Language Outcomes of the Play and Language for Autistic Youngsters (PLAY) Project Home Consultation model—An Extended Analysis

The current study is a post-hoc analysis of data from the original randomized control trial of the Play and Language for Autistic Youngsters (PLAY) Home Consultation program, a parent-mediated, DIR/Floortime based early intervention program for children with ASD (Solomon, Van Egeren, Mahone, Huber, & Zimmerman, 2014). We examined 22 children from the original RCT who received the PLAY program. Children were split into two groups (high and lower functioning) based on the ADOS module administered prior to intervention. Fifteen-minute parent-child video sessions were coded through the use of CHILDES transcription software. Child and maternal language, communicative behaviors, and communicative functions were assessed in the natural language samples both pre- and post-intervention. Results demonstrated significant improvements in both child and maternal behaviors following intervention. There was a significant increase in child verbal and non-verbal initiations and verbal responses in whole group analysis. Total number of utterances, word production, and grammatical complexity all significantly improved when viewed across the whole group of participants; however, lexical growth did not reach significance. Changes in child communicative function were especially noteworthy, and demonstrated a significant increase in social interaction and a significant decrease in non-interactive behaviors. Further, mothers demonstrated an increase in responsiveness to the child’s conversational bids, increased ability to follow the child’s lead, and a decrease in directiveness. When separated for analyses within groups, trends emerged for child and maternal variables, suggesting greater gains in use of communicative function in both high and low groups over changes in linguistic structure. Additional analysis also revealed a significant inverse relationship between maternal responsiveness and child non-interactive behaviors; as mothers became more responsive, children’s non-engagement was decreased. Such changes further suggest that changes in learned skills following PLAY parent training may result in improvements in child social interaction and language abilities.

The “handwriting brain”: a motor/linguistic network with specialized “writing-specific” areas?

International audience

Political ideologies and attitudes towards income inequality in the US: a critical discourse analysis of CNN and Fox News opinion articles

The topic of the thesis is media discourse about current state if income inequality in the US, and political ideologies as influences behind the discourse. The data consists of four opinion articles, two from CNN and two from Fox News. The purpose of the study was to examine how media represents income inequality as an issue, and if the attitudes conveyed are concerned or indifferent. Previous studies have indicated that the level of income is often seen as a personal responsibility, and such perspective can be linked with Republican ideology. In contrast, the Democrats typically express more concern about the consequences of inequality. CNN has been previously considered to have a Democratic bias, and Fox News has been considered to have Republican bias, which is one reason why these two news channels were chosen as the sources of the data. The study is a critical discourse analysis, and the methods applied were sociocognitive approach, which analyzes the social and cognitive factors affecting the discourse, and appraisal framework, which was applied to scrutinize the expressed attitudes more closely by identifyind specific linguistic features. The appraisal framework includes studying such features as affect, judgment and appreciation, which offer a more detailed analysis on the attitudes present in the articles. The sociocognitive approach, additionally, offers a way of analyzing a more broad context affecting the articles. The findings were then compared, to see if there are differences between the articles, or between the news sites with alleged bias. The findings showed that CNN, with alleged Democratic bias, had a more symphatetic attitude towards income inequality, whereas Fox News, with more Republican views, showed clearly less concern towards the issue. Moreover, the Fox News articles had such dubious claims that the underlying ideology behind the articles could be even supporting of income inequality, as it allows the rich to pursue all the wealth they can without having to give anything away. The results, thus, suggest that the political ideologies may a significant effect on media discourse, which, in turn, may have a significant effect on the attitudes of the public towards great issues that could require prompt measures.

Consolidation of national grammar: an analysis of the pronoun frame in the eighteenth-century in Minas Gerais context

This article intends to revisit the issue of national genesis of grammar, from the analysis of a corpus of five unpublished documents that was writing in the region of Diamantina (MG) in the second half of the eighteenth century. The data analyzed here according to the assumptions sociolinguistic endorse the hypothesis that destabilization of pronominal framework and the consequent weakening of the agreement of the Portuguese system were already established in this region in the late eighteenth century. From this result, we speculate about the socio-historical role of the Minas Gerais region in implementing linguistic changes determinants for the establishment of a national grammar.

