scholarly journals A Multilab Study of Bilingual Infants: Exploring the Preference for Infant-Directed Speech

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 251524592097462
Author(s):  
Krista Byers-Heinlein ◽  
Angeline Sin Mei Tsui ◽  
Christina Bergmann ◽  
Alexis K. Black ◽  
Anna Brown ◽  
...  

From the earliest months of life, infants prefer listening to and learn better from infant-directed speech (IDS) compared with adult-directed speech (ADS). Yet IDS differs within communities, across languages, and across cultures, both in form and in prevalence. This large-scale, multisite study used the diversity of bilingual infant experiences to explore the impact of different types of linguistic experience on infants’ IDS preference. As part of the multilab ManyBabies 1 project, we compared preference for North American English (NAE) IDS in lab-matched samples of 333 bilingual and 384 monolingual infants tested in 17 labs in seven countries. The tested infants were in two age groups: 6 to 9 months and 12 to 15 months. We found that bilingual and monolingual infants both preferred IDS to ADS, and the two groups did not differ in terms of the overall magnitude of this preference. However, among bilingual infants who were acquiring NAE as a native language, greater exposure to NAE was associated with a stronger IDS preference. These findings extend the previous finding from ManyBabies 1 that monolinguals learning NAE as a native language showed a stronger IDS preference than infants unexposed to NAE. Together, our findings indicate that IDS preference likely makes similar contributions to monolingual and bilingual development, and that infants are exquisitely sensitive to the nature and frequency of different types of language input in their early environments.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista Byers-Heinlein ◽  
Angeline Tsui ◽  
Christina Bergmann ◽  
Alexis K. Black ◽  
Anna Brown ◽  
...  

From the earliest months of life, infants prefer listening to and learn better from infant-directed speech (IDS) than adult-directed speech (ADS). Yet, IDS differs within communities, across languages, and across cultures, both in form and in prevalence. This large-scale, multi-site study used the diversity of bilingual infant experiences to explore the impact of different types of linguistic experience on infants’ IDS preference. As part of the multi-lab ManyBabies 1 project, we compared lab-matched samples of 333 bilingual and 385 monolingual infants’ preference for North-American English IDS (cf. ManyBabies Consortium, 2020 (ManyBabies 1)), tested in 17 labs in 7 countries. Those infants were tested in two age groups: 6–9 months (the younger sample) and 12–15 months (the older sample). We found that bilingual and monolingual infants both preferred IDS to ADS, and did not differ in terms of the overall magnitude of this preference. However, amongst bilingual infants who were acquiring North-American English (NAE) as a native language, greater exposure to NAE was associated with a stronger IDS preference, extending the previous finding from ManyBabies 1 that monolinguals learning NAE as a native language showed a stronger preference than infants unexposed to NAE. Together, our findings indicate that IDS preference likely makes a similar contribution to monolingual and bilingual development, and that infants are exquisitely sensitive to the nature and frequency of different types of language input in their early environments.


Author(s):  
Anne Nassauer

This book provides an account of how and why routine interactions break down and how such situational breakdowns lead to protest violence and other types of surprising social outcomes. It takes a close-up look at the dynamic processes of how situations unfold and compares their role to that of motivations, strategies, and other contextual factors. The book discusses factors that can draw us into violent situations and describes how and why we make uncommon individual and collective decisions. Covering different types of surprise outcomes from protest marches and uprisings turning violent to robbers failing to rob a store at gunpoint, it shows how unfolding situations can override our motivations and strategies and how emotions and culture, as well as rational thinking, still play a part in these events. The first chapters study protest violence in Germany and the United States from 1960 until 2010, taking a detailed look at what happens between the start of a protest and the eruption of violence or its peaceful conclusion. They compare the impact of such dynamics to the role of police strategies and culture, protesters’ claims and violent motivations, the black bloc and agents provocateurs. The analysis shows how violence is triggered, what determines its intensity, and which measures can avoid its outbreak. The book explores whether we find similar situational patterns leading to surprising outcomes in other types of small- and large-scale events: uprisings turning violent, such as Ferguson in 2014 and Baltimore in 2015, and failed armed store robberies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Fayne ◽  
Huilin Huang ◽  
Mike Fischella ◽  
Yufei Liu ◽  
Zhaoxin Ban ◽  
...  

