Nomina Agentis in the language of Shakespearen drama

Niniejsza praca stanowi formalną i semantyczną analizę morfologicznie złożonych nazw wykonawców czynności w języku sztuk Williama Szekspira. Celem pracy jest wyodrębnienie formantów derywacyjnych kategorii nomen agentis oraz oszacowanie ich produktywności na podstawie relacji ilościowej typów i konkretnych przykładów, stopnia przejrzystości semantycznej, występowania w funkcji anaforycznej oraz tworzenia nowych formacji o znaczeniu agentywnym. Praca składa się z sześciu rozdziałów. Rozdział pierwszy przedstawia problematykę związaną z opisem nominalizacji w obecnie najszerzej stosowanych modelach badań językoznawczych, takich jak gramatyka tranformacyjno-generatywna, semantyka generatywna czy językoznawstwo kognitywne. Celem tej części rozprawy jest wypracowanie modelu teoretycznego, który pozwoli na najpełniejszy opis badanych jednostek słowotwórczych. Rozdział drugi podejmuje kwestię produktywności w badaniach słowotwórczych. Autorka omawia proponowane w literaturze językoznawczej metody mierzenia produktywności, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem problemów odnoszących się do szacowania stopnia produktywności danego procesu w badaniach historyczno-językowych. Poruszane są również zagadnienia związane z zależnością między produktywnością danego procesu i jego frekwencją i dostępnością oraz stopniem jego semantycznej leksykalizacji. Rozdział trzeci stanowi opis trudności związanych z przynależnością kategorialną. Zacierające się granice między kategoriami derywacyjnymi, jak na przykład między wykonawcami a środkami czynności, wymagają szczególnej metodologii badawczej. Autorka podejmuje próbę wykorzystania do tego celu teorii prototypu, gdzie przynależność do kategorii ustalana jest na zasadzie siatki krzyżujących się podobieństw, a sama struktura wewnętrzna kategorii cechuje się wielopoziomowością i hierarchicznością. Rozdział czwarty przedstawia dalsze problemy odnoszące się do typologii w ramach kategorii nomen agentis. Okazuje się bowiem, że samo pojęcie agensa cechuje się wieloznacznością i jest różnie definiowane przez różnych badaczy. W rozdziale tym omówione są także wyróżniki formalne agensów, jak również najbardziej produktywne sposoby ich tworzenia we współczesnym języku angielskim. Rozdział piąty niniejszej dysertacji jest wprowadzeniem do epoki języka Williama Szekspira. Przedstawione są pokrótce najważniejsze cechy morfologiczne i składniowe okresu elżbietańskiego. Najwięcej uwagi poświęca Autorka zmianom semantyczno-leksykalnym, jakie zaszły w języku angielskim od XVI wieku, które to zmiany mogą utrudniać prawidłowe odczytanie języka Szekspira. Rozdział szósty to część empiryczna dysertacji. Autorka poddaje analizie formalnej i semantycznej leksemy o znaczeniu agentywnym występujące w korpusie sztuk Szekspira. Szczególny nacisk kładziony jest na frekwencję i efekt semantyczny danego afiksu w neologizmach. Autorka śledzi również proces neosemantyzacji nazw wykonawców czynności

A Theory and Practice of Website Engagibility

This thesis explores the domain of website quality. It presents a new study of website quality - an abstraction and synthesis, a measurement methodology, and analysis - and proposes metrics which can be used to quantify it. The strategy employed involved revisiting software quality, modelling its broader perspectives and identifying quality factors which are specific to the World Wide Web (WWW). This resulted in a detailed set of elements which constitute website quality, a method for quantifying a quality measure, and demonstrating an approach to benchmarking eCommerce websites. The thesis has two dimensions. The first is a contribution to the theory of software quality - specifically website quality. The second dimension focuses on two perspectives of website quality - quality-of-product and quality-of-use - and uses them to present a new theory and methodology which are important first steps towards understanding metrics and their use when quantifying website quality. Once quantified, the websites can be benchmarked by evaluators and website owners for comparison with competitor sites. The thesis presents a study of five mature eCommerce websites. The study involves identifying, defining and collecting data counts for 67 site-level criteria for each site. These counts are specific to website product quality and include criteria such as occurrences of hyperlinks and menus which underpin navigation, occurrences of activities which underpin interactivity, and counts relating to a site’s eCommerce maturity. Lack of automated count collecting tools necessitated online visits to 537 HTML pages and performing manual counts. The thesis formulates a new approach to measuring website quality, named Metric Ratio Analysis (MRA). The thesis demonstrates how one website quality factor - engagibility - can be quantified and used for website comparison analysis. The thesis proposes a detailed theoretical and empirical validation procedure for MRA

