Public Day Care and Female Labor Force Participation: Evidence from Chile

Public day care centers in Chile have increased in 240% between 2005 and 2007. This paper uses this huge increase in public day care supply for infants of poor families to analyze its impact on Female Labor Force Participation. The magnitude of the expansion is used as a quasi-natural experiment, where different geographic areas and income groups were affected differently. Using mean differences I find a positive effect on Labor Force Participation of 2.6-10 percentage points which coincides with previous findings for Chile and the local policy common sense. After control- ling for observable individual and family characteristics I don’t find any significant effect for the eligible mothers. As a robustness check I also use alternative outcome measures like employment and hours of work and I am not able to find a positive statistically significant effect. Therefore, I conclude that it is not possible yet to infer that this policy has had this desired effect.Female Labor Force, Child Care, Fertility and Labor Supply.

Linking adult second language learning and diachronic change:a cautionary note

It has been suggested that the morphological complexity of a language is negatively correlated with the size of its population of speakers. This relationship may be driven by the proportion of non-native speakers, among other things, and reflects adaptations to learning constraints imposed by adult language learners. Here we sound a note of caution with respect to these claims by arguing that (a) morphological complexity is defined in somewhat contradictory ways and hence not straightforward to measure, and (b) there is insufficient evidence to suggest that children’s cognitive limitations support mechanisms beneficial for learning of complex morphology relative to adults. We suggest that considering the informational value of morphological cues may be a better way to capture learnability of morphology. To settle the issue of how age related constraints on learning might impact language change, more cross-linguistic studies comparing learning trajectories of different second languages and laboratory experiments examining language transmission in children and adults are needed

More is more in language learning:reconsidering the less-is-more hypothesis

The Less-is-More hypothesis was proposed to explain age-of-acquisition effects in first language (L1) acquisition and second language (L2) attainment. We scrutinize different renditions of the hypothesis by examining how learning outcomes are affected by (1) limited cognitive capacity, (2) reduced interference resulting from less prior knowledge, and (3) simplified language input. While there is little-to-no evidence of benefits of limited cognitive capacity, there is ample support for a More-is-More account linking enhanced capacity with better L1- and L2-learning outcomes, and reduced capacity with childhood language disorders. Instead, reduced prior knowledge (relative to adults) may afford children with greater flexibility in inductive inference; this contradicts the idea that children benefit from a more constrained hypothesis space. Finally, studies of childdirected speech (CDS) confirm benefits from less complex input at early stages, but also emphasize how greater lexical and syntactic complexity of the input confers benefits in L1-attainment

How are exemplar representations transformed by encoding, retrieval, and explicit knowledge? A commentary on Ambridge (2020)

The radical exemplar model resonates with work on perceptual classification and categorization highlighting the role of exemplars in memory representations. Further development of the model requires acknowledgment of both the fleeting and fragile nature of perceptual representations and the gist-based, good-enough quality of long-term memory representations. Retrieval operations potentially serve as a mechanism for abstraction as representations of exemplars are distorted through reconstructive processes. As a framework applicable to both first and second language acquisition, the model needs to account for how explicit knowledge arises and its role in filtering input via selective attention

Distributional effects and individual differences in L2 morphology learning

Second language (L2) learning outcomes may depend on the structure of the input and learners’ cognitive abilities. This study tested whether less predictable input might facilitate learning and generalization of L2 morphology while evaluating contributions of statistical learning ability, nonverbal intelligence, phonological short-term memory, and verbal working memory. Over three sessions, 54 adults were exposed to a Russian case-marking paradigm with a balanced or skewed item distribution in the input. Whereas statistical learning ability and nonverbal intelligence predicted learning of trained items, only nonverbal intelligence also predicted generalization of case-marking inflections to new vocabulary. Neither measure of temporary storage capacity predicted learning. Balanced, less predictable input was associated with higher accuracy in generalization but only in the initial test session. These results suggest that individual differences in pattern extraction play a more sustained role in L2 acquisition than instructional manipulations that vary the predictability of lexical items in the input

Acquisition of gender agreement in Lithuanian:exploring the effect of diminutive usage in an elicited production task

This study examines Lithuanian children's acquisition of gender agreement using an elicited production task. Lithuanian is a richly inflected Baltic language, with two genders and seven cases. Younger (N=24, mean 3;1, 2;5–3;8) and older (N=24, mean 6;3, 5;6–6;9) children were shown pictures of animals and asked to describe them after hearing the animal's name. Animal names differed with respect to familiarity (novel vs. familiar), derivational status (diminutive vs. simplex) and gender (masculine vs. feminine). Analyses of gender-agreement errors based on adjective and pronoun usage indicated that younger children made more errors than older children, with errors more prevalent for novel animal names. For novel animals, and for feminine nouns, children produced fewer errors with nouns introduced in diminutive form. These results complement findings from several Slavic languages (Russian, Serbian and Polish) that diminutives constitute a salient cluster of word forms that may provide an entry point for the child's acquisition of noun morphology

The Control and Coercion of Disabled Individuals: The Injustice of Legal Violence of Medical and Pharmaceutical Interventions

