Language development at 3 years in pre-term children of birth weight below 1000 g

Language development at 3 years of pre-term children born below 1000 g birth weight was compared with full-term controls matched for social background. The pre-term group used less complex expressive language and showed lower receptive understanding, auditory memory and verbal reasoning. Language outcome was related to intraventricular haemorrhage but not to global indication of postnatal illness such as number of days on the ventilator. Average verbal intelligence in environmentally low risk, extremely low birth weight children is an insufficient indicator of complex language functioning.

A language-independent parallel refactoring framework

Recent trends towards increasingly parallel computers mean that there needs to be a seismic shift in programming practice. The time is rapidly approaching when most programming will be for parallel systems. However, most programming techniques in use today are geared towards sequential, or occasionally small-scale parallel, programming. While refactoring has so far mainly been applied to sequential programs, it is our contention that refactoring can play a key role in significantly improving the programmability of parallel systems, by allowing the programmer to apply a set of well-defined transformations in order to parallelise their programs. In this paper, we describe a new language-independent refactoring approach that helps introduce and tune parallelism through high-level design patterns targeting a set of well-specified parallel skeletons. We believe this new refactoring process is the key to allowing programmers to truly start thinking in parallel. © 2012 ACM.

Comorbid motor deficits in a clinical sample of children with specific language impairment

The aim of the present study was to compare the motor function of a clinical sample of children with specific language impairment (SLI) to a language-matched comparison group that had not been referred for SLI assessment. A typical language comparison group with similar nonverbal IQ was also included. There were approximately 35 children in each group, aged 9- to 10-years-old, and the children completed a range of standardised language, motor and literacy measures. The results showed that the SLI group scored significantly lower than the language-matched and typical language comparison groups on all of the motor and literacy measures. We conclude that language factors alone are insufficient to explain the extensive comorbid motor and literacy deficits shown by the children with SLI in this study. We suggest that the clinical diagnosis of SLI may be influenced by the presence of additional developmental difficulties, which should be made explicit in assessment procedures, and that intervention strategies which address the broad range of difficulties experienced by children with a clinical diagnosis of SLI, should be prioritised.

International on-line reciprocal peer tutoring to promote modern language development in primary schools

The paper reports data from an on-line peer tutoring project. In the project 78, 9–12-year-old students from Scotland and Catalonia peer tutored each other in English and Spanish via a managed on-line envi- ronment. Significant gains in first language (Catalonian pupils) modern language (Scottish pupils) and attitudes towards modern languages (both Catalonian and Scottish pupils) were reported for the exper- imental group as compared to the control group. Results indicated that pupils tutored each other in using Piagetian techniques of error correction during the project. Error correction provided by tutors to tutees focussed on morph syntaxys, more specifically the correction of verbs. Peer support provided via the on- line environment was predominantly based on the tutor giving the right answer to the tutee. High rates of impact on tutee corrected messages were observed. The implications for peer tutoring initiative taking place via on-line environments are discussed. Implications for policy and practice are explored

Tact training versus bi-directional intraverbal training in teaching a foreign language

The current study involved an evaluation of the emergence of untrained verbal relations as a function of between three different foreign-language teaching strategies. Two Spanish-speaking adults received foreign-language (English) tact-training as well as native-to-foreign and foreign-to-native intraverbal training. The results indicated that tact training and native-to-foreign intraverbal training are more likely to result in the emergence of untrained relations, and may thus be more efficient compared to foreign-to-native intraverbal training.

An Gaelaras, by O'Donnell and Tuomey:The Building blocks of Language: Review by Rick LeVert and Tarla MacGabhann

The opening of An Gaelaras - the Irish language cultural centre in Derry designed by O'Donnell + Tuomey - is the most significant architectural addition to the symbolic landscape of the Walled City in recent times. It marks nothing less than a physical re-surfacing and a normalisation of the Irish language in this long fragmented city. This alone places An Gaelaras in a delicate historical arc that spans over 1500 years of architectural heritage and links it with the now invisible ruins of St Columba's original 6th century monastery.

Universal behaviour of shock precursors in the presence of efficient cosmic ray acceleration

The self-consistent interaction between energetic particles and self-generated hydromagnetic waves in a cosmic ray pressure dominated plasma is considered. Using a three-dimensional hybrid magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)-kinetic code, which utilizes a spherical harmonic expansion of the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation, high-resolution simulations of the magnetic field growth including feedback on the cosmic rays are carried out. It is found that for shocks with high cosmic ray acceleration efficiency, the magnetic fields become highly disorganized, resulting in near isotropic diffusion, independent of the initial orientation of the ambient magnetic field. The possibility of sub-Bohm diffusion is demonstrated for parallel shocks, while the diffusion coefficient approaches the Bohm limit from below for oblique shocks. This universal behaviour suggests that Bohm diffusion in the root-mean-squared field inferred from observation may provide a realistic estimate for the maximum energy acceleration time-scale in young supernova remnants. Although disordered, the magnetic field is not self-similar suggesting a non-uniform energy-dependent behaviour of the energetic particle transport in the precursor. Possible indirect radiative signatures of cosmic ray driven magnetic field amplification are discussed.

Language Teacher Education in Ireland, North and South

The European Union considers modern languages among the basic skills or key competencies required by all its citizens and is concerned to promote excellence in the teaching and learning of languages as well as greater diversity in the range of languages available to learners in the Member States, as witnessed by the recent European Commission Action Plan, Promoting Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity: An Action Plan 2004-2006. This consideration, the changing socio-cultural demography of Ireland, the need for more joined-up thinking in the context of language teaching in schools, and in the context of language teacher education in particular, form the back-drop to the paper. Among the challenges facing modern/world languages’ education in Ireland identified in the paper are, lack of a languages’ policy, lack of a languages’ strategy, and lack of an integrated language curriculum and by implication, a whole school approach to language teaching and learning. The paper refers to positive signs that are occurring in this context as well, e.g. official recognition to Irish as a working language in the European Union and in the Official Languages Act in Ireland (2003). The paper reports on the recent first ever all Ireland cross-border conference in the context of language teacher education. It outlines the background, aims, and content of the conference that includes findings from a study about the impact of autonomous language teaching and learning supported by the European Language Portfolio in the context of post-primary language teacher education in Ireland. The paper shows data from the first ever survey on language teacher education provision, policy and practice across colleges in Ireland, North and South. Initial teacher education is on the cusp of change. This paper highlights several key issues facing language teacher education. This paper has implications for Irish as well as international readers, and is aimed at supporting all those who want to bring about improvement in this important area.

On the Complexity of Universal Leader Election

Electing a leader is a fundamental task in distributed computing. In its implicit version, only the leader must know who is the elected leader. This paper focuses on studying the message and time complexity of randomized implicit leader election in synchronous distributed networks. Surprisingly, the most "obvious" complexity bounds have not been proven for randomized algorithms. The "obvious" lower bounds of O(m) messages (m is the number of edges in the network) and O(D) time (D is the network diameter) are non-trivial to show for randomized (Monte Carlo) algorithms. (Recent results that show that even O(n) (n is the number of nodes in the network) is not a lower bound on the messages in complete networks, make the above bounds somewhat less obvious). To the best of our knowledge, these basic lower bounds have not been established even for deterministic algorithms (except for the limited case of comparison algorithms, where it was also required that some nodes may not wake up spontaneously, and that D and n were not known).

We establish these fundamental lower bounds in this paper for the general case, even for randomized Monte Carlo algorithms. Our lower bounds are universal in the sense that they hold for all universal algorithms (such algorithms should work for all graphs), apply to every D, m, and n, and hold even if D, m, and n are known, all the nodes wake up simultaneously, and the algorithms can make anyuse of node's identities. To show that these bounds are tight, we present an O(m) messages algorithm. An O(D) time algorithm is known. A slight adaptation of our lower bound technique gives rise to an O(m) message lower bound for randomized broadcast algorithms.

An interesting fundamental problem is whether both upper bounds (messages and time) can be reached simultaneously in the randomized setting for all graphs. (The answer is known to be negative in the deterministic setting). We answer this problem partially by presenting a randomized algorithm that matches both complexities in some cases. This already separates (for some cases) randomized algorithms from deterministic ones. As first steps towards the general case, we present several universal leader election algorithms with bounds that trade-off messages versus time. We view our results as a step towards understanding the complexity of universal leader election in distributed networks.

First steps: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of the Group Family Nurse Partnership (gFNP) program compared to routine care in improving outcomes for high-risk mothers and their children and preventing abuse

Background: Evidence from the USA suggests that the home-based Family Nurse Partnership program (FNP), extending from early pregnancy until infants are 24 months, can reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect throughout childhood. FNP is now widely available in the UK. A new variant, Group Family Nurse Partnership (gFNP) offers similar content but in a group context and for a shorter time, until infants are 12 months old. Each group comprises 8 to 12 women with similar expected delivery dates and their partners. Its implementation has been established but there is no evidence of its effectiveness.

Methods/Design: The study comprises a multi-site randomized controlled trial designed to identify the benefits of gFNP compared to standard care. Participants (not eligible for FNP) must be either aged <20 years at their last menstrual period (LMP) with one or more previous live births, or aged 20 to 24 at LMP with low educational qualifications and no previous live births. 'Low educational qualifications' is defined as not having both Maths and English Language GCSE at grade C or higher or, if they have both, no more than four in total at grade C or higher. Exclusions are: under 20 years and previously received home-based FNP and, in either age group, severe psychotic mental illness or not able to communicate in English. Consenting women are randomly allocated (minimized by site and maternal age group) when between 10 and 16 weeks pregnant to either to the 44 session gFNP program or to standard care after the collection of baseline information. Researchers are blind to group assignment. The primary outcomes at 12 months are child abuse potential based on the revised Adult-Adolescent Parenting Inventory and parent/infant interaction coded using the CARE Index based on a video-taped interaction. Secondary outcomes are maternal depression, parenting stress, health related quality of life, social support, and use of services.

Discussion: This is the first study of the effectiveness of gFNP in the UK. Results should inform decision-making about its delivery alongside universal services, potentially enabling a wider range of families to benefit from the FNP curriculum and approach to supporting parenting.

Attention during social interaction in children with autism: Comparison to specific language impairment, typical development, and links to cognition

Eye-tracking studies have shown how people with autism spend significantly less time looking at socially relevant information on-screen compared to those developing typically. This has been suggested to impact on the development of socio-cognitive skills in autism. We present novel evidence of how attention atypicalities in children with autism extend to real-life interaction, in comparison to typically developing (TD) children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). We explored the allocation of attention during social interaction with an interlocutor, and how aspects of attention (awareness checking) related to traditional measures of social cognition (false belief attribution). We found divergent attention allocation patterns across the groups in relation to social cognition ability. Even though children with autism and SLI performed similarly on the socio- cognitive tasks, there were syndrome-specific atypicalities of their attention patterns. Children with SLI were most similar to TD children in terms of prioritising attention to socially pertinent information (eyes, face, awareness checking). Children with autism showed reduced attention to the eyes and face, and slower awareness checking. This study provides unique and timely insight into real-world social gaze (a)typicality in autism, SLI and typical development, its relationship to socio-cognitive ability, and raises important issues for intervention.