Brain activity during automatic semantic priming revealed by event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging

Semantic priming occurs when a subject is faster in recognising a target word when it is preceded by a related word compared to an unrelated word. The effect is attributed to automatic or controlled processing mechanisms elicited by short or long interstimulus intervals (ISIs) between primes and targets. We employed event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) responses associated with automatic semantic priming using an experimental design identical to that used in standard behavioural priming tasks. Prime-target semantic strength was manipulated by using lexical ambiguity primes (e.g., bank) and target words related to dominant or subordinate meaning of the ambiguity. Subjects made speeded lexical decisions (word/nonword) on dominant related, subordinate related, and unrelated word pairs presented randomly with a short ISI. The major finding was a pattern of reduced activity in middle temporal and inferior prefrontal regions for dominant versus unrelated and subordinate versus unrelated comparisons, respectively. These findings are consistent with both a dual process model of semantic priming and recent repetition priming data that suggest that reductions in BOLD responses represent neural priming associated with automatic semantic activation and implicate the left middle temporal cortex and inferior prefrontal cortex in more automatic aspects of semantic processing.

OntoRama: Browsing RDF ontologies using a hyperbolic-style browser

This paper presents a Java-based hyperbolic-style browser designed to render RDF files as structured ontological maps. The program was motivated by the need to browse the content of a web-accessible ontology server: WEB KB-2. The ontology server contains descriptions of over 74,500 object types derived from the WordNet 1.7 lexical database and can be accessed using RDF syntax. Such a structure creates complications for hyperbolic-style displays. In WEB KB-2 there are 140 stable ontology link types and a hyperbolic display needs to filter and iconify the view so different link relations can be distinguished in multi-link views. Our browsing tool, OntoRama, is therefore motivated by two possibly interfering aims: the first to display up to 10 times the number of nodes in a hyperbolic-style view than using a conventional graphics display; secondly, to render the ontology with multiple links comprehensible in that view.

Farming under constrained budgets: Practices of agricultural credit users in central Lombok, Indonesia

There has been a long dependency on credit by Indonesian farmers as a result of the lack of capital to apply proper farming practices. This paper describes the farming activities applied by agricultural credit users in Central Lombok, Indonesia. A survey was conducted during July 2001- March 2002 of 65 farmers making use of government or private credit in three villages within the Regency. Data from the farmers were collected using face-to-face, semi-structured interviews. Survey results indicated that on average, farmers had some 20 years experience of farming, were aged 40 years, but lacked of formal education. Their main asset was cropping land with average landholding of 0.69 ha. As a consequence of their capital constraints, farmers were commonly making use of credit to finance their farming activities, including both production of rice as the main crop and secondary crops. Farmers generally applied less than recommended amount of inputs in their farming practices, since the amount of credit they obtained was limited. As a result, their farms become less productive and their repayment capability of loans diminished. Of 65 farmers interviewed, 54 could earn extra income by engaging in a variety of non-farm activities, which contributed on average some 36% to family incomes of over Rp 5 million (A$ 1 thousand). The average credit repayment rate made by agricultural producers was 60%. The repayment made did not always reflect farm production capacity, being sometimes supported by other borrowings. The greater role of credit is not in increasing agricultural production or improving farmers’ income, but in helping them to sustain farm production and their living. Farmers need a bigger amount of credit to make an impact on their livelihood. This should be accompanied by extension services for farmers to enable better use of credit and to change their attitude towards it. As well, farmers require to be equipped with technical and market skills to run a business. Interdisciplinarity, holistic analysis, and an expansion of traditional ‘agricultural’ interests to embrace the span of interests included in rural livelihood, are each critical features of revision of the existing system.