Developing Oral Reading Fluency: Effects of Daily Use of Word Walls and Daily Independent Silent Reading on Oral Reading Fluency Development of Second Grade Students

The researcher measured the effectiveness of two popular supplemental reading instruction strategies, word walls and independent silent reading, in 6 second-grade classes over 12 weeks. The study involved the comparison of eight oral reading fluency growth measures (Rate, Accuracy, Fluency, Comprehension, Oral Reading Quotient--overall oral reading ability, Sight Word Efficiency, Phonemic Decoding Efficiency, and Total Word Reading Efficiency). The researcher used the individually administered Gray Oral Reading Tests (fourth edition) and the Test of Word Reading Efficiency in a pretest-intervention-posttest experimental design to obtain these measures. Although pretest and posttest comparisons of the standard scores and percentile ranks revealed no statistically significant effects for either intervention group when compared to the Control group, actual gain score grade equivalency comparisons to the anticipated gains of 3 months were statistically significant for all three groups for almost every measure. The researcher concluded that although the daily use of Word Walls and the daily use of Independent Silent Reading both appear to be effective reading instruction strategies for second grade students, other reading instruction strategies (employed by the Control group) appear to be comparably effective. All three groups experienced a remarkable gain in overall oral reading ability according to the GORT-4 Oral Reading Quotient measure. This dramatic gain over the beginning three months of second grade suggests this period may be a crucial phase of reading fluency development

Furthering the multi-route model of alexithymia: a constructionist perspective

Alexithymia – difficulties identifying and describing feelings with an externally-oriented thinking style – is elevated in a range of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions, and may explain co-occurring affective psychopathology. Past research has primarily focused on the role of interoceptive deficits in the development of alexithymia, yet the sole reliance on this interoceptive account may be insufficient to explain the aetiology of alexithymia in a wide array of alexithymic individuals. Chapter 1 first describes the alexithymia construct and its high co-occurrence with a wide range of mental health conditions. This is followed by an overview of the past literature on the link between interoceptive deficits and alexithymia, and its limitations in explaining the development of alexithymia in different clinical groups. The multi-route model of alexithymia is discussed, which posits that there are multiple psychological pathways underlying alexithymia. In particular, the language hypothesis of alexithymia proposes that language impairments predispose language impaired groups to alexithymia. To enrich the theoretical discussion, the theory of constructed emotion is considered, introducing novel areas for research on the representation and acquisition of emotion concepts in alexithymic individuals. Chapter 2 presents an integrated systematic review and meta-analysis on the relationships between alexithymia and (i) multi-domain language impairments, and (ii) emotional granularity. A modest association was found between alexithymia and language impairments, and elevated alexithymic traits were evident in language impaired groups relative to those with typical language in a small subset of studies. Alexithymia was associated with less fine-grained perception of emotional experience. Chapter 3 investigates the prospective relationship between childhood language impairments and alexithymic traits in adolescence using data from the SCALES cohort. Supporting the language hypothesis, boys with low language function at ages 4-5 and those who later met the diagnostic criteria of language disorders at ages 5-6 reported more difficulties differentiating emotions and paying less attention to others’ emotions at ages 12-13 than peers with typical language. Early structural language difficulties were consistently associated with elevated alexithymic traits in adolescence. Chapter 4 adopts a strength-based approach, using professional writers as a model to study the role of language talents in emotional self-awareness. Results showed that writers had very low levels of alexithymic traits when compared to non-writers, and this group difference was related to higher self-reported interoceptive accuracy in writers compared to non-writers. Both writers and non-writers showed similar structural organisation of emotion concepts, which did not significantly predict their alexithymic traits. Chapter 5 tests the link between alexithymia and emotion concept acquisition. Experiments 1 and 2 found no robust associations between alexithymia and emotion concept learning processes, but an indirect pathway between alexithymia and more stochastic choices through co-occurring anxiety symptoms. Experiment 3 found this same indirect pathway through anxiety when learning abstract non-emotion concepts, suggesting a general choice characteristic. Chapter 6 investigates the relationships between autistic and alexithymic traits and information gathering. In a sample of typically-developing youths (aged 6-25 years), autistic traits were consistently associated with more information gathering regardless of information type and cost of information gathering. Computational modelling suggested that this was related to later emergence of subjective cost of information gathering, promoting later guesses in those with higher autistic traits. Alexithymia was uniquely associated with inconsistent reporting of emotional responses to rewards and losses, and reduced gathering of emotional information when analysing parent-report measures, suggesting a novel treatment target. Finally, Chapter 7 summarises the key findings and discusses their theoretical and methodological implications with respect to a multi-route model of alexithymia. This is followed by a general discussion of the utility of the theory of constructed emotion. Future directions and clinical implications are also discussed. Together, this collection of work seeks to refine the theoretical framework of the multi-route model of alexithymia and highlights the importance of mechanism-focused research, with the ultimate goal of informing treatments for the wide array of alexithymic individuals

