scholarly journals One Focus or Many? Modeling Attentional Distributions During Spatial Term Use

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Kluth
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Cognitive Model ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Spatial Language ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Vector Sum

Are humans able to split their attentional focus? This master's thesis tries to answer this question by proposing several modifications to the Attentional Vector Sum (AVS) model (Regier & Carlson, 2001). The AVS model is a computational cognitive model of spatial language use that assumes visual attention. Carlson, Regier, Lopez, and Corrigan (2006) have developed a modification to the AVS model that integrates effects of world knowledge (functionality of spatially related objects) into the AVS model. This modified model assumes that people are able to split their visual spatial attention. However, it is debated whether this assumption holds true (e.g., Jans, Peters, & De Weerd, 2010). Thus, this thesis investigates the assumption in the domain of spatial language use by proposing and assessing alternative model modifications that do not assume split attention. Based on available empirical data, the results favor a uni-focal distribution of attention over a multi-focal attentional distribution. At the same time, the results cast doubt on the proper modeling of functional aspects of spatial language use, as the AVS model (not considering functionality) is performing surprisingly well on most data sets. (See https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11215-2_6 for a condensed version of this work.)

Language change across a lifetime: A historical micro-perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bergs
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
The Social ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
Micro Analysis

Abstract This paper focuses on the micro-analysis of historical data, which allows us to investigate language use across the lifetime of individual speakers. Certain concepts, such as social network analysis or communities of practice, put individual speakers and their social embeddedness and dynamicity at the center of attention. This means that intra-speaker variation can be described and analyzed in quite some detail in certain historical data sets. The paper presents some exemplary empirical analyses of the diachronic linguistic behavior of individual speakers/writers in fifteenth to seventeenth century England. It discusses the social factors that influence this behavior, with an emphasis on the methodological and theoretical challenges and opportunities when investigating intra-speaker variation and change.

scholarly journals Creating Sign Language Web Forms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma-Jane E. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Software Tool ◽  
Spatial Language ◽  
Web Pages ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Language Form ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Online Forms

Currently, the World Wide Web allows web pages to be produced in most written languages. Many deaf people, however, use a visual-spatial language with no written equivalent (e.g. American Sign Language). SignLink Studio, a software tool for designing sign language web pages, allows for hyperlinking within video clips so that sign language only web pages can be created. However, this tool does not allow for other interactive elements such as online forms. In this thesis, a model for an online sign language form is proposed and evaluated. A study consisting of 22 participants was conducted to examine whether there were differences in performance of preferences between sign language forms and text forms, and between two presentation styles (all-at-once versus one-at-a-time). The results showed that there was no clear performance advantage between sign language and text; however, participants were interested in having online questions presented in sign language. Also, there were no advantages in performance or preferences between presentation styles.

Deconvolution of Event-Related fMRI Responses in Fast-Rate Experimental Designs: Tracking Amplitude Variations

2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (supplement 2) ◽  
pp. 76-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermann Hinrichs ◽  
Michael Scholz ◽  
Claus Tempelmann ◽  
Martin G. Woldorff ◽  
Anders M. Dale ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Variations ◽  
Experimental Designs ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Statistical Efficiency ◽  
Hemodynamic Response Function ◽  
Detection Rates ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Estimation Efficiency ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Noise Covariance

Recent developments towards event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging has greatly extended the range of experimental designs. If the events occur in rapid succession, the corresponding time-locked responses overlap significantly and need to be deconvolved in order to separate the contributions of different events. Here we present a deconvolution approach, which is especially aimed at the analysis of fMRI data where sequence- or context-related responses are expected. For this purpose, we make the assumption of a hemodynamic response function (HDR) with constant yet not predefined shape but with possibly variable amplitudes. This approach reduces the number of variables to be estimated but still keeps the solutions flexible with respect to the shape. Consequently, statistical efficiency is improved. Temporal variations of the HDR strength are directly indicated by the amplitudes derived by the algorithm. Both the estimation efficiency and statistical inference are further supported by an improved estimation of the noise covariance. Using synthesized data sets, both differently shaped HDRs and varying amplitude factors were correctly identified. The gain in statistical sensitivity led to improved ratios of false- and true-positive detection rates for synthetic activations in these data. In an event-related fMRI experiment with a human subject, different HDR amplitudes could be derived corresponding to stimulation at different visual stimulus contrasts. Finally, in a visual spatial attention experiment we obtained different fMRI response amplitudes depending on the sequences of attention conditions.

scholarly journals The effect of prestige in language maintenance: The case of Catalan in Valencia

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Casesnoves Ferrer
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Official Language ◽  
The Real ◽  
City Life ◽  
Remarkable Improvement ◽  
Rural Context ◽  
Linguistic Attitudes

