Non-adjacent dependency learning: development, domain differences, and memory

Children learn their first language simply by listening to the linguistic utterances provided by their caregivers and other speakers around them. In order to extract meaning and grammatical rules from these utterances, children must track regularities in the input, which are omnipresent in language. The ability to discover and adapt to these statistical regularities in the input is termed statistical learning and has been suggested to be one of the key mechanisms underlying language acquisition. In this thesis, I investigated a special case of statistical learning, non-adjacent dependency (NAD) learning. NADs are grammatical dependencies between distant elements in an utterance, such as is and -ing in the sentence Mary is walking. I examined which factors play a role in the development of NAD learning by illuminating this process from different stand points: the first study compares NAD learning in the linguistic and the non-linguistic domain during the earliest stages of development, at 4 months of age. This study suggests that at this age, NAD learning seems to be domain-specific to language. The second study puts a spotlight on the development of NAD learning in the linguistic domain and proposes that there may be a sensitive period for linguistic NAD learning during early childhood. Finally, the third study shows that children can not only recall newly learned NADs in a test immediately following familiarization, but also recall them after a retention period, which is critical to show more long-term learning. Overall, the findings in this thesis further illuminate how NADs, as a spotlight into language acquisition, are learned, stored in memory, and recalled

Common Ground Information Affects Reference Resolution

One of the most important social cognitive skills in humans is the ability to “put oneself in someone else’s shoes,” that is, to take another person’s perspective. In socially situated communication, perspective taking enables the listener to arrive at a meaningful interpretation of what is said (sentence meaning) and what is meant (speaker’s meaning) by the speaker. To successfully decode the speaker’s meaning, the listener has to take into account which information he/she and the speaker share in their common ground (CG). We here further investigated competing accounts about when and how CG information affects language comprehension by means of reaction time (RT) measures, accuracy data, event-related potentials (ERPs), and eye-tracking. Early integration accounts would predict that CG information is considered immediately and would hence not expect to find costs of CG integration. Late integration accounts would predict a rather late and effortful integration of CG information during the parsing process that might be reflected in integration or updating costs. Other accounts predict the simultaneous integration of privileged ground (PG) and CG perspectives. We used a computerized version of the referential communication game with object triplets of different sizes presented visually in CG or PG. In critical trials (i.e., conflict trials), CG information had to be integrated while privileged information had to be suppressed. Listeners mastered the integration of CG (response accuracy 99.8%). Yet, slower RTs, and enhanced late positivities in the ERPs showed that CG integration had its costs. Moreover, eye-tracking data indicated an early anticipation of referents in CG but an inability to suppress looks to the privileged competitor, resulting in later and longer looks to targets in those trials, in which CG information had to be considered. Our data therefore support accounts that foresee an early anticipation of referents to be in CG but a rather late and effortful integration if conflicting information has to be processed. We show that both perspectives, PG and CG, contribute to socially situated language processing and discuss the data with reference to theoretical accounts and recent findings on the use of CG information for reference resolution.Peer Reviewe

Development of the N400 for Word Learning in the First 2 Years of Life: A Systematic Review

The N400 ERP component is a direct neural index of word meaning. Studies show that the N400 component is already present in early infancy, albeit often delayed. Many researchers capitalize on this finding, using the N400 component to better understand how early language acquisition unfolds. However, variability in how researchers quantify the N400 makes it difficult to set clear predictions or build theory. Not much is known about how the N400 component develops in the first 2 years of life in terms of its latency and topographical distributions, nor do we know how task parameters affect its appearance. In the current paper we carry out a systematic review, comparing over 30 studies that report the N400 component as a proxy of semantic processing elicited in infants between 0 and 24 months old who listened to linguistic stimuli. Our main finding is that there is large heterogeneity across semantic-priming studies in reported characteristics of the N400, both with respect to latency and to distributions. With age, the onset of the N400 insignificantly decreases, while its offset slightly increases. We also examined whether the N400 appears different for recently-acquired novel words vs. existing words: both situations reveal heterogeneity across studies. Finally, we inspected whether the N400 was modulated differently with studies using a between-subject design. In infants with more proficient language skills the N400 was more often present or showed itself here with earlier latency, compared to their peers; but no consistent patterns were observed for distribution characteristics of the N400. One limitation of the current review is that we compared studies that widely differed in choice of EEG recordings, pre-processing steps and quantification of the N400, all of which could affect the characteristics of the infant N400. The field is still missing research that systematically tests development of the N400 using the same paradigm across infancy

Campus-Community-Partnerships in der Hochschullehre: Aktuelle Daten aus Österreich

Community-Based Research und Service Learning sind hochschuldidaktische Methoden des anwendungsorientierten und erfahrungsbasierten Lernens (FELTEN & CLAYTON, 2011). Diese Lehrformate erfordern aufeinander abgestimmte Partnerschaften zwischen der Hochschule (Campus) und zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen (Community Partner). Bislang ist wenig über die Entstehung und Institutionalisierung dieser Campus-Community-Partnerships (CCPs) an österreichischen Hochschulen bekannt. Mittels eines Online-Survey wurden Hochschullehrende (N = 107) befragt, die im Rahmen ihrer Lehrveranstaltungen mit Community Partnern zusammenarbeiten. Erhoben wurden die initiale Motivation der Lehrpersonen, der Stellenwert und die Unterstützungsstrukturen an den Hochschulen sowie die konkreten Bedingungen der Umsetzung der CCPs. Die empirischen Ergebnisse verdeutlichen, dass CCPs an österreichischen Hochschulen bislang kaum institutionalisiert sind. Stattdessen bilden das persönliche Engagement und die Kontakte der Lehrenden den Ausgangspunkt für die Gestaltung der CCPs in der Hochschullehre

