The role of pitch accent in discourse construction

This project investigates the role of intonation in creating a mental discourse structure. More specifically, it examines the effect of producing L+H* pitch accent, an expansion of the pitch of voice during the stressed syllable of a word, on discourse markers, short phrases that set relations between utterances in discourse. L+H* pitch accent often induces a contrastive interpretation regarding items in discourse (e.g., ‘Don’t hand me the blue pen, hand me the RED one.’), and it has been shown to lead to anticipatory processing of contrastive status. The hypothesis under investigation is that L+H* on a discourse marker induces a notion of contrast between the preceding and upcoming utterances, such that the locus of prosodic and informational prominence in an upcoming utterance mirrors that of the preceding utterance. In the experiment, participants were exposed to short discourses exhibiting systematically placed L+H* accents, and they were asked to continue the discourses as they saw fit. Preliminary analysis of continuations from twelve participants does not indicate that L+H* on discourse markers uniformly evokes contrast; however, there was an interesting interaction between the prosody of the preceding utterance and that of the discourse marker in guiding the production of contrastive information. When the subject of the preceding utterance was prosodically highlighted, participants produced a contrastive subject more often when the discourse marker exhibited L+H* than when it did not. However, when the direct object of the preceding utterance was prosodically highlighted, participants produced a contrastive object more often when the discourse marker did not exhibit L+H*. This thesis presents two possible accounts for this finding. In addition, it identifies a possible bias in the experimental design that made subject contrast more salient than object contrast as well as semantic baises for and against productions of contrast within some of the stimuli, and in doing so provides a basis for a future investigation of the role of L+H* in establishing contrastive relationships in discourse. Advisor: Dr. Kiwako It

Stereotypical inferences: Philosophical relevance and psycholinguistic toolkit

Stereotypes shape inferences in philosophical thought, political discourse, and everyday life. These inferences are routinely made when thinkers engage in language comprehension or production: We make them whenever we hear, read, or formulate stories, reports, philosophical case-descriptions, or premises of arguments – on virtually any topic. These inferences are largely automatic: largely unconscious, non-intentional, and effortless. Accordingly, they shape our thought in ways we can properly understand only by complementing traditional forms of philosophical analysis with experimental methods from psycholinguistics. This paper seeks, first, to bring out the wider philosophical relevance of stereotypical inference, well beyond familiar topics like gender and race. Second, we wish to provide (experimental) philosophers with a toolkit to experimentally study these ubiquitous inferences and what intuitions they may generate. This paper explains what stereotypes are (Section 1), and why they matter to current and traditional concerns in philosophy – experimental, analytic, and applied (Section 2). It then assembles a psycholinguistic toolkit and demonstrates through two studies (Sections 3-4) how potentially questionnaire-based measures (plausibility-ratings) can be combined with process measures (reaction times and pupillometry) to garner evidence for specific stereotypical inferences and study when they ‘go through’ and influence our thinking

a visão dos coordenadores dos centros de atenção psicossocial - CAPS do município de Fortaleza

O presente artigo trata de trabalho descritivo com caráter qualitativo sobre as estratégias de gestão da saúde mental no município de Fortaleza, a partir da visão dos coordenadores dos Centros de Atenção Psicossocial. Busca-se compreender como vem se desenvolvendo o suporte à saúde mental a partir da Reforma Psiquiátrica, enfatizando a gestão atual da política de saúde mental. Desta forma, o artigo objetivou analisar as estratégias utilizadas para a gestão dos CAPS do município de Fortaleza (Ceará) e identificar possíveis fatores facilitadores e/ou obstáculos enfrentados pelos gestores. Identificou-se que os coordenadores consideram como estratégias a importância da intervenção no território, do trabalho interdisciplinar e do embasamento teórico sobre a política de saúde mental. Entretanto, eles reconhecem que estas ações não vêm acontecendo de forma satisfatória devido à precarização das políticas públicas

Predicting form and meaning:Evidence from brain potentials

We used ERPs to investigate the pre-activation of form and meaning in language comprehension. Participants read high-cloze sentence contexts (e.g., “The student is going to the library to borrow a…”), followed by a word that was predictable (book), form-related (hook) or semantically related (page) to the predictable word, or unrelated (sofa). At a 500 ms SOA (Experiment 1), semantically related words, but not form-related words, elicited a reduced N400 compared to unrelated words. At a 700 ms SOA (Experiment 2), semantically related words and form-related words elicited reduced N400 effects, but the effect for form-related words occurred in very high-cloze sentences only. At both SOAs, form-related words elicited an enhanced, post-N400 posterior positivity (Late Positive Component effect). The N400 effects suggest that readers can pre-activate meaning and form information for highly predictable words, but form pre-activation is more limited than meaning pre-activation. The post-N400 LPC effect suggests that participants detected the form similarity between expected and encountered input. Pre-activation of word forms crucially depends upon the time that readers have to make predictions, in line with production-based accounts of linguistic prediction

Distinguishing reality from fantasy in adults with autism spectrum disorder: Evidence from eye movements and reading

Understanding fictional events requires one to distinguish reality from fantasy, and thus engages high-level processes including executive functions and imagination, both of which are impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We examined how adults with and without ASD make sense of reality-violating fantasy narratives by testing real-time understanding of counterfactuals. Participants were eye-tracked as they read narratives that depicted novel counterfactual scenarios that violate reality (e.g. “If margarine contained detergent, Mum could use margarine in her washing/baking”, Experiment 1), or counterfactual versions of known fictional worlds (e.g. “If Harry Potter had lost all his magic powers, he would use his broom to sweep/fly”, Experiment 2). Results revealed anomaly detection effects in the early moments of processing (immediately in Experiment 1, and from the post-critical region in Experiment 2), which were not modulated by group. We discuss these findings in relation to the constraints from real-world and fantasy contexts that compete to influence language comprehension, and identify a dissociation between ToM impairments and counterfactual processing abilities

Beyond the (Linguistically) Expected: Activating Event Knowledge During Real-Time Language Comprehension

Comprehending language describing typical events, such as going to a baseball game or playing in the snow, involves activating general knowledge of the type of event described. Research has demonstrated that event knowledge guides the generation of expectations for upcoming words as sentences are processed in real time, word-by-word. This dissertation begins by examining the activation of concepts that are related to the described event but are not expected to appear in the language (i.e., linguistically unexpected concepts). In an event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment, participants read short stories that contained unexpected words related or unrelated to the described event. Unexpected words related to the described event elicited a reduced N400 ERP component relative to unexpected words unrelated to the described event. This result indicates that event knowledge activation during comprehension is not limited to only this concepts expected to appear in the unfolding sentence. A subsequent ERP experiment utilized visual-half field presentation of critical words to examine asymmetries across the cerebral hemispheres in the activation of linguistically unexpected event knowledge elements. Unexpected words related to the described event elicited a reduced N400 with left visual field (right hemisphere) but not right visual field (left hemisphere) presentation, suggesting a crucial role of the right hemisphere in activating unexpected event knowledge elements. A third experiment investigated the temporal dynamics of event knowledge activation by monitoring eye movements over arrays of images as participants listened to short stories. When a story first established an event context, unmentioned images depicting concepts related to the described event immediately attracted visual attention. As the story elaborated on the event, specifically highlighting one of the images related to the event, comprehenders shifted visual attention to this image and also to a distractor image that had not drawn visual attention when the event context was first established. This finding suggests that comprehenders considered the potential relevance of each image to the unfolding event description at each point in time. Together, these studies advance our understanding of how event knowledge is engaged during language comprehension

To What Extent do Informal Learning and Technology Transfer Impact Absorptive Capacity?

This thesis aimed to investigate the extent to which informal learning and technology transfer impact absorptive capacity and to uncover how individual social agents contribute to the development of absorptive capacity. Research on absorptive capacity has hitherto mainly focused on the use of proxies such as R&D intensity and the number of PhD holders in organizations to measure absorptive capacity. This preoccupation with proxies has retarded progress with respect to our understanding of how absorptive capacity is developed. The literature review revealed that most previous studies employed the quantitative paradigm and failed to capture the contextual dimensions of absorptive capacity. Most studies focused mainly on organizational level aspects thereby neglecting the individual antecedents of absorptive capacity. In order to reveal aspects of absorptive capacity development that quantitative studies are unable reveal, this study employed a qualitative paradigm, based on the constructionist philosophy. The data were generated through the use of semi-structured interviews, supplemented by field notes. The data analysis drew on the grounded theory approach. The evidence generated by this study shows that informal learning and knowledge/ technology transfer impact the ability to integrate and use external knowledge through individual agency. The findings also show that individual employees rely on their cognitive resources to acquire knowledge. Further, the results suggest that working with others, interacting with them, helps with knowledge transfer and institutionalization. The main implications of this study are that managers need to facilitate the creation of more learning opportunities in the workplace. Such learning has the potential to contribute significantly to the aspiration of creating a knowledge economy, especially in the context of Namibia. Also, organizations need to forge more links with industrial forerunners in order to learn from them and build up their own technological capabilities

Relationship Between the Use of Online Courseware and Achievement in a Developmental Writing Course

A consistent challenge of implementing blended learning is the support that students should receive when using online courseware outside of class time. For blended learning to be successful in terms of student learning, the online courseware would need to be able to support the learning of students outside of class time. An interactive, digital courseware was used for a developmental writing course at California State University - Bakersfield. The main goal of this study was to gather evidence to determine if the use of this online courseware was associated with higher student achievement within a blended learning environment. After controlling for confounding factors, a multi-level regression was used to determine the contribution of courseware usage to student achievement, which was measured by a final writing exam. The number of writing topics completed by students in the courseware was found to be positively related to their exam scores. This provides preliminary evidence that the online courseware with certain interactive features can be supportive of learning outside of class.</jats:p