Can children with speech difficulties process an unfamiliar accent?

This study explores the hypothesis that children identified as having phonological processing problems may have particular difficulty in processing a different accent. Children with speech difficulties (n = 18) were compared with matched controls on four measures of auditory processing. First, an accent auditory lexical decision task was administered. In one condition, the children made lexical decisions about stimuli presented in their own accent (London). In the second condition, the stimuli were spoken in an unfamiliar accent (Glaswegian). The results showed that the children with speech difficulties had a specific deficit on the unfamiliar accent. Performance on the other auditory discrimination tasks revealed additional deficits at lower levels of input processing. The wider clinical implications of the findings are considered

The Effect of Website Quality on Information Disclosure: A Cue Utilization Theory Perspective

As shopping through e-commerce portals continues to grow, personal information disclosure is becoming morecommonplace. The proposed research employs Cue Utilization Theory (CUT) to better understand how extrinsic cues,intrinsic cues, or a combination of both, influence truthful consumer disclosure of personal demographic information. Thetwo relevant cues used in the study are security features (website seals and security statements) and website visual appeal(VAP). Two studies, a lab experiment and a field study utilizing a snowball sample, will expose subjects to mock-up ecommercesites that vary high and low components of the cues and present a shopping simulation to determine the cues’influence on truthful disclosure decisions. We posit that VAP will drive stronger predictive and critical values than securityfeatures, thereby having greater impact on truthful disclosure. Results from these two studies will be presented at theconference. Contributions and limitations of the proposed research are discussed

Kinetics of reduction of a Resazurin-based photocatalytic activity ink

The kinetics of reduction of a Resazurin, Rz,-based photocatalyst activity indicator ink, paii, on a commercial sample of self-cleaning glass, Activ™ is examined; the latter has ca. a 15nm compact coating of anatase TiO2 which serves as the active photocatalyst layer. The rate of dye reduction is reduced significantly by the presence of ambient O2. In the absence of O2, the measured change in film absorbance due to Rz, d Δ Abs/dt, was found to be independent of both [Rz] and film thickness, b. It is shown that this translates to the rate of dye reduction, d[Rz]/dt, being independent of the concentration of the Rz in the ink film, [Rz], and inversely proportional to film thickness, b. The observed kinetics are rationalised in terms of a kinetic model in which the rate determining step is the reduction of photocatalyst surface-adsorbed Rz by photo-generated surface electrons, with all photocatalyst surface sites occupied by Rz. Further work suggests that, if the kinetics of the photocatalysed reduction of the Rz paii were diffusion-controlled, then the decay in [Rz] would be first order and dependent upon b-2

The Buck Stops There: The Impact of Perceived Accountability and Control on the Intention to Delegate to Software Agents

Software agents with the ability to recommend actions, aid decision-making, and actually make decisions are becoming increasingly common. In many situations, users now choose whether or not to delegate tasks to these agents. While some research has examined software agents, relatively little is known about the factors that influence the intention to delegate decisions to them. An experiment was used to examine the influence of perceived accountability, extent of control, and trust in the agent on the intention to delegate a travel arrangement decision. Users were more likely to delegate to agents that gave them greater control by requiring them to approve the agent’s recommendation before the decision was completed than to agents that performed the task autonomously without intervention after it was delegated. Contrary to expectations, intention to delegate increased as perceived accountability increased. Participants may perceive delegation as a means to shift blame from themselves to the agent and thus mitigate risk resulting from potential negative decision outcomes

Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) ISS Year-Three: Technology Demonstration, Utilization, and Potential Future Applications

Bigelow Expandable Activity Module's (BEAM) life has been extended and in addition to being a test bed of the first human-rated expandable space module, BEAM will be utilized as an ISS stowage module. Hear about BEAM's on-orbit performance as well as highlights of BEAM's use on ISS as a technology demonstration