bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
An association between mothers’ speech clarity and infants’ speech discrimination skills
Authors: Liu Huei‐Mei , Kuhl Patricia K. , Tsao Feng‐Ming 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThe quality of speech directed towards infants may play an important role in infants’ language development. However, few studies have examined the link between the two. We examined the correlation between maternal speech clarity and infant speech perception performance in two groups of Mandarin‐speaking mother–infant pairs. Maternal speech clarity was assessed using the degree of expansion of the vowel space, a measure previously shown to reflect the intelligibility of words and sentences. Speech discrimination in the infants (6–8 and 10–12‐month‐olds) was measured using a head‐turn task. The results show that mothers’ vowel space area is significantly correlated with infants’ speech discrimination performance. Socioeconomic data from both parents show that the result cannot be attributed to parental socioeconomic factors. This study is correlational and therefore a causal relationship cannot be firmly established. However, the results are consistent with the view that maternal speech clarity directly affects infants’ early language learning.
Sound induces perceptual reorganization of an ambiguous motion display in human infants
Authors: Scheier Christian , Lewkowicz David J. , Shimojo Shinsuke 
Published: May 2003

AbstractAdults who watch an ambiguous visual event consisting of two identical objects moving toward, through, and away from each other and hear a brief sound when the objects overlap report seeing visual bouncing. We conducted three experiments in which we used the habituation/test method to determine whether these illusory effects might emerge early in development. In Experiments 1 and 3 we tested 4‐, 6‐ and 8‐month‐old infants’ discrimination between an ambiguous visual display presented together with a sound synchronized with the objects’ spatial coincidence and the identical visual display presented together with a sound no longer synchronized with coincidence. Consistent with illusory perception, the 6‐ and 8‐month‐old, but not the 4‐month‐old, infants responded to these events as different. In Experiment 2 infants were habituated to the ambiguous visual display together with a sound synchronized with the objects’ coincidence and tested with a physically bouncing object accompanied by the sound at the bounce. Consistent with illusory perception again, infants treated these two events as equivalent by not exhibiting response recovery. The developmental emergence of this intersensory illusion at 6 months of age is hypothesized to reflect developmental changes in object knowledge and attentional mechanisms.
Getting a clear picture: young children's understanding of a televised image
Authors: Troseth Georgene L. 
Published: May 2003

AbstractPrevious research has established that very young children, unlike older people, often have difficulty using a televised image as a source of information about a real event. After watching on a live video monitor as an adult in the next room hid a toy, 2‐year‐olds usually did not find it, but after watching directly through a window, children of this age succeeded. In the first experiment reported here, 2‐year‐olds could see hiding events directly and on a video monitor at the same time. This video–reality training did not improve performance on subsequent standard trials with video as the only source of information. In a second experiment, an adult demonstrated correct search behavior using video, finding a toy as the child watched on the video monitor. Despite this training and assistance, most of the children did not appear to recognize the connection between a video image and reality.
Imitation from television by 24‐ and 30‐month‐olds
Authors: Hayne Harlene , Herbert Jane , Simcock Gabrielle 
Published: May 2003

AbstractInfants’ imitation of complex actions was examined in three experiments with 24‐ and 30‐month‐olds. In all experiments, an adult modeled a series of actions with novel stimuli and the infant's reproduction of those actions was assessed either immediately or after a 24‐hour delay. Some infants watched the demonstration live, while other infants watched the same demonstration on television from a pre‐recorded videotape. Both 24‐ and 30‐month‐olds imitated actions that had been modeled on television; however, their performance was consistently inferior to that of infants of the same age who watched the demonstration live.
The development of attentional orienting during the school‐age years
Authors: Schul Rina , Townsend Jeanne , Stiles Joan 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThis study was designed to assess the development of spatial attentional orienting during the school‐age years. To that end, we used a cost‐benefit attentional cueing task with short (100 ms) and long (800 ms) cue‐to‐target intervals to examine attentional processing independent of motor skills and perceptual processing in 200 7–17‐year‐olds and 40 adults. We found that orienting attention, disengaging attention and visual processing in an unattended location, were all progressively more accurate and faster with increasing age. Our data thus suggest that the efficiency of attentional orienting improves in an age‐related manner throughout the school‐age years.
Are infants in the dark about hidden objects?
Authors: Shinskey Jeanne L. , Munakata Yuko 
Published: May 2003

