Seeing Turkish state formation processes: Mapping language and education census data

Language provides an interesting lens to look at state-building processes because of its cross-cutting nature. For example, in addition to its symbolic value and appeal, a national language has other roles in the process, including: (a) becoming the primary medium of communication which permits the nation to function efficiently in its political and economic life, (b) promoting social cohesion, allowing the nation to develop a common culture, and (c) forming a primordial basis for self-determination. Moreover, because of its cross-cutting nature, language interventions are rarely isolated activities. Languages are adopted by speakers, taking root in and spreading between communities because they are legitimated by legislation, and then reproduced through institutions like the education and military systems. Pádraig Ó’ Riagáin (1997) makes a case for this observing that “Language policy is formulated, implemented, and accomplishes its results within a complex interrelated set of economic, social, and political processes which include, inter alia, the operation of other non-language state policies” (p. 45). In the Turkish case, its foundational role in the formation of the Turkish nation-state but its linkages to human rights issues raises interesting issues about how socio-cultural practices become reproduced through institutional infrastructure formation. This dissertation is a country-level case study looking at Turkey’s nation-state building process through the lens of its language and education policy development processes with a focus on the early years of the Republic between 1927 and 1970. This project examines how different groups self-identified or were self-identified (as the case may be) in official Turkish statistical publications (e.g., the Turkish annual statistical yearbooks and the population censuses) during that time period when language and ethnicity data was made publicly available. The overarching questions this dissertation explores include: 1.What were the geo-political conditions surrounding the development and influencing the Turkish government’s language and education policies? 2.Are there any observable patterns in the geo-spatial distribution of language, literacy, and education participation rates over time? In what ways, are these traditionally linked variables (language, literacy, education participation) problematic? 3.What do changes in population identifiers, e.g., language and ethnicity, suggest about the government’s approach towards nation-state building through the construction of a civic Turkish identity and institution building? Archival secondary source data was digitized, aggregated by categories relevant to this project at national and provincial levels and over the course of time (primarily between 1927 and 2000). The data was then re-aggregated into values that could be longitudinally compared and then layered on aspatial administrative maps. This dissertation contributes to existing body of social policy literature by taking an interdisciplinary approach in looking at the larger socio-economic contexts in which language and education policies are produced.

Quichua-Spanish language contact in Salcedo, Ecuador: revisiting media lengua syncretic language practices

