Does argument structure complexity affect reading? A case study of an Italian agrammatic patient with deep dyslexia

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELENA BARBIERI ◽  
SILVIA AGGUJARO ◽  
FRANCO MOLTENI ◽  
CLAUDIO LUZZATTI

ABSTRACTThe argument structure complexity hypothesis (Thompson, 2003) was introduced to account for the verb production pattern of agrammatic patients, who show greater difficulty in producing transitive versus unergative verbs (argument number effect) and in producing unaccusative versus unergative verbs (syntactic movement effect). The present study investigates these two effects in the reading performance of a patient (GR) suffering from deep dyslexia. GR read nouns significantly better than verbs; moreover, her performance was better on unergative than on transitive verbs, whereas the comparison between unergative and unaccusative verbs did not differ significantly. Data support the extension of the argument structure complexity hypothesis to word naming and suggest that the two aspects of argument structure complexity occur at different levels within models of lexical processing.

2005 ◽  
Vol 51 (12) ◽  
pp. 325-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
X. Wang ◽  
X. Bai ◽  
J. Qiu ◽  
B. Wang

The performance of a pond–constructed wetland system in the treatment of municipal wastewater in Kiaochow city was studied; and comparison with oxidation ponds system was conducted. In the post-constructed wetland, the removal of COD, TN and TP is 24%, 58.5% and 24.8% respectively. The treated effluent from the constructed wetland can meet the Chinese National Agricultural and Irrigation Standard. The comparison between pond–constructed wetland system and oxidation pond system shows that total nitrogen removal in a constructed wetland is better than that in an oxidation pond and the TP removal is inferior. A possible reason is the low dissolved oxygen concentration in the wetland. Constructed wetlands can restrain the growth of algae effectively, and can produce obvious ecological and economical benefits.


2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 109-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Mathegana ◽  
L. K. Chauke ◽  
F. A.O. Otieno

The primary purpose of an improved water supply and sanitation is the achievement of acceptable health and hygiene standards as well as the sustainable improvement of the environment. Many governments recognize this and so they budget for large sums of money to improve these services to the communities. The purpose of this study was to investigate the different gaps in environmental health and hygiene practices with the aim of suggesting a strategy of improving this in the Northern Province of South Africa. To do this, 231 households and 30 schools were surveyed. Workshops and visits to different government departments were also used. This paper reports the results from this study which indicate that the situation in schools was not any better than that in households, with more than 90% of the villages still dependent on the unimproved pit latrines and 56,6% relying on standpipes which were (70% of the time) non-operational. The main problems identified seem to those associated with implementation and maintenance. The study concludes that with proper training of the water committees and their active involvement with the government and NGOs, environmental health and hygiene problems can be minimized or eliminated.


2002 ◽  
Vol os9 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raman Bedi ◽  
Jackie A Champion ◽  
Roger Davies

Introduction In order to promote training and education in special-needs dentistry an attempt was made to introduce problem-based learning (PBL) as a method of postgraduate dental education. The aim of this paper was to review the principles of PBL and report on a case study using this methodology. Method The case study was of a PBL session, on the subject of ‘problems of obtaining appropriate dental care for people with epilepsy’, undertaken at a national conference. Delegates were asked to complete a pre- and post-session questionnaire on PBL and their attitudes to the session. Results The session received a mixed response. Only 33 (35%) thought the session was valuable and only 20 (31%) thought it was better than conventional teaching methods and yet over half (55%) said they would like to attend more PBL in special-needs dentistry. Professionals complementary to dentistry were more likely to find the PBL session of value and to prefer the method to a more conventional format than dentists were (chi-square=5.5, df=1, p<0.05 and chi-square=5.9, df=1, p<0.05 respectively). Conclusion Valuable feedback was received from delegates. This will enable improvements to be made in future courses so that the effectiveness of PBL can be optimised.