AbstractInfants appear to search for objects hidden by darkness earlier in development than they search for objects hidden by an occluder in the light. However, these two types of search tasks have differed in numerous ways that may have contributed to better performance in the dark (e.g. in whether the hidden objects made sound, in the number of familiarization trials with visible objects). The current studies controlled such incidental differences between search tasks, so that they could be directly compared. Six‐and‐a‐half‐month‐olds received four types of test events, in which either a toy or no toy was presented and then hidden in the dark or under a cloth in the light. Infants searched more often on toy than no‐toy trials in the dark than with a cloth. The advantage in searching for hidden objects in the dark thus appears to be genuine. Theoretical implications are discussed.
Respective contributions of inhibition and knowledge levels in class inclusion development: a negative priming study
Authors: Perret Patrick , Paour Jean‐Louis , Blaye Agnès 
Published: May 2003

AbstractDempster (Dempster, 1995; Dempster & Corkill, 1999) proposed that developmental changes in performance on Piagetian tasks could be related to changes in inhibitory efficiency more than to logical development. In this study, the negative priming paradigm was adapted to the class inclusion task in order to investigate the role of inhibition and knowledge levels in the development of class inclusion. Participants were pre‐tested on two inclusion tasks, the standard Piagetian task and Markman's modification task, and assigned to different knowledge levels: empirical, and logical necessity. Children were then tested on a priming version of the class inclusion task. Results showed a negative priming effect, indicating that the irrelevant ‘subclass comparison strategy’ was actively inhibited during the processing of the class inclusion task. This effect was found to vary as a function of knowledge levels, indicating that the need for inhibition was reduced when children had attained logical necessity.
The role of perseveration in children's symbolic understanding and skill
Authors: Sharon Tanya , DeLoache Judy S. 
Published: May 2003

