Deaf and hearing children's picture naming Impact of age of acquisition and language modality on representational gesture

Stefanini, Bello, Caselli, Iverson, & Volterra (2009) reported that Italian 24-36 month old children use a high proportion of representational gestures to accompany their spoken responses when labelling pictures. The two studies reported here used the same naming task with (1) typically developing 24-46-month-old hearing children acquiring English and (2) 24-63-month-old deaf children of deaf and hearing parents acquiring British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English. In Study 1 children scored within the range of correct spoken responses previously reported, but produced very few representational gestures. However, when they did gesture, they expressed the same action meanings as reported in previous research. The action bias was also observed in deaf children of hearing parents in Study 2, who labelled pictures with signs, spoken words and gestures. The deaf group with deaf parents used BSL almost exclusively with few additional gestures. The function of representational gestures in spoken and signed vocabulary development is considered in relation to differences between native and non-native sign language acquisition

The BSL Sentence Reproduction Test: Exploring age of acquisition effects in British deaf adults

Here we present initial findings from a BSL sentence reproduction test, adapted from a test originally created for ASL (Hauser et al., 2008), with the aim of creating a screen that can be used to distinguish signers with native-like vs. non-native-like skills. The stimulus items, based on a set of 49 sentences from Hauser et al. (2008), included 40 BSL sentences varying in length and complexity, presented on video by a deaf native BSL signer. Participants were instructed to copy the signed sentence to camera, exactly as they saw it, regardless of phonological or lexical variants for the same concepts that they might prefer. Participants were 20 deaf adults: 10 deaf native signers, 5 deaf early learners first exposed to BSL between ages 2 and 6, and 5 late learners first exposed to BSL at age 11 or later. Responses were scored by a team of deaf and hearing sign language researchers. Responses which were agreed by all scorers as identical to the stimulus were given a score of 1; responses which included any phonological, morphological, lexical or syntactic deviations were given a score of 0 (except for a few specific, agreed-upon acceptable deviations). Results indicate that native signers scored significantly higher than non-native signers. For non-native signers there was no significant differences between early and late learners. We explore implications of these findings for use of the BSL-SRT as a screening test for assessing fluency in deaf adults and for exploring age-of-acquisition effects more generally. Hauser, P., Paludneviciene, R., Supalla, T., & Bavelier, D. (2008). American Sign Language – Sentence Reproduction Test: Development & Implications. In R. M. d. Quadros (Ed.), Sign Languages: Spinning and Unraveling the Past, Present and Future. TISLR 9, Forty-five Papers and Three Posters from the 9th Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research Conference (pp. 155-167). Petrópolis/RJ. Brazil: Editora Arara Azul

Sleep quality, valence, energetic arousal, and calmness as predictors of device-based measured physical activity during a three-week mHealth intervention

Physical inactivity is known to be a risk factor for several noncommunicable diseases and has a high prevalence in today’s society. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the psychological factors associated with physical activity (PA). Recent developments in the field of ambulatory assessment and technological advances are promising to enhance our understanding of this relationship by analyzing longitudinal data within- and between-persons. These analyses can reveal important factors to design behavior change interventions to enhance PA. Therefore, this study used an ecological momentary assessment during the 3-week intervention period in the SMARTFAMILY2.0 trial and aimed to investigate whether valence, calmness, energetic arousal, and sleep quality predict daily steps and moderate to vigorous PA. Overall, 49 adults (35–60 years) and 40 children (5–19 years) were included in this analysis and self-rated their mental state within our smartphone application while also wearing a hip-worn accelerometer for 21 consecutive days (996 days included) during the intervention period. Multilevel analyses were conducted to predict daily PA while considering covariables (e.g., child/adult and non-wear time) both within- and between-persons. The results indicated that higher than average ratings of a person’s valence and energetic arousal on one day predicted increased PA while higher than average calmness predicted decreased PA at the same day within this person. Sleep quality and between-person effects of the affective states showed no clear associations to PA. Overall, these results showed that within- person associations of valence, calmness, and energetic arousal should be considered when designing PA interventions for both children and adults. The influence of sleep quality, as well as between-person effects, should be further explored by future studies

Family predictors of physical activity change during the COVID-19 lockdown in preschool children in Germany

