Establishing social statistical databases for evidenced-based social policy formulation in the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

The use of databases of social and gender statistics in the development of policies and programmes

The unavailability of data to inform policy planning and formulation has been repeatedly cited as the main challenge to economic and social progress in the Caribbean. Furthermore, even in instances when data is produced, broader gaps exist between its production and eventual use for evidence-based policy formulation. Owing to those challenges, this report explores the use of databases of social and gender statistics in the development of policies and programmes in the Caribbean subregion. The report offers a general appraisal of databases against two main considerations: (i) maximizing the use of existing databases in relevant policies and programmes; and (ii) bridging the gaps in data availability of relevant statistical databases and their analyses. The assessment entailed an inventory of social and gender databases maintained by data producers in the region and analysis of the extent to which the databases are used for policy formulation. To that end, a literature search as well as consultations with a number of knowledgeable persons active in the field of statistics and data provision was conducted. Based on the review, a set of recommendations were produced to improve current practices within the region with respect evidence based policy formulation.

Ferramentas e recursos livres para reconhecimento e síntese de voz em português brasileiro

Sistemas de reconhecimento e síntese de voz são constituídos por módulos que dependem da língua e, enquanto existem muitos recursos públicos para alguns idiomas (p.e. Inglês e Japonês), os recursos para Português Brasileiro (PB) ainda são escassos. Outro aspecto é que, para um grande número de tarefas, a taxa de erro dos sistemas de reconhecimento de voz atuais ainda é elevada, quando comparada à obtida por seres humanos. Assim, apesar do sucesso das cadeias escondidas de Markov (HMM), é necessária a pesquisa por novos métodos. Este trabalho tem como motivação esses dois fatos e se divide em duas partes. A primeira descreve o desenvolvimento de recursos e ferramentas livres para reconhecimento e síntese de voz em PB, consistindo de bases de dados de áudio e texto, um dicionário fonético, um conversor grafema-fone, um separador silábico e modelos acústico e de linguagem. Todos os recursos construídos encontram-se publicamente disponíveis e, junto com uma interface de programação proposta, têm sido usados para o desenvolvimento de várias novas aplicações em tempo-real, incluindo um módulo de reconhecimento de voz para a suíte de aplicativos para escritório OpenOffice.org. São apresentados testes de desempenho dos sistemas desenvolvidos. Os recursos aqui produzidos e disponibilizados facilitam a adoção da tecnologia de voz para PB por outros grupos de pesquisa, desenvolvedores e pela indústria. A segunda parte do trabalho apresenta um novo método para reavaliar (rescoring) o resultado do reconhecimento baseado em HMMs, o qual é organizado em uma estrutura de dados do tipo lattice. Mais especificamente, o sistema utiliza classificadores discriminativos que buscam diminuir a confusão entre pares de fones. Para cada um desses problemas binários, são usadas técnicas de seleção automática de parâmetros para escolher a representaçãao paramétrica mais adequada para o problema em questão.

Linguagem narrativa e fluência na síndrome de down: uma revisão

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Egocentric speech in the works of Vygotsky and Piaget: educational implications and representations by teachers

This paper presents an applied qualitative and quantitative study and seeks to understand egocentric speech according to Vygotsky and Piaget and, through a literature review, the educational implications of Vygotsky and Piaget’s ideas. Additionally, the representations of these ideas by fifteen teachers of basic education are investigated. It is important to understand egocentric speech in Vygotsky and Piaget. Despite the differences in how they conceive its nature, functions and implications, for both, egocentric speech is intrinsically linked to and facilitates our understanding of child development. Regarding the representation of teachers who criticized children who used egocentric language, when teachers established any negative consequences of such language, they attributed it to the affective and moral aspects as well as to cognition. However, their approach was more practically oriented than those found in the psychological theories addressed. Therefore, this study aids in understanding the limits and scope of teacher-training courses.

A brief look at the least-squares approach as a classifier applied to restricted-vocabulary speech recognition

In this letter, a speech recognition algorithm based on the least-squares method is presented. Particularly, the intention is to exemplify how such a traditional numerical technique can be applied to solve a signal processing problem that is usually treated by using more elaborated formulations.

Trajectory and outcomes of speech language therapy in the Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS): case report

The aim of this study was to describe the trajectory and the outcomes of speech-language therapy in Prader-Willi syndrome through a longitudinal study of the case of an 8 year-old boy, along four years of speech-language therapy follow-up. The therapy sessions were filmed and documental analysis of information from the child's records regarding anamnesis, evaluation and speech-language therapy reports and multidisciplinary evaluations were carried out. The child presented typical characteristics of Prader-Willi syndrome, such as obesity, hyperfagia, anxiety, behavioral problems and self aggression episodes. Speech-language pathology evaluation showed orofacial hypotony, sialorrhea, hypernasal voice, cognitive deficits, oral comprehension difficulties, communication using gestures and unintelligible isolated words. Initially, speech-language therapy had the aim to promote the language development emphasizing social interaction through recreational activities. With the evolution of the case, the main focus became the development of conversation and narrative abilities. It were observed improvements in attention, symbolic play, social contact and behavior. Moreover, there was an increase in vocabulary, and evolution in oral comprehension and the development of narrative abilities. Hence, speech-language pathology intervention in the case described was effective in different linguistic levels, regarding phonological, syntactic, lexical and pragmatic abilities.