AbstractIn the first few years of life, children become increasingly sensitive to the significance of a variety of symbolic artifacts. An extensive body of research has explored very young children's ability to use symbol‐based information as a guide to current reality. In one common task, for example, children watch as a miniature toy is hidden in a scale model, and are then asked to retrieve a larger version of the toy from the corresponding place in the room itself. Two‐and‐a‐half‐year‐old children perform very poorly in most versions of this task. Their most common error is to perseverate; that is, they search again at the location where the toy was last hidden. Two studies examined the degree to which 21/2‐year‐olds’ high rate of perseveration and poor performance stem from problems with inhibitory control. Results showed that problems with inhibitory control contribute very little to 21/2‐year‐old children's difficulty with the task. Instead, the results confirm young children's great difficulty appreciating and exploiting symbol–referent relations.
Infants’ developing understanding of the link between looker and object
Authors: Woodward Amanda L. 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThree studies investigated infants’ understanding that gaze involves a relation between a person and the object of his or her gaze. Infants were habituated to an event in which an actor turned and looked at one of two toys. Then, infants saw test events in which (1) the actor turned to the same side as during habituation to look at a different toy, or (2) the actor turned to the other side to look at the same toy as during habituation. The first of these involved a change in the relation between actor and object. The second involved a new physical motion on the part of the actor but no change in the relation between actor and object. Seven‐ and 9‐month‐old infants did not respond to the change in relation between actor and object, although infants at both ages followed the actor's gaze to the toys. In contrast, 12‐month‐old infants responded to the change in the actor–object relation. Control conditions verified that the paradigm was a sensitive index of the younger infants’ representations of action: 7‐ and 9‐month‐olds responded to a change in the actor–object relation when the actor's gaze was accompanied by a grasp. Taken together, these findings indicate that gaze‐following does not initially go hand in hand with understanding the relation between a person who looks and the object of his or her gaze, and that infants begin to understand this relation between 9 and 12 months.
Attention affects the recognition of briefly presented visual stimuli in infants: an ERP study
Authors: Richards John E. 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThis study examined the effect of attention in infants on the ERP changes occurring during the recognition of briefly presented visual stimuli. Infants at ages 4.5, 6 and 7.5 months were presented with a Sesame Street movie that elicited periods of attention and inattention, and computer‐generated stimuli were presented overlaid on the movie for 500 ms. One stimulus was familiar to the infants and was presented frequently, a second stimulus was familiar but presented infrequently, and a set of 14 novel stimuli were presented infrequently. An ERP component labeled the ‘Nc’ (Negative Central, about 450–550 ms after stimulus onset) was larger during attention than inattention and increased in magnitude over the three testing ages during attention. Late slow waves in the ERP (from 1000 to 2000 ms post‐stimulus onset) consisted of a positive slow wave in response to the infrequent familiar stimulus at all three testing ages. The late slow wave in response to the infrequent novel stimulus during attention was a positive slow wave for the 4.5‐month‐old infants, to a positive‐negative slow wave for the 6‐month‐old infants and a negative slow wave for the 7.5‐month‐old infants. These results show attention facilitates the brain response during infant recognition memory and show that developmental changes in recognition memory are closely related to changes in attention.
Teleo‐functional constraints on preschool children's reasoning about living things
Authors: Kelemen Deborah , Widdowson Deborah , Posner Tamar , Brown Ann L. , Casler Krista 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThese studies explore the degree to which preschool children employ teleological‐functional reasoning – reasoning based on the assumption of function and design – when making inferences about animal behavior. Using a triad induction method, Study 1 examined whether a sensitivity to biological function would lead children to overlook overall similarity and instead attend to relevant functional cues (in the presence of overall dissimilarity), as a basis for generalizing behavioral properties to unfamiliar animals. It found that, between 3 and 4 years of age, children, with increasing consistency, attend to functional features rather than overall similarity when drawing inferences about animal behavior. Children's ability to describe the relevance of functional adaptations to animal behavior also increased with age. Study 2 explored whether Study 1 findings might result from stimulus biases in favor of the function‐based choice. It found that children's attention shifted from functional features to overall similarity when generalizing labels rather than behaviors with the same triads. These results are discussed in relation to the development of biological knowledge.
The influence of language on theory of mind: a training study
Authors: Hale Courtney Melinda , Tager‐Flusberg Helen 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThis study investigated the role of language in the development of theory of mind. It was hypothesized that the acquisition of the syntactic and semantic properties of sentential complements would facilitate the development of a representational theory of mind. Sixty preschoolers who failed false belief and sentential complement pretests were randomly assigned to training on false belief, sentential complements or relative clauses (as a control group). All the children were post‐tested on a set of different theory of mind tasks, sentential complements and relative clauses. The main findings were that the group trained on sentential complements not only acquired the linguistic knowledge fostered by the training, but also significantly increased their scores on a range of theory of mind tasks. In contrast, false belief training only led to improved theory of mind scores but had no influence on language. The control group, trained on relative clauses, showed no improvement on theory of mind post‐tests. These findings are taken as evidence that the acquisition of sentential complements contributes to the development of theory of mind in preschoolers.
Identification of objects in 9‐month‐old infants: integrating ‘what’ and ‘where’ information
Authors: Káldy Zsuzsa , Leslie Alan M. 
Published: May 2003

