to map a novel word onto an action that they are performing or perceiving. These results demonstrate that sensorimotor information is insufficient to fully account for the complexity of verb learning: in this process, infants seem to privilege abstract constructs such as goal, intentionality and causality, as well as syntactic constraints, over the perceptual and motor dimensions of an action. Altogether, the empirical data suggest that, while not crucial for verb learning and understanding, sensorimotor processes can contribute to solving the problem of symbol grounding and/or serve as a primary mechanism in social cognition, to learn about others' goals and intentions. By assessing the relevance of sensorimotor representations in the way action-related words are acquired and represented, we aim to provide a useful set of criteria for testing specific predictions made by different theories of concepts

Language Testing in the Military: Problems, Politics and Progress

Science.gov (United States)

Green, Rita; Wall, Dianne

2005-01-01

There appears to be little literature available -- either descriptive or research-related -- on language testing in the military. This form of specific purposes assessment affects both military personnel and civilians working within the military structure in terms of posting, promotion and remuneration, and it could be argued that it has serious…

Performance-intensity functions of Mandarin word recognition tests in noise: test dialect and listener language effects.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Danzheng; Shi, Lu-Feng

2013-06-01

This study established the performance-intensity function for Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin bisyllabic word recognition tests in noise in native speakers of Wu Chinese. Effects of the test dialect and listeners' first language on psychometric variables (i.e., slope and 50%-correct threshold) were analyzed. Thirty-two normal-hearing Wu-speaking adults who used Mandarin since early childhood were compared to 16 native Mandarin-speaking adults. Both Beijing and Taiwan bisyllabic word recognition tests were presented at 8 signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in 4-dB steps (-12 dB to +16 dB). At each SNR, a half list (25 words) was presented in speech-spectrum noise to listeners' right ear. The order of the test, SNR, and half list was randomized across listeners. Listeners responded orally and in writing. Overall, the Wu-speaking listeners performed comparably to the Mandarin-speaking listeners on both tests. Compared to the Taiwan test, the Beijing test yielded a significantly lower threshold for both the Mandarin- and Wu-speaking listeners, as well as a significantly steeper slope for the Wu-speaking listeners. Both Mandarin tests can be used to evaluate Wu-speaking listeners. Of the 2, the Taiwan Mandarin test results in more comparable functions across listener groups. Differences in the performance-intensity function between listener groups and between tests indicate a first language and dialectal effect, respectively.

The effects of mental representation on performance in a navigation task

Science.gov (United States)

Barshi, Immanuel

Most aviation accidents and incidents are attributed to human error. Among the various kinds of human errors found in aviation, problems in communication constitute a large majority. The purpose of this study is to understand some of the cognitive factors influencing these misunderstandings so they can be prevented. Five experiments tested individuals' ability to follow verbal instructions pertaining to navigating in space. The experiments simulated the kinds of instructions pilots receive from air traffic controllers. All five experiments show the importance of the mental representation of the task over and above the short-term memory demands. The results of Experiment 1 show that the number of instructional units is a critical factor, rather than the number of words per unit. The results of Experiment 2 show that when moving in a three dimensional space, it does not matter whether movement is required along all three dimensions or along only two of the three dimensions. The results of Experiment 3 show that individuals perform much better when they have to maintain a two-dimensional mental representation than when they have to maintain a three-dimensional mental representation. What is more, it shows that even immediate verbatim recall is affected by the representation of the situation to which the language input applies. The results of Experiments 4 and 5 show that the two-dimensional advantage found in Experiment 3 is indeed an aspect of the mental representation, rather than a result of translating a visual display into a mental representation. These results also suggest that three units is the capacity limit of short-term memory. Thus, to minimize misunderstandings due to message length, air traffic controllers are advised to limit their messages to no more than three instructions at a time. In addition to ATC procedures, this research has practical implications for computer/visual displays, and for training environments.

Perceptions about the museological language of the Historical Museum of Londrina: the exhibition "Caring, Healing, Remembering – memory of health in Londrina" and representations of women

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Bruno Sanches Mariante Silva

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The historical museums, such as the monuments, have been understood as images the societies produce for the future. However, this concept of museums as maintainers and guardians of the memory of a community or a locality is been revised. The city of Londrina, even though fairly new, preserves by various means a praise of the memory of certain groups, called 'pioneers'. The challenging of such memorial practices and inclusion of new actors is quite controversial and costly. Thus, this paper aims to reflect on the representations of women in the language of the Historical Museum of Londrina. To this end, it is proposed to analyze a temporary exhibition placed in that Museum: "Caring, Healing, Remember - memory of the health in Londrina." Therefore, we will investigate what (s language (s the MHL aligns to and presents itself for the public.

Language Planning and Student Experiences: Intention, Rhetoric and Implementation

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Lo Bianco, Joseph; Aliani, Renata

2013-01-01

This book is a timely comparison of the divergent worlds of policy implementation and policy ambition, the messy, often contradictory here-and-now reality of languages in schools and the sharp-edged, shiny, future-oriented representation of languages in policy. Two deep rooted tendencies in Australian political and social life, multiculturalism…

Comparative analysis of business rules and business process modeling languages

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Audrius Rima

2013-03-01

Full Text Available During developing an information system is important to create clear models and choose suitable modeling languages. The article analyzes the SRML, SBVR, PRR, SWRL, OCL rules specifying language and UML, DFD, CPN, EPC and IDEF3 BPMN business process modeling language. The article presents business rules and business process modeling languages theoretical comparison. The article according to selected modeling aspects of the comparison between different business process modeling languages ​​and business rules representation languages sets. Also, it is selected the best fit of language set for three layer framework for business rule based software modeling.

IDE Support of String-Embedded Languages

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S. Grigorev

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Complex information systems are often implemented by using more than one programming language. Sometimes this variety takes a form of one host and one or few string-embedded languages. Textual representation of clauses in a string-embedded language is built at run time by a host program and then analyzed, compiled or interpreted by a dedicated runtime component (database, web browser etc. Most general-purpose programming languages may play the role of the host; one of the most evident examples of the string-embedded language is the dynamic SQL which was specified in ISO SQL standard and is supported by the majority of DBMS. Standard IDE functionality such as code completion or syntax highlighting can really helps the developers who use this technique. There are several tools providing this functionality, but they all process only one concrete string-embedded language and cannot be easily extended for supporting another language. We present a platform which allows to easily create tools for string-embedded language processing.

Language Cultural Specificity of the Language Units “Cat” and “Dog” in English and Chinese Languages

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Жером Багана

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the national and cultural features of zoonyms “cat” and “dog” in English and Chinese languages. The authors point out zoonyms’ main characteristics and their national cultural originality. Zoonyms represent the special features of national linguistic world view and values in the comparative analysis’ aspect The article represents interpretation of the language units in the monolingual explanatory dictionaries. The dictionary definitions of the terms phraseology and zoonym are given. The research is devoted to phraseology in the English and Chinese languages. The historical notes about the attitude toward cats and dogs in Britain and China are shown. Also some peculiarities of zoonyms function in English and Chinese animal fairy-tales are observed. Based on the differences the authors notice differences of phraseology between zoonyms “cat” and “dog”. Some examples in the English and Chinese languages are observed. The analysis represents universal and national specific semantic features of the present units in the languages so far as phraseology contains the most vivid representation of the national-cultural specificity of world view, connotative features and values peoples in Europe and Asia.

Development of a KSC test and flight engineering oriented computer language, Phase 1

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Case, C. W.; Kinney, E. L.; Gyure, J.

1970-01-01

Ten, primarily test oriented, computer languages reviewed during the phase 1 study effort are described. Fifty characteristics of ATOLL, ATLAS, and CLASP are compared. Unique characteristics of the other languages, including deficiencies, problems, safeguards, and checking provisions are identified. Programming aids related to these languages are reported, and the conclusions resulting from this phase of the study are discussed. A glossary and bibliography are included. For the reports on phase 2 of the study, see N71-35027 and N71-35029.

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

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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.

Force Concept Inventory-Based Multiple-Choice Test for Investigating Students' Representational Consistency

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Nieminen, Pasi; Savinainen, Antti; Viiri, Jouni

2010-01-01

This study investigates students' ability to interpret multiple representations consistently (i.e., representational consistency) in the context of the force concept. For this purpose we developed the Representational Variant of the Force Concept Inventory (R-FCI), which makes use of nine items from the 1995 version of the Force Concept Inventory…

Binding Task-Based Language Teaching and Task-Based Language Testing: A Survey into EFL Teachers and Learners' Views of Task-Based Approach

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Panahi, Ali

2012-01-01

In most settings, task-based language teaching and testing have been dissociated from each other. That is why this study came to rethink of the learners' views towards awareness and implementation of task-based language teaching through IELTS listening tasks. To these objectives, after sketching instrumentation, the learners were divided into…

Phonological deficits in specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia: towards a multidimensional model

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Ramus, Franck; Marshall, Chloe R.; Rosen, Stuart

2013-01-01

An on-going debate surrounds the relationship between specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia, in particular with respect to their phonological abilities. Are these distinct disorders? To what extent do they overlap? Which cognitive and linguistic profiles correspond to specific language impairment, dyslexia and comorbid cases? At least three different models have been proposed: the severity model, the additional deficit model and the component model. We address this issue by comparing children with specific language impairment only, those with dyslexia-only, those with specific language impairment and dyslexia and those with no impairment, using a broad test battery of language skills. We find that specific language impairment and dyslexia do not always co-occur, and that some children with specific language impairment do not have a phonological deficit. Using factor analysis, we find that language abilities across the four groups of children have at least three independent sources of variance: one for non-phonological language skills and two for distinct sets of phonological abilities (which we term phonological skills versus phonological representations). Furthermore, children with specific language impairment and dyslexia show partly distinct profiles of phonological deficit along these two dimensions. We conclude that a multiple-component model of language abilities best explains the relationship between specific language impairment and dyslexia and the different profiles of impairment that are observed. PMID:23413264

[Attachment representation and a projective test with pictures of parent-child interaction].

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Kubo, M

2000-02-01

The purpose of this study was to assess individual differences in attachment representation. They were assessed, not through direct verbal reports, but indirectly as indicated in a projective test. The test required subjects to tell their impressions of pictures, which depicted daily, routine parent-child interactions. A series of pictures were developed for story-making task, which was named PARS (Picture Attachment Related Study). Three hundred and two (302) undergraduate and vocational students were asked to see the pictures, and freely imagine the situation, think what they would feel, and create the further story. They were then to recall their own experiences with their parents, and fill out a questionnaire of how they see their relationship with others. It was found that those who made a trustful PARS story recalled their own attachment experiences in an autonomous way, and had lower distrust in their relationship with others. Thus, results of the projective test were shown to reflect individual personal attachment experiences, and the test be useful.

The impact of training process on the stress tests results of women cross country skiing representation.

OpenAIRE

Fusková, Dana

2015-01-01

Title: The impact of training process on the stress tests results of women cross country skiing representation. Aim: The aim of this thesis is the comparison of the results of stress tests carried out preparatory period before and after the preparation period and whether the results were influenced by the applied training process. Methods: In this thesis was used background research of professional publications, content analyzes of documents and comparison of the results of stress tests and c...