A New, Atypical Case of Cobalamin F Disorder Diagnosed by Whole Exome Sequencing

The Deciphering Developmental Disorders Study presents independent research commissioned by the Health Innovation Challenge Fund (HICF-1009-003), a parallel funding partnership between the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WT098051). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Wellcome Trust or the Department of Health. The research team acknowledges the support of the National Institute for Health Research, through the Comprehensive Clinical Research Network.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Embedding Social Innovation and Service Learning in Higher Education's Third Sector Policy Developments in Austria

Social innovation in Austrian HEIs is discussed under the headline of their “Third Mission.” The HE sector is pressured to have more and more impact on society. Internationally speaking, many countries benefit from national policies and networks in the Third Sector, but policies in Austria were initiated only recently, in 2017, on a national level. Interestingly, the service learning approach as an innovative and socially responsible teaching methodology stands out in Austrian HE. This article classifies the developments of the Third Sector in Austria in the form of a policy brief. Austria has a growing community of practice in social innovation and service learning. The article gives insight into the strategic developments in Austria and is underpinned with recommendable action to be transferred to others

Failure of Supervised Chloroquine and Primaquine Regimen for the Treatment of Plasmodium vivax in the Peruvian Amazon

The widespread use of primaquine (PQ) and chloroquine (CQ), together, may be responsible for the relatively few, isolated cases of chloroquine-resistant P. vivax (CQRPV) that have been reported from South America. We report here a case of P. vivax from the Amazon Basin of Peru that recurred against normally therapeutic blood levels of CQ. Four out of 540 patients treated with combination CQ and PQ had a symptomatic recurrence of P. vivax parasitemia within 35 days of treatment initiation, possibly indicating CQ failure. Whole blood total CQ level for one of these four subjects was 95 ng/ml on the day of recurrence. Based on published criteria that delineate CQRPV as a P. vivax parasitemia, either recrudescence or relapse, that appears against CQ blood levels >100 ng/mL, we document the occurrence of a P. vivax strain in Peru that had unusually high tolerance to the synergistic combination therapy of CQ + PQ that normally works quite well

Guardería y hospedaje canino Wawapet

Esta propuesta está diseñada en plasmar la creación de una guardería y/o hospedaje para todo tipo de canes de raza pequeña y mediana. Con la peculiaridad de que cuando estén a cargo del equipo especializado, contarán con los siguientes beneficios: Seguro de salud canino básico, Clases de entrenamiento, Spa (corte, baño y acicalamiento), Paseos, Fiestas temáticas, Servicio de delivery (recojo y entrega del can). Esta propuesta de negocio nace a raíz que en los últimos años hay un crecimiento y una tendencia en el cuidado, protección y bienestar de las mascotas domésticas según la estadística realizada por el diario (GESTION, 2016); de igual manera, enlazada ante la promulgación del dispositivo legal Nº 30407 “Ley de Protección y bienestar animal” aprobada el 07 de enero del 2016 y publicada el 08 de enero del mismo año en el diario oficial El Peruano (LEYES DEL CONGRESO, 2016). Con lo indicado líneas arriba, se nota un increíble incremento de la demanda de servicios, productos para el cuidado y atención de los animales domésticos; sobre todo para los canes (CPI, 2016). De igual manera, existen proyecciones de crecimiento del gasto de las familias en servicios y productos para mascotas domésticas, las cuales están previstos a aumentar considerablemente en los próximos años (CONSULTORA INVERA, 2016). En ese sentido, la guardería y/o hospedaje están acondicionadas con espacios cómodos, controlados y divertidos, garantizando el entretenimiento y descanso de los canes, con el propósito de brindar a los clientes un servicio seguro, fiable y confiable. Con lo indicado anteriormente, nuestro público objetivo, está conformado: ONG ´s que difunden el sentimiento ANIMALISTA y PET LOVER’S que vivan cerca o en zonas aledañas a nuestra guardería y/o hospedaje. Público en general que comparta un cariño excepcional y extraordinario por su mascota y la disposición para invertir su tiempo y dinero en la misma. Por ello, como un servicio adicional es compartir con nuestro cliente imágenes y videos de la estadía de su mascota en nuestras instalaciones, de manera que pueda ver que su mascota está siendo bien atendida y que se le brinda los cuidados que requiere. Finalmente, como información adicional, los gastos que originarán el alquiler de local, acondicionamiento e implementación, construcción de nuestra página web, un APP y la creación de blog de consejos caninos, se darán durante el 1er año lo cual ascenderán de S/ 205,660.00 soles; con ventas brutas anuales proyectadas de S/ 607,290.00 durante el primer año, incrementándose de manera gradual al 4.00 % en los años posteriores.Escuela de Postgrad