Overcoming the Effects of Variation in Infant Speech Segmentation: Influences of Word Familiarity

Previous studies have shown that 7.5‐month‐olds can track and encode words in fluent speech, but they fail to equate instances of a word that contrast in talker gender, vocal affect, and fundamental frequency. By 10.5 months, they succeed at generalizing across such variability, marking a clear transition period during which infants' word recognition skills become qualitatively more mature. Here we explore the role of word familiarity in this critical transition and, in particular, whether words that occur frequently in a child's listening environment (i.e., “Mommy” and “Daddy”) are more easily recognized when they differ in surface characteristics than those that infants have not previously encountered (termed nonwords). Results demonstrate that words are segmented from continuous speech in a more linguistically mature fashion than nonwords at 7.5 months, but at 10.5 months, both words and nonwords are segmented in a relatively mature fashion. These findings suggest that early word recognition is facilitated in cases where infants have had significant exposure to items, but at later stages, infants are able to segment items regardless of their presumed familiarity.     

Deporting Fathers: Involuntary Transnational Families and Intent to Remigrate among Salvadoran Deportees

One‐fourth of deportees from the United States are parents of US‐citizen children. We do not know how separation from families affects remigration among deportees, who face high penalties given unlawful reentry. We examined how family separation affects intent to remigrate among Salvadoran deportees. The majority of deportees with children in the United States were also separated from their spouse, and the vast majority had US‐citizen children. Family separation was the single most important factor affecting intent to remigrate. We interpret these findings in light of immigration policy debates.     

Influences of Infant‐Directed Speech on Early Word Recognition

When addressing infants, many adults adopt a particular type of speech, known as infant‐directed speech (IDS). IDS is characterized by exaggerated intonation, as well as reduced speech rate, shorter utterance duration, and grammatical simplification. It is commonly asserted that IDS serves in part to facilitate language learning. Although intuitively appealing, direct empirical tests of this claim are surprisingly scarce. Additionally, studies that have examined associations between IDS and language learning have measured learning within a single laboratory session rather than the type of long‐term storage of information necessary for word learning. In this study, 7‐ and 8‐month‐old infants' long‐term memory for words was assessed when words were spoken in IDS and adult‐directed speech (ADS). Word recognition over the long term was successful for words introduced in IDS, but not for those introduced in ADS, regardless of the register in which recognition stimuli were produced. Findings are discussed in the context of the influence of particular input styles on emergent word knowledge in prelexical infants.     

Central limit theorems for functionals of large sample covariance matrix and mean vector in matrix‐variate location mixture of normal distributions

In this paper, we consider the asymptotic distributions of functionals of the sample covariance matrix and the sample mean vector obtained under the assumption that the matrix of observations has a matrix‐variate location mixture of normal distributions. The central limit theorem is derived for the product of the sample covariance matrix and the sample mean vector. Moreover, we consider the product of the inverse sample covariance matrix and the mean vector for which the central limit theorem is established as well. All results are obtained under the large‐dimensional asymptotic regime, where the dimension p and the sample size n approach infinity such that p/n→c ∈ [0, + ∞) when the sample covariance matrix does not need to be invertible and p/n→c ∈ [0,1) otherwise.     

The Effects of Recent Welfare and Immigration Reforms on Immigrants' Access to Health Care1

This study investigates the impact of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, both passed in 1996, on the use of health‐care services in immigrant communities in five Texas counties. The study presents findings of interviews with public agency officials, directors of community‐based organizations, and members of 500 households during two research phases, 1997–1998 and 1998–1999. In the household sample, 20 percent of U.S. citizens and 30 percent of legal permanent residents who reported having received Medicaid during the five years before they were interviewed also reported losing the coverage during the past year. Some lost coverage because of welfare reform restrictions on noncitizen eligibility or because of changes in income or household size, but many eligible immigrants also withdrew from Medicaid “voluntarily.”     

Career,Culture, and Compromise: Career Development Experiences of Latinas Working in Higher Education

The purpose of this exploratory ethnographic research project was to investigate the career development experiences of Latinas employed in counseling and faculty positions in higher education. The research reveals strong images of an inhospitable and nonsupportive place to work and suggests that Latina women are inhibited from achieving the same levels of success as men or other women in higher education. Implications for career development practitioners are provided.     

U.S. Deportation Policy,Family Separation,and Circular Migration

Since the mid‐1990s the United States has enacted a series of laws that make it easier to deport noncitizens. Drawing on findings from interviews with a random sample of 300 Salvadoran deportees, we examine how family relations, ties, remittance behavior, and settlement experiences are disrupted by deportation, and how these ties influence future migration intentions. We find that a significant number of deportees were long‐term settlers in the United States. Many had established work histories and had formed families of their own. These strong social ties in turn influence the likelihood of repeat migration to the United States.     

Patterns of African American parents' educational involvement: associations with adolescents' academic performance and motivational beliefs

The current study used survey data from 786 African American mother–adolescent (M = 12.29 years; 48% female) dyads to examine profiles of 7th-grade parental educational involvement and their associations with adolescents' 11th-grade academic performance, academic self-concept, and educational aspirations. Using latent profile analyses, four patterns emerged: (a) Low Involvers; (b) Helpers, Low Providers; (c) Providers, Low Helpers; and (d) More Involved Helpers and Providers. The More Involved Helpers and Providers had adolescents with higher grades than the Helpers, Low Providers and the Low Involvers. The Providers, Low Helpers also had adolescents with higher educational aspirations than other profiles except for the More Involved Helpers and Providers. Findings suggest multiple pathways through which African American parents can enhance adolescents' academic outcomes.