Semantic and inferencing abilities in children with communication disorders

Background: Semantic and inferencing abilities have not been fully examined in children with communication difficulties. Aims: To investigate the inferential and semantic abilities of children with communication difficulties using newly designed tasks. Methods & Procedures: Children with different types of communication disorder were compared with each other and with three groups of typically developing children: those of the same chronological age and two groups of younger children. In total, 25 children aged 11 years with specific language impairment and 22 children, also 11 years of age, with primary pragmatic difficulties were recruited. Typically developing groups aged 11 (n = 35; age‐match), and those aged 9 (n = 40) and 7 (n = 37; language similar) also participated as comparisons. Outcomes & Results: For Semantic Choices, children with specific language impairment performed significantly more poorly than 9‐ and 11‐year‐olds, whilst the pragmatic difficulties group scored significantly lower than all the typically developing groups. Borderline differences between specific language impairment and pragmatic difficulties groups were found. For inferencing, children with communication impairments performed significantly below the 11‐year‐old peers, but not poorer than 9‐ and 7‐year‐olds, suggesting that this skill is in line with language ability. Six children in the pragmatic difficulties group who met diagnosis for autism performed more poorly than the other two clinical groups on both tasks, but not statistically significantly so. Conclusions: Both tasks were more difficult for those with communication impairments compared with peers. Semantic but not inferencing abilities showed a non‐significant trend for differences between the two clinical groups and children with pragmatic difficulties performed more poorly than all typically developing groups. The tasks may relate to each other in varying ways according to type of communication difficulty

Semantic and inferencing abilities in children with communication disorders

Background: Semantic and inferencing abilities have not been fully examined in children with communication difficulties. Aims: To investigate the inferential and semantic abilities of children with communication difficulties using newly designed tasks. Methods & Procedures: Children with different types of communication disorder were compared with each other and with three groups of typically developing children: those of the same chronological age and two groups of younger children. In total, 25 children aged 11 years with specific language impairment and 22 children, also 11 years of age, with primary pragmatic difficulties were recruited. Typically developing groups aged 11 (n = 35; age‐match), and those aged 9 (n = 40) and 7 (n = 37; language similar) also participated as comparisons. Outcomes & Results: For Semantic Choices, children with specific language impairment performed significantly more poorly than 9‐ and 11‐year‐olds, whilst the pragmatic difficulties group scored significantly lower than all the typically developing groups. Borderline differences between specific language impairment and pragmatic difficulties groups were found. For inferencing, children with communication impairments performed significantly below the 11‐year‐old peers, but not poorer than 9‐ and 7‐year‐olds, suggesting that this skill is in line with language ability. Six children in the pragmatic difficulties group who met diagnosis for autism performed more poorly than the other two clinical groups on both tasks, but not statistically significantly so. Conclusions: Both tasks were more difficult for those with communication impairments compared with peers. Semantic but not inferencing abilities showed a non‐significant trend for differences between the two clinical groups and children with pragmatic difficulties performed more poorly than all typically developing groups. The tasks may relate to each other in varying ways according to type of communication difficulty

Hidden communication aspects in the exponent of Zipf's law

This article focuses on communication systems following Zipf’s law, in a study of the rel-ationship between the properties of those communication systems and the exponent of the law. The properties of communication systems are described using quantitative measures of semantic vagueness and the cost of word use. The precision and the economy of a communication system is reduced to a function of the exponent of Zipf’s law and the size of the communication system. Taking the exponent of the frequency spectrum, it is demonstrated that semantic precision grows with the exponent, where-as the cost of word use reaches a global minimum between 1.5 and 2, if the size of the communication system remains constant. The exponent of Zipf’s law is shown to be a key aspect for knowing about the number of stimuli handled by a communication system, and determining which of two systems is less vague or less expensive. The ideal exponent of Zipf’s law, it is therefore argued, should be very slightly above 2.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Building a family ontology to meet consistency criteria

Semantic web is an extension of the current web in which the existing information on the web are organized and encoded more meaningfully using ontology language, thus enabling effective communication among machines and humans. Ontology is the backbone of the semantic web that contributes to knowledge sharing among intended parties over distributed systems around the world. In the past few years, semantic web has been widely accepted by a variety of fields for better knowledge representation, communication, sharing and reasoning on the web. Now, there are existing genealogical ontologies proposed by different groups of researchers once semantic web has emerged as third generation of the web. However, existing ontologies still lack certain important concepts and properties to support the domain of family relations. This may lead to the inability of the ontology to deliver full potential of exchanging family history information among all interested parties. Moreover, existing ontologies do not employ the full potential of SWRL rules to reason the individuals within the ontology. The main aim of this research is to build a new Family Ontology which obeys the consistency criteria. Consistency checking ensures there are no contradictory concepts found within the resulting ontology. The consistency of Family Ontology will be evaluated using FACT++, HermiT and Pellet reasoners. By augmenting the additional axioms and testing the resulting ontology thoroughly using reasoner tools, the proposed Family Ontology is expected to achieve a consistency of 100%.This research is meaningful and significant to all humans since everyone has his or her own unique family history. The proposed ontology also facilitates effective and efficient communication among all intended parties since shared vocabularies and standards are employed by the proposed ontology