Alphabetic Languages Research Articles

Multivariate Scaling of the Characteristic Features Based on Pseudo-Inverse Operations for Recognition Problems Solving

Some approach to multidimensional information scaling of the characteristics features based on results of theory of perturbation of pseudo-inverse and projective matrices and solutions of systems of linear algebraic equations is proposed. The method and algorithm of a piecewise hyperplane clusters creating with the verification of a given criterion for effectiveness of the proposed method of clustering is developed. The problem of stability of main indicators of the classifier in presence disturbances in source information is investigated. The proposed method for determining influence of source data errors on main indicators of the classifier provides presentation of undisturbed information matrix in form of splitting matrices of special kind. Advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated, an example of using the method of scaling characteristic features for recognizing fingerspelling alphabet of sign language is given.

МОДЕЛІ СПІВРОБІТНИЦТВА ФАХІВЦІВ У ХОДІ ІНКЛЮЗИВНОГО НАВЧАННЯ ІНОЗЕМНОЇ МОВИ: СВІТОВИЙ ДОСВІД

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the current state of educational inclusion in Ukraine and the challenges that are to be met in the process of scientific researches. These challenges primarily refer to the lack of teachers' skills and confidence in teaching children with special educational needs and their lack of awareness of the existing native and foreign experience of effective pedagogical collaboration in the process of inclusive instruction. Exemplified by secondary education systems of Italy, Austria, Belgium and the USA, the possibilities of collaboration of mainstream and special education teachers are considered in the context of teaching all 4 categories of children with special educational needs. The latter, according to Salamanca statement and framework for action on special needs education, can be observed as referred to persons with: disability, gift, language difficulties and disadvantaged social environment. The research done resulted in singling out a number of collaboration correspondent models. In Italian mainstream classes all pupils can be taught Braille alphabet or sign language (traditional for special education) on condition that a learner with disability in this class needs some of them. In Austrian inclusive classes a special education teacher can collaborate with a mainstream one on a regular or temporary basis to help children with disability. In Belgium the latter have to attend a part of lessons in a mainstream school and to work additionally with special education teachers or a remedial one. Teaching learners with other 3 remaining groups of special educational needs is thoroughly studied in the USA. The traditional “Push-In Pull-Out” (PIPO) model of teaching learners, whose native language is not English, is gradually replaced by co-teaching models, and namely by: leader – support, team teaching, parallel teaching, station teaching, enrichment teaching, circuit teaching, teaching – observation, alternative teaching, etc. These models are used in teaching learners with disability and gifted children. As for the learners from disadvantaged social environments, they additionally work with remedial teachers.

The origins of backward priming effects in logographic scripts for four-character words

Abstract Yang, Chen, Spinelli, and Lupker (2019) reported a large masked priming effect in a Chinese lexical-decision task using prime-target pairs in which the primes were presented in a backward (right-to-left) orientation (e.g., 说来的总-总的来说) (a “backward” priming effect). The question addressed here is whether this effect is truly an orthographic priming effect or is, to some degree, morphologically/meaning- or syllabic/phonologically-based. Five experiments, two involving phonologically-related primes and three involving meaning-related primes, produced no evidence that either of those factors contributed to the backward priming effect, implying that it truly is an orthographic effect. As backward priming effects do not emerge in English, these results suggest that the orthographic coding process is quite different for Chinese versus English readers. Specifically, they support the conclusion that the orthographic coding process for Chinese readers codes character positions in a quite flexible fashion. Issues concerning the generalizability of current models of orthographic coding in alphabetic languages, as well as implications for models of Chinese word recognition, are discussed.

Applying the Bell's Test to Chinese Texts.

Search engines are able to find documents containing patterns from a query. This approach can be used for alphabetic languages such as English. However, Chinese is highly dependent on context. The significant problem of Chinese text processing is the missing blanks between words, so it is necessary to segment the text to words before any other action. Algorithms for Chinese text segmentation should consider context; that is, the word segmentation process depends on other ideograms. As the existing segmentation algorithms are imperfect, we have considered an approach to build the context from all possible n-grams surrounding the query words. This paper proposes a quantum-inspired approach to rank Chinese text documents by their relevancy to the query. Particularly, this approach uses Bell’s test, which measures the quantum entanglement of two words within the context. The contexts of words are built using the hyperspace analogue to language (HAL) algorithm. Experiments fulfilled in three domains demonstrated that the proposed approach provides acceptable results.