The purpose of the current thesis is to develop a better understanding of the interaction between Spanish and Quichua in the Salcedo region and provide more information for the processes that might have given rise to Media Lengua, a ‘mixed’ language comprised of a Quichua grammar and Spanish lexicon. Muysken attributes the formation of Media Lengua to relexification, ruling out any influence from other bilingual phenomena. I argue that the only characteristic that distinguishes Media Lengua from other language contact varieties in central Ecuador is the quantity of the overall Spanish borrowings and not the type of processes that might have been employed by Quichua speakers during the genesis of Media Lengua. The results from the Salcedo data that I have collected show how processes such as adlexification, code-mixing, and structural convergence produce Media Lengua-type sentences, evidence that supports an alternative analysis to Muysken’s relexification hypothesis. Overall, this dissertation is developed around four main objectives: (1) to describe the variation of Spanish loanwords within a bilingual community in Salcedo; (2) to analyze some of the prominent and recent structural changes in Quichua and Spanish; (3) to determine whether Spanish loanword use can be explained by the relationship consultants have with particular social categories; and (4) to analyze the consultants’ language ideologies toward syncretic uses of Spanish and Quichua. Overall, 58% of the content words, 39% of the basic vocabulary, and 50% of the subject pronouns in the Salcedo corpus were derived from Spanish. When compared to Muysken’s description of highlander Quichua in the 1970’s, Spanish loanwords have more than doubled in each category. The overall level of Spanish loanwords in Salcedo Quichua has grown to a level between highlander Quichua in the 1970’s and Media Lengua. Similar to Spanish’s lexical influence in Media Lengua, the increase of Spanish borrowings in today’s rural Quichua can be seen in non-basic and basic vocabularies as well as the subject pronoun system. Significantly, most of the growth has occurred through forms of adlexification i.e., doublets, well-established borrowings, and cultural borrowings, suggesting that ‘ordinary’ lexical borrowing is also capable of producing Media Lengua-type sentences. I approach the second objective by investigating two separate phenomena related to structural convergence. The first examines the complex verbal constructions that have developed in Quichua through Spanish loan translations while the second describes the type of Quichua particles that are attached to Spanish lexemes while speaking Spanish. The calquing of the complex verbal constructions from Spanish were employed when speaking standard Quichua. Since this standard form is typically used by language purists, I argue that their use of calques is a strategy of exploiting the full range of expression from Spanish without incorporating any of the Spanish lexemes which would give the appearance of ‘contamination’. The use of Quichua particles in local varieties of Spanish is a defining characteristic of Quichuacized Spanish, spoken most frequently by women and young children in the community. Although the use of Quichua particles was probably not the main catalyst engendering Media Lengua, I argue that its contribution as a source language to other ‘mixed’ varieties, such as Media Lengua, needs to be accounted for in descriptions of BML genesis. Contrary to Muysken’s representation of relatively ‘unmixed’ Spanish and Quichua as the two source languages of Media Lengua, I propose that local varieties of Spanish might have already been ‘mixed’ to a large degree before Media Lengua was created. The third objective attempts to draw a relationship between particular social variables and the use of Spanish loanwords. Whisker Boxplots and ANOVAs were used to determine which social group, if any, have been introducing new Spanish borrowings into the bilingual communities in Salcedo. Specifically, I controlled for age, education, native language, urban migration, and gender. The results indicate that none of the groups in each of the five social variables indicate higher or lower loanword use. The implication of these results are twofold: (a) when lexical borrowing occurs, it is immediately adopted as the community-wide norm and spoken by members from different backgrounds and generations, or (b) this level of Spanish borrowing (58%) is not a recent phenomenon. The fourth and final objective draws on my ethnographic research that addresses the attitudes of syncretic language use. I observed that Quichuacized Spanish and Hispanicized Quichua are highly stigmatized varieties spoken by the country’s most marginalized populations and families, yet within the community, syncretic ways of speaking are in fact the norm. It was shown that there exists a range of different linguistic definitions for ‘Chaupi Lengua’ and other syncretic language practices as well as many contrasting connotations, most of which were negative. One theme that emerged from the interviews was that speaking syncretic varieties of Quichua weakened the consultant’s claim to an indigenous identity. The linguistic and social data presented in this dissertation supports an alternative view to Muysken’s relexification hypothesis, one that has the advantage of operating with well-precedented linguistic processes and which is actually observable in the present-day Salcedo area. The results from the study on lexical borrowing are significant because they demonstrate how a dynamic bilingual speech community has gradually diversified their Quichua lexicon under intense pressure to shift toward Spanish. They also show that Hispanicized Quichua (Quichua with heavy lexical borrowing) clearly arose from adlexification and prolonged lexical borrowing, and is one of at least six identifiable speech styles found in Salcedo. These results challenge particular interpretations of language contact outcomes, such as, ones that depict sources languages as discrete and ‘unmixed.’ The bilingual continuum presented in this thesis shows on the one hand, the range of speech styles that are accessible to different speakers, and on the other hand, the overlapping, syncretic features that are shared among the different registers and language varieties. It was observed that syncretic speech styles in Salcedo are employed by different consultants in varied interactional contexts, and in turn, produce different evaluations by other fellow community members. In the current dissertation, I challenge the claim that relexification and Media Lengua-type sentences develop in isolation and without the influence of other bilingual phenomena. Based on Muysken's Media Lengua example sentences and the speech styles from the Salcedo corpus, I argue that Media Lengua may have arisen as an institutionalized variant of the highly mixed "middle ground" within the range of the Salcedo bilingual continuum discussed above. Such syncretic forms of Spanish and Quichua strongly resemble Media Lengua sentences in Muysken’s research, and therefore demonstrate how its development could have occurred through several different language contact processes and not only through relexification.

