Comparison of written and spoken language from deaf and hearing children at five age levels

This dissertation compares oral and written language development in hearing and deaf children. The study applies grammatical, lexical and syntactical measures to describe and analyze the differences in language development in groups of hearing and orally-taught hearing-impaired children and to relate these findings to chronological age.

Distributional semantics and machine learning for statistical machine translation

[EU]Lan honetan semantika distribuzionalaren eta ikasketa automatikoaren erabilera aztertzen dugu itzulpen automatiko estatistikoa hobetzeko. Bide horretan, erregresio logistikoan oinarritutako ikasketa automatikoko eredu bat proposatzen dugu hitz-segiden itzulpen- probabilitatea modu dinamikoan modelatzeko. Proposatutako eredua itzulpen automatiko estatistikoko ohiko itzulpen-probabilitateen orokortze bat dela frogatzen dugu, eta testuinguruko nahiz semantika distribuzionaleko informazioa barneratzeko baliatu ezaugarri lexiko, hitz-cluster eta hitzen errepresentazio bektorialen bidez. Horretaz gain, semantika distribuzionaleko ezagutza itzulpen automatiko estatistikoan txertatzeko beste hurbilpen bat lantzen dugu: hitzen errepresentazio bektorial elebidunak erabiltzea hitz-segiden itzulpenen antzekotasuna modelatzeko. Gure esperimentuek proposatutako ereduen baliagarritasuna erakusten dute, emaitza itxaropentsuak eskuratuz oinarrizko sistema sendo baten gainean. Era berean, gure lanak ekarpen garrantzitsuak egiten ditu errepresentazio bektorialen mapaketa elebidunei eta hitzen errepresentazio bektorialetan oinarritutako hitz-segiden antzekotasun neurriei dagokienean, itzulpen automatikoaz haratago balio propio bat dutenak semantika distribuzionalaren arloan.

La responsabilidad del Estado por la falta de efectividad del proceso de integración andino (Tema Central)

Aunque ha existido un notable crecimiento del comercio en la Comunidad Andina, la integración se encuentra en una fase imperfecta de unión aduanera. No existe una verdadera solidaridad subregional, ya que cada Estado mantiene su posición en cuanto a la política exterior. Esta visión estatalista se contrapone a la integracionista. La falta de voluntad política es también la causa de una ausencia de efectividad de la Comunidad, cuya consecuencia es la responsabilidad de los países sobre la base de la protección de los derechos de los particulares que se encuentren vulnerados, por cuanto ellos son los principales destinatarios del proyecto integracionista. Por ello, cabe derivar un derecho de reparación por los daños que provoque el incumplimiento de las disposiciones comunitarias.

The Fundamental Rights Agency and Civil Society: Reminding the Gardeners of their Plants' Roots. EDAP 02/2012, 2012

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the EU body responsible for advising EU institutions on fundamental rights, is equipped with a Fundamental Rights Platform (FRP) to ensure an on-going and structured exchange of information and feedback between the FRA and Civil Society. When the FRA was founded in 2007, there was little pre-existing knowledge on how to design such a Platform; hence, the development of the relationship between the FRA and Civil Society over the first five years proved an interesting experiment. Although the Platform was never intended as a mechanism of democratic co-decision making, it is far more than a loose marketplace where Civil Society actors across the spectrum of fundamental rights themes gather. The Platform offers channels of consultation and exchange not only among the participants but also with the FRA. It allows for cross-pollination, ensuring informed grassroots input into FRA work and FRA expertise flow to Civil Society actors. This synergetic relationship builds upon both the self-organising forces of Civil Society and the terms of references of the FRP as defined by the FRA. The Platform allows to find a certain unity in the remarkable diversity of fundamental rights voices. To what degree, however, the Platform’s dynamics allow the transformation of sometimes ‘compartmentalised’ single human rights discussions into wider trans-sectoral and transnational debates within the Human Rights Community depends on the motivation and the interest(s) of the different Civil Society players.

A Field Evaluation of the Time-of-Detection Method to Estimate Population Size and Density for Aural Avian Point Counts

The time-of-detection method for aural avian point counts is a new method of estimating abundance, allowing for uncertain probability of detection. The method has been specifically designed to allow for variation in singing rates of birds. It involves dividing the time interval of the point count into several subintervals and recording the detection history of the subintervals when each bird sings. The method can be viewed as generating data equivalent to closed capture–recapture information. The method is different from the distance and multiple-observer methods in that it is not required that all the birds sing during the point count. As this method is new and there is some concern as to how well individual birds can be followed, we carried out a field test of the method using simulated known populations of singing birds, using a laptop computer to send signals to audio stations distributed around a point. The system mimics actual aural avian point counts, but also allows us to know the size and spatial distribution of the populations we are sampling. Fifty 8-min point counts (broken into four 2-min intervals) using eight species of birds were simulated. Singing rate of an individual bird of a species was simulated following a Markovian process (singing bouts followed by periods of silence), which we felt was more realistic than a truly random process. The main emphasis of our paper is to compare results from species singing at (high and low) homogenous rates per interval with those singing at (high and low) heterogeneous rates. Population size was estimated accurately for the species simulated, with a high homogeneous probability of singing. Populations of simulated species with lower but homogeneous singing probabilities were somewhat underestimated. Populations of species simulated with heterogeneous singing probabilities were substantially underestimated. Underestimation was caused by both the very low detection probabilities of all distant individuals and by individuals with low singing rates also having very low detection probabilities.

