397 research outputs found
Disentangling syntactic, semantic and pragmatic impairments in ASD : elicited production of passives
Children with ASD and an IQ-matched control group of typically developing (TD) children completed an elicited-production task which encouraged the production of reversible passive sentences (e.g., âBob was hit by Wendyâ). Although the two groups showed similar levels of correct production, the ASD group produced a significantly greater number of âreversalâ errors (e.g., âWendy was hit by Bobâ, when, in fact Wendy hit Bob) than the TD group (who, when they did not produce correct passives, instead generally produced semantically appropriate actives; e.g., âWendy hit Bobâ). These findings suggest that the more formal elements of syntax are spared relative to more semantic/pragmatic/narrative aspects (e.g., manipulating thematic roles) in at least high-functioning children with ASD
An exploration of self-compassion, acceptance and third-wave psychological approaches for people with brain injuries and neurological conditions
This portfolio thesis has three parts: a systematic literature review, an empirical report and supporting appendices.Part One: A systematic literature review in which empirical papers utilising Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for people with neurological conditions and acquired brain injuries are reviewed for effectiveness for psychological flexibility and wellbeing. A systematic database search identified sixteen studies to be reviewed. Methodological considerations of studies were considered, and their findings were examined using narrative synthesis. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.Part Two: An empirical paper combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies to explore the implications of feeling personally responsibility for a brain injury. The quantitative component aimed to examine the relationship between perceived responsibility for injury and shame, and whether self-compassion moderated this relationship. The qualitative data was analysed thematically to explore participantsâ experiences of shame, responsibility and self-compassion. The findings are discussed in relation to theory and implications for clinical practice and future research.Part Three: Appendices supporting the systematic literature review and the empirical paper, and a reflective statement on the research process
Statistics and semantics in the acquisition of Spanish word order: testing two accounts of the retreat from locative overgeneralization errors
Native speakers of Spanish (children aged 6â7, 10â11 and adults) rated grammatical and ungrammatical ground- and figure-locative sentences with high frequency, low frequency and novel verbs (e. g., Lisa llenoÌ/forroÌ/nupoÌ la caja con papel; *Lisa llenoÌ/forroÌ/nupoÌ papel en la caja, âLisa filled/ lined/nupped the box with paperâ; âLisa filled/lined/nupped paper into the boxâ) using a 5-point scale. Echoing the findings of a previous English study (a language with some important syntactic differences relevant to the locative), participants rated errors as least acceptable with high frequency verbs, more acceptable with low frequency verbs, and most acceptable with novel verbs, suggesting that learners retreat from error using statistically-based learning mechanisms regardless of the target language. In support of the semantic verb class hypothesis, adults showed evidence of using the meanings assigned to novel verbs to determine the locative constructions in which they can and cannot appear. However, unlike in the previous English study, the child groups did not. We conclude that the more flexible word order exhibited by Spanish, as compared to English, may make these types of regularities more difficult to discern.
Keywords: child language acquisition, Spanish, locatives, argument structure overgeneralization errors, verb semantics, statistical learning, entrenchment, pre-emptio
Exact Real Search: Formalised Optimisation and Regression in Constructive Univalent Mathematics
The real numbers are important in both mathematics and computation theory.
Computationally, real numbers can be represented in several ways; most commonly
using inexact floating-point data-types, but also using exact
arbitrary-precision data-types which satisfy the expected mathematical
properties of the reals. This thesis is concerned with formalising properties
of certain types for exact real arithmetic, as well as utilising them
computationally for the purposes of search, optimisation and regression.
We develop, in a constructive and univalent type-theoretic foundation of
mathematics, a formalised framework for performing search, optimisation and
regression on a wide class of types. This framework utilises Mart\'in
Escard\'o's prior work on searchable types, along with a convenient version of
ultrametric spaces -- which we call closeness spaces -- in order to
consistently search certain infinite types using the functional programming
language and proof assistant Agda.
We formally define and prove the convergence properties of type-theoretic
variants of global optimisation and parametric regression, problems related to
search from the literature of analysis. As we work in a constructive setting,
these convergence theorems yield computational algorithms for correct
optimisation and regression on the types of our framework.
