Towards a complete multiple-mechanism account of predictive language processing [Commentary on Pickering & Garrod]

Although we agree with Pickering & Garrod (P&G) that prediction-by-simulation and prediction-by-association are important mechanisms of anticipatory language processing, this commentary suggests that they: (1) overlook other potential mechanisms that might underlie prediction in language processing, (2) overestimate the importance of prediction-by-association in early childhood, and (3) underestimate the complexity and significance of several factors that might mediate prediction during language processing

An integrated theory of language production and comprehension

Currently, production and comprehension are regarded as quite distinct in accounts of language processing. In rejecting this dichotomy, we instead assert that producing and understanding are interwoven, and that this interweaving is what enables people to predict themselves and each other. We start by noting that production and comprehension are forms of action and action perception. We then consider the evidence for interweaving in action, action perception, and joint action, and explain such evidence in terms of prediction. Specifically, we assume that actors construct forward models of their actions before they execute those actions, and that perceivers of others' actions covertly imitate those actions, then construct forward models of those actions. We use these accounts of action, action perception, and joint action to develop accounts of production, comprehension, and interactive language. Importantly, they incorporate well-defined levels of linguistic representation (such as semantics, syntax, and phonology). We show (a) how speakers and comprehenders use covert imitation and forward modeling to make predictions at these levels of representation, (b) how they interweave production and comprehension processes, and (c) how they use these predictions to monitor the upcoming utterances. We show how these accounts explain a range of behavioral and neuroscientific data on language processing and discuss some of the implications of our proposal

ASSESSING THE APPLICATION OF THE UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS (UAS) IN EARTHWORK VOLUME MEASUREMENT

Earthwork operations are often one of the major cost items on infrastructure construction projects. Because earthwork is largely influenced by unstable construction conditions and organization plans, it becomes the emphasis and difficulties of the cost control in the construction process. Therefore, precise estimates of actual earthwork volumes are important for both owners and contractors alike to ensure appropriate payments are made. However, measuring work on site requires lots of time and labors because of various and irregular site conditions. Conventional measurement methods, such as planned quantities from the drawings or estimates from equipment activity, are rough estimates with significant opportunities for errors and safety concerns. Recently, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have become popular for numerous surveying applications in civil engineering. They require less cost and time consumptions compared with traditionally manual methods. Also, they are able to perform photogrammetric data acquisition with equipped digital cameras in hazardous, complex or other conditions that may present high safety risks. However, UAS photogrammetry for research applications is still in its infancy, especially in construction management, and research conducted on UAS photogrammetry for earthwork volume estimation are very limited. Therefore, this research intends to investigate and validate the feasibility and efficiency of utilizing the UAS photogrammetry surveying technique to estimate earthwork volume. The research is conducted into three steps based on distinct case studies: firstly, adapting a basic analysis through a case study to preliminarily prove the effectiveness of the UAS photogrammetry method in earthwork volume measurement; also providing an analytical foundation for further utilizations; secondly, Quantitatively assessing the impact of flight parameters and environmental factors on the accuracy of UAS photogrammetry in earthwork volume measurement and identifying the most influential individual or combinations through observations and a statistical multiple regression analysis; at last, comparing volumes calculated by using the UAS platform and other two conventional methods which are Average-End-Area method and grid method in AutoCAD to further validate the feasibility of using the UAS technology in the process of earthwork volumes estimation. The results indicate that the UAS is an effective method for earthwork volume measurement. According to published standards, practice experience, and literature, the measurement errors are in an acceptable range when parameters are under control. In addition, the UAS demonstrates its advantages in balancing between the accuracy and efficiency compared with conventional earthwork volume measurement methods

Boundaries, Narrative Frames, and the Politics of Place in Public Housing Redevelopment: Exploring Toronto's Don Mount Court/Rivertowne

Toronto’s Rivertowne (formerly Don Mount Court) is Canada’s first fully completed experiment with redeveloping post-war public housing developments into newly built mixed-income neighbourhoods (a combination of public housing and private condominiums). Originally built at the end of Toronto’s urban renewal era, Don Mount Court consisted of 232 public housing units until the City’s public housing authority decided to tear the buildings down in 2003. Five years later, former residents, along with newcomers, moved into rows of townhouses under its new name, Rivertowne. Proponents of this project believed this would transform an isolated, stigmatized environment into a thriving and integrated community. This thesis explores redevelopment as a mechanism that has profound and intricate impacts on space, place-identity and social dynamics between residents. Drawing on interviews with residents, I argue that the way proponents envision redevelopment is overly idealistic and overshadows a number of problems produced by the project

