Exploring Natural Speech Accommodation in L1-L2 Interactions

Second language (L2) speech accommodation involves adjusting one’s speech when communicating with non-native speakers of a language. This can include speaking more slowly and clearly, exaggerating vowels, and using simpler language. While L2 speech accommodation can be an important tool for language teachers to help students learn, inappropriate accommodation can hinder the learning process. Previous studies on L2 speech accommodation have mainly relied on observational data obtained in classroom settings, limiting our knowledge about the natural use of accommodation during interactions. In this study, we designed an experiment to investigate L2 accommodation in a more natural, ecologically valid setting.  We analyzed conversational sequences between L1 English speakers and L2 speakers of English while they played a cooperative computer game. Our results show that L1 speakers adjust their speech when talking to L2 speakers. Specifically, they tend to choose words of higher frequency and great contextual diversity, and they tend to speak louder compared to L1 speakers. Additionally, the relationship between speech accommodation and anxiety reveals affective connections between participants. These findings indicate that teaching pedagogy that instructs speech accommodation should be rooted in the communicative needs of the students in the classroom. However, more research is needed to increase awareness of natural L2 speech accommodation and to develop appropriate pedagogic guidelines

In-law Conflict: Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Roles of Their Mothers and Husbands among the Matrilineal Khasi

Human behavioral ecologists have shown that the reproductive lives of women are affected by both their husbands and the grandmothers of their children. Study of the combined effect of the roles of the husbands and mothers of 650 Khasi women aged 16–50 years supports the ideas that the reproductive agendas of husbands may require more than women want to invest and that mothers provide support and protective services to their daughters and grandchildren. In the absence of the woman’s mother, the husband’s agenda appears to have more influence on her reproductive career. In a cooperative vein, women’s mothers may contribute to good marital choices. A view of reproductive pursuits that incorporates in-laws enhances behavioral ecology approaches to the evolutionary comprehension of human reproductive behavior. This view also more readily interfaces with the cultural systems that set up the ecologies of reproductive life. The article is followed by 11 sets of comments and a response by the 3 original authors

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7