Since early asylums, people with disabilities and psychiatric disorders were disproportionately institutionalized and coerced to harmful treatment. Today, the same people are disproportionately incarcerated, sharing similar values once held by asylums. Ableist and disablist practices must be accounted for to address the injustice faced by disabled people and people with psychiatric disorders. Using criminological frameworks, this paper studies the surveillance and loss of autonomy disabled people and people with psychiatric disorders face in favour of goverment power and control.&nbsp

2D spin-orbit-coupled frustrated magnets

The dissertation presents the complete way from the synthesis over the structural characterization to the thermodynamic properties of two compounds based on Ru, Na2RuO3 and Na3RuO4, and of two compounds based on Co, Na2BaCo(PO4)2 and Na2SrCo(PO4)2. The individual interplay of Hund’s coupling, spin-orbit coupling, and crystal field effects governs the magnetism in these compounds. In Na2RuO3 the Ru ions form a honeycomb lattice. Temperature dependent heat capacity and magnetization measurements point towards a spin-orbit entangled J=0 ground state. Excitations from the non-magnetic ground state to higher lying J levels were spectroscopically detected. In Na3RuO4 triangular features are found on two different length scales. The edge-shared RuO6 octahedra form tetramers which are composed of two triangles and the tetramers form a secondary triangular lattice. With neutron diffraction it was shown that the tetramers are antiferromagnetic units and competing exchange interactions on the secondary triangular lattice lead to an incommensurately modulated magnetic structure. The Co ions with effective spin 1/2 in Na2BaCo(PO4)2 form a direct triangular lattice. The compound was presented as quantum spin liquid candidate in the literature. However, the data shown in this work reveal a phase transition at around 150 mK and heat capacity and direction dependent magnetization data are accurately described with the nearest neighbor XXZ model. Based on the analysis of the temperature dependent synchrotron powder diffraction data the space group was revised to P-3 and structural dynamics were shown to be present. This was confirmed by NMR measurements. The compound was further compared to Na2SrCo(PO4)2 with a monoclinic symmetry and the structural differences were directly related to the differences of the thermodynamic properties.Die Doktorarbeit präsentiert den Weg von der Synthese über die strukturelle Charakterisierung zu den thermodynamischen Eigenschaften zweier Verbindungen basierend auf Ru, Na2RuO3 und Na3RuO4, und zweier Verbindungen basierend auf Co, Na2BaCo(PO4)2 und Na2SrCo(PO4)2. Das individuelle Zusammenspiel von Hundscher Kopplung, Spin-Bahn-Kopplung und Kristallfeldeffekten bestimmt den Magnetismus in diesen Verbindungen. In Na2RuO3 formen die Ru Ionen ein Honigwabengitter. Temperaturabhängige Wärmekapazitäts- und Magnetisierungsmessungen deuten einen Spin-Bahn gekoppelten J=0 Grundzustand an. Anregungen vom nicht magnetischen Grundzustand zu energetisch höher gelegenen J Niveaus wurden spektroskopisch nachgewiesen. In Na3RuO4 ist das Motiv des Dreiecks auf zwei Längenskalen zu finden. Die über die Kanten verknüpften RuO6 Oktaeder formen Tetramere, die aus zwei Dreiecken zusammengesetzt sind. Die Tetramere bilden ein sekundäres Dreiecksgitter. Mit Hilfe von Neutronendiffraktometrie wurde gezeigt, dass die Tetramere antiferromagnetische Einheiten sind und dass konkurrierende Wechselwirkungen auf dem sekundären Dreiecksgitter zu einer inkommensurablen magnetischen Struktur führen. In Na2BaCo(PO4)2 formen die Co Ionen mit effektivem Spin 1/2 ein direktes Dreiecksgitter. Die Verbindung wurde als Quantenspinflüssigkeit in der Literatur vorgestellt. Allerdings zeigen die Daten, die in dieser Arbeit präsentiert werden, einen Phasenübergang bei einer Temperatur von circa 150 mK. Die Daten aus Wärmekapazitäts- und richtungsabhängigen Magnetisierungsmessungen können mit dem XXZ Model für nächste Nachbarn beschrieben werden. Die Analyse der Daten aus Pulver-Synchrotron Messungen ergab, dass die Raumgruppe zu P-3 revidiert werden muss und es wurde gezeigt, dass strukturelle Dynamiken vorliegen. Dies wurde durch NMR Messungen bestätigt. Die Verbindung wurde außerdem mit Na2SrCo(PO4)2 verglichen. Na2SrCo(PO4)2 hat eine monokline Symmetrie und die strukturellen Unterschiede wurden direkt mit den Unterschieden der thermodynamischen Eigenschaften in Verbindung gebracht

Children’s tolerance of word-form variation

How much morphological variation can children tolerate when identifying familiar words? This is an important question in the context of the acquisition of richly inflected languages where identical word forms occur far less frequently than in English. To address this question, we compared children’s (N = 96, mean age 4;1, range 2;11–5;1) and adults’ (N = 96, mean age 21 years) tolerance of word-onset modifications (e.g., for stug: wug and wastug) and pseudoaffixes (e.g., kostug and stugko) in a labelextension task. Word-form modifications were repeated within each experiment to establish productive inflectional patterns. In two experiments, children and adults exhibited similar strategies: they were more tolerant of prefixes (wastug) than substitutions of initial consonants (wug), and more tolerant of suffixes (stugko) than prefixes (kostug). The findings point to word-learning strategies as being flexible and adaptive to morphological patterns in languages