The fact of speaking a language instead of another at a specific moment in a person’s life depends on many and diverse factors such as immigration, the language acquired and spoken at home, and what the dominant and official language is. In addition, in situations where it is possible to choose, speaking one language instead of another is not a neutral choice, in that the values associated with languages have a lot to do with that choice. In the Valencian Community, in Spain, two languages officially coexist: Castilian, the official language within the whole Spanish State, and Catalan, the historical language of the territory, which is undergoing a process of revitalization since the beginnings of the 1980s. At that time,Catalan was perceived as a second-rate language, associated with peasantry, with the rural context and uncultured people from the lower social classes. The technique employed to reveal these values or stereotypes, namely the matched-guise technique (Ros 1984),was used again during the 90s (Blas Arroyo 1995, Gómez Molina1998) for evaluating the effects of the revitalization program. The results of this work showed that Catalan was gaining more and more prestige, i.e., it was increasingly associated with modern people, city life, learning and social progress. An underlying, though never proved, assumption was that the remarkable improvement in the image of Catalan would be reflected in its use, which would also be more frequent and more widespread. At the beginning ofthe new millennium the matched-guise technique was applied again,with one new twist: to assess the real extent of prestige associated with speaking Catalan (Casesnoves and Sankoff 2003). Ten years later that study was replicated in order to observe the evolution of linguistic attitudes as well as the progress of the linguistic revitalization process. In this presentation, we compare the two data sets to evaluate the effects of linguistic attitudes on the use of Catalan.Has Catalan gained prestige throughout the years? If so, does it have an influence on language use or, on the contrary, are there any other factors such as identity that play a more important role in influencing the choice of speaking Catalan?

scholarly journals Topographic specificity of alpha power during auditory spatial attention

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuqi Deng ◽  
Inyong Choi ◽  
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Spectral Band ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Target Sequence ◽  
Alpha Power ◽  
Visual Spatial Attention ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Topographical Distribution ◽  
Subject Specific

AbstractVisual and somatosensory spatial attention both induce parietal alpha (7-14 Hz) oscillations whose topographical distribution depends on the direction of spatial attentional focus. In the auditory domain, contrasts of parietal alpha power for leftward and rightward attention reveal a qualitatively similar lateralization; however, it is not clear whether alpha lateralization changes monotonically with the direction of auditory attention as it does for visual spatial attention. In addition, most previous studies of alpha oscillation did not consider subject-specific differences in alpha frequency, but simply analyzed power in a fixed spectral band. Here, we recorded electroencephalography in human subjects when they directed attention to one of five azimuthal locations. After a cue indicating the direction of an upcoming target sequence of spoken syllables (yet before the target began), alpha power changed in a task specific manner. Subject-specific peak alpha frequencies differed consistently between frontocentral electrodes and parieto-occipital electrodes, suggesting multiple neural generators of task-related alpha. Parieto-occipital alpha increased over the hemisphere ipsilateral to attentional focus compared to the contralateral hemisphere, and changed systematically as the direction of attention shifted from far left to far right. These results showing that parietal alpha lateralization changes smoothly with the direction of auditory attention as in visual spatial attention provide further support to the growing evidence that the frontoparietal attention network is supramodal.

scholarly journals Parents’ Spatial Language Mediates a Sex Difference in Preschoolers’ Spatial-Language Use

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (11) ◽  
pp. 1583-1596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon M. Pruden ◽  
Susan C. Levine
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Sex Difference ◽  
Mediation Analysis ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Spatial Language ◽  
Time Points ◽  
Spatial Features ◽  
Dimensional Adjectives ◽  
Parent Child

Do boys produce more terms than girls to describe the spatial world—that is, dimensional adjectives (e.g., big, little, tall, short), shape terms (e.g., circle, square), and words describing spatial features and properties (e.g., bent, curvy, edge)? If a sex difference in children’s spatial-language use exists, is it related to the spatial language that parents use when interacting with children? We longitudinally tracked the development of spatial-language production in children between the ages of 14 and 46 months in a diverse sample of 58 parent-child dyads interacting in their homes. Boys produced and heard more of these three categories of spatial words, which we call “what” spatial types (i.e., unique “what” spatial words), but not more of all other word types, than girls. Mediation analysis revealed that sex differences in children’s spatial talk at 34 to 46 months of age were fully mediated by parents’ earlier spatial-language use, when children were 14 to 26 months old, time points at which there was no sex difference in children’s spatial-language use.

Psychological and ethical contexts of diagnosis of hearing children of deaf parents

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (15) ◽  
pp. 242-251
Author(s):  
Dominika Wiśniewska
Keyword(s):  
Correct Diagnosis ◽  
Deaf Culture ◽  
Spatial Language ◽  
Specific Situation ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Cultural Minority ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Deaf Parents ◽  
Hearing Children

Ethical and methodologically correct diagnosis of a child hearing Deaf parents requires a specialist with extensive knowledge. In every society there are people who use the visual-spatial language – they are deaf people. They are perceived by the majority as disabled people, less frequently as a cultural minority. The adoption of a particular attitude towards the perception of deafness determines the context of the psychologist’s assessment. Diagnosis in such a specific situation shouldbe viewed from the perspective of a child hearing as a bi-cultural person, a descendant of a Deaf parent – a representative of the Deaf culture and himself a psychologist representing the cultural majority of hearing people.

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