Phonetic training significantly mitigates the stress ‘deafness’ of French speakers

Stress ‘deafness’ refers to the inconsistent perception and/or processing of phonological stress by speakers of fixed stress languages such as French. This paper briefly reports on the results of a study in which French and English participants performed an ABX word stress task, similar to Dupoux et al.’s (1997) Experiment 1. A group of French and a group of English speakers received phonetic training designed to improve perception while two other groups of French and English speakers received no training. The training was an adaptation of the perceptual fading technique, which exposes listeners to stressed syllables that exaggerate the durational correlate of stress, then gradually reduces the durations of subsequent stressed syllables to increase participants’ overall ability to accurately perceive stressed syllables. The trained French group performed significantly better than the untrained group with fewer errors and lower response times. As expected there was no difference in accuracy between the trained and untrained English groups. We argue that by exaggerating the duration cue for stress, the phonetic training led to increased overall perception, perhaps even beginning to build an abstract phonological representation of stress that was then carried into the ABX task. Although trained on artificially manipulated stimuli, participants were able to perform well on naturally-produced novel stimuli

Learning natural and unnatural phonological stress by 9- and 10-year-olds: A preliminary report

Research into adult learning of natural and unnatural pairs of artificial languages have demonstrated that it is easier to learn a phonological rule that is based on naturalness in language than a similar, but unnatural, version of the same rule (Wilson 2006, Carpenter 2010). Infants\u27 learning of natural and unnatural phonology has produced mixed results (Gerken and Boltt, 2008; Seidl and Buckley, 2005). The present study focuses on older children\u27s learning of a natural and unnatural version of a stress rule based on vowel height. The results show that 9- and 10-year-olds exhibit a bias towards the natural rule. I suggest that the bias develops from an interaction between general cognition and a language-specific one

The Benefits and Challenges of Preconsent in a Multisite, Pediatric Sickle Cell Intervention Trial

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133619/1/pbc26013.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133619/2/pbc26013_am.pd

An international comparison of the outcomes of environmental regulation

Whilst there is much discussion about the stringency of environmental regulations and the variability of industrial environmental performance in different countries, there are very few robust evaluations that allow meaningful comparisons to be made. This is partly because data scarcity restricts the ability to make 'like for like' comparisons across countries and over time. This paper combines data on benzene emissions from Pollution Release and Transfer Registers with data on industrial production from oil refineries to generate normalized measures of industrial environmental performance across eight Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries and the EU-15. We find that normalized emissions levels are improving in nearly all countries, and that there is some convergence in emissions performance between countries, but that there are still very significant variations across countries. We find that average emissions levels are lower in Japan and Germany than in the USA and Australia, which in turn are lower than in Canada and the EU-15, but we note that average emissions in the EU-15 are significantly affected by particularly high emissions in the UK. These findings have significant implications for wider debates on the stringency of environmental regulations and the variability of industrial environmental performance in different countries

Unconditional care in academic emergency departments

Recent news stories have explicitly stated that patients with symptoms of COVID-19 were "turned away" from emergency departments. This commentary addresses these serious allegations, with an attempt to provide the perspective of academic emergency departments (EDs) around the Nation. The overarching point we wish to make is that academic EDs never deny emergency care to any person

Rethinking intercurrent events in defining estimands for tuberculosis trials.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Tuberculosis remains one of the leading causes of death from an infectious disease globally. Both choices of outcome definitions and approaches to handling events happening post-randomisation can change the treatment effect being estimated, but these are often inconsistently described, thus inhibiting clear interpretation and comparison across trials. METHODS: Starting from the ICH E9(R1) addendum's definition of an estimand, we use our experience of conducting large Phase III tuberculosis treatment trials and our understanding of the estimand framework to identify the key decisions regarding how different event types are handled in the primary outcome definition, and the important points that should be considered in making such decisions. A key issue is the handling of intercurrent (i.e. post-randomisation) events (ICEs) which affect interpretation of or preclude measurement of the intended final outcome. We consider common ICEs including treatment changes and treatment extension, poor adherence to randomised treatment, re-infection with a new strain of tuberculosis which is different from the original infection, and death. We use two completed tuberculosis trials (REMoxTB and STREAM Stage 1) as illustrative examples. These trials tested non-inferiority of new tuberculosis treatment regimens versus a control regimen. The primary outcome was a binary composite endpoint, 'favourable' or 'unfavourable', which was constructed from several components. RESULTS: We propose the following improvements in handling the above-mentioned ICEs and loss to follow-up (a post-randomisation event that is not in itself an ICE). First, changes to allocated regimens should not necessarily be viewed as an unfavourable outcome; from the patient perspective, the potential harms associated with a change in the regimen should instead be directly quantified. Second, handling poor adherence to randomised treatment using a per-protocol analysis does not necessarily target a clear estimand; instead, it would be desirable to develop ways to estimate the treatment effects more relevant to programmatic settings. Third, re-infection with a new strain of tuberculosis could be handled with different strategies, depending on whether the outcome of interest is the ability to attain culture negativity from infection with any strain of tuberculosis, or specifically the presenting strain of tuberculosis. Fourth, where possible, death could be separated into tuberculosis-related and non-tuberculosis-related and handled using appropriate strategies. Finally, although some losses to follow-up would result in early treatment discontinuation, patients lost to follow-up before the end of the trial should not always be classified as having an unfavourable outcome. Instead, loss to follow-up should be separated from not completing the treatment, which is an ICE and may be considered as an unfavourable outcome. CONCLUSION: The estimand framework clarifies many issues in tuberculosis trials but also challenges trialists to justify and improve their outcome definitions. Future trialists should consider all the above points in defining their outcomes

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy