1,720,966 research outputs found
The role of number mismatch and exposure in the comprehension of relative clauses in bilingual children
No full textResearch on English relative clauses shows that, in most studies, subject relatives are comprehended more accurately than object relatives by both monolingual and bilingual children. The current study focuses on Czech-English bilingual children and extends this line of research in two ways. First, it includes a condition in which the noun phrases involved in the action differ in number (one is singular and the other is plural), a manipulation that was never tested on bilinguals. Second, it includes a fine-grained measure of language exposure, since the exposure has been linked to the acquisition of complex structures. Thirty-eight Czech-English bilinguals (aged 8-11 years) were tested on their comprehension of relative clauses using a picture matching paradigm. Results show that sentences with number mismatch were comprehended more accurately than match sentences and that subject relatives were comprehended more accurately than object relatives. In addition, in the subject relatives subset, higher exposure to English corresponded to poorer performance in relative clauses with number mismatch. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed
Evidence for a bi(multi)lingual advantage on working memory performance in South African university students
Full text linkThesis (M.A (Social and Psychological Research))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, School of Human & Community Development, 2016Due to linguistic diversity within South Africa, multilingualism is becoming increasingly prominent. Since South Africa is host to 11 official languages, it is the norm rather than the exception that South Africans are exposed to more than one language. This has social, educational and cognitive implications. Specifically, research indicates that the acquisition of additional languages to an individual’s mother tongue has a positive effect on working memory – the short-term storage and manipulation of information during the performance of cognitive tasks – which may confer a ‘bi(multi)lingual advantage’ and could improve academic performance. Consequently, the aim of this study was to determine whether working memory ability differs significantly between students who are monolingual or multilingual, while statistically controlling for intellectual ability and socio-economic status between these groups. Participants were 78 undergraduate students, comprising English first- (monolingual, Mage = 20.06 years, SD = .88) and second- or additional-language (multilingual, Mage = 20.03 years, SD = 1.03) speakers, matched for age, gender and socio-economic status. Language groups were compared on the Automated Working Memory Assessment (Alloway, 2007) and subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – Third Edition (Wechsler, 1997). One-way between-group ANCOVAs showed that (a) the multilingual group outperformed the monolingual group across five of six non-verbal subtests, namely Mazes Memory and Block Recall (non-verbal simple span), and Odd One Out, Mister X and Spatial Recall (non-verbal complex span), (b) the multilingual group outperformed the monolingual group on two verbal subtests, namely Digit Recall (verbal simple span) and Listening Recall (verbal complex span), (c) the language groups performed equivalently on verbal simple and complex tasks of Word Recall, Non-word Recall, Counting Recall and Backwards Digit Recall. The findings contribute to the extant literature confirming a ‘bi(multi)lingual advantage’ in executive functioning. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in light of academic performance.
Keywords: working memory, monolingualism, multilingualism, bi(multi)lingual advantage, South Afric
Context Matters: How Experimental Language and Language Environment Affect Mental Representations in Multilingualism
Full text linkThe Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM) proposed by Kroll and Stewart has been one of the most influential models of late multilingual language processing. While the model has provided valuable insights into language processing mechanisms, the role of contextual factors for the RHM has not been investigated to date. Such contextual effects could be manifold, including individual speakers’ language profiles (such as age of acquisition, proficiency, and immersion experiences), experimental factors (such as different instruction languages), and environmental factors (such as societal language(s)). Additionally, it also appears promising to investigate the applicability of the RHM to non-native multilingual speakers from diverse backgrounds. To investigate whether some of the mentioned contextual factors affect non-native language processing, we designed three online experiments requiring answers in German and English, but tested speakers whose first language was neither German nor English. They performed a series of translation, picture-naming, and recall tasks based on Kroll and Stewart, as well as providing detailed information on their proficiencies, profiles of language use, and exposure. Experiment 1, conducted with speakers living in Germany, established the paradigm and investigated the role of individual differences in linguistic background. While Experiment 2 focused on the short-term effects of the experimental context by varying whether instructions were provided in German or in English, Experiment 3 examined the longer-term role of the current language environment by comparing individuals living in German-speaking countries with speakers living in societies where neither experimental language is spoken regularly. As in Kroll and Stewart, both the response language and the list type constituted key variables affecting response times and accuracy, known as language asymmetry and category interference. Importantly, the strength of this asymmetry was affected by participants’ immersion experiences, suggesting a certain dynamic development in multilingual language processing. In addition, context also seemed to play a role for experimental performance, especially the language environment examined in Experiment 3. Hence, speakers’ individual linguistic backgrounds and experience with the experimental languages, as well as additional contextual factors, need to be considered when conducting multilingual experiments and drawing conclusions about multilinguistic processing
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
AI in the Writing Center: an Analysis of Tutor Approaches and Perspectives
No full textElectronic Thesis or DissertationThis study investigates the university writing center tutors’ perspectives on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies and the approaches they employ for GenAI for academic writing practices. This qualitative research involves interviews with writing center tutors to understand their ethical perspectives, strategies, and methods related to GenAI, based on their familiarity with these technologies, interactions with the students in the sessions, and discussions with their colleagues. Seven tutors (domestic and international) in an American university were interviewed, and a thematic analysis was applied to the interview data. The findings show that most of the tutors express ethical concerns about the use of GenAI in academic environments. Furthermore, tutors feel an uneasiness toward GenAI, and they often voice their fears and anxieties over GenAI usage. However, recognizing the growing role of these technologies, tutors develop approaches and methods to integrate GenAI into their practices responsibly within and outside of the writing center. Through the writing center’s learning culture as a community of practice, they contribute to the cultivation of AI literacies
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe 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
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