COMUNICAÇÃO MERCADOLÓGICA EM MÍDIAS SOCIAIS ONLINE ANÁLISES PARA RELACIONAMENTOS EM REDES VIRTUAIS

Com o propósito de incrementar suas campanhas mercadológicas, muitas organizações, recorrem às ferramentas de mídias sociais hospedadas na Internet. Com isso, procuram o aumento de produtividade com adoção de sistemas automatizados de reprodução de mensagens, ou mesmo de recursos de acesso direto, inserindo mensagens de caráter persuasivo nos fóruns de discussões em comunidades online. Uma certa falta de sensibilidade para com o trato comunicacional, num meio potencialmente promissor, mas que pede uma outra interpretação, para posterior ação. Frequentemente implica em uma possibilidade de reverberação indicando ser imprescindível maior atenção na elaboração e no direcionamento desses fluxos comunicacionais, acentuadamente os de propósitos persuasivos. Nesse sentido, o presente trabalho propõe o estudo de comunidades online nas quais possamos a partir da identificação dos fatores que levem à sua formação, analisar e interpretar sua estrutura e seus fluxos comunicacionais, tais que, indiquem seus elementos agregadores. Para tal, com os preceitos metodológicos observados, objetivou-se demonstrar que, com esses componentes, as análises podem ser desenvolvidas para melhor adequação de estratégias de relacionamentos, possibilitando ações inerentes ao processo comunicacional mercadológico com essas comunidades. A metodologia ora empregada envolveu análise estrutural da rede com aplicações de softwares como UCINET, integrado com NetDraw, e dos fluxos comunicacionais, que formaram o corpora, analisado com a suíte Wordsmith Tools. Uma rede formada em comunidade hospedada na ferramenta orkut, por meio da obtenção dos conteúdos de fóruns temáticos, forneceu o corpora para as análises lexicais. Os resultados obtidos puderam caracterizar, não só a própria existência da rede social, como as potencialidades de relacionamento, a partir de interpretações de fluxos dialógicos de seus elementos agregadores, por meio de recursos visuais (grafos), estatísticos e lexicais.

PENSAR A CIBERCULTURA AMBIENTALISTA: Comunicação, mobilização e as estratégias discursivas do Greenpeace Brasil

Nossa Tese postula a existência de uma cibercultura ambientalista, própria do movimento ambiental, que conta com uma dinâmica comunicativa caracterizada por estratégias de discurso e mobilização específicas. O movimento ambiental, aqui representado pela organização de espectro internacional Greenpeace, soube se apropriar das ferramentas digitais, difundir a problemática em um cenário de redes sociais digitais, ciberativismo, interatividade e composição de uma esfera pública em rede, que colocamos em debate. Para entender esse panorama realizamos uma ampla discussão teórica, em permanente diálogo com nosso objeto de estudo, abrangendo a trajetória do ambientalismo e seu lugar enquanto movimento social; as tecnologias da sociabilidade, a Internet e suas mídias como espaço de resistência e controle, assinalando a cibercultura como a própria cultura contemporânea, pautada pelas influências tecnológicas. Realizamos entrevistas com voluntários, seguidores, além de responsáveis pela comunicação do Greenpeace que nos permitiram traçar as motivações da participação e confirmar que o engajamento na causa ambiental foi fortemente impulsionado pelas facilidades do ciberespaço. As estratégias discursivas foram desvendadas com as coordenadas metodológicas da Análise do Discurso, focada na identificação do ethos e das cenas de enunciação, com base em um protocolo de análise que formulamos para compreender a maneira de dizer que leva os sujeitos aderirem maciçamente ao discurso ambiental. Na primeira etapa da análise realizamos diagnóstico de perspectiva quantitativa e caráter exploratório para levantar as campanhas/temáticas principais e avaliar a repercussão dos assuntos nas redes sociais digitais e na mídia convencional. Posteriormente, selecionamos os textos das principais campanhas que passaram pela fase qualitativa, que abarcou os itens lexicais, as técnicas argumentativas e os elementos de destacabilidade, além de aspectos externos ao texto linguístico, como fotos, vídeos, cores e cenas predominantes. O discurso na cibercultura ambiental desvela o ethos do amigo, do parceiro, que oscila entre o drama e a agressividade para chamar atenção à causa. Problemas graves como denúncias ambientais são tratados com um ethos lúdico, até mesmo infantil, usando de linguagem coloquial e de códigos da cultura contemporânea desenhos animados, jogos virtuais, belos animais que cantam e dançam que para os nossos olhos revelam uma cenografia esquizofrênica, mas é justamente o que garante o êxito das campanhas.

