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.

A Fuzzy Decision Strategy for Topic Identification and Dynamic Selection of Language Models

International audience

Network Construction and Graph Theoretical Analysis of Functional Language Networks in Pediatric Epilepsy

This dissertation introduces a new approach for assessing the effects of pediatric epilepsy on the language connectome. Two novel data-driven network construction approaches are presented. These methods rely on connecting different brain regions using either extent or intensity of language related activations as identified by independent component analysis of fMRI data. An auditory description decision task (ADDT) paradigm was used to activate the language network for 29 patients and 30 controls recruited from three major pediatric hospitals. Empirical evaluations illustrated that pediatric epilepsy can cause, or is associated with, a network efficiency reduction. Patients showed a propensity to inefficiently employ the whole brain network to perform the ADDT language task; on the contrary, controls seemed to efficiently use smaller segregated network components to achieve the same task. To explain the causes of the decreased efficiency, graph theoretical analysis was carried out. The analysis revealed no substantial global network feature differences between the patient and control groups. It also showed that for both subject groups the language network exhibited small-world characteristics; however, the patient’s extent of activation network showed a tendency towards more random networks. It was also shown that the intensity of activation network displayed ipsilateral hub reorganization on the local level. The left hemispheric hubs displayed greater centrality values for patients, whereas the right hemispheric hubs displayed greater centrality values for controls. This hub hemispheric disparity was not correlated with a right atypical language laterality found in six patients. Finally it was shown that a multi-level unsupervised clustering scheme based on self-organizing maps, a type of artificial neural network, and k-means was able to fairly and blindly separate the subjects into their respective patient or control groups. The clustering was initiated using the local nodal centrality measurements only. Compared to the extent of activation network, the intensity of activation network clustering demonstrated better precision. This outcome supports the assertion that the local centrality differences presented by the intensity of activation network can be associated with focal epilepsy.

Language policy and critical discourse studies:towards an integrated approach

This chapter offers a framework for combining critical language policy with critical discourse studies (CDS) to analyse language policy as a process in the context of minority language policy in Wales. I propose a discursive approach to language policy, which starts from the premise that language policy is constituted, enacted, interpreted and (re)contextualised in and through language. This approach extends the critical language policy framework provided by Shohamy (Language policy: hidden agendas and new approaches. Routledge, London, 2006) and integrates perspectives from the context-sensitive discourse-historical approach in CDS. It incorporates discourse as an essential lens through which policy mechanisms, ideologies and practices are constituted and de facto language policy materialises. This chapter argues that conceptualising and analysing language policy as a discursive phenomenon enables a better understanding of the multi-layered nature of language policy that shapes the management and experience of corporate bilingualism in Wales.

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.

Optimization of Pattern Matching Algorithms for Multi- and Many-Core Platforms

Image and video compression play a major role in the world today, allowing the storage and transmission of large multimedia content volumes. However, the processing of this information requires high computational resources, hence the improvement of the computational performance of these compression algorithms is very important. The Multidimensional Multiscale Parser (MMP) is a pattern-matching-based compression algorithm for multimedia contents, namely images, achieving high compression ratios, maintaining good image quality, Rodrigues et al. [2008]. However, in comparison with other existing algorithms, this algorithm takes some time to execute. Therefore, two parallel implementations for GPUs were proposed by Ribeiro [2016] and Silva [2015] in CUDA and OpenCL-GPU, respectively. In this dissertation, to complement the referred work, we propose two parallel versions that run the MMP algorithm in CPU: one resorting to OpenMP and another that converts the existing OpenCL-GPU into OpenCL-CPU. The proposed solutions are able to improve the computational performance of MMP by 3 and 2:7 , respectively. The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265) is the most recent standard for compression of image and video. Its impressive compression performance, makes it a target for many adaptations, particularly for holoscopic image/video processing (or light field). Some of the proposed modifications to encode this new multimedia content are based on geometry-based disparity compensations (SS), developed by Conti et al. [2014], and a Geometric Transformations (GT) module, proposed by Monteiro et al. [2015]. These compression algorithms for holoscopic images based on HEVC present an implementation of specific search for similar micro-images that is more efficient than the one performed by HEVC, but its implementation is considerably slower than HEVC. In order to enable better execution times, we choose to use the OpenCL API as the GPU enabling language in order to increase the module performance. With its most costly setting, we are able to reduce the GT module execution time from 6.9 days to less then 4 hours, effectively attaining a speedup of 45 .