The Functional Neuroanatomy of Developmental Dyslexia Across Languages and Writing Systems

The present article reviews the literature on the functional neuroanatomy of developmental dyslexia across languages and writing systems. This includes comparisons of alphabetic languages differing in orthographic depth as well as comparisons across alphabetic, syllabic, and logographic writing systems. It provides a synthesis of the evidence for both universal and language-specific effects on dyslexic functional brain activation abnormalities during reading and reading-related tasks. Specifically, universal reading-related underactivation of dyslexic readers relative to typical readers is identified in core regions of the left hemisphere reading network including the occipito-temporal, temporo-parietal, and inferior frontal cortex. Orthography-specific dyslexic brain abnormalities are mainly related to the degree and spatial extent of under- and overactivation clusters. In addition, dyslexic structural gray matter abnormalities across languages and writing systems are analyzed. The neuroimaging findings are linked to the universal and orthography-dependent behavioral manifestations of developmental dyslexia. Finally, the present article provides insights into potential compensatory mechanisms that may support remediation across languages and writing systems.

Revealing similarities in the perceptual span of young and older Chinese readers.

Older readers (aged 65+ years) of both alphabetic languages and character-based languages like Chinese read more slowly than their younger counterparts (aged 18-30 years). A possible explanation for this slowdown is that, due to age-related visual and cognitive declines, older readers have a smaller perceptual span and so acquire less information on each fixational pause. However, although aging effects on the perceptual span have been investigated for alphabetic languages, no such studies have been reported to date for character-based languages like Chinese. Accordingly, we investigated this issue in three experiments that used different gaze-contingent moving window paradigms to assess the perceptual span of young and older Chinese readers. In these experiments, text was shown either entirely as normal or normal only within a narrow region (window) comprising either the fixated word, the fixated word, and one word to its left, or the fixated word and either one or two words to its right. Characters outside these windows were replaced using a pattern mask (Experiment 1) or a visually similar character (Experiment 2), or blurred to render them unidentifiable (Experiment 3). Sentence reading times were overall longer for the older compared with the younger adults and differed systematically across display conditions. Crucially, however, the effects of display condition were essentially the same across the two age groups, indicating that the perceptual span for Chinese does not differ substantially for the older and young adults. We discuss these findings in relation to other evidence suggesting the perceptual span is preserved in older adulthood.

The Effect of Salience on Chinese Pun Comprehension: A Visual World Paradigm Study.

The present study adopted the printed-word visual world paradigm to investigate the salience effect on Chinese pun comprehension. In such an experiment, participants listen to a spoken sentence while looking at a visual display of four printed words (including a semantic competitor, a phonological competitor, and two unrelated distractors). Previous studies based on alphabetic languages have found robust phonological effects (participants fixated more at phonological competitors than distractors during the unfolding of the spoken target words), while controversy remains regarding the existence of a similar semantic effect. A recent Chinese study reported reliable semantic effects in two experiments using this paradigm, suggesting that Chinese participants could actively map the semantic input from the auditory modality with the semantic information retrieved from printed words. In light of their study, we designed an experiment with two conditions: a replication condition to test the validity of using the printed-word world paradigm in Chinese semantic research, and a pun condition to assess the role played by salience during pun comprehension. Indeed, global analyses have revealed robust semantic effects in both experimental conditions, where participants were found more attracted to the semantic competitors than to the distractors with the emergence of target words. More importantly, the local analyses from the pun condition have shown that the participants were more attracted to the semantic competitors related to the salient meaning of the ambiguous word in a pun than to those related to the less salient meanings within 200 ms after target word offset. This finding suggests that the salient meaning of the ambiguous word in a pun is activated and assessed faster than its less salient counterpart. The initial advantage observed in the present study is consistent with the prediction of the graded salience hypothesis rather than the direct access model.

The relationship of domain-general serial order memory and reading ability in school children with and without dyslexia

Recent evidence suggests that reading development when learning alphabetic languages is related to the underlying cognitive ability to maintain the serial order of information in short-term memory (STM). However, it remains unclear at which time point in reading development serial order STM is most important. Here, we established a crucial link between the reading development of primary school children and their serial order STM performance for both verbal and nonverbal materials. In a large cohort study of 113 Italian-speaking elementary school children in Grades 1–4, we investigated this relationship by implementing a novel double-probe design. In Experiment 1, we found that serial order STM performance was related to children’s reading abilities, especially in Grades 2 and 3, corresponding to the training phase of grapheme–phoneme decoding skills. In Experiment 2, we assessed children with developmental dyslexia (DD) and found that their serial order STM performance was significantly lower than that of chronological age-matched controls (CA). It also differed from that of reading age-matched controls when accounting for individual reading performance. Furthermore, the CA group displayed an implicit serial order facilitation for item memory, whereas this implicit recruitment of serial order abilities was completely absent in children with DD. Our results suggest that the domain-general cognitive ability to maintain the serial order of information interacts with the development of reading competency, especially during a middle training phase of word reading, and this particular relationship is markedly impaired in children with DD.