<p>Extreme precipitation, a critical factor in flooding, has selectively increased with warmer temperatures in the Western U.S. Despite this, the streamflow measurements have captured no noticeable increase in large-scale flood frequency or intensity. As flood studies have mostly focused on specific flood events in particular areas, analyses of large-scale floods and their changes have been scarce. For floods during 1960-2013, we identify six flood generating mechanisms (FGMs) that are prominent across the Western U.S., including atmospheric rivers and non-atmospheric rivers, monsoons, convective storms, radiation-driven snowmelt, and rain-on-snow, in order to identify to what extent different types of floods are changing based on the dominant FGM. The inconsistency between extreme precipitation and lack of flood increase suggests that the impact of climate change on flood risk has been modulated by hydro-meteorological and physiographic processes such as sharp increases in temperature that drive increased evapotranspiration and decreased soil moisture. Our results emphasize the importance of FGMs in understanding the complex interactions of flooding and climatic changes and explain the broad spatiotemporal changes that have occurred across the vast Western U.S. for the past 50 years.</p>


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huiting Mao ◽  
Dolly Hall ◽  
Zhuyun Ye ◽  
Ying Zhou ◽  
Dirk Felton ◽  
...  

Abstract. The impact of large-scale circulation on urban gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) was investigated through analysis of 2008–2015 measurement data from an urban site in New York City (NYC), New York, USA. Distinct annual cycles were observed in 2009–2010 with mixing ratios in warm seasons (i.e. spring–summer) 10–20 ppqv (~ 10 %–25 %) higher than in cool seasons (i.e. fall–winter). This annual cycle was disrupted in 2011 by an anomalously strong influence of the North American trough in that warm season and was reproduced in 2014 with annual amplitude enhanced up to ~ 70 ppqv associated with a particularly strong Bermuda High. North American trough axis index (TAI) and intensity index (TII) were used to characterize the effect of the North American trough on NYC GEM especially in winter and summer. The intensity and position of the Bermuda High had a significant impact on GEM in warm seasons supported by a strong correlation (r reaching 0.96, p 


Author(s):  
Jun Gong ◽  
Xudong Zhi ◽  
Feng Fan ◽  
Shizhao Shen ◽  
Da Qaio ◽  
...  

To investigate the variability of ground motion characteristics (GMC) with the angle of seismic incidence (ASI) and the impact of seismic incident directionality on structural responses, first, a large-scale database of recorded ground motions was used to analyze the causes of GMC variability due to the seismic incident directionality effect (SIDE). Then a single-mass bi-degree-of-freedom system (SM-BDOF-S) with different types of symmetrical sections was selected to explore the influence mechanism of SIDE on the seismic responses. The results illustrated that the GMC has substantial variability with the ASI, which is independent of the earthquake source, propagation distance, and site condition, and exhibits complex random characteristics. Additionally, a classification method for ground motions is proposed based on this GMC variability to establish a criterion for selecting ground motions in seismic analysis considering the SIDE. Moreover, for an SM-BDOF-S, the response spectral plane is proposed to explain the transition behavior of spectral responses that are very similar among different stiffness ratios, but divergent for different types of ground motions. The influence of SIDE on structures is determined by their stiffness and stiffness ratio in the [Formula: see text]- and [Formula: see text]-directions, as well as the type of ground motion.


Author(s):  
Susan Reichelt

Abstract This study explores marked affixation as a possible cue for characterization in scripted television dialogue. The data used here is the newly compiled TV Corpus, which encompasses over 265 million words in its North American English context. An initial corpus-based analysis quantifies the innovative use of affixes in word-formation processes across the corpus to allow for comparison with a following character analysis, which investigates how derivational word-formation supports characterization patterns within a specific series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For this, a list of productive prefixes (e.g. de-, un-) and suffixes (e.g. -y, -ish) is used to elicit relevant contexts. The study thus combines two approaches to word-formation processes in scripted contexts. On a large scale, it shows how derivational neologisms are spread across TV dialogue and on a much smaller scale, it highlights particular instances where these neologisms are used to aid character construction.


2009 ◽  
Vol 138 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. KARHUNEN ◽  
T. LEINO ◽  
H. SALO ◽  
I. DAVIDKIN ◽  
T. KILPI ◽  
...  