Color associations for days and letters across different languages

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Rouw, Romke; Case, Laura; Gosavi, Radhika; Ramachandran, Vilayanur

2014-01-01

While colors are commonplace in everyday metaphors, relatively little is known about implicit color associations to linguistic or semantic concepts in a general population. In this study, we test color associations for ordered linguistic concepts (letters and days). The culture and language specificity of these effects was examined in a large group (457) of Dutch-speaking participants, 92 English-speaking participants, and 49 Hindi-speaking participants. Non-random distributions of color choices were revealed; consistencies were found across the three language groups in color preferences for both days and letters. Interestingly, while the Hindi-speaking participants were presented with letter stimuli matched on phonology, their pattern of letter-to-color preferences still showed similarities with Dutch- and English-speaking participants. Furthermore, we found that that the color preferences corresponded between participants indicating to have conscious color experiences with letters or days (putative synesthetes) and participants who do not (non-synesthetes). We also explored possible mechanisms underlying the color preferences. There were a few specific associations, including red for “A,” red for “Monday,” and white for “Sunday.” We also explored more general mechanisms, such as overall color preferences as shown by Simner et al. (2005). While certainly not all variation can be explained or predicted, the results show that regularities are present in color-to-letter or color-to-day preferences in both putative synesthetes and non-synesthetes across languages. Both letter-to-color and day-to-color preferences were influenced by multiple factors. The findings support a notion of abstract concepts (such as days and letters) that are not represented in isolation, but are connected to perceptual representational systems. Interestingly, at least some of these connections to color representations are shared across different language/cultural groups. PMID

Color associations for days and letters across different languages

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Romke eRouw

2014-05-01

Full Text Available While colors are commonplace in everyday metaphors, relatively little is known about implicit color associations to linguistic or semantic concepts in a general population. In this study, we test color associations for ordered linguistic concepts (letters and days. The culture and language specificity of these effects was examined in a large group (457 of Dutch-speaking participants, 92 English-speaking participants, and 49 Hindi-speaking participants. Non-random distributions of color choices were revealed; consistencies were found across the three language groups in color preferences for both days and letters. Interestingly, while the Hindi-speaking participants were presented with letter stimuli matched on phonology, their pattern of letter-to-color preferences still showed similarities with Dutch- and English-speaking participants. Furthermore, we found that that the color preferences corresponded between participants indicating to have conscious color experiences with letters or days (putative synesthetes and participants who do not (non-synesthetes. We also explored possible mechanisms underlying the color preferences. There were a few specific associations, including red for A, red for Monday, and white for Sunday. We also explored more general mechanisms, such as overall color preferences shown by Simner et al (2005. While certainly not all variation can be explained or predicted, the results show that regularities are present in color-to-letter or color-to-day preferences in both putative synesthetes and non-synesthetes across languages. Both letter-to-color and day-to-color preferences were influenced by multiple factors. The findings support a notion of abstract concepts (such as days and letters that are not represented in isolation, but are connected to perceptual representational systems. Interestingly, at least some of these connections to color representations are shared across different language/cultural groups.

Making Room for Second Language Phonotactics: Effects of L2 Learning and Environment on First Language Speech Perception.

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Carlson, Matthew T

2018-04-01

Language-specific restrictions on sound sequences in words can lead to automatic perceptual repair of illicit sound sequences. As an example, no Spanish words begin with /s/-consonant sequences ([#sC]), and where necessary (e.g., foreign loanwords) [#sC] is repaired by inserting an initial [e], (e.g. foreign loanwords, cf., esnob, from English snob). As a result, Spanish speakers tend to perceive an illusory [e] before [#sC] sequences. Interestingly, this perceptual illusion is weaker in early Spanish-English bilinguals, whose other language, English, allows [#sC]. The present study explored whether this apparent influence of the English language on Spanish is restricted to early bilinguals, whose early language experience includes a mixture of both languages, or whether later learning of second language (L2) English can also induce a weakening of the first language (L1) perceptual illusion. Two groups of late Spanish-English bilinguals, immersed in Spanish or English, were tested on the same Spanish AX (same-different) discrimination task used in a study by Carlson et al., (2016) and their results compared with the Spanish monolinguals from Carlson et al.'s study. Like early bilinguals, late bilinguals exhibited a reduced impact of perceptual prothesis on discrimination accuracy. Additionally, late bilinguals, particularly in English immersion, were slowest when responding against the Spanish perceptual illusion. Robust L1 perceptual illusions thus appear to be malleable in the face of later L2 learning. It is argued that these results are consonant with the need for late bilinguals to navigate alternative, conflicting representations of the same acoustic material, even in unilingual L1 speech perception tasks.

The effects of multisensory structured language instruction on native language and foreign language aptitude skills of at-risk high school foreign language learners.

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Sparks, R; Ganschow, L; Pohlman, J; Skinner, S; Artzer, M

1992-12-01

Research findings suggest that most students who have foreign language learning problems have language-based difficulties and, in particular, phonological processing problems. Authors of the present study examined pre- and posttest scores on native language and foreign language aptitude tests of three groups of at-risk high school students enrolled in special, self-contained sections of first-year Spanish. Two groups were instructed using a multisensory structured language (MSL) approach. One of the groups was taught in both English and Spanish (MSL/ES), the other only in Spanish (MSL/S). The third group (NO-MSL) was instructed using more traditional second language teaching methodologies. Significant gains were made by the MSL-ES group on measures of native language phonology, vocabulary, and verbal memory and on a test of foreign language aptitude; the MSL/S group made significant gains on the test of foreign language aptitude. No significant gains on the native language or foreign language aptitude measures were made by the NO-MSL group. Implications for foreign language classroom instruction of at-risk students are discussed.

Aware Computing in Spatial Language Understanding Guided by Cognitively Inspired Knowledge Representation

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Masao Yokota

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Mental image directed semantic theory (MIDST has proposed an omnisensory mental image model and its description language Lmd. This language is designed to represent and compute human intuitive knowledge of space and can provide multimedia expressions with intermediate semantic descriptions in predicate logic. It is hypothesized that such knowledge and semantic descriptions are controlled by human attention toward the world and therefore subjective to each human individual. This paper describes Lmd expression of human subjective knowledge of space and its application to aware computing in cross-media operation between linguistic and pictorial expressions as spatial language understanding.

Do children with autism have a theory of mind? A non-verbal test of autism vs. specific language impairment.

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Colle, Livia; Baron-Cohen, Simon; Hill, Jacqueline

2007-04-01

Children with autism have delays in the development of theory of mind. However, the sub-group of children with autism who have little or no language have gone untested since false belief tests (FB) typically involve language. FB understanding has been reported to be intact in children with specific language impairment (SLI). This raises the possibility that a non-verbal FB test would distinguish children with autism vs. children with SLI. The present study tested two predictions: (1) FB understanding is to some extent independent of language ability; and (2) Children with autism with low language levels show specific impairment in theory of mind. Results confirmed both predictions. Results are discussed in terms of the role of language in the development of mindreading.

The Meta-Language of Advertising in a Synergetic Vision of the World (in English Language

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Aila E. Zhumabekova

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The relevance of this article is determined by necessity of consideration of the metalanguage, which is considered a language that expresses the hidden meaning of advertising through natural language, from the point of view of linguistic analysis in the synergy aspect as a main tool used by the metalanguage in the process of representation created in the framework of this direction terminology. The article creates a lexical reservoir used on the respective orientation, which detects the connection with the language phenomena and the facts in our case in advertising. Formed the language of "second order", which is the object of the natural language in all its manifestations. The new synergetic way of thinking in the meta-language of advertising is nonlinear, and evolutionary. This is the current stage of development of linguistics as an attempt of system description meta-language of advertising and its effects on customers are different segments of the population, that is, a synergistic perception of the content of advertising texts in English and their components.

A geometric language for representing structure in polyphonic music

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Meredith, David

2012-01-01

In 1981, Deutsch and Feroe proposed a formal language for representing melodic pitch structure that employed the powerful concept of hierarchically-related pitch alphabets. However, neither rhythmic structure nor pitch structure in polyphonic music can be adequately represented using this language....... A new language is proposed here that incorporates certain features of Deutsch and Feroe’s model but extends and generalises it to allow for the representation of both rhythm and pitch structure in polyphonic music. The new language adopts a geometric approach in which a passage of polyphonic music...

Effects of age, gender, education and race on two tests of language ability in community-based older adults.

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Snitz, Beth E; Unverzagt, Frederick W; Chang, Chung-Chou H; Bilt, Joni Vander; Gao, Sujuan; Saxton, Judith; Hall, Kathleen S; Ganguli, Mary

2009-12-01

Neuropsychological tests, including tests of language ability, are frequently used to differentiate normal from pathological cognitive aging. However, language can be particularly difficult to assess in a standardized manner in cross-cultural studies and in patients from different educational and cultural backgrounds. This study examined the effects of age, gender, education and race on performance of two language tests: the animal fluency task (AFT) and the Indiana University Token Test (IUTT). We report population-based normative data on these tests from two combined ethnically divergent, cognitively normal, representative population samples of older adults. Participants aged > or =65 years from the Monongahela-Youghiogheny Healthy Aging Team (MYHAT) and from the Indianapolis Study of Health and Aging (ISHA) were selected based on (1) a Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) score of 0; (2) non-missing baseline language test data; and (3) race self-reported as African-American or white. The combined sample (n = 1885) was 28.1% African-American. Multivariate ordinal logistic regression was used to model the effects of demographic characteristics on test scores. On both language tests, better performance was significantly associated with higher education, younger age, and white race. On the IUTT, better performance was also associated with female gender. We found no significant interactions between age and sex, and between race and education. Age and education are more potent variables than are race and gender influencing performance on these language tests. Demographically stratified normative tables for these measures can be used to guide test interpretation and aid clinical diagnosis of impaired cognition.

Translation Accommodations Framework for Testing English Language Learners in Mathematics

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Solano-Flores, Guillermo

2012-01-01

The present framework is developed under contract with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) as a conceptual and methodological tool for guiding the reasonings and actions of contractors in charge of developing and providing test translation accommodations for English language learners. The framework addresses important challenges in…

"Neural overlap of L1 and L2 semantic representations across visual and auditory modalities: a decoding approach".

Science.gov (United States)

Van de Putte, Eowyn; De Baene, Wouter; Price, Cathy J; Duyck, Wouter

2018-05-01

This study investigated whether brain activity in Dutch-French bilinguals during semantic access to concepts from one language could be used to predict neural activation during access to the same concepts from another language, in different language modalities/tasks. This was tested using multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA), within and across language comprehension (word listening and word reading) and production (picture naming). It was possible to identify the picture or word named, read or heard in one language (e.g. maan, meaning moon) based on the brain activity in a distributed bilateral brain network while, respectively, naming, reading or listening to the picture or word in the other language (e.g. lune). The brain regions identified differed across tasks. During picture naming, brain activation in the occipital and temporal regions allowed concepts to be predicted across languages. During word listening and word reading, across-language predictions were observed in the rolandic operculum and several motor-related areas (pre- and postcentral, the cerebellum). In addition, across-language predictions during reading were identified in regions typically associated with semantic processing (left inferior frontal, middle temporal cortex, right cerebellum and precuneus) and visual processing (inferior and middle occipital regions and calcarine sulcus). Furthermore, across modalities and languages, the left lingual gyrus showed semantic overlap across production and word reading. These findings support the idea of at least partially language- and modality-independent semantic neural representations. Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Theoretical approaches to natural language understanding

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

1985-01-01

This book discusses the following: Computational Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science and the current state of natural language understanding. Three topics form the focus for discussion; these topics include aspects of grammars, aspects of semantics/pragmatics, and knowledge representation.

