A conditional indirect effect of language brokering on adjustment among Chinese and Korean American adolescents : the roles of perceived maternal sacrifice, respect for the mother, and mother-child open communication

textAsian American adolescents, such as Chinese and Korean American adolescents, often language broker for their immigrant parents. This study examines how language brokering influences parent-child relationships and adolescents' psychological adjustment in Asian-American families. Using a two-wave sample of Chinese (n = 237; average age = 14.65, SD = .68) and Korean (n = 262; average age = 14.72, SD = .69) American adolescents, this study examined a culturally relevant conditional mechanism through which language brokering may contribute to lower levels of internalizing/externalizing problems. Results suggested that language brokering for the mother was associated with perceived maternal sacrifice, which was in turn associated with respect for the mother, which was eventually associated with lower levels of externalizing problems (but not internalizing problems) in the adolescents. Moreover, the indirect effect was conditional on the level of mother-child open communication. With a lower level of open communication, the indirect effect of language brokering on externalizing problems became stronger. Results indicate that interventions designed to reduce Asian American adolescent language brokers' externalizing problems can target their perception of parental sacrifice and their respect for parents, and that this approach may be especially effective for adolescents experiencing a low level of parent-child open communication. At the same time, for these families with low levels of parent-child open communication, encouraging more open communication may be an additional way to intervene.Human Development and Family Science

Praxis of Jose Marti: Politico Literary Discourse and Agency for Independence Movement

This article explores Jose Marti’s political mobilization in general and extrapolates Marti’s praxis specifically. A multifold analysis is conducted as follows: first, the analysis explores the narrative of Jose Marti regarding the development of his consciousness and his role in changing the historical trajectory of Cuba; second, the analysis examines Marti’s political praxis in engaging with the geopolitical semiotic field and mobilizing Cuban cultural communities for the Cuban War of Independence

Simulating dysarthric speech for training data augmentation in clinical speech applications

Training machine learning algorithms for speech applications requires large, labeled training data sets. This is problematic for clinical applications where obtaining such data is prohibitively expensive because of privacy concerns or lack of access. As a result, clinical speech applications are typically developed using small data sets with only tens of speakers. In this paper, we propose a method for simulating training data for clinical applications by transforming healthy speech to dysarthric speech using adversarial training. We evaluate the efficacy of our approach using both objective and subjective criteria. We present the transformed samples to five experienced speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and ask them to identify the samples as healthy or dysarthric. The results reveal that the SLPs identify the transformed speech as dysarthric 65% of the time. In a pilot classification experiment, we show that by using the simulated speech samples to balance an existing dataset, the classification accuracy improves by about 10% after data augmentation.Comment: Will appear in Proc. of ICASSP 201

The Agricultural Deities of Q ’Eqchi’ Mayas, Tzuultaq’as: Agricultural Rituals as Historical Obligation and Avatar of the Cultural Reservoir in Rural Lanquín , Alta Verapaz, Guatemala

This study, based on fieldwork in rural Lanquín, Guatemala, discusses cultural continuity and the sense of historicity through agricultural rituals and worship of the agricultural deity Tzuultaq’as. The place, Lanquín, and the Q’eqchi’ Maya peasant farmers are situated within a two-fold tension and contradiction. Geographically remote in relation to the economic centers in Guatemala, and marginal in infrastructural development, while their cash crop harvests never fail to be effected by the fluctuations of the global market. From the eclectic stance merging both theories of cultural essentialism and constructivism, by juxtaposing the emblematic event of the anti-Monsanto Law movement in 2014 in Guatemala, and by the calendrical cycles of ritual events, routines, and ceremonials in rural Lanquín, the subsistence practices of milpa (corn field) cultivation emerge as a central theme for cultural survival and continuity. The aggregated clusters of ritual processions and the system of symbolism used manifest the Q’eqchi’ peasant thought and practice of sustainability and conservancy in their construction of a modern cultural identity that maintains congruency with the cultural essence of a nativist identity