FORMAÇÃO E PRÁTICA DOCENTE DE PROFESSORES DE INGLÊS EM CURSO LIVRE: UM ESTUDO DAS REPRESENTAÇÕES SOCIAIS

Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo investigar as representações sociais de um grupo de professores de inglês em curso livre a respeito de sua identidade profissional, seus processos formativos e seus saberes docentes. A fundamentação teórica do estudo baseou-se nos conceitos de representação social (Serge Moscovici e Denise Jodelet) e de dialogicidade (Mikhail Bakhtin e Ivana Marková). Foram realizadas considerações a respeito de fatores históricos, sociais e econômicos que originaram as atuais representações que os sujeitos do estudo têm a respeito do idioma bem como dos processos de ensino e aprendizagem do mesmo. Os dados foram coletados através de dois questionários e analisados com os recursos de um software para análise lexical, o ALCESTE. Os resultados revelaram que os participantes consideram a fluência no idioma como central para sua identidade profissional e a experiência em sala de aula como mais importante do que a vivência acadêmica. A falta de reflexão acerca de aspectos sociais relacionados à sua prática pedagógica também foi observada. A contribuição pretendida por este estudo foi uma melhor compreensão das representações de professores de inglês a respeito do idioma e dos processos de ensino e aprendizagem do mesmo, bem como de seu papel profissional, de forma a oferecer algumas reflexões sobre as políticas e práticas atuais relacionadas à formação inicial e continuada de professores de língua estrangeira.(AU)

DROGAS E ALUNOS USUÁRIOS DE DROGAS NA ESCOLA: ESTUDO DE REPRESENTAÇÕES SOCIAIS DE PROFESSORES DO ENSINO MÉDIO DA REDE ESTADUAL DE SÃO PAULO

Este estudo apresenta uma discussão a respeito de drogas e de alunos usuários de drogas na escola, explorando as Representações Sociais manifestadas por professores que atuam na Rede Estadual de São Paulo, no ensino Médio. O estudo resgata aspectos históricos e sociais que influenciaram representações sociais sobre drogas em diferentes contextos da sociedade, na perspectiva de buscar compreender a maneira como atualmente elas se apresentam. Discute aspectos conceituais da Teoria das Representações Sociais a partir de Moscovici, considerando contribuições de Jodelet, e outros autores. Os dados coletados por meio de questionários e entrevistas foram analisados com o auxílio de dois softwares, o ALCESTE para análise lexical e o EVOC para análise de associação de palavras ou expressões, em articulação com uma análise de conteúdo clássica sugerida por Maria Laura Puglisi Barbosa Franco. O resultado identificou que as representações sociais sobre drogas na escola e alunos usuários estão ancoradas no modo como a grande mídia trata o tema, de forma alarmista e sensacionalista, influenciando grande parte dos professores que associa drogas na escola à violência. Verificou-se ainda que objetivação do aluno usuário de drogas é simbolizada como doença e que o grupo pesquisado segue as representações sociais há muito tempo estruturadas na sociedade, tendo a normalidade como sinônimo de saúde e a drogadição como condição desviante, decorrente de patologias. Assim, espera-se estar contribuindo para a reflexão sobre o uso e abuso de drogas nas escolas, um tema indispensável e que precisa ser enfrentado para construir-se uma via que leve a uma Educação justa e democrática.(AU)

REPRESENTAÇÕES SOCIAIS: PARA ALÉM DA IDENTIDADE DO PEDAGOGO DOCENTE

Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo investigar as representações sociais de um grupo de pedagogos docentes em faculdades isoladas, nos cursos de Pedagogia, a respeito de sua identidade profissional. A fundamentação teórica do estudo baseou- se nos conceitos de Representação Social enunciados por Sèrge Moscovici e Denise Jodelet. Foram realizadas considerações acerca dos caminhos percorridos pelos cursos de Pedagogia no país e seus aspectos sociais, que deram origem às atuais representações que os sujeitos do estudo têm sobre a profissão docente. Os dados foram coletados através de um questionário semidiretivo e analisado com os recursos dos softwares ALCESTE, para análise lexical, e EVOC, para evocação livre das palavras. Os resultados revelaram que a identidade do pedagogo é compreendida como um processo de construção e reconstrução e apresenta-se como um diferencial, fruto de uma escolha profissional, e não de sacerdócio, anunciando que, embora exista um padrão social estabelecido para o exercício profissional, o pedagogo docente faz uso de sua professoralidade, na sua maneira de exercer a profissão. A contribuição pretendida por este estudo é melhor compreender as representações de pedagogos docentes nos cursos de formação de professores a respeito de sua profissão, e seu papel profissional, de forma a oferecer algumas reflexões sobre a formação em Pedagogia.