Translation as a resource for the teaching of linguistic diversity in foreign language

Translation has played many roles in foreign language teaching. It has been, on the one hand, considered a fundamental methodological tool, constituting the core of the grammar-translation approach, and, on the other hand, heavily criticized and excluded from the classroom, whether from the practical or the theoretical point of view. Currently, with the communicative approach to language teaching, the study of language varieties has become very important to the learner, and considering the need to understand and interpret the meaning of a word within a specific socio-cultural context during the translation process, it is of paramount importance to acknowledge sociolinguistic variations in the text to be translated. Thus, our goal is to show, through a reflective analysis, that translation can be an educational resource for the teaching of linguistic diversity in foreign language. This study isbased on theoretical assumptions on translation dating from the time of Cicero and Saint Jerome to the present times.

Paraná in the guidebook: a cultural markers analysis

Even nowadays, with the access to information through the internet or even by means of apps on the cellphone, the market of printed tourist guidebooks, as a way of advertising tourist destinations, continues to work. In a global scope, one of the most recognized publishing companies is Lonely Planet, with publications about a great number of destinations, in until 11 languages, commercialized in various parts of the world. One of its theme is Brazil. The titles Brazil (2013), in Portuguese, Brasil (2014) and in the Italian guidebook, Brasile (2014) were selected. The manuals were analyzed in a post-doctorate research entitled, “Analyzes of tourist guidebooks about Brazil in the light of the Translation Studies Based on Corpus”. However, the analyzed chapters are just the ones that make up the South of Brazil, that is, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. The aim was to analyze the cultural markers with the highest level of keyness, presented in them and its respective translations in the guidebooks in Portuguese and in Italian. Nevertheless, for this article just the chapters referring to Paraná were selected. The theoretical basis were the Corpus Linguistic (Berber Sardinha, 2004), the Translation Studies Based on Corpus (BAKER, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000; CAMARGO, 2005, 2007a, 2007b), as well as the studies about cultural markers (AUBERT, 1981, 1995, 2006). It was noted that even on the source language corpus there were markers in Portuguese language, such as “Curitiba” and “Iguaçu”, whereas the toponyms are quite frequent in this textual genre.

BELIEF AND THE LINGUISTIC ATTITUDE OF CAPANEMENSE

Despite not using the Spanish language, Brazil borders with several countries that speak this language. The State of Paraná, for instance, has nineteen districts bordering with Paraguay and Argentina. In this geographical context is inserted Capanema city, whose multi-ethnic environment not only promotes the exchange of goods but also culture, beliefs, customs, and especially the language. This work takes as its investigation object the speech of Capanemenses with the aim of verifying the positive and negative views of these subjects regarding the multiple languages ​​and varieties with which they live on today. Following the mentalist methodology (LÓPEZ MORALEZ, 1993), the collected data analysis through interviews in locus showed that, compared to Argentines, most Capanemenses presents a positive attitude, both in relation to the Argentine people properly said, as their mother tongue, seen in a prestigious way by the interviewees. As for Paraguayan, a significant amount of informants showed not see them in a positive way, presenting a justification for this refusal the difference in culture, indigenous origin, low technology and education, as well as the language issue - Guarani, Jopará. On the other hand, the German people’s seen as introverted by their lack of emotion, but responsible in everything they do. The German language has not been evaluated positively by the Capanemenses, as it’s considered difficult and awkward. Finally, we note that, believing that Italian culture and language are close to the one existing in Brazil, due to Latin ascendancy, respondents react favorably on the Italians, people judged by Capanemenses as joyful and spontaneous. Keywords: beliefs and linguistic attitudes, language prejudice, languages in contact, Capanema.   