Compreensão e produção oral de sentenças em crianças com deficiência auditiva pré-lingual usuárias de implante coclear

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Paralisia cerebral: efeitos da escrita sobre a escrita

The aim of this research was to apprehend the effects of text reading in S.'s writing productions, a child in literacy process. S. is a child who can't speak or write by her own due to a dystonic quadriplegic CP. S. communicates with Blissymbols which were introduced in a school-clinic in São Paulo city when she was six years old. At the same time the literacy process took place and she indicated symbols, letters and numbers in a board by scanning. The teacher related S.'s difficulties concerning reading activities, so a weekly activity was proposed by the speech therapist in the classroom. The teacher and her assistant participated in the activity. A cutout of the activity involving a book reading when S. was between eight years and seven months old and nine years and one month old was analysed. The research was based in Borges (2006) grounded in The Brazilian Interactionism according to De Lemos (1992; 1995 and others) and proposes a literacy process among students from the first series in a regular school by the reading of different texts. The activity guided by the speech therapist took place side by side with the literacy program guided by the teacher and resulted in various S's text productions. The data was collected through film transcriptions from the activities in the classroom and from materials produced by S. through the reading of the chosen book. These data integrates NALíngua-CNPq databases coordinated by Dr. Alessandra Del Ré whose aim is to investigate the language acquisition process. S.'s reading and writing acquisition occurred in a singular way, affected by the using of Blissymbols that became S.'s speech modality: a written-speech with symbols and alphabetic writing

ABN Noon Speech (Short version)

Folks, because we find ourselves in a time crunch, I'm going to forego the terrific speech I planned to give today and quickly make five key points. Please know I will be happy to provide additional information on any of them at any time.

The Perception of Natural, Cell Phone, and Computer-Synthesized Speech During The Performance Of Simultaneous Visual-Motor Tasks

This study investigated the influence of top-down and bottom-up information on speech perception in complex listening environments. Specifically, the effects of listening to different types of processed speech were examined on intelligibility and on simultaneous visual-motor performance. The goal was to extend the generalizability of results in speech perception to environments outside of the laboratory. The effect of bottom-up information was evaluated with natural, cell phone and synthetic speech. The effect of simultaneous tasks was evaluated with concurrent visual-motor and memory tasks. Earlier works on the perception of speech during simultaneous visual-motor tasks have shown inconsistent results (Choi, 2004; Strayer & Johnston, 2001). In the present experiments, two dual-task paradigms were constructed in order to mimic non-laboratory listening environments. In the first two experiments, an auditory word repetition task was the primary task and a visual-motor task was the secondary task. Participants were presented with different kinds of speech in a background of multi-speaker babble and were asked to repeat the last word of every sentence while doing the simultaneous tracking task. Word accuracy and visual-motor task performance were measured. Taken together, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the intelligibility of natural speech was better than synthetic speech and that synthetic speech was better perceived than cell phone speech. The visual-motor methodology was found to demonstrate independent and supplemental information and provided a better understanding of the entire speech perception process. Experiment 3 was conducted to determine whether the automaticity of the tasks (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977) helped to explain the results of the first two experiments. It was found that cell phone speech allowed better simultaneous pursuit rotor performance only at low intelligibility levels when participants ignored the listening task. Also, simultaneous task performance improved dramatically for natural speech when intelligibility was good. Overall, it could be concluded that knowledge of intelligibility alone is insufficient to characterize processing of different speech sources. Additional measures such as attentional demands and performance of simultaneous tasks were also important in characterizing the perception of different kinds of speech in complex listening environments.

Paralisia cerebral: efeitos da escrita sobre a escrita

The aim of this research was to apprehend the effects of text reading in S.'s writing productions, a child in literacy process. S. is a child who can't speak or write by her own due to a dystonic quadriplegic CP. S. communicates with Blissymbols which were introduced in a school-clinic in São Paulo city when she was six years old. At the same time the literacy process took place and she indicated symbols, letters and numbers in a board by scanning. The teacher related S.'s difficulties concerning reading activities, so a weekly activity was proposed by the speech therapist in the classroom. The teacher and her assistant participated in the activity. A cutout of the activity involving a book reading when S. was between eight years and seven months old and nine years and one month old was analysed. The research was based in Borges (2006) grounded in The Brazilian Interactionism according to De Lemos (1992; 1995 and others) and proposes a literacy process among students from the first series in a regular school by the reading of different texts. The activity guided by the speech therapist took place side by side with the literacy program guided by the teacher and resulted in various S's text productions. The data was collected through film transcriptions from the activities in the classroom and from materials produced by S. through the reading of the chosen book. These data integrates NALíngua-CNPq databases coordinated by Dr. Alessandra Del Ré whose aim is to investigate the language acquisition process. S.'s reading and writing acquisition occurred in a singular way, affected by the using of Blissymbols that became S.'s speech modality: a written-speech with symbols and alphabetic writing