Digital literacy matters. Increasing workforce productivity through blended English language programmes

Current workplace demands newer forms of literacies that go beyond the ability to decode print. These involve not only competence to operate digital tools, but also the ability to create, represent, and share meaning in different modes and formats; ability to interact, collaborate and communicate effectively using digital tools, and engage critically with technology for developing one’s knowledge, skills, and full participation in civic, economic, and personal matters. This essay examines the application of the ecology of resources (EoR) model for delivering language learning outcomes (in this case, English) through blended classroom environments that use contextually available resources. The author proposes the implementation of the EoR model in blended learning environments to create authentic and sustainable learning environments for skilling courses. Applying the EoR model to Indian skilling instruction contexts, the article discusses how English language and technology literacy can be delivered using contextually available resources through a blended classroom environment. This would facilitate not only acquisition of language and digital literacy outcomes, but also consequent content literacy gain to a certain extent. This would ensure satisfactory achievement of not only communication/language literacy and technological literacy, but also active social participation, lifelong learning, and learner autonomy.

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.

Swedish-speaking Finns: a multi-method qualitative study of belonging and identification

The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, often described as an ‘elite minority’, holds a special position in the country. With linguistic rights protected by the constitution of Finland, Swedish-speakers, as a minority of only 5.3%, are often described in public discourse and in academic and statistical studies as happier, healthier and more well off economically than the Finnish-speaking majority. As such, the minority is a unique example of language minorities in Europe. Knowledge derived from qualitatively grounded studies on the topic is however lacking, meaning that there is a gap in understanding of the nature and complexity of the minority. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in four different locations in Finland over a period of 12 months, this thesis provides a theoretically grounded and empirically informed rich account of the identifications and sites of belonging of this diverse minority. The thesis makes a contribution to theoretical, methodological and empirical research on the Swedish-speaking minority, debates around identity and belonging, and ethnographic methodological approaches. Making use of novel methodology in studying Swedish-speaking Finns, this thesis moves beyond generalisations and simplifications on its nature and character. Drawing on rich ethnographic empirical material, the thesis interrogates various aspects of the lived experience of Swedish-speaking Finns by combining the concepts of belonging and identification. Some of the issues explored are the way in which belonging can be regionally specific, how Swedish-speakers create Swedish-spaces, how language use is situational and variable and acts as a marker of identity, and finally how identifications and sites of belonging among the minority are extremely varied and complex. The thesis concludes that there are various sites of belonging and identification available to Swedish-speakers, and these need to be studied and considered in order to gain an accurate picture of the lived experience of the minority. It also argues that while identifications are based on collective imagery, this imagery can vary among Swedish-speakers and identifications are multiple and situational. Finally, while language is a key commonality for the minority, the meanings attached to it are not only concerned with ‘Finland Swedishness’, but connected to various other factors, such as the context a person grew up in and the region one lives in. The complex issues affecting the lived experience of Swedish-speaking Finns cannot be understood without the contribution of findings from qualitative research. This thesis therefore points towards a new kind of understanding of Swedish-speaking Finns, moving away from stereotypes and simplifications, shifting our gaze towards a richer perception of the minority.

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.

Multicultural work environment as a key in cross-cultural negotiations and organizations’ performance: Canada overview

Es necesario que los gerentes sean líderes y establezcan relaciones sólidas con los empleados, para luego establecer las mismas con socios potenciales. Para lograr este objetivo, Con el fin de cumplir este objetivo, el uso de estrategias y técnicas de negociación es crucial, así como la importancia de la conciencia cultural y de la diversidad. La globalización no sólo ha movido a los mercados sino también a las personas, la inmigración es un fenómeno fuerte hoy en día y varios países, como Canadá, han sido inclusivos y han apoyado a estos nuevos ciudadanos. Las empresas de Canadá, sin importar la industria, han asumido el reto de integrar una fuerza laboral diversa con el propósito de adquirir nuevos conocimientos y crecer a nivel nacional, pero sobre todo en el ámbito internacional. Igualmente, es esencial tener en cuenta las ventajas y limitaciones del multiculturalismo dentro de la empresa y específicamente en las negociaciones interculturales.

L'infrastruttura barocca del lavoro di piattaforma. Un'etnografia multi-situata.

