Changes in backward masking thresholds, reading, phoneme awareness, and language skills following an auditory training program

Deficits in auditory temporal processing, or the ability to process the rapid sequence of auditory stimuli within speech, have been linked to reading and language disorders. It has been suggested that a temporal processing deficit interferes with the development of phonological awareness, a prerequisite to early reading skills. This investigation examined the effects of an intense auditory training program, Fast ForWord (FFW; Scientific Learning Corporation, 1998) designed to increase auditory temporal processing on a group of children with poor reading skills. Two primary research questions were posed. Will children increase temporal processing abilities, as measured through backward masking, immediately following FFW and will temporal processing abilities be sustained six months following FFW? Secondly, will children increase reading, phoneme awareness, and language skills immediately following FFW, and will increases continue six months after FFW? Twenty-six children participated in experimental testing and the FFW program. Thresholds for simultaneous masking and three conditions of backward masking were obtained pre and post FFW, and six months following FFW. Behavioral testing included reading (word attack, word identification, and passage comprehension), phoneme awareness, and expressive and receptive language. A group of children who did not receive FFW training were administered the same tests immediately after FFW and six V months after FFW in order to determine if children with FFW training demonstrated greater developments in reading and language skills. Thirteen children in the experimental group had more than a year delay on the word attack and word identification subtests and 13 children had reading measures that ranged within six months of age-equivalency. The two subgroups in the experimental group differed significantly on all tests of reading, phoneme awareness and language measures with the exception of the Nonword Repetition Task. Backward masking thresholds were not significantly different between the two groups. Immediately following FFW, backward masking thresholds for all conditions improved. Even though masking thresholds improved, there were no increases in reading and only a modest increase on phoneme awareness as measured by the Nonword Repetition Task (R= .05). Both groups demonstrated increases in expressive language skills. Further assessment six months after FFW did not reveal a significant increase in 0-ms gap backing masking thresholds. In addition a control group that did not have the auditory training had significantly similar backward masking thresholds. Previous increases in language skills were not sustained at the end of the school year and there were no significant increases in reading skills. All three groups increased in phoneme awareness based on the NWT, however, only the children in the low average reading group significantly improved scores on the Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization test. This study calls into question the efficacy of an intensive auditory training program to improve reading skills. Although, phonological awareness abilities improved over the course of the school year, there were no improvements in reading abilities. The FFW program is designed to target an increase in auditory temporal processing skills, however, this investigation revealed that immediate improvements in backward masking thresholds do not necessarily precipitate increases in reading abilities

Is There a Counterpoint to Culture?

Also CSST Working Paper #101.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51275/1/510.pd

A Limited Dependent Variable Analysis of Integrated Pest Management Adoption in Uganda

In Uganda overall crop loss due to pests exceeds that caused by drought, soil infertility, or poor planting material. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) technologies can reduce pest damage to crops by emphasizing non-chemical control methods thereby reducing potential negative effects of chemicals on the environment while preserving profitability. This study investigates the adoption of eight IPM practices including intercropping, crop rotation, two improved varieties, incorporating an 'exotic weed chaser', optimal planting dates, optimal planting density and fertilizer use. Variables include market forces, social factors, management factors, and technology delivery mechanisms. Results were consistent across the multivariate logit and ordered logit analyses. The single most important category of influential factors across all crops and technologies is economic/market forces, including labor availability, technology resource requirements, technology complexity, and the level of expected benefits. Social factors are generally less associated with IPM technology adoption than either market or institutional factors. Management factors are not important for adoption of the IPM technologies evaluated for the cowpea crop, while with groundnut IPM practices, no social or institutional factors are found to be important. High expected/potential benefits from the groundnut IPM technologies increase the probability of their adoption, as does the availability of off-farm income and farmers' membership in farm organizations. Generally high levels of adoption (>75%) were observed with crop rotation, and improved varieties. Other technologies registered low levels of adoption (<25%), the least popular being the application of fertilizer on sorghum fields.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Stuttering Intervention in Three Service Delivery Models (Direct, Hybrid, and Telepractice): Two Case Studies

