Rhythmic Sensitivity and Developmental Language Disorder in Children

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have difficulties in acquiring language in the absence of other neurodevelopmental issues (e.g. autism, hearing impairment) and despite growing up in an adequate language-learning environment. Previous characterisations of DLD have focused on grammatical processing, phonological memory or rapid auditory processing. This thesis approaches the language-learning difficulties of children with DLD from a novel perspective by considering the potential contribution made by differing levels of sensitivity to the rhythmic properties of language. Children with DLD have been shown to have reduced sensitivity to some of the acoustic cues present in speech which are thought to be important for rhythmic perception. Since rhythm forms the basis of language processing in early development, poorer sensitivity to language rhythm may result in later language problems. To investigate whether children with DLD demonstrate difficulties in processing language rhythm, this thesis explores five areas of language processing which could be affected by poor rhythmic sensitivity: locating word-boundaries, processing novel words, storing lexical stress patterns, representing sentence level structures and the integration of rhythm and syntax. As part of the investigation, measures were also taken of acoustic threshold sensitivity to see whether task performance related to acoustic sensitivity. A parallel strand of the study investigated whether provision of an entraining rhythm prior to task stimuli could support task performance. Three groups of children participated in the study: children with DLD, age-matched TD children (AMC) and younger, language-matched TD children (YLC). The results indicate that rhythmic manipulation of language stimuli affects task responses across the five language areas under investigation. The findings are then discussed in terms of the contribution made to our understanding of the role of rhythm in language and language disorder.Research supported by a studentship awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

Time in Music and Culture

From Aristotle to Heidegger, philosophers distinguished two orders of time, before, after and past, present, future, presenting them in a wide range of interpretations. It was only around the turn of the 1970s that two theories of time which deliberately went beyond that tradition, enhancing our notional apparatus, were produced independently of one another. The nature philosopher Julius T. Fraser, founder of the interdisciplinary International Society for the Study of Time, distinguished temporal levels in the evolution of the Cosmos and the structure of the human mind: atemporality,prototemporality,eotemporality,biotemporality andnootemporality. The author of the book distinguishes two ‘dimensions’ in time: the dimension of the sequence of time (syntagmatic) and the dimension of the sizes of duration or frequency (systemic). On the systemic scale, the author distinguishes, in human ways of existing and acting, a visual zone, zone of the psychological present, zone of works and performances, zone of the natural and cultural environment, zone of individual and social life and zone of history, myth and tradition. In this book, the author provides a synthesis of these theories

The Music–Writing Connection: Exploring a Rhythm-Based Framework in the Primary Writing Classroom

The purpose of this study was to develop a framework for the teaching of writing in the primary English classroom with a rhythm–grammar focus based on musical and rhythmic processes featured in Orff-Schulwerk and Kodály music pedagogies. The framework uses five key principles: listening, interpreting, rehearsing, improvising, and composing (LIRIC). These principles also express concepts shared across the Australian Curriculum: Music and English. This multisite, design-based intervention was used to develop and refine a music-pedagogy-informed LIRIC framework for the teaching of writing, with attention given to a rhythm–grammar connection. The framework was refined through three iterations. It was first explored in a pilot study in my own classroom in two school contexts and was then further refined in another school setting where a music teacher and three generalist teachers used the framework to plan and deliver a series of writing lessons with a Year 1 cohort over a school term. Beginning with demonstration lessons and training with the researcher, the teachers took on the framework over a 6-week period. Through three iterative phases, the researcher collected teacher and student interviews, writing samples, teacher planning documents and filmed lessons. The LIRIC rhythmic pedagogy model was employed with an emphasis on student collaboration—through musical rhythm, movement, sound, and speech. It featured oral language activities and short writing experiments and demonstrated several key findings from an analysis of both teacher and student data: (a) the viability of a music–writing framework for teachers using a LIRIC model; (b) the critical place of improvisatory and experimental strategies for writing; and (c) that an aesthetic appreciation for musical rhythm, through sound and gesture, could be used to lift metalinguistic creativity and awareness. Overall, students demonstrated a more expressive personal writing style through their metalinguistic creativity. This was evident through enhanced and experimental sentence structure, punctuation, and literary features