Neural substrates of Chinese lexical production: The role of domain-general cognitive functions

Verbal fluency test, a type of word generation task, is a commonly used neuropsychological assessment. Among the healthy population, it has been used to assess verbal ability, but also executive functions. In the clinical field, verbal fluency has been used to support the diagnoses of a number of neuropsychological disorders. However, existing evidence do not allow for clear conclusions on whether such nonlinguistic uses of verbal fluency test are justified. The present study therefore investigated the involvement of domain-general cognitive functions in word production using functional magnetic resonance imaging, assessing verbal fluency, response inhibition, and working memory updating brain activations in the same set of participants. Results showed that response inhibition and working memory updating do play a role in verbal-fluency-type word production tasks, although language-specific regions are also required. Furthermore, domain-general and language-specific areas are closely neighboring subregions within the same broad brain regions. Additionally, a neural network for Chinese lexical production was observed, which corroborate neural bases for production in alphabetic languages, indicating that there is a core network for lexical production, regardless of language, production mode, or cue stimulus type, with other additional areas involved under some production conditions. Given that most previous research only investigated alphabetic languages, these results help gain a better understanding of language production mechanisms across languages.

Resting-state EEG reveals global network deficiency in dyslexic children

Developmental dyslexia is known to involve dysfunctions in multiple brain regions; however, a clear understanding of the brain networks behind this disorder is still lacking. The present study examined the functional network connectivity in Chinese dyslexic children with resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. EEG data were recorded from 27 dyslexic children and 40 age-matched controls, and a minimum spanning tree (MST) analysis was performed to examine the network connectivity in the delta, theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands. The results show that, compared to age-matched controls, Chinese dyslexic children had global network deficiencies in the beta band, and the network topology was more path-like. Moderate correlations are observed between MST degree metric and rapid automatized naming and morphological awareness tests. These observations, together with the findings in alphabetic languages, show that brain network deficiency is a common neural underpinning of dyslexia across writing systems.

Morphological awareness and orthographic awareness link Chinese writing to reading comprehension

Researchers have investigated the association between word writing and word reading in both alphabetic languages and Chinese. The present study extended prior research to investigate the relationship between Chinese word writing (dictation) and reading comprehension in a group of 209 Hong Kong primary school students. Morphological awareness, orthographic awareness, speeded word reading, Chinese word writing and reading comprehension were measured in the present study. The results showed that both morphological awareness and orthographic awareness were significant mediators linking Chinese writing and reading comprehension. More strikingly, when we included the mediating role of speeded word reading in the above model, morphological awareness and orthographic awareness still exhibited significant mediating roles in linking Chinese writing and comprehension. Further analyses showed that morphological awareness and orthographic awareness were equally important in linking writing to reading comprehension in Chinese. Practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Universal and Specific Predictors of Chinese Children With Dyslexia - Exploring the Cognitive Deficits and Subtypes.

While previous studies have shown that the impact of phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) on dyslexia depends on orthographic complexity in alphabetic languages, it remains unclear whether this relationship generalizes to the more complex orthography of Chinese. We investigated the predictive power of PA, RAN, and morphological awareness (MA) in dyslexia diagnosis status in a sample of 241 typically developing and 223 dyslexic Chinese-speaking children. Compared with the control group, children with dyslexia performed notably worse on character reading and all three cognitive measures. A logistic regression analysis showed that PA and RAN were both significant predictors, while MA also played a relatively important role for predicting dyslexia status in Chinese children. In the next step, we used multigroup analyses to test if these three cognitive predictors were of the same importance in predicting reading variance in different reading proficiency groups. And the results showed that the regression coefficient of MP is stronger for the control group than the dyslexia group, while the regression coefficient of PD tends to be stronger for the dyslexic group. Further cluster analysis identified four subtypes of dyslexia in this sample: a global deficit group, a phonological deficit group, a RAN deficit group, and a mild morphological deficit group. Our findings are largely consistent with previous studies of predictors of dyslexia, while uniquely demonstrating the differences in predictive power of these three cognitive variables on reading, as well as the unique contribution of MA in Chinese reading.

