6,994 research outputs found
A meta-analytic study of the neural systems for auditory processing of lexical tones
The neural systems of lexical tone processing have been studied for many years. However, previous findings have been mixed with regard to the hemispheric specialization for the perception of linguistic pitch patterns in native speakers of tonal language. In this study, we performed two activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses, one on neuroimaging studies of auditory processing of lexical tones in tonal languages (17 studies), and the other on auditory processing of lexical information in non-tonal languages as a control analysis for comparison (15 studies). The lexical tone ALE analysis showed significant brain activations in bilateral inferior prefrontal regions, bilateral superior temporal regions and the right caudate, while the control ALE analysis showed significant cortical activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus and left temporo-parietal regions. However, we failed to obtain significant differences from the contrast analysis between two auditory conditions, which might be caused by the limited number of studies available for comparison. Although the current study lacks evidence to argue for a lexical tone specific activation pattern, our results provide clues and directions for future investigations on this topic, more sophisticated methods are needed to explore this question in more depth as well.published_or_final_versio
Both Facts and Feelings: Emotion and News Literacy
News literacy education has long focused on the significance of facts, sourcing, and verifiability. While these are critical aspects of news, rapidly developing emotion analytics technologies intended to respond to and even alter digital news audiences’ emotions also demand that we pay greater attention to the role of emotion in news consumption. This essay explores the role of emotion in the “fake news” phenomenon and the implementation of emotion analytics tools in news distribution. I examine the function of emotion in news consumption and the status of emotion within existing news literacy training programs. Finally, I offer suggestions for addressing emotional responses to news with students, including both mindfulness techniques and psychological research on thinking processes
Crosslinguistic trends in tone change A review of tone change studies in East and Southeast Asia
Ground-breaking studies on how Bangkok Thai tones have changed over the past 100 years (Pittayaporn 2007, 2018; Zhu et al. 2015) reveal a pattern that Zhu et al. (2015) term the “clockwise tone shift cycle:” low > falling > high level or rising-falling > rising > falling-rising or low. The present study addresses three follow-up questions: (1) Are tone changes like those seen in Bangkok Thai also attested in other languages? (2) What other tone changes are repeated across multiple languages? (3) What phonetic biases are most likely to be the origins of the reported changes? A typological review of 52 tone change studies across 45 Sinitic, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, and Tibeto-Burman languages reveals that clockwise changes are by far the most common. The paper concludes by exploring how tonal truncation (Xu 2017) generates synchronic variation that matches the diachronic patterns; this suggests that truncation is a key mechanism in tone change
What's the point? The role of punctuation in realising information structure in written English
The main claim of this paper is that punctuation marks, in conjunction with spaces between words, function to provide visual rather than auditory cues for information
structure in written English. INFORMATION STRUCTURE is defined here as dividing the flow of discourse into units, each containing a newsworthy element, and in contrast to the Systemic Functional systems of REFERENCE and THEME. A model of how these three systems interact is further supported by evidence from the historical development of reading and modern studies of the process of fluent silent reading. Reading silently does not require physical articulation and so written text is constrained by the saccading eye rather than the need to draw breath. The silent reader uses punctuation marks as a guide in a saccade to focus on the end of a clause which provides a non-arbitrary location for New Information
The political economy of foreign bank entry and its impact: theory and a case study
We apply Becker's (1983) model of lobbying to show that liberalization of foreign bank entry may result from political changes and a fall in domestic bank efficiency caused by lack of competition, which raises the costs to domestic banks of restricting foreign bank entry. We also show that in equilibrium, reform may be too limited to improve efficiency. We use this model and Data Envelopment Analysis techniques to interpret the liberalization of foreign bank entry in the Philippines in 1994. Declines in banking efficiency reduced resistance to foreign bank entry, but the effects of liberalization on efficiency were modest.Monetary policy - East Asia ; Inflation (Finance)
Advanced Turboprop Project
At the direction of Congress, a task force headed by NASA was organized in 1975 to identify potential fuel saving concepts for aviation. The result was the Aircraft Energy Efficiency (ACEE) Program implemented in 1976. An important part of the program was the development of advanced turboprop technology for Mach 0.65 to 0.85 applications having the potential fuel saving of 30 to 50 percent relative to existing turbofan engines. A historical perspective is presented of the development and the accomplishments that brought the turboprop to successful flight tests in 1986 and 1987
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