Seeing a talking face matters: Infants' segmentation of continuous auditory-visual speech

Visual speech cues from a speaker's talking face aid speech segmentation in adults, but despite the importance of speech segmentation in language acquisition, little is known about the possible influence of visual speech on infants' speech segmentation. Here, to investigate whether there is facilitation of speech segmentation by visual information, two groups of English-learning 7-month-old infants were presented with continuous speech passages, one group with auditory-only (AO) speech and the other with auditory-visual (AV) speech. Additionally, the possible relation between infants' relative attention to the speaker's mouth versus eye regions and their segmentation performance was examined. Both the AO and the AV groups of infants successfully segmented words from the continuous speech stream, but segmentation performance persisted for longer for infants in the AV group. Interestingly, while AV group infants showed no significant relation between the relative amount of time spent fixating the speaker's mouth versus eyes and word segmentation, their attention to the mouth was greater than that of AO group infants, especially early in test trials. The results are discussed in relation to the possible pathways through which visual speech cues aid speech perception.     

FIRM SURVIVAL,UNCERTAINTY, AND FINANCIAL FRICTIONS: IS THERE A FINANCIAL UNCERTAINTY ACCELERATOR?

Using a large panel of unquoted UK firms over the period 2000–2009, we examine the impact of firm‐specific uncertainty on corporate failures. In this context we also distinguish between firms which are likely to be more or less dependent on bank finance as well as public and nonpublic companies. Our results document a significant effect of uncertainty on firm survival. This link is found to be more potent during the recent financial crisis compared with tranquil periods. We also uncover significant firm‐level heterogeneity because the survival chances of bank‐dependent and nonpublic firms are most affected by changes in uncertainty, especially during the recent global financial crisis. (JEL E44, F32, F34, G32)     

Living in the Now: Decision-Making and Delay Discounting in Adolescent Gamblers

Several studies examining the relationship of affective decision-making and delay discounting in disordered gambling demonstrated that adult pathological gamblers differ from healthy controls on both reward-related decision tasks. To date no study analyzed the relative contribution of these variables in adolescent gambling. This study was designed to compare affective decision-making and delay discounting in gamblers and nongamblers Italian adolescents, controlling for alcohol consumption. A total of 138 adolescents took part in the research. Two equal-number groups, defined according to the scoring rules for the South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised for Adolescents, were administered the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), the Monetary Choice Questionnaire (MCQ), and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). Zero-order correlations among all variables revealed a moderate negative association between IGT and MCQ scores only in nongamblers group. Results of mixed-model ANOVAs indicated that, compared with nongamblers, adolescent gamblers performed worse on the IGT, showed steeper delay discounting, and scored significantly higher on the AUDIT. Results of logistic regression analysis indicated that IGT, MCQ, and AUDIT scores are all significant predictors of gambling status. This novel finding provides the first evidence of an association among problematic gambling, maladaptive decision-making, and steep delay discounting among adolescents, as already observed in adults.     

Patterns of plant species diversity in deciduous woodlands of Kyiv,Ukraine

Urban Ecosystems - The present study is aimed at exploring native and alien plant species diversity patterns in distinct types of the urban forest environment by documenting differences in species...     

The mass class and teaching assistants: A case for discussion exercises

Sociology courses, particularly introductory courses, with 200 or more students are increasingly being offered in U.S. colleges and universities. Within the “mass class” structure, teaching assistants are often utilized to instruct students in smaller discussion sessions. This creates unique conditions of instruction for both professors and teaching assistants. For instance, professors are faced with coordinating teaching assistants’ activities, while teaching assistants need to develop skills relating to provoking discussion. Both must deal with effects of a hierarchy of instruction. After discussing these conditions we present structured classroom exercises that focus on sociological concepts typically presented in introductory courses to help teaching assistants create an engaging learning experience, attain teaching skills, and facilitate the professor’s coordination of instruction.     

Bias for Vocalic Over Consonantal Information in 6‐Month‐Olds

Human languages rely on the ability to learn and produce an indefinite number of words by combining consonants and vowels in a lawful manner. The categorization of speech representations into consonants and vowels is evidenced by the tendency of adult speakers, attested in many languages, to use consonants and vowels for different tasks. Consonants are favored in lexical tasks, while vowels are favored to learn structural regularities. Recent results suggest that this specialization is already observable at 12 months of age in Italian participants. Here, we investigated the representations of younger infants. In a series of anticipatory looking experiments, we showed that Italian 6‐month‐olds rely more on vowels than on consonants when learning the predictions made by individual words (Experiment 1) and are better at generalizing a structure when it is implemented over vowels than when it is implemented over consonants (Experiments 2 and 3). Until 6 months of age, infants thus show a general vocalic bias, which contrasts with the specialization previously observed at 12 months. These results suggest the format of speech representations changes during the second semester of life.     