Structured Approaches for Exploring Interpersonal Relationships in Natural Language Text

Human relationships have long been studied by scientists from domains like sociology, psychology, literature, etc. for understanding people's desires, goals, actions and expected behaviors. In this dissertation we study inter-personal relationships as expressed in natural language text. Modeling inter-personal relationships from text finds application in general natural language understanding, as well as real-world domains such as social networks, discussion forums, intelligent virtual agents, etc. We propose that the study of relationships should incorporate not only linguistic cues in text, but also the contexts in which these cues appear. Our investigations, backed by empirical evaluation, support this thesis, and demonstrate that the task benefits from using structured models that incorporate both types of information. We present such structured models to address the task of modeling the nature of relationships between any two given characters from a narrative. To begin with, we assume that relationships are of two types: cooperative and non-cooperative. We first describe an approach to jointly infer relationships between all characters in the narrative, and demonstrate how the task of characterizing the relationship between two characters can benefit from including information about their relationships with other characters in the narrative. We next formulate the relationship-modeling problem as a sequence prediction task to acknowledge the evolving nature of human relationships, and demonstrate the need to model the history of a relationship in predicting its evolution. Thereafter, we present a data-driven method to automatically discover various types of relationships such as familial, romantic, hostile, etc. Like before, we address the task of modeling evolving relationships but don't restrict ourselves to two types of relationships. We also demonstrate the need to incorporate not only local historical but also global context while solving this problem. Lastly, we demonstrate a practical application of modeling inter-personal relationships in the domain of online educational discussion forums. Such forums offer opportunities for its users to interact and form deeper relationships. With this view, we address the task of identifying initiation of such deeper relationships between a student and the instructor. Specifically, we analyze contents of the forums to automatically suggest threads to the instructors that require their intervention. By highlighting scenarios that need direct instructor-student interactions, we alleviate the need for the instructor to manually peruse all threads of the forum and also assist students who have limited avenues for communicating with instructors. We do this by incorporating the discourse structure of the thread through latent variables that abstractly represent contents of individual posts and model the flow of information in the thread. Such latent structured models that incorporate the linguistic cues without losing their context can be helpful in other related natural language understanding tasks as well. We demonstrate this by using the model for a very different task: identifying if a stated desire has been fulfilled by the end of a story.

The experience of teaching statistics to non-specialist students in Saudi universities

Undoubtedly, statistics has become one of the most important subjects in the modern world, where its applications are ubiquitous. The importance of statistics is not limited to statisticians, but also impacts upon non-statisticians who have to use statistics within their own disciplines. Several studies have indicated that most of the academic departments around the world have realized the importance of statistics to non-specialist students. Therefore, the number of students enrolled in statistics courses has vastly increased, coming from a variety of disciplines. Consequently, research within the scope of statistics education has been able to develop throughout the last few years. One important issue is how statistics is best taught to, and learned by, non-specialist students. This issue is controlled by several factors that affect the learning and teaching of statistics to non-specialist students, such as the use of technology, the role of the English language (especially for those whose first language is not English), the effectiveness of statistics teachers and their approach towards teaching statistics courses, students’ motivation to learn statistics and the relevance of statistics courses to the main subjects of non-specialist students. Several studies, focused on aspects of learning and teaching statistics, have been conducted in different countries around the world, particularly in Western countries. Conversely, the situation in Arab countries, especially in Saudi Arabia, is different; here, there is very little research in this scope, and what there is does not meet the needs of those countries towards the development of learning and teaching statistics to non-specialist students. This research was instituted in order to develop the field of statistics education. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to generate new insights into this subject by investigating how statistics courses are currently taught to non-specialist students in Saudi universities. Hence, this study will contribute towards filling the knowledge gap that exists in Saudi Arabia. This study used multiple data collection approaches, including questionnaire surveys from 1053 non-specialist students who had completed at least one statistics course in different colleges of the universities in Saudi Arabia. These surveys were followed up with qualitative data collected via semi-structured interviews with 16 teachers of statistics from colleges within all six universities where statistics is taught to non-specialist students in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Region. The data from questionnaires included several types, so different techniques were used in analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to identify the demographic characteristics of the participants. The chi-square test was used to determine associations between variables. Based on the main issues that are raised from literature review, the questions (items scales) were grouped and five key groups of questions were obtained which are: 1) Effectiveness of Teachers; 2) English Language; 3) Relevance of Course; 4) Student Engagement; 5) Using Technology. Exploratory data analysis was used to explore these issues in more detail. Furthermore, with the existence of clustering in the data (students within departments within colleges, within universities), multilevel generalized linear models for dichotomous analysis have been used to clarify the effects of clustering at those levels. Factor analysis was conducted confirming the dimension reduction of variables (items scales). The data from teachers’ interviews were analysed on an individual basis. The responses were assigned to one of the eight themes that emerged from within the data: 1) the lack of students’ motivation to learn statistics; 2) students' participation; 3) students’ assessment; 4) the effective use of technology; 5) the level of previous mathematical and statistical skills of non-specialist students; 6) the English language ability of non-specialist students; 7) the need for extra time for teaching and learning statistics; and 8) the role of administrators. All the data from students and teachers indicated that the situation of learning and teaching statistics to non-specialist students in Saudi universities needs to be improved in order to meet the needs of those students. The findings of this study suggested a weakness in the use of statistical software applications in these courses. This study showed that there is lack of application of technology such as statistical software programs in these courses, which would allow non-specialist students to consolidate their knowledge. The results also indicated that English language is considered one of the main challenges in learning and teaching statistics, particularly in institutions where English is not used as the main language. Moreover, the weakness of mathematical skills of students is considered another major challenge. Additionally, the results indicated that there was a need to tailor statistics courses to the needs of non-specialist students based on their main subjects. The findings indicate that statistics teachers need to choose appropriate methods when teaching statistics courses.