Human-Computer Interaction

In this book the reader will find a collection of 31 papers presenting different facets of Human Computer Interaction, the result of research projects and experiments as well as new approaches to design user interfaces. The book is organized according to the following main topics in a sequential order: new interaction paradigms, multimodality, usability studies on several interaction mechanisms, human factors, universal design and development methodologies and tools

Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry

"The canon of Russian poetry has been reshaped since the fall of the Soviet Union. A multi-authored study of changing cultural memory and identity, this revisionary work charts Russia’s shifting relationship to its own literature in the face of social upheaval. Literary canon and national identity are inextricably tied together, the composition of a canon being the attempt to single out those literary works that best express a nation’s culture. This process is, of course, fluid and subject to significant shifts, particularly at times of epochal change. This volume explores changes in the canon of twentieth-century Russian poetry from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union to the end of Putin’s second term as Russian President in 2008. In the wake of major institutional changes, such as the abolition of state censorship and the introduction of a market economy, the way was open for wholesale reinterpretation of twentieth-century poets such as Iosif Brodskii, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandel′shtam, their works and their lives. In the last twenty years many critics have discussed the possibility of various coexisting canons rooted in official and non-official literature and suggested replacing the term ""Soviet literature"" with a new definition – ""Russian literature of the Soviet period"". Contributions to this volume explore the multiple factors involved in reshaping the canon, understood as a body of literary texts given exemplary or representative status as ""classics"". Among factors which may influence the composition of the canon are educational institutions, competing views of scholars and critics, including figures outside Russia, and the self-canonising activity of poets themselves. Canon revision further reflects contemporary concerns with the destabilising effects of emigration and the internet, and the desire to reconnect with pre-revolutionary cultural traditions through a narrative of the past which foregrounds continuity. Despite persistent nostalgic yearnings in some quarters for a single canon, the current situation is defiantly diverse, balancing both the Soviet literary tradition and the parallel contemporaneous literary worlds of the emigration and the underground. Required reading for students, teachers and lovers of Russian literature, Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry brings our understanding of post-Soviet Russia up to date.

A critical analysis of French as taught to beginners in British schools.

In the main, the aims of the thesis consist in: outlining the development of the teaching of French whose methodology "is more extensive than that of almost all other subjects" examining the factors which contributes to the learning of French; demonstrating that the body of facts now available is sufficiently advanced to effect significant improvements with regard to both course design and methodology; drafting a rationale for the teaching of French by bringing the literature heretofore scattered is scholarly treatises into relevant contact with much of the important work which has appeared in article form in journals. There is a consensus of opinion that the rapid development of techniques and attitudes in Modern Language teaching demands a constant reappraisal. Professor Carroll has expressed the view that what is required "is a profound rethinking of current theories of foreign language teaching in the light of contemporary advances in psychological and psycholinguistic theory".2 The search for a much needed theoretical framework has brought out results which have accelerated the retreat from skinner's operant conditioning, whose "stimulus response reinforcement theory is woven into second language teaching everywhere". As a result the Plowden Committee made the plea that "any school embarking on French ought to scrutinize critically the course that it proposes to use". Besides, the aristocracy of theorists is now showing more concern with the learning process than with teaching techniques and teaching aids. Indeed, Professor Fries once decried that, "in spite of the fact that there has been more than a hundred years of vigorous linguistic investigation is accord with sound scientific methods, very little results of this investigation has actually got into the schools to affect the materials and methods of teaching". The study has entailed extensive reading of a multidisciplinary nature. The relevant literature is scattered in diverse professional journals, scholarly treatises, and official documents largely, but not exclusively, published in English. Part I consists of an overview of the sudio-lingual habit theory, which centres on the acquisition of mechanistic causal paradigms. We therefore probe the audio-visual method which, fundamentally, appears to be restricted to the teaching of form in language learning (chapter 1) and to impose a heavy burden onto the pupils in their attitudes towards their cognitive and emotional readjustments (chapter 2). In Part II, we undertake a searching investigation of both psychological theories and Applied Linguistics, with regard to their influence, or the lack of it, on the methodology of Modern Language teaching in general, and the contrasting teaching methods as practiced at the various stages of Modern language teaching is particular. Considering that, is Modern Language teaching, the problems are the most complex of all it is therefore appropriate to deal with several of the methodological issues which must be resolved. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)