City Limits: A Psychoanalysis of Urbanism and Everyday Life

This dissertation begins with Lefebvre’s theoretical framework that space is a social product and provides a brief account of the plans and road networks established with John Graves Simcoe’s founding of York (now Toronto). Foucault’s arguments about gridded street systems and early forms of policing are introduced to explain the intentions and desires associated with the gridded street pattern of Toronto. Foucault’s theory of governmentality is argued to be the marking of a limit rather than a strict prohibition, and is a specifically urban practice. Lacan’s graph of desire and Lacanian concepts are then introduced to continue this discussion of the problem of limits in contemporary urban everyday life. The overriding questions are, “What do we desire from the city?” and, “What do we think the city wants from us?” The central writers and movements in urban planning are then interpreted through Lacan’s ‘four discourses.’ Generally, early ‘organic’ urban spaces are understood through the master’s discourse, Olmsted, Howard, and Le Corbusier represent the shift to the university’s discourse, while Jane Jacobs is presented as within the analyst’s discourse. The reading of Jacobs shows her to be primarily concerned with the economic aspects of cities. A deeper analysis of Lefebvre’s theories, along with Manuel Castells’ theory of the ‘space of flows’ and ‘timeless time,’ are then used to tie together the problem of desire and spatial arrangement through a discussion of the implications of mobile communication, ‘Big Data,’ and the ‘internet of things’ on urban life with theoretical support from Simmel

The Dream is in the Process: Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice in Boston, 1900 to 2000

The following work explores the evolution of a resident-directed environmental activism that challenged negative public perception to redevelop their community. Beginning in the 1950s, city leaders justified the dislocation of non-white residents from Boston’s South End with the argument that they failed to maintain personal property and degraded community institutions. Most of these minority residents were forced to move to Roxbury. From 1963 to 1983, Roxbury lost 2,200 housing units. The vacant lots led to illegal dumping, and increased toxicity in the air, water, and soil from undesirable land use businesses such as asphalt plants. As a result, banks, supermarkets and pharmacies refused to locate in the area. By 1985, the Dudley area of Roxbury shared a median income with the poorest communities in the United States. The negative perception of residents, abrogation of civil and property rights, and denial of essential services led to isolation and vulnerability that instituted and enforced environmental racism. The roots of the Environmental Justice Movement (EJM) that gained public recognition in Boston during the 1990s extend back to the nineteenth century. Minorities employed a variety of environmental strategies and actions to control their community and shape policies that impacted their community. In response to urban renewal and coupled with civil rights efforts, residents developed an activist approach in the 1960s. In the 1970s, groups recruited participants, built organizational capacities, and improved the networking capabilities of residents. While they did not identify as environmentalists, their pragmatic pursuit of equality led to specific environmental improvements. In the 1980s, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) drew directly from the experiences and personnel of previous efforts to build a national exemplar of environmental justice. Building an “urban village” in Dudley Square facilitated a variety of environmentally focused initiatives that increased access to public transportation, expanded clean energy use, improved air quality, and reduced pollutants. Activist groups pioneered civic environmentalism, the philosophy that environmentalism and civic activism begins in the home, street, and neighborhood where one lives. Proponents of civic environmentalism contend that local environmental stewardship leads to sound environmental policy on larger and more complex scales

Spatial Reconfigurations: Bodily Terrains and their Suppression on the New York Waterfront: the Greenwich Village Piers 40-53 1936-1998

There has been seismic change on the New York waterfront since World War II. The shipping industry of longshoremen on the rough docks, has given way to mothers with babies in a bucolic landscape. The former condition existed within Kristeva\u27s theories of abjection (1982), and today we have a suppression of that abjection through the municipal authority of the Hudson River Park Act (1998). This control of space is integral to gentrification. The abject condition existed as a changing zone of spatial occupiers and colonies, who demarcated their territories as bodily terrains on the edge of the city. Due to particular cultural episodes on the Greenwich Village waterfront- mob violence, sexual activity, cultural creations, reformer and gentrifier plans- there is an opportunity for reading spatial reconfigurations as coalescing around the changes in occupancy and colonies. It allows for contemplation on marginality and the reality of national border zones as places of varying frontiers. This study set out to identify the key themes of change, how they progressed over time, and their impact on the waterfront of the Village. The use of maps, photographs and social, economic and historical literature support the theory that the abject was inherently symbolic on the waterfront and integral to its transformation. Key themes, segregated by colonial identity (Mr. Joe Docks vs. the Gangsters and Shylocks; The Clone; The Legendary Children; The Mamas) are individually explored in a chronological order. Conclusions are referenced together to form an overall theory that demonstrates the argument. The dominating slant of the thesis is in the social/ cultural reconfiguration of space- \u27the crowds, pacing straight for the water\u27 - that has fostered on the waterfront over the latter part of the twentieth century. I argue colonization is the evidence for this socio-spatial condition, and a forgotten generator of spatial change. Its study therefore is important within a framework of gentrification and the transformation of public space in New York in the Twentieth Century