SUMMARYIt has been suggested that the incidence of herpes zoster may increase due to lack of natural boosting under large-scale vaccination with the varicella vaccine. To study the possibility and magnitude of such negative consequences of mass vaccination, we built a mathematical model of varicella and zoster epidemiology in the Finnish population. The model was based on serological data on varicella infection, case-notification data on zoster, and new knowledge about close contacts relevant to transmission of infection. According to the analysis, a childhood programme against varicella will increase the incidence of zoster by one to more than two thirds in the next 50 years. This will be due to increase in case numbers in the ⩾35 years age groups. However, high vaccine coverage and a two-dose programme will be very effective in stopping varicella transmission in the population.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (12) ◽  
pp. 2981-2995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mahalov ◽  
Jialun Li ◽  
Peter Hyde

Abstract In this study, the impacts of Mexican and southwestern U.S. agricultural and urban irrigation on North American monsoon (NAM) rainfall and other hydrometeorological fields are investigated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model by implementing an irrigation scheme into the WRF–land surface model. Taking the 2000–12 monsoon seasons as examples, multiple WRF simulations with irrigation are conducted by designing different crops’ maximum allowable water depletions (SWm). In comparison with gridded rainfall observations in urban and rural area, the WRF simulations with/without irrigation generally capture the observations very well, but with underestimation along the western slope of the Sierra Madre Occidental (SMO) and overestimation over southern Mexico. The simulations of WRF with irrigation are slightly improved over those without irrigation, compared with rainfall and sounding observations. Sensitivity studies reveal that the impact of irrigation on rainfall varies with location and NAM rainfall variability. Irrigation increases rainfall in eastern Arizona–western New Mexico and in northwestern Mexico because of the irrigation-induced increases of convective available potential energy (CAPE) and precipitable water. Overall, irrigation decreases rainfall in western Arizona, along the western slope of the SMO, and in central Mexico because of irrigation-induced increases of convective inhibition (CIN), decreases of CAPE, and/or large-scale water vapor divergence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (18) ◽  
pp. 5799-5814 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas J. Lutsko ◽  
Jane Wilson Baldwin ◽  
Timothy W. Cronin

Abstract The impact of large-scale orography on wintertime near-surface (850 hPa) temperature variability on daily and synoptic time scales (from days to weeks) in the Northern Hemisphere is investigated. Using a combination of theory, idealized modeling work, and simulations with a comprehensive climate model, it is shown that large-scale orography reduces upstream temperature gradients, in turn reducing upstream temperature variability, and enhances downstream temperature gradients, enhancing downstream temperature variability. Hence, the presence of the Rockies on the western edge of the North American continent increases temperature gradients over North America and, consequently, increases North American temperature variability. By contrast, the presence of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas on the eastern edge of the Eurasian continent damps temperature variability over most of Eurasia. However, Tibet and the Himalayas also interfere with the downstream development of storms in the North Pacific storm track, and thus damp temperature variability over North America, by approximately as much as the Rockies enhance it. Large-scale orography is also shown to impact the skewness of downstream temperature distributions, as temperatures to the north of the enhanced temperature gradients are more positively skewed while temperatures to the south are more negatively skewed. This effect is most clearly seen in the northwest Pacific, off the east coast of Japan.


2020 ◽  
Vol 188 (3) ◽  
pp. 865-877 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michala Bryndová ◽  
Daniel Stec ◽  
Ralph O Schill ◽  
Łukasz Michalczyk ◽  
Miloslav Devetter

Abstract Tardigrades may be divided into the following feeding groups: herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. However, little is known about their specific feeding preferences. Here, we used a number of laboratory experiments with 18 potential food sources, representing a wide variety of organisms, to test feeding preferences, survival and fecundity of three tardigrade species, representing different feeding modes. We also tested for differences in preferences between juveniles and adults, and differences in survival between two age groups: one that started the experiment as juveniles and the other as adults. In our experiments, Milnesium inceptum is confirmed to be a carnivore, being able to reproduce only on animal prey. We also show that Hypsibius exemplaris is a herbivore, feeding on cyanobacteria, algae and fungi. Paramacrobiotus fairbanksi, on the other hand, is demonstrated to be an omnivore, feeding on cyanobacteria, algae, fungi and animals. In some cases, juveniles preferred different types of food than adults. Reproduction was strongly affected by food type. Finally, we demonstrate that tardigrades may ingest food types that they are not able to digest. Thus, gut content analysis may be misleading as a method of studying tardigrade feeding habits.


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