The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with crucial changes in children’s daily life including their physical activity (PA) and screen time (ST). Among preschool children, the family represents an important factor for sufficient PA levels by being the gatekeeper for PA. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the family environment, specifically SES, parental support, and having siblings on COVID-19-related changes of PA and ST behavior in 317 (170 boys, 147 girls) German preschool children using longitudinal data. Our results indicate a decline in total amount of sports-related PA, an increase in outdoor play, as well as an increase in leisure ST in preschool children. The changes in total amount of PA differed between children with different levels of parental support as well as in dependence on having siblings. Furthermore, levels of outdoor play and ST in preschool children were influenced by environmental factors like having access to their own garden. We conclude that the family environment (parental support as well as physical environment) is highly relevant for PA and ST levels in preschool children. To provide every child with PA opportunities during potential future lockdowns, restriction policies should be adapted and parents need sophisticated information about the importance of their support and thus the PA levels of their children

Aging and scaling laws in β\beta-hydroquinone-clathrate

The dielectric permittivity of the orientational glass methanol(x=0.73)-$\beta$-hydroquinone-clathrate has been studied as function of temperature and waiting time using different temperature-time-protocols. We study aging, rejuvenation and memory effects in the glassy phase and discuss similarities and differences to aging in spin-glasses. We argue that the diluted methanol-clathrate, although conceptually close to its magnetic pendants, takes an intermediate character between a true spin-glass and a pure random field system

Aging and memory effects in beta-hydrochinone-clathrate

The out-of-equilibrium low-frequency complex susceptibility of the orientational glass methanol(73%)-beta-hydrochinone-clathrate is studied using temperature-stop protocols in aging experiments . Although the material does not have a sharp glass transition aging effects including rejuvenation and memory are found at low temperatures. However, they turn out to be much weaker, however, than in conventional magnetic spin glasses.Comment: 5 pages RevTeX, 6 eps-figures include

Parental and peer support and modelling in relation to domain-specific physical activity participation in boys and girls from Germany

Background Physical activity (PA) as a precondition of child development is related with social environmental correlates. However, domain-specific PA and gender issues have been neglected in studies on social support and modelling and PA in school-aged children. The aim of this study was to assess the relationships of parental and peer modelling and social support with domain-specific PA participation in a large sample of school-aged children, taking gender into account. Methods 3,505 school children aged 6 to 17 years old participated in the German nationwide ‘MoMo’ cohort-study. By using the MoMo-PAQ the participants and their parents provided self-report data on perceived social support and social modelling and domain-specific PA participation. Relationships of social environmental variables and the physical outcomes were analysed by logistic regression analyses. Results At secondary school level, girls were less likely than boys to participate in physical activity in and outside of sports clubs, extra-curricular physical activity and in outdoor play (p < 0.05), but at primary school level this pattern only applied to club sport (p < 0.01). Girls also received less social support than boys (p < 0.01). Physical activity participation in all domains was associated with any of the social support and modelling variables and differences between physical activity domains and between boys and girls occurred. Most consistently physical activity in sports clubs was related with the social environmental correlates in boys (primary school: R2 = 0.60; secondary school: R2 = 0.45) and girls (primary school: R2 = 0.53; secondary school: R2 = 0.47). Conclusions In future, reciprocal relationships of social environmental variables and PA should be considered in longitudinal studies to obtain insights into the direction of the associations. Furthermore, interventions encompassing the social environment and focussed particularly on the promotion of domain-specific PA in girls in secondary school-age are warranted

Pronouns and pointing in sign languages

Pointing signs are used for pronominal reference (among many other functions) in sign languages. Many pointing signs do not look very different from non-signers’ pointing gestures (Kendon, 2004 and Kita, 2003c). However, most sign language researchers, regardless of their theoretical perspective, assume that there is evidence for considering these pointing signs to be pronouns (i.e., distinct from pointing gestures used by non-signers). In this paper, we compare canonical properties of pronominal pointing signs in sign languages with (a) personal pronouns in spoken languages and (b) pointing gestures used by non-signers. We find firstly that the features that make pronominal signs difficult to characterise morphosyntactically are those features they share with pointing gestures and not with pronouns. Secondly, we find that the features that make pronominal signs difficult to characterise gesturally are those features they share with pronouns and not with pointing gestures. Therefore, we conclude that pronominal signs cannot be characterised exclusively either as personal pronouns, or as pointing gestures, but instead have characteristics of both. We discuss implications of this conclusion for linguistic theory and also for our understanding of linguistic diversity and linguistic universals