2012 ◽  
Vol 518-523 ◽  
pp. 5886-5893
Author(s):  
Lu Cang Wang ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Jing Gao

“The Project of Nomadic Settlement” is one of the major construction tasks for “Gannan Important Water Supply Ecological Functional Area of Yellow River”. Because of the distribution of population and settlements have obvious discreteness and wavering in alpine pasture, it is necessary to plan and guide agricultural and grazing villages during the process of the construction of nomadic settlements, spatial displacement and integration of population and settlement. The nomadic habitation mode in Luqu county undergoes four stages. At present, it adopts four settlement modes, that is, centralized settlement mode in the county town, settlement mode in the village, settlement along the highway mode and dispersed settlement mode, involving a total of 2,645households,13,783people and be arranged in 21 settlements. The paper adopts 14 indicators related conditions of economic development, social development conditions, geographic conditions, measures the overall strength of 24 administrative villages in Luqu, the whole villages are divided into four grade. The results show that the suburban villages are better than the surrounding villages and towns, pure pastoral farming are better than farming-pastoral villages. Accordingly, 24 villages are divided into four types—community-based villages, developing villages, controlling villages, and revoking-merging villages. Finally, it also proposes the path on village plan guidelines.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (7) ◽  
pp. 1863-1875 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin R Vasilev ◽  
Fabrice BR Parmentier ◽  
Bernhard Angele ◽  
Julie A Kirkby

Oddball studies have shown that sounds unexpectedly deviating from an otherwise repeated sequence capture attention away from the task at hand. While such distraction is typically regarded as potentially important in everyday life, previous work has so far not examined how deviant sounds affect performance on more complex daily tasks. In this study, we developed a new method to examine whether deviant sounds can disrupt reading performance by recording participants’ eye movements. Participants read single sentences in silence and while listening to task-irrelevant sounds. In the latter condition, a 50-ms sound was played contingent on the fixation of five target words in the sentence. On most occasions, the same tone was presented (standard sound), whereas on rare and unexpected occasions it was replaced by white noise (deviant sound). The deviant sound resulted in significantly longer fixation durations on the target words relative to the standard sound. A time-course analysis showed that the deviant sound began to affect fixation durations around 180 ms after fixation onset. Furthermore, deviance distraction was not modulated by the lexical frequency of target words. In summary, fixation durations on the target words were longer immediately after the presentation of the deviant sound, but there was no evidence that it interfered with the lexical processing of these words. The present results are in line with the recent proposition that deviant sounds yield a temporary motor suppression and suggest that deviant sounds likely inhibit the programming of the next saccade.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (11) ◽  
pp. 1222-1230
Author(s):  
Ricardo Herbé Cruz-Estrada ◽  
Javier Guillén-Mallette ◽  
Carlos Vidal Cupul-Manzano ◽  
Josué Iván Balam-Hernández

This work presents a study on the use of wood and plastic wastes generated in abundance in Merida, Mexico, to help to reduce them in order to mitigate environmental deterioration. The use of these wastes is proposed to obtain a low-cost building material. So, the escalation process (i.e., extrusion) at the pilot level to obtain a prototype of a wood–plastic composite (WPC) corrugated sheet to evaluate the technical feasibility to make a low-cost product is reported. A corrugated sheet with recycled high-density polyethylene (R-HDPE) was produced. The R-HDPE was collected from Merida’s Separation Plant. The wood came from the trimmings of different varieties of trees and shrubs that are periodically pruned. WPC sheets with virgin HDPE were prepared to assess its effect on the materials’ mechanical performance. The wood/HDPE weight ratio was 40/60. The performance of the WPC sheets was compared with that of commercial products with similar characteristics, namely acrylic and polyester sheets reinforced with fibreglass, and black asphalt-saturated cardboard sheets. Thus, the effect of natural weathering on the maximum tensile tearing force and on the maximum flexural load of the different types of sheets was evaluated. Although the mechanical performance of the WPC sheets was lower than that of the acrylic and polyacrylic sheets, their performance was much better than that of the cheap black asphalt-saturated cardboard sheets. So, they are a good option to be used as low-cost temporary roofing.


Open Praxis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Juliana Magro ◽  
Sara V Tabaei

This case study describes the library’s experience of collaborating with an undergraduate Psychology Department at Touro College to integrate open textbooks into their program. We discuss the pedagogical changes as well as explore the impact of Open Educational Resources (OER) on students’ savings, their academic outcomes and perceptions of OER. Furthermore, we highlight the successes and shortcomings in having the library as a central OER partner. To measure the results, we surveyed students and conducted a faculty survey and a focus group, in addition to analyzing the students’ final grades. This pilot program delivered strong results. The students’ perception was very positive, and faculty’s opinions on the textbooks used were mixed. Some professors felt that the textbook lacked important content, but because of its openness, they added their own content to the book. Students enrolled in OER courses performed better than those enrolled in the same courses using a commercial textbook.


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