Bullying and Victimization Among School-age Children: Stability and Links to Proactive and Reactive Aggression

The main aim of the study relates to the links between bullying and victimization on the one hand and reactive and proactive aggression on the other. In addition, we also investigated stability and incidence of bullying and victimization. At age 7, 236 children were rated on bullying and victimization using peer reports. At age 8, 242 children were rated again. Two hundred and fifteen children (114 girls and 101 boys) were present at both time points. Reactive and proactive aggression was assessed by teachers. The results showed that bullies and bully/victims were both reactively and proactively aggressive, while victims were only reactively aggressive. A moderate degree of stability of bullying and victimization was found, with bullying being more stable than victimization. Boys were more often bullies than girls and more stable than girls in victimization. Stable victims and stable bully/victims were more reactively aggressive than their unstable counterparts. The relevance of the outcomes to preventing future maladjustment and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Ecological resilience in urban ecosystems: Linking urban patterns to human and ecological functions

Urban ecosystems evolve over time and space as the outcome of dynamic interactions between socio-economic and biophysical processes operating over multiple scales. The ecological resilience of urban ecosystems—the degree to which they tolerate alteration before reorganizing around a new set of structures and processes—is influenced by these interactions. In cities and urbanizing areas fragmentation of natural habitats, simplification and homogenization of species composition, disruption of hydrological systems, and alteration of energy flow and nutrient cycling reduce cross-scale resilience, leaving systems increasingly vulnerable to shifts in system control and structure. Because varied urban development patterns affect the amount and interspersion of built and natural land cover, as well as the human demands on ecosystems differently, we argue that alternative urban patterns (i.e., urban form, land use distribution, and connectivity) generate varied effects on ecosystem dynamics and their ecological resilience. We build on urban economics, landscape ecology, population dynamics, and complex system science to propose a conceptual model and a set of hypotheses that explicitly link urban pattern to human and ecosystem functions in urban ecosystems. Drawing on preliminary results from an empirical study of the relationships between urban pattern and bird and aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity in the Puget Sound region, we propose that resilience in urban ecosystems is a function of the patterns of human activities and natural habitats that control and are controlled by both socio-economic and biophysical processes operating at various scales. We discuss the implications of this conceptual model for urban planning and design.     

Social support,the presence of barriers and ideas for the future from students with disabilities in the higher education system in Croatia

This paper examines how students with disabilities in Croatia perceive support, experience barriers and propose ways forward for equality of opportunities in the higher education system. In qualitative interviews, students were satisfied with the informal support they received from family and friends but dissatisfied with the formal support they received from universities and the government. Obstacles to inclusion included: inadequate transport and finance to attend university and minimal adaptation of buildings, toilets, lifts, classrooms and dormitories. Students proposed: investment in adapting buildings, personal assistants, educational grants and transport; coordination within the formal systems from national government to universities and non-governmental organisations; and measures to increase disability awareness for academics, professionals and other students within higher education. The situation for students with disabilities in Croatia is a reminder for those working in countries where policy and practice is relatively advanced that many disability battles are still to be won in newer nations.     

Outsourcing Manufacturing: Secure Price‐Masking Mechanisms for Purchasing Component Parts

This paper develops and tests a privacy‐preserving business process that supports the selection of a contract manufacturer by an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), and the determination of whether the OEM or the chosen contract manufacturer will procure each of the components to be used in the manufacture of the OEM's branded product. Our “secure price‐masking (SPM)” technology contributes to procurement theory and practice in four significant ways: First, it preserves the privacy of every party's individual component prices. Second, SPM assures that the contract manufacturers will bid their own private purchase cost (i.e., not add a margin to their cost). Third, SPM is not invertible; i.e., none of the participants can “solve” for the private inputs of any other participant based on its own inputs and the outputs provided to it by SPM. Fourth, the posterior distribution of any other participant's private inputs is practically indistinguishable from its prior distribution. We also describe the results of a proof‐of‐concept implementation.