Phonological Priming In Young Children Who Stutter: Holistic Versus Incremental Processing

Purpose: To investigate the holistic versus incremental phonological encoding processes of young children who stutter (CWS; N = 26) and age- and gender-matched children who do not stutter (CWNS; N = 26) via a picture-naming auditory priming paradigm. Method: Children named pictures during 3 auditory priming conditions: neutral, holistic, and incremental. Speech reaction time (SRT) was measured from the onset of picture presentation to the onset of participant response. Results: CWNS shifted from being significantly faster in the holistic priming condition to being significantly faster in the incremental priming condition from 3 to 5 years of age. In contrast, the majority of 3- and 5-year-old CWS continued to exhibit faster SRT in the holistic than the incremental condition. Conclusion: CWS are delayed in making the developmental shift in phonological encoding from holistic to incremental processing, a delay that may contribute to their difficulties establishing fluent speech.Communication Sciences and Disorder

The development and evaluation of computer generated material for 43.220 Information and Communications : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Technology - Information Engineering at Massey University

The information age is upon us. Technological advances, particularly in communications, have facilitated the conveyance of accurate and updatable information in vast quantities. Educational institutions have recognized the potential of such technology to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their organizations. Institutions that depend almost entirely on technological knowledge transfer already exist and those who are not investigating how it may best be used in their university are likely to be left behind [1]. The impact of technology on education has been the subject of much speculation [2,3,4]. What is becoming apparent is that views of education are changing from that of 'option' to 'commodity' [5]. This has lead to an increasing demand for a varied education and an even greater burden for educators, given that there has been little change in the modes of delivery [1]. Therefore, in education, it has been argued that "more must be accomplished with less. Automation through the successful application of powerful new technologies is undoubtedly one of the key enablers" [6, p. 59). The Department of Production Technology at Massey University has been investigating how current technologies may best be utilized to facilitate multicampus teaching. Massey University, with its main campus at Palmerston North, now has a new campus situated approximately 600 kilometres north at Albany where the Department of Production Technology intends to offer one of its courses in the near future. Instead of duplicating many facilities, resources and staff at Albany an alternative is to have the courses remotely delivered. This has lead to the establishment of two systems whose objectives are to increase flexibility in delivery modes without decreasing the quality of education delivered

A distributional model of semantic context effects in lexical processinga

One of the most robust findings of experimental psycholinguistics is that the context in which a word is presented influences the effort involved in processing that word. We present a novel model of contextual facilitation based on word co-occurrence prob ability distributions, and empirically validate the model through simulation of three representative types of context manipulation: single word priming, multiple-priming and contextual constraint. In our simulations the effects of semantic context are mod eled using general-purpose techniques and representations from multivariate statistics, augmented with simple assumptions reflecting the inherently incremental nature of speech understanding. The contribution of our study is to show that special-purpose m echanisms are not necessary in order to capture the general pattern of the experimental results, and that a range of semantic context effects can be subsumed under the same principled account.›

Refinement for user interface designs

Formal approaches to software development require that we correctly describe (or specify) systems in order to prove properties about our proposed solution prior to building it. We must then follow a rigorous process to transform our specification into an implementation to ensure that the properties we have proved are retained. Different transformation, or refinement, methods exist for different formal methods, but they all seek to ensure that we can guide the transformation in a way which preserves the desired properties of the system. Refinement methods also allow us to subsequently compare two systems to see if a refinement relation exists between the two. When we design and build the user interfaces of our systems we are similarly keen to ensure that they have certain properties before we build them. For example, do they satisfy the requirements of the user? Are they designed with known good design principles and usability considerations in mind? Are they correct in terms of the overall system specification? However, when we come to implement our interface designs we do not have a defined process to follow which ensures that we maintain these properties as we transform the design into code. Instead, we rely on our judgement and belief that we are doing the right thing and subsequent user testing to ensure that our final solution remains useable and satisfactory. We suggest an alternative approach, which is to define a refinement process for user interfaces which will allow us to maintain the same rigorous standards we apply to the rest of the system when we implement our user interface designs

\u201cGive, but Give until It Hurts\u201d: The Modulatory Role of Trait Emotional Intelligence on the Motivation to Help

Two studies investigated the effect of trait Emotional Intelligence (trait EI) on people\u2019s moti- vation to help. In Study 1, we developed a new computer-based paradigm that tested partic- ipants\u2019 motivation to help by measuring their performance on a task in which they could gain a hypothetical amount of money to help children in need. Crucially, we manipulated partici- pants\u2019 perceived efficacy by informing them that they had been either able to save the chil- dren (positive feedback) or unable to save the children (negative feedback). We measured trait EI using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire\u2013Short Form (TEIQue-SF) and assessed participants\u2019 affective reactions during the experiment using the PANAS-X. Results showed that high and low trait EI participants performed differently after the presen- tation of feedback on their ineffectiveness in helping others in need. Both groups showed increasing negative affective states during the experiment when the feedback was negative; however, high trait EI participants better managed their affective reactions, modulating the impact of their emotions on performance and maintaining a high level of motivation to help. In Study 2, we used a similar computerized task and tested a control situation to explore the effect of trait EI on participants\u2019 behavior when facing failure or success in a scenario unre- lated to helping others in need. No effect of feedback emerged on participants\u2019 emotional states in the second study. Taken together our results show that trait EI influences the impact of success and failure on behavior only in affect-rich situation like those in which people are asked to help others in need

Heroic failures in disseminating novel e learning technologies to corporate clients: a case study of interactive webcasting

In principle, it should be easier to disseminate novel learning concepts based in technology enhanced learning to companies. Unfortunately, many corporations seem to be extremely risk averse, and the challenges inherent in the new models seem to be very hard for them to accept. This paper uses the deployment of interactive webcasting systems to present a series of case studies of dissemination successes and failures. We will suggest that the key to successful deployment is in making critical innovation (and its risk) invisible to the client, whilst matching their expectations with an "appropriate" level of technology. This work has led to a new dissemination portal "Prolearn.TV"

Testing Contextual and Design Effects on Inter-Urban Motorists’ Responses to Time Savings

In the context of inter-urban motorists' route choices and the travel time savings offered by the UK's first toll motorway, a range of SP exercises tested various contextual and design effects. The design aspects relate to how the marginal benefit of time savings is influenced by the size and sign of the time saving, task complexity, presentation format, and whether the choice context is real. The contextual factors cover the impact of journey duration, attribute credibility, and where in the journey the time savings occur. The conclusions are largely credible but in some cases challenge established views and contribute significantly to understanding in this area