Linguistic Characteristics of Mandarin-Speaking Huntington's Disease Patients

Objective Linguistic problem is common in Huntington's disease (HD) patients. It has been studied before in native speakers of alphabetic languages, such as English. As a hieroglyphic language, Chinese differs from alphabetic languages in terms of phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax. We aimed to investigate the linguistic characteristics of manifest HD in native speakers of Mandarin. Meanwhile, we expected to explore the linguistic differences associated with cortical or subcortical pathology.Methods Five HD patients and five Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients matched in age, gender, disease course and educational level were enrolled. All the participants were Mandarin native speakers. All finished history inquiry, physical examination, basic test, genetic test and neuropsychological assessment. Language evaluation was performed by Aphasia Battery of Chinese.Results HD patients had a mean disease course of 5.4±2.97 (range, 2-10) years. They showed a linguistic disorder close to transcortical motor aphasia. They exhibited prominent phonological impairment, as well as slight semantic and syntactic abnormality. Tonic errors were found in speech. Character structural errors and substitutions were detected in writing. In comparison, AD patients showed a more severe linguistic impairment, characterized by global aphasia with more semantic errors. Conclusion Mandarin-speaking HD patients have a transcortical motor aphasia-like disturbance with prominent phonological impairment, whereas AD patients have a more severe global aphasia with salient semantic impairment.

O'TGAN ASRNING 20-YILLARIDA O'ZBeKISTONDA YoZUV ISLOHOTI

This article examines the efforts of Turkestan intellectuals in the 1920s to reform the alphabet and spelling, and later to convert the script to the Latin alphabet in Uzbekistan. As a result of these processes, the contradictions between the Uzbek intelligent were assessed. In particular, the members of the "Chigatay Gurungi" headed by Fitrat showed the work in the field of correction and implementation of the old alphabet and spelling of the Uzbek language based on the Arabic script. Attention was paid to the idea of creating a common language, a single script and literature for the Turkic peoples of Central Asia on the national-cultural front of Turkestan nationalists. Conflicts and disputes between the proponents of the Middle Spelling and the new orthographers on the issues of the alphabet, spelling, literary language were explained by the specific historical conditions of this period, the participation of groups in the socio-political processes in Turkestan, their attitude to reality. The policy of the Soviet regime in this regard and its purpose were also revealed. In general, the process of writing reform and change in Uzbekistan, its causes, essence and results were covered on the basis of primary sources.

From individual word recognition to word list and text reading fluency.

This study aimed to examine (a) the developing interrelations between the efficiency of reading individually presented words (i.e., isolated word recognition speed) and the efficiency of reading multiword sequences (i.e., word list and text reading fluency); (b) whether serial digit naming, indexing the ability to process multi-item sequences, accounts for variance in word list and text reading fluency beyond isolated word recognition speed; and (c) if these patterns of relations/effects differ between two alphabetic languages varying in orthographic consistency (English and Greek). In total, 710 Greek- and English-speaking children from Grades 1, 3, and 5 completed a serial digit naming task and a set of reading tasks, including unconnected words presented individually, unconnected words presented in lists, and sentences forming a meaningful passage. Our results showed that the relation between isolated word recognition speed and both word list and text reading fluency gradually decreased across grades, irrespective of contextual processing requirements. Moreover, serial digit naming uniquely predicted both word-list and text reading fluency in Grades 3 and 5, beyond isolated word recognition speed. The same pattern of results was observed across languages. These findings challenge the notion that individual word recognition and reading fluency differ only in text-level processing requirements. Instead, an additional component of processing multi-item sequences appears to emerge by Grade 3, after a basic level of both accuracy and speed in word recognition has been achieved, offering a potential mechanism underlying the transition from dealing with words one at a time to efficient processing of word sequences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