Understanding mixing efficiency in the oceans. Do the nonlinearities of the equation of state matter?

There exist two central measures of turbulent mixing in turbulent stratified fluids that are both caused by molecular diffusion: 1) the dissipation rate D(APE) of available potential energy APE; 2) the turbulent rate of change Wr, turbulent of background gravitational potential energy GPEr. So far, these two quantities have often been regarded as the same energy conversion, namely the irreversible conversion of APE into GPEr, owing to the well known exact equality D(APE)=Wr, turbulent for a Boussinesq fluid with a linear equation of state. Recently, however, Tailleux (2009) pointed out that the above equality no longer holds for a thermally-stratified compressible, with the ratio ξ=Wr, turbulent/D(APE) being generally lower than unity and sometimes even negative for water or seawater, and argued that D(APE) and Wr, turbulent actually represent two distinct types of energy conversion, respectively the dissipation of APE into one particular subcomponent of internal energy called the "dead" internal energy IE0, and the conversion between GPEr and a different subcomponent of internal energy called "exergy" IEexergy. In this paper, the behaviour of the ratio ξ is examined for different stratifications having all the same buoyancy frequency N vertical profile, but different vertical profiles of the parameter Υ=α P/(ρCp), where α is the thermal expansion coefficient, P the hydrostatic pressure, ρ the density, and Cp the specific heat capacity at constant pressure, the equation of state being that for seawater for different particular constant values of salinity. It is found that ξ and Wr, turbulent depend critically on the sign and magnitude of dΥ/dz, in contrast with D(APE), which appears largely unaffected by the latter. These results have important consequences for how the mixing efficiency should be defined and measured in practice, which are discussed.

Tracer correlations in the northern high latitude lowermost stratosphere: Influence of cross‐tropopause mass exchange

We present an analysis of trace gas correlations in the lowermost stratosphere. In‐situ aircraft measurements of CO, N2O, NOy and O3, obtained during the STREAM 1997 winter campaign, have been used to investigate the role of cross‐tropopause mass exchange on tracer‐tracer relations. At altitudes several kilometers above the local tropopause, undisturbed stratospheric air was found with NOy/NOy * ratios close to unity, NOy/O3 about 0.003–0.006 and CO mixing ratios as low as 20 ppbv (NOy * is a proxy for total reactive nitrogen derived from NOy–N2O relations measured in the stratosphere). Mixing of tropospheric air into the lowermost stratosphere has been identified by enhanced ratios of NOy/NOy * and NOy/O3, and from scatter plots of CO versus O3. The enhanced NOy/O3 ratio in the lowermost stratospheric mixing zone points to a reduced efficiency of O3 formation from aircraft NOx emissions.

Name agreement in picture naming: An ERP study

Name agreement is the extent to which different people agree on a name for a particular picture. Previous studies have found that it takes longer to name low name agreement pictures than high name agreement pictures. To examine the effect of name agreement in the online process of picture naming, we compared event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded whilst 19 healthy, native English speakers silently named pictures which had either high or low name agreement. A series of ERP components was examined: P1 approximately 120ms from picture onset, N1 around 170ms, P2 around 220ms, N2 around 290ms, and P3 around 400ms. Additionally, a late time window from 800 to 900ms was considered. Name agreement had an early effect, starting at P1 and possibly resulting from uncertainty of picture identity, and continuing into N2, possibly resulting from alternative names for pictures. These results support the idea that name agreement affects two consecutive processes: first, object recognition, and second, lexical selection and/or phonological encoding.

Testing the limits of quasi-geostrophic theory: application to observed laboratory flows outside the quasi-geostrophic regime

We compare laboratory observations of equilibrated baroclinic waves in the rotating two-layer annulus, with numerical simulations from a quasi-geostrophic model. The laboratory experiments lie well outside the quasi-geostrophic regime: the Rossby number reaches unity; the depth-to-width aspect ratio is large; and the fluid contains ageostrophic inertia–gravity waves. Despite being formally inapplicable, the quasi-geostrophic model captures the laboratory flows reasonably well. The model displays several systematic biases, which are consequences of its treatment of boundary layers and neglect of interfacial surface tension and which may be explained without invoking the dynamical effects of the moderate Rossby number, large aspect ratio or inertia–gravity waves. We conclude that quasi-geostrophic theory appears to continue to apply well outside its formal bounds.