Relational frame theory and human intelligence: a conceptual and empirical analysis

The current thesis builds upon developments in the field of Relational Frame Theory (RFT), which has proposed a behavioural re-examination of the widely used concept of intelligence in terms of derived relational responding (DRR). In the first chapter the concept of intelligence is explored theoretically from a RFT perspective. A framework for the construction of interventions to raise intelligence quotients as calculated by standardised IQ tests is also provided. Specifically, the current thesis proposes that training skills in DRR by utilising multiple exemplar training (MET) can improve intellectual skills. In Experiments 1 and 2, it is shown that, by employing a MET intervention for symmetry and transitivity, modest rises in full scale IQ on the WISC-IIIUK were generated for normally functioning children. In Experiment 3, the MET intervention methodology is further developed across a group of both children and adults to specifically improve the relational skills which appear to underlie intelligence as a behavioural repertoire. The newer methodology is shown to generate repertoires of Same and Opposite relational responding for experimental groups of adults and children, where these repertoires were previously weak or absent. In Experiments 4 and 5, the stimulus control of the intervention is further improved. Experiments 6 and 7 involve the addition of intervention protocols for More- Than/Less-Than relational responding. MET is again shown to facilitate the emergence of DRR for Same and Opposite (Experiments 4 and 5), and also for More-Than/Less- Than (Experiments 6 and 7) with both child and adult groups. However, Experiments 6 and 7 failed to clearly establish the functional dependence of More-Than/Less-Than responding on Opposite relational responding alone. In Experiment 8, participants with an extended history of MET across symmetry, transitivity, Same and Opposite showed rapid acquisition of More-Than/Less-Than DRR. Experiment 9 measured considerable rises in WISC-IIIUK scores across an extended MET intervention for four children. Importantly, similar rises were not seen for a matched control group who had no access to the intervention. In Experiment 10a, a relational abilities index (RAI) is developed for use as a baseline relational skills index. This baseline measure is then correlated with the WISC-IVUK and its subtests for a group of children with learning difficulties (Experiment 10b). Several interesting correlations between relational skills and intelligence are observed in the resulting analysis, although many theoretical and conceptual issues are also suggested by the data. In Experiment 11, a complete MET battery is administered to an educationally challenged child group. Both RAI and full scale IQ scores rise from pre to post intervention. In the closing chapter, the implications of these rises for intellectual disability, educational psychology and behaviour analysis are discussed

Parental Shared Reading Intervention: Examining the Effects of Structured Parental Reading Training on Vocabulary Acquisition in Children Undergoing Treatment for Leukemia