L'interprétation des phrases négatives:portée et foyer des négations en français

The organization of linguistic meaning is animated by the duality between the sense of signs and the reference to the experience of speakers. How the presuppositions communicated by speakers emanate from the conventional value of signs and their cotextual dependencies is explored in this monograph on the scope and focus of negation. Negation can have scope over the predicate of the sequence in which it is used. The body of data brought together show that a variety of configurations preclude command of the predicate by the negative scoping over it, and that scope is a semantic rather than structural relation. Scope defines the domain in which an item can be focused by negation. Negative focus is dependent on the evocation of an alternative value, which may be generated by lexical antonymy, syntactic determination or contextual corrections. The study of focus and scope of negation on the basis of attested examples from different varieties of French demonstrates how the independently motivated semantic principles of relation to predicate and reference to an alternative value account for the observed effects.

Interprétation des insultes et relations de solidarité

This article focuses on the empirical domain of the solidarity uses of certain insults in different varieties of French (standard, Quebec, Burgundy) from diachronic and synchronic points of view. Solidarity uses refers to the usage of axiological terms as terms of endearment to mark social proximity between subjects. This value is signalled by morphosyntactic, prosodic and mimeo-gestural features indicating the speaker's disposition towards the addressee. These psychological and social parameters conspire to attenuate the axiological term's argumentative program, which however can never be entirely evacuated. This argumentative program is nevertheless subordinated to pragmatics, which remains necessary in order to evaluate the extent to which the conventional lexical meaning is maintained in these uses. The attenuation of conventional meaning under solidarity uses shows the relevance of relational and attitudinal notions for the negotiation of meaning. It further establishes that at least in some cases, the analysis of linguistic interpretation require a multidisciplinary approach, most specifically where the relation between Semantics and Pragmatics is concerned.

World knowledge in the process of translation

The paper illustrates the role of world knowledge in comprehending and translating texts. A short news item, which displays world knowledge fairly implicitly in condensed lexical forms, was translated by students from English into German. It is shown that their translation strategies changed from a first draft which was rather close to the surface structure of the source text to a final version which took situational aspects, texttypological conventions and the different background knowledge of the respective addressees into account. Decisions on how much world knowledge has to be made explicit in the target text, however, must be based on the relevance principle. Consequences for teaching and for the notions of semantic knowledge and world knowledge are discussed.

Relating two simultaneous events in discourse: the role of on-goingness devices in L1 Tunisian Arabic, L1 French and L2 French by Tunisian learners

Our PhD study focuses on the role of aspectual marking in expressing simultaneity of events in Tunisian Arabic as a first language, French as a first language, as well as in French as a second language by Tunisian learners at different acquisitional stages. We examine how the explicit markers of on-goingness qa:’id and «en train de» in Tunisian Arabic and in French respectively are used to express this temporal relation, in competition with the simple forms, the prefixed verb form in Tunisian Arabic and the présent de l’indicatif in French. We use a complex verbal task of retelling simultaneous events sharing an interval on the time axis based on eight videos presenting two situations happening in parallel. Two types of simultaneity are exploited: perfect simultaneity (when the two situations are parallel to each other) and inclusion (one situation is framed by the second one). Our informants in French and in Tunisian Arabic have two profiles, highly educated and low educated speakers. We show that the participants’ response to the retelling task varies according to their profiles, and so does their use of the on-goingness devices in the expression of simultaneity. The differences observed between the two profile groups are explained by the degree to which the speakers have developed a habit of responding to tasks. This is a skill typically acquired during schooling. We notice overall that the use of qa:’id as well as of «en train de» is less frequent in the data than the use of the simple forms. However, qa:’id as well as «en train de» are employed to play discursive roles that go beyond the proposition level. We postulate that despite the shared features between Tunisian Arabic and French regarding marking the concept of on-goingness, namely the presence of explicit lexical, not fully grammaticalised markers competing with other non-marked forms, the way they are used in the discourse of simultaneous events shows clear differences. We explain that «en train de» plays a more contrastive role than qa:’id and its use in discourse obeys a stricter rule. In cases of the inclusion type of simultaneity, it is used to construe the ‘framing’ event that encloses the second event. In construing perfectly simultaneneous events, and when both «en train de» and présent de l’indicatif are used, the proposition with «en train de» generally precedes the proposition with présent de l’indicatif, and not the other way around. qa:id obeys, but to a less strict rule as it can be used interchangeably with the simple form regardless of the order of propositions. The contrastive analysis of French L1 and L2 reveals learners’ deviations from natives’ use of on-goingness devices. They generalise the use of «en train de» and apply different rules to the interaction of the different marked and unmarked forms in discourse. Learners do not master its role in discourse even at advanced stages of acquisition despite its possible emergence around the basic and intermediate varieties. We conclude that the native speakers’ use of «en train de» involves mastering its role at the macro-structure level. This feature, not explicitly available to learners in the input, might persistently present a challenge to L2 acquisition of the periphrasis.