Evaluation of NRC, UC Davis and ADAS approaches to estimate the metabolizable energy values of feeds at maintenance energy intake from equations utilizing chemical assays and in vitro determinations

Feed samples received by commercial analytical laboratories are often undefined or mixed varieties of forages, originate from various agronomic or geographical areas of the world, are mixtures (e.g., total mixed rations) and are often described incompletely or not at all. Six unified single equation approaches to predict the metabolizable energy (ME) value of feeds determined in sheep fed at maintenance ME intake were evaluated utilizing 78 individual feeds representing 17 different forages, grains, protein meals and by-product feedstuffs. The predictive approaches evaluated were two each from National Research Council [National Research Council (NRC), Nutrient Requirements of Dairy Cattle, seventh revised ed. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, USA, 2001], University of California at Davis (UC Davis) and ADAS (Stratford, UK). Slopes and intercepts for the two ADAS approaches that utilized in vitro digestibility of organic matter and either measured gross energy (GE), or a prediction of GE from component assays, and one UC Davis approach, based upon in vitro gas production and some component assays, differed from both unity and zero, respectively, while this was not the case for the two NRC and one UC Davis approach. However, within these latter three approaches, the goodness of fit (r(2)) increased from the NRC approach utilizing lignin (0.61) to the NRC approach utilizing 48 h in vitro digestion of neutral detergent fibre (NDF:0.72) and to the UC Davis approach utilizing a 30 h in vitro digestion of NDF (0.84). The reason for the difference between the precision of the NRC procedures was the failure of assayed lignin values to accurately predict 48 h in vitro digestion of NDF. However, differences among the six predictive approaches in the number of supporting assays, and their costs, as well as that the NRC approach is actually three related equations requiring categorical description of feeds (making them unsuitable for mixed feeds) while the ADAS and UC Davis approaches are single equations, suggests that the procedure of choice will vary dependent Upon local conditions, specific objectives and the feedstuffs to be evaluated. In contrast to the evaluation of the procedures among feedstuffs, no procedure was able to consistently discriminate the ME values of individual feeds within feedstuffs determined in vivo, suggesting that the quest for an accurate and precise ME predictive approach among and within feeds, may remain to be identified. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A demonstration of attentional bias, using a novel dual task paradigm, towards clinically salient material in recovering alcohol abuse patients?

Background. This study examined whether alcohol abuse patients are characterized either by enhanced schematic processing of alcohol related cues or by an attentional bias towards the processing of alcohol cues. Method. Abstinent alcohol abusers (N = 25) and non-clinical control participants (N = 24) performed a dual task paradigm in which they had to make an odd/even decision to a centrally presented number while performing a peripherally presented lexical decision task. Stimuli on the lexical decision task comprised alcohol words, neutral words and non-words. In addition, participants completed an incidental recall task for the words presented in the lexical decision task. Results. It was found that, in the presence of alcohol related words, the performance of patients on the odd/even decision task was poorer than in the presence of other stimului. In addition, patients displayed slower lexical decision times for alcohol related words. Both groups displayed better recall for alcohol words than for other stimuli. Conclusions. These results are interpreted as supporting neither model of drug cravings. Rather, it is proposed that, in the presence of alcohol stimuli, alcohol abuse patients display a breakdown in the ability to focus attention.

Do children with Williams syndrome have unusual vocabularies?

Aims: The present study investigated whether children with Williams syndrome (WS) produced a higher number of different word roots and low-frequency words in spontaneous speech in a topic controlled setting. Method: A group of children with WS was compared to a group of typically developing children matched for chronological age (CA), and a group of typically developing children matched for receptive language abilities (LA). A further comparison was made between the WS group and a group of children matched for non-verbal abilities (NA). Spontaneous speech was elicited using a narrative task. The data were analysed using three different measures of lexical diversity. The results revealed that the children with WS neither produce a higher number of different word roots nor significantly more low-frequency items in comparison to the CA, LA and NA matched participants. Furthermore, language and non-verbal abilities did not predict the number of different and low frequency words used by the typically developing children, however in the WS group non-verbal abilities predicted the number of low-frequency words and receptive language skills predicted the number of different words produced. It is concluded that individuals with WS do not have unusual vocabularies and that the subdomain of language, lexical semantics, does not seem to be an independent cognitive skill. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The distinct contributions of age of acquisition and word frequency in auditory word perception

We report two studies of the distinct effects that a word's age of acquisition (AoA) and frequency have on the mental lexicon. In the first study, a purely statistical analysis, we show that AoA and frequency are related in different ways to the phonological form and imageability of different words. In the second study, three groups of participants (34 seven-year-olds, 30 ten-year-olds, and 17 adults) took part in an auditory lexical decision task, with stimuli varying in AoA, frequency, length, neighbourhood density, and imageability. The principal result is that the influence of these different variables changes as a function of AoA: Neighbourhood density effects are apparent for early and late AoA words, but not for intermediate AoA, whereas imageability effects are apparent for intermediate AoA words but not for early or late AoA. These results are discussed from the perspective that AoA affects a word's representation, but frequency affects processing biases.