Tones in Zhangzhou: Pitch and Beyond

This study draws on various approaches—field linguistics; auditory and acoustic phonetics; and statistics—to explore and explain the nature of Zhangzhou tones, an under-described Southern Min variety. Several original findings emerged from the analyses of the data from 21 speakers. The realisations of Zhangzhou tones are multidimensional. The single parameter of pitch/F0 is not sufficient to characterise tonal contrasts in either monosyllabic or polysyllabic settings in Zhangzhou. Instead, various parameters, including pitch/F0, duration, vowel quality, voice quality, and syllable coda type, interact in a complicated but consistent way to code tonal distinctions. Zhangzhou has eight tones rather than seven tones as proposed in previous studies. This finding resulted from examining the realisations of diverse parameters across three different contexts—isolation, phrase-initial, and phrase-final—, rather than classifying tones in citation and in terms of the preservation of Middle Chinese tonal categories. Tonal contrasts in Zhangzhou can be neutralised across different linguistic contexts. Identifying the number of tonal contrasts based simply on tonal realisations in the citation environment is not sufficient. Instead, examining tonal realisations across different linguistic contexts beyond monosyllables is imperative for understanding the nature of tone. Tone sandhi in Zhangzhou is syntactically relevant. The tone sandhi domain is not phonologically determined but rather is aligned with a syntactic phrase XP. Within a given XP, the realisations of the tones at non-phrase-final positions undergo alternation phonologically and phonetically. Nevertheless, the alterations are sensitive only to the phrase boundaries and are not affected by the internal structure of syntactic phrases. Tone sandhi in Zhangzhou is phonologically inert but phonetically sensitive. The realisations of Zhangzhou tones in disyllabic phrases are not categorically affected by their surrounding tones but are phonetically sensitive to surrounding environments. For instance, the pitch/F0 onsets of phrase-final tones are largely sensitive to pitch/F0 offsets of preceding tones and appear to have diverse variants. The mappings between Zhangzhou citation and disyllabic tones are morphologically conditioned. Phrase-initial tones are largely not related to the citation tones at either the phonological or the phonetic level while phrase-final tones are categorically related to the citation tones but phonetically are not quite the same because of predictable sensitivity to surrounding environments. Each tone in Zhangzhou can be regarded as a single morpheme having two alternating allomorphs (tonemes), one for non-phrase-final variants and one for variants in citation and phrase-final contexts, both of which are listed in the mental lexicon of native Zhangzhou speakers but are phonetically distant on the surface. In summary, the realisations of Zhangzhou tones are multidimensional, involving a variety of segmental and suprasegmental parameters. The interactions of Zhangzhou tones are complicated, involving phonetics, phonology, syntax, and morphology. Neutralisation of Zhangzhou tonal contrasts occurs across different contexts, including citation, phrase-final, and non-phrase-final. Thus, researchers must go beyond pitch to understand tone thoroughly as a phenomenon in Southern Min

The Agricultural Deities of Q’eqchi’ Mayas, Tzuultag’as: Agricultural Rituals as Historical Obligation and Avatar of the Cultural Reservoir in Rural Lanquín, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala

This study, based on fieldwork in rural Lanquín, Guatemala, discusses cultural continuity and the sense of historicity through agricultural rituals and worship of the agricultural deity Tzuultaq’as. The place, Lanquín, and the Q’eqchi’ Maya peasant farmers are situated within a two-fold tension and contradiction. Geographically remote in relation to the economic centers in Guatemala, and marginal in infrastructural development, while their cash crop harvests never fail to be effected by the fluctuations of the global market. From the eclectic stance merging both theories of cultural essentialism and constructivism, by juxtaposing the emblematic event of the anti-Monsanto Law movement in 2014 in Guatemala, and by the calendrical cycles of ritual events, routines, and ceremonials in rural Lanquín, the subsistence practices of milpa (corn field) cultivation emerge as a central theme for cultural survival and continuity. The aggregated clusters of ritual processions and the system of symbolism used manifest the Q’eqchi’ peasant thought and practice of sustainability and conservancy in their construction of a modern cultural identity that maintains congruency with the cultural essence of a nativist identity