How teachers' perceptions affect the academic and language assessment of immigrant children

Recent research evidences inconsistencies in teachers' practice regarding skills assessment of L2 students. Scientific evidence supports that less experienced teachers have lower orientation toward multiple task-tests for non-native students. Research questions: Whether school teachers as having different teaching training and unequal teaching experience with non-native students perceive differently a four-skills scale. Purpose of the study: This study intends to analyse the importance degree between the four skills/tasks: reading, writing, speaking and listening, in the perspective of school teachers. Method: 77 teachers, aged 32-62, with (and without) experience in teaching and adapting materials for immigrant students, divided into six groups according to their scientific domain. Assessment tools included a scale for judgement of four academic tasks adapted from the original “Inventory of Undergraduate and Graduate Level: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening Tasks (Rosenfeld, Leung & Ottman, 2001). Main Findings: 1) different degrees of importance attributed by teachers on tasks that should be included in academic and language test for immigrant students; 2) perceptions of teachers are determined by predictors in this order: scientific domain, experience with multicultural classes and lower prediction from teaching service and age; 3) different results between american and portuguese samples answering the same questionnaire.

The big four skills: Teachers’ assumptions on measurement of non-native students cognition

The four-skills on tests for young native speakers commonly do not generate correlation incongruency concerning the cognitive strategies frequently reported. Considering the non-native speakers there are parse evidence to determine which tasks are important to assess properly the cognitive and academic language proficiency (Cummins, 1980; 2012). Research questions: It is of high probability that young students with origin in immigration significantly differ on their communication strategies and skills in a second language processing context (1); attached to this first assumption, it is supposed that teachers significantly differ depending on their scientific area and previous training (2). Purpose: This study intends to examine whether school teachers (K-12) as having different origin in scientific domain of teaching and training perceive differently an adapted four-skills scale, in European Portuguese. Research methods: 77 teachers of five areas scientific areas, mean of teaching year service = 32 (SD= 2,7), 57 males and 46 females (from basic and high school levels). Main findings: ANOVA (Effect size and Post-hoc Tukey tests) and linear regression analysis (stepwise method) revealed statistically significant differences among teachers of different areas, mainly between language teachers and science teachers. Language teachers perceive more accurately tasks in a multiple manner to the broad skills that require to be measured in non-native students. Conclusion: If teachers perceive differently the importance of the big-four tasks, there would be incongruence on skills measurement that teachers select for immigrant puppils. Non-balanced tasks and the teachers’ perceptions on evaluation and toward competence of students would likely determine limitations for academic and cognitive development of non-native students. Furthermore, results showed sufficient evidence to conclude that tasks are perceived differently by teachers toward importance of specific skills subareas. Reading skills are best considered compared to oral comphreension skills in non-native students.

Home Literacy Activities in Latino Immigrant Families: Contributions to Toddlers’ Expressive and Receptive Language Skills

The development of language is a critical component of early childhood, enabling children to communicate their wishes and desires, share thoughts, and build meaning through linguistic interactions with others. A wealth of research has highlighted the importance of children’s early home experiences in fostering language development. This literature emphasizes the importance of a stimulating and supportive home environment in which children are engaged in literacy activities such as reading, telling stories, or singing songs with their parents. This study examined the association between low-income Latino immigrant mothers’ and fathers’ home literacy activities and their children’s receptive and expressive language skills. It also examined the moderating influence of maternal (i.e., reading quality and language quality) and child (engagement during reading, interest in literacy activities) characteristics on this association. This study included observational mother-child reading interactions, child expressive and receptive language assessments, and mother- and father-reported survey data. Controlling for parental education, multiple regression analyses revealed a positive association between home literacy activities and children’s receptive and expressive language skills. The findings also revealed that mothers’ reading quality and children’s engagement during reading (for expressive language skills only) moderated this association. Findings from this study will help inform new interventions, programs, and policies that build on Latino families’ strengths.

