60,800 research outputs found
Higher physical fitness levels are associated with less language decline in healthy ageing
Healthy ageing is associated with decline in cognitive abilities such as
language. Aerobic fitness has been shown to ameliorate decline in some
cognitive domains, but the potential benefits for language have not been
examined. In a cross-sectional sample, we investigated the relationship between
aerobic fitness and tip-of-the-tongue states. These are among the most frequent
cognitive failures in healthy older adults and occur when a speaker knows a
word but is unable to produce it. We found that healthy older adults indeed
experience more tip-of-the-tongue states than young adults. Importantly, higher
aerobic fitness levels decrease the probability of experiencing
tip-of-the-tongue states in healthy older adults. Fitness-related differences
in word finding abilities are observed over and above effects of age. This is
the first demonstration of a link between aerobic fitness and language
functioning in healthy older adults
Regular expressions as violin bowing patterns
String players spend a significant amount of practice time creating and learning bowings. These may be indicated in the music using up-bow and down-bow symbols, but those traditional notations do not capture the complex bowing patterns that are latent within the music. Regular expressions, a mathematical notation for a simple class of formal languages, can describe precisely the bowing patterns that commonly arise in string music. A software tool based on regular expressions enables performers to search for passages that can be handled with similar bowings, and to edit them consistently. A computer-based music editor incorporating bowing patterns has been implemented, using Lilypond to typeset the music. Our approach has been evaluated by using the editor to study ten movements from six violin sonatas by W. A. Mozart. Our experience shows that the editor is successful at finding passages and inserting bowings; that relatively complex patterns occur a number of times; and that the bowings can be inserted automatically and consistently
Access to recorded interviews: A research agenda
Recorded interviews form a rich basis for scholarly inquiry. Examples include oral histories, community memory projects, and interviews conducted for broadcast media. Emerging technologies offer the potential to radically transform the way in which recorded interviews are made accessible, but this vision will demand substantial investments from a broad range of research communities. This article reviews the present state of practice for making recorded interviews available and the state-of-the-art for key component technologies. A large number of important research issues are identified, and from that set of issues, a coherent research agenda is proposed
Boundaries of Semantic Distraction: Dominance and Lexicality Act at Retrieval
Three experiments investigated memory for semantic information with the goal of determining boundary conditions for the manifestation of semantic auditory distraction. Irrelevant speech disrupted the free recall of semantic category-exemplars to an equal degree regardless of whether the speech coincided with presentation or test phases of the task (Experiment 1) and occurred regardless of whether it comprised random words or coherent sentences (Experiment 2). The effects of background speech were greater when the irrelevant speech was semantically related to the to-be-remembered material, but only when the irrelevant words were high in output dominance (Experiment 3). The implications of these findings in relation to the processing of task material and the processing of background speech is discussed
Classifying Amharic News Text Using Self-Organizing Maps
The paper addresses using artificial neural networks for classification of Amharic news items. Amharic is the language for countrywide communication in Ethiopia and has its own writing system containing extensive systematic redundancy. It is quite dialectally diversified and probably representative of the languages of a continent that so far has received little attention within the language processing field.
The experiments investigated document clustering around user queries using Self-Organizing Maps, an unsupervised learning neural network strategy. The best ANN model showed a precision of 60.0% when trying to cluster unseen data, and a 69.5% precision when trying to classify it
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The role of HG in the analysis of temporal iteration and interaural correlation
The impact of second language learning on semantic and nonsemantic first language reading
The relationship between orthography (spelling) and phonology
(speech sounds) varies across alphabetic languages. Consequently,
learning to read a second alphabetic language, that uses the same
letters as the first, increases the phonological associations that can
be linked to the same orthographic units. In subjects with English
as their first language, previous functional imaging studies have
reported increased left ventral prefrontal activation for reading
words with spellings that are inconsistent with their orthographic
neighbors (e.g., PINT) compared with words that are consistent
with their orthographic neighbors (e.g., SHIP). Here, using
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 17 Italian--English
and 13 English--Italian bilinguals, we demonstrate that left ventral
prefrontal activation for first language reading increases with
second language vocabulary knowledge. This suggests that
learning a second alphabetic language changes the way that
words are read in the first alphabetic language. Specifically, first
language reading is more reliant on both lexical/semantic and
nonlexical processing when new orthographic to phonological
mappings are introduced by second language learning. Our
observations were in a context that required participants to switch
between languages. They motivate future fMRI studies to test
whether first language reading is also altered in contexts when the
second language is not in use
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