Estrada de Ferro Caravelas: trilhos pioneiros na trajetória socioeconômica do sul do Espírito Santo

O objetivo desta dissertação de História Social das Relações Políticas é discutir a relevância da Estrada de Ferro Caravelas para o desenvolvimento socioeconômico do Sul do Espírito Santo. Apresentamos uma breve abordagem histórica dos caminhos do ferro na Europa e no Brasil do século XIX. Em seguida, buscaremos compreender a conjuntura da economia nacional e a relação da economia cafeeira com a implantação das ferrovias no cenário nacional e capixaba. Apresentaremos também as dificuldades da implantação das ferrovias no cenário estadual e analisaremos os motivos do primeiro trecho ferroviário ter sido construído na região sul do Espírito Santo. Finalmente, evidenciaremos a importância da Estrada no cenário de desenvolvimento econômico da região, sob uma abordagem que englobe os aspectos econômicos e sociais; o impacto da implantação da Estrada de Ferro Caravelas e sua anexação à Leopoldina Railway Company ampliando o trecho ferroviário que ligava Cachoeiro de Itapemirim a Alegre e, posteriormente, a Espera Feliz. Utilizamos como principais fontes documentos oficiais e periódicos da época, com a perspectiva metodológica que buscou analisar os discursos presentes nessas fontes

Auditory–visual speech perception in three- and four-year-olds and its relationship to perceptual attunement and receptive vocabulary

Despite the body of research on auditory–visual speech perception in infants and schoolchildren, development in the early childhood period remains relatively uncharted. In this study, English-speaking children between three and four years of age were investigated for: (i) the development of visual speech perception – lip-reading and visual influence in auditory–visual integration; (ii) the development of auditory speech perception and native language perceptual attunement; and (iii) the relationship between these and a language skill relevant at this age, receptive vocabulary. Visual speech perception skills improved even over this relatively short time period. However, regression analyses revealed that vocabulary was predicted by auditory-only speech perception, and native language attunement, but not by visual speech perception ability. The results suggest that, in contrast to infants and schoolchildren, in three- to four-year-olds the relationship between speech perception and language ability is based on auditory and not visual or auditory–visual speech perception ability. Adding these results to existing findings allows elaboration of a more complete account of the developmental course of auditory–visual speech perception

Auditory development

In this chapter we have shown that the auditory system develops early; that the infant is born with a number of auditory abilities and preferences, some learned in the womb; and that there are developmental infl uences of species - general auditory experience and culturally and linguistically specifi c auditory experience. Auditory competence underlies the understanding of speech and the appreciation of song and music, rich sources of communication that enhance our enjoyment of the world and our fellows. There are a number of factors that may put intact hearing at risk, and hearing loss is not as uncommon as we would wish. Given the early emergence of auditory abilities, if there is early deprivation in the auditory sphere, there can be signifi cant later consequences. Fortunately, there are now quite sophisticated means of both early screening and early intervention for hearing loss. Nevertheless, further research is required so that the mechanisms of hearing loss are better understood and the technology of hearing prostheses improved. To achieve this research goal, further understanding of the development of normal hearing is necessary. Such research will not only aid the impairment area, but also help us to understand the delicate interplay of species - general aspects of the auditory system we share with other animals, species - specifi c predilections of humans, and culture - specifi c infl uences of speech and music, that make up the richness of human auditory experience. At a more general level, the world ’ s variety of speech and music systems provides a natural collection of mini - laboratories in which the age - old question of nature and nurture may be investigated

The relationship between auditory–visual speech perception and language-specific speech perception at the onset of reading instruction in English-speaking children

Speech perception is auditory–visual, but relatively little is known about auditory–visual compared with auditory-only speech perception. One avenue for further understanding is via developmental studies. In a recent study, Sekiyama and Burnham (2008) found that English speakers significantly increase their use of visual speech information between 6 and 8 years of age but that this development does not appear to be universal across languages. Here, the possible bases for this language-specific increase among English speakers were investigated. Four groups of English-language children (5, 6, 7, and 8 years) and a group of adults were tested on auditory–visual, auditory-only, and visual-only speech perception; language-specific speech perception with native and non-native speech sounds; articulation; and reading. Results showed that language-specific speech perception and lip-reading ability reliably predicted auditory–visual speech perception in children but that adult auditory–visual speech perception was predicted by auditory-only speech perception. The implications are discussed in terms of both auditory–visual speech perception and language development

The perception of tones and phones

Tone languages use lexical tone at the syllable level to contrast word meaning. In this chapter we present an overview of the status of tone research to date – what tone is, its unique status as both a segmental and suprasegmental feature of speech, and how it differs from other pitch-related information in speech – pitch-accent, intonation, stress, and emotional tone. The process by which tone perception develops from infancy through childhood to adulthood is reviewed for both tone and non-tone language speakers by drawing on the results of studies that have evaluated the perceptual salience of tones versus phones in speech perception, tonological versus phonological awareness tasks, spelling, and orthography. Issues regarding the status of tone as a linguistic device are considered with due reference to hemispheric (brain) specialisation of tone versus pitch processing, and the influence of linguistic versus non-linguistic context on tone perception. The chapter concludes with a comparison of the similarities and differences between tone and phone perception, and suggestions regarding possible directions for future research on tone perception