All Is not English that Glitters: False Anglicisms in the Spanish Language of Sports

Over the past decades, many studies have dealt with Anglicisms in Spanish, not only in science and technology, but also in other areas such as business, fashion and even sports. However, in spite of the large number of works on Spanish Anglicisms in sports, these have often disregarded the distinction between Anglicisms and false Anglicisms. Given their importance as evidence of the particular relationships between languages, this article focuses on the use of false Anglicisms in the Spanish language of sports, which has not only adopted English words giving them new meanings and usage, but has also either imported items with an English appearance from other languages or created its own forms based on English patterns. Although these false Anglicisms, which have proven extremely popular in various European languages (not only Spanish), have frequently been used and disseminated, as some examples will prove, little attention has been paid to their differences with the English term or their non-English origin.

Anomalies immunitaires chez les enfants exposés au VIH mais non infectés.

La thérapie antirétrovirale prévient la transmission mère-enfant du VIH dans plus de 98% des cas lorsqu’administrée pendant la grossesse, le travail et au nouveau-né. L’accessibilité à la thérapie antirétrovirale dans près de 70% des 1,5 millions cas de grossesses VIH+ dans le monde mène à la naissance de plus d’un million d’enfants exposés non infectés chaque année. Le nombre d’enfants exposés non infectés est à la hausse ainsi que les préoccupations concernant leur santé. En effet, plusieurs groupes ont signalé une augmentation de la morbidité et de la mortalité chez les enfants exposés non infectés. L’analyse des données rétrospectives de 705 enfants exposés non infectés de la cohorte mère-enfant du CMIS a révélé qu’à 2 mois d’âge, les enfants nés de mères ayant une charge virale supérieure à 1,000 copies d’ARN / ml avaient une fréquence de lymphocytes B significativement plus élevés par rapport aux enfants exposés non infectés nés de mères ayant une charge virale indétectable. L’objectif de cette étude est de caractériser ces anomalies. Les lymphocytes, provenant du sang de cordon ombilical et de sang veineux obtenu à 6 et 12 mois d’âge, ont été phénotypés par cytométrie en flux à l’aide des marqueurs CD3 / CD10 / CD14 / CD16 / CD19 / CD20 / CD21 / CD27 / IgM pour les lymphocytes B et CD4 / CD8 / CD3 / CCR7 / CD45RA pour les lymphocytes T. De plus, afin d’étudier les capacités fonctionnelles des lymphocytes B CD19+, la réponse antigène-spécifique au vaccin antitétanique a été mesurée par marquage avec des tétramères fluorescents de fragment C du toxoïde tétanique. Nos travaux ont mis en évidence des différences statistiquement significatives entre les enfants exposés non-infectés (ENI) nés de mères avec une charge virale détectable comparativement à ceux nés de mères avec une charge virale indétectable. À la naissance, les enfants ENI nés de mères avec une charge virale détectable avaient significativement moins de lymphocytes B totaux, plus de lymphocytes B mémoires classiques, activés, plasmablastes et lymphocytes T CD8+ mémoires centrales. À 6 mois, ils avaient significativement plus de lymphocytes B naïfs et significativement moins de lymphocytes T CD8+ effecteurs mémoires. À 12 mois d’âge, ils avaient significativement plus de lymphocytes B et T CD8+ totaux; significativement moins de lymphocytes T CD4+ totaux et leurs lymphocytes T affichaient un profil significativement plus activé (plus de cellules mémoires). L’analyse de la réponse antigène-spécifique a révélé une fréquence plus élevé de lymphocytes B mémoires IgM+ suggérant que les enfants nés de mères avec une virémie détectable ont plus de mal à établir une mémoire immunitaire efficace face au vaccin antitétanique. Nos données suggèrent qu’il y a exposition durant le premier trimestre de grossesse à la virémie maternelle et que cette exposition impacte le système immunitaire en développement du fœtus. Les mécanismes sous-jacents causant ces anomalies doivent encore être élucidés et l’épuisement du compartiment T à la naissance et à 6 mois reste à être investigué. Dans un pays industrialisé où l’accès aux soins est facilité, ces anomalies ont des conséquences modérées mais dans des pays à faible et moyen revenu, les conséquences peuvent être beaucoup plus tragiques voir fatales.

Learning data-driven models of non-verbal behaviors for building rapport using an intelligent virtual agent

There is a growing societal need to address the increasing prevalence of behavioral health issues, such as obesity, alcohol or drug use, and general lack of treatment adherence for a variety of health problems. The statistics, worldwide and in the USA, are daunting. Excessive alcohol use is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States (with 79,000 deaths annually), and is responsible for a wide range of health and social problems. On the positive side though, these behavioral health issues (and associated possible diseases) can often be prevented with relatively simple lifestyle changes, such as losing weight with a diet and/or physical exercise, or learning how to reduce alcohol consumption. Medicine has therefore started to move toward finding ways of preventively promoting wellness, rather than solely treating already established illness.^ Evidence-based patient-centered Brief Motivational Interviewing (BMI) interventions have been found particularly effective in helping people find intrinsic motivation to change problem behaviors after short counseling sessions, and to maintain healthy lifestyles over the long-term. Lack of locally available personnel well-trained in BMI, however, often limits access to successful interventions for people in need. To fill this accessibility gap, Computer-Based Interventions (CBIs) have started to emerge. Success of the CBIs, however, critically relies on insuring engagement and retention of CBI users so that they remain motivated to use these systems and come back to use them over the long term as necessary.^ Because of their text-only interfaces, current CBIs can therefore only express limited empathy and rapport, which are the most important factors of health interventions. Fortunately, in the last decade, computer science research has progressed in the design of simulated human characters with anthropomorphic communicative abilities. Virtual characters interact using humans’ innate communication modalities, such as facial expressions, body language, speech, and natural language understanding. By advancing research in Artificial Intelligence (AI), we can improve the ability of artificial agents to help us solve CBI problems.^ To facilitate successful communication and social interaction between artificial agents and human partners, it is essential that aspects of human social behavior, especially empathy and rapport, be considered when designing human-computer interfaces. Hence, the goal of the present dissertation is to provide a computational model of rapport to enhance an artificial agent’s social behavior, and to provide an experimental tool for the psychological theories shaping the model. Parts of this thesis were already published in [LYL+12, AYL12, AL13, ALYR13, LAYR13, YALR13, ALY14].^

Funtional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Study of Language, Joint Attention and Motor Skills

Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is an emerging non-invasive optical neuro imaging technique that monitors the hemodynamic response to brain activation with ms-scale temporal resolution and sub-cm spatial resolution. The overall goal of my dissertation was to develop and apply NIRS towards investigation of neurological response to language, joint attention and planning and execution of motor skills in healthy adults. Language studies were performed to investigate the hemodynamic response, synchrony and dominance feature of the frontal and fronto-temporal cortex of healthy adults in response to language reception and expression. The mathematical model developed based on granger causality explicated the directional flow of information during the processing of language stimuli by the fronto-temporal cortex. Joint attention and planning/ execution of motor skill studies were performed to investigate the hemodynamic response, synchrony and dominance feature of the frontal cortex of healthy adults and in children (5-8 years old) with autism (for joint attention studies) and individuals with cerebral palsy (for planning/execution of motor skills studies). The joint attention studies on healthy adults showed differences in activation as well as intensity and phase dependent connectivity in the frontal cortex during joint attention in comparison to rest. The joint attention studies on typically developing children showed differences in frontal cortical activation in comparison to that in children with autism. The planning and execution of motor skills studies on healthy adults and individuals with cerebral palsy (CP) showed difference in the frontal cortical dominance, that is, bilateral and ipsilateral dominance, respectively. The planning and execution of motor skills studies also demonstrated the plastic and learning behavior of brain wherein correlation was found between the relative change in total hemoglobin in the frontal cortex and the kinematics of the activity performed by the participants. Thus, during my dissertation the NIRS neuroimaging technique was successfully implemented to investigate the neurological response of language, joint attention and planning and execution of motor skills in healthy adults as well as preliminarily on children with autism and individuals with cerebral palsy. These NIRS studies have long-term potential for the design of early stage interventions in children with autism and customized rehabilitation in individuals with cerebral palsy.