Le conseguenze del management algoritmico sui lavoratori sono note tra gli studiosi, ma poche ricerche indagano le possibilità di agency, soprattutto a livello individuale, nella gig-economy. A partire dalla quotidianità del lavoro, l’obiettivo è analizzare le forme di agency esercitate dai platform workers nel settore della logistica dell'ultimo miglio. La ricerca si basa su un'etnografia multi-situata condotta in due paesi molto distanti e riguardante due diversi servizi urbani di piattaforma: il food-delivery in Italia (Bologna, Torino) e il ride-hailing in Argentina (Buenos Aires). Nonostante le differenze, il lavoro di campo ha mostrato diverse continuità tra i contesti geografici. Innanzitutto, le tecnologie digitali giocano un ruolo ambivalente nell'ambiente di lavoro: se la tecnologia è usata dalle aziende per disciplinare il lavoro, costituisce però anche uno strumento che può essere impiegato a vantaggio dei lavoratori. Sia nel ride-hailing che nelle piattaforme di food-delivery, infatti, i lavoratori esprimono la loro agency condividendo pratiche di rimaneggiamento e tattiche per aggirare il despotismo algoritmico. In secondo luogo, la ricerca ha portato alla luce una gran varietà di attività economiche sviluppate ai margini dell'economia di piattaforma. In entrambi i casi le piattaforme intersecano vivacemente le economie informali urbane e alimentano circuiti informali di lavoro, come evidenziato dall'elevata presenza di scambi illeciti: ad esempio, vendita di account, hacking-bots, caporalato digitale. Tutt'altro che avviare un processo di formalizzazione, quindi, la piattaforma sussume e riproduce l’insieme di condizioni produttive e riproduttive dell'informalità (viração), offrendo impieghi intermittenti e insicuri a una massa di lavoratori-usa-e-getta disponibile al sottoimpiego. In conclusione, le piattaforme vengono definite come infrastrutture barocche, intendendo con il barocco tanto la natura ibrida dell'azione che mescola forme di neoliberismo-dal-basso con pratiche di solidarietà tra pari, quanto la progressiva ristrutturazione dei processi di accumulazione all’insegna di una rinnovata interdipendenza tra formale e informale nelle infrastrutture del «mondo a domicilio».

Applying machine learning: a multi-role perspective

Machine (and deep) learning technologies are more and more present in several fields. It is undeniable that many aspects of our society are empowered by such technologies: web searches, content filtering on social networks, recommendations on e-commerce websites, mobile applications, etc., in addition to academic research. Moreover, mobile devices and internet sites, e.g., social networks, support the collection and sharing of information in real time. The pervasive deployment of the aforementioned technological instruments, both hardware and software, has led to the production of huge amounts of data. Such data has become more and more unmanageable, posing challenges to conventional computing platforms, and paving the way to the development and widespread use of the machine and deep learning. Nevertheless, machine learning is not only a technology. Given a task, machine learning is a way of proceeding (a way of thinking), and as such can be approached from different perspectives (points of view). This, in particular, will be the focus of this research. The entire work concentrates on machine learning, starting from different sources of data, e.g., signals and images, applied to different domains, e.g., Sport Science and Social History, and analyzed from different perspectives: from a non-data scientist point of view through tools and platforms; setting a problem stage from scratch; implementing an effective application for classification tasks; improving user interface experience through Data Visualization and eXtended Reality. In essence, not only in a quantitative task, not only in a scientific environment, and not only from a data-scientist perspective, machine (and deep) learning can do the difference.

Relationship between phenotype and environment in marine calcifying organisms: exploring growth and shell properties of different mollusks species in past and modern scenario

Coastal ecosystems represent an inestimable source of biodiversity, being among the most productive areas on the planet. Despite the great ecological and economic value of those environments, many threats endanger the species living in this ecosystem, like the rapid warming and the sea acidification, among many other. Benthic calcifying organisms (e.g. mollusks, corals and echinoderms) in particular, are among the most exposed to those hazards. These organisms use calcium carbonate as a structural and protective material through the biomineralization process, biologically controlled by the organism, but nevertheless, strongly influenced by the environmental surroundings. Evaluating how a changing environment can influence the process of biomineralization is critical to understand how those species of great ecological and economic importance will face the ongoing climate change. This thesis investigates the mechanism of biomineralization in different mollusks’ species of the Adriatic Sea, providing detailed descriptions of shells skeletal, biometric and growth parameters. Applying a multidisciplinary and multi-scale research approach, the influence of external environmental factors on the process of shell formation has been investigated. To achieve this purpose analysis were conducted both on current populations and on fossil remain, which allows to investigate ecological responses to past climate transitions. Mollusks’ shells in fact are one of the best tools to understand climate change in the past, present and future, since they record the environmental conditions prevailed during their life, reflected on the geochemical properties, microstructure and growth of the shell. This approach allowed to overcome the time scale limit imposed by field and laboratory survey, and better understand species long term adaptive response to changing environment, a crucial issue to define proper conservation and management strategies. Furthermore, the investigation of fossil record of mollusks assemblages offered the opportunity to evaluate the long-term biotic response to anthropogenic stressors in the north Adriatic Sea.