This study assessed outcomes in stuttering intervention across three service delivery models: direct, hybrid, and telepractice for two 11-year old children who stutter. The goal of the study was to investigate whether short-term goals were maintained through the telepractice sessions. The Stuttering Severity Instrument, Fourth Edition (SSI-4) was administered to each child before and after each intervention period and weekly fluency samples (percentage of stuttered syllables in a monologue) were obtained in each of the 10-week intervention periods. In addition, the Communication Attitudes Test-Revised was used to assess the children’s attitudes toward speaking. Following the telepractice period, parents and children completed a questionnaire concerning the therapy experience via telepractice. Both children continued to improve fluency as measured by the weekly fluency samples. SSI-4 severity ratings improved for one child and remained consistent for the other. These outcomes appear to demonstrate that telepractice is viable for improving and maintaining fluency

Audio Fingerprinting to Identify Multiple Videos of an Event

The proliferation of consumer recording devices and video sharing websites makes the possibility of having access to multiple recordings of the same occurrence increasingly likely. These co-synchronous recordings can be identified via their audio tracks, despite local noise and channel variations. We explore a robust fingerprinting strategy to do this. Matching pursuit is used to obtain a sparse set of the most prominent elements in a video soundtrack. Pairs of these elements are hashed and stored, to be efficiently compared with one another. This fingerprinting is tested on a corpus of over 700 YouTube videos related to the 2009 U.S. presidential inauguration. Reliable matching of identical events in different recordings is demonstrated, even under difficult conditions

Audio Fingerprinting to Identify Multiple Videos of an Event

The proliferation of consumer recording devices and video sharing websites makes the possibility of having access to multiple recordings of the same occurrence increasingly likely. These co-synchronous recordings can be identified via their audio tracks, despite local noise and channel variations. We explore a robust fingerprinting strategy to do this. Matching pursuit is used to obtain a sparse set of the most prominent elements in a video soundtrack. Pairs of these elements are hashed and stored, to be efficiently compared with one another. This fingerprinting is tested on a corpus of over 700 YouTube videos related to the 2009 U.S. presidential inauguration. Reliable matching of identical events in different recordings is demonstrated, even under difficult conditions

Impact of Storage Conditions on the Physical Properties and Cooking Characteristics of Two Bean Varieties Grown in Kenya

Common beans are highly nutritious and widely consumed in Kenya. Storage of common beans under adverse conditions of high temperature and high humidity renders them susceptible to the hard-to-cook (HTC) defect. This results in increased cooking time, fuel and water use which has a negative effect on acceptability and utilization of beans. The objective of this study was to determine effects of storage temperature and relative humidity on development of the HTC defect in Rose coco and Red Kidney bean varieties. Bean samples were obtained from Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (K ALRO) - Thika. The beans were stored at varying temperature (25ºC, 35˚ C and 45˚ C) and relative humidity (RH=75% and 83%) combinations. Apart from beans stored at 25ºC/75%, samples from each treatment condition were sampled after every two months and analyzed for physical properties. Soaking pretreatments in deionized water, sodium carbonate and calcium chloride solutions were carried out to determine their effect on the cooking time. There was a significant increase in conductivity and leached solutes paralleled by decreasing hydration and swelling coefficients with increasing storage time under all the storage conditions. Characteristic dimensions and one hundred seed weight were not significantly different among the bean varieties under various storage conditions. Moisture uptake reduced by 19% for Rose coco and 23% for Red kidney under 35˚C/83%  storage whereas 45˚C/75% had a 29% reduction for Rose coco and 39% reduction for Red kidney over the 6 months storage period. Cooking time increased for all the bean varieties with increasing storage time, the most pronounced increase (100%) being observed at 45˚C and 75% RH. Across the 6 months storage period, Na2CO3 soaking pretreatment reduced the cooking time by 75% for Rose coco and 70% for Red kidney in comparison to beans cooked without prior soaking. Based on the results of this study, it was concluded that storage under high temperature and relative humidity conditions accelerated the development of the HTC defect in beans resulting in changes in physical and cooking properties. Keywords: hard-to-cook, storage, physical properties, cooking qualit

On double access, cessation and parentheticality

Arguably the biggest challenge in analyzing English tense is to account for the double access interpretation, which arises when a present tensed verb is embedded under a past attitude—e.g., "John said that Mary is pregnant". Present-under-past does not always result in a felicitous utterance, however—cf. "John believed that Mary is pregnant". While such oddity has been noted, the contrast has never been explained. In fact, English grammars and manuals generally prohibit present-under-past. Work on double access, on the other hand, has either disregarded the oddity (e.g., Abusch 1997: 39) or treated it as a reflex of a particular dialect (e.g., Kratzer 1998: 14). The goal of the paper is to argue—based on a corpus study—that a present-under-past sentence is grammatical, but modulated by two, interacting pragmatic phenomena: cessation and parentheticality