Limits to tDCS effects in language:failures to modulate word production in healthy participants with frontal or temporal tDCS

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a method of non-invasive brain stimulation widely used to modulate cognitive functions. Recent studies, however, suggests that effects are unreliable, small and often non-significant at least when stimulation is applied in a single session to healthy individuals. We examined the effects of frontal and temporal lobe anodal tDCS on naming and reading tasks and considered possible interactions with linguistic activation and selection mechanisms as well possible interactions with item difficulty and participant individual variability. Across four separate experiments (N, Exp 1A = 18; 1B = 20; 1C = 18; 2 = 17), we failed to find any difference between real and sham stimulation. Moreover, we found no evidence of significant effects limited to particular conditions (i.e., those requiring suppression of semantic interference), to a subset of participants or to longer RTs. Our findings sound a cautionary note on using tDCS as a means to modulate cognitive performance. Consistent effects of tDCS may be difficult to demonstrate in healthy participants in reading and naming tasks, and be limited to cases of pathological neurophysiology and/or to the use of learning paradigms.

Anomalies immunitaires chez les enfants exposés au VIH mais non infectés

La thérapie antirétrovirale prévient la transmission mère-enfant du VIH dans plus de 98% des cas lorsqu’administrée pendant la grossesse, le travail et au nouveau-né. L’accessibilité à la thérapie antirétrovirale dans près de 70% des 1,5 millions cas de grossesses VIH+ dans le monde mène à la naissance de plus d’un million d’enfants exposés non infectés chaque année. Le nombre d’enfants exposés non infectés est à la hausse ainsi que les préoccupations concernant leur santé. En effet, plusieurs groupes ont signalé une augmentation de la morbidité et de la mortalité chez les enfants exposés non infectés. L’analyse des données rétrospectives de 705 enfants exposés non infectés de la cohorte mère-enfant du CMIS a révélé qu’à 2 mois d’âge, les enfants nés de mères ayant une charge virale supérieure à 1,000 copies d’ARN / ml avaient une fréquence de lymphocytes B significativement plus élevés par rapport aux enfants exposés non infectés nés de mères ayant une charge virale indétectable. L’objectif de cette étude est de caractériser ces anomalies. Les lymphocytes, provenant du sang de cordon ombilical et de sang veineux obtenu à 6 et 12 mois d’âge, ont été phénotypés par cytométrie en flux à l’aide des marqueurs CD3 / CD10 / CD14 / CD16 / CD19 / CD20 / CD21 / CD27 / IgM pour les lymphocytes B et CD4 / CD8 / CD3 / CCR7 / CD45RA pour les lymphocytes T. De plus, afin d’étudier les capacités fonctionnelles des lymphocytes B CD19+, la réponse antigène-spécifique au vaccin antitétanique a été mesurée par marquage avec des tétramères fluorescents de fragment C du toxoïde tétanique. Nos travaux ont mis en évidence des différences statistiquement significatives entre les enfants exposés non-infectés (ENI) nés de mères avec une charge virale détectable comparativement à ceux nés de mères avec une charge virale indétectable. À la naissance, les enfants ENI nés de mères avec une charge virale détectable avaient significativement moins de lymphocytes B totaux, plus de lymphocytes B mémoires classiques, activés, plasmablastes et lymphocytes T CD8+ mémoires centrales. À 6 mois, ils avaient significativement plus de lymphocytes B naïfs et significativement moins de lymphocytes T CD8+ effecteurs mémoires. À 12 mois d’âge, ils avaient significativement plus de lymphocytes B et T CD8+ totaux; significativement moins de lymphocytes T CD4+ totaux et leurs lymphocytes T affichaient un profil significativement plus activé (plus de cellules mémoires). L’analyse de la réponse antigène-spécifique a révélé une fréquence plus élevé de lymphocytes B mémoires IgM+ suggérant que les enfants nés de mères avec une virémie détectable ont plus de mal à établir une mémoire immunitaire efficace face au vaccin antitétanique. Nos données suggèrent qu’il y a exposition durant le premier trimestre de grossesse à la virémie maternelle et que cette exposition impacte le système immunitaire en développement du fœtus. Les mécanismes sous-jacents causant ces anomalies doivent encore être élucidés et l’épuisement du compartiment T à la naissance et à 6 mois reste à être investigué. Dans un pays industrialisé où l’accès aux soins est facilité, ces anomalies ont des conséquences modérées mais dans des pays à faible et moyen revenu, les conséquences peuvent être beaucoup plus tragiques voir fatales.