Narrative at Risk: Accident and Teleology in American Culture, 1963-2013

Accident in fiction is always inevitable. When a character in a novel suffers a car accident, for example, the accident is the effect of the author\u27s intentions, and therefore it is not accidental. The words and images that constitute the meanings and events of the text do not change. The accidents in the narrative always happen the same way, reading after rereading. Drawing from this observation, the question that Narrative at Risk attempts to answer is, in its simplest iteration: how can narrative accurately represent accident when its textual representation is not subject to the effects of accident? I ask this of a number of American cultural objects that were produced over the last fifty years, from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the present. Narrative at Risk interrogates representations of accident primarily in novels and films--but also in television, roleplaying games, comic strips, and videogames--in order to examine how contemporary American culture ascribes meaning to the accidental. I read a wide array of accidents--from mechanical failures to failed suicides, depictions of biological evolution to games of chance--as providing a broad but nonetheless coherent understanding of how American society has conceived of accident in relation to individuals, communities, and the species as a whole. Narrative at Risk, in treating media such as film, television, and videogames alongside literature, broadens our understanding of how accident developed as a danger over the past fifty years, as well as how various media influenced and shaped one another through borrowed reading practices. In the introduction, I focus on the crystallization of the mass media that brought traumatic events into American homes again and again, specifically, the moment of President John F. Kennedy\u27s assassination and the epistemological and ontological crises this event and its media coverage initiated. The first chapter reads the role of this mediation and the crises of the 1960s as they jointly inform representations of accidental mechanical failure. Through readings of four texts, I theorize a politics of accident, taking as my initial subject what Ronald Reagan called his most formative moment: his role as a train accident victim in King\u27s Row: 1941), and his discussion of this role in his 1965 memoir Where\u27s the Rest of Me? I delineate how Reagan\u27s obsession with narrating accident later shaped a politics of the accident in texts such as David Cronenberg\u27s film Crash: 1996), Don DeLillo\u27s novel White Noise: 1985), Colson Whitehead\u27s novel The Intuitionist: 1999), and Rockstar Game\u27s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: 2004). The subsequent chapter shifts from the first\u27s broad historical range to texts composed and published at the end of the Cold War: Paul Auster\u27s novel Leviathan: 1992); Jeffrey Eugenides\u27s novel The Virgin Suicides: 1993); and Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man : 1996) an episode of the television show The X-Files: 1993-2002). I read the failure of suicide attempts in these texts as accidents that express the limits of intentionality, which bring to the fore the nation\u27s inability to conceive of a future beyond the ideological bounds of the conflict with the Soviet Union that provided meaning during the Cold War. The third chapter recontextualizes the final years of the Cold War. Here I read Richard Kenney\u27s poem, A Colloquy of Ancient Men from his collection, The Invention of the Zero: 1993), alongside two novels: Michael Crichton\u27s Jurassic Park: 1990) and Richard Powers\u27s The Gold Bug Variations: 1991). Rather than depicting the futurelessness of the United States, these texts look to deep history on the scale of evolutionary time. They depict evolution as a series of random, accidental changes that take place in the history of a species\u27 development; in doing so, they together trace the Cold War fear of thermonuclear annihilation shifting to an anxiety of genetic manipulation. The fourth chapter turns to the 1970s to investigate the early years of the culture wars. I begin by reading how chance disrupts the narrative of Kathy Acker\u27s novel Blood and Guts in High School: 1984), then consider the religious right\u27s hyperbolic condemnation of chance in TSR\u27s roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons: 1974). I then scrutinize games of chance in three other texts: Michael Cimino\u27s film The Deer Hunter: 1978); Thomas Pynchon\u27s novel Gravity\u27s Rainbow: 1973); and Sam Lipsyte\u27s short story The Dungeon Master : 2010). These three cases demonstrate how chance undermines the paranoid fantasy that there are external forces authoring the world. Finally, Narrative at Risk concludes with an exploration of accident in the present through a discussion of two television shows--Breaking Bad: 2008-2013) and The Americans: 2013-)--and Steve Erickson\u27s 2012 novel These Dreams of You. Imagining accidents as the fault of the government, these texts collectively suggest American culture\u27s continued reliance upon teleological thinking and conspiracy theory

Semantic radical consistency and character transparency effects in Chinese: an ERP study

BACKGROUND: This event-related potential (ERP) study aims to investigate the representation and temporal dynamics of Chinese orthography-to-semantics mappings by simultaneously manipulating character transparency and semantic radical consistency. Character components, referred to as radicals, make up the building blocks used dur...postprin