The music of language: an ERP investigation of the effects of musical training on emotional prosody processing

Recent studies have demonstrated the positive effects of musical training on the perception of vocally expressed emotion. This study investigated the effects of musical training on event-related potential (ERP) correlates of emotional prosody processing. Fourteen musicians and fourteen control subjects listened to 228 sentences with neutral semantic content, differing in prosody (one third with neutral, one third with happy and one third with angry intonation), with intelligible semantic content (semantic content condition--SCC) and unintelligible semantic content (pure prosody condition--PPC). Reduced P50 amplitude was found in musicians. A difference between SCC and PPC conditions was found in P50 and N100 amplitude in non-musicians only, and in P200 amplitude in musicians only. Furthermore, musicians were more accurate in recognizing angry prosody in PPC sentences. These findings suggest that auditory expertise characterizing extensive musical training may impact different stages of vocal emotional processing.

Para uma pedagogia das literacias: das conceções e práticas docentes aos conceitos e competências discentes. Um estudo da aula de língua portuguesa no 2º ciclo do ensino básico

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Educação (Especialidade em Literacias e Ensino do Português)

Modelling and verifying smell-free architectures with the Archery language

Architectural (bad) smells are design decisions found in software architectures that degrade the ability of systems to evolve. This paper presents an approach to verify that a software architecture is smellfree using the Archery architectural description language. The language provides a core for modelling software architectures and an extension for specifying constraints. The approach consists in precisely specifying architectural smells as constraints, and then verifying that software architectures do not satisfy any of them. The constraint language is based on a propositional modal logic with recursion that includes: a converse operator for relations among architectural concepts, graded modalities for describing the cardinality in such relations, and nominals referencing architectural elements. Four architectural smells illustrate the approach.

Embedding, evolution, and validation of model-driven spreadsheets

This paper proposes and validates a model-driven software engineering technique for spreadsheets. The technique that we envision builds on the embedding of spreadsheet models under a widely used spreadsheet system. This means that we enable the creation and evolution of spreadsheet models under a spreadsheet system. More precisely, we embed ClassSheets, a visual language with a syntax similar to the one offered by common spreadsheets, that was created with the aim of specifying spreadsheets. Our embedding allows models and their conforming instances to be developed under the same environment. In practice, this convenient environment enhances evolution steps at the model level while the corresponding instance is automatically co-evolved.Finally,wehave designed and conducted an empirical study with human users in order to assess our technique in production environments. The results of this study are promising and suggest that productivity gains are realizable under our model-driven spreadsheet development setting.

An integrated model for simulation of construction phasing of arch concrete dams

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Civil Engineering

Relatório de atividade profissional

Relatório de atividade profissional de mestrado em Ciências – Formação Contínua de Professores (área de especialização em Física e Química)