A virtual agent to sustaining children's engagement in language learning

In this thesis we aimed to explore the potential of gamification - defined as “the use of game elements in non-game contexts” [30] - in increasing children's (aged 5 to 6) engagement with the task. This is mainly due to the fact that our world is living a technological era, and videogames are an example of this engagement by being able to maintain children’s (and adults) engagement for hours straight. For the purpose of limiting complexity, we only addressed the feedback element by introducing it with an anthropomorphic virtual agent (human-like aspect), because research shows that virtual agents (VA’s) can influence behavioural change [17], or even induce emotions on humans both through the use of feedback provided and their facial expressions, which can interpreted in the same way as of humans’ [2]. By pairing the VA with the gamification concept, we wanted to 1) create a VA that is likely to be well-received by children (appearance and behaviour), and 2) have the immediate feedback that games have, so we can give children an assessment of their actions in real-time, as opposed to waiting for feedback from someone (traditional teaching), and with this give students more chances to succeed [32, 43]. Our final system consisted on a virtual environment, where children formed words that corresponded to a given image. In order to measure the impact that the VA had on engagement, the system was developed in two versions: one version of the system was limited to provide a simple feedback environment, where the VA provided feedback, by responding with simple phrases (i.e. “correct” or “incorrect”); for the second version, the VA had a more complex approach where it tried to encourage children to complete the word – a motivational feedback - even when they weren’t succeeding. Lastly we conducted a field study with two groups of children, where one group tested the version with the simple feedback, and the other group tested the ‘motivational’ version of the system. We used a quantitative approach to analyze the collected data that measured the engagement, based on the number of tasks (words) completed and time spent with system. The results of the evaluation showed that the use of motivational feedback may carry a positive effect on engaging children.

A Grammar of Tajio. A Language Spoken in Central Sulawesi

This work is a description of Tajio, a Western Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. It covers the essential aspects of Tajio grammar without being exhaustive. Tajio has a medium sized phoneme inventory consisting of twenty consonants and five vowels. The language does not have lexical (word) stress; rather, it has a phrasal accent. This phrasal accent regularly occurs on the penultimate syllable of an intonational phrase, rendering this syllable auditorily prominent through a pitch rise. Possible syllable structures in Tajio are (C)V(C). CVN structures are allowed as closed syllables, but CVN syllables in word-medial position are not frequent. As in other languages in the area, the only sequence of consonants allowed in native Tajio words are sequences of nasals followed by a homorganic obstruent. The homorganic nasal-obstruent sequences found in Tajio can occur word-initially and word-medially but never in word-final position. As in many Austronesian languages, word class classification in Tajio is not straightforward. The classification of words in Tajio must be carried out on two levels: the morphosyntactic level and the lexical level. The open word classes in Tajio consist of nouns and verbs. Verbs are further divided into intransitive verbs (dynamic intransitive verbs and statives) and dynamic transitive verbs. Based on their morphological potential, lexical roots in Tajio fall into three classes: single-class roots, dual-class roots and multi-class roots. There are two basic transitive constructions in Tajio: Actor Voice and Undergoer Voice, where the actor or undergoer argument respectively serves as subjects. It shares many characteristics with symmetrical voice languages, yet it is not fully symmetric, as arguments in AV and UV are not equally marked. Neither subjects nor objects are marked in AV constructions. In UV constructions, however, subjects are unmarked while objects are marked either by prefixation or clitization. Evidence from relativization, control and raising constructions supports the analysis that AV and UV are in fact transitive, with subject arguments and object arguments behaving alike in both voices. Only the subject can be relativized, controlled, raised or function as the implicit subject of subjectless adverbial clauses. In contrast, the objects of AV and UV constructions do not exhibit these features. Tajio is a predominantly head-marking language with basic A-V-O constituent order. V and O form a constituent, and the subject can either precede or follow this complex. Thus, basic word order is S-V-O or V-O-S. Subject, as well as non-subject arguments, may be omitted when contextually specified. Verbs are marked for voice and mood, the latter of which is is obligatory. The two values distinguished are realis and non-realis. Depending on the type of predicate involved in clause formation, three clause types can be distinguished: verbal clauses, existential clauses and non-verbal clauses. Tajio has a small number of multi-verbal structures that appear to qualify as serial verb constructions. SVCs in Tajio always include a motion verb or a directional.