Recast type, repair, and acquisition in AAC mediated interaction

The present study investigated the effects of different types of recasts and prompts on the rate of repair and spontaneous use of novel vocabulary by eight children with severe motor speech disabilities who used speech-generating technologies to communicate. Data came from 60 transcripts of clinical sessions that were part of a conversation-based intervention designed to teach them pronouns, verbs, and verb inflections. The results showed that, when presented alone, interrogative choice and declarative recasts led to the highest rates of child repair. The results also showed that when children were presented with recasts and prompts to repair, the rate of repair increased. Spontaneous use of linguistic targets was significantly and positively related to conversational sequences where the adult recast was followed by child repair. These findings suggest that using different recast types and prompts to repair may be beneficial for spontaneous use of linguistic targets in this population.

En psykolingvistisk test til kvantificering af progression i indlæringen af italiensk som fremmedsprog: metoder og resultater

This article describes a psycholinguistic protocol designed to elicit individual differences in performance regarding phonological (sound discrimination) and lexical (vocabulary memorization) aspects of learning Italian as a foreign language. An experiment built on that protocol revealed a wide range among participants regarding the number of novel vocabulary items memorized as well as a minor spread regarding the discrimination of a novel Italian consonant contrast. No correlation could be revealed between learning success in vocabulary acquisition and phonological discrimination. We conclude that the two types of tasks can be used as instruments for quantifying aspects of learning Italian as a foreign language.

Reconsidering Richard Shusterman’s Somaesthetics

In his work on somaesthetics, Richard Shusterman employs Confucianism’s take on ritualized self-cultivation to address blind spots in Euro-American accounts. However, Shusterman’s remarks on the later classical-era thinker Xún Zǐ (荀子) hint at a possible tension with the former’s pragmatism and promotion of somatic self-fashioning. The classical Confucian debate between Mencius (Mèng Zǐ; 孟子) and Xún Zǐ on human nature being either “good” or “bad” broaches issues of somaesthetics, namely as concerns self-cultivation being either internally spontaneous or externally imposed. Looking at this debate can thus help the project of somaesthetics by bringing old, though in this case novel, vocabulary to bear on an issue with which Shusterman wrestles – the “ontic” status of somaesthetic practice.