Importantly, we can instantiate our framework on data-types from the
literature of exact real arithmetic, allowing us to perform our variants of
search, optimisation and regression on ternary signed-digit encodings of the
real numbers, as well as a simplified version of Hans-J. Boehm's functional
encodings of real numbers. Furthermore, we contribute to the extensive work on
ternary signed-digits by formally verifying the definition of certain exact
real arithmetic operations using the Escard\'o-Simpson interval object
specification of compact intervals.Comment: A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy. 198 pages. Supervised by Dan Ghica and Mart\'in
Escard\'
Do as I say, not as I do:a lexical distributional account of English locative verb class acquisition
Children overgeneralise verbs to ungrammatical structures early in acquisition, but retreat from these overgeneralisations as they learn semantic verb classes. In a large corpus of English locative utterances (e.g., the woman sprayed water onto the wall/wall with water), we found structural biases which changed over development and which could explain overgeneralisation behaviour. Children and adults had similar verb classes and a correspondence analysis suggested that lexical distributional regularities in the adult input could help to explain the acquisition of these classes. A connectionist model provided an explicit account of how structural biases could be learned over development and how these biases could be reduced by learning verb classes from distributional regularities
The influence of self-compassion on perceived responsibility and shame following acquired brain injury
Primary objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of perceived personal responsibility for an acquired ABI (ABI) on shame, and whether self-compassion moderates this relationship. We hypothesized that people who perceived themselves to be responsible for their injury would have high levels of shame and poorer recovery outcomes.Research design: A mixed-methods design was employed using both standardized measures and a series of open questions.Methods and procedures: 66 participants with ABI were included in the analysis. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlations, multiple regression, and thematic analysis.Main outcomes and results: Significant relationships were found between self-compassion, shame, anxiety, and depression, but perceived responsibility for ABI was not correlated with any examined variables. Due to issues with the measurement of responsibility, it was not possible to complete all proposed forms of analysis. The thematic analysis revealed the ways participantsâ injuries affected their perceived level of functioning, its consequences for sense of self, shame, and self-compassion.Conclusions: This study concluded that people with ABI might experience shame with respect to the injuryâs impact on functioning. Study limitations and implications for providing therapeutic interventions such as Compassion Focused Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy are discussed
Lexical distributional cues, but not situational cues, are readily used to learn abstract locative verb-structure associations.
Children must learn the structural biases of locative verbs in order to avoid making overgeneralisation errors (e.g., *I filled water into the glass). It is thought that they use linguistic and situational information to learn verb classes that encode structural biases. In addition to situational cues, we examined whether children and adults could use the lexical distribution of nouns in the post-verbal noun phrase to assign novel verbs to locative classes. In Experiment 1, children and adults used lexical distributional cues to assign verb classes, but were unable to use situational cues appropriately. In Experiment 2, adults generalised distributionally-learned classes to novel verb arguments, demonstrating that distributional information can cue abstract verb classes. Taken together, these studies show that human language learners can use a lexical distributional mechanism that is similar to that used by computational linguistic systems that use large unlabelled corpora to learn verb meaning
Syntactic representations are both abstract and semantically constrained : evidence from childrenâs and adultsâ comprehension and production/priming of the English passive
All accounts of language acquisition agree that, by around age 4, childrenâs knowledge of grammatical constructions is abstract, rather than tied solely to individual lexical items. The aim of the present research was to investigate, focusing on the passive, whether childrenâs and adultsâ performance is additionally semantically constrained, varying according to the distance between the semantics of the verb and those of the construction. In a forcedâchoice pointing study (Experiment 1), both 4â to 6âyear olds (N = 60) and adults (N = 60) showed support for the prediction of this semantic construction prototype account of an interaction such that the observed disadvantage for passives as compared to actives (i.e., fewer correct points/longer reaction time) was greater for experiencerâtheme verbs than for agentâpatient and themeâexperiencer verbs (e.g., Bob was seen/hit/frightened by Wendy). Similarly, in a production/priming study (Experiment 2), both 4â to 6âyear olds (N = 60) and adults (N = 60) produced fewer passives for experiencerâtheme verbs than for agentâpatient/themeâexperiencer verbs. We conclude that these findings are difficult to explain under accounts based on the notion of A(rgument) movement or of a monostratal, semanticsâfree, level of syntax, and instead necessitate some form of semantic construction prototype account
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