scholarly journals 'Clap your hands' or 'take your hands'? One-year-olds distinguish between frequent and infrequent multiword phrases

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbora Skarabela ◽  
Mitsuhiko Ota ◽  
Rosie O'Connor ◽  
Inbal Arnon

Although words are often described as the basic building blocks of language, there is growing evidence that multiword sequences also play an integral role in language learning and processing. It is still not known, however, whether children become sensitive to multiword information at an age when they are still building knowledge of individual words. Using a central fixation paradigm, the present study examined whether infants between 11 and 12 months (N=36) distinguish between three-word sequences (trigrams) with similar substring frequencies but different multiword frequency in infant-directed speech (e.g., high frequency: ‘clap your hands’ vs. low frequency: ‘take your hands’). Infants looked significantly longer at frequent trigrams compared to infrequent ones. This provides the first evidence that infants at the cusp of one-word production are already sensitive to the frequency of multiword sequences, and suggests they represent linguistic units of varying sizes from early on, raising the need to evaluate knowledge of both words and larger sequences during development.l

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Siyanova ◽  
S Spina

© 2015 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan. Research into frequency intuition has focused primarily on native (L1) and, to a lesser degree, nonnative (L2) speaker intuitions about single word frequency. What remains a largely unexplored area is L1 and L2 intuitions about collocation (i.e., phrasal) frequency. To bridge this gap, the present study aimed to answer the following question: How do L2 learners and native speakers compare against each other and corpora in their subjective judgments of collocation frequency? Native speakers and learners of Italian were asked to judge 80 noun-adjective pairings as one of the following: high frequency, medium frequency, low frequency, very low frequency. Both L1 and L2 intuitions of high frequency collocations correlated strongly with corpus frequency. Neither of the two groups of participants exhibited accurate intuitions of medium and low frequency collocations. With regard to very low frequency pairings, L1 but not L2 intuitions were found to correlate with corpora for the majority of the items. Further, mixed-effects modeling revealed that L2 learners were comparable to native speakers in their judgments of the four frequency bands, although some differences did emerge. Taken together, the study provides new insights into the nature of L1 and L2 intuitions about phrasal frequency.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (9) ◽  
pp. 1735-1748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Batterink

Language is composed of small building blocks, which combine to form larger meaningful structures. To understand language, we must process, track, and concatenate these building blocks into larger linguistic units as speech unfolds over time. An influential idea is that phase-locking of neural oscillations across different levels of linguistic structure provides a mechanism for this process. Building on this framework, the goal of the current study was to determine whether neural phase-locking occurs more robustly to novel linguistic items that are successfully learned and encoded into memory, compared to items that are not learned. Participants listened to a continuous speech stream composed of repeating nonsense words while their EEG was recorded and then performed a recognition test on the component words. Neural phase-locking to individual words during the learning period strongly predicted the strength of subsequent word knowledge, suggesting that neural phase-locking indexes the subjective perception of specific linguistic items during real-time language learning. These findings support neural oscillatory models of language, demonstrating that words that are successfully perceived as functional units are tracked by oscillatory activity at the matching word rate. In contrast, words that are not learned are processed merely as a sequence of unrelated syllables and thus not tracked by corresponding word-rate oscillations.


Blood ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 120 (21) ◽  
pp. 244-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyacinth I Hyacinth ◽  
Beatrice E Gee ◽  
Jenifer H Voeks ◽  
Robert J. Adams ◽  
Jacqueline Hibbert