Transformable Space Based on Human Body Movement

Due to the increase in urban population and the rising cost of providing housing, the size and quality of dwelling space in the city has become an issue. Asian cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo have already shrunk the normal living space to accommodate more units in a development. Taipei, Singapore, and Shanghai are also evolving toward the same solution. This dissertation argues that there are alternative ways to design and reshape our dwelling space to create an efficient space based on human body movement and at the same time retain spatial quality . Dance can be seen as creating extreme body movements compared to our daily movement, so the hypothesis of this dissertation is that if a space can accommodate dance movement, then most likely it will be a comfortable space for daily movement. The study begins with a historical research of space, including the concept of space, human use of space, and body movement in the space. Rudolf Laban’s theory of dance movement is one of the main ideas investigated and reinterpreted for the research and design dissertation. To understand the human daily movement, data gathering is key to the thesis. The subjects of study are from both dance body movement and daily body movement. A videotaping process is used to record these movements. During the data collecting process, both two dimensional and four dimensional methods are used. The first phase records the body movements and translates these into two dimensional images. These images are simulated into three dimensional representations. In the design phase, computer models are made with Rhinoceros, Maya, 3D Studio Max, and MotionBuilder to simulate the new space prototype and body movements based on the analyzed information to create more efficient spaces that also provide a better quality living environment. 1 For the purpose of this study, spatial quality is defined as visual experience, lighting quality, and ventilation quality. 2Four dimensional is a combination of three dimension and the time factor, can also be called 3D animation

Travel as a Ritual Toward Transformative Consciousness: Juxtaposing Che Guevara’s Biography and Teacher Candidates’ Narratives

This article discusses the development of critical consciousness by examining the biographical-narratives in relationship to the experiential accounts on travel. Biographical narratives are important cultural texts filled with history and cultural nuances. The biography of Ernesto Che Guevara has resonated with readers and viewers from around the world. By dreaming seemingly impossible dreams and garnering triumph in the face of mounting obstacles, Che has inspired the generations that have followed him. The life of Che, which is a myth of idealism, has captivated the hearts of many around the globe. This paper engages in the process of reading student narratives along with Che Guevara’s biography and diaries. The analysis reveals a common pattern of experiences. Similar to the rites of passage in human development, the themes that emerge across the two sets of texts involve intellectual growth, psychological maturity, and awakening of consciousness

Complex effects of language brokering among Chinese immigrant families : integrating variable-centered and person-centered approaches

Children and adolescents in linguistic minority families, such as Chinese American families, often serve as language brokers; that is, they are the translators or interpreters for their parents who have limited English proficiency. Despite a growing number of scholarly investigations on language brokering, evidence regarding its developmental outcomes remains mixed. To disentangle the complex effects of language brokering, two separate but complementary studies were conducted. Specifically, Study 1 took a variable-centered approach and examined the mechanisms of the complex effects of language brokering frequency, while Study 2 took a person-centered approach and explored subgroups of language brokers based on language brokering feelings and identified predictors and outcomes of subgroup memberships (including a known subgroup of non-brokers). Participants were Chinese American adolescents (N = 252 for Study 1; N = 394 for Study 2 including non-brokers) residing in Northern California who were surveyed when they were in high school (T1; Mage = 17.0; SD = 0.73; 61% female) and again four years later (T2). In Study 1, it was found that frequent language brokering for mothers was associated with brokering-related maternal dependence, which was in turn simultaneously associated with both brokering-related mother-child mutual regard and mother-child role reversal across language brokers’ adolescence and emerging adulthood. In addition, the positive impact of frequent language brokering diminished when language brokers did not perceive warmth from their mothers’ parenting behaviors. In Study 2, two distinct subgroups of adolescent language brokers were identified using latent profile analyses based on language brokering feelings: efficacious brokers and burdened brokers. A key predictor that distinguished the two language broker groups was bilingual proficiency, such that those who were proficient in both English and Chinese were more likely to be efficacious brokers. Moreover, compared to non-brokers, efficacious brokers were not significantly affected by or even benefitted from translating, while burdened brokers’ parent-child relationships and psychosocial well-being were at risk due to brokering. Finally, the majority of adolescents remained in the same subgroups over time, and those who were burdened at both times and those who later became burdened showed poorer adjustment in emerging adulthood than other subgroups.Human Development and Family Science