The relation between language and cognition in children aged 3 to 9 : The acquisition of grammatical gender in French

The French language has a grammatical gender system in which all nouns are assigned either a masculine or a feminine gender. Nouns provide two types of gender cues that can potentially guide gender attribution: morphophonological cues carried by endings and semantic cues (natural gender). The first goal of this study was to describe the acquisition of the probabilistic system based on phonological oppositions on word endings by French-speaking children. The second goal was to explore the extent to which this system affects categorization. In the study, 3- to 9-year-olds assigned gender categorization to invented nouns whose endings were typically masculine, typically feminine, or neutral. Two response conditions were used. In the determiner condition, children indicated the gender class by orally providing the determiner un or une marked for gender. In the picture condition, responses were given by pointing to the picture of a Martian-like female or male person that would be best called by each spoken pseudoword. Results indicated that as young as 3 years, children associated the determiner corresponding to the ending bias at greater than chance levels. Ending-consistent performance increased from 3 to 9 years of age. Moreover, from 4 years of age onward, sensitivity to endings aVected categorization. Starting at that age, pictures were selected according to endings at greater than chance levels. This eVect also increased with age. The discussion deals with the mechanisms of language acquisition and the relation between language and cognition

Usage-based account of the acquisition of liaison: evidence from sensitivity to plural / singular orientation of nouns

International audienceThis study investigates whether the production and the recognition of liaison sequences in children depend on the singular/plural orientation of nouns. Certain nouns occur more frequently in the plural (e.g., arbre "tree") whereas others are found more often in the singular (e.g., arc-en-ciel "rainbow"). In the input, children more frequently encounter these plural-oriented nouns after determiners which indicate plurality (e.g., les, des, "the", deux, "two", etc.) and which are often associated with a /z/ liaison [døzarbr],"two trees". In experiment 1, 122 children (aged from 3;2 to 6;3) were asked to produce nominal phrases with either /z/ liaisons (i.e., in plural contexts like deux ours [døzurs],"two bears") or with /n/ liaisons (i.e., in singular contexts like un ours [oenurs],"one bear"). We found correlations between the plural-orientation of the nouns and (1) the probability that they will be preceded by an incorrect /z/ liaison in singular contexts (2) the probability that they will be preceded by a correct /z/ liaison in the plural context. This result was however restricted to the younger children. In experiment 2, 20 children (aged from 5;5 to 6;3) were asked to monitor target words in auditorily presented sentences. The results showed shorter responses times for singular-oriented nouns when preceded by singular determiners than when preceded by plural determiners. Conversely, plural-oriented nouns were responded to faster when preceded by a plural determiner than by a singular determiner. Results are discussed within the framework of a two-stage model of liaison acquisition recently proposed by Chevrot, Chabanal and Dugua (2007) and Chevrot, Dugua and Fayol (2009)

Acoustic cues for segmentation resist within speaker variation: An EEG study

In order to recognize spoken words, listeners must map sensory information from the acoustic input onto stored lexical entries. Because the speech signal is continuous, listeners must segment the speech stream in order to recognize words. To accomplish the task of segmentation listeners use their tacit knowledge of a wide range of patterns in their native language including cues from allophonic variation, phonotactic constraints, transitional probabilities, lexical stress etc. Among those cues, there is now a growing body of evidence suggesting that fine-grained acoustic information is available for lexical access and used for segmenting the speech stream. Although it is generally agreed that acoustic cues are used on line to segment the speech signal and to bias lexical access, some important questions remained unanswered. First we ought to know whether these cues are robust enough to be used in the context of multiple productions of the same segmentation as speech is by nature variable and listeners are never exposed to invariant speech. The second important open question is that of the timing of the use of the cues

Liaison acquisition: debates, critical issues, future research

International audienceLiaison is a sandhi phenomenon in French. Over the last four decades, it has given rise to many different models illustrating the whole range of phonological theories. More recently, new studies have documented its acquisition in French-speaking children as well as adult learners of French as a second language. These studies have resulted in the elaboration of two models of the acquisition process: 1/ the constructionist model (Chevrot, Dugua & Fayol, 2009; Nicoladis & Paradis, 2011) developed within the framework of the usage-based theories; 2/ the phonological model (Wauquier, 2009) which represents the framework of nonlinear phonology. Our aim is to re-examine the usage-based model in the light of the criticisms and suggestions made by Wauquier (2009). We shall first present the two models and then examine the issues under discussion. After that, we shall present longitudinal data testing a prediction made by the phonological model with regard to the generalization process in L1 and L2 acquisition. To conclude, we shall identify the points that remain to be clarified for each of the models and the directions which future research should take

La mie de pain n’est pas une amie: une étude EEG sur la perception de différences infra-phonémiques en situation de variations