Infant-directed speech from seven to nineteen months has similar acoustic properties but different functions

This longitudinal study assessed three acoustic components of maternal infant-directed speech (IDS) - pitch, affect, and vowel hyperarticulation - in relation to infants' age and their expressive vocabulary size. These three individual components were measured in IDS addressed to infants at 7, 9, 11, 15, and 19 months (N=18). All three components were exaggerated at all ages in mothers' IDS compared to their adult-directed speech. Importantly, the only significant predictor of infants' expressive vocabulary size at 15 and 19 months was vowel hyperarticulation, but only at 9 months and beyond, not at 7 months, and not pitch or affect at any age. These results set apart vowel hyperarticulation in IDS to infants as the critical IDS component for vocabulary development. Thus IDS, specifically the degree of vowel hyperarticulation therein, is a vehicle by which parents can provide the most optimal speech quality for their infants' linguistic and communicative development

Novel word learning, reading difficulties, and phonological processing skills

Visual-verbal paired associate learning (PAL) refers to the ability to establish an arbitrary association between a visual referent and an unfamiliar label. It is now established that this ability is impaired in children with dyslexia, but the source of this deficit is yet to be specified. This study assesses PAL performance in children with reading difficulties using a modified version of the PAL paradigm, comprising a comprehension and a production phase, to determine whether the PAL deficit lies in children's ability to establish and retain novel object-novel word associations or their ability to retrieve the learned novel labels for production. Results showed that while children with reading difficulties required significantly more trials to learn the object-word associations, when they were required to use these associations in a comprehension-referent selection task, their accuracy and speed did not differ from controls. Nevertheless, children with reading difficulties were significantly less successful when they were required to produce the learned novel labels in response to the visual stimuli. Thus, these results indicate that while children with reading difficulties are successful at establishing visual-verbal associations, they have a deficit in the verbal production component of PAL tasks, which may relate to a more general underlying impairment in auditory or phonological processing

Development of neural discrimination of pitch across speech and music in the first year of life, a mismatch response study

This study focuses on the development of neural discrimination of pitch changes in speech and music by English-language adults and 4-, 8- and 12-month-old infants. Speech stimuli were Mandarin Chinese rising and dipping lexical tones and the musical stimuli were three-note melodies with pitch levels based on those of the lexical tones. Mismatch responses were elicited using a non-attentive oddball paradigm. Adults showed mismatch negativity (MMN) responses in both the lexical tone and music conditions. For infants, for the lexical tones, a positive-mismatch response (p-MMR) was observed at 4, 8, and 12 months, whereas for the musical tones, a p-MMR was found for the 4-month-olds, an MMN for the 12-month-olds, and no mismatch response, either positive or negative, for the 8-month-olds. No evidence of cross-domain correlation of the mismatch responses was found. These results suggest domain-specific development of mismatch responses to pitch change in the first year of life

"D-o-e-s-n-o-t-c-o-m-p-u-t-e" : vowel hyperarticulartion in speech to an auditory-visual avatar

Humans use speech to convey information; attract attention; express affect, etc. Speech register research shows that humans are adept at fine-tuning components of their speech to accommodate the needs of their audience, suggesting that they have a model of others’ communication needs. However, when that audience is a computer rather than another human, such a model may be invalid and speech adaptations, Computer-Directed Speech, may be inappropriate. Here we examine humans’ speech to other humans or an auditoryvisual avatar before and after the computer makes a listening “error”. Vowel durations are found to be longer in Computerthan Human-Directed Speech (especially in speech repairs after computer errors), and there is greater vowel hyperarticulation in Computer- than Human-Directed Speech both before and after error correction. The results are discussed in terms of human-computer interaction (HCI), talking head applications and ASR systems

Mothers speak differently to infants at-risk for dyslexia

Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental disorder manifested in deficits in reading and spelling skills that is consistently associated with difficulties in phonological processing. Dyslexia is genetically transmitted, but its manifestation in a particular individual is thought to depend on the interaction of epigenetic and environmental factors. We adopt a novel interactional perspective on early linguistic environment and dyslexia by simultaneously studying two pre-existing factors, one maternal and one infant, that may contribute to these interactions; and two behaviours, one maternal and one infant, to index the effect of these factors. The maternal factor is whether mothers are themselves dyslexic or not (with/without dyslexia) and the infant factor is whether infants are at-/not-at family risk for dyslexia (due to their mother or father being dyslexic). The maternal behaviour is mothers’ infant-directed speech (IDS), which typically involves vowel hyperarticulation, thought to benefit speech perception and language acquisition. The infant behaviour is auditory perception measured by infant sensitivity to amplitude envelope rise time, which has been found to be reduced in dyslexic children. Here, at-risk infants showed significantly poorer acoustic sensitivity than not-at-risk infants and mothers only hyperarticulated vowels to infants who were not at-risk for dyslexia. Mothers’ own dyslexia status had no effect on IDS quality. Parental speech input is thus affected by infant risk status, with likely consequences for later linguistic development