Variation and education in Linguistic Atlas of Brazil

This article focuses on one of the aspects treated in the project Linguistic Atlas of Brazil (ALiB Project) – the teaching of Brazilian Portuguese language. Therefore, this paper investigates how individuals’ language presents specific linguistic marks that construct, maintain and project the diversity in the questionnaire of the ALiB Project, based on the use of the linguistic variation. Thereby, it deals with the importance of linguistic atlas for the education process, highlighting the publication of some Brazilian regional atlas and the linguistic atlas of Brazil. Thus, it discusses the relevant contribution of these works to the knowledge of the linguistic reality in Brazil, as the atlas can optimize and motivate classroom activities and they can also be explored by other subjects of school curriculum. The methodology used was based on the performance of the following stages: 1) reading of the theoretical texts related to the proposed theme; 2) choice and formation of the corpus, made up of inquests of the ALiB Project in different capitals; 3) analysis of the corpus in order to verify linguistic marks that transmit the construction, projection and maintenance of the linguistic variation. The analyses of the selected inquiries try to study variation and its relationship to education by the informers from different age-groups in the different capitals of the country. The analysis of the corpus enabled the realization of register and documentation of lexical diversity of Portuguese language spoken in Brazil, according to the principles of the modern Pluridimensional Geolinguistics, in which the register follows specific parameters.

Educational advertising on youtube: a discursive analysis

The internet has been an increasingly important support for advertising various products. We witness the proliferation of educational advertisements on youtube, aiming for membership of an audience that craves attend university. Thus, the advertising discourse uses linguistic and imagistic strategies increasingly effective. The image constructed in discourse this is a strategy. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to analyze the emerging ethos of sceneries built in educational advertising on youtube. Therefore, we analyzed five videos aimed at pre-university students, adopting as theoretical presuppositions of discourse analysis (AD) French oriented, based on Maingueneau research on the scenes of enunciation. The analysis revealed the variation of topographies and cronografias featuring sceneries, linked to the scenic framework of educational advertising discourse on youtube. Therefore, based on scenes of enunciation, we see the construction of a bold ethos, brave, challenging, among others.

Raman microscopy of formamide-intercalated kaolinites treated by controlled-rate thermal analysis technology

Raman spectroscopy of formamide-intercalated kaolinites treated using controlled-rate thermal analysis technology (CRTA), allowing the separation of adsorbed formamide from intercalated formamide in formamide-intercalated kaolinites, is reported. The Raman spectra of the CRTA-treated formamide-intercalated kaolinites are significantly different from those of the intercalated kaolinites, which display a combination of both intercalated and adsorbed formamide. An intense band is observed at 3629 cm-1, attributed to the inner surface hydroxyls hydrogen bonded to the formamide. Broad bands are observed at 3600 and 3639 cm-1, assigned to the inner surface hydroxyls, which are hydrogen bonded to the adsorbed water molecules. The hydroxyl-stretching band of the inner hydroxyl is observed at 3621 cm-1 in the Raman spectra of the CRTA-treated formamide-intercalated kaolinites. The results of thermal analysis show that the amount of intercalated formamide between the kaolinite layers is independent of the presence of water. Significant differences are observed in the CO stretching region between the adsorbed and intercalated formamide.

Detailed analysis of a conservative difference approximation for the time fractional diffusion equation

Diffusion equations that use time fractional derivatives are attractive because they describe a wealth of problems involving non-Markovian Random walks. The time fractional diffusion equation (TFDE) is obtained from the standard diffusion equation by replacing the first-order time derivative with a fractional derivative of order α ∈ (0, 1). Developing numerical methods for solving fractional partial differential equations is a new research field and the theoretical analysis of the numerical methods associated with them is not fully developed. In this paper an explicit conservative difference approximation (ECDA) for TFDE is proposed. We give a detailed analysis for this ECDA and generate discrete models of random walk suitable for simulating random variables whose spatial probability density evolves in time according to this fractional diffusion equation. The stability and convergence of the ECDA for TFDE in a bounded domain are discussed. Finally, some numerical examples are presented to show the application of the present technique.

Determination of preventive maintenance lead time using hybrid analysis

The time for conducting Preventive Maintenance (PM) on an asset is often determined using a predefined alarm limit based on trends of a hazard function. In this paper, the authors propose using both hazard and reliability functions to improve the accuracy of the prediction particularly when the failure characteristic of the asset whole life is modelled using different failure distributions for the different stages of the life of the asset. The proposed method is validated using simulations and case studies.