Foreign language comprehension achievement: insights from the cognate facilitation effect

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Aina eCasaponsa

2015-05-01

Full Text Available Numerous studies have shown that the native language influences foreign word recognition and that this influence is modulated by the proficiency in the nonnative language. Here we explored how the degree of reliance on cross-language similarity (as measured by the cognate facilitation effect together with other domain-general cognitive factors contribute to reading comprehension achievement in a nonnative language at different stages of the learning process. We tested two groups of native speakers of Spanish learning English at elementary and intermediate levels in an academic context. A regression model approach showed that domain-general cognitive skills are good predictors of second language reading achievement independently of the level of proficiency. Critically, we found that individual differences in the degree of reliance on the native language predicted foreign language reading achievement, showing a markedly different pattern between proficiency groups. At lower levels of proficiency the cognate facilitation effect was positively related with reading achievement, while this relation became negative at intermediate levels of foreign language learning. We conclude that the link between native- and foreign-language lexical representations helps participants at initial stages of the learning process, whereas it is no longer the case at intermediate levels of proficiency, when reliance on cross-language similarity is inversely related to successful nonnative reading achievement. Thus, at intermediate levels of proficiency strong and direct mappings from the nonnative lexical forms to semantic concepts are needed to achieve good nonnative reading comprehension, in line with the premises of current models of bilingual lexico-semantic organization.

Co-lateralized bilingual mechanisms for reading in single and dual language contexts: evidence from visual half-field processing of action words in proficient bilinguals

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Marlena eKrefta

2015-08-01

Full Text Available When reading, proficient bilinguals seem to engage the same cognitive circuits regardless of the language in use. Yet, whether or not such ‘bilingual’ mechanisms would be lateralized in the same way in distinct – single or dual – language contexts is a question for debate. To fill this gap, we tested 18 highly proficient Polish (L1 – English (L2 childhood bilinguals whose task was to read aloud one of the two laterally presented action verbs, one stimulus per visual half field. While in the single-language blocks only L1 or L2 words were shown, in the subsequent mixed-language blocks words from both languages were concurrently displayed. All stimuli were presented for 217 ms followed by masks in which letters were replaced with hash marks. Since in non-simultaneous bilinguals the control of language, skilled actions (including reading, and representations of action concepts are typically left lateralized, the vast majority of our participants showed the expected, significant right visual field advantage for L1 and L2, both for accuracy and response times. The observed effects were nevertheless associated with substantial variability in the strength of the lateralization of the mechanisms involved. Moreover, although it could be predicted that participants’ performance should be better in a single-language context, accuracy was significantly higher and response times were significantly shorter in a dual-language context, irrespective of the language tested. Finally, for both accuracy and response times, there were significant positive correlations between the laterality indices (LIs of both languages independent of the context, with a significantly greater left-sided advantage for L1 vs. L2 in the mixed-language blocks, based on LIs calculated for response times. Thus, despite similar representations of the two languages in the bilingual brain, these results also point to the functional separation of L1 and L2 in the dual-language

Flexibility in embodied language understanding.

Science.gov (United States)

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

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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.

Interaction and representational integration: Evidence from speech errors

OpenAIRE

Goldrick, Matthew; Baker, H. Ross; Murphy, Amanda; Baese-Berk, Melissa

2011-01-01

We examine the mechanisms that support interaction between lexical, phonological and phonetic processes during language production. Studies of the phonetics of speech errors have provided evidence that partially activated lexical and phonological representations influence phonetic processing. We examine how these interactive effects are modulated by lexical frequency. Previous research has demonstrated that during lexical access, the processing of high frequency words is facilitated; in contr...

Gradient language dominance affects talker learning.

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Bregman, Micah R; Creel, Sarah C

2014-01-01

Traditional conceptions of spoken language assume that speech recognition and talker identification are computed separately. Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies imply some separation between the two faculties, but recent perceptual studies suggest better talker recognition in familiar languages than unfamiliar languages. A familiar-language benefit in talker recognition potentially implies strong ties between the two domains. However, little is known about the nature of this language familiarity effect. The current study investigated the relationship between speech and talker processing by assessing bilingual and monolingual listeners' ability to learn voices as a function of language familiarity and age of acquisition. Two effects emerged. First, bilinguals learned to recognize talkers in their first language (Korean) more rapidly than they learned to recognize talkers in their second language (English), while English-speaking participants showed the opposite pattern (learning English talkers faster than Korean talkers). Second, bilinguals' learning rate for talkers in their second language (English) correlated with age of English acquisition. Taken together, these results suggest that language background materially affects talker encoding, implying a tight relationship between speech and talker representations. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Semiotic Structure and Meaning Making: The Performance of English Language Learners on Mathematics Tests

Science.gov (United States)

Solano-Flores, Guillermo; Barnett-Clarke, Carne; Kachchaf, Rachel R.

2013-01-01

We examined the performance of English language learners (ELLs) and non-ELLs on Grade 4 and Grade 5 mathematics content knowledge (CK) and academic language (AL) tests. CK and AL items had different semiotic loads (numbers of different types of semiotic features) and different semiotic structures (relative frequencies of different semiotic…

Validation of Linguistic and Communicative Oral Language Tests for Spanish-English Bilingual Programs.

Science.gov (United States)

Politzer, Robert L.; And Others

1983-01-01

The development, administration, and scoring of a communicative test and its validation with tests of linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in English and Spanish are reported. Correlation with measures of home language use and school achievement are also presented, and issues of test validation for bilingual programs are discussed. (MSE)

Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Sign Language Test Development: Results of an International Survey

Science.gov (United States)

Haug, Tobias

2015-01-01

Sign language test development is a relatively new field within sign linguistics, motivated by the practical need for assessment instruments to evaluate language development in different groups of learners (L1, L2). Due to the lack of research on the structure and acquisition of many sign languages, developing an assessment instrument poses…

Sixteen-month-olds can use language to update their expectations about the visual world.

Science.gov (United States)

Ganea, Patricia A; Fitch, Allison; Harris, Paul L; Kaldy, Zsuzsa

2016-11-01

The capacity to use language to form new representations and to revise existing knowledge is a crucial aspect of human cognition. Here we examined whether infants can use language to adjust their representation of a recently encoded scene. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we asked whether 16-month-old infants (N=26; mean age=16;0 [months;days], range=14;15-17;15) can use language about an occluded event to inform their expectation about what the world will look like when the occluder is removed. We compared looking time to outcome scenes that matched the language input with looking time to those that did not. Infants looked significantly longer at the event outcome when the outcome did not match the language input, suggesting that they generated an expectation of the outcome based on that input alone. This effect was unrelated to infants' vocabulary size. Thus, using language to adjust expectations about the visual world is present at an early developmental stage even when language skills are rudimentary. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Phenomenology of non-verbal communication as a representation of sports activities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Liubov Karpets

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The priority of language professional activity in sports is such non-verbal communication as body language. Purpose: to delete the main aspects of non-verbal communication as a representation of sports activities. Material & Methods: in the study participated members of sports teams, individual athletes, in particular, for such sports: basketball, handball, volleyball, football, hockey, bodybuilding. Results: in the process of research it was revealed that in sports activities such nonverbal communication as gestures, facial expressions, physique, etc., are lapped, and, as a consequence, the position "everything is language" (Lyotard is embodied. Conclusions: non-verbal communication is one of the most significant forms of communication in sports. Additional means of communication through the "language" of the body help the athletes to realize themselves and self-determination.

Language Codes and Memory Codes.

Science.gov (United States)

Liberman, Alvin M.; And Others

Paraphrase, as it reflects the processes of remembering rather than those of forgetting, implies that language is best transmitted in one form and stored in another. The dual representation of linguistic information that is implied by paraphrase is important for storing information that has been received and for transmitting information that has…

Effect of education and language on baseline concussion screening tests in professional baseball players.

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Nathaniel S; Walter, Kevin D; Caplinger, Roger; Wright, Daniel; Raasch, William G; Young, Craig

2014-07-01

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the possible effects of sociocultural influences, specifically pertaining to language and education, on baseline neuropsychological concussion testing as obtained via immediate postconcussion assessment and cognitive testing (ImPACT) of players from a professional baseball team. A retrospective chart review. Baseline testing of a professional baseball organization. Four hundred five professional baseball players. Age, languages spoken, hometown country location (United States/Canada vs overseas), and years of education. The 5 ImPACT composite scores (verbal memory, visual memory, visual motor speed, reaction time, impulse control) and ImPACT total symptom score from the initial baseline testing. The result of t tests revealed significant differences (P education, the significant differences (P < 0.05) remained in some scores. Sociocultural differences may result in differences in computer-based neuropsychological testing scores.

Exploring Middle School Students' Representational Competence in Science: Development and Verification of a Framework for Learning with Visual Representations

Science.gov (United States)

Tippett, Christine Diane

Scientific knowledge is constructed and communicated through a range of forms in addition to verbal language. Maps, graphs, charts, diagrams, formulae, models, and drawings are just some of the ways in which science concepts can be represented. Representational competence---an aspect of visual literacy that focuses on the ability to interpret, transform, and produce visual representations---is a key component of science literacy and an essential part of science reading and writing. To date, however, most research has examined learning from representations rather than learning with representations. This dissertation consisted of three distinct projects that were related by a common focus on learning from visual representations as an important aspect of scientific literacy. The first project was the development of an exploratory framework that is proposed for use in investigations of students constructing and interpreting multimedia texts. The exploratory framework, which integrates cognition, metacognition, semiotics, and systemic functional linguistics, could eventually result in a model that might be used to guide classroom practice, leading to improved visual literacy, better comprehension of science concepts, and enhanced science literacy because it emphasizes distinct aspects of learning with representations that can be addressed though explicit instruction. The second project was a metasynthesis of the research that was previously conducted as part of the Explicit Literacy Instruction Embedded in Middle School Science project (Pacific CRYSTAL, http://www.educ.uvic.ca/pacificcrystal). Five overarching themes emerged from this case-to-case synthesis: the engaging and effective nature of multimedia genres, opportunities for differentiated instruction using multimodal strategies, opportunities for assessment, an emphasis on visual representations, and the robustness of some multimodal literacy strategies across content areas. The third project was a mixed

CANTAB object recognition and language tests to detect aging cognitive decline: an exploratory comparative study

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Cabral Soares F

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Fernanda Cabral Soares,1 Thaís Cristina Galdino de Oliveira,1 Liliane Dias e Dias de Macedo,1 Alessandra Mendonça Tomás,1 Domingos Luiz Wanderley Picanço-Diniz,2 João Bento-Torres,1,3 Natáli Valim Oliver Bento-Torres,1,3 Cristovam Wanderley Picanço-Diniz1 1Universidade Federal do Pará, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Hospital Universitário João de Barros Barreto, Laboratório de Investigações em Neurodegeneração e Infecção Belém, Pará, Brazil; 2Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará, Núcleo Universitário de Oriximiná, Oriximiná, Pará, Brazil; 3Faculdade de Fisioterapia e Terapia Ocupacional, Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, Pará, BrazilObjective: The recognition of the limits between normal and pathological aging is essential to start preventive actions. The aim of this paper is to compare the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB and language tests to distinguish subtle differences in cognitive performances in two different age groups, namely young adults and elderly cognitively normal subjects.Method: We selected 29 young adults (29.9±1.06 years and 31 older adults (74.1±1.15 years matched by educational level (years of schooling. All subjects underwent a general assessment and a battery of neuropsychological tests, including the Mini Mental State Examination, visuospatial learning, and memory tasks from CANTAB and language tests. Cluster and discriminant analysis were applied to all neuropsychological test results to distinguish possible subgroups inside each age group.Results: Significant differences in the performance of aged and young adults were detected in both language and visuospatial memory tests. Intragroup cluster and discriminant analysis revealed that CANTAB, as compared to language tests, was able to detect subtle but significant differences between the subjects.Conclusion: Based on these findings, we concluded that, as compared to language tests, large-scale application

Linguistic Turn and Gendering Language in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary

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Arimbi, Diah A.; Kwary, Deny A.