Abstract Abstract 244 Stroke is a major cause of morbidity and mortality among children with sickle cell anemia (SCA). Children with SCA at risk for stroke can be identified by transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasound screening for abnormally high cerebral artery blood flow velocity and strokes can be prevented by chronic packed red blood cell (RBC) transfusion. However, the mechanisms that lead to cerebral vasculopathy and stroke in SCA and that explain the beneficial effects of chronic RBC transfusions in stroke prevention are poorly understood. We have previously shown that pre-treatment serum levels of brain derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) and platelet derived growth factor (PDGF) subtypes, biomarkers of cerebral ischemia and arterial remodeling, were associated with both high TCD velocity and development of stroke. We hypothesized that frequency of RBC transfusion would be associated with altered serum levels of neurodegenerative, inflammatory and angiogenic markers in SCA children with high TCD velocity and tested this hypothesis by assaying levels of these markers in post-STOP serum samples. Frozen serum samples drawn one year after subject's exit from the STOP clinical trial phase were utilized. Given the positive trial results, all but 9 subjects had been on chronic transfusion regimen for at least one year at the time of sample collection. Eighty samples were assayed using multiplex antibody immobilized beads (Millipore Corp, Billerica, MA). The mean fluorescent intensity was measured using the Milliplex xMAP system powered by Luminex (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA). Ten biologically related neurodegenerative, inflammatory and angiogenic biomarkers were tested. The total number (frequency) of RBC transfusions recorded over the study period (4 years) for each participant was categorized into High (≥ 40), Moderate (20 – 39) or Low (< 20) frequency of transfusion. Median distribution with 10 – 90th percentile of the levels of biomarkers and TCD velocity were expressed using box-plots and the differences in median distribution between groups based on frequency of transfusion was estimated using Kruskal-Wallis test. A principal component analysis (PCA) loading plot was used to demonstrate the biological relationships between the biomarkers, taking into consideration linear correlations and spatial relationships between them. There were no significant differences in the hematological and anthropometric measures between groups. Overall, our result showed that low transfusion frequency was associated with high serum levels of biomarkers and vice versa, despite no significant difference in hemoglobin level between groups. The high frequency transfusion group had lower serum levels of BDNF (p = 0.02), sVCAM-1 (p < 0.001), PDGF-AA (p < 0.001), CCL5 (p < 0.01), tPAI-1 (p < 0.01) and NCAM (p < 0.01) levels compared with the low frequency transfusion group (figure 1 a – e). Although not shown in the figures, the same pattern was observed with TCD velocity which was lower (160, 115.7 – 204.9 cm/s) in the low compared with the high (195, 154 – 272 cm/s) frequency transfusion group. In addition, the medium frequency transfusion group had significantly lower serum sVCAM-1 (p < 0.01) compared with the low frequency transfusion group and higher PDGF-AA (p < 0.01) compared with the high frequency transfusion group. A PCA loading plot (figure 2) shows clustering of the biomarkers that are most closely biologically related, these are also the biomarkers that were significantly affected by the frequency of transfusion. Red blood cell transfusions in the STOP study were associated with reduced serum levels of biomarkers of angiogenesis (PDGF-AA and sVCAM-1), cerebral ischemia/neuronal survival adaptation (BDNF and NCAM) and inflammation (RANTES/CCL5), and this effect was most pronounced in the group with the highest frequency of transfusions (equivalent to most chronic transfusion regimen). This suggests that the protective effects of chronic RBC transfusions on stroke development in children with SCA may be attributable to improved cerebral perfusion, reduced inflammation and down-regulation of hypoxia-induced angiogenic responses that promote arterial remodeling. One or more in this group of biologically-related and relevant markers may be useful for monitoring children with SCA receiving stroke prevention therapies and for designing treatment targets. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Siyanova ◽  
S Spina

© 2015 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan. Research into frequency intuition has focused primarily on native (L1) and, to a lesser degree, nonnative (L2) speaker intuitions about single word frequency. What remains a largely unexplored area is L1 and L2 intuitions about collocation (i.e., phrasal) frequency. To bridge this gap, the present study aimed to answer the following question: How do L2 learners and native speakers compare against each other and corpora in their subjective judgments of collocation frequency? Native speakers and learners of Italian were asked to judge 80 noun-adjective pairings as one of the following: high frequency, medium frequency, low frequency, very low frequency. Both L1 and L2 intuitions of high frequency collocations correlated strongly with corpus frequency. Neither of the two groups of participants exhibited accurate intuitions of medium and low frequency collocations. With regard to very low frequency pairings, L1 but not L2 intuitions were found to correlate with corpora for the majority of the items. Further, mixed-effects modeling revealed that L2 learners were comparable to native speakers in their judgments of the four frequency bands, although some differences did emerge. Taken together, the study provides new insights into the nature of L1 and L2 intuitions about phrasal frequency.


Author(s):  
G. Y. Fan ◽  
J. M. Cowley

It is well known that the structure information on the specimen is not always faithfully transferred through the electron microscope. Firstly, the spatial frequency spectrum is modulated by the transfer function (TF) at the focal plane. Secondly, the spectrum suffers high frequency cut-off by the aperture (or effectively damping terms such as chromatic aberration). While these do not have essential effect on imaging crystal periodicity as long as the low order Bragg spots are inside the aperture, although the contrast may be reversed, they may change the appearance of images of amorphous materials completely. Because the spectrum of amorphous materials is continuous, modulation of it emphasizes some components while weakening others. Especially the cut-off of high frequency components, which contribute to amorphous image just as strongly as low frequency components can have a fundamental effect. This can be illustrated through computer simulation. Imaging of a whitenoise object with an electron microscope without TF limitation gives Fig. 1a, which is obtained by Fourier transformation of a constant amplitude combined with random phases generated by computer.


