Asymmetrical cognitive load Imposed by processing native and non-native speech

Intonation affects information processing and comprehension. Previous research has found that some international teaching assistants (ITAs) fail to exploit English intonation, potentially posing processing difficulties to students who are native English speakers. However, researchers have also found that non-native listeners found it easier to process sentences given by a non-native speaker with a shared language background, leading to an interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit (ISIB). Therefore, how native speaker teaching assistant (NSTA)’s and ITA’s classroom speech affects the processing, comprehension, and attitudes of listeners with different language backgrounds needs to be further investigated. Using a dual-task paradigm, a comprehension questionnaire, and an attitudinal questionnaire, the present study investigates how the pronunciation and intonation of a NSTA and an ITA affect native English speakers’ and Mandarin-speaking English learners’ processing and comprehension of a lecture, and attitudes towards the two instructors. The present study found shared processing advantages when the listeners shared the L1 of the speaker, but overall lecture comprehension and attitude were unaffected. These findings support and extend prior research studies surveying ITAs’ intonational patterns and ISIB. These findings also have implications for research on the teaching of English pronunciation to non-native instructors.Published versio

Detecting large extra dimensions with optomechanical levitated sensors

Numbers of tabletop experiments have made efforts to detect large extra dimensions for the range from solar system to submillimeter system, but the direct evidence is still lacking. Here we present a scheme to test the gravitational law in 4+2 dimensions at microns by using cavity optomechanical method. We have investigated the probe spectrum for coupled quantum levitated oscillators in optical cavities. The results show that the spectral splitting can be obtained once the large extra dimensions present. Compare to the previous experiment, the sensitivity can be improved by the using of a specific geometry and a shield mirror to control and suppress the effect of the Casimir background. The weak frequency splitting can be optically read by the pump-probe scheme. Thus we can detect the gravitational deviation in the bulk based ADD model via spectroscopy without the isoelectronic technique

Stability of Gorenstein flat categories with respect to a semidualizing module

In this paper, we first introduce $\mathcal {W}_F$-Gorenstein modules to establish the following Foxby equivalence: \xymatrix@C=80pt{\mathcal {G}(\mathcal {F})\cap \mathcal {A}_C(R) \ar@[r]^{C\otimes_R-} & \mathcal {G}(\mathcal {W}_F) \ar@[l]^{\textrm{Hom}_R(C,-)}} where $\mathcal {G}(\mathcal {F})$, $\mathcal {A}_C(R)$ and $\mathcal {G}(\mathcal {W}_F)$ denote the class of Gorenstein flat modules, the Auslander class and the class of $\mathcal {W}_F$-Gorenstein modules respectively. Then, we investigate two-degree $\mathcal {W}_F$-Gorenstein modules. An $R$-module $M$ is said to be two-degree $\mathcal {W}_F$-Gorenstein if there exists an exact sequence \mathbb{G}_\bullet=\indent ...\longrightarrow G_1\longrightarrow G_0\longrightarrow G^0\longrightarrow G^1\longrightarrow... in $\mathcal {G}(\mathcal {W}_F)$ such that $M \cong$ \im(G_0\rightarrow G^0) and that $\mathbb{G}_\bullet$ is Hom$_R(\mathcal {G}(\mathcal {W}_F),-)$ and $\mathcal {G}(\mathcal {W}_F)^+\otimes_R-$ exact. We show that two notions of the two-degree $\mathcal {W}_F$-Gorenstein and the $\mathcal {W}_F$-Gorenstein modules coincide when R is a commutative GF-closed ring.Comment: 18 page