2016-01-01

Language constructs how humans perceive things. Since language is a human construction, it tends to be biased as it is mainly men's construction. Using gender perspectives, this paper attempts to discuss the imbalance in gender representations found in the examples given in an English learner's dictionary, that is, the "Cambridge Advanced…

First Language Proficiency and Successful Foreign Language Learning: The Case of High School Students Learning French as a Foreign Language

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Gnintedem, Antoine

2014-01-01

This study investigated whether there was a correlation between first language proficiency as measured by the Mississippi Curriculum Test (MCT II) Reading and Language Arts and foreign language proficiency as measured by the French Language Proficiency Test. Data for the independent variable, first language proficiency, was collected from the…

Near-infrared spectroscopic study and the Wada test for presurgical evaluation of expressive and receptive language functions in glioma patients: with a case report of dissociated language functions.

Science.gov (United States)

Sato, Yosuke; Uzuka, Takeo; Aoki, Hiroshi; Natsumeda, Manabu; Oishi, Makoto; Fukuda, Masafumi; Fujii, Yukihiko

2012-02-29

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has proven to be useful for the evaluation of language lateralization in healthy subjects, infants, and epileptic patients. This study for the first time investigated the expressive and receptive language functions separately, using NIRS in presurgical glioma patients. We also describe a special case with dissociated pattern of language functions. Ten glioma patients were examined. Using NIRS, the hemodynamic changes during a verb generation task or story listening task were measured in the cerebral hemisphere on either side covering the language areas. Following the NIRS study, the Wada test was performed in all the patients. The NIRS study revealed increases of oxyhemoglobin and decreases of deoxyhemoglobin in the language areas elicited by both tasks. In 9 patients, who were all right-handed, the expressive and receptive language functions were lateralized to the left hemisphere. The results of the NIRS study were completely consistent with those of the Wada test. In the remaining 1 patient with a right sided insular glioma, who was right-handed, the NIRS study revealed stronger activation of the right inferior frontal region during the verb generation task, and stronger activation of the left superior temporal region during the story listening task. This dissociated language function was validated by the Wada test and the postoperative neurological course. These results demonstrate that a NIRS study using our technique is extremely valuable for preoperative assessment of the language functions and exemplifies how a preoperative NIRS study can allow detection of unforeseen language lateralization. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language and Cognition Interaction Neural Mechanisms

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Leonid Perlovsky

2011-01-01

Full Text Available How language and cognition interact in thinking? Is language just used for communication of completed thoughts, or is it fundamental for thinking? Existing approaches have not led to a computational theory. We develop a hypothesis that language and cognition are two separate but closely interacting mechanisms. Language accumulates cultural wisdom; cognition develops mental representations modeling surrounding world and adapts cultural knowledge to concrete circumstances of life. Language is acquired from surrounding language “ready-made” and therefore can be acquired early in life. This early acquisition of language in childhood encompasses the entire hierarchy from sounds to words, to phrases, and to highest concepts existing in culture. Cognition is developed from experience. Yet cognition cannot be acquired from experience alone; language is a necessary intermediary, a “teacher.” A mathematical model is developed; it overcomes previous difficulties and leads to a computational theory. This model is consistent with Arbib's “language prewired brain” built on top of mirror neuron system. It models recent neuroimaging data about cognition, remaining unnoticed by other theories. A number of properties of language and cognition are explained, which previously seemed mysterious, including influence of language grammar on cultural evolution, which may explain specifics of English and Arabic cultures.

Language and cognition interaction neural mechanisms.

Science.gov (United States)

Perlovsky, Leonid

2011-01-01

How language and cognition interact in thinking? Is language just used for communication of completed thoughts, or is it fundamental for thinking? Existing approaches have not led to a computational theory. We develop a hypothesis that language and cognition are two separate but closely interacting mechanisms. Language accumulates cultural wisdom; cognition develops mental representations modeling surrounding world and adapts cultural knowledge to concrete circumstances of life. Language is acquired from surrounding language "ready-made" and therefore can be acquired early in life. This early acquisition of language in childhood encompasses the entire hierarchy from sounds to words, to phrases, and to highest concepts existing in culture. Cognition is developed from experience. Yet cognition cannot be acquired from experience alone; language is a necessary intermediary, a "teacher." A mathematical model is developed; it overcomes previous difficulties and leads to a computational theory. This model is consistent with Arbib's "language prewired brain" built on top of mirror neuron system. It models recent neuroimaging data about cognition, remaining unnoticed by other theories. A number of properties of language and cognition are explained, which previously seemed mysterious, including influence of language grammar on cultural evolution, which may explain specifics of English and Arabic cultures.

Language and Cognition Interaction Neural Mechanisms

Science.gov (United States)

Perlovsky, Leonid

2011-01-01

How language and cognition interact in thinking? Is language just used for communication of completed thoughts, or is it fundamental for thinking? Existing approaches have not led to a computational theory. We develop a hypothesis that language and cognition are two separate but closely interacting mechanisms. Language accumulates cultural wisdom; cognition develops mental representations modeling surrounding world and adapts cultural knowledge to concrete circumstances of life. Language is acquired from surrounding language “ready-made” and therefore can be acquired early in life. This early acquisition of language in childhood encompasses the entire hierarchy from sounds to words, to phrases, and to highest concepts existing in culture. Cognition is developed from experience. Yet cognition cannot be acquired from experience alone; language is a necessary intermediary, a “teacher.” A mathematical model is developed; it overcomes previous difficulties and leads to a computational theory. This model is consistent with Arbib's “language prewired brain” built on top of mirror neuron system. It models recent neuroimaging data about cognition, remaining unnoticed by other theories. A number of properties of language and cognition are explained, which previously seemed mysterious, including influence of language grammar on cultural evolution, which may explain specifics of English and Arabic cultures. PMID:21876687

Enrichment Effects of Gestures and Pictures on Abstract Words in a Second Language

OpenAIRE

Claudia Repetto; Elisa Pedroli; Manuela Macedonia; Manuela Macedonia

2017-01-01

Laboratory research has demonstrated that multisensory enrichment promotes verbal learning in a foreign language (L2). Enrichment can be done in various ways, e.g., by adding a picture that illustrates the L2 word’s meaning or by the learner performing a gesture to the word (enactment). Most studies have tested enrichment on concrete but not on abstract words. Unlike concrete words, the representation of abstract words is deprived of sensory-motor features. This has been addressed as one of t...

An Overview of the Needs of Technology in Language Testing in Spain

Science.gov (United States)

Garcia Laborda, Jesus; Magal Royo, Teresa; Barcena Madera, Elena

2015-01-01

Over the few years, computer based language testing has become prevailing worldwide. The number of institutions the use computers as the main means of delivery has increased dramatically. Many students face each day tests for well-known high-stakes decisions which imply the knowledge and ability to use technology to provide evidence of language…

Usage of semantic representations in recognition memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Nishiyama, Ryoji; Hirano, Tetsuji; Ukita, Jun

2017-11-01

Meanings of words facilitate false acceptance as well as correct rejection of lures in recognition memory tests, depending on the experimental context. This suggests that semantic representations are both directly and indirectly (i.e., mediated by perceptual representations) used in remembering. Studies using memory conjunction errors (MCEs) paradigms, in which the lures consist of component parts of studied words, have reported semantic facilitation of rejection of the lures. However, attending to components of the lures could potentially cause this. Therefore, we investigated whether semantic overlap of lures facilitates MCEs using Japanese Kanji words in which a whole-word image is more concerned in reading. Experiments demonstrated semantic facilitation of MCEs in a delayed recognition test (Experiment 1), and in immediate recognition tests in which participants were prevented from using phonological or orthographic representations (Experiment 2), and the salient effect on individuals with high semantic memory capacities (Experiment 3). Additionally, analysis of the receiver operating characteristic suggested that this effect is attributed to familiarity-based memory judgement and phantom recollection. These findings indicate that semantic representations can be directly used in remembering, even when perceptual representations of studied words are available.

Learning language with the wrong neural scaffolding: The cost of neural commitment to sounds.

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Amy Sue Finn

2013-11-01

Full Text Available Does tuning to one’s native language explain the sensitive period for language learning? We explore the idea that tuning to (or becoming more selective for the properties of one’s native-language could result in being less open (or plastic for tuning to the properties of a new language. To explore how this might lead to the sensitive period for grammar learning, we ask if tuning to an earlier-learned aspect of language (sound structure has an impact on the neural representation of a later-learned aspect (grammar. English-speaking adults learned one of two miniature artificial languages over 4 days in the lab. Compared to English, both languages had novel grammar, but only one was comprised of novel sounds. After learning a language, participants were scanned while judging the grammaticality of sentences. Judgments were performed for the newly learned language and English. Learners of the similar-sounds language recruited regions that overlapped more with English. Learners of the distinct-sounds language, however, recruited the Superior Temporal Gyrus (STG to a greater extent, which was coactive with the Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG. Across learners, recruitment of IFG (but not STG predicted both learning success in tests conducted prior to the scan and grammatical judgment ability during the scan. Data suggest that adults’ difficulty learning language, especially grammar, could be due, at least in part, to the neural commitments they have made to the lower level linguistic components of their native language.

Learning language with the wrong neural scaffolding: the cost of neural commitment to sounds

Science.gov (United States)

Finn, Amy S.; Hudson Kam, Carla L.; Ettlinger, Marc; Vytlacil, Jason; D'Esposito, Mark

2013-01-01

Does tuning to one's native language explain the “sensitive period” for language learning? We explore the idea that tuning to (or becoming more selective for) the properties of one's native-language could result in being less open (or plastic) for tuning to the properties of a new language. To explore how this might lead to the sensitive period for grammar learning, we ask if tuning to an earlier-learned aspect of language (sound structure) has an impact on the neural representation of a later-learned aspect (grammar). English-speaking adults learned one of two miniature artificial languages (MALs) over 4 days in the lab. Compared to English, both languages had novel grammar, but only one was comprised of novel sounds. After learning a language, participants were scanned while judging the grammaticality of sentences. Judgments were performed for the newly learned language and English. Learners of the similar-sounds language recruited regions that overlapped more with English. Learners of the distinct-sounds language, however, recruited the Superior Temporal Gyrus (STG) to a greater extent, which was coactive with the Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG). Across learners, recruitment of IFG (but not STG) predicted both learning success in tests conducted prior to the scan and grammatical judgment ability during the scan. Data suggest that adults' difficulty learning language, especially grammar, could be due, at least in part, to the neural commitments they have made to the lower level linguistic components of their native language. PMID:24273497

Comparison of the Reynell Developmental Language Scale II and the Galker test of word-recognition-in-noise in Danish day-care children

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lous, Jørgen; Glenn Lauritsen, Maj Britt

2018-01-01

Objective: To search for predictive factors for language development measured by two receptive language tests for children, the Galker test (a word-recognition-in-noise test) testing hearing and vocabulary, and the Danish version of Reynell Developmental Language Scale (2nd revision, RDLS II) test...... in terms of the degree to which variables were able to predict test scores at the age of three to five years. Methods: All children aged three and five years attending 20 day-care centres for children without cognitive development issues from the Municipality of Hillerød, Denmark, were invited......, a language comprehension test. The study analysed if information about background variables and parents and pre-school teachers was predictive for test scores; if earlier middle ear disease, actual hearing loss and tympanometry was important for language development; and if the two receptive tests differed...

Bikol Dictionary. PALI Language Texts: Philippines.

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Mintz, Malcolm W.

The Bikol language of the Philippines, spoken in the southernmost peninsula of Luzon Island and extending into the island provinces of Catanduanes and Masbate, is presented in this bilingual dictionary. An introduction explains the Bikol alphabet, orthographic representation (including policies adopted in writing Spanish and English loan words),…

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

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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.

Integrating deep and shallow natural language processing components : representations and hybrid architectures

OpenAIRE

Schäfer, Ulrich

2006-01-01

We describe basic concepts and software architectures for the integration of shallow and deep (linguistics-based, semantics-oriented) natural language processing (NLP) components. The main goal of this novel, hybrid integration paradigm is improving robustness of deep processing. After an introduction to constraint-based natural language parsing, we give an overview of typical shallow processing tasks. We introduce XML standoff markup as an additional abstraction layer that eases integration ...

Representational Momentum for the Human Body: Awkwardness Matters, Experience Does Not

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Wilson, Margaret; Lancaster, Jessy; Emmorey, Karen

2010-01-01

Perception of the human body appears to involve predictive simulations that project forward to track unfolding body-motion events. Here we use representational momentum (RM) to investigate whether implicit knowledge of a learned arbitrary system of body movement such as sign language influences this prediction process, and how this compares to…

Differential Item Functioning in While-Listening Performance Tests: The Case of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Listening Module

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Aryadoust, Vahid

2012-01-01

This article investigates a version of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) listening test for evidence of differential item functioning (DIF) based on gender, nationality, age, and degree of previous exposure to the test. Overall, the listening construct was found to be underrepresented, which is probably an important cause…

L'Uso dei Materiali Video nei Test Linguistici (The Use of Video Materials in Language Tests).

Science.gov (United States)

Diadori, Pierangela

1995-01-01

This article argues that a communicative language course must have communicative exams. It explains how to choose and use material to test students' listening comprehension and socio-cultural knowledge. Transcripts of a commercial, a talk show, a film, a TV news show, and a documentary are included accompanied by exercises. (CFM)

Weighted Discriminative Dictionary Learning based on Low-rank Representation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chang, Heyou; Zheng, Hao

2017-01-01

Low-rank representation has been widely used in the field of pattern classification, especially when both training and testing images are corrupted with large noise. Dictionary plays an important role in low-rank representation. With respect to the semantic dictionary, the optimal representation matrix should be block-diagonal. However, traditional low-rank representation based dictionary learning methods cannot effectively exploit the discriminative information between data and dictionary. To address this problem, this paper proposed weighted discriminative dictionary learning based on low-rank representation, where a weighted representation regularization term is constructed. The regularization associates label information of both training samples and dictionary atoms, and encourages to generate a discriminative representation with class-wise block-diagonal structure, which can further improve the classification performance where both training and testing images are corrupted with large noise. Experimental results demonstrate advantages of the proposed method over the state-of-the-art methods. (paper)

Converting biomolecular modelling data based on an XML representation.

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Yudong; McKeever, Steve

2008-08-25

Biomolecular modelling has provided computational simulation based methods for investigating biological processes from quantum chemical to cellular levels. Modelling such microscopic processes requires atomic description of a biological system and conducts in fine timesteps. Consequently the simulations are extremely computationally demanding. To tackle this limitation, different biomolecular models have to be integrated in order to achieve high-performance simulations. The integration of diverse biomolecular models needs to convert molecular data between different data representations of different models. This data conversion is often non-trivial, requires extensive human input and is inevitably error prone. In this paper we present an automated data conversion method for biomolecular simulations between molecular dynamics and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics models. Our approach is developed around an XML data representation called BioSimML (Biomolecular Simulation Markup Language). BioSimML provides a domain specific data representation for biomolecular modelling which can effciently support data interoperability between different biomolecular simulation models and data formats.

Converting Biomolecular Modelling Data Based on an XML Representation

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Sun Yudong

2008-06-01

Full Text Available Biomolecular modelling has provided computational simulation based methods for investigating biological processes from quantum chemical to cellular levels. Modelling such microscopic processes requires atomic description of a biological system and conducts in fine timesteps. Consequently the simulations are extremely computationally demanding. To tackle this limitation, different biomolecular models have to be integrated in order to achieve high-performance simulations. The integration of diverse biomolecular models needs to convert molecular data between different data representations of different models. This data conversion is often non-trivial, requires extensive human input and is inevitably error prone. In this paper we present an automated data conversion method for biomolecular simulations between molecular dynamics and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics models. Our approach is developed around an XML data representation called BioSimML (Biomolecular Simulation Markup Language. BioSimML provides a domain specific data representation for biomolecular modelling which can effciently support data interoperability between different biomolecular simulation models and data formats.

Reading, Writing, and Animation in Character Learning in Chinese as a Foreign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Yi; Chang, Li-Yun; Zhang, Juan; Perfetti, Charles A.

2013-01-01

Previous studies suggest that writing helps reading development in Chinese in both first and second language settings by enabling higher-quality orthographic representation of the characters. This study investigated the comparative effectiveness of reading, animation, and writing in developing foreign language learners' orthographic knowledge…

The (Spatial) Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Gudde, Harmen B; Griffiths, Debra; Coventry, Kenny R

2018-02-19

The memory game paradigm is a behavioral procedure to explore the relationship between language, spatial memory, and object knowledge. Using two different versions of the paradigm, spatial language use and memory for object location are tested under different, experimentally manipulated conditions. This allows us to tease apart proposed models explaining the influence of object knowledge on spatial language (e.g., spatial demonstratives), and spatial memory, as well as understanding the parameters that affect demonstrative choice and spatial memory more broadly. Key to the development of the method was the need to collect data on language use (e.g., spatial demonstratives: "this/that") and spatial memory data under strictly controlled conditions, while retaining a degree of ecological validity. The language version (section 3.1) of the memory game tests how conditions affect language use. Participants refer verbally to objects placed at different locations (e.g., using spatial demonstratives: "this/that red circle"). Different parameters can be experimentally manipulated: the distance from the participant, the position of a conspecific, and for example whether the participant owns, knows, or sees the object while referring to it. The same parameters can be manipulated in the memory version of the memory game (section 3.2). This version tests the effects of the different conditions on object-location memory. Following object placement, participants get 10 seconds to memorize the object's location. After the object and location cues are removed, participants verbally direct the experimenter to move a stick to indicate where the object was. The difference between the memorized and the actual location shows the direction and strength of the memory error, allowing comparisons between the influences of the respective parameters.

Reading Logs and Literature Teaching Models in English Language Teacher Education

Science.gov (United States)

Ochoa Delarriva, Ornella; Basabe, Enrique Alejandro

2016-01-01

Reading logs are regularly used in foreign language education since they are not only critical in the development of reading comprehension but may also be instrumental in taking readers beyond the referential into the representational realms of language. In this paper we offer the results of a qualitative analysis of a series of reading logs…

Towards a category theory approach to analogy: Analyzing re-representation and acquisition of numerical knowledge.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jairo A Navarrete

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Category Theory, a branch of mathematics, has shown promise as a modeling framework for higher-level cognition. We introduce an algebraic model for analogy that uses the language of category theory to explore analogy-related cognitive phenomena. To illustrate the potential of this approach, we use this model to explore three objects of study in cognitive literature. First, (a we use commutative diagrams to analyze an effect of playing particular educational board games on the learning of numbers. Second, (b we employ a notion called coequalizer as a formal model of re-representation that explains a property of computational models of analogy called "flexibility" whereby non-similar representational elements are considered matches and placed in structural correspondence. Finally, (c we build a formal learning model which shows that re-representation, language processing and analogy making can explain the acquisition of knowledge of rational numbers. These objects of study provide a picture of acquisition of numerical knowledge that is compatible with empirical evidence and offers insights on possible connections between notions such as relational knowledge, analogy, learning, conceptual knowledge, re-representation and procedural knowledge. This suggests that the approach presented here facilitates mathematical modeling of cognition and provides novel ways to think about analogy-related cognitive phenomena.

Towards a category theory approach to analogy: Analyzing re-representation and acquisition of numerical knowledge.

Science.gov (United States)

Navarrete, Jairo A; Dartnell, Pablo

2017-08-01

Category Theory, a branch of mathematics, has shown promise as a modeling framework for higher-level cognition. We introduce an algebraic model for analogy that uses the language of category theory to explore analogy-related cognitive phenomena. To illustrate the potential of this approach, we use this model to explore three objects of study in cognitive literature. First, (a) we use commutative diagrams to analyze an effect of playing particular educational board games on the learning of numbers. Second, (b) we employ a notion called coequalizer as a formal model of re-representation that explains a property of computational models of analogy called "flexibility" whereby non-similar representational elements are considered matches and placed in structural correspondence. Finally, (c) we build a formal learning model which shows that re-representation, language processing and analogy making can explain the acquisition of knowledge of rational numbers. These objects of study provide a picture of acquisition of numerical knowledge that is compatible with empirical evidence and offers insights on possible connections between notions such as relational knowledge, analogy, learning, conceptual knowledge, re-representation and procedural knowledge. This suggests that the approach presented here facilitates mathematical modeling of cognition and provides novel ways to think about analogy-related cognitive phenomena.

Assessment of representational competence in kinematics

Science.gov (United States)

Klein, P.; Müller, A.; Kuhn, J.