Children diagnosed with leukemia often fail to progress academically, even falling behind due to hospitalizations and prolonged treatment protocols. Naturally, their medical challenges take priority over all other issues, though eventually absences from school place them at risk for academic deficits after the completion of treatment (Tsimicalis et al., 2018). As well, the neurotoxicity associated with chemotherapy damages their central nervous systems, exacerbating school related problems (Lewis et al., 2010). Since the survival rate for children with leukemia has improved dramatically in recent years, intervention aimed at ameliorating these problems has potent benefits. The current study compared structured and unstructured parental reading programs in a sample of children diagnosed with leukemia focused on improving their vocabulary growth, an important factor facilitating academic success. The parents of these children participated in the intervention with their children during hospitalization. Nineteen parent-child dyads were recruited to participate in this investigation. The implementation of two different forms of reading programs, dialogic reading (structured) and read-alouds (unstructured), took place after the parent participants had received training on these topics. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) served as the pre/post assessment of vocabulary, measuring any gains obtained by the children in both groups. Parents in both groups read aloud to their children on a daily basis during the five-week intervention period. To assess treatment fidelity, the principal investigator texted the parent participants weekly. This study analyzed PPVT-R data using pre and post growth scale values (GSV). GSV differences determined the significance of the vocabulary gains (Dunn & Dunn, 2007, p. 21). Results indicated that the main effect for the within-subjects factor, changes in value of the GSV, in the period between pre and post assessment, did reveal a significant difference. The data suggests areas for future research and the instructional implications of the findings

Multi-scale modeling of gene-behavior associations in an artificial neural network model of cognitive development

In the multi-disciplinary field of developmental cognitive neuroscience, statistical associations between levels of description play an increasingly important role. One example of such associations is the observation of correlations between relatively common gene variants and individual differences in behavior. It is perhaps surprising that such associations can be detected despite the remoteness of these levels of description, and the fact that behavior is the outcome of an extended developmental process involving interaction with a variable environment. Given that they have been detected, how do such associations inform cognitive-level theories? To investigate this question, we employed a multi-scale computational model of development, using a sample domain drawn from the field of language acquisition. The model comprised an artificial neural network model of past-tense acquisition trained using the backpropagation learning algorithm, extended to incorporate population modeling and genetic algorithms. It included five levels of description, four internal: genetic, network, neurocomputation, behavior; and one external: environment. Since the mechanistic assumptions of the model were known and its operation was relatively transparent, we could evaluate whether cross-level associations gave an accurate picture of causal processes. We established that associations could be detected between artificial genes and behavioral variation, even under polygenic assumptions of a many-to-one relationship between genes and neurocomputational parameters, and when an experience-dependent developmental process interceded between the action of genes and the emergence of behavior. We evaluated these associations with respect to their specificity (to different behaviors, to function versus structure), to their developmental stability, and to their replicability, as well as considering issues of missing heritability and gene-environment interactions. We argue that gene-behavior associations can inform cognitive theory with respect to effect size, specificity, and timing. The model demonstrates a means by which researchers can undertake modeling multi-scale modeling with respect to cognition, and develop highly specific and complex hypotheses across multiple levels of description

Explaining affectivity in second/foreign language learning

Rozdział ukazuje rolę, jaką odgrywa sfera emocji w uczeniu się języka obcego, a także relacje między emocjami i kognitywną sferą funkcjonowania człowieka, wskazując prymarną rolę afektu. Zależności przedstawione zostały w świetle badań psycholingwistycznych i neurolingwistycznych. Omówiono również poszczególne cechy składające się na charakterystykę emocjonalną człowieka oraz cechy osobowości, np. samoświadomość i samoocenę, poczucie bezpieczeństwa i motywację do działania. Każda z tych cech przedstawiona jest w kontekście uczenia się języka obcego oraz jej wpływu na sukces bądź porażkę. Rozdział ukazuje również przykładowe rozwiązania pedagogiczne służące rozwojowi sfery emocjonalnej ucznia, szczególnie w kontekście nauczania języka obcego

The effect of using test-outs and assigned activities on the vocabulary achievements of sixth grade students

With each new concept or activity developed, a way to express that concept or activity is a must with man. Verbal communication is a peculiar distinction of man. It sets him off from all other life forms on earth. This may account for the excitement felt when a child utters his first word. At that point a child has taken a giant step toward socialization. For those words to become verbal communication, meaning must accompany them. Meaning comes from experiences--experiences in which a child is actively involved whether it be intellectually, emotionally, physically or any combination of the three. This paper will deal with students obtaining meaning primarily through physical/intellectual experiences. The following two questions will be answered. 1. Do students retain words after having had experiences with their meanings? 2. Do the kinds of experience(s) a student has with a word\u27s meaning influence the retention of that meaning