International audienceWe examined electrophysiological correlates of listener’s sensitivity to fine acoustic cues in intra-speaker variability conditions in order to test the relevance of such cues for the speech perception system. For this purpose, a modified oddball paradigm has been used with syllables such as French homophones la and l’a, and in a second experiment with longer sequences such as la mie and l’amie, both /lami/. The main result of this study was the observation of a mismatch negativity (MMN) for homophone deviants. Speech perception system is thus sensitive to subphonemic differences between homophone sequences despite the speech variability. Fine acoustic cues are robust enough to play a role in speech processin

Atividade física e adesão à dieta mediterrânica: estudo em idosas hipertensas

O presente trabalho visa contribuir para a análise dos níveis de adesão à Atividade Física (ATF) e à Dieta Mediterrânica (DM) em idosos. Realizou-se uma pesquisa de campo com alunos da Universidade Sénior de Olhão, aplicando o IPAQ (Questionário Internacional de Atividade Física) e o PREDIMED (Avaliação de Adesão ao Padrão Alimentar Mediterrânico). A amostra foi composta 16 idosas do género feminino, com idades compreendidas entre 65 e 80 anos, com diversas patologias clínicas de base. Os resultados obtidos demonstram que 9 eram hipertensas, o que corresponde a 56% da amostra, e que 5 apresentavam Diabetes Mellitus, correspondendo a 31% das entrevistadas. Relativamente aos níveis de adesão à ATF, os resultados demonstram que as idosas as idosas do estudo apresentam um padrão variado, nomeadamente: 4 são “Irregularmente ativo B”; 2 são “Irregularmente ativo A” e 10 são “Ativas”. No que diz respeito à atividade física em casa, este grupo apresenta valores positivos de autonomia, mobilidade e independência. No que concerne ao nível de adesão à DM, 5 idosas apresentaram uma boa adesão e as restantes 11 apresentaram uma adesão reduzida. Verificámos que bastaria a alteração em alguns itens comportamentais para que fosse possível a alteração dos resultados e consequentemente para que estas idosas passassem a ter uma boa adesão à DM. Conclui-se que importa clarificar e e disponibilizar mais informação de forma a melhorar os conhecimentos relativos aos valores ótimos a atingir que contribuam para um envelhecimento saudável e garantam uma maior longevidade com qualidade de vida, através da ATF e da alimentação com base na DM.0348_CIE_6_Einfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

MEGALEX:A megastudy of visual and auditory word recognition

Using the megastudy approach, we report a new database (MEGALEX) of visual and auditory lexical decision times and accuracy rates for tens of thousands of words. We collected visual lexical decision data for 28,466 French words and the same number of pseudowords, and auditory lexical decision data for 17,876 French words and the same number of pseudowords (synthesized tokens were used for the auditory modality). This constitutes the first large-scale database for auditory lexical decision, and the first database to enable a direct comparison of word recognition in different modalities. Different regression analyses were conducted to illustrate potential ways to exploit this megastudy database. First, we compared the proportions of variance accounted for by five word frequency measures. Second, we conducted item-level regression analyses to examine the relative importance of the lexical variables influencing performance in the different modalities (visual and auditory). Finally, we compared the similarities and differences between the two modalities. All data are freely available on our website ( https://sedufau.shinyapps.io/megalex/ ) and are searchable at www.lexique.org , inside the Open Lexique search engine

La videoconferencia como tecnología para la enseñanza: conocimientos y requisitos técnicos

Los actuales avances en las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación hacen de la Videoconferencia (VDC) un método fiable y rentable para ser usado como herramienta para la educación médica a distancia. Videoconferencia es la transmisión y recepción simultánea de audio, video y datos entre dos o más sitios distantes permitiendo una interacción permanente en tiempo real entre los participantes.Facultad de Ciencias Médica

Continuing education: The Clinical Trials

En los artículos anteriores de esta serie se ha proporcionado información sobre la revista científica, el artículo científico original y el artículo científico de revisión. El propósito de esta cuarta entrega de educación continua es brindar los conocimientos básicos necesarios para entender los ensayos clínicos y los ensayos clínicos controlados aleatorios (ECAs). Un ECA es un experimento científico prospectivo que involucra sujetos humanos en los que se inicia un tratamiento o intervención para su evaluación. En el ECA los sujetos son asignados al azar a uno de dos grupos: el grupo experimental y el grupo de comparación o control.Preceding articles in this series have provided information concerning to scientific journal, original scientific article and the review scientific article. The purpose of this fourth part of continuing education is to provide the basic knowledge necessary to understand the clinical trials and the randomized controlled trials (RCT). A RCT is a prospective scientific experiment that involves human subjects in whom treatment is initiated for the evaluation of a therapeutic intervention. In the RCT the subjects are randomly assigned to one of two groups: the experimental group and the comparison group or control.Facultad de Ciencias Médica