Author(s):  
M. T. Postek ◽  
A. E. Vladar

Fully automated or semi-automated scanning electron microscopes (SEM) are now commonly used in semiconductor production and other forms of manufacturing. The industry requires that an automated instrument must be routinely capable of 5 nm resolution (or better) at 1.0 kV accelerating voltage for the measurement of nominal 0.25-0.35 micrometer semiconductor critical dimensions. Testing and proving that the instrument is performing at this level on a day-by-day basis is an industry need and concern which has been the object of a study at NIST and the fundamentals and results are discussed in this paper.In scanning electron microscopy, two of the most important instrument parameters are the size and shape of the primary electron beam and any image taken in a scanning electron microscope is the result of the sample and electron probe interaction. The low frequency changes in the video signal, collected from the sample, contains information about the larger features and the high frequency changes carry information of finer details. The sharper the image, the larger the number of high frequency components making up that image. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis of an SEM image can be employed to provide qualitiative and ultimately quantitative information regarding the SEM image quality.


1992 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 52-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail L. MacLean ◽  
Andrew Stuart ◽  
Robert Stenstrom

Differences in real ear sound pressure levels (SPLs) with three portable stereo system (PSS) earphones (supraaural [Sony Model MDR-44], semiaural [Sony Model MDR-A15L], and insert [Sony Model MDR-E225]) were investigated. Twelve adult men served as subjects. Frequency response, high frequency average (HFA) output, peak output, peak output frequency, and overall RMS output for each PSS earphone were obtained with a probe tube microphone system (Fonix 6500 Hearing Aid Test System). Results indicated a significant difference in mean RMS outputs with nonsignificant differences in mean HFA outputs, peak outputs, and peak output frequencies among PSS earphones. Differences in mean overall RMS outputs were attributed to differences in low-frequency effects that were observed among the frequency responses of the three PSS earphones. It is suggested that one cannot assume equivalent real ear SPLs, with equivalent inputs, among different styles of PSS earphones.


1971 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman P. Erber

Two types of special hearing aid have been developed recently to improve the reception of speech by profoundly deaf children. In a different way, each special system provides greater low-frequency acoustic stimulation to deaf ears than does a conventional hearing aid. One of the devices extends the low-frequency limit of amplification; the other shifts high-frequency energy to a lower frequency range. In general, previous evaluations of these special hearing aids have obtained inconsistent or inconclusive results. This paper reviews most of the published research on the use of special hearing aids by deaf children, summarizes several unpublished studies, and suggests a set of guidelines for future evaluations of special and conventional amplification systems.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Maria Lina Silva Leite
Keyword(s):  

O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar os efeitos do Método Pilates sobre a variabilidade da frequência cardíaca, na flexibilidade e nas variáveis antropométricas em indivíduos sedentários. O presente estudo contou com 14 voluntárias do sexo feminino, na faixa etária entre 40 e 55 anos, que realizaram 20 sessões de exercícios do Método Pilates, duas vezes por semana, com duração de 45 minutos cada sessão, dividida em três fases: repouso, exercício e recuperação. As variáveis estudadas foram: os dados antropométricos, flexibilidade avaliada utilizando o teste de sentar-e-alcançar com o Banco de Wells, e intervalos R-R usando um cardiotacômetro. O processamento dos sinais da frequência cardíaca foi efetuado em ambiente MatLab 6.1®, utilizando a TWC. Os dados coletados foram submetidos ao teste de normalidade de Shapiro Wilk e foi utilizado o teste de Wilcoxon e Anova One Way (α = 0,05). Nos resultados, observou-se que não houve diferenças significativas entre os valores antropométricos e de frequência cardíaca, porém houve aumento da flexibilidade com o treinamento. Comparando a primeira e a vigésima sessão com relação aos parâmetros low frequency (LF), high frequency (HF), e relação LF/HF, não houve diferença na fase de repouso e foram constatadas diferenças significativas de LF (p = 0,04) e HF (p = 0,04) na fase de exercício e diferença significativa de LF/HF (p = 0,05) na fase de recuperação. Comparando os parâmetros nos períodos de repouso, exercícios e recuperação durante a primeira sessão e durante a vigésima sessão, não houve diferença significativa nos parâmetros LF, HF e LF/HF. Pode-se concluir que, em relação à flexibilidade, foi observada uma melhora significativa, enquanto a análise da frequência cardíaca caracterizou a intensidade do exercício de 50% da capacidade funcional das voluntárias. Em relação aos parâmetros LF, HF e LF/HF foram observados um aumento da variabilidade da frequência cardíaca, provavelmente produto da atividade do Método Pilates. A Transformada Wavelet (TWC) mostrou-se um Método adequado para as análises da variabilidade da frequência cardíaca.Palavras-chave: frequência cardíaca, Transformada Wavelet, Pilates.


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