2017-06-01

A two-tier instrument for representational competence in the field of kinematics (KiRC) is presented, designed for a standard (1st year) calculus-based introductory mechanics course. It comprises 11 multiple choice (MC) and 7 multiple true-false (MTF) questions involving multiple representational formats, such as graphs, pictures, and formal (mathematical) expressions (1st tier). Furthermore, students express their answer confidence for selected items, providing additional information (2nd tier). Measurement characteristics of KiRC were assessed in a validation sample (pre- and post-test, N =83 and N =46 , respectively), including usefulness for measuring learning gain. Validity is checked by interviews and by benchmarking KiRC against related measures. Values for item difficulty, discrimination, and consistency are in the desired ranges; in particular, a good reliability was obtained (KR 20 =0.86 ). Confidence intervals were computed and a replication study yielded values within the latter. For practical and research purposes, KiRC as a diagnostic tool goes beyond related extant instruments both for the representational formats (e.g., mathematical expressions) and for the scope of content covered (e.g., choice of coordinate systems). Together with the satisfactory psychometric properties it appears a versatile and reliable tool for assessing students' representational competency in kinematics (and of its potential change). Confidence judgments add further information to the diagnostic potential of the test, in particular for representational misconceptions. Moreover, we present an analytic result for the question—arising from guessing correction or educational considerations—of how the total effect size (Cohen's d ) varies upon combination of two test components with known individual effect sizes, and then discuss the results in the case of KiRC (MC and MTF combination). The introduced method of test combination analysis can be applied to any test comprising

Assessment of representational competence in kinematics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

P. Klein

2017-06-01

Full Text Available A two-tier instrument for representational competence in the field of kinematics (KiRC is presented, designed for a standard (1st year calculus-based introductory mechanics course. It comprises 11 multiple choice (MC and 7 multiple true-false (MTF questions involving multiple representational formats, such as graphs, pictures, and formal (mathematical expressions (1st tier. Furthermore, students express their answer confidence for selected items, providing additional information (2nd tier. Measurement characteristics of KiRC were assessed in a validation sample (pre- and post-test, N=83 and N=46, respectively, including usefulness for measuring learning gain. Validity is checked by interviews and by benchmarking KiRC against related measures. Values for item difficulty, discrimination, and consistency are in the desired ranges; in particular, a good reliability was obtained (KR20=0.86. Confidence intervals were computed and a replication study yielded values within the latter. For practical and research purposes, KiRC as a diagnostic tool goes beyond related extant instruments both for the representational formats (e.g., mathematical expressions and for the scope of content covered (e.g., choice of coordinate systems. Together with the satisfactory psychometric properties it appears a versatile and reliable tool for assessing students’ representational competency in kinematics (and of its potential change. Confidence judgments add further information to the diagnostic potential of the test, in particular for representational misconceptions. Moreover, we present an analytic result for the question—arising from guessing correction or educational considerations—of how the total effect size (Cohen’s d varies upon combination of two test components with known individual effect sizes, and then discuss the results in the case of KiRC (MC and MTF combination. The introduced method of test combination analysis can be applied to any test

DD-PREF: a language for expressing preferences over sets

Science.gov (United States)

Wagstaff, Kiri; desJardins, Marie

2005-01-01

We present a representation language, DD-PREF (for Diversity and Depth PREFrences), for specifying the desired diversity and depth of sets of objects where each object is represented as a vector of feature values.

Representations of the Magnitudes of Fractions

Science.gov (United States)

Schneider, Michael; Siegler, Robert S.

2010-01-01

We tested whether adults can use integrated, analog, magnitude representations to compare the values of fractions. The only previous study on this question concluded that even college students cannot form such representations and instead compare fraction magnitudes by representing numerators and denominators as separate whole numbers. However,…

ATTILA 2 S. A technical and interactive test language for architecture allowing simultaneity

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Batllo, M.

1980-01-01

The name ATTILA 2 S is inspired from ATLAS, test language adopted by the Department of Defence of America (D.O.D.) but cannot be implemented on our installation. ATTILA 2 S is principally characterized by: its technical vocabulary (P.O.L.), its interactivity, its simultaneity with main job (Multiprogramming and Multiprocessing allowed by multiprocessors architecture. This language has been developed for the Paris C.R.T. system (Photographies analysis system) on Control Data Cyber 72 computer [fr

Brain readiness and the nature of language.

Science.gov (United States)

Bouchard, Denis

2015-01-01

To identify the neural components that make a brain ready for language, it is important to have well defined linguistic phenotypes, to know precisely what language is. There are two central features to language: the capacity to form signs (words), and the capacity to combine them into complex structures. We must determine how the human brain enables these capacities. A sign is a link between a perceptual form and a conceptual meaning. Acoustic elements and content elements, are already brain-internal in non-human animals, but as categorical systems linked with brain-external elements. Being indexically tied to objects of the world, they cannot freely link to form signs. A crucial property of a language-ready brain is the capacity to process perceptual forms and contents offline, detached from any brain-external phenomena, so their "representations" may be linked into signs. These brain systems appear to have pleiotropic effects on a variety of phenotypic traits and not to be specifically designed for language. Syntax combines signs, so the combination of two signs operates simultaneously on their meaning and form. The operation combining the meanings long antedates its function in language: the primitive mode of predication operative in representing some information about an object. The combination of the forms is enabled by the capacity of the brain to segment vocal and visual information into discrete elements. Discrete temporal units have order and juxtaposition, and vocal units have intonation, length, and stress. These are primitive combinatorial processes. So the prior properties of the physical and conceptual elements of the sign introduce combinatoriality into the linguistic system, and from these primitive combinatorial systems derive concatenation in phonology and combination in morphosyntax. Given the nature of language, a key feature to our understanding of the language-ready brain is to be found in the mechanisms in human brains that enable the unique

Brain readiness and the nature of language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Denis eBouchard

2015-09-01

Full Text Available To identify the neural components that make a brain ready for language, it is important to have well defined linguistic phenotypes, to know precisely what language is. There are two central features to language: the capacity to form signs (words, and the capacity to combine them into complex structures. We must determine how the human brain enables these capacities.A sign is a link between a perceptual form and a conceptual meaning. Acoustic elements and content elements, are already brain-internal in non-human animals, but as categorical systems linked with brain-external elements. Being indexically tied to objects of the world, they cannot freely link to form signs. A crucial property of a language-ready brain is the capacity to process perceptual forms and contents offline, detached from any brain-external phenomena, so their representations may be linked into signs. These brain systems appear to have pleiotropic effects on a variety of phenotypic traits and not to be specifically designed for language.Syntax combines signs, so the combination of two signs operates simultaneously on their meaning and form. The operation combining the meanings long antedates its function in language: the primitive mode of predication operative in representing some information about an object. The combination of the forms is enabled by the capacity of the brain to segment vocal and visual information into discrete elements. Discrete temporal units have order and juxtaposition, and vocal units have intonation, length, and stress. These are primitive combinatorial processes. So the prior properties of the physical and conceptual elements of the sign introduce combinatoriality into the linguistic system, and from these primitive combinatorial systems derive concatenation in phonology and combination in morphosyntax.Given the nature of language, a key feature to our understanding of the language-ready brain is to be found in the mechanisms in human brains that

Graphical Language for Data Processing

Science.gov (United States)

Alphonso, Keith

2011-01-01

A graphical language for processing data allows processing elements to be connected with virtual wires that represent data flows between processing modules. The processing of complex data, such as lidar data, requires many different algorithms to be applied. The purpose of this innovation is to automate the processing of complex data, such as LIDAR, without the need for complex scripting and programming languages. The system consists of a set of user-interface components that allow the user to drag and drop various algorithmic and processing components onto a process graph. By working graphically, the user can completely visualize the process flow and create complex diagrams. This innovation supports the nesting of graphs, such that a graph can be included in another graph as a single step for processing. In addition to the user interface components, the system includes a set of .NET classes that represent the graph internally. These classes provide the internal system representation of the graphical user interface. The system includes a graph execution component that reads the internal representation of the graph (as described above) and executes that graph. The execution of the graph follows the interpreted model of execution in that each node is traversed and executed from the original internal representation. In addition, there are components that allow external code elements, such as algorithms, to be easily integrated into the system, thus making the system infinitely expandable.

Sequoyah Foreign Language Translation System - Business Case Analysis

Science.gov (United States)

2007-12-01

typescript . Can read either representations of familiar formulaic verbal exchanges or simple language containing only the highest frequency...comprehension to read simple, authentic written material in a form equivalent to usual printing or typescript on subjects within a familiar context

Field Markup Language: biological field representation in XML.

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, David; Lovell, Nigel H; Dokos, Socrates

2007-01-01

With an ever increasing number of biological models available on the internet, a standardized modeling framework is required to allow information to be accessed or visualized. Based on the Physiome Modeling Framework, the Field Markup Language (FML) is being developed to describe and exchange field information for biological models. In this paper, we describe the basic features of FML, its supporting application framework and its ability to incorporate CellML models to construct tissue-scale biological models. As a typical application example, we present a spatially-heterogeneous cardiac pacemaker model which utilizes both FML and CellML to describe and solve the underlying equations of electrical activation and propagation.

Lexical representation of novel L2 contrasts

Science.gov (United States)

Hayes-Harb, Rachel; Masuda, Kyoko

2005-04-01

There is much interest among psychologists and linguists in the influence of the native language sound system on the acquisition of second languages (Best, 1995; Flege, 1995). Most studies of second language (L2) speech focus on how learners perceive and produce L2 sounds, but we know of only two that have considered how novel sound contrasts are encoded in learners' lexical representations of L2 words (Pallier et al., 2001; Ota et al., 2002). In this study we investigated how native speakers of English encode Japanese consonant quantity contrasts in their developing Japanese lexicons at different stages of acquisition (Japanese contrasts singleton versus geminate consonants but English does not). Monolingual English speakers, native English speakers learning Japanese for one year, and native speakers of Japanese were taught a set of Japanese nonwords containing singleton and geminate consonants. Subjects then performed memory tasks eliciting perception and production data to determine whether they encoded the Japanese consonant quantity contrast lexically. Overall accuracy in these tasks was a function of Japanese language experience, and acoustic analysis of the production data revealed non-native-like patterns of differentiation of singleton and geminate consonants among the L2 learners of Japanese. Implications for theories of L2 speech are discussed.

[Understand the neurodevelopment of language: a necessity to prevent learning disabilities in children].