AbstractFollowing Leslie, Xu, Tremoulet and Scholl (1998), we distinguish between individuation (the establishment of an object representation) and identification (the use of information stored in the object representation to decide which previously individuated object is being encountered). Although there has been much work on how infants individuate objects, there is relatively little on the question of when and how property information is used to identify objects. Experiment 1 shows that 9‐month‐old infants use shape, but apparently not color, information in identifying objects that are each moved behind spatially separated screens. Infants could not simply have associated a shape with a location or a screen without regard to objecthood, because on alternate trials the objects switched locations/screens. Infants therefore had to bind shape information to the object representation while tracking the objects’ changing location. In Experiment 2, we tested if infants represented both objects rather than ‘sampled’ only one of them. Using the same alternation procedure, infants again succeeded in using shape (but not color) information when only one of the screens was removed – the screen that occluded the first‐hidden object (requiring the longer time in memory). Finally, we relate our behavioral findings both to a cognitive model and to recent neuroscientific studies, concluding that ventral ‘what’ and dorsal ‘where’ pathways may be functionally integrated by 9 months.
Developing Early Years Childcare in England, 1997–2002: The Choices for (Working) Mothers
Authors: Lewis Jane 
Published: May 2003

AbstractThe UK has long been near the bottom of the EU “childcare league”. Attitudes of policymakers towards employment for the mothers of young children were ambivalent up to and including the Thatcher years, and the problem of “reconciling” work and family was historically deemed to be a private decision. This changed in 1998, when the Labour government put forward the first ever national childcare strategy. This paper argues that the aims behind the strategy were intimately linked to the attack on poverty and social exclusion in that: (1) efforts to stimulate provision focused on disadvantaged neighbourhoods; (2) subsidy was provided for early yearseducation, rather thancare(in order to give children a better start in life); and (3) stimulating provision was intended to promote women's employment, especially among lone‐mother families, thereby improving the material welfare of poor families. The means of expanding childcare have taken the form of a complicated set of demand‐ and supply‐side subsidies, reflecting the ongoing commitment to a mixed economy of childcare. The paper argues that this has implications for access and quality, and that there are tensions between the social investment approach to childcare on the one hand, and the desire to promote mothers’ employment on the other.
Women and Pensions: Time for a Rethink
Authors: Evason Eileen , Spence Lynda 
Published: May 2003

Abstract This paper presents the results of a research project conducted in Northern Ireland, which focused on women and pensions. The paper suggests that, in the broader rethink of pensions policy in the UK, which is now clearly needed, central consideration should be given to constructing policies which more clearly relate to the needs and circumstances of women.
Employers and the Management of Retirement
Authors: Vickerstaff Sarah , Cox Jennie , Keen Linda 
Published: May 2003

Abstract In the UK early withdrawal from the labour market is seen as a risk and a cost, worsening the dependency ratio, raising public and private pension costs and threatening additional welfare expenditure over the longer term. Explanations of the retirement process have focused on the welfare state and the impact of pensions and other social security policies. This paper argues that a missing actor in these accounts is the employing organization. Early retirement in the UK has been predominantly driven by the labour requirements of employers rather than state policies to encourage older workers to take early retirement. There is a case for arguing that significant change in retirement behaviour in the UK will come primarily from the modification of employers’ policies. This research is a case study of three employers: one public‐sector and two commercial. It examines the dynamics of the retirement decision. This paper reports the public‐sector case. The findings indicate that employers, in order to reduce their pensions liabilities and stem the cost of early retirement, are trying to regain control of the retirement process. The employees interviewed felt they experienced little choice concerning their retirement, had limited knowledge of the options open to them and found pensions complicated and confusing.
Eating With Your Favourite Mother: Time And Sociality In A Brazilian Amerindian Community
Authors: DE MATOS VIEGAS SUSANA 
Published: May 2003

This article is based on an ethnographic account of parent‐child relations in a Caboclo‐Indian community of south Bahia, Brazil. Raising a child by providing care and food is valued to such an extent that a child's mother may be the woman the child has chosen to be its mother. Choice is not understood as an act of free will, but as a time‐frame in the sense that choosing one's mother is a way of emphasizing the possibility of the unmaking or reversibility of parent‐child links. The article suggests a ‘sociality of becoming a being‐in‐the‐world’ as an alternative not only to the notion of socialization but also to the theoretical link between kinship and society.The Kid has changed the world and myself.  Not in the beginning  But bit by bit,  As I became attached to him  Andrei Tarkovskij,The sacrifice
ALGEBRAIC K-THEORY IN LOW DEGREE AND THE NOVIKOV ASSEMBLY MAP
Authors: MATTHEY MICHEL , OYONO-OYONO HERVÉ 
Published: May 2003

We prove that the Novikov assembly map for a group $\Gamma$ factorizes, in ‘low homological degree’, through the algebraic K-theory of its integral group ring. In homological degree 2, this answers a question posed by N. Higson and P. Julg. As a direct application, we prove that if $\Gamma$ is torsion-free and satisfies the Baum-Connes conjecture, then the homology group $H_{1}(\Gamma;\,\mathbb{Z})$ injects in $K_{1}(C^{*}_{r}\Gamma)$ and in $K_{1}^{\rm alg}(A)$, for any ring $A$ such that $\mathbb{Z}\Gamma\subseteq A\subseteq C^{*}_{r}\Gamma$. If moreover $B\Gamma$ is of dimension less than or equal to 4, then we show that $H_{2}(\Gamma;\,\mathbb{Z})$ injects in $K_{0}(C^{*}_{r}\Gamma)$ and in $K_{2}^{\rm alg}(A)/\Delta_{2}$, where $A$ is as before, and $\Delta_{2}$ is generated by the Steinberg symbols $\{\gamma,\,\gamma\}$, for $\gamma\in\Gamma$. 2000 Mathematical Subject Classification: primary 19D55, 19Kxx, 58J22; secondary: 19Cxx, 19D45, 43A20, 46L85.
RULED SPECIAL LAGRANGIAN 3-FOLDS IN [Copf ]3
Authors: JOYCE DOMINIC 
Published: May 2003

This is the fifth in a series of papers constructing explicit examples of special Lagrangian submanifolds in ${\mathbb C}^m$. A submanifold of ${\mathbb C}^m$ is ruled if it is fibred by a family of real straight lines in ${\mathbb C}^m$. This paper studies ruled special Lagrangian 3-folds in ${\mathbb C}^3$, giving both general theory and families of examples. Our results are related to previous work of Harvey and Lawson, Borisenko, and Bryant.
Special Lagrangian cones in ${\mathbb C}^3$ are automatically ruled, and each ruled special Lagrangian 3-fold is asymptotic to a unique special Lagrangian cone. We study the family of ruled special Lagrangian 3-folds N asymptotic to a fixed special Lagrangian cone N0. We find that this depends on solving a linear equation, so that the family of such N has the structure of a vector space. We also show that the intersection $\Sigma$ of N0 with the unit sphere ${\mathcal S}^5$ in ${\mathbb C}^3$ is a Riemann surface, and construct a ruled special Lagrangian 3-fold N asymptotic to N0 for each holomorphic vector field w on $\Sigma$.
As corollaries of this we write down two large families of explicit special Lagrangian 3-folds in ${\mathbb C}^3$ depending on a holomorphic function on $\mathbb C$, which include many new examples of singularities of special Lagrangian 3-folds. We also show that each special Lagrangian T2-cone N0 can be extended to a 2-parameter family of ruled special Lagrangian 3-folds asymptotic to N0, and diffeomorphic to $T^2\times{\mathbb R}$.2000 Mathematical Subject Classification: 53C38, 53D12.
THE INTERSECTION OF OPPOSED BIG CELLS IN THE REAL FLAG VARIETY OF TYPE G2
Authors: MARSH R. J. , RIETSCH K. 
Published: May 2003

We compute the Euler characteristics of the individual connected
components of the intersection of two opposed big cells in the real flag variety of type G2, verifying a conjecture of Rietsch [6].2000 Mathematical Subject Classification: primary 14M15; secondary 20G20.