An action research study with low proficiency learners in Japan to promote the learning of vocabulary through collocations.

This action research (AR) study explores an alternative approach to vocabulary instruction for low-proficiency university students: a change from targeting individual words from the general service list (West, 1953) to targeting frequent verb + noun collocations. A review of the literature indicated a focus on collocations instead of individual words could potentially address the students’ productive challenges with targeted vocabulary. Over the course of four reflective cycles, this thesis addresses three main aspects of collocation instruction. First, it examines if the students believe studying collocations is more useful than studying individual lexical items. Second, the thesis investigates whether a focus on collocations will lead to improvements in spoken fluency. This is tested through a comparison of a pre-intervention spoken assessment task with the findings from the same task completed 15 weeks later, after the intervention. Third, the thesis explores different procedures for the instructing of collocations under the classroom constraints of a university teaching context. In the first of the four reflective cycles, data is collected which indicates that the students believe a focus on collocations is superior to only teaching individual lexical items, that in the students’ opinion their productive abilities with the targeted structures has improved, and that delexicalized verb collocations are problematic for low-proficiency students. Reflective cycle two produces evidence indicating that productive tasks are superior to receptive tasks for fluency development. In reflective cycle three, productively challenging classroom tasks are investigated further and the findings indicate that tasks with higher productive demands result in greater improvements in spoken fluency. The fourth reflective cycle uses a different type of collocation list: frequent adjective + noun collocations. Despite this change, the findings remain consistent in that certain types of collocations are problematic for low-proficiency language learners and that the evidence shows productive tasks are necessary to improve the students’ spoken ability.

Concreteness effects in different tasks: implications for models of short-term memory

This study investigates concreteness effects in tasks requiring short-term retention. Concreteness effects were assessed in serial recall, matching span, order reconstruction, and free recall. Each task was carried out both in a control condition and under articulatory suppression. Our results show no dissociation between tasks that do and do not require spoken output. This argues against the redintegration hypothesis according to which lexical-semantic effects in short-term memory arise only at the point of production. In contrast, concreteness effects were modulated by task demands that stressed retention of item versus order information. Concreteness effects were stronger in free recall than in serial recall. Suppression, which weakens phonological representations, enhanced the concreteness effect with item scoring. In a matching task, positive effects of concreteness occurred with open sets but not with closed sets of words. Finally, concreteness effects reversed when the task asked only for recall of word positions (as in the matching task), when phonological representations were weak (because of suppression), and when lexical semantic representations overactivated (because of closed sets). We interpret these results as consistent with a model where phonological representations are crucial for the retention of order, while lexical-semantic representations support maintenance of item identity in both input and output buffers.

Localizing the deficit in a case of jargonaphasia

We report the case of a neologistic jargonaphasic and ask whether her target-related and abstruse neologisms are the result of a single deficit, which affects some items more severely than others, or two deficits: one to lexical access and the other to phonological encoding. We analyse both correct/incorrect performance and errors and apply both traditional and formal methods (maximum-likelihood estimation and model selection). All evidence points to a single deficit at the level of phonological encoding. Further characteristics are used to constrain the locus still further. V.S. does not show the type of length effect expected of a memory component, nor the pattern of errors associated with an articulatory deficit. We conclude that her neologistic errors can result from a single deficit at a level of phonological encoding that immediately follows lexical access where segments are represented in terms of their features. We do not conclude, however, that this is the only possible locus that will produce phonological errors in aphasia, or, indeed, jargonaphasia.