Science.gov (United States)

Charollais, A; Marret, S; Stumpf, M-H; Lemarchand, M; Delaporte, B; Philip, E; Monom-Diverre; Guillois, B; Datin-Dorriere, V; Debillon, T; Simon, M-J; De Barace, C; Pasquet, F; Saliba, E; Zebhib, R

2013-09-01

Clinical and radiological knowledge of language development in the former premature infant compared to the newborn allows us to argue for exploration of the sensorimotor co-factors required for proper language development. There are early representations of the maternal language in the infant's visual, auditory, and sensorimotor areas, activated or stabilized by orofacial and articulatory movements. The functional architecture of language is different for vulnerable children such as premature infants. We have already mentioned the impact of early dysfunction of the facial praxis fine motor skills in this population presenting comprehension disorders. A recent meta-analysis confirms the increasing difficulty of understanding between 3 and 12 years, questioning the quality of the initial linguistic processes. A precise analysis of language, referenced from 3 years of age, should be completed by sensorimotor tests to assess possible constraints in automating neurolinguistic foundations. The usual assessment at this age can exclude sensory disturbances and communication and offers guidance and socialization. However, a recent study shows the ineffectiveness of "language-reinforced immersion" at 2 and 3 years in a population of vulnerable children. The LAMOPRESCO study of language and motor skills in the premature infant (National PHRC 2010) has assessed language and sensorimotor skills of preterm-born (theory of speech perception." Early and accurate assessment of language and the patient's constraints should differentiate and specify management strategies for all children, whatever their background and pathologies. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Language, Space, Power: Reflections on Linguistic and Spatial Turns in Urban Research

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Vuolteenaho, Jani; Ameel, Lieven; Newby, Andrew

2012-01-01

to conceptualise the power-embeddedness of urban spaces, processes and identities. More recently, however, the ramifications of the linguistic turn across urban research have proliferated as a result of approaches in which specific place-bound language practices and language-based representations about cities have......) and thematic interests (from place naming to interactional uses of spoken language) that have been significant channels in re-directing urban scholars’ attention to the concrete workings of language. As regards the spatial turn, we highlight the relevance of the connectivity-, territoriality-, attachment...

Recommendations for elaboration, transcultural adaptation and validation process of tests in Speech, Hearing and Language Pathology.

Science.gov (United States)

Pernambuco, Leandro; Espelt, Albert; Magalhães, Hipólito Virgílio; Lima, Kenio Costa de

2017-06-08

to present a guide with recommendations for translation, adaptation, elaboration and process of validation of tests in Speech and Language Pathology. the recommendations were based on international guidelines with a focus on the elaboration, translation, cross-cultural adaptation and validation process of tests. the recommendations were grouped into two Charts, one of them with procedures for translation and transcultural adaptation and the other for obtaining evidence of validity, reliability and measures of accuracy of the tests. a guide with norms for the organization and systematization of the process of elaboration, translation, cross-cultural adaptation and validation process of tests in Speech and Language Pathology was created.

Non-contact test of coating by means of laser-induced ultrasonic excitation and holographic sound representation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Crostack, H.A.; Pohl, K.Y.; Radtke, U.

1991-01-01

In order to circumvent the problems of introducing and picking off sound, which occur in conventional ultrasonic testing, a completely non-contact test process was developed. The ultrasonic surface wave required for the test is generated without contact by absorption of laser beams. The recording of the ultrasound also occurs by a non-contact holographic interferometry technique, which permits a large scale representation of the sound. Using the example of MCrAlY and ZrO 2 layers, the suitability of the process for testing thermally sprayed coatings on metal substrates is identified. The possibilities and limits of the process for the detection and description of delamination and cracks are shown. (orig.) [de

Gender sensitive language policies and deconstruction of gender stereotypes in textbooks of Spanish as a foreign language

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ana Kuzmanović Jovanović

2015-12-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the impact of gender representations in Spanish/L2 textbooks on perpetuation or deconstruction of gender stereotypes in the classroom. Although the results of numerous studies of gender representation in such books performed in the past two decades suggest that teaching materials have been an important instrument in perpetuating gender stereotypes, recent researches have revealed certain changes in this area. The present analysis supports these findings. The research corpus consists of eleven textbooks of Spanish/L2 (level A1 and A2 by different Spanish publishers, all of them published in the last four years. The gender roles in which women and men appear are critically analyzed. The results of the analysis suggest that there has been a conscious effort by both authors and editors in order to change the stereotypical gender representation in these didactic materials. We offer an explanation for these changes suggesting that they can be accounted for by the action of a different model of gender sensitive language policies, the bottom-up model, where the crucial factors of change are not the activities of the official institutions but rather are to be found in different communities of practice, i.e., all people involved in creating, publishing and distributing teaching materials, as well as linguists who investigate the relationship between language and gender.

Desiderata for computable representations of electronic health records-driven phenotype algorithms.

Science.gov (United States)

Mo, Huan; Thompson, William K; Rasmussen, Luke V; Pacheco, Jennifer A; Jiang, Guoqian; Kiefer, Richard; Zhu, Qian; Xu, Jie; Montague, Enid; Carrell, David S; Lingren, Todd; Mentch, Frank D; Ni, Yizhao; Wehbe, Firas H; Peissig, Peggy L; Tromp, Gerard; Larson, Eric B; Chute, Christopher G; Pathak, Jyotishman; Denny, Joshua C; Speltz, Peter; Kho, Abel N; Jarvik, Gail P; Bejan, Cosmin A; Williams, Marc S; Borthwick, Kenneth; Kitchner, Terrie E; Roden, Dan M; Harris, Paul A

2015-11-01

Electronic health records (EHRs) are increasingly used for clinical and translational research through the creation of phenotype algorithms. Currently, phenotype algorithms are most commonly represented as noncomputable descriptive documents and knowledge artifacts that detail the protocols for querying diagnoses, symptoms, procedures, medications, and/or text-driven medical concepts, and are primarily meant for human comprehension. We present desiderata for developing a computable phenotype representation model (PheRM). A team of clinicians and informaticians reviewed common features for multisite phenotype algorithms published in PheKB.org and existing phenotype representation platforms. We also evaluated well-known diagnostic criteria and clinical decision-making guidelines to encompass a broader category of algorithms. We propose 10 desired characteristics for a flexible, computable PheRM: (1) structure clinical data into queryable forms; (2) recommend use of a common data model, but also support customization for the variability and availability of EHR data among sites; (3) support both human-readable and computable representations of phenotype algorithms; (4) implement set operations and relational algebra for modeling phenotype algorithms; (5) represent phenotype criteria with structured rules; (6) support defining temporal relations between events; (7) use standardized terminologies and ontologies, and facilitate reuse of value sets; (8) define representations for text searching and natural language processing; (9) provide interfaces for external software algorithms; and (10) maintain backward compatibility. A computable PheRM is needed for true phenotype portability and reliability across different EHR products and healthcare systems. These desiderata are a guide to inform the establishment and evolution of EHR phenotype algorithm authoring platforms and languages. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical

Mirror neurons and the action theory of language origins

OpenAIRE

Steels, Luc

2000-01-01

The research reported here attempts to understand how language may have originated from sensori-motor competences. Recently the observation of mirror neurons has lead to the suggestion that there is not only a rich representation of motor action but also that this representation is used for multiple purposes: action execution, action planning, action imaging, and action recognition. Of particular importance is the observation that one agent can recognise an action plan of another one and t...

Testing an AAC system that transforms pictograms into natural language with persons with cerebral palsy.

Science.gov (United States)

Pahisa-Solé, Joan; Herrera-Joancomartí, Jordi

2017-10-18

In this article, we describe a compansion system that transforms the telegraphic language that comes from the use of pictogram-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) into natural language. The system was tested with four participants with severe cerebral palsy and ranging degrees of linguistic competence and intellectual disabilities. Participants had used pictogram-based AAC at least for the past 30 years each and presented a stable linguistic profile. During tests, which consisted of a total of 40 sessions, participants were able to learn new linguistic skills, such as the use of basic verb tenses, while using the compansion system, which proved a source of motivation. The system can be adapted to the linguistic competence of each person and required no learning curve during tests when none of its special features, like gender, number, verb tense, or sentence type modifiers, were used. Furthermore, qualitative and quantitative results showed a mean communication rate increase of 41.59%, compared to the same communication device without the compansion system, and an overall improvement in the communication experience when the output is in natural language. Tests were conducted in Catalan and Spanish.

The influence of the visual modality on language structure and conventionalization: insights from sign language and gesture.

Science.gov (United States)

Perniss, Pamela; Özyürek, Asli; Morgan, Gary

2015-01-01

For humans, the ability to communicate and use language is instantiated not only in the vocal modality but also in the visual modality. The main examples of this are sign languages and (co-speech) gestures. Sign languages, the natural languages of Deaf communities, use systematic and conventionalized movements of the hands, face, and body for linguistic expression. Co-speech gestures, though non-linguistic, are produced in tight semantic and temporal integration with speech and constitute an integral part of language together with speech. The articles in this issue explore and document how gestures and sign languages are similar or different and how communicative expression in the visual modality can change from being gestural to grammatical in nature through processes of conventionalization. As such, this issue contributes to our understanding of how the visual modality shapes language and the emergence of linguistic structure in newly developing systems. Studying the relationship between signs and gestures provides a new window onto the human ability to recruit multiple levels of representation (e.g., categorical, gradient, iconic, abstract) in the service of using or creating conventionalized communicative systems. Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

A Natural Logic for Natural-Language Knowledge Bases

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andreasen, Troels; Styltsvig, Henrik Bulskov; Jensen, Per Anker

2017-01-01

We describe a natural logic for computational reasoning with a regimented fragment of natural language. The natural logic comes with intuitive inference rules enabling deductions and with an internal graph representation facilitating conceptual path finding between pairs of terms as an approach t...

A Natural Logic for Natural-language Knowledge Bases

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andreasen, Troels; Bulskov, Henrik; Jensen, Per Anker

2017-01-01

We describe a natural logic for computational reasoning with a regimented fragment of natural language. The natural logic comes with intuitive inference rules enabling deductions and with an internal graph representation facilitating conceptual path finding between pairs of terms as an approach t...

Reading Test Performance of English-Language Learners Using an English Dictionary.

Science.gov (United States)

Albus, Debra; Thurlow, Martha; Liu, Kristin; Bielinski, John

2005-01-01

The authors examined the effects of a simplified English dictionary accommodation on the reading-test performance of Hmong English-language learners (ELLs). Participants included a control group of 69 non-ELL students and an experimental group of 133 Hmong ELLs from 3 urban middle schools in Minnesota. In a randomized counterbalanced design, all…

Testing Foreign Language Impact on Engineering Students' Scientific Problem-Solving Performance

Science.gov (United States)

Tatzl, Dietmar; Messnarz, Bernd

2013-01-01

This article investigates the influence of English as the examination language on the solution of physics and science problems by non-native speakers in tertiary engineering education. For that purpose, a statistically significant total number of 96 students in four year groups from freshman to senior level participated in a testing experiment in…

French, English or Kanak Languages? Can Traditional Languages and Cultures Be Sustained in New Caledonia?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anu Bissoonauth

2017-10-01

Preliminary results from the study show a difference in the language habits between older and younger generations on New Caledonians of Melanesian descent. Although French is perceived as the lingua franca by all, English is more valued than ancestral Melanesian languages by the younger generations. In terms of cultural representations and links with family history, there seems to be a discrepancy between the younger and the older generations. Whilst the older generations perceive the Centre Culturel Tjibaou as a traditional space for Melanesian art and culture their younger counterparts on the contrary view it as a place associated with contemporary art and music performances.

Design Features for Linguistically-Mediated Meaning Construction: The Relative Roles of the Linguistic and Conceptual Systems in Subserving the Ideational Function of Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Evans, Vyvyan

2016-01-01

Recent research in language and cognitive science proposes that the linguistic system evolved to provide an "executive" control system on the evolutionarily more ancient conceptual system (e.g., Barsalou et al., 2008; Evans, 2009, 2015a,b; Bergen, 2012). In short, the claim is that embodied representations in the linguistic system interface with non-linguistic representations in the conceptual system, facilitating rich meanings, or simulations, enabling linguistically mediated communication. In this paper I build on these proposals by examining the nature of what I identify as design features for this control system. In particular, I address how the ideational function of language-our ability to deploy linguistic symbols to convey meanings of great complexity-is facilitated. The central proposal of this paper is as follows. The linguistic system of any given language user, of any given linguistic system-spoken or signed-facilitates access to knowledge representation-concepts-in the conceptual system, which subserves this ideational function. In the most general terms, the human meaning-making capacity is underpinned by two distinct, although tightly coupled representational systems: the conceptual system and the linguistic system. Each system contributes to meaning construction in qualitatively distinct ways. This leads to the first design feature: given that the two systems are representational-they are populated by semantic representations-the nature and function of the representations are qualitatively different. This proposed design feature I term the bifurcation in semantic representation. After all, it stands to reason that if a linguistic system has a different function, vis-à-vis the conceptual system, which is of far greater evolutionary antiquity, then the semantic representations will be complementary, and as such, qualitatively different, reflecting the functional distinctions of the two systems, in collectively giving rise to meaning. I consider the

Screening for Specific Language Impairment in Preschool Children: Evaluating a Screening Procedure Including the Token Test.

Science.gov (United States)

Willinger, Ulrike; Schmoeger, Michaela; Deckert, Matthias; Eisenwort, Brigitte; Loader, Benjamin; Hofmair, Annemarie; Auff, Eduard

2017-10-01

Specific language impairment (SLI) comprises impairments in receptive and/or expressive language. Aim of this study was to evaluate a screening for SLI. 61 children with SLI (SLI-children, age-range 4-6 years) and 61 matched typically developing controls were tested for receptive language ability (Token Test-TT) and for intelligence (Wechsler Preschool-and-Primary-Scale-of-Intelligence-WPPSI). Group differences were analyzed using t tests, as well as direct and stepwise discriminant analyses. The predictive value of the WPPSI with respect to TT performance was analyzed using regression analyses. SLI-children performed significantly worse on both TT and WPPSI ([Formula: see text]). The TT alone yielded an overall classification rate of 79%, the TT and the WPPSI together yielded an overall classification rate of 80%. TT performance was significantly predicted by verbal intelligence in SLI-children and nonverbal intelligence in controls whilst WPPSI subtest arithmetic was predictive in both groups. Without further research, the Token Test cannot be seen as a valid and sufficient tool for the screening of SLI in preschool children but rather as a tool for the assessment of more general intellectual capacities. SLI-children at this age already show impairments typically associated with SLI which indicates the necessity of early developmental support or training. Token Test performance is possibly an indicator for a more general developmental factor rather than an exclusive indicator for language difficulties.

A Large-Scale Analysis of Variance in Written Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Johns, Brendan T; Jamieson, Randall K

2018-01-22

The collection of very large text sources has revolutionized the study of natural language, leading to the development of several models of language learning and distributional semantics that extract sophisticated semantic representations of words based on the statistical redundancies contained within natural language (e.g., Griffiths, Steyvers, & Tenenbaum, ; Jones & Mewhort, ; Landauer & Dumais, ; Mikolov, Sutskever, Chen, Corrado, & Dean, ). The models treat knowledge as an interaction of processing mechanisms and the structure of language experience. But language experience is often treated agnostically. We report a distributional semantic analysis that shows written language in fiction books varies appreciably between books from the different genres, books from the same genre, and even books written by the same author. Given that current theories assume that word knowledge reflects an interaction between processing mechanisms and the language environment, the analysis shows the need for the field to engage in a more deliberate consideration and curation of the corpora used in computational studies of natural language processing. Copyright © 2018 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

The representation of women in Japanese written media The representation of women in Japanese written media

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Seiko Yasumoto

2008-04-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to investigate the representation of women in Japanese society in relation to men with respect to the use of language. One selected section of the published media has been used to determine if the Japanese language still propagates the traditional role of women as being different to and beneath that of men or if there has been some change. The traditional relationship of women to men is called in Japanese dan-son jo-hi and dates back to before the Meiji era. dan-son jo-hi involves the idea that men should be respected and not women, that women have lower status than men in society. As a case study, the magazine AERA that purports to be the “Time magazine of Japan” was selected. Thirty articles published between 2000 and 2002 from “Josei” the women’s section of AERA, were examined by using three analytical techniques: Content analysis; Foregrounding analysis; Gender control and Gender image analysis. These three analyses show that the messages about a woman’s role vary from one of promoting historical traditional attitudes through to more current “Western attitudes” with respect to equal status for women. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the representation of women in Japanese society in relation to men with respect to the use of language. One selected section of the published media has been used to determine if the Japanese language still propagates the traditional role of women as being different to and beneath that of men or if there has been some change. The traditional relationship of women to men is called in Japanese dan-son jo-hi and dates back to before the Meiji era. dan-son jo-hi involves the idea that men should be respected and not women, that women have lower status than men in society. As a case study, the magazine AERA that purports to be the “Time magazine of Japan” was selected. Thirty articles published between 2000 and 2002 from “Josei” the women’s section

More Than Words: The Role of Multiword Sequences in Language Learning and Use.

Science.gov (United States)

Christiansen, Morten H; Arnon, Inbal

2017-07-01

The ability to convey our thoughts using an infinite number of linguistic expressions is one of the hallmarks of human language. Understanding the nature of the psychological mechanisms and representations that give rise to this unique productivity is a fundamental goal for the cognitive sciences. A long-standing hypothesis is that single words and rules form the basic building blocks of linguistic productivity, with multiword sequences being treated as units only in peripheral cases such as idioms. The new millennium, however, has seen a shift toward construing multiword linguistic units not as linguistic rarities, but as important building blocks for language acquisition and processing. This shift-which originated within theoretical approaches that emphasize language learning and use-has far-reaching implications for theories of language representation, processing, and acquisition. Incorporating multiword units as integral building blocks blurs the distinction between grammar and lexicon; calls for models of production and comprehension that can accommodate and give rise to the effect of multiword information on processing; and highlights the importance of such units to learning. In this special topic, we bring together cutting-edge work on multiword sequences in theoretical linguistics, first-language acquisition, psycholinguistics, computational modeling, and second-language learning to present a comprehensive overview of the prominence and importance of such units in language, their possible role in explaining differences between first- and second-language learning, and the challenges the combined findings pose for theories of language. Copyright © 2017 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Time series patterns and language support in DBMS

Science.gov (United States)

Telnarova, Zdenka

2017-07-01

This contribution is focused on pattern type Time Series as a rich in semantics representation of data. Some example of implementation of this pattern type in traditional Data Base Management Systems is briefly presented. There are many approaches how to manipulate with patterns and query patterns. Crucial issue can be seen in systematic approach to pattern management and specific pattern query language which takes into consideration semantics of patterns. Query language SQL-TS for manipulating with patterns is shown on Time Series data.

POETICS OF TRANSCENDENCE: STYLISTIC REDUCTION AS A TOOL FOR REPRESENTATION OF SACRED MEANINGS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elena Brazgovskaya

2016-10-01

Full Text Available The main direction of the work is connected to the representation of abstract (transcendent objects in music and literature. The article analyses "Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten" by Arvo Pärt and some poems of Czesław Miłosz. The metaphysical dimension of reality involves forms and things, existing beyond the boundaries of empirical perception and, at first sight, beyond the descriptive practices. Abstract objects are available in intellectual experience, but culture must transform them into a symbolic form. As a rule, it is connected to the practice of art minimalism. The essence of minimalism is the reduction of number of stylistic tools and “purification” the perception from the visual / auditory images (not a mimetic use of language. For the representation of the sacred Pärt uses only mensural canon form, scale and chord. These “characters” are deprived of descriptive function, but have symbolic potential (canon as a sign of stopped time, the eternal return. The distinctive feature of the Miłoszʼs style is the pursuit to “clean” the signs (indexical and symbolic. There is the reverse side of language distillation: the rejection of the subjective position, emotional experience, the distance between the person and the object of representation.

Incomplete contour representations and shape descriptors : ICR test studies

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ghosh, Anarta; Petkov, Nicolai; Gregorio, MD; DiMaio,; Frucci, M; Musio, C

2005-01-01

Inspired by psychophysical studies of the human cognitive abilities we propose a novel aspect and a method for performance evaluation of contour based shape recognition algorithms regarding their robustness to incompleteness of contours. We use complete contour representations of objects as a

Public opinion and change in language. On the history of the atomic energy discourse

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jung, M.

1994-01-01

The representation of the atomic energy controversy as a linguistic and social process of development reveals the discrepancy between linguistic consciousness and the actual change in language which proves to be the unintentional result of manifold influences and intentions. A vivid, exciting description is given of political language culture in the Federal Republic of Germany. The role of technical languages in the public controversy is discussed, and numerous errors committed by scientific language criticism are disclosed. (orig.) [de

Use of Mobile Testing System PeLe for Developing Language Skills

Science.gov (United States)

Titova, Svetlana

2015-01-01

One of the objectives of this paper is to investigate the pedagogical impact of both the mobile testing system PeLe (Norway, HiST) and the enquiry-based learning approach on language skills development in the context of mobile-assisted learning. The research aims to work out a methodological framework of PeLe implementation into the language…

Modeling language and cognition with deep unsupervised learning: a tutorial overview.

Science.gov (United States)

Zorzi, Marco; Testolin, Alberto; Stoianov, Ivilin P

2013-01-01

Deep unsupervised learning in stochastic recurrent neural networks with many layers of hidden units is a recent breakthrough in neural computation research. These networks build a hierarchy of progressively more complex distributed representations of the sensory data by fitting a hierarchical generative model. In this article we discuss the theoretical foundations of this approach and we review key issues related to training, testing and analysis of deep networks for modeling language and cognitive processing. The classic letter and word perception problem of McClelland and Rumelhart (1981) is used as a tutorial example to illustrate how structured and abstract representations may emerge from deep generative learning. We argue that the focus on deep architectures and generative (rather than discriminative) learning represents a crucial step forward for the connectionist modeling enterprise, because it offers a more plausible model of cortical learning as well as a way to bridge the gap between emergentist connectionist models and structured Bayesian models of cognition.

Modeling Language and Cognition with Deep Unsupervised Learning:A Tutorial Overview

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marco eZorzi

2013-08-01

Full Text Available Deep unsupervised learning in stochastic recurrent neural networks with many layers of hidden units is a recent breakthrough in neural computation research. These networks build a hierarchy of progressively more complex distributed representations of the sensory data by fitting a hierarchical generative model. In this article we discuss the theoretical foundations of this approach and we review key issues related to training, testing and analysis of deep networks for modeling language and cognitive processing. The classic letter and word perception problem of McClelland and Rumelhart (1981 is used as a tutorial example to illustrate how structured and abstract representations may emerge from deep generative learning. We argue that the focus on deep architectures and generative (rather than discriminative learning represents a crucial step forward for the connectionist modeling enterprise, because it offers a more plausible model of cortical learning as well as way to bridge the gap between emergentist connectionist models and structured Bayesian models of cognition.