I-Sign: Sign Language Learning Application Via Gamification

Hearing loss is a type of disability where people who suffer from it could not hear a sound or can only listen to a sound with certain levels. People with hearing loss use sign language to communicate with others and to help them in their learning process. For this study, an interview and survey were conducted with teachers and students from SK Pendidikan Khas Melaka and few problems have been identified in the learning spectrum of children with hearing disability. They face difficulties in learning due to the lack of exposure about the correct sign language since young, difficulty in interpreting sign language in the conventional teaching material due to the nature of its static image contents, and hearing loss children are also usually less focused in the learning process and are easily distracted by their surroundings when the class is in session. To solve these problems, i-Sign is developed as a learning application that incorporates simple gamification in its development that could help hearing loss children to learn the alphabet and basic words of sign language. The use of gamification and multimedia elements provide a more interactive and fun learning environment for the students instead of using static contents, and are also used to direct students’ attention to the learning activity making them more focused in the learning process. i-Sign was developed using the ADDIE model which includes the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation phases. In the evaluation phase, a usability test was conducted on 8 children with hearing loss to test the acceptance of the user towards this application and 91.89% of the respondents found that the application meets their expectation of the application capability in terms of its effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction. This shows that gamification can be used as an alternative learning material for hearing loss children and help expose the correct sign language to them. The application can also be used by the public that wants to learn about sign language.

Identification of Static and Dynamic Signs of the Mexican Sign Language Alphabet for Smartphones using Deep Learning and Image Processing

Identification of Static and Dynamic Signs of the Mexican Sign Language Alphabet for Smartphones using Deep Learning and Image Processing

Demystifying simultaneous triliteracy development: One child’s emergent writing practices across three scripts focusing on letter recognition, directionality and name writing

It has long been acknowledged that immigrant children who are originally exposed to home languages become rapidly socialized into using only English. Although many children ultimately develop receptive skills in their home language, they often become English dominant and rarely have the opportunity for literacy development. There is also a common misperception that allowing children to acquire three languages and scripts simultaneously is either too difficult or too confusing, or both. That children do not realize their full multilingual, multiliterate potential is not only a loss to their cognitive, emotional and academic development but also a violation of their language rights. As a way to help demystify simultaneous triliteracy development, I study my own child as a motherscholar. He is growing up in the United States as a simultaneous trilingual and triliterate in three alphabetical languages using two non-Roman scripts, Korean and Farsi, as well as a Roman script, English. I examine the ways in which he makes sense of and communicates in his literate world from age three to six by focusing on his emergent writing practices, particularly letter recognition, directionality and name writing in three distinctively different scripts. Social semiotic and translanguaging theories have guided my analysis of video and audio data as well as artefacts pertinent to his writing. Qualitative analysis rooted in an ethnographic case study approach demonstrated that he recognized different orthographic symbols across scripts but made linkages between them, applied correct directionality in scripts but with flexibility, and stamped a trilingual identity and met audiences' needs through name writing. The findings show the trilingual child engaging in a more flexible and creative process of letter designing as well as name writing in three scripts in more sophisticated and nuanced ways. The study provides insights into educational practices for multilingual children at preschools and schools.

Spoken Language Development and the Challenge of Skill Integration.

The development of phonological awareness, the knowledge of the structural combinatoriality of a language, has been widely investigated in relation to reading (dis)ability across languages. However, the extent to which knowledge of phonemic units may interact with spoken language organization in (transparent) alphabetical languages has hardly been investigated. The present study examined whether phonemic awareness correlates with coarticulation degree, commonly used as a metric for estimating the size of children’s production units. A speech production task was designed to test for developmental differences in intra-syllabic coarticulation degree in 41 German children from 4 to 7 years of age. The technique of ultrasound imaging allowed for comparing the articulatory foundations of children’s coarticulatory patterns. Four behavioral tasks assessing various levels of phonological awareness from large to small units and expressive vocabulary were also administered. Generalized additive modeling revealed strong interactions between children’s vocabulary and phonological awareness with coarticulatory patterns. Greater knowledge of sub-lexical units was associated with lower intra-syllabic coarticulation degree and greater differentiation of articulatory gestures for individual segments. This interaction was mostly nonlinear: an increase in children’s phonological proficiency was not systematically associated with an equivalent change in coarticulation degree. Similar findings were drawn between vocabulary and coarticulatory patterns. Overall, results suggest that the process of developing spoken language fluency involves dynamical interactions between cognitive and speech motor domains. Arguments for an integrated-interactive approach to skill development are discussed.

La faculté articulatoire de l'apprenant irakien Dans une classe de français langue étrangère A l’université de Bagdad Etude comparative

This research speaks of the ability of Iraqi student in pronunciation. First we describe the alphabet of Arabic and French language, while showing the specificity of some Arabic sounds. The one that characterizes our learner and facilitates his learning of the French language by an easy pronunciation of French sounds