1,720,977 research outputs found
The proto-lexicon: Segmenting word-like units from the speech stream
No full textThere is growing evidence from experimental studies that infants start acquiring a vocabulary already when they are between six to nine months old (Bergelson & Swingley, 2012; Parise & Csibra, 2012; Tincoff & Jusczyk, 1999). Clearly, infants must have learned what these words mean prior to their lab visit, that is, learned them in their natural environment. However, as infant speech corpora reveal, there are surprisingly few one-word utterances directed to 6-12-month-olds in maternal speech (excluding exclamations, fillers and social expressions that typically do not combine into phrases): ranging from 2% (Morgan, 1996) to 9% (Brent & Siskind, 2001). Even when parents are explicitly instructed to teach their child certain words, they present these words predominantly in multi-word utterances (Aslin et al., 1996; Johnson et al., 2013). It appears that, for most children, most of the words they hear are presented in continuous speech. As Figure 2.1 demonstrates for a typical infant-directed example from Dutch, words are generally glued together without clear pauses between them to signal word onset and offset (unlike written text, in which words are conveniently separated by spaces). While it is debated whether or not isolated words alone can function as a starting point for vocabulary acquisition (Brent & Siskind, 2001; Depaolis, Vihman & Keren-Portnoy, 2014; Lew‐Williams, Pelucchi & Saffran, 2011; Yang, 2004), it is undeniably true that in order to learn from the input, infants are required to segment the speech stream into separate word-like units from very early on. From adult research, we know that the speech signal contains several cues that assist successful word extraction from speech, but these cues are probabilistic rather than deterministic: no single cue appears sufficient to signal word boundaries (Cutler, 2012). Fortunately, the past two decades have provided us with two experimental methods that allow us to examine when and under what conditions infants can segment words from speech. In what follows next, we will first discuss the main methods (Section 2.1), before we focus on the cues that infants can use to detect words from speech (Section 2.2). Section 2.3 underscores how vital early speech segmentation skill is for subsequent language development, while Section 2.4 ends with future directions
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Facing variation in early vocabularies: How group classification of autism and individual looking behaviours to faces influence vocabulary outcomes in the first years of life
No full textLanguage forms the foundation of our thoughts and enables us to communicate and connect with others. Therefore, learning to comprehend and use language is important for building social connections and integration. Infants start to understand words at around six months, and this is followed by speaking at around one year of age. There is significant variability in the pace at which children learn words, and this can influence their future academic and employment opportunities. Early language difficulties may result in long-term challenges with communication.
This PhD thesis has two main objectives: to examine how infants at higher likelihood of or later diagnosis of autism differ in vocabulary outcomes from typical likelihood or non-diagnosed infants, and to investigate how individual differences in infants’ gaze behavior towards faces relate to their vocabulary outcomes. The thesis draws on data from two cohorts: Eurosibs, focusing on children more likely to be diagnosed with autism, and the Youth cohort, tracking children's development from birth until adolescence.
In Chapter 2, this thesis reviews existing literature to understand how both the expressive and receptive vocabularies of children with an elevated likelihood or later diagnosis of autism compare to typical likelihood or non-diagnosed children. The findings indicate that elevated likelihood/diagnosed infants have smaller vocabularies than typical likelihood/non-diagnosed peers. These differences become more pronounced with age, especially between diagnosed and non-diagnosed children. Chapter 3 then investigates the agreement between two methods of assessing language skills in 14-month-old infants: parent questionnaires (CDI) and behavioral assessments (MSEL). A moderate level of agreement is found between the two methods, suggesting that they are related, but may assess different aspects of language skills.
The thesis then explores how infants’ preference to look at faces develops in the first year and how this preference might relate to later vocabulary outcomes. Chapter 4 examines how looking behaviours to faces might predict vocabulary outcomes, with studies showing that infants who pay more attention to faces tend to have larger vocabularies later on. Chapter 5 then investigates how looking behaviours to faces develops between the first 4 and 7 months after birth, finding that face preference and duration of looking to faces increases with age. Then, Chapter 6 investigates how looking behaviours to faces and object exploration at 4-7 months relate to vocabulary at 2.3-4 years, finding that quicker gazes to faces and more exploration of objects are associated with larger vocabularies. The significance of these relationships varies with age.
This PhD thesis explores the variability in vocabulary outcomes during early childhood. It examines differences between autistic and non-autistic children and investigates how individual differences in looking behaviour to faces and object exploration relate to later vocabulary outcomes. The findings indicate that the timing of assessments is crucial for detecting group differences and individual differences in vocabulary outcomes. Future research should consider how the impact of factors varies with the child's age at measurement. This insight is also important when designing effective interventions for vocabulary-